by Ed Greenwood
“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.
“Almost anyone may have,” Arclath said bleakly.
“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.
He held it up, smiled at it, and told Amarune and Arclath, “Fortunately, I always did enjoy playing these particular games.”
In a place as sprawling, tall, and deep as the royal palace of Suzail, there are forgotten places.
There are also “almost forgotten” spots. One of them was a neglected corner deep in the palace cellars where ancient and mighty interwoven ward spells foil detection magics and hide magical auras, very much as a thick fog conceals small scuttling things.
Targrael thought she just might be the last rememberer of that spot, judging by the condition of a particular ill-mended wall that had been getting worse for centuries. It had two dark recesses, cavities where stones had collapsed out to leave behind holes like missing teeth in an old warrior’s jawbone.
One of them was large enough to hold a death knight, one who had managed to unbar the door, escape Druth’s room, and make her slow and painful way to the doors of the royal crypt after several long and agonizing hours of crawling. Only her incredible force of will kept her going.
There, as she’d expected, the Fang of Baerovus glowed, as it protruded from the heart of a warding-rune that had kept it from entering the crypt.
She had it with her now.
Oh, this was going to hurt.
Stepping into the little cavern behind the wall, she bent over, choosing where she would fall, making certain she had space enough to lie. The slow, cold drops of water seeping through the stone above her chilled her back as she brushed against them. Yes, this place would do. It would have to.
She undid her leathers above her belt, laying bare her midriff, chose the spot with one careful finger-and slowly thrust the Fang of Baerovus into herself, driving the blade up under her ribs.
Every inch tore a fresh gasp of pain out of her, and she shuddered helplessly.
“I,” she hissed at the unhearing stone around, “am a Highknight of Cormyr. The Highknight of Cormyr!”
Then the agony overwhelmed her, and she sank down with a moan, trembling…
This was her doom, or her last slender hope.
Would her undeath slowly drink the magic of the dagger, healing and strengthening her, despite the agony she now felt?
She dared not move around the palace-where Alusair might find and finish her, or foolish war wizards destroy her. Not as weak as she’d become, even before tasting the Fang.
She would be a long time healing, if this worked at all�
�� a very long time.
But then-she smiled coldly-that was the one thing she did have left. Time.
“What was that?” a Dragon snapped, his sword hissing out.
“A stone tumbling out of a water-soaked wall,” Glathra replied briskly, not slowing in the slightest. “It’s why we no longer use this part of the cellars much. Too many springs seeping out of the stones. Walls were built to seal off the worst parts, but that was centuries back, and they fall, stone by tumbling stone, with no one here to care or rebuild. Don’t worry, there’s quite enough solid rock left to hold the palace in place up above our heads. All four cellar levels and six floors of it, just here.”
“I thought I heard someone moan,” the soldier muttered, looking behind them. Glathra sighed.
“Lord Warder,” she commanded, “you have the right wand handy; are there undead behind us?”
Vainrence smiled, used the wand, and reported, “No.”
Glathra turned to the Dragon, the Highknight with her, and the other three Dragons carefully avoiding her eyes. “Happier?” she asked the soldier briskly.
“Yes, lady,” he replied, managing to convey not even a hint of a sigh. Or a curse.
“Good.” She swept on. “We have much larger worries.”
“Loyal blades,” Vainrence spoke up, “I presume you’ve heard the names Garendor, Argrant, Orkrash, Wyshbryn, and Loagranboydar?”
“The sages who’ve spent years digging through ancient court records, down here somewhere?” the Highknight asked.
Glathra gave him a sharp look, but he added stoutly, “The entire palace knows as much. What we don’t know, any of us, is what they’re looking for. Tidying up and organizing doesn’t take years.”
“Well,” Glathra said tartly, “it can, but yes, those five have spent most of their waking hours in certain deep palace cellars doing rather more than putting records in order. They’ve been tracing royal and noble lineages.”
The Highknight snorted, which earned him another sharp look.
“Yes, clever Sir Hawkmantle, they’re, as you so subtly hint, not merely reading records any commoner can consult in the right royal court offices, any day they choose to. We’re hoping these sages can, by referencing recorded incidents from the past, identify nobles who have, or are likely to have, any inherited personal talent for the Art.”
“You’re hunting the noble who commands a blueflame ghost,” one of the Dragons said quietly.
Glathra stopped dead, so swiftly that they almost ran into her, and gave the man a flat, expressionless look. “I see there’s nothing at all wrong with your wits, Sir Jephford.”
“For years,” the lord warder told the ceiling, “our wizards of war have scorned using such methods to learn more about our nobles’ mastery of magic, trusting instead to scrying and to subversion of-even placing our own mages among-the House wizards hired by all nobles who can afford to do so. Yet this long-practiced vigilance has thus far failed to identify who controls the ghost who slew nobles at the Council, so…”
“You’re willing to try other methods,” Sir Hawkmantle finished the sentence. He did not add “at last,” but his tone of voice made doing so unnecessary.
If the Lady Glathra’s glare could have melted manhoods, he would have suffered such a fate on the spot.
The lord warder flung out an arm to bar Glathra’s way. “I will go first.”
“Lord Vainrence,” Glathra began, “there’s no need-”
“Oh, but there is,” he said firmly. “The little tellsong I cast across the passage here is gone. Meaning powerful magic has been cast, very close by.”
“A tellsong? You never-”
“No, I did not. A secret is something one person knows. Once two know it, that ‘secret’ is better termed ‘realm-wide gossip.’ Wait here.”
