by Ed Greenwood
Manshoon had seen wizards’ eyes do that before, when farscrying Thayan torturers; Sarrak’s end would come soon.
“Manshoon,” the doomed mage quavered suddenly, through his streaming sweat, his eyes now dark pits. “You live to slay him. You burn to slay him. Is this the Manshoon of legend? Why do you hate him so?”
“You seek to buy time and a little relief from pain,” came the calm reply, “yet, I’ll tell you, Sarrak of Westgate. I hate only one man more than Manshoon—if he is a man, at all, or ever was. Elminster, the Sage of Shadowdale.”
“How … how so?”
“I was Manshoon’s lover and apprentice. So was my mother. And my two sisters. Oh, he was a magnificent beast; when he stared into your eyes, there was nothing you wouldn’t do for him.”
The Lady of Ghosts took a step closer. “He ordered them to attack and kill Elminster, and in their battle with the Old Mage—Manshoon watched from afar for his personal entertainment, rendering no aid at all—Elminster slew my kin. I was the youngest and Manshoon’s favorite. He held me back. I believe he knew he was sending them to their doom.”
She took another step forward, her voice rising a little. “I was enraged, and in my grief turned on Manshoon, incredulous that he’d done nothing. He left me with this.”
She tore open her black jerkin.
Between her pale, revealed breasts protruded the bloody point of a dagger.
A wound that should have been fatal. The blood glistened fresh and wet.
“He left me for dead, knowing nothing of the curse I bore that kept me alive. Elminster had cast it on me earlier, to keep me safe from Manshoon’s ‘murderous cruelties,’ he told me—though it was really to give him a spy the lord of the Zhentarim could not slay; so, when Manshoon finally fell he could plunder my mind at will to learn all Manshoon’s deeds and treasures and secrets.”
Her voice rose into a savage snarl. “He used me. They both used me. They will both die!”
The Lady of Ghosts made a swift, complicated gesture—and Sarrak’s head burst like a rotten fruit. She turned away.
“Much more slowly and painfully than I let you perish, wizard of Westgate. But then, your only crime was working for the wrong man. A crime I share twice over.”
As Ironhand watched, not daring to move lest he make a sound she might hear, the Lady of Ghosts went to various places in the Lord Harkuldragon’s chamber and collected as many hidden magic items from them.
“Thank you, Sarrak,” she told the headless corpse. “The entire roster, and how to safely recover them. You saved me much time.”
Ironhand heard her walk away, across the floor and out and down the stairs.
He waited a long time before he dared shift his position on the roof and take himself away.
Manshoon never noticed. He was too busy staring into the darkness around his chair, shaken.
“Cymmarra,” he whispered. “Is this fallen Mystra’s last slap at me? How much do you know of what I am now, Cymmarra? You hunt me here in Suzail, so you know something … oh, Bane blast all! Now what do I do?”
Elminster came awake slowly, feeling the warmth of a loving embrace. Ahh, Alassra, at last …
No. These were … Storm’s arms about him, her bare body wrapped around his. They were on her bed, and he wore only Applecrown’s breeches and clout.
He rose on one elbow, and she stirred in her sleep then settled contentedly back against him, the side of her face against his breast.
Hmm. Against Applecrown’s young, sleekly muscled chest, and flat stomach below. Nothing to compare with her rounded magnificence, of course …
Mystra, but she was beautiful! The sun was high—stlarn, it must be almost highsun!—and lancing down through the window to paint her body with bright gold. Her silver tresses were writhing and coiling, slowly and lazily, in their own sensual pleasure.
Such beauty …
He was aroused, yes, stirring beneath her and causing her to purr and move against him in her sleep. Aroused, and why shouldn’t he be?
Well, because she was his friend, and although she wasn’t his daughter, he’d raised her like one some seven hundred years ago. She was his companion, his sword sister, not his lover … never his lover …
Storm’s eyes opened. She gazed up at him along his bare chest, her nose almost touching his belt buckle, and gave him a long, slow smile, regarding him dreamily.
