by Ed Greenwood
“A splendid dream,” Crownrood drawled, though not before a flash of his eyes betrayed his excitement. “And you are, O granter of dreams-?”
“Your master,” Manshoon purred. He leaned forward until they were almost nose-to-nose, and launched the spell that wrapped around his mind, and hurled it into Crownrood’s.
The skewer started to thrust… then fell back. The nobleman shuddered and spun around in his seat to slap aside the wand the alarmed wizard behind him was trying to aim. “Dolt! D’you want to ruin everything?”
“You’re doing something to the Lord Crownrood!” that mage snarled at Manshoon, springing up from his chair to back hastily away and aiming his wand again. “You’re doing it, undead thing!”
The man’s voice rose, and heads turned at nearby tables. Manshoon smiled crookedly, shook his head, and made Crownrood turn to him and do the same, and cast a swift and simple spell.
The wizard’s head burst in a welter of spattering gore. Even before the screams started, Manshoon rose from his chair, drew a knife from his sleeve, and sliced delicately across the throat of the still-coughing wizard, and strode away.
If he’d been wearing his own face, being seen by so many of Cormyr’s high and mighty would have been a grave mistake.
As it was, Crownrood’s mind was his, now. And it was the mind of an accomplished schemer and lawbreaker, who had already been thinking much treason without any help from visiting Manshoon at all.
As he smiled at a server and made the man flinch back out of his way in stammering fear, Manshoon started to hurry. Not out of any fear of lawkeepers; he’d be long gone before any Dragons arrived.
No, there were still two nobles he wanted to recruit-and with Suzail crowded with ambitious feuding nobility and their already-roused bodyguards, finding and reaching his quarries was going to take time.
Lord Jassur Dragonwood and Lord Relgadrar Loroun. Bane and blasphemy, but they even sounded like arrogant idiots…
“Your Majesty,” Glathra said quickly and a trifle sharper than she intended to, “should we place any trust in the words of a ghost, or even listen to them? My experience has been that undead understand little of the changing world around them, clinging instead to what they knew in life, and that they can appear as anyone they please! This might well be an image sent by a hostile mage sitting in Sembia, or the ghost of an exiled traitor noble just pretending to be the Steel Regent, and-”
“Your ‘experience’ has been?” Alusair’s eyes flashed. “Glathra Barcantle, just what experience have you had, treating with ghosts? You always seek to ignore me when you see me around the palace, and frankly, it shouldn’t matter if I’m the lowliest chambermaid or passing street urchin! The moment you hear the slightest hint of possible treachery on the part of any wizard of war, you must investigate-or the House of Obarskyr, and Cormyr as anything other than a wizard-ruled land, is doomed!”
Glathra gave the ghostly princess an angry glare. “A ghost telling me my business? Why, next you’ll be-”
“Holding your peace,” King Foril Obarskyr said firmly, giving Glathra a glare that outshone her own in ferocity. He glowered at her for a long breath before turning to favor Fentable with the same quelling look, slowing the understeward to fumbling uncertainty as he clawed some sort of talisman or magical token out of a belt pouch.
“Ironhorn,” the king of Cormyr added gently, “I believe the Lady of Graces needs reviving. Please?”
Then he turned to face Alusair directly, nodded to her as an equal, and said gravely, “Your Majesty, we thank you for your counsel.”
The ghostly face drifted closer to his and acquired a smile. “Majesty, you do me honor. I’m a ‘Highness,’ and no more. I never ruled as queen, only as regent.”
Foril waved a grey-haired hand. “To me, anyone who defended the Dragon Throne and the realm, when she could have taken both, is a true monarch of Cormyr. Your Majesty.”
Fentable sputtered.
The king rounded on him and said sternly, “My decision, faithful understeward, and my judgment. This royal princess knew the burden and took it on, without enjoying the reward. She served the realm long and well, and made many of our nobles more loyal to the Crown than they had ever been. So slight her not, in my presence or behind my back. Oh, and it is high time that you and many of your fellow courtiers-to say nothing of others in the realm-ceased to mistake my customary reserve and politeness for weakness and vacillation of mind and purpose.”