Glathra stayed where she was, a little shocked. Vainrence had never been so curt with her before.
A moment later he returned and pointed to two of the Dragons. “With me. You two, guard the Lady Glathra. Swords out.”
Everyone exchanged grim looks.
A few breaths later, Glathra was summoned to join the lord warder and learned why.
The passage they’d been following ended in a large room, which in turn opened into a huge storage cellar. The cellar held the records and the room where the sages worked, in a crowded den of chairs, floating glowstones for lamps, and tables.
No longer. Not only were there no men to be seen nor any hovering glowstones, the furniture and every last record had been reduced to ashes.
Including five neat little piles, standing in a line along a great rectangle of ash that marked where a table had been.
The conflagration had raged long enough ago that all smoke and smell had fled, and everything was cold. Yet a lingering, sickly yellow-green glow played and flickered feebly here and there among the ashes, from the magic that had done this.
“Treason,” Glathra whispered. “Right here, beneath our feet. Beneath the king.”
“Stand back,” Vainrence ordered, spreading his arms. “I must try to learn what befell here.”
Glathra turned and made shooing motions, frowning at the Highknight, who seemed reluctant to move.
He and one of the Dragons obeyed as the lord warder began a long and careful incantation.
Glathra turned back to face him, to intently watch the spell’s results. It was hard for any one person to notice all the details when such a revelation took shape, because so much was revealed so quickly ere it all faded. A second casting would be only a poor echo of the first, a third a ghost of the second, and so on.
Vainrence cast the spell unhurriedly, careful and precise, finishing with a careful flourish.
And the world exploded.
Sir Eldur Hawkmantle was quick. As the blast erupted in front of him, he sprang back, trying to twist around in the air-which promptly gave him a hard shove in his ribs and in a whirling instant slammed him hard into a passage wall that had been far behind him.
He lost consciousness for a moment amid the rolling, booming echoes and swirling dust, but when he was aware again and could move, he discovered he and one wincing and groaning Purple Dragon were the only folk coming to their feet.
Vainrence had unwittingly triggered a waiting trap. A blast of some sort that had-he stared at ashen corpses, crumbling as he watched-fried the other three Dragons, because they happened to be closest.
He dimly remembered seeing Glathra and Vainrence scream, brief tongues of flame spurting from their eyes and mouths ere they’d toppled. Wincing at that memory, he went to them.
They were sprawled atop the older ashes, looking lifeless.
Not scorched, outwardly, and nothing about them seemed broken or missing. Unconscious, and quite possibly brain-burned.
“Search,” he ordered the dazed surviving Dragon, and set an example by stirring the ashes very gently with his sword.
They found nothing, but the glowstones Glathra and Vainrence were wearing began to flicker and fade, so they grimly hoisted the two stricken mages onto their shoulders and began the long, grim trudge back up to where they could find help.
Someone wanted family secrets kept. Someone who had magic to spare.
Storm came in first, with Elminster right behind her.
Mirt was standing with daggers up beside both ears, held ready to throw.
She crooked an eyebrow at him. “You hate being Heljack Thornadarr that much?”
Mirt grinned, resheathed his fangs, and turned to the table behind him, waving them toward a platter piled high with cold roast fowl and a large, lazily steaming bowl of fragrant fieldgreens soup. “Want some?”
“Do Waterdhavians love coins?”
Mirt ladled soup into tankards for them. “So, who’d ye kill tonight? Shall I expect a host of Purple Dragons to soon break down the door, even as the massed wizards of war blast the roof off?”
“No one, and I hope not,” Storm replied wearily, sipping soup and discovering she w
as ravenous. She waved at the food. “Where’d you get all this?”
“Arclath sent a servant with it. Suitably disguised, so no fear. Said he’ll send a man around on the morrow to teach me to cook.”
El and Storm regarded him with identical frowns of concern, then headed for their bedchamber, snatching up food and taking it with them.
Mirt roared with laughter at their reaction and headed for his own bed, decanter in hand.
After all, only six decanters already lay beside the bed, and his throat was as dry as all Anauroch.
“You should have come to me earlier, you two.” The Lady Marantine Delcastle spoke softly, even sadly. “I had no idea.”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Arclath said gravely. “This is my fault, entirely. Rune didn’t even know my name a month back.”
He spread his hands. “I suppose every young noble thinks his-or her-concerns about what’s ahead for Cormyr, and its noble Houses in particular, are something older nobles don’t want to hear, or will challenge or dismiss out of hand. After all, you are inevitably part of whatever we want to see changed, or that we fear won’t change, or…”
Lady Delcastle nodded, the ghost of a smile rising to her lips. “I recall feeling very much as you do now, when I disagreed with my father. He hurled me into the duck pond. Which is why we no longer have a duck pond.”
Amarune and Arclath had been sitting with her in the best parlor in Delcastle Manor for hours, explaining what had been going on with the blueflame ghosts-but not their work with El and Storm, or their deepening friendship with Mirt. Lady Delcastle, in a rare friendly, talkative mood, had proven to be a free-flowing geyser of information about noble feuds and alliances and personal friendships and hatreds, from the time of Arclath’s grandsire up until last night, or so it seemed.
She was frowning, now, trying to recall something. Suddenly she flung up an imperious hand for silence and brightened. “I remember!”
Arclath thrust his head forward eagerly, squeezing Amarune’s hand in an unnecessary signal for silence. His mother noticed and grinned.
“And does that work on her, dear?”