“Even in another’s body, El,” she whispered, her hair lashing him gently like the tails of a dozen playful cats, “you’re … a comfort to wake up to.”
She had obviously changed what she’d been about to say midsentence. Unsettled, he looked aside before whispering, “Yes.”
Then, slowly, he rolled away from her.
Just as reluctantly, she let him go.
As he padded to the garderobe, he growled, “Ye’ll make a good mask dancer.”
“No,” Storm replied, up on one elbow in the rumpled bed. “You will.”
Elminster turned around to regard her, a silent question in his lifted brow.
“El,” she asked softly, “why don’t you be the mask dancer? And spell-shift my face and this silver hair that marks me for all eyes, as well as using magic to wreathe yourself in blue flames? Then we’ll be two women, not ‘that silver-haired Storm, so the man with her must be Elminster of Shadowdale, no matter what he looks like.’ We’ll still be a lure—just not the lure that tells everyone who’s luring.”
El blinked. “Oh, now. That is better. Well pointed, lass. Aye, we’ll do it thy way.”
Storm smiled, not bothering to hide her pleased surprise. “Well, now. Progress at last.”
Elminster’s reply, as he headed into the garderobe, was a rude noise.
Storm chuckled and rolled over on her back, stretching her arms, legs, and hair wide, and flexing them.
She was in the midst of gently groaning as she wiggled her cobble-worn toes, and their aches all throbbed in response, when she heard the unmistakable sounds of the inn’s guards admitting someone into Mirt’s rooms, across the hall from their own.
Springing out of bed, she snatched a robe around herself and went across to Mirt’s forechamber, where Amarune and Arclath were smilingly greeting a still-dozing Mirt.
Who had obviously spent the night snoring in the forechamber’s most massive armchair, after wenching and then dismissing the wenches, and then enjoying all he could manage of the best decanters on Lord Helderstone’s sideboard, which now littered the carpet around his floppy-booted feet.
“Afraid you’d lose them all when you stopped being Lord Helderstone?” Storm asked, waving her hand at the array of emptied glass.
Arclath chuckled, but Mirt’s response was a growl that was only a trifle more jovial than surly. Then his eyes focused on her, and he brightened, sitting up a little to properly take in the sight of a barely clad Storm.
“Now that fashion I like, lady. Are ye succumbing to my charms at last?”
“No,” she replied fondly, “I was finally getting some sleep. And unlike some old rogues around here, I like to occasionally get out of garments I’ve been living in for days. It gives the lice a little excitement.”
Mirt started scratching himself.
“Never saw the point of exciting lice, myself,” he growled. “Maggots, now …”
“Maggots? I thought I heard someone discussing morningfeast!” Elminster put in, from the doorway behind Storm. “Yet I smell nothing sizzling.”
“Oh, no?” Mirt leered at them both. “I’ll wager something was, in yon bedchamber last night.”
Storm rolled her eyes. “How often do you lose your last coin in foolish wagers, I wonder? Where is your cook, anyhail?”
She strode into the kitchen—and stopped dead.
The cook’s severed head was staring in terror at her from where it sat, beneath a handful of eager flies, in a skillet on a cold and unlit hearth. That end of the room was drenched with blood, but the rest of the cook was nowhere to be seen.
“Someone’s sent us a warning,” she told the others over her shoulder.
There was a rush to look—and Amarune recoiled, Arclath winced, and El and Mirt looked grim.
“It’s more than time for Lord Helderstone to disappear,” El muttered. “He had other old foes among the nobles, I’d say.” He looked at Mirt. “Sorry, old friend.”
Mirt shrugged and grinned.
“Where’s the rest of her?” Arclath asked, peering around the blood-spattered kitchen.
“Carried off into undeath,” Storm replied crisply, “or left somewhere to make trouble for us in the eyes of the Crown. Let’s move.”
Every now and then, when walking the haunted wing of the royal palace, one came to a high window whose shroudings had fallen to let in the bright sunlight.
Radiance that fell in shafts down into the gloom of the deserted galleries, illuminating thick dust that hung in the air like lazily swirling snow.