“Well said,” Ironhorn and Alusair murmured in unintentional unison-and the king astonished everyone in the room by flashing, just for a moment, a boyish grin by way of reply.
Then he turned to Glathra and said politely, “Lady Glathra, I command that Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake be taken into custody and questioned with spells, priestly assistance, and everything else short of mind-reaming. Search his rooms here in the palace. And set tax-scribes to turn up any properties he may own in or near Suzail, that they may be searched without delay. If we wrong him, I’ll tender my apologies.”
Foril looked back at Alusair grimly and added, “Yet, I very much doubt that we will.”
Fentable, face flushed and downcast in the wake of his rebuke, was behind Foril Obarskyr, hidden from the others in the room by the king’s body. That was a good thing for Foril, because it kept the other members of the court from seeing him stiffen, his face change, and his eyes flash with momentary fire-highly unusual behavior for Fentable or, for that matter, any prudent understeward of any high House.
A moment later, Fentable was his usual urbane, almost expressionless self again, but the mind behind those thoughtful eyes was once more crowded, as Fentable’s own sentience quailed and cringed beneath the cold weight of Manshoon’s mind. He had returned to the understeward’s mind in haste and in none-too-good a temper, after conquering the mind of Lord Jassur Dragonwood just in time to hear Mreldrake denounced as a traitor.
Manshoon made Fentable turn away and pass his hand over his eyes to conceal any grimace or eye-flash his swift departure might cause. He had to get to Mreldrake without delay.
“Traitors, traitors everywhere,” he said sardonically, so those were the words the understeward mumbled, in his wake.
The words that made everyone else in the room-save for Lady of Graces Jalessa Windstone, who was still blearily drifting her way back to full awareness-nod grimly.
It was a sentiment every one of them had heard before.
Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake had just risen from the seat of his favorite garderobe in the palace, adjusted his garments, inspected the inside of his nose with a practiced finger, and reached for the door when Manshoon burst into his mind like a dark thunderbolt.
Mreldrake stiffened, swayed in midair with his fingers not quite close enough to the door bellpull to close on it, then lunged for the door in pounding haste.
He had to get across the upper floor of the palace, down the far stair to the easternmost of the tunnels that linked the palace with the sprawling pile of the royal court, traverse that underway, ascend from the court’s uppermost cellar to a certain nondescript linen-cupboard in the southeasternmost corner of the court’s ground floor, and pass through the portal that was hidden there. Without being seen, if possible-as himself, at least-and without raising any sort of cry.
The portal would take him to the fortress of the king’s tower in Marsember, and hopefully buy him time enough to get aboard a ship bound for somewhere more distant than Westgate, before he was traced.
Mind-reaming is not a pleasant death.
He was sprinting along a passage when Manshoon again gripped his mind, flooding him with his master’s growing disgust at his frightened flight, and Mreldrake was forced to slow to a normal walk, open the next door he came to, calmly step into the vacant guestroom beyond that door, and work a magic that would alter his appearance.
A few long, calming breaths later, a rather stocky, plain, middle-aged female wizard of war stepped out of the guestroom, care
fully closed its door, and trudged along the passage as if bored and tired, rather than in a hurry to go anywhere at all.
She felt a bit dazed but remembered she had to get to Marsember and take a ship for Turmish or some other distant place, without anyone in the palace knowing. She was on a mission so secret that it would be revealed to her only when she was safely on the waves. Her name was… was Mythandra, but she had to fight to remember that-and it was a fight that brought to her a confused, whirling half-memory of a very powerful and coldly malicious mind departing hers in haste, searing many memories as it went.
Mythandra’s head hurt. She growled wordless displeasure and plodded toward the door that opened into the far stair.
“Traitors, traitors everywhere,” she mumbled-then paused, lifting her head with a frown. Now where had that come from?
CHAPTER SIX
STORMBREAK
Wizard of War Ellard Gauntur was young, callow, full of self-importance, and zealous. At the moment, he was decidedly not full of sufficient breath.
