by Ed Greenwood
“A wench did that,” Morligul explained before he could ask, pointing down at the body. “Rorn’s chasing her right now.”
Illance looked down at the unconscious Brabras, shook his head, sighed in exasperation, and grunted, “Can’t even get good bullyblades these days! Come!”
He stalked off, heading for the front door of the Ravens. Elminster hastened to follow.
The third hard, ringing slap brought Mirt awake.
By the burning sensation down that side of his face, previous slaps had been administered with powerful enthusiasm, yet had failed to rouse him.
“I hope ye’re a pretty lass,” he growled, “because those are the sort of folk I like to be slapped by.”
He tried to turn his head, which was when he discovered he was bound—by quite a lot of rope, knotted very tightly—to a chair in a cavernous warehouse.
Standing in front of him was Lord Traevyn Illance, wearing an unpleasant smile as he stared at Mirt. The old lord was flanked by five bullyblades in matching surcoats, and another man who looked more like a mage than any sort of warrior. As Mirt looked at all of them, Illance nodded to his five bodyguards, and they disappeared through a door in the wall behind him, seeming rather eager to be gone.
“I think we both know why you’re here, Rauligus,” Illance said coldly.
“Ye’re smitten with me and seek to enjoy my charms in private?” Mirt asked hopefully.
Illance’s eyes narrowed. He looked at the mage, then back at Mirt. “Your voice is different, the words you use, too … you are Lord Rauligus Helderstone, are you not?”
“Have been these too many seasons,” Mirt replied cheerfully. “Getting good at being Lord Helderstone, I am.”
Illance nodded. “Then you will recall that you owe me a quite considerable sum. Seven hundred thousand golden lions, to be precise. Not to mention ten thousand more on the year-day mark, every year since you borrowed it. Twenty-nine summers ago.”
“Aye?”
“You dispute this?”
“Nay.”
“Good. Then you should also recall that the entire sum was due if ever you returned to Cormyr. Which you have obviously now done. Probably because you had to depart Sembia in a hurry, thanks to some new foe—and considered me the lesser peril.”
“Aye.”
“I’ve heard you’ve been here in Suzail for almost a tenday, now. Yet, I had to hear it from others, because I heard nothing from you. You failed to contact me promptly upon reaching the city to offer me the repayment of my loan, despite such action on your part being a clear part of our agreement. I am hurt, Rauligus. Hurt. Almost as deeply hurt as I’ve been all these years, living in near penury without my gold. It’s been calling to me, Rauligus, as I scrimped and saved and did without … but I took what scant consolation I could from the knowledge that my gold was at least in the hands of a fair man, an honest man. A rival, some might even say a foe, but an honest man.”
Illance was pacing now, drawling airily, the wizard in the background smiling and enjoying the performance.
“I am that,” Mirt agreed happily.
Illance stopped. “Oh? You claim so? How is it then that you shatter our agreement, returning to fair Suzail to live like a decadent king, drinking kegs upon kegs and rolling in perfumed bedlinens with playpretties night after night, without even a word to me? For in that, I do not see the conduct of an honest man. I see the brazen behavior of a swindler.”
“Nay, nay!” Mirt protested, trying to strain against his bonds without appearing to do so. Gods below, but they were tight. He was trussed like a roast, and every whit as doomed. “ ’Twas nothing of the sort!”
“Lies are no more attractive when retold,” Illance replied coldly and waved his hand dismissively. “Enough of this. I was hoping for pleading, for desperate bargaining for your life—or at least the retention of some of your limbs—but you seem to have become some sort of happy half-wit. So, hear now your fate—my five bodyguards are going to torture you into yielding up the whereabouts not just of what you owe me, but all your properties and wealth. Everything. If you’re still alive, we’ll put you on a boat to Westgate to be unloaded, naked and broken, onto the docks, to see how long you survive in that pleasant den of vipers.”
“B-but you sent them away,” Mirt pointed out brightly.