Targrael liked the haunted wing. It was more home to her than the cleaner, busier, noisy chambers where the courtiers worked, walked, and talked.
Yet, she wasn’t here in this particular corner of the shunned part of the palace this day for a pleasure-stroll.
For years she’d heard rumors of this or that hidden royal cache of enchanted weapons. Most of the tales were overblown, over time transforming a glowing dagger or ring hidden in a hollow bedpost into a small armory boasting many flying suits of armor and figurines that became snarling lions or flying dragon steeds, but she’d found a few palace treasures herself, and learned enough to know that there were larger ones. Or had been, once.
Of particular interest was a “marcher in blue flame” mentioned in a long-ago scribe’s description of items Salember the Rebel Prince had once publicly gloated over, that had apparently never been seen again since. She’d been hoping the five sages who’d been closeted secretly combing palace records for years now would turn something up … and it seemed they finally had.
It wasn’t much, just a line at the end of a Jorunhast note: “The three pillars safeguard the most perilous.” One more cryptic taunt, most might well term it, but to this lady Highknight, it meant something more.
There was just one pillar in this whole reach of the palace sculpted into the semblance of a triangular cluster of three fused pillars.
A pillar that stood like a prow where a little three-room-long side wing branched off the main block of the palace, rooms that on all five floors had once housed senior war wizards, the spell-crafters and researchers too old to ride in hard country and take to battlefields.
The young Palaghard, while still a prince, had once written a note to a young lady who’d caught his eye that “If you need to hide, Druth’s pillar swings wide.” Now, a wizard of war hight Jereth Ardruth had once dwelt in one of those rooms, and the triple pillar would have formed the endpost at the back of Ardruth’s—Druth’s—closet.
A stretch, but worth investigating. Blueflame ghosts could be used to bring down House Obarskyr and plunge the realm into years of thronestrife—but blueflame ghosts under her command could keep Cormyr strong, the Dragon Throne better guarded than ever before.
The wizards of war had sunk beyond untrustworthiness; the current royals were weak; and the highest-ranking courtiers a more corrupt and venal band of pompous greed-heads than she would have thought tolerable, even to a weak king.
No, it was all up to her.
And with the blueflame ghosts hers, she could at last …
This one. This was the door.
Closed and locked, but that meant little to a death knight. Drawing her sword, she positioned herself just so, aiming her blade so it would plunge down the crack where door met frame, and swung it high.
Before bringing it down with all her might, straight and true, to slash through the forged locking mechanism in one great shriek of metal.
Then she gently pulled on the door ring, let the great door swing wide, and went in.
The room beyond was a mess, of course. The windows had broken long ago, and generations of pigeons and whir-wings had nested on the desk, shelves, and bed, winter snows and winds had scattered parchments across the floor and set about rotting them into the moldering ruin of carpet, and the closet was right over—there.
Its curtain fallen, its—
The door she’d just forced slammed shut behind her, and a doorbar thudded into place. Targrael whirled around with a snarl, sword up.
A woman was facing her, leaning indolently on a sword of her own. Someone she knew. The ghost of the Princess Alusair Nacacia Obarskyr. The Steel Princess. The Steel Regent.
“Well met,” Alusair said dryly. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Targrael wasted no time in words. She sprang at her hated foe with a snarl, bright blade singing.
“You traitor and stealer of Obarskyr secrets,” Alusair added almost gently, flying up into the air to parry and draw Targrael out into the room.
The death knight charged, trying to pounce and hack the ghost down to the floor in a flurry of slashing swings.
Though the princess might be insubstantial as a wraith, she was solid enough to hold and swing the weight of a sword—even a sword made of her own ghostly self, sharpened momentarily to the strength and keen edge of warsteel. So she could be hurt.
Alusair laughed amid the clang and skirl of steel. “Is that your best, kitchen-cleaver-maid? How many beds did you have to warm to get made a Highknight?”
“I never!” Targrael shrieked, stung to speech at last. “You bitch! You evil, reckless-of-the-realm, rutting slut of a—”
Her blade crashed home, right through Alusair’s ghostly sword—and right through the ghostly breast beyond, pinning it to the floor.
