by Ed Greenwood
Arclath flushed, let out a gusty sigh, leaned back against a pillar, and folded his arms across his chest. “It is. Though we haven’t had much opportunity for leisurely discussion of anything. Nor have I quite dared to say what I think, with Rune justifiably furious if we talk about her rather than to her, and with, well… my fear of you, Lady Storm, and he whom you carry.”
“True fear? Or just wariness?” Storm asked quietly.
“Real fear, Storm. You are… a figure out of legend. And so is he.”
“Elminster,” Mirt and the ghost said together.
“Elminster,” Arclath confirmed. “Servants of a goddess, hurlers of magic that can shatter castles and level mountains and all of that; I’ve heard the tales. At many a revel, late at night over flagons, there’s talk of you, Lady Storm. It’s said you lead whatever Harpers are left in Cormyr, or recruit new Harpers, or both. I grew up hearing about you. Now I’ve met you and come to care for Rune-and now I fear Elminster wants my Rune, body and soul, to be his thrall.”
“And if he did?” Storm asked gently. “Wouldn’t that make her the best-guarded woman in all the realms?”
“Not if he can take over anyone he wants to. That makes Rune or anyone he rides something to be used up or abandoned when harmed, tossed aside like a cracked flagon. Moreover, long before the flagon gets cracked, my Rune could be gone forever. This has been my fear. That if ever I leave you, Lady Storm, alone with Rune, Elminster will enter and conquer her utterly, keeping her body and making all that’s left of the real Amarune I love fade away!”
Rune started to say something, then closed her mouth firmly and shot Storm a look of challenge.
The silver-haired woman looked back at them, saw Mirt and Alusair gazing at her with just as much interest, and let out a sigh.
“Fair enough, Arclath. Hear the truth: Elminster can only take over bodies I prepare for him, or have previously prepared. Right now, that means just one person in all the world: Amarune.”
Storm took a step forward and stared right into Arclath’s eyes. “He cannot take over your body unless you choose to let him-willingly.”
“I don’t believe you,” Arclath whispered.
“Yes, and that’s the problem that’s been hovering like a shadow between us,” Storm agreed sadly. “A shadow I’d love to be rid of.”
She strode a few steps away through the dusty gloom, then turned back to face him. “I can prove the truth of what I say, Arclath, by going mind-to-mind with you-but I no longer have magic enough to do that without help.”
“Whose help?” Arclath asked sharply.
“There’s a certain enchanted item on display in this palace… clear across it, as it happens. Right now, with the Dragons roused and Glathra after us, the trip to fetch it will hold some danger, but-”
“No,” Arclath said flatly. “You’re carrying Elminster with you, right now. If our minds are, ah, touching, El could come right into mine and overpower me.”
“Not so.”
“So you say. Yet, how do I know Elminster isn’t controlling you right now, forcing you to speak-”
“Enough of this,” Alusair snapped, soaring over their heads. “You, Lord Delcastle, hold an opinion of the Sage of Shadowdale that’s far from how I see him, and I’ve known him for-gods help me! — more than a century, now. Hear this, my royal command: Stop refusing all offers to show you truth, and accept one of them. Cormyr needs wise nobles not just stubborn ones!”
Arclath gazed up at her. “Your royal command? I’m sorry, Princess, but as Glathra said, you’re dead. Your time for giving commands is past.”
“Is it now? Well,” Alusair announced, her voice suddenly as sharp as a sword, “my time for keeping my royal patience is certainly at an end!”
She plunged down out of the dimness like a vengeful arrow, straight into Arclath-and stayed there.
As they all watched, Lord Arclath Delcastle gasped, stiffened, and started to shiver.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SUNDERINGS AND WILD CHASES
T he cold, the clawing cold…
Arclath fought to breathe, struggled to stay on his feet, tried to speak…
And lost all battles.
Sinking down, everything going gray, he was only vaguely aware of Rune shrieking and clutching at him.
Her fingers were warm, but everything else was colder, darker. A deadly chill that had a cutting edge of fury cruised angrily through his innards, searing his mind with a pride and grief greater than anything he’d ever felt.
