by Ed Greenwood
Tracegar put the emptied vials in a basket on the closet floor, closed the door again, and waved his wand, pointing along a new passage.
Storm crossed her wrists again and looked glum, so Rune and Arclath did the same as they shuffled along after the silent war wizard, chains clinking.
They were heading for a distant lantern, by a large door that looked like it led out of the palace. Standing under the lantern were four impassive Purple Dragons, watching them make the long, long walk.
As they got closer, two of the guards lowered their spears to the ready, points up and inclined in their direction. The other two set their spears against walls, drew their swords, and stepped forward, looking decidedly unfriendly.
Mirt sighed heavily.
“I know not which harness to use, or what horses, either! But I know right well I was ordered to bring a closed coach—like this one, or that one yonder—around to a particular door just as fast as I could. And being as those orders came from the highest-ranking wizard of war ye’re likely to find, I’m not inclined to disobey them. Why are ye of a mood to, I wonder?”
“Because I’ve never seen you in my life before,” the senior hostler said bluntly, “because you talk like an outlander, and because it’s the middle of the stlarning night and what you’re telling me you want to do would be unusual at highsun! Why don’t we just wait for this highnosed wizard to show up himself and demand his coach, eh? After all, it’s you he’s going to be angry with, not me. I’m just the man responsible for all the coaches and horses and tack here, who’s not letting any of them out of my sight without clear orders from my superiors.”
Mirt sighed. “I was afraid ye were going to be like this, an’ I want ye to know that I regret what I’m now going to have to do.” He rubbed his knuckles, made a fist, and started forward threateningly.
The hostler sneered, stepping back and reaching for a long-tined hayfork—as a massively muscled telsword of the Purple Dragons stepped out of a stall to confront Mirt. “Any trouble, Neld?”
“Yes,” the hostler said triumphantly, glaring at Mirt. “This fat outlander is trying to steal a coach—and wants me to harness up the horses for him, first.”
“Nay, I’m not trying anything of the sort,” Mirt growled, still advancing with his hairy hands balled into fists—and ignoring the looming telsword. “I’m trying to get ye to obey orders that came from the royal magician himself.”
“Are you, now?” the telsword asked softly. “Being as the royal magician’s been missing for days, I’d like to hear those orders directly from him myself. In the meantime, what’s your name, outlander, and what’s your trade?”
“Mirt, an’ I’m a Lord of Waterdeep. It pays well.”
“I’ll bet it does, if you acquire coaches this way everywhere you go,” the telsword snapped, stepping forward to confront Mirt.
The Waterdhavian was a big man, but the telsword was head and shoulders taller and just as wide, his bulk being muscle and bone where Mirt’s was fat and bone. “Well?” he asked silkily. “Still going to try to bully Neld into helping you clout a coach, Lord Mirt?”
“I was asking nicely, but I suppose if local custom demands I bully him, then bully him I must,” Mirt growled. “Stand out of the way, Nameless Dragon.”
“Heh. My name is Voruld, and I don’t take orders from outlander thieves.”
“Stand out of the way, Voruld,” Mirt growled.
“Or you’ll what?”
Mirt shrugged, snatched one of his handy bags of pepper from his belt with the twist that undid its binding, and flung it in Voruld’s face. Sidestepping the inevitable blind charge, as the telsword bellowed in pain, he deftly slit the man’s codpiece straps with his dagger—and from behind the roaring Dragon, delivered a good hearty kick where it would cause impressive results.
Then he ran up the Dragon’s shuddering body, temporarily out of reach of Neld’s jabbing fork, stamped on the back of Voruld’s neck with both boot heels, and, as the Dragon fell heavily to the floor, snatched some filled and ready feedbags from their pegs and fed them into Neld’s face.
Avoiding the fork, he followed the blinding doses of oats with his fists, taking solid satisfaction in hammering Neld to the floor twice. When the hostler seemed disinclined to rise on his own the third time, Mirt took him by one ear and hauled him to his feet.
