by Ed Greenwood
The Night Helm was nowhere to be found in the first chamber or the second, though she did acquire a useful trio of daggers in forearm and ankle sheaths—but it was the first thing to strike her eye in the third room.
She peered around swiftly for traps, alarms, or paralyzing-bite spider guardians, saw none—and picked up the helm.
Nothing happened.
With tense excitement, Targrael examined the helm carefully to make sure nothing was inside, like a blade set to snap across the wearer’s throat, or any sharp inner points coated with suspicious substances. None.
She hadn’t needed to breathe for over a century, but as she lifted the helm, she realized she was trying to hold her breath.
In sudden impatience, she hauled it down over her head, settled it in place, and peered out of its eyeslit at the room around her.
Nothing happened. Silence.
Utter silence, that is. The ever-so-faint, everpresent singing sound that had been in her head since Manshoon’s first trampling invasion was gone.
Gone.
She was free.
Truly free.
Unleashed and with the leash torn away, let loose to follow her own desires. To serve Cormyr properly once more.
Free to hunt Manshoon down. And do the same to Elminster the meddler and the incumbent fools of the court, the current courtiers and wizards of war—from the doorjacks on up, most of them were incompetent traitors and fools who endangered Cormyr by their very presence.
Yes, she was free to be herself again. No archwizard’s slave, but the guardian of Cormyr.
The guardian of Cormyr. Its sole true bannermaster. Her every thought and moment once more devoted to calculated deeds that would advance Cormyr to new greatness. Unmoved by sentiment and misplaced loyalties to traditions or the House of Obarskyr or anything else. She would be the clear-headed, dispassionate agent of the Forest Kingdom.
Unless, of course, she ran into that bitch Alusair again.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
LET IT BEGIN
It had been, Elminster decided, a very long day.
This young lass whose body he was riding was more fit and supple than he’d ever been, but right now she was footsore and weary.
Her legs groaned at every step; she’d long since reached the stumbling stage; and if her life suddenly depended on sprinting somewhere farther off than, say, yon tree … well, Amarune Whitewave’s life would come to an end right then.
He had a new appreciation for the views of upcountry Cormyreans who said the King’s Forest went on forever.
El knew better, having walked across it a time or two and magically whisked himself over it or translocated from end to end of it often. But, traversed this way, step after clambering step in the deep brush flanking the Way of the Dragon trade road, it certainly seemed endless.
The cozy, private Delcastle hunting lodge Arclath had promised them was still half a day’s trudge north, then a good walk west from the road along a grassy track straight into the deep heart of the forest. A walk that would happen on the morrow, being as night had fallen while they were tarrying in one of the roadside camping glades, debating whether or not they should push on to the next one.
“Clean jakes,” Storm reported crisply, in a tone that made it clear she’d decided they would stop there for the night.
Arclath gave her a sour look that swung around to include El. “So you’ve decided, have you?”
“Look ye, young lord,” Elminster replied, waving at the trees ahead. “Can ye see clearly, to avoid missteps? Or to always find room enough to swing thy blade in a good clear sweep, so as to slash a wolf off its feet and away from thy throat? Because I’ve been hacking at wolves in forests for far more than a thousand years longer than ye have—and I know I can’t, when nightgloom gets this deep.”
“Well, of course not now, in your dotage,” Arclath muttered, but bit off his next words with a sigh, shrugged, and spread his hands. “You’re right. We camp here.”
Storm chuckled. “Well, we can go on arguing about the life El and I lead—and our fell attempts to ensnare Rune in it—just as well here, around a fire, as we can stumbling on blindly through the forest in the dark.”
Arclath gave her a look.
All day long, as they had trudged along beside the road, they’d debated the ethics and merits of the life in service to Mystra that El and Storm had led for the better part of the last century. Arclath was obviously more interested in what they’d done than he cared to admit, but he held several reservations about his Amarune joining in that life, not to mention dragging him along with her.