So, that’s what it feels like, to be the ghost of a princess.
You have no idea, naive lordling, came a snarl from the depths of his mind.
He was sliding down the pillar, his limbs as heavy as stone, and had reached his knees, his mouth slack and his head hanging, before the ghost of Alusair Obarskyr curled out of his chest like a wisp of smoke and snapped, “Helpless, yet? I want you broken, Delcastle, if that’s what it’ll take to have you let Storm or Elminster enter your head and show you what it’s like-and that El has no intention of keeping Amarune’s body or destroying her mind.”
“You… tyrant,” Arclath managed to hiss, glaring at her.
“Yes, I am that,” the face floating in front of him agreed bleakly. “I had to be. They called me the Steel Regent for a reason, Arclath. I accept your judgment.”
She drifted closer, her chill taking the last color from his face. “Yet, hear my judgment of you: ’tis time for you to be wiser, Lord Delcastle. Your friends need you to be, and the realm needs this, too.”
She backed away-the gods granting a small mercy-and Arclath could move again.
He looked at Mirt. “And what’s your judgment of me, Lord of Waterdeep? Am I the stubborn, callow fool these elder folk think I am?”
“Of course ye are, lad. Ye’re a noble of Cormyr! Stubborn, callow fools is what most nobles are-and stay, unless someone gives them a boot up the behind. Ye just got one. Will it work, I wonder?”
Arclath looked at Amarune, whose arms were still around him. “You, Rune? Do you think I’m a fool?”
Her eyes were two banners of love. Two sad, proud pools.
“I think you’re a tower of strength who refuses to surrender,” she replied quietly. “But unlike the many bullies among your fellow lords-that Windstag, for one-you prefer to hide your strength, rather than use it as a daily weapon. I love you for that. My Lord Fool.”
Arclath blinked at her then slowly grinned. “I… see. And as you see so much more swiftly and clearly than I do, I put my fate in your hands. School me, Rune. Even if you use Elminster to do so.”
Amarune looked at Storm.
Who shrugged. “I know not if El’s recovered enough to do or say anything.”
Slipping off one of her boots, she reached inside. When she withdrew her arm, it was cloaked in clinging ashes up to the elbow.
Rune reached out, Storm clasped the dancer’s hand, and ashes raced along their joined arms like lightning.
They watched Amarune shudder, arch backward, and roll her eyes up until only the whites showed. She swayed.
Arclath caught her to guard against falling, and watched her give Alusair a glare before rasping in Elminster’s voice, “Is this wise? When ye crowd young lordlings, ’tis my experience most respond wildly, doing much harm. I’m not in the disaster business.”
“El?” Storm asked cautiously. “How are you?”
“Dreadful. Ye?”
Storm smiled. “I’ve been better.”
“Huh. I suppose all of us here can say as much.” Rune looked at Mirt. “Well met again, old thief.”
“Ho, ancient destroyer,” Mirt responded cheerfully. “Ye seem to surround yerself with fine lasses.”
“ ’Tis what I do. Until I’ve trained replacements, at least. Which reminds me…”
Rune turned to Arclath and sank against him in their mutual embrace. “Kiss me,” she growled into his face, in Elminster’s incongruous voice.
Arclath
winced. “You’re… coming into my mind?”
“Aye. Not eagerly, lad, not as any sort of a conqueror-but now that Luse has forced us into this, I may as well. Just as soon as I prepare you,”
Arclath frowned but shook his head in surrender. And kissed the woman in his arms.
As their lips parted, Arclath’s face changed subtly. He stiffened, gently pushed Rune away, and strode off down the passage.
After he went a few pillars distant, well into the gloom and with Alusair gliding after him to make sure no skeletons were lurking, he turned and came back.
“Right,” he said slowly. “I’ve seen your truth. I believe you.”
He backed himself against a wall. “You really don’t intend to conquer Rune or me, or keep our bodies overlong. Just borrow them briefly when you think it truly needful.” He drew his sword. “Yet know this, Elminster of Shadowdale-I’ll resist you still.”
