by Ed Greenwood
She turned to indicate Storm and found she was gesturing at empty air. Storm Silverhand was nowhere to be seen.
Above and around them, thunderously, the third fanfare sounded.
The anteroom off the crimson-carpeted passage was small, dusty, luxuriously furnished, and occupied only by a silver-haired woman talking to herself.
Or rather, arguing with a swirling cloud of ashes.
I must get into that Council. So either we conquer some poor, unfortunate, high-ranking courtier or a much-less-poor noble, or I go back into your boots and you march right in there. At least get me to the open doorway, so I can drift away to find a suitable victim, while you distract the guards.
Storm sighed. “No, El. It won’t work. Not with all the wizards, Highknights, and Dragons they’ve gathered around that room.”
Show them your bitebolds, Stormy One. That usually works.
Storm shook her head. “I don’t mind in the slightest trying that, but I just don’t think it’ll work. Not this day. There are handfuls of war wizards at every door, all with wands in their hands, orders to use them without hesitation, and worry and excitement all over their faces. They’ll blast you.”
I’m already dead or bodiless; what can they do to me?
“That’s just it,” Storm hissed. “We don’t know! They could destroy you! And it’ll all end right here—Mystra’s dreams, your promises, and all—over a bunch of nobles fighting over the Dragon Throne, something that’s been going on ever since there first was a Dragon Throne. El, use your head!”
Haven’t got one any more, came the inevitable reply.
“Then use mine, and see sense!”
Nay, nay, lass, I’ve got ye to do that for me. When I behave like a madwits, that’s when things go best, remember?
“My memory, Old Mage, is rather less selective than yours!”
Amarune and Arclath turned together to the nearest doors that opened into the Hall of Justice, but at its doors many stern war wizards and Purple Dragons denied Amarune passage.
“Now, listen here!” Arclath began sternly. “I’m Lord Delcastle, and I—”
“No bodyguards or companions of any sort,” the oldest wizard told him sternly. “We’ll not bend this clear royal decree, so if you want to avoid unpleasantness, lord, you’ll be best advised to—”
“Do not presume to give me advice, man,” Arclath began but broke off as Amarune dug steel-like fingers into his thigh.
“Lord Delcastle, you have a duty to your family and to the realm,” she hissed in his ear. “Get to your seat. You can tell me how it all unfolded afterward!”
And before he could reply she turned away, leaving him staring into the wizard’s face and watching the man do a masterful demonstration of smirking at a noble lord without quite smirking.
Chin high, Arclath strode past and into the Hall of Justice.
Storm was gone, and of course Elminster with her. They were up to something, and Amarune’s own part in it—for now—was done.
So, in small and modest ways, mask dancers can help save kingdoms after all.
Marching back down the crimson-carpeted hall, Amarune Whitewave did not see the oldest wizard of war direct three others to follow her.
At the third fanfare of warhorns, servants were dismissed from the chamber, and most of the war wizards and Dragons moved to stand guard outside its doors. As Arclath hastened up to the nearest vacant seat in the great oval tiers of nobles, the only non-nobility he could still see in the room were a pair of armored bodyguards and two scribes around the king. Probably everyone present knew or guessed they were really Highknights and war wizards.
The older scribe rose, his abrupt movement lessening the din of chatter, and struck a little bell. Silence fell. The Council of Dragons had begun.
King Foril rose to address the nobles, looking more calm than impassioned. Was there a hint of sadness about him?
Arclath devoted himself to listening hard and gazing all over the chamber, watching the expressions riding the faces of his fellow nobles. Most, like Harkuldragon yonder, held open contempt.
Foril wanted all the peers to swear binding “blood oaths” before the attending wizards. Meaning those mages would formally take vials of their blood, upon which to work magics if the sworn nobles were disloyal in the future. These would further be oaths of loyalty to Crown Prince Irvel—who sat impassively to the left of the king: vows to serve him and keep his person safe to ascend the Dragon Throne, and then rule as rightful king of Cormyr.