“Couldn’t we just have stayed in Suzail to fight Windstag and his ilk barehanded?” he asked. “Or taken on those blueflame ghosts, with us naked and blindfolded? Wouldn’t that have been safer?”
Storm smiled. “Safety is most often a matter of how one feels, rather than true security. Ask your Amarune about Talane, and see if she feels so eager to return to Suzail.”
“I can’t ask her,” Arclath pointed out bitterly as they went to the glade’s little roofed stand of ready firewood to take what they needed for a small fire. “Not with old Leatherjaws in residence.”
From the far side of the clearing came Elminster’s dry chuckle, higher pitched than it should have been thanks to Amarune’s younger throat. “I may be ancient, lad, but there’s nothing at all wrong with this splendid young body’s hearing. Speaking of which, I should be returning it to her so the two of ye can kiss and cuddle and try to pretend ye’re alone.”
Arclath gave El a hard look, or tried to. He found it difficult to favor his beloved with a properly withering scornful glare, even when she was wearing the lopsided grin El liked to adorn her face with.
The noble gave up trying, sighed again, and went to his knees by the firepit to set down his wood for Storm to build the fire. Firetending was something Delcastles left to servants; he knew only enough about it to be certain you didn’t just pile the wood in a heap and try to get it going.
“I believe I’ll be more accepting of this,” he told the silver-haired lady, “when I know who—or what—Mystra really is. To me, she’s little more than a name from the past. The dead goddess who once ruled or corrupted all magic.”
“You have much to learn,” Storm replied softly.
Arclath nodded. “That, I freely grant.” He held out some of the smaller split logs to her. “Yet I hinted as much earlier as we walked, and instead we talked more about the current politics of Cormyr.”
Rune joined them, still speaking with Elminster’s voice. “Well, such concerns matter more to ye and to the lass, right now. Talk of gods—and ethics—can take lifetimes.”
She bent down and embraced Storm, breast to breast. Arclath watched, fascinated, as ashes suddenly flowed from Rune’s mouth, ears, and nose, flowing like purposeful lines of ants down Storm’s cheek and neck, to vanish into her bodice.
Then he looked away. It seemed somehow … obscene. “Done yet?”
“Well, El’s out of me,” Rune murmured in her own voice, reaching out for him, “if that’s what you mean. Is there anything to eat?”
Storm smiled. “Trust me. Where foresters make these camping spots, Harpers hide food nearby. And despite what you may have heard, there are still Harpers in the world.”
Arclath nodded skeptically. “Can you name me one, who’s here in Cormyr?”
“Certainly.” Storm gave him a wink. “Me.”
Under her hands, the fire flared up then, with an eager crackle. She fed it carefully, calmly moving a flaming twig to three different spots before letting it fall into the rising flames, then she rose to her feet.
“I’ll be right back. Or I can take some time returning, if you two would prefer.”
“If—? Oh.” To her surprise, Rune found herself blushing.
“Oh,” Arclath added, catching on more slowly. He gave Rune a swift glance and added, “Uh, no. Not this night. Not … out here, under the trees.”
Storm nodded and walked away, moving almost soundlessly into the deepening darkness where the clearing ended.
Arclath watched her go but was astonished at how quickly he lost sight of her amid the trees. He thought he saw movement, but … no, he could no longer be certain where she was.
Suddenly, his intent peering was interrupted by Amarune’s face, bobbing up right in front of his, nose to nose.
“You could give me a kiss,” she suggested in a whisper, offering her lips. “Lord Delcastle.”
“But of course,” he murmured airily. “Where are my manners?”
Manshoon leaned back in his chair, a stylish goblet of Lord Relgadrar Loroun’s best wine in his hand, and regarded his host.
Loroun sat across the table staring past him, rendered dumb and immobile by Manshoon’s grip on his mind.