He held his blade up and ready. “I want to like you. I want to trust you. Yet, your mind is like a mighty mountain, where mine is a small stone.”
He hefted his sword, looking steadily into Amarune’s eyes over it. “I believe a mind that much more powerful than mine, belonging to a mage who’s had a thousand years and more to practice deception, can lie to me. Not just with words as any man does, but mind-to-mind.”
He looked at Storm, then back at Amarune. “Is this not true?”
“It is,” Elminster admitted, “yet there’s another truth you should be aware of, Lord Delcastle. Such a deception can’t succeed when other minds share in the contact and don’t want to deceive. Storm? Alusair?”
The ghost and the silver-haired woman both nodded and started toward Arclath, but the young noble held up a warning hand.
“Don’t bother. I’ll grant I’ve been told truth, a princess and a centuries-old Harper attesting to it. It matters not. There’s still nothing that you can say, any of you, to make me agree to let you take over my body. I hate that you can do that to Rune, and even more that she agrees to it, but you can-so isn’t that, before all the gods, enough? The rest of us have to make do with one body in life! If it’s torn apart, we die. Why must you take over her and me and then someone else, building your own army of mind-slaves? Hey?”
“To save the world,” El whispered, “and never an army.”
“Sage of Shadowdale, forgive me,” Arclath replied curtly, “but I still don’t believe you. I saw in your mind that you must recruit Cormyr’s war wizards. Are they not an army?”
“A question, Lord Delcastle,” Storm asked softly. “You swear you’ll never let Elminster into your head or let him ride your body. If Cormyr’s survival hung in the balance, or Amarune’s life, or the continuance of House Delcastle… would you trust me to enter your mind and control your body?”
Arclath stared at her, feeling his face going hot. He was aroused by the idea and ashamed of being so; could they tell that? Could they all tell that?
Storm always looked so wise; Elminster always seemed two strides ahead of whatever he thought… and the Princess Alusair had done much, years and years ago…
He couldn’t take this. Fool or not, he could not He had to get away, off by himself to think. Away even from Rune.
Slamming his fist against the wall, Arclath spun away from it and ran, swinging his sword as he sprinted as if the empty air were foe upon foe that had to be slashed open and slain.
No one called his name or ran after him. No one at all.
Lord Broryn Windstag looked up from the nearly empty decanter and scowled.
“Back again? Aereld, I told you to leave us alone! We’ve important matters to discuss-”
The old steward bowed very low. “Y-yes, Lord Master! Please believe me when I say I interrupt you with the greatest of reluctance! You have a visitor, a lord who was a great friend of your father and always welcome in this house, who tells me he comes on a matter of great urgency!”
Windstag grimaced. The priests had healed him, but somehow the pain lingered-and he hated surprises.
“Well,” he snarled testily, “announce him, then!”
The steward bobbed even lower then scurried away, returning before Windstag could finish trading “What now?” looks with his frightened cronies Stonestable, Ormblade, and Handragon. Had the Crown killed Marlin? Were they next? And who was this unexpected “The Lord Traevyn Illance,” Aereld declaimed grandly, bowing low.
The white-haired lord gave the steward a tight smile and strode into the room. He bore a black walking stick and wore a half-cloak, in the old fashion. His boots were so old and smoothworn that they fitted him like a lady’s elbow-length gloves.
“Broryn,” he asked gently, “how are you? Word reached my ears that you’d been wounded.”
Lord Windstag grinned up at him in genuine pleasure. Illance had been a longtime friend and creditor of his father, and was the one man Broryn had been reared to trust.
Traevyn’s sneering son, Rothgar, was no friend to Windstag, Stormserpent, and the others at this parlor table, but the elder Lord Illance was a different sort of man.
“Lord Illance,” Broryn said eagerly, rising to offer his hand, “be welcome! I’ve paid priests and been healed, and count myself fortunate not to have been at this Council, where I might have taken worse harm!”
“That’s good to hear,” Illance replied, espying an empty chair against the wall and reaching for it. Aereld got there first.
As Illance sat and looked wordless thanks at the steward, he made a swift hand signal that sent the old servant racing from the room. Windstag’s eyes narrowed.