Illance smiled. “Oh, they’ll be back. Just as soon as they finish enjoying your maid, in yonder room.” He leered. “She’s really your wife, isn’t she? Wearing quite a few sapphires, wasn’t she? Oh, yes, I’m expecting them back soon. Yet, we mustn’t rush my loyal blades … and there are five of them.”
Mirt let himself look downcast for the first time. He was done. The ironguard ring Storm had given him protected against metal weapons—until, of course, they took it from him—but there were many other ways a man could be hurt. Roasting alive, or breaking most of his bones, one after another, for instance.
“And how d’ye know I won’t lie to ye?” he asked. “Send ye headlong into trap after trap?”
Illance smiled thinly. “This handy hirespells mage here will tell me when you’re lying. And keep you alive and awake through the pain, so you can enjoy every last moment of it.”
The wizard gave Mirt a solemn wink. Then he turned to the door the bodyguards had disappeared through and called, “Done, lass?”
The door opened and Storm stepped through it, dragging the limp body of the largest bodyguard by his throat.
She was barefoot and bloody, the gown torn to shreds that still clung to her largely because the blood was making them stick—but she was grinning.
“Done,” she said simply, striding across the room. Behind her, through the doorway, the rest of the bodyguards could be seen strewn senseless all over the room she’d departed.
She was coming for Illance, who after one look at her turned and fled across the room with surprising speed.
El hurried after him, caught him up, and calmly tripped him.
Illance had just time to scramble up to his knees before Storm reached him. Her kick took him under the chin, snapped his head back, and lifted the rest of him right off the ground.
They watched the old lord bounce, out cold. Storm waited until Illance lay quite still before plucking out the noble’s belt dagger and heading over to Mirt.
“Hey, now,” Mirt said, “ye look dangerous with that fang.”
Storm smiled through the blood. “I feel dangerous with this fang. Yet, Mirt, why the worry? You always wanted bondage, and bared women to come for you …”
“Not with knives, and not me bound,” Mirt protested.
Storm sighed as she set about cutting him free. “Details, details …”
“Hoy!” Mirt yelped. “Get yer knife away from that! It’s not a detail!”
Elminster looked up from Lord Illance’s body. “Stop playing with Mirt and get over here. Undressing unconscious men is harder than I remember.”
“Undressing …?” Storm teased. “El, is there something you should be telling me?”
“Just help me get all this clobber off him,” El growled. “By Siamorphe, Tiamat, and Waukeen, but nobles wear more costly tripe than they ever did when I was playing at being one!”
Mirt shook free of the last few coils and lurched to his feet, wincing and growling at the numbness—and the pain, wherever there was no numbness. “What’re ye baring him for, anyhail?”
“I want every last bauble and stitch of magic on him, to take to Alassra,” Elminster replied. “Though none of it—even if we amass a cartload of it—will do her as much good as a blueflame item. If I could get one of those before we go to her …”
Mirt shook his head. “Well, I just want to be free of nobles trying to harm me. D’ye know if anyone else in Suzail is likely to treat kindly old Helderstone like this one was planning to? For that matter, what’s to stop him trying again, when he wakes?”
El and Storm looked at each other, then shrugged.
“We’ll change thy appearance again and gi
ve ye another name, so ye can dwell in Suzail free of that particular problem,” El told him.
“And we’ll spread word that Illance tortured and killed Helderstone, then hid his body, so our kindly old lord here will receive some very unwanted attention from the war wizards,” Storm added with a sly smile.
Mirt grinned. “The two of ye would have made very good Lords of Waterdeep, ye know?”
El and Storm exchanged glances again.
“As I recall,” Storm added sweetly, “we did.”
Lady Greatgaunt’s rented suite boasted three guest bedchambers, and although her war wizard escort bedded down in the most distant one, there was no one at all to see that he stayed there.
Particularly in the hours just before dawn, when two tired walkers came home with some wine and a filched wheel of Illance’s cheese to share between them.
“So,” Storm asked Elminster as they munched and sipped, “how do we find the mysterious noble who has a blueflame ghost up his sleeve? We can’t just go from mansion to tower all around Suzail knocking down doors and trying to shake the truth out of every lord and lady we meet!”