In return, King Foril expressed his willingness to restore “some” rights and privileges trammeled by the Writ—if the assembled nobles could convince him that doing so wouldn’t harm the lives of Cormyreans not born with titles.
“I have heard your anger, directly and by report of what you have said aloud but not to my face. Remember that I must rule justly over all Cormyreans, high and low. I am prepared to dispense with evasions, long speeches, and insults, and deal plainly, here and now. So, what rights and privileges are you, good lords of the realm all, most concerned with?”
The king spread his hands in query and resumed his seat. Which, Arclath noticed, was no throne but identical to all other chairs in the chamber.
After a short, uncertain silence, it began. Old Kreskur Mountwyrm was bold enough to rise first. Noble after noble followed suit, each rising to speak of what he wanted restored.
Which, when those who liked to flap their tongues—Arclath not among them—were done, was everything.
Few of them were unreasonable or wanted all that much, but put together, all their demands would not just gut the Writ, it would grant them more power than ever before, leaving the king of Cormyr little more than a figurehead.
In other words, just about what Arclath had expected.
Now the real fun would begin.
And if everyone in this room was more fortunate than they probably deserved to be, they might—just might—still have a kingdom come next morning.
CHAPTER
TEN
I FORESAW ALL THIS
A slight sound behind her—the scuff of a swift striding boot on carpet—made Amarune glance back.
Far down the passage were three men in robes. War wizards. They were heading after her, their forbidding eyes locked on her.
They were coming for her.
Rune quickened her pace and looked back again. The mages, wearing tight smiles, were gaining on her.
Sighing in mingled fear and anger, she came to a right-angled bend, strode around that corner—and discovered she was trapped.
The passage ahead was long, straight, and ended in closed double doors that were visibly locked and barred. There were other, lesser doors along the passage but all were closed and probably locked, too. She tried the nearest one.
Yes. Locked.
Rune set off down the passage, moving very briskly as the three wizards turned the corner behind her.
A sudden, unseen force shoved and clawed at her knees and ankles, and she stumbled and fell. Magic.
Scrambling up again, she found the Crown mages almost upon her.
“Surrender, woman,” one commanded, “in the name of the king! You’re suspected of treason against the Crown, and—”
“What do you want with me?” she snapped.
In her fine garb, she was weaponless and stood still, panting from her fall and from rising fear as they surrounded her.
“Your obedience,” another mage replied grimly, “which every loyal citizen owes the Crown, I remind you! If you’re innocent, you’ve nothing to fear. A few swift spells will tell us what’s in your mind, and—”
“And I’ll go mad!” Amarune snarled. “A barking, drooling madwoman I’ll be, and—”
“Ah,” the third war wizard said soothingly, “but you’ll be a loyal one, and—”
A door behind them opened, and a storm of ashes swirled out of it, spinning up to the height of their heads.
Amarune ducked down hastily as the w
izards shouted in alarm and started casting spells. Through watering eyes she saw them staggering around as someone else came through that door.
Could she flee?
No, this new arrival seemed to know just where she was, and was striding toward her, reaching out …
It was Storm!
A spell worked by a war wizard took effect, lashing Storm with lightning. She staggered but caught Amarune by the arm and started towing her toward the still-open door.
Another spell struck, and as Storm moaned in pain, Rune felt a flare of searing heat in her shoulder and down her back. She ducked low and flung herself into the room beyond the door, leaving Storm reeling behind her.
Ashes were still whirling around the cursing mages’ heads. Looking back through swimming eyes, Rune saw Storm, her gown aflame, collapse into the arms of the nearest wizard.
He grappled with her as she snatched a wand from his belt and used it on his two fellows.
They toppled, and she twisted, served him the same fate. The roiling ash seemed to thrust her away and hurry her to Amarune, who reached out and hauled a gasping Storm into the room.
“Help me with the door bar,” she hissed at Rune, smoke rising from her smoldering gown. “Hurry!”
