by Ed Greenwood
Her fingers closed on nothing. They had all been plucked away and strewn across the room! Stumbling boots were trampling them underfoot.
Yes, stumbling. The ghost of Alusair was racing repeatedly through them like a savage wind, leaving a weak, momentarily frozen and clumsy crowd of Dragons and fellow war wizards to carry out her orders.
Glathra fought for calm and began to cast a spell. Whereupon Storm Silverhand turned at the door in a swirl of silver tresses, plucked the nearest war wizard bodily off his feet, and flung him through the air.
Straight at Glathra.
A looming, helplessly shouting weight, all clawing arms and legs.
Who proved heavy, impossible to avoid, and very solid.
Glathra was slammed to the floor, bruised and winded. The mage who’d just felled her had thankfully rolled on past. Though not before ruining her spell, helplessly driving sharp knees and elbows into her … and giving the fleeing five time to get out the door.
As she fought to get her breath back, Glathra saw her fellow wizards on their knees clutching chests and throats, with Alusair curling up from them in ghostly triumph to dart out the door, calling, “To me, friends! I’ll take you to a place in this house of mine where no one will trace or follow you!”
“Don’t bet on that,” Glathra hissed furiously, struggling to her knees. “This particular thick-skulled idiot doesn’t embrace defeat so willingly.”
Something swirled in the dark passage beyond the door—and Alusair blazed back into the room like an arrow, straight at the war wizard’s head.
Only to stop right in Glathra’s face.
“Glathra Barcantle,” the ghost hissed, “Cormyr stands in peril! The realm needs you to grow up, right now. Think on that.”
Then the princess was gone, leaving nothing but empty air in front of Glathra’s nose.
And beyond it, a lot of sheepish men in robes or armor, awkwardly avoiding meeting her gaze as they wincingly found their feet.
Unexpectedly, Glathra found herself on the trembling verge of tears.
“No!” Marlin Stormserpent shrieked, slashing at the death tyrant in wide-eyed terror. The Flying Blade flashed and bit, sinking into rotten plates that in life would have been as hard as Purple Dragon armor.
Each blow shook the beholder, jostling Manshoon’s many overlapping visions as its eyes danced and writhed.
Momentarily everything blurred, and a pounding pain arose in his mind. Blackfire, but he was tired!
His vision steadied, sliding back into focus again. The second death tyrant had hold of the Chalice, and had just slammed into the struggling noble from behind. The room was too small for the beholders to battle effectively—
Yet the clumsy strike worked; the sword tumbled from Stormserpent’s hand. Manshoon used the tyrant that had hold of him to shove him back, pinning the lordling when he went limp and tried to slip to the floor and crawl to his blade. The other tyrant snatched the sword up.
Back now, out of Stormserpent Towers, to me.
To Sraunter’s cellar … so tired …
Had the smoke somehow come with the tyrants? No … What, then, was this purple-gray, heaving mist that swirled in his mind? The rising pain …
Manshoon was vaguely aware he’d lost control over one tyrant. It was drifting limply near the cellar wall. He was seeing it from the floor, a floor that lurched beneath him, slowly, like the deck of a ship he’d been on, long years ago, fighting slow, rolling waves in the Moonsea …
Too much. He’d tried controlling too many minds at once. Sraunter’s roiling fear, the dark, cold dead weights of the two undead beholders, all while keeping his scrying spheres going as he cast multiple teleports, holding some in hanging abeyance … too much. Stormserpent’s flood of terror had defeated him, had put the noble’s mind beyond his mastery this time, exhausting him …
Bile of Bane, but he had limitations after all.
“Sark and lurruk,” he cursed in a weary whisper, watching the ceiling spin above him. Stormserpent was on the move.
The lordling had torn free of the tyrant holding him, but Manshoon still had a tenuous hold over it. If Stormserpent tried to harm Manshoon’s human body, he could slam the beholder into the man, or interpose it between angry young lord and exhausted vampire lord …
Or, he could take mist form to escape destruction if he had to—but the last time he’d done that, as Orbakh of Westgate, so many of his bindings and mental holds over others had faded away that he’d spent the better part of seven seasons restoring a little more than half of them; the others were gone for good.