“I’m in a hurry,” he growled with a jovial smile, wiping away spattered oats until Neld could see him out of swelling eyes that were going to be impressively purple-black by highsun, “so I’ll refrain from breaking your nose or jaw. If, that is, you get the proper horses harnessed to that coach there, right away without any delays at all. And in case you’re thinking of giving me lame horses or the wrong harness and reins or some such trickery, I suppose I should warn you that I’ve readied coaches in my time. Cut a strap or leave anything important loose or undone or just missing, and I’ll break your fingers. Backwards.”
Neld swallowed.
Mirt gave him a tender smile. “Yes, I mean it,” he added lightly. “And I do believe time is sliding past us, Neld, my new friend. Just like the royal magician’s patience. And where I’m a simple man who just knows how to break things, he’s a mage who knows how to really exact lasting revenges.”
Neld ran to the nearest tack table. Fast.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
BEDCHAMBERS INVADED
Got you here, didn’t it?”
Glathra Barcantle stiffened as if she’d been slapped, then turned slowly, trembling hands clenched and a wordless, rising-pitch snarl escaping her lips.
Her towering rage at discovering no danger at all in the royal wing, that she’d been duped, and that she’d awakened Obarskyrs for no good reason had not been improved by angry royal aspersions upon her competence.
She was facing a sleepy King Foril right now, and he continued to be none too amused.
So an unwelcome voice from behind her was a last slapping insult, by the throne!
“Give me one good reason,” she hissed as she addressed a spiderlike intruder that had somehow gotten past several posts of guards and into the outermost anteroom of the king’s own bedchambers, “why I should not blast you to your grave, right now.”
“You’ll be dooming the realm, entirely for your own selfish ambition and shortsighted stupidity,” the black, wraithlike head atop spiderlike human fingers replied calmly, lifting one finger to wag it at her disapprovingly. “To put it diplomatically.”
The king had caught up a scepter that could do all the blasting that might be necessary to dispose of all of his guests and most of the wall beyond them, too, but was staring past Glathra at the walking head atop the high back of his best guest chair with interest rather than fear.
“Are you who I think you are?” Foril asked quietly. “Vangerdahast?”
“I am,” the spiderlike thing replied. “And I needed to lure this noisy wizard up here so I could converse with her before a royal audience. Vastly increasing the chances she’ll listen and obey.”
Glathra exploded. “What? Don’t presume to give me orders! Your time is past, old man—by the Dragon, your time as a man is past!”
“I serve the realm still. And do so far better than you’ve ever done, Barcantle. Bluster, highhanded rudeness, and lashing out before you consider consequences is never superior to subtle manipulations—even if you weren’t now facing a city full of angered nobles just itching to find provocations. So spare me your shouts, and tender me your ears and whatever small part of your brain you still use for thinking.”
“How dare—? I’ve never been spoken to—”
“Indeed, and what a problem that’s created! Now, will you listen?”
Glathra folded her arms across her chest and tossed her head. “I don’t even know you are the infamous royal magician! You look like a construct an ambitious but not accomplished mage might cobble together! The words we’re hearing from you right now could be those of any traitor noble, Sembian
, or other foe of the Dragon Throne!”
“Or they could be my own. Foril, call to mind the line of verse Queen Filfaeril left to you, written in a locket, but say them not.”
The king frowned then nodded. “I remember them.”
“ ‘The Crown of the Dragon is a thing so heavy, that I send my love to all who may wear it when I am dust, because only love can hold it high,’ ” the spiderlike thing declaimed, then asked, “Believe I’m Old Vangey now?”
“No,” Glathra snapped, before the king could speak. “Scores of courtiers know those words now, because of various royal scribes and palace gossip and the Highknights’ use of parts of it, some time back, as pass phrases.”
“Very well,” the wraith-spider replied and murmured something too softly for either the king or the wizard of war to hear.
