by Ed Greenwood
“I am one who has served Cormyr since your grandmother was young,” the intruder replied almost mockingly, the voice female, gentle, and at the same time colder than Deleira Truesilver’s frostiest tones, “and I want to know your secrets. Talane.”
Lady Truesilver stiffened. No one should know that she was—
She whirled and fled, seeking her innermost bedchamber and a door she could slam between her and this intruder.
Who shed a dark helm as she sprang across the room like a panther and pounced, slamming Deleira Truesilver bruisingly to the floor and easily overpowering her in a chilling, steel-strong grip.
“Not so fast,” the intruder hissed, their faces almost touching. An eerie glow came from between the unfamiliar woman’s teeth. “Your death can be easily achieved, but I want what you know first.”
“And just how are you going to get that?” Lady Truesilver snarled defiantly, arching and struggling, trying to buck her attacker off.
“Like this,” Targrael replied, opening her mouth to reveal a glowing white gem on her tongue—before she forced Deleira Truesilver’s jaws open with iron-hard fingers, and kissed her.
A flash of light erupted as their tongues met that Deleira Truesilver felt, like a silent roar of surf crashing through her very bones, and she felt the cold, somehow minty feeling of magic awakening within her.
Her attacker was now more than a stronger, colder body than hers, holding her down. There was another mind in hers, a dark and looming presence growing larger and closer.
Lady Truesilver did not hear the words that Targrael spoke then so much as she felt them.
“The royal magicians of Cormyr left some very interesting magics hidden around the palace. This was the one that most interested me.”
Enthralled and helpless, Deleira Truesilver couldn’t move or speak as the dark malice of her foe’s cruel, hostile mind flooded into hers, drowning her in shivering darkness …
The Horngate, of course, was locked and barred for the night. The stone-faced guards there crisply informed Mirt that they had no intention whatsoever, short of the correct horncalls from the palace, or the king himself wagging “crown and scepter” in their faces, of opening it before morning.
“All Cormyreans know these rules,” one of them added sharply. “Climb down from there, man, and yield up to us your name, your business here, the land you hail from, your passengers—and their destination. Now.”
Mirt sighed. “I have my orders, an’ they don’t sit well with the ones ye’re giving me, man. So a little less of the ‘now,’ if ye don’t mind.”
“But I do mind, saer! Now, there are ten crossbows aimed at you, so I’m going to tell you agai—”
“If ye put a quarrel through any of my passengers,” Mirt roared, “ ‘tis yer lives as’ll be forfeit, idiot Dragons! Now, down bows, an’ pay heed to who’s stepping out of my coach!”
His shout rang back at him off the closed gates, and he sat down sweating, hoping very much he’d bought Elminster enough time to think of something.
Under him, the coach made the slight rocking that meant its door had been opened and someone was stepping down.
There was a stir among the guards, and he could see crossbows being lowered. They obviously recognized the passenger who’d alighted.
“Open the gate,” came a crisp, simple order.
Mirt hid a smirk. The voice was a very good imitation of the Lady Glathra Barcantle’s shrill of excitement, but it was Elminster’s very good imitation.
And now the guards were opening the gate, and “Glathra” was climbing back into the coach.
Mirt waited for the rap on the coach roof before he urged the horses forward again, and they rumbled out of Suzail into the last dark hours of the night.
Or were they the darkest hours of the morning?
Even after twenty seasons of leading raids in those dark hours, Mirt had never decided.
He waited until they were out of bowshot from the walls before opening the little hatch that let a drover talk with passengers, and asking, “Where now?”
“We take the coach to the paddocks nigh Eastgate,” Elminster’s voice came up to him, “and leave it there, hobbling the horses. Then we go for a long walk on Jester’s Green, well out from the walls. We’ll go well west, around to the Field Gates. Accompanied by this pet war wizard of ours, we’ll trudge back into the city through them at daybreak, looking suitably different than we do now. We’ll be burying those shackles.”