She crowed in triumph, as Alusair arched and writhed in soundless agony beneath her.
“Ha ha! Not so insolent now, are you, failed regent! Disgrace to the realm! Overmatched fool of an incompetent warrior!”
Through her open-mouthed, gasping pain, Alusair spat out the words, “Fly, Fang.” And then she smiled.
As up through her, up from the moldering heap of rubble she’d been lying on, sprang a glowing blue dagger.
Point first, it sped through Targrael, up through her leathers into her breast and inwards, through ribs, slicing upward like icy fire.
“Meet the Fang of Baerovus,” Alusair whispered. “The blueflame treasure you sought … the only one we Obarskyrs have. I wish you joy of it, would-be tyrant!” She faded into darkness, a wisp that drifted slowly across the floor, toward the door.
Targrael lashed out sideways with her sword, seeking vainly to slice that whispering shadow as it flew this way and then that, wriggling snakelike out under the door.
But the Fang of Baerovus was caught in her throat and sliding higher …
Desperately she dropped her sword, reached up with both hands, and broke her own neck, thrusting her head grotesquely to one side to hang limply down her back.
Just in time. The Fang burst up to the ceiling, trailing one of her ears, and struck sparks off the stone there.
Before it arrowed to the door, out through the gap she’d made by chopping through the lock, and away.
She knew by the utter agony, that her wounds would be mortal for one with lifeblood to spill. She felt too weak to do anything more than slump down atop the rubble and whimper.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
OLD GAMES AND OLDER SECRETS
The oldest, grandest Delcastle coach had thickly cushioned seats, but nothing else to soften rides. Wherefore Amarune was clinging to Arclath to keep upright, with her booted feet wedged against Mirt’s knees where he sat facing the noble and the dancer. Loose cobbles on this particular lane were making the coach rattle almost deafeningly as it rushed toward Delcastle Manor, where it had been agreed they’d tarry until Storm or El appeared to fetch Mirt to different lodgings under a new face and name.
“So who did kill the cook?” Rune was asking.
“Not so, lad,” Mirt rumbled. “The slayers were working for a noble.”
“Likely, yes,” Arclath granted, “but tell me why you say so. Is it merely one more ‘dastardly nobles are behind everything’ thought?”
“Nay. They carried off Lady Greatgaunt with no mess or noise. No ransom demands, no snatching all her gowns or the jewels off ‘em, no blood or tussle. Following clear an’ detailed orders—carefully.” Mirt waved a hand. “Therefore, working for nobles, hey?”
“Hey,” Arclath agreed with a grin.
“I—” Amarune hesitated, then continued, “I learned much from Elminster’s mind, while he was in mine. It’s only right you should know as much as we do about all of this. The ghosts, I mean.”
Arclath nodded, and Mirt made a beckoning “out with it!” gesture.
“At the Council,” Rune began, “a blueflame ghost appeared briefly during the fighting and felled several nobles, specific ones, but then vanished. So, obviously someone in the room was controlling it.”
Mirt nodded. “A noble who attended yer Council has a blueflame item.”
“A mystery for Elminster, or his old foe Manshoon, not to mention half the ambitious nobles in Suzail, now, to solve, as they all scramble to get that item and control the ghost,” Arclath added.
Rune nodded. “Elminster wants it to try to restore The Simbul—you know about her?”
Mirt chuckled. “I do. More’n I want to, but that’s another tale.”
Rune shook her head. “Not now, I pray you! Manshoon presumably wants the ghost to have another slayer he can send forth, in case he ever runs out of mind-slaves or beholders.”
Mirt nodded. “I remember him, too. That one will never be able to resist seeking such power.”
“Yes, but he mustn’t yet have it, or he’d be using it, not faring forth himself or sending agents. The blueflame ghosts frighten and therefore dominate—and Manshoon lives to control and dominate.”
Mirt nodded again. “Over the years,” he growled, “some things change very little. Names and faces, aye, but the games, nay.” He flexed his hands—and a dagger suddenly gleamed in one of them.