He was gasping with excitement and exertion, having just sprinted the length of the royal court with five Purple Dragons in full armor puffing and clanging along in his wake. He skidded to a stop in front of a door that needed his hand and a whispered password to open, exulting as he flung it wide.
He finally had a chance to do something important, to get noticed-to be a hero!
Oh, and do true service for Cormyr, too…
“There’s one portal that usually gets forgotten!” he’d shouted. “He probably won’t go that way-but if he does, we can be there to prevent him!”
His heart had leaped up like lit torchwood when he’d seen the Dragons nod. There’d been approval on the veterans’ faces! Clear in Narbrace’s expression, and Hethel’s!
Now they were through the door and pounding along the dim and narrow passage behind him, around this last corner and Someone was standing at the closet door. Someone in wizards’ robes!
“Mreldrake!” Gauntur shouted. “Hold!”
The wizard at the open closet turned to look at him-then rushed into it, leaving behind only the soundless flash of light that meant the portal had taken her.
Yes, her. It had been a woman, not Mreldrake!
A woman he’d never seen before.
In robes that “It’s him! ’Twas a trick! Those were Mreldrake’s robes!” Gauntur snarled over his shoulder at Narbrace. “With that food stain down the front by the-”
He reached the open closet door, caught hold of the frame, and swung himself in and right at the dancing glow of the portal, then skidded to a stop and caught his breath in sudden apprehension Whereupon Narbrace shoved him hard in the back and growled jovially, “Lead us, gallant Gauntur!”
And the portal’s glow claimed him.
“As per orders, saer,” the Dragon puffed, “after Narbrace, Hethel, and the rest all followed him through, I came back to you to report. Mreldrake’s gone to Marsember, if the lad’s to be believed, and-and I knew you needed to know this, without delay!”
“Very proper, Swordcaptain Troon, and well done,” Fentable agreed, nodding. “Go now-catch your wind first, there’s not that much need for frantic haste-and catch up to Narbrace and your fellows. I’ll inform the wizards of war.” He clapped the breathless soldier on one armor-plated shoulder and hurried away.
Troon nodded, gasping for breath, and staggered to a garderobe door. His bladder was bursting…
Not long after a distant door had shut behind the hastening understeward, and Troon had found relief behind a much closer door, a streaking shadow came racing down the corridor.
It halted for a moment to rise up and glare around, and then it plunged through a wall and was gone again.
Once a Steel Regent, always a Steel Regent. That Fentable was every whit as rotten as Mreldrake-but when had he got that way? Who had gotten to him?
Sometimes, Alusair thought, she still existed only because of her abiding rage.
The court weren’t such a sorry, corrupt lot in my day!
Were they?
Targrael awakened in the chill darkness of the crypt with a pounding headache. She hadn’t known death knights could have pounding headaches.
The reason for her mind-pain was clear, even through her glee at being loosed once more to dance with the living. Manshoon, as he jabbed her back to awareness with vicious mental thrusts that shattered the cloaks over many of her memories, was in a seething rage.
That arrogant beast Mreldrake had been seen departing the palace through the main magical gate to Marsember-the king’s tower portal-by a shining-eyed young war wizard and a handful of Dragons. Who must now be slain, every last one of them, in a hurry. With the bodies hidden to prevent swift and easy priestly questioning.
All to hide Mreldrake’s trail. Manshoon must find him very useful.
To the slaughter, then, Wizard of War Ellard Gauntur and Purple Dragon veterans Ilstan Narbrace, Gorloun Hethel, Mandron Saldar, Berent Thallowood, and Unstrarr Troon. You served the realm in life, but your swift and sure deaths are now required for Cormyr’s greater service…
Targrael set the coffin lid carefully back into place, glided through the darkness like a chill breeze, and departed the crypt in a swift, gathering gale.
Manshoon was with her, but riding her mind lightly, most of his attention elsewhere. She was a hasty, brute-force solution to a problem that had arisen just at the moment when he’d have preferred to enjoy something else. Just what that “something else” was, she knew not, nor cared.