“Oh?” Mirt growled. “What’re ye going to make me look like?”
“Old Lord Helderstone,” Elminster told him. “He has no heirs and has dwelt in seclusion in Sembia for years—no one in Suzail should know that he’s dead yet. I know where a handsome fortune in coins can be had, and ye can lord it up in a highnose inn as long as they hold out. Storm will be thy servant. I’ll make Rune look like a retired Highknight I recall, who died a few months back, who’s now in Suzail and investigating just why rich old Lord Helderstone has returned to Cormyr—in other words, which faction of treason-plotting nobles he’s drenching in floods of coins—and the rest of the time she can look like Amarune and be with Arclath, the two of them keeping well away from ye.”
“While I do what?”
“Wench, trade, work a few swindles, get rich—in short, be thyself,” El replied. “No noble of Cormyr would spend a score of summers in Sembia who did not love coins and the winning of them.”
“And what will ye be doing?”
“Trying to hunt down and slay Manshoon, and hold Cormyr together, and find and come to command or destroy all the blueflame ghosts, of course.”
Mirt shook his head slowly. “Ye’re as crazed as ever.”
“Of course.”
Mirt could hear Elminster’s grin.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
A LADY OF GHOSTS
The morning sun was reaching bright fingers in through the windows. None of the dozen senior wizards of war gathered around the long table, which almost filled this locked room on an upper floor of the sprawling royal court, cared a whit about sunlight, however.
Their minds were on darker things, specifically, the foremost current threats to the realm.
The royal magician of Cormyr and the lord warder had been too long absent from such conversations, and there was much to catch up on.
“Of course our tirelessly treasonous nobles are brewing civil war in earnest in the wake of this disastrous Council,” the Lady Glathra was declaring, “but there are other, smaller players we must now pay attention to.”
Ganrahast held up his hand to stop her. “I want you to list them for us in a moment, lady, but first—Erzoured?”
“Our ongoing work to, ah, take care of every crony and ally he develops,” a thin and dour mage replied, “continues, and he remains isolated, as he has found himself time and time again. Many of the nobles’ factions and Sembian and Suzailan merchant cabals are reaching out to him right now, but he has joined none of them, yet—and all of them fear the possibility he’s a spy for the king.”
Dark chuckles made note of that irony, ere the royal magician stilled them with his hand again and asked, “Glathra? Those smaller players?”
“Targrael, the death knight who believes herself the true guardian of Cormyr. The rival claimant for that role, the ghost of the Princess Alusair. Whoever sent the eye tyrant to attack us last night. The scuttling wraith-spider—I know of no better name for it—who claims to be the infamous Vangerdahast and certainly commands as much about the palace as that royal magician was reputed to—statues, and the like—not to mention the escaped Elminster, and his companion Storm Silverhand, who for some years have stolen magic from us, in the palace.”
“Have any of these joined in common cause with ambitious nobles, while we’ve been … asleep?” Vainrence asked with a frown.
“Not that we know of,” Glathra said slowly, after no one else ventured a reply, “yet all of them are capable of such trea
son.”
Ganrahast snorted. “So is any dog or passing falcon. We must avoid raising phantoms and fearing them. The real foes are formidable enough.”
“I do have my suspicions about one of us,” Glathra added, raising a finger, “though I admit it is early yet for my alarm to have gained any serious substance. Yet, we all follow our hunches or noses or itches … and this is my newest.”
Ganrahast waved at her to continue. “Raise your suspicions. Please.”
“Welwyn Tracegar,” she replied bluntly. “Last night I ordered him to take three persons into custody for questioning—Storm Silverhand, Lord Arclath Delcastle, and a mask dancer of the city who seems to be descended from the notorious Elminster, one Amarune Whitewave. He did this but has since vanished, along with the prisoners and a man calling himself Mirt, who claims to be a Lord of Waterdeep. Though that name was better known in Waterdeep about a century ago.”