Foril’s scepter suddenly vanished from his hand, two suits of armor in the corners of the anteroom stepped down off their plinths and knelt to the king, and a dusty stone statue at the end of the room shifted its pose to hold forth and open the stone book it was carrying, revealing it to be a pipe coffer holding three pipes and four small and rather moldering lines of pipeweed.
“Do you believe me now?” the spiderlike intruder asked rather testily. “I come on a matter of some urgency, as it happens, and would rather not deprive the crowned head of Cormyr of any more royal slumber because I’m being challenged to do tricks.”
“I believe you,” King Foril Obarskyr said firmly, “and that should be sufficient. What do you want, Royal Magician Vangerdahast?”
“To tell Your Majesty that I’ve found Ganrahast and Vainrence in magical stasis, down in the royal crypt.”
“What?!” The king and wizard of war shouted that word together.
“Reduced to what I’ve become,” Vangey continued calmly, “I can’t cast the necessary spells if they awaken crazed or hostile or enthralled by a foe of the realm. So, I need Glathra here to gather four or five war wizards of experience and accomplishment, and go down and release them.”
“Is this another ploy, old madwits? Another deception?” Glathra spat. “What sort of trap awaits us down there, hey? You just want us all gone, so you can rule again!”
“I want nothing of the sort,” Vangerdahast snapped. “Other than to know just why you didn’t search the palace well enough to find them yourself, days ago. I would hate to think you were either that incompetent or that much of a traitor.”
Glathra went white. “You dare accuse me of treason?”
“Yes. Twice now. I’ll do it again, if you’re hard of hearing. Foril, will you please order this witch to go down to the stlarning crypt and free the royal magician and the lord warder? I don’t need to sleep anymore, and even I’m getting weary of endless snappish debating.”
A sudden commotion erupted outside the doors, the gruff challenges of veteran Dragons overruled by stern orders—and then the doors were flung wide.
Three Crown mages stood there. Seeing the king in his nightrobe, they hastily went to their knees. “Forgive us, Your Majesty, but there’s grave peril! Statues and suits of armor—solid stone ones, and empty suits, that is!—are on the move, all over the palace! They’re tramping places and rearranging things, and we can’t—”
The wraith-spider chuckled, muttered something, then said, “Sorry. That should all stop now. I hope.”
The war wizards all stared at the spider-thing, and some of the Dragons behind them raised spears as if to try to stab at it over the heads of the gaping mages.
“Behold,” Vangerdahast said gleefully. “Here are the wizards you’ll need, Glathra. You might actually reach the crypt before highsun, if you stop arguing and start obeying!”
Glathra glared at him. “I—”
“Can provide us with no good reason not to go down to the royal crypt to investigate Lord Vangerdahast’s claims,” the king said firmly. “Wherefore, I now give you, Lady Glathra, these explicit orders—you are to free the royal magician and lord warder if you find them, and bring them unharmed here to this chamber without delay, that I may converse with them. You are to take these wizards and all of the loyal Dragons outside my doors except Launcel and Tarimmon, there, who will remain as my guardians. Go. Go now. See that this is done.”
With alacrity Glathra bowed low and replied, “It shall be, Majesty.”
After she’d swept out, she looked back to see if the wraith-spider was offering any menace to the king—but it had vanished.
She hesitated, but the king gave her a cold look. She hurried off toward the nearest stair.
The royal crypt was a long way down from there.
“Th-the Three Dolphins Door,” Neld quavered. “Now, will you stop hitting me?”
Mirt gave him a jovial grin and slap on the back that almost pitched the hostler off the coach and onto the rump of one of the hindmost horses.
“Of course,” the Waterdhavian agreed. “Down ye get, now, an’ run along, an’ I’ll say nothing at all bad about ye to the royal magician. A pleasure, Master Neld—a distinct pleasure!”
Neld said something in an incredulous voice as he launched himself in a heroic leap out from the drovers’ seat to the hard cobbles of the Promenade, quite a distance to one side of the coach.
Mirt gave him a cheery wave and brought the coach to a rattling stop outside the Three Dolphins Door.