That mind was a dark and fascinating place. Loroun was another Crownrood, only more so. The lord had dabbled in half a dozen intrigues against the Crown and knew of thrice that many. Most were fledgling, stillborn attempts at small, sneaking treasons, more angry talk in back rooms and minor deceptions against Crown inspectors than matters of swords-out or real harm. But a few had gone as far as specific plans for killings and seizures of keeps and bridges once the hated wizards of war were dealt with.
That did not surprise Manshoon at all. If there were no mages spying for the Dragon Throne and hurling spells at any sign of insurrection, this land would have been drenched in the blood of civil strife long ago—many times over.
What was a surprise was what had driven him to pour a second glass of wine and spend far more time than he’d intended sorting through Loroun’s thoughts, searching for more. Loroun knew a surprising amount about the foremost Sembian-sponsored treason afoot in Suzail.
Most folk believed a mind held thoughts like some sort of gigantic ledger or written tome: ordered sentences that stayed in one spot and could easily be consulted time and again. Most folk were fools.
Even the simplest mind held thoughts as images—fading, overlapping, confusingly melded images that swam around in endless rearrangements, clinging to favorite linkages but apt to move, links and all, anywhere in the shifting murk.
It was enough to drive a man—even an accomplished archwizard gone vampire—mad.
Manshoon smirked. More mad, as Elminster might have said.
He was thankful that he no longer had to contend with that particular old menace, or have any regard at all for the ancient fool’s views.
These Sembian intrigues, now …
Manshoon was no Cormyrean, and what he knew of Suzail’s streets came from the relatively few citizens whose minds he’d plundered. Though some of those minds had known much, “Andranth Glarvreth” was not a name he’d ever heard before.
Apparently, Glarvreth was a successful, established merchant dealing in imports of ironmongery and glasspane. “Respectable” in the eyes of the city, a merchant who supplied shops, rather than a shopkeeper himself. Suzailan-born and grown quite wealthy, he was one of the growing number of successful citizens who wanted to be nobles but hadn’t yet been admitted to the titled ranks. A rebuff that festered behind their well-fed smiles.
It certainly did behind Glarvreth’s. Enough that the man had scorned Loroun in private twice, rather than accept his friendship and common cause in certain plots against the Crown. Glarvreth wanted to carve his own way to a title, not accept the help of any noble of Cormyr.
The importer’s intended road to nobility, Loroun’s spies had long ago learned, lay through Sembia. Glarvreth headed the strongest Sembian-backed scheme to bring down or enthrall the Dragon Throne, and had assembled a sizeable armory hidden right in the heart of Suzail.
Sipping wine in growing amusement, Manshoon settled down to learn all he could about Andranth Glarvreth from Lord Loroun’s sour, resentful mind.
Loroun went right on staring. Dust was beginning to settle on his frozen, glaring eyeballs.
Manshoon discovered the goblet in his hand had somehow become empty and started to rise.
Then he sat back and compelled his newfound servant to fetch the decanter for him. It was more fun to make the stiffly staggering Loroun do the work.
Clumsy servant though he was.
Yes, servant. “Slave” was such an ugly word.
“Will it bother you much to leave Suzail behind?”
“I … know not, yet. I don’t think so, but I don’t know so,” Arclath replied thoughtfully, staring into the hot orange coals of the fire that warmed their faces.
He and Rune were talking together after a meal of astonishingly tasty forest roots and leaves, flavored with a meaty paste that Arclath strongly suspected had been made from freshly scooped snails.
The cook was standing watch a few strides away, on the far side of a large tree, leaning against the trunk facing out into the night. If Arclath leaned and peered, he could just see the side of one of Storm’s boots, but she hadn’t moved a muscle, so far as he could tell, or made a sound, for …
Well, a long time.
He quelled a yawn. Just how late was it? Night had fallen a good long time ago, and rustlings arose in the brush here and there, well beyond the light of the fire. He hadn’t seen eyes peering out of the darkness, yet, but—
“Good even, foresters. If you are foresters,” Storm said suddenly, her voice calm, firm, and loud. “Will you share our fire?”