So that was very much a last resort.
Ohhh, his head …
The sword and the chalice lay on the cellar floor beneath the other, limply floating tyrant. Through swimming eyes Manshoon saw the young noble snatch them up.
Blade in hand, Marlin Stormserpent turned a pale, frightened face in Manshoon’s direction for a moment, then turned and bolted for the cellar stairs.
Manshoon lay on cold stone, listening to the thunder of the noble’s boots die away. He was too drained and near senseless to prevent Stormserpent’s flight.
Silence descended in the shop overhead. No smashings, no smoke … just stillness.
So his pawn had escaped—for now—and the two blueflame items with him.
Manshoon sighed. Undeniably, the future emperor of Cormyr had overreached himself.
He let slip his control over the last tyrant and watched it drift, eyestalks drooping. If the pain would only fade, sark it …
From overhead came the faint slam of a door and the tinkling of the shop’s bell.
Then an imperious female voice, a little breathless but with shrill volume to make up for that, coming nearer.
“Shopkeeper? Alchemist! Master Surontur, or whatever your name is! Yoohoo! Is anyone here? Service! Ser-vice!”
From behind the door of the corner cellar room where an alchemist and a noble lord of Cormyr were confined arose the muffled thunder of Immaero Sraunter trying to get the locked door open.
Manshoon’s lips twisted in wry amusement. Of course. The alchemist knew all too well that Nechelseiya Sammartael didn’t like to be kept waiting.
“Th-they’re saying it everywhere, saer! Rumors always run wild, aye, but they’re all crying it! Noble lords butchered, and King Foril dead, and the realm now at war!”
Lord Irlin Stonestable shook his head. “Surely not all of this can be true! Broryn, is this steward of yours a drinker?”
From the far side of the decanter-crowded table in the front parlor of Staghaven House, his grim-faced host shook his head.
“Aereld here is one of the oldest and most trusted Windstag servants,” he announced almost fiercely. “Shrewd, prudent, and utterly trustworthy. If he tells us all the city’s saying so, then you may trust that all the city’s saying so!”
“Well, haularake! If this doesn’t naed all!” Stonestable swore, draining his flagon and sitting back to stare at the steward as if the man were a shapechanging monster growing jaws and claws before his eyes.
Windstag suddenly rounded on the old steward, in one of his abrupt changes of mood.
“At war?” he bellowed into the man’s frightened face. “Are you sure?”
“Yon trusty may or may not be,” a familiar voice gasped, before the stammering Aereld could say a clear word in reply, “but I sure as the Purple Dragon am!”
Lord Mellast Ormblade, red faced and puffing for breath, staggered past the steward to crash down into a vacant seat at the table and gasp, “Truth, all of it! Many nobles butchered—by a barepelt club dancer, seemingly possessed by the ghost of the legendary Vangerdahast! The king clings to life despite three or four swords through him, I think—and Handragon’s alive, for sure—but many of the oldbloods are frightened or enraged enough that we may already be at war!”
A clatter of hooves and the loud neighing of a protesting horse came from outside. Before anyone could go to see the cause, Lord Sacrast Hand
ragon came striding in.
“Butchery at the palace, a score of oldblood lords dead, and the rest all crying rebellion, and worse news!” he said grimly.
“Worse?” Windstag growled in disbelief. “How so?’
Handragon snatched up a decanter and drank deeply, not bothering with a flagon.
“Just now I almost rode down some Stormserpent family servants,” he replied, slamming what was left of the wine down on the table. “They’re running through the streets saying Lord Marlin Stormserpent and most of his household have been slaughtered in Stormserpent Towers, by unknown hands!”
“Where are we, exactly?” Mirt growled.
“Deep in the haunted wing,” Alusair replied. “Where the old enchantments are so thick that none of the wizards of war who serve the realm now can scry us or even find us with certainty.”
“They’ll guess we’re here,” Storm said dryly, and they were all treated to the sight of a ghost shrugging.