As they barred the door together, they could hear distant shouting from the Hall of Justice. The shouts rose into full-throated roaring.
Arclath had been wrong; his fellow nobles were not done. Emboldened now, they were falling over each other to stand and shout for more. Lord Landrar Dathcloake had gone so far as to demand that a “Council of Regents—heads of noble Houses, all—should have clear governance over the war wizards, the armies of Cormyr, and all matters of royal succession, including Irvel’s. So the Council will choose, whenever a ruling Obarskyr dies or becomes unfit to rule, who—Obarskyr or non-Obarskyr—will next ascend the Dragon Throne!”
There were roars of approval, and many shouts of disbelief and disapproval, too, as Dathcloake sat down with an air of triumph.
The king was on his feet. “Now that,” he said sternly, “I cannot agree to. The only reason to have a royal line at all is to give the realm some measure of stability. If a Council can choose anyone to rule, that is all lost, and Cormyr will become an endless battleground of factions vying to put their people on Council and to destroy those councillors whose views they decry.”
Many nobles rose to shout responses to that, but one angrily overrode them all: Obraerl Foulweather.
“An easy doom to proclaim,” Foulweather declaimed. “We can all call down darkness and disaster in our imaginations, Your Majesty! Yet we do not see the Council as the strife-ridden, shallow thing you paint it. Elder nobles have at least as much sense—and regard for the realm—as most of your courtiers.”
There arose a general roar of agreement.
“Ah,” the king responded mildly. “Well, then, if so, it should be simplicity itself for everyone here to calmly and swiftly agree on just which nobles should sit on this Council, and which should not. So name your roster, lords, that all may judge your wisdom and prudence.” He looked up at the tiers of seats in clear challenge and repeated, “Name it.”
Uproar ensued, of course, with Arclath grinning in wry silence as it raged, until one leather-lunged noble—Lord Mulcaster Emmarask—prevailed with repeated shouts of “Hear me! Hear me!”
When the chamber quieted, Emmarask advanced a plan for an eleven-person Council, formed of members of specific oldcoin families such as Emmarask and Illance, but not including the Obarskyrs, Crownsilvers, or Truesilvers. Further, he claimed that this was the will of the last regent of the realm, the widely revered, heroic Princess Alusair, and was approved by her, her mother, the Dowager Queen Filfaeril, and the royal magician of the day, Caladnei!
This falsehood proved to be one blatant fabrication too much for one lurking witness in the room to stomach.
The glowing figure of Alusair Obarskyr appeared in midair above them all, pointing at Emmarask angrily and shouting, “You lie, Emmarask! Twist my words at your peril! As regent of the realm I advocated an advisory-only council of eleven citizens, to be named by the monarch or a surviving Obarskyr, and not to have members drawn from specific, set families, noble or otherwise. That was what my mother and Caladnei supported. But all the senior courtiers and nobles of the day hated it and said so, your father being one of those who openly threatened that the founding of such a Council would be immediate cause for rebellion; so, it came to nothing! Cleave to the truth, noble lords, or Cormyr is surely doomed!”
Lord Mulcaster Emmarask sneered at the ghostly princess. “What war wizard trickery are you?” he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he looked around the tiers of seats and said loudly, “The falcons are certainly flying this season.”
About a dozen older nobles seated all over the room rose as one. Arclath, as most others there, peered around, trying to mark all of them; the two nearest were Lathlance Goldfeather and Corladror Silversword.
Emmarask pointed at Alusair. “Begone, false and lying apparition! You’re not the Steel Princess of legend; you’re some young chit of a war wizard, saying and doing what Ganrahast tells you to! Begone!”
That enraged Alusair, who plunged down through the air as nobles gasped and ducked away and rushed right through Mulcaster Emmarask. He clutched at his heart and fell to shivering, bent in pain and frozen into silence. Swirling, she swooped and did likewise to all the nobles standing in support of him, one after another.
Leaving them terrified and chilled, shaking—and furious.