“We can all banish our suspicions about Wizard of War Tracegar,” Ganrahast announced firmly, “and leave him be, to operate without hindrance.”
Glathra leaned forward to look at him, frowning. “Why?”
“I’ve taken counsel with Vangerdahast—or what is left of him—and we have agreed on this,” the royal magician replied curtly. “Ask me no more.”
Eyebrows went up all around the table, but Glathra merely sat back and asked the ceiling, “Will there come a day when someone else besides a former royal magician—who richly earned himself a very fell reputation—will decide things for the Forest Kingdom?”
“Vangerdahast swore to dedicate his life to guard Cormyr, and he is still guarding Cormyr. Guided by wisdom and experience none of us can match,” Ganrahast replied quietly. “In this, I am willing to trust him for a little longer.”
“How little?”
“We’ll see.”
This cellar was beginning to feel like a prison cell. Manshoon paced it, thinking dark thoughts.
He was back in the body of Sraunter, who was given to such gloomy thinking—but the worrying that was consuming him at that moment was all his own.
He could find no trace of Mreldrake or Targrael—or Talane!
Dared he creep back into Understeward Corleth Fentable’s mind, using one of his wagon drovers, who supplied the palace with foodstuffs daily, to reach Fentable? And so seek to learn the current thinking of the Crown?
Or was it time to lie low, going nowhere near the palace? He could instead take fresh measure of the war wizards, with an eye to which ones he could isolate and destroy or ruin with scandal, either by entrapment or deceit.
It went against his desires to lurk idle and let others seize power—it had angered him just to return his beholders to hiding in the cellar—but perhaps that was the best path to take over the next few months. He could work through Dardulkyn to keep some sort of watch over the various ambitious nobles …
He nodded, feeling grim.
He’d succumbed once again to the urge to take a direct hand in things, and the results had been disastrous.
Two beholders gone, for scant gain, and his presence very close to being revealed or at least suspected strongly enough to set the wizards of war to hunting him.
No, lying low and keeping his beholders hidden was best, for a while.
He would work through Dardulkyn—he had, after all, managed to destroy everyone who’d seen his tyrants—and use various lesser thralls, servants and carters, to try to discover just which Cormyrean noble besides Marlin Stormserpent commanded a blueflame ghost.
This stealth should keep him away from Elminster’s notice, too. He would wait until the Sage of Shadowdale revealed himself, and then pounce and destroy Elminster again.
“And bury him deep, this time,” he told the cellar fiercely, as the shop bell rang and he started up the stairs. “As often as it takes, until he’s gone forever.”
“Well?” Marlin Stormserpent snapped. It was full morning and foresters would be about, all too soon. His bodyguards should have managed this a lot faster.
“Done, lord,” came the flat, almost sullen reply. “The huntsman and all six lodge guards are dead.”
“Wrap the bodies in the oldest tent of those up in the rafters, and take them to the bear den up by Blackrock, right down in the rocks at its mouth, for the bruins to devour. Don’t be seen, and don’t trail blood from here to there. Leave Ghalhunt here with me.”
“As you command,” the man replied, almost insolently, and strode away.
Shaking his head in exasperation, Marlin went the other way, to where the doors of the Windstag hunting lodge—his, now, for a few nights at least—stood open and waiting.
Windstag could find another huntsman, and any lout of an armsman could be a lodge guard. It wasn’t as if House Windstag lacked coins enough …
Ghalhunt at least had sense enough to light and stoke the firewood that had been left ready in the lodge hearth, to drive the chill damp out.
With a sigh of contentment, Stormserpent settled himself in Windstag’s big lounge chair, right in front of the hearth, and kicked his boots off, the better to toast his cold and aching feet. He’d always coveted that particular chair …
He gave Ghalhunt a nod of thanks as the bullyblade rose from the hearth.
“Just going to fetch more wood in, lord, before any nosy foresters come by and want to know who all the strange faces belong to.”