“Let them,” the princess replied. “What boots it? I trust we can agree on some things before Glathra can assemble enough Dragons, priests, and mages to dare to march this far in. So start arguing.”
Arclath smiled. “You know us well.”
Alusair smiled back. “You are a noble of Cormyr, Lord Delcastle.”
“And although known well for your debonair lack of concern over anything at all,” Storm said gravely, “you have been anything but unconcerned—or even approaching calm—these last few days. I feel your mistrust. ’Tis high time we talked.”
Arclath flushed, let out a gusty sigh, leaned back against a pillar, and folded his arms across his chest. “It is. Though we haven’t had much opportunity for leisurely discussion of anything. Nor have I quite dared to say what I think, with Rune justifiably furious if we talk about her rather than to her, and with, well … my fear of you, Lady Storm, and he whom you carry.”
“True fear? Or just wariness?” Storm asked quietly.
“Real fear, Storm. You are … a figure out of legend. And so is he.”
“Elminster,” Mirt and the ghost said together.
“Elminster,” Arclath confirmed. “Servants of a goddess, hurlers of magic that can shatter castles and level mountains and all of that; I’ve heard the tales. At many a revel, late at night over flagons, there’s talk of you, Lady Storm. It’s said you lead whatever Harpers are left in Cormyr, or recruit new Harpers, or both. I grew up hearing about you. Now I’ve met you and come to care for Rune—and now I fear Elminster wants my Rune, body and soul, to be his thrall.”
“And if he did?” Storm asked gently. “Wouldn’t that make her the best-guarded woman in all the realms?”
“Not if he can take over anyone he wants to. That makes Rune or anyone he rides something to be used up or abandoned when harmed, tossed aside like a cracked flagon. Moreover, long before the flagon gets cracked, my Rune could be gone forever. This has been my fear. That if ever I leave you, Lady Storm, alone with Rune, Elminster will enter and conquer her utterly, keeping her body and making all that’s left of the real Amarune I love fade away!”
Rune started to say something, then closed her mouth firmly and shot Storm a look of challenge.
The silver-haired woman looked back at them, saw Mirt and Alusair gazing at her with just as much interest, and let out a sigh.
“Fair enough, Arclath. Hear the truth: Elminster can only take over bodies I prepare for him, or have previously prepared. Right now, that means just one person in all the world: Amarune.”
Storm took a step forward and stared right into Arclath’s eyes. “He cannot take over your body unless you choose to let him—willingly.”
“I don’t believe you,” Arclath whispered.
“Yes, and that’s the problem that’s been hovering like a shadow between us,” Storm agreed sadly. “A shadow I’d love to be rid of.”
She strode a few steps away through the dusty gloom, then turned back to face him. “I can prove the truth of what I say, Arclath, by going mind-to-mind with you—but I no longer have magic enough to do that without help.”
“Whose help?” Arclath asked sharply.
“There’s a certain enchanted item on display in this palace … clear across it, as it happens. Right now, with the Dragons roused and Glathra after us, the trip to fetch it will hold some danger, but—”
“No,” Arclath said flatly. “You’re carrying Elminster with you, right now. If our minds are, ah, touching, El could come right into mine and overpower me.”
“Not so.”
“So you say. Yet, how do I know Elminster isn’t controlling you right now, forcing you to speak—”
“Enough of this,” Alusair snapped, soaring over their heads. “You, Lord Delcastle, hold an opinion of the Sage of Shadowdale that’s far from how I see him, and I’ve known him for—gods help me!—more than a century, now. Hear this, my royal command: Stop refusing all offers to show you truth, and accept one of them. Cormyr needs wise nobles not just stubborn ones!”
Arclath gazed up at her. “Your royal command? I’m sorry, Princess, but as Glathra said, you’re dead. Your time for giving commands is past.”
“Is it now? Well,” Alusair announced, her voice suddenly as sharp as a sword, “my time for keeping my royal patience is certainly at an end!”
She plunged down out of the dimness like a vengeful arrow, straight into Arclath—and stayed there.