“Will you take wine, lord?” he asked, but Illance waved the offered flagon aside.
“I’m not here to drink, lad.” He looked around the table. “Forgive my bluntness, but what has befallen this day forces swiftness upon me. These gallant young lords with you-do you trust them?”
“With my life,” Windstag said slowly. “Why?”
Illance picked up the nigh-empty decanter, held it up to catch the light, and told it, “I have heard Lord Broryn Windstag makes common cause with Lord Marlin Stormserpent-and others. Are these men all numbered among those others?”
Around the table faces tightened into wary expressionlessness, and hands stole to daggers.
“Yes,” Broryn Windstag admitted. “Again, lord, I ask you: why?”
Illance set the decanter down. “Our brave kingdom is plunging into a time of… strife. Sides will be taken, and those who try to avoid declaring their loyalties will suffer. Here I find myself greeting what some might term a ‘faction.’ I happen to represent an older and more numerous faction that sees itself as too small to prevail in most struggles. Wherefore, I seek to recruit like-minded nobles, joining factions into a larger alliance that might succeed in both saving and reshaping bright Cormyr.”
“I confess myself interested, lord,” Handragon murmured. “A faction that seeks what, exactly?”
“You are wise enough to seek no names. A test passed.” Illance let a fleeting ghost of a smile touch his lips. “Know that certain lords of this land believe our good but often misguided King Foril should be, ah, protected by a group of nobles-ourselves and those who join with us. We will hire outland wizards to advise the king-’control’ is such an ugly word-as we employ mages, mercenaries, and loyal Cormyreans who cleave to our cause, to hunt down and exterminate those foul subverters of the throne, the wizards of war.”
He sat back and looked into the eyes of the young lords around the table, watching them relax in relief… then lean forward in excitement.
Good. The ring on his finger that could slay them all would not be needed. Yet.
Lord Windstag could read faces, too. “I think I speak for all of us,” he said eagerly, “when I say we are most interested in-”
The door banged open without benefit of steward or announcement, and a panting, wide-eyed arrival was in the room before a single dagger could be drawn.
“Save me!” Marlin Stormserpent gasped, almost
collapsing onto the table. “You’ve got to hide me!”
“From whom?” Handragon snapped.
“Who’s after you?” Lord Illance asked sharply, twisting a ring on his finger until it glowed.
Stormserpent’s eyes were wide with terror as he waved a heavy chalice in one hand and a bright-bladed sword in the other.
“He bursts into your mind,” he hissed in Illance’s face, “and hunts you with beholders!”
Everyone was on his feet, talking at once. Decanters toppled, rolled, and shattered unnoticed.
“What happened, Marl?” Ormblade demanded, his voice louder than the rest. “Who’s after you-”
“Hold!” Handragon shouted, drowning out the rest of the question. “Who’s this?”
He was pointing at the door.
Which stood open again. Framed in it stood the wincing steward, with a man whose stance and garb suggested he was a house servant, but of another household.
“Osbur? What news?” Illance barked, before adding to the rest of the room, “This man can be trusted!”
The man bowed then announced huskily, “I am sent by Lord Elbert Oldbridle with a mess-”
“Elbert? What of your master, Lord Olgarth Oldbridle?”
“Dead, Lord Illance. Slain by… others, led by a man of Westgate. Lord Olgarth’s last orders to me were to pass on a specific warning to his son, if he fell. I did this, and his son-my master, now-bade me seek you out and give you the warning, too.”
“Do so.”
“ ‘Competing cabals from Sembia and from Westgate are seeking to subvert senior courtiers of Cormyr during this unrest, so as to either influence or outright rule the Forest Kingdom. Beware Kormoroth and Yestrel and the Lhendreths of Saerloon.’ Those were his exact words, Lord Illance.”
“Thank you, faithful Osbur. Take yourself back to Lord Elbert, and convey my sympathies for his father’s demise. Tell two of my men-the warriors in red you passed, outside the gates-that they’re to accompany you, on my orders, for a safe return to your new master. With the city in an uproar, some nobles may see messengers as targets.”