She was awake again, and that was enough.
The royal palace and royal court were her home; she knew both buildings better than anyone else. Every last damp and long-forgotten cellar corner, every nook with an outside window-ah, it was just after nightfall-and every secret passage. So it was ease itself to flit unnoticed, a tall and silent shadow among so many pillars, to the passage that led to a certain closet.
She approached cautiously. The guard who ought to be standing sentinel had power enough to destroy her with ease.
The door that led into the passage stood ajar, and no one stood guard at it… or anywhere within sight.
She used her sword to thrust the door open and tiptoed into the passage.
Where the silence held.
Everything was deserted.
Peering around a corner, she felt her eyebrows rise.
She was more than a little surprised to find the closet door open and the portal completely unguarded-after all, it was a way in and out of the heart of Cormyr’s power, and restoring it to safe reliability after the Spellplague had cost at least seven war wizards’ lives-but Targrael wasted no time in speculation or tarrying to wait for trouble. She strode fearlessly into the portal’s glow.
The far end of the portal-a cold, humid, and dark upper room of the king’s tower in Marsember that she remembered from long, long ago-was also deserted.
Well, now. The surprise deepens steadily, she thought.
There was the uncomfortable stool provided for the guard, and yonder the lidded chamberpot, the three lanterns hung on their hooks, and…
The mirror. Ah, yes, and didn’t the last true Highknight of the realm look lovely that night? Black armor and silver-edged black sword, bareheaded with her long, wild hair more white than gray. Framing a fine-boned face that had dead white skin to match, though there was a patch of mold growing on her cheek…
Targrael shrugged, giving her reflection a smile. Yes, mold or not, it was as cruel a face as ever.
She preened for a moment longer, her hand on her hip, to see if Manshoon’s anger would flare.
Yet he seemed not to notice, his attention even fainter. Whatever else he was seeing to was far more important to him, it seemed.
Which just might afford her the chance she needed…
Sword in hand, Targrael ducked through the open archway she knew young Gauntur would have taken, wondering if she could get to Ildool’s Veil before Manshoon realized what
she was up to.
“But he’s one of our wizards,” a soldier growled under his breath, somewhere up ahead. “He’d go up to the spell chambers where they keep the magic, wouldn’t he? Not down to the docks like a sneak thief!”
“That’s why young Gauntur’s running back and forth like a chased chicken,” another Dragon replied. “He left us here to make sure Mreldrake doesn’t just fetch something and come right back to the portal, to get back to the palace.”
“Huh! The last place I’d run to, with Glathra after me! Still, splitting up your forces is nigh as foolish, so perhaps they don’t teach wizards of war basic sense…”
“Oh, well said, soldier,” Targrael murmured as her sword whipped across his throat. “I almost regret having to kill you. Yet-as you both know well-orders are orders.”
As she shoved the reeling, dying warrior away and slashed at his fellow Dragon, she saw the frightened face of her newest foe for an instant, on the far side of the sparks that flew as his desperate parry met her blade.
“So who are you, loyal Dragon?” she greeted him regally. “Saldar or Thallowood?”
The soldier gaped at her. “You know-?”
“Far too much, I’m afraid,” Targrael replied, driving his warsteel aside with her own and chopping his throat with the edge of her free hand.
The man sobbed for breath as he fell. She slammed down atop him, both knees to his belly, and chopped ruthlessly with her steel. His blade was easily sent flying from his numbed sword hand, and she brought her sword back in under his chin as she leaned forward, bringing them face-to-face. “Your name?”
“S-Saldar,” he gasped.
She smiled like a playful lover, kissed the end of his nose, and purred, “And what was the name of your friend, whom I dallied with first?”
“Thallowood,” he gulped.
Targrael slit his throat.
Heedless of how much of his blood drenched her, she sprang up and ran on. The king’s tower-what luck!
Now, if young Gauntur had been kind enough to have headed higher in the fortress, to the loftier rooms where wizards of war kept their trinkets and luxurious sleeping quarters… not to mention a certain old Crown secret known as Ildool’s Veil…