by Ed Greenwood
Andemel led the way back through the curtains into the cozy dimness of their favorite alcove. By the gods, both of the pillars that held up its arched ceiling had been moved. There was a new and stonily regal bust of Azoun standing in one corner, too. Did they ever stop rebuilding things at the palace—with tax coins taken from those in Cormyr who actually had to work for their living? Probably not. Andemel shrugged and asked his friend, “Just who in Suzail, now, would you be calling an ‘honest merchant’?”
“My apologies,” Sabrast replied with a smile. “Let us say ‘common-born,’ then.”
Andemel nodded. “Better. Ah, but I’ll forgive many haughty nobles a lot of things so long as their vanity keeps them hosting revels like these. Did you see that lass with the glowing gown? When the mock flames died away right down her front, I’d thought I’d choke! How does she keep those emeralds glued on?” He shook his head in remembered admiration. “She’s still around, isn’t she? Mayhap I’ll ask her if she’d like to see the new Graeven garden topiary, hey?”
“Well, friend,” Sabrast told him, “old lion you may be … but she’s even older.”
“What? Magic? She looks not a day over twenty winters—if that!”
“Magic, indeed. Kept you from seeing her beard quite effectively, didn’t it?”
“Beard? Sabrast, what’re you drinking?”
“Excellent firewine, thank you,” Sir Windriver replied. He stepped out through the curtain to deftly procure an entire platter of oysters drenched in garlic butter. The servant carrying it looked very surprised but departed in swift silence. “Andemel, you’ve met that young lass in the gown of flames before … and, as I recall, you didn’t stop shuddering and cursing for a tenday. Yon lass is the wizard Elminster.”
“What? Sabrast, you’re … serious. Oh, gods!”
“How did you think he learned all the Cormyrean gossip? Can you see him spending days sitting in front of a crystal ball when he can have the fun of spying into our minds in person?”
“But …” a shaken Master Andemel Graeven replied, bravely struggling with the shock of how close he’d come to trying to win the charms of one of the oldest and most feared mages in all Faerûn. “But …”
Another brace of servants struggled past, gasping under the weight of a fat and snoring noble burden. Under the strain, the metal of the silver-plated platter was groaning more loudly than they were. The hairy arm dangling over its edge might have belonged to Lord Blester … or Lord Staglar. No one else at court was quite grossly fat enough.
Sir Windriver drew the alcove curtains firmly shut. “Glah! I’m not so eager to see more brazen young ladies that I have to watch all of Cormyr’s most corpulent being carried off to bed. Sometimes I wonder how this kingdom staggers along from one day to the next, with the likes of Blester leading the converse at court. Bah—enough of it. You lured me here, Andemel, with talk of something that would interest me greatly. I trust ’twas more than the pleasure of seeing Elminster in a fine enspelled gown!”
Master Graeven settled himself back among the cushions of the most comfortable seat and crossed his silver-toed boots atop the gleaming polish of a handy side table. “I don’t recall having to lure you all that hard, Sir Windriver … but aye, there is something of import I wanted to share with you. Something I’ve just acquired, called a ‘Godsfrown Shield.’ ”
“A ‘Godsfrown Shield’? Explain!”
Andemel reached for an oyster. “If you should have a valuable cargo stolen, wagon and all, or have a warehouse burn with all that is in it, the gods frown on you, no? So Baerusin takes a stiff fifty golden lions and undertakes to intercede with the gods for a month, or a tenday, or whatever you agree upon. If the wagon goes missing or the building burns, he gives you several thousands of gold pieces to replace your loss. He is your shield, your ‘Godsfrown Shield.’ If all is well—and he has agents who watch very carefully over your wagon or warehouse, to keep all well—he keeps the fifty lions.”
Sir Sabrast frowned. “Hmmm … a theft on his part, it seems at first—but no; guards come all too expensive—especially when one must pay them more than a rival slips them, to avoid betrayals. Shields are always expensive—and if it fails, this one comes expensive to Baerusin.”
Andemel nodded. “Exactly. Wherefore, I’ve purchased a shield on my shop that lasts un—”
The alcove curtains were thrust open, and a face that bore the latest stylish wisps of mustache and beard, adorned with tiny golden rings, peered in. “Ah!” it exclaimed in delighted recognition, a scant second before a servant stammered unnecessarily, “Master Raurild Sarpath!”
Raurild turned and made an unmistakable gesture of dismissal to the servant, one that involved the transfer of a golden lion, then strode into the alcove, pulling the curtains firmly shut behind him. “Andemel! You’re alive, by the gods! A thousand thanks to Tymora for that! I’ve just heard about the fire in your shop yestereve, and I—”
Master Andemel Graeven peered nervously into the shadowy corners of the alcove, seeking spy holes with eyeballs gleaming in them … and thankfully finding none. “Hush!” he said urgently. “By Oghma, let the record be straight: the fire was not yestereve, but this night. About an hour from now.”
Sir Sabrast Windriver filled the momentary silence with a chuckle and poured himself more wine. Ruby, of course.
“Raurild, this is late out for you … your good wife grant permission for once?”
Master Raurild Sarpath grimaced. “Yes, as it happens. ‘Possibly good for business, so long as I drank but little,’ she said—so here I am.”
“Your wife decides whether or not you can go out to a revel?” Andemel asked incredulously.
“Aye, quite so,” Raurild told him. “In marriage, I leave all of the small decisions to my wife—in fact, she insists on it. The larger matters are mine to deal with.”
Sir Sabrast Windriver crooked one eyebrow. “ ‘Larger matters’? Such as?”
Raurild smiled thinly. “I don’t know. We’ve been wed only sixteen summers; no larger matters have come up yet.”