As they all watched, Lord Arclath Delcastle gasped, stiffened, and started to shiver.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
SUNDERINGS AND WILD CHASES
The cold, the clawing cold …
Arclath fought to breathe, struggled to stay on his feet, tried to speak …
And lost all battles.
Sinking down, everything going gray, he was only vaguely aware of Rune shrieking and clutching at him.
Her fingers were warm, but everything else was colder, darker. A deadly chill that had a cutting edge of fury cruised angrily through his innards, searing his mind with a pride and grief greater than anything he’d ever felt.
So, that’s what it feels like, to be the ghost of a princess.
You have no idea, naïve lordling, came a snarl from the depths of his mind.
He was sliding down the pillar, his limbs as heavy as stone, and had reached his knees, his mouth slack and his head hanging, before the ghost of Alusair Obarskyr curled out of his chest like a wisp of smoke and snapped, “Helpless, yet? I want you broken, Delcastle, if that’s what it’ll take to have you let Storm or Elminster enter your head and show you what it’s like—and that El has no intention of keeping Amarune’s body or destroying her mind.”
“You … tyrant,” Arclath managed to hiss, glaring at her.
“Yes, I am that,” the face floating in front of him agreed bleakly. “I had to be. They called me the Steel Regent for a reason, Arclath. I accept your judgment.”
She drifted closer, her chill taking the last color from his face. “Yet, hear my judgment of you: ’tis time for you to be wiser, Lord Delcastle. Your friends need you to be, and the realm needs this, too.”
She backed away—the gods granting a small mercy—and Arclath could move again.
He looked at Mirt. “And what’s your judgment of me, Lord of Waterdeep? Am I the stubborn, callow fool these elder folk think I am?”
“Of course ye are, lad. Ye’re a noble of Cormyr! Stubborn, callow fools is what most nobles are—and stay, unless someone gives them a boot up the behind. Ye just got one. Will it work, I wonder?”
Arclath looked at Amarune, whose arms were still around him. “You, Rune? Do you think I’m a fool?”
Her eyes were two banners of love. Two sad, proud pools.
“I think you’re a tower of strength who refuses to surrender,” she replied quietly. “But unlike the many bullies among your fellow lords—that Windstag, for one—you prefer to hide your strength, rather than use it as a daily weapon. I love you for that. My Lord Fool.”
Amarune looked at Storm.
Who shrugged. “I know not if El’s recovered enough to do or say anything.”
Slipping off one of her boots, she reached inside. When she withdrew her arm, it was cloaked in clinging ashes up to the elbow.
Rune reached out, Storm clasped the dancer’s hand, and ashes raced along their joined arms like lightning.
They watched Amarune shudder, arch backward, and roll her eyes up until only the whites showed. She swayed.
Arclath caught her to guard against falling, and watched her give Alusair a glare before rasping in Elminster’s voice, “Is this wise? When ye crowd young lordlings, ’tis my experience most respond wildly, doing much harm. I’m not in the disaster business.”
“El?” Storm asked cautiously. “How are you?”
“Dreadful. Ye?”
Storm smiled. “I’ve been better.”
“Huh. I suppose all of us here can say as much.” Rune looked at Mirt. “Well met again, old thief.”
“Ho, ancient destroyer,” Mirt responded cheerfully. “Ye seem to surround yerself with fine lasses.”
“ ’Tis what I do. Until I’ve trained replacements, at least. Which reminds me …”
Rune turned to Arclath and sank against him in their mutual embrace. “Kiss me,” she growled into his face, in Elminster’s incongruous voice.
Arclath winced. “You’re … coming into my mind?”
“Aye. Not eagerly, lad, not as any sort of a conqueror—but now that Luse has forced us into this, I may as well. Just as soon as I prepare you,”
Arclath frowned but shook his head in surrender. And kissed the woman in his arms.
As their lips parted, Arclath’s face changed subtly. He stiffened, gently pushed Rune away, and strode off down the passage.
After he went a few pillars distant, well into the gloom and with Alusair gliding after him to make sure no skeletons were lurking, he turned and came back.