Other nobles were struck to anger, too. The scribes laid aside their quills and rose to defend King Foril with their wands. Whereupon many nobles promptly and loudly accused them, as war wizards, of “meddling in the lawful debate” of the Council.
In a trice, ceremonial swords and daggers flashed out of scabbards and sheaths all over the room; the Highknights made ready to hustle the king out to safety. And nobles rushed from their seats to surround the king and prevent him escaping anywhere.
Arclath Delcastle sighed as he drew his sword. This was all so predictable.
War wizards and Purple Dragons traded worried frowns as the shouting they heard coming through the closed and guarded doors rose to a full-throated roar, like unto battle. Should they go in? Were they needed to prevent bloodshed? Regicide?
At that moment Storm Silverhand, in a scorched ruin of a gown, with Amarune right behind her, came marching up to them.
“You cannot pass, by order of the king,” a Dragon said automatically, barring their way.
“The king,” the silver-haired woman snarled, “has been poisoned. We’ve only just uncovered the plot! He’ll very soon fall on his face, dead. Let me through this door! Do I look like I have any weapons?”
She spread her hands, showing what was left of her once-magnificent gown clinging to her shapely figure, to reveal that she wore nothing much beneath. Involuntarily, the wizards and guards blinked at her.
Then they stared at each other, worry and doubt on every face.
“What if they’re Marsembian agents? Or Sembians? Or from Westgate?” one mage snapped, waving at the two women.
“Can’t be,” one of the youngest Dragons replied, pointing at Amarune. “Seen that one before, dancing at the Dragonriders’—an’ if she’s some sort of secret agent, I’ll eat my cods!”
From inside the Council chamber came the ring of steel and shouts.
“Oh, farruk!” snarled the senior war wizard. He turned and flung open the doors.
“Sit down!” Lord Summerstar, Lord Delcastle, and other nobles bellowed, but many nobles clearly intended to menace the throats of the crown prince and the king, and were already crossing swords with the Highknights.
In moments, a pitched battle was raging around the two royals. A war wizard reeled, clutching his slit throat; a Highknight went down under a dozen stabbing nobles; and someone managed to stab Irvel—only to discover that his dagger plunged through a royal midriff as i
f the prince weren’t really there; although, the hard punches Irvel was landing told him the struggling Obarskyr was present and very solid, to boot.
“Ironguard!” that murderous lord cried and clawed at the prince’s gorget—which was popularly rumored to confer such protection—to tear it off.
A Highknight’s desperate leap took the lord away from Irvel and down to the floor with a heavy crash. The landing proved fatal for the lord, as both the dagger and sword of a writhing, groaning noble he landed on burst through him.
Startled shouts and gasps rose all over the Hall of Justice as a woman in archaic fluted armor appeared out of thin air in the empty uppermost tier of seats. A pair of hooked and curved swords—blades like something out of Calimshan or far Raurin—gleamed in her hands.
As nobles stared, she vaulted two tiers down and ran both blades through Lord Barelder, who was wrestling with another noble from behind.
He arched, shrieked, and fell limp. Kicking him off her swords, she sprang down to the next tier of seats, ducked past a shouting dagger-wielding noble, and pounced on Lord Ambrival, hacking ruthlessly.
He managed to half-turn to face her amid that storm of sharp steel before she slashed out his throat. As he toppled, head flopping loosely amid a fountain of pumping blood, she spun away and leaped down another tier of seats.
The unknown swordswoman was seeking specific targets, moving like lightning as she hunted—lunging and slashing with eerie speed through nobles, wizards, and guards alike. But what awakened fear in the brawling Cormyreans wasn’t her deadly swordplay. It was the aura of cold blue flames that wreathed her, igniting nothing but leaving those they touched wincing and moaning with chill.
“Blueflame ghost! A blueflame ghost—a new one! Right here!” Lord Mountwyrm shouted hoarsely.
“Get her!” a young lord bawled. “If we all strike at her, we can have her down before she slaughters every last one of us!”