El grinned. “No,” he agreed, “so we’ll lure a ghost to us, instead. I’ll use a spell to grace a certain mask dancer with blue flames, and wait for word to spread.”
“Tress won’t thank you for getting her club wrecked by a blueflame ghost,” Storm said quietly. “And young Arclath will probably try to serve your beard up to you on a platter—attached to your head or not—for endangering his love.”
“The dancer isn’t going to be at the Dragonriders’ and isn’t going to be Amarune,” El told her happily.
“Then who …” Storm gave him a sharp look. “Oh, no, El. Oh, no!”
“I’d much rather see you barepelt than young Rune, and I’ll wager most of Suzail will, too. You’re something splendid, lass. Truly. And you don’t look a day older than, say, twenty-two summers.”
“You rogue,” she replied with a twinkling smile. “You lying, flattering rogue.”
“Aye, that’s me,” he said serenely. “Shall we go out and purchase a mask?”
“After I’ve had a good long sleep,” Storm replied emphatically. “There’s no longer a Weave to replenish us, Old Mage, and I get tired, these days. Weren’t you ‘about done’ most of the night ago?”
“I was,” El agreed—and fell face-first onto her bed. He was snoring in a trice.
Storm rolled her eyes.
“Now that’s a useful trick, Sage of Shadowdale,” she told him.
Then she bent closer and frowned. He really was snoring.
She kicked off Illance’s boots, wriggled out of his clothes—they fit terribly, and she resolved to burn them before someone recognized them; Suzail these days seemed a city of tireless spies—and cuddled against him.
In his sleep, Elminster stroked her then put an arm around her.
Storm amused herself by trying to undress him, but fell asleep in his arms before she got very far.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
THE DANGEROUS WORK OF LURING GHOSTS
Manshoon leaned eagerly forward in his chair, straining to see and hear better.
Or rather, to urge Ironhand, ever so gently, to shift to where he could see and hear better.
Manshoon’s spell would let him observe what Ironhand was seeing and hearing for just a little longer. He wasn’t riding the man’s mind, because he didn’t want the risk of being where Ironhand was just then.
He had found his best blueflame hunter yet. Imglor “Imhammer” Ironhand was very expensive, but worth it. The man was almost as ruthless, careful, and coldly calm as Manshoon himself, and had carved himself out an impressive career as a slayer-for-hire specializing in swift and covert killings disguised as accidents.
No slaying was necessary, this time—only a slayer unmasked. The noble who commanded the lone blueflame ghost that had appeared at the Council.
Thus far, Ironhand had helped make almost certain that three candidates for the blueflame noble were not, in fact, the one Manshoon sought.
At that moment, Manshoon’s new hireling had wormed his way onto the roof of a high house adjacent to the one where Lord Harkuldragon was strutting around an upper room that had open windows. Through which Ironhand could hear a discussion between Harkuldragon and his longtime hired mage, the homely, aging sourface Sarrak of Westgate about the slaying of a certain inconvenient courtier.
The courtier was one whose death half Suzail would greet cheerfully. The pompous Khaladan Mallowfaer, Master of Revels, was no one’s favorite or confidant, and as far as Manshoon knew was kinless, had never married, and had never romanced anyone. He’d hired doxies aplenty, of course, but that was an entirely different matter. His inconvenience to Harkuldragon was that he’d inadvertently learned something of the noble’s planned treason, and so could expose Harkuldragon, if he so desired. A situation the lord naturally found intolerable.
What had made Manshoon pay far too much to have Ironhand eavesdropping on the noble and his mage was Harkuldragon’s grim comment over one too many goblets, at The Three Ravens some nights ago, that if “the usual magics failed” he had “something more to settle scores with.”
Harkuldragon could have meant nothing more than blackmail, the fact that he was good with his fists and swift to use them, or that he owned a magic sword of great age and mysterious powers that adventurers of his hiring had once brought him. Or he might have a pet monster, or be able to call in a favor from a mage or two. But then again, it might mean he could send forth his own slayer wreathed in blue flame …
So far, the converse Ironhand had overheard hadn’t suggested blueflame ghosts or anything of the sort, but they were getting to interesting words finally, as Harkuldragon’s temper started to slip.