Four impassive guards held their positions, spears slanted just so, as if he, his coach, and their dust weren’t there at all.
Behind the four Dragons, the double doors that made up the Three Dolphins “Door” started to swing inward.
Smoothly the door guards swung around to face inward, so that whoever was departing the palace would pass between them.
“These prisoners,” an officer’s voice inside began suspiciously.
“I have my orders,” came a flat reply, then the same voice snapped some orders of its own. “Forward. Into the coach. Remember, my wand is ready.”
Storm Silverhand strode out of the palace in shackles and dangling chains, her head bowed. The Lord Delcastle followed her, then Amarune, also in shackles. Behind them came the War Wizard Tracegar, his wand in hand.
Storm stopped in front of the coach and waited. After a long span of hesitation, one of the outer-door guards stepped forward, opened the coach door, and folded down its pair of steps. She ascended, and the other two prisoners followed, under the frowningly suspicious stares of all the guards.
As Tracegar got into the coach with them, one of the guards peered up at Mirt, then snapped, “I’ve not seen you before, and you wear no uniform! Who are you?”
Mirt gave the man a hard stare. “Ask the king. Keep in mind that your low rank will limit the answers you’ll get. And may well wind up lower, when you’re done asking.”
Tracegar rapped on the inside roof of the coach then, so Mirt flicked his whip, clucked to the horses, and set the coach in motion, his stare never leaving the guard’s eyes.
Unhindered, Glathra’s prisoners were conveyed in stately splendor up the Promenade—and out of her reach.
For a while.
The Lady Deleira Truesilver was not in a good mood. Wherefore, fools and those who merely happened to displease her did well to get themselves out of her sight and stay there. Though it was true she was eye-catchingly beautiful, lithe, and elegant, her exquisitely styled white hair contrasting with her flashing yellow eyes, it was the edge of her tongue and the weight of her formidable wits and character they were apt to remember instead, on nights like this.
To put it plainly, she ruled Truesilver House like a tyrant, and in the so-late-they-were-early hours since her reappearance from her chambers, she had verbally demolished two of her kin and a few servants for various stupidities. Having grown tired of having to find fresh words to find so much fault when it seemed to besiege her on all sides, she retired to her chambers again, dismissing her maids and locking them out.
Certain of her inner chambers had bars as well as bolts, and she us
ed these with the deft vigor of a woman half her age, her movements both graceful and imperious.
When the last door was firmly fastened, leaving her only the windows, balconies, and certain secret passages as ways of departing her self-imposed retreat, the Lady Truesilver turned and began to disrobe as she walked toward her favorite bedchamber, kicking off her dainty boots and then doing off her gown and petticoats and hurling them aside for all the world as if she were a club dancer.
When she was down to the most scandalously brief of clouts—definitely the fashion of club dancers, and not aging noble matriarchs—she padded barefoot to a particular relief-carved wall panel, did something to the eye of the doe carved on it and then something else to a moon depicted in a panel across the room—and then returned to the first panel, put two fingertips around some gnarled tree roots in the carving, and drew the panel gently open.
The revealed recess beyond was just large enough for her to hide in—she’d done so just twice, and one had been only a short trial—but held, on foldout hooks, things that did not look at all ladylike. She drew them out, one by one, draping them on handy furniture: boots, several weapon-belts, and then some garments.
The tight leathers of a thief.
All that was left in the closet were wigs—long, dark hair that hung on their hooks like cowls—and a coil of dark, slender cord.
She shook out the leathers, reached for the well-oiled, supple breeches—and froze.
The curtains that framed the door to her balcony were swirling, and no one should have been there to make them move.
Someone was. Not of Truesilver House, but someone she’d never seen before. An intruder. Dark, agile, feminine … and bearing a drawn sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.
Lady Truesilver glanced over at her swordbelt—just out of reach, slung over the back of a chair, with her dagger-baldrics impossibly distant on the lounge beyond—and asked calmly, “Who are you, and what do you want?”