Stormserpent nodded, satisfied. The shed was perhaps ten strides away; Ghalhunt would be back in no time to get a morningfeast going. At the very thought, his stomach rumbled loudly.
He heard the bullyblade chuckle at that as he went out, the door squealing ever so slightly in the man’s wake.
The next thing he knew, something had been tossed into the fire, scattering sparks. Something round, that set up an angry hiss. Something that stank of … burning hair?
Marlin Stormserpent sat up, rubbing at his eyes. He must have dozed off.
Was that—what was that, in the fire?
A log slumped, the object he was staring at rolled over, and he realized he was looking at Baert Ghalhunt’s dully staring severed head.
But who—?
He tried to look back behind him, but the high wings of the chair were in his way. Blue flames, cold and tireless, were flickering above and behind them, and he grabbed frantically for the Flying Blade. His fingers closed around the familiar, reassuring weighty curves of its hilt.
Then a man he’d never seen before strode into view around the chair, smiling down at him with sword drawn. A cruel smile on the face of a man wreathed in blue flames.
A blueflame ghost, but not one of his!
Then hard, cold hands took hold of him from the other side of the chair, holding his arms with iron strength. He strained to draw his sword, managed to get it halfway out with a sudden jerk—then felt the coldest, keenest pain that had ever blighted his life.
His hand had been hacked off.
His other arm was grabbed by the man who’d walked around the chair to smile at him, and forced down onto the chair arm. A blade wreathed in blue flames chopped down again, and Stormserpent screamed.
He was lost in pain, he was staring in disbelief at the two streaming stumps of his arms—and above them, standing side by side to smile down at him, three blueflame ghosts. Strangers, all of them.
The Flying Blade and the Wyverntongue Chalice were lost to him. He couldn’t call forth his own two blueflame slayers now, to save him.
If it wasn’t too late for any saving …
He could feel his own life flowing out of him, pumping out of him …
This couldn’t be happening! Couldn’t …
He was Lord Marlin Stormserpent! Didn’t they know that? How dare they?
Someone else was strolling unhurriedly around the three ghosts and reaching down long, shapely arms to pluck up the Blade and the Chalice. His Blade and Chalice.
Marlin stared up at her in dimming, dying disbelief. Blearily he beheld a tall, slender, beautiful huma
n woman with a cruel face and dark, rage-filled eyes, clad all in black, with a silver weathercloak around her shoulders. He’d never seen her before, either.
As she set the sword and the cup down on a sidetable he hadn’t the means to reach, Stormserpent saw the bloody point of a dagger protruding from her black-garbed chest, thrusting out between her breasts.
He was fading fast, his lifeblood flowing out of his useless stumps with every heartbeat. He tried to raise them toward her, and his effort earned him a cold sneer.
“W-who are you?” he managed to gasp.
“The Lady of Ghosts,” came the mocking reply. “I gather blueflame ghosts. Yours are a most welcome addition to my collection.”
She strode closer. Marlin stared at the blood-drenched point standing out between her breasts in dull, dying fascination.
She smiled. “Like it? I seek the man who put it there. A well-known wizard named Manshoon. You’ve heard of him, I’m sure, but have you seen him hereabouts? Recently?”
Marlin shook his head.
“Is anyone else in Cormyr collecting blueflame ghosts?”
“One appeared … at the Council,” he replied weakly, tasting his own blood in his mouth. “No one knows who commands it.”
She bent suddenly and took hold of his throat, her grip cruelly tight.
“Do you tell me truth?” she hissed, blue flames suddenly dancing in her eyes.
Marlin shuddered and tried not to choke. “Y-yes.”
Eyes burning into his, she shook him.
Then, suddenly, she was telling him a tale, the words whispered low and fast.
“The one called Manshoon literally stabbed me in the back, years and years ago, and as you see, left his dagger in me, pommel-deep. I’m under a curse and cannot die until the spell is broken—so I live in constant agony. Worse than what you’re feeling now, worm of a noble.”
Marlin had just enough strength left to shake his head in disbelief.