“The man’s as greedy and malicious as a snake, Sarrak! And as conceited as—what was that?”
Ironhand had heard it, too, and leaned out so far in a neck-craning attempt to see and hear that his eavesdropping almost became literal.
Someone had caused the lock on the door of that upper room to burst outward in all directions, showering the room with tiny pattering fragments of metal that would have been deadly if they hadn’t been almost dust.
The door yawned open, evidently revealing no one at all outside the room.
“Make whoever it is visible, wizard! Banish invisibility, or whatever the spell is!” Lord Harkuldragon bellowed.
“Done,” Sarrak replied a moment later.
“Who—who are you?” the nobleman demanded, hauling out his belt dagger and glaring at someone Ironhand couldn’t see. “Wizard, don’t just stand there! Smite her! Smite her down!”
“I fear he can’t, noisy fool. He made the mistake of obeying you—and while he was making me visible, I was casting paralysis on him.”
With an easy, almost insolent stride, a tall and slender woman came into the room. She had pale white skin, a sharp-featured, cruel face dominated by large, dark eyes that snapped with simmering anger, and long, long legs. She was clad all in black except for a silver weathercloak that hung from her shoulders, and Ironhand was certain he’d never seen her before.
A woman this beautiful, he would remember.
“Who are you?” he demanded, hefting his dagger as he came around the table. “And what do you want?”
“I am the Lady of Ghosts. And fear not, Lord Harkuldragon—my business here is not with you at all. I am here for Sarrak of Westgate.”
“Sarrak? Why?”
“Your questions grow tiresome. Perhaps you should fear me, after all.”
“Oh? You wield no weapon, and I’m protected against spells. Perhaps you should fear me.”
Harkuldragon strode toward the woman, who stood watching him come closer, making no move at all. She looked bored.
Two strides from her the lord suddenly hissed out a curse, shook his dagger hand as he stepped back, then flung the dagger down. “Burned me!”
He
was flapping fingers that seemed to be dripping melted flesh.
“Protected,” the woman said contemptuously. “By Sarrak’s spells, no doubt.”
Then she moved like a striking panther, charging to take him by the throat so swiftly that Harkuldragon didn’t even have time to cry out.
He managed to do so a moment later, when her hard-driven knee into his crotch lifted him off his feet, but thanks to her tightening fingers, his cry wasn’t much more than a croak.
As he went down, she got behind him, hands still gripping his throat, and flung herself hard down on his neck, knees together.
Ironhand winced as Lord Harkuldragon’s neck broke.
The woman calmly twisted the lord’s head around at a gruesome angle as she stood up. Then she walked away, leaving the man dead and forgotten on the floor behind her.
“Now, Sarrak, let us begin. I will see what is in your mind—destroying it in so doing, but that can’t be helped. You see, I’ve heard you know things about Orbakh, who once ruled your city. Things relating to who he really was. A man I seek, named Manshoon.”
Manshoon sat frozen in astonishment. What was this?
Sarrak emitted a sort of sob as her spell struck him. As she bored into his mind, the magic that was destroying his brain seemed to release him from her paralysis, but too late for him to escape; his limbs were trembling violently and thrashing wildly about from time to time, utterly out of his control.
He staggered back into Ironhand’s field of view, tripping backward over Harkuldragon’s body and crashing to the floor, where he lay twisting and panting, his eyes bulging and sweat drenching his skin … which was going bone-white.
“Please,” he blurted.
Ten or twenty of Manshoon’s breaths passed before the stricken mage spoke again. “Please … please stop.”
“I’m sorry, Sarrak, but I must know what’s in your mind, not just what you choose to tell me. Speak freely if doing so will bring you a little release. It makes my peering easier.”
“No!” Sarrak gasped, in feeble defiance. “No.”
He fell silent again, except for gasps, until his eyes started to go dark.