Sabrast and Andemel exploded in mirth. When he was recovered enough, the knight poured another glass of wine and held it out to Raurild, just as the alcove curtains parted again—and a sudden stillness descended upon the cozy scene. A quiet that bespoke tension. The four grim and fully armored Purple Dragons who held the curtains open might have had something to do with the sudden change of atmosphere. Two officers raised glowing maces, flanking the slender, oily-haired figure of Suzail’s most senior tax collector. Those court weapons could paralyze or turn aside other spells, and they were borne only by the most able and high-ranking soldiers of the realm. Precept Immult Murauvyn wore the thinnest of crooked smiles.
“Ah, Sir Sabrast Windriver,” Murauvyn said softly, “what a pleasure finally to look upon your face. A hard man to catch up with in all sprawling Suzail. They warned me, and I certainly found it to be so. Yet we meet at last. I bear a fond greeting from the Crown—and the request that you surrender unto me the thirty-six thousand lions in last year’s unpaid taxes that you, Sir Sabrast, owe to the Royal Treasury of Cormyr!”
Feeling the sudden weight of interested gazes upon him—those of Andemel and Raurild foremost—Sir Sabrast Windriver grew a whit pale. “I seem to have failed to carry such funds about with me,” he observed smoothly. “It’s these new form-fitting tunics … they leave precious little space for thousands of coins, y’see …”
Precept Murauvyn interrupted witheringly. “Sir Sabrast Windriver, my agents have failed to find you with coins enough in your tunic at your villa on Turnhelm Street, your stables on Sarangar Lane, your city manor in Ambel Row, your business offices on Waervar Street, your little romantic hideaway on Westchapel Way, the cottage that so sumptuously houses your mistress on Brightstar Street—”
“Ahem,” remarked Sir Sabrast Windriver, hastily.
“—the cottage of your second mistress on Undelmring Street—”
�
�Ahem, hem, hem,” Sir Sabrast Windriver added, more vigorously. “Now, just a—”
“—your country estate at Gray Oaks, your yacht moored at Moonever, your hunting lodge at Mouth o’ Gargoyles—and oh, yes, the cottage of your third mistress, in Waymoot. The port rolls in Suzail record sixteen sailings of vessels owned by you so far this season, and twenty returns; at least two of the ships that were unloaded at the docks to your enrichment shared a name and charter but were quite dissimilar in size and age. Fellow agents of the Crown report that the ledger of landings in Marsember that records the particulars of your fleet is mysteriously missing. They have thus far failed personally to examine any of the offloaded cargoes, which would, of course, add taxation to the amount I’ve just mentioned—to say nothing of any personal transactions you may have accomplished that may also be of interest to us. I speak now merely of the face value of annual land taxes on the properties I’ve just named, though one of my colleagues reports that you own at least two score houses in this city and some hundred or so upland farms. How is it—with so much land that you could readily sell enough to meet almost any royal demand for monies—that you seem to habitually forget to render unto Azoun what is, undeniably, Azoun’s?”
Andemel and Raurild, whose eyebrows had risen at this astonishing catalogue of wealth, looked with interest at their colleague, wondering what Sir Sabrast would say or do now. Without thinking, in an instinctive move to distance themselves from financial embarrassment and Crown suspicion, they’d stepped a pace or two away from him, so that the master of Windriver House now stood alone in a little cleared spot of gaudy Thayan carpet.
Taking one slow stride to where he could lean against one of the recently relocated pillars, Sir Sabrast Windriver managed a smile.
“Actually, Murauvyn,” he replied calmly, “you appear unaware of my fourth, fifth, and sixth mistresses, my Olde Lace and Glitterswash chain of souvenir shops throughout Sembia, and the current needs and dispositions of my large family. My eldest son, Falorian, is hard at work founding his own shipping line out of Selgaunt, my middle son Arastor is fast becoming the largest builder in stone in Westgate, and my youngest, Bralzaer, has founded a mercenary company in Impiltur, Bralzaer’s Bold Basilisks. I have six daughters, all of whom are in Sembia going through three or four new gowns each a day, trying to snare wealthy Sembian husbands. My sickly wife—of whom I’m sure you’ve heard—is busily trying every medicine that can be suggested by man or halfling, searching for a cure for … living, it seems. Do you have any idea how many golden lions they can all spend in a day?”
He smiled archly and added, “If I don’t give any of them so much as one worn copper coin, why should I give anything to you?”
Into the tense silence that followed, Raurild couldn’t help but snort as he tried to smother his mirth. The tax collector gave him a cold look before bending an even more icy gaze upon the unrepentant knight.
“Sir Sabrast,” Precept Immult Murauvyn said in cold, precise tones, “your treatment of your family is not the concern of the Crown. Your failure to render tax monies, however, is. In fact, it has become a concern so grave that the Royal Magician of Cormyr has gone so far as to grant me permission to seize whatever of your properties I choose, to meet the outstanding debt—after you have rendered menial labor on the royal roads of the kingdom for a month, as any penniless debtor must. You act the part of the destitute man all too well and drive us to treat you as one.”
Sir Sabrast stepped away from the pillar, casually moving one hand to cover the rings he wore on the other, and asked softly, “And if I refuse to submit to your demands upon my properties and person?”
The other pillar in the alcove suddenly twisted and blurred. Glowing maces swept up, and Purple Dragons reached for their weapons on all sides. They paused as the pillar resolved itself into the unmistakable figure of Vangerdahast, the Royal Magician of Cormyr.
“Sabrast Windriver,” the old and pudgy mage said calmly, “be aware that daring to cast any spell or commit any acts of violence at this time will earn you a year or so of additional service as a toad … in the palace dung-Middens.”
Even as Vangerdahast spoke, the pillar Sabrast had been leaning against became a whirling chaos. An instant later it snapped into the shape of a beautiful maid who was almost wearing a gown of leaping flames.
Purple