Her challenge floated out into the night. After what seemed a long time, some sudden cracklings and twig-snappings arose … and seven foresters with bows in their hands and daggers at their belts stepped out of the dark forest and approached the fire. They formed a wide arc that almost encircled the camping glade; the only gap in their line was toward the road.
The elder foresters had impressive beards and hard, weathered faces to match. They regarded Storm expressionlessly, and one who looked to be the oldest said, “We are foresters. The king’s foresters on patrol. And who would you be?”
“Nobles of Cormyr who have been vastly entertained by your attempts to stealthily encircle us,” Storm replied gently.
“Nobles, hey? You, lad, what might your title be?”
As he flung that question, the oldest forester strode forward, drawing his dagger. Behind him, others strung their bows.
Arclath stood up and put his hand to his sword. “I am Lord Arclath Delcastle, and this is Lady Delcastle. The lady you’ve just spoken with is the Marchioness Immerdusk.”
“Not noble Houses I’ve heard of,” another forester growled, as the ring of men in leather and homespun tightened around the fire.
The oldest forester came to a stop facing Arclath and held up his hand in a wave that might have meant “stop” or might have meant “halt, let us have peace.”
“Well, then, Lord Delcastle,” he asked, “is this all of you? Three afoot? I’ve never seen a noble out here without a horse and several servants. Are you running from something?” Two foresters fitted shafts to their bows.
Two more reached swiftly for arrows after Storm stepped away from her tree to face them, her long, silver hair winding about her shoulders like a nest of restless snakes.
The old forester eyed her for a moment, and then looked back at Arclath.
“Well, noble lord? You have my questions; have you any answers for me?”
Manshoon sat back, frowning. His exploration of Loroun’s mind was done, and the noble’s wits and tongue had been restored to him. He was sitting there in his sweat, glowering at Manshoon as much as he dared to and reaching for the wine.
Loroun knew a lot—but much of it was hints, gossip, and reports from men he paid to spy but trusted little. Suzail could be a seething snakepit of men just aching to erupt into widespread treason … or it could be a nobles’ den of arrogant malcontents, a few of whom had dreams and a few more of whom had loud, unguarded tongues.
Which made it not much different from anywhere else that had nobles.
Westgate, Zhentil Keep, Sembia …
he’d tasted them all and found them very much the same in this respect. True traitors seldom made much noise. Those too fearful to ever do anything, unless carried away in the heat and blood of someone else’s tumult, did most of the blustering and taunting and making of grand doom promises. Loroun was at least shrewd enough to know he was dealing with shadows more than things that could be held and trusted, which put him above many of the young fools Manshoon had encountered in this city these last two nights, as nobles gathered to attend this Council.
“I have a question or two, Lord Manshoon,” Loroun said, his voice polite, “and I believe that in a world that knows any shred of fairness, it is more than my turn for answers, if you have them.”
Surprised, Manshoon unfolded one hand palm upward, in a silent signal to proceed.
“What’s become of these blueflame ghosts? Are they a war-wizard weapon, soon to be sent out to hunt down nobles? Or, are they a sword wielded by a noble? Or, do they instead obey a Sembian or some other outlander foe of Cormyr? Or, are they the tools of someone who wants to be noble and is determined to butcher lords until so many titles and holdings are vacant that the Crown may well ennoble him seeking to fill them?”
“Good questions, all,” Manshoon replied. “So good that I can answer none of them.” He raised a swift forefinger and added soothingly, “Yet I am trying to find out.”
Whereupon Loroun glared at him with narrowing eyes and demanded, “Or is it you?”
Manshoon shook his head. “If it were, Loroun, do you think I’d waste my time befriending you? Hmmm?”
“We are … serving the Crown in a matter we cannot discuss,” Arclath improvised, glancing at Storm to see if she approved. She gave him a solemn wink, strolled over to Amarune, and put her arm around the dancer’s shoulders.
“El?” Rune whispered.
“Not yet,” Storm murmured. “Only if need be.”
The foresters had been cautiously drawing closer and peering closely at the three by the fire.