by Ed Greenwood
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.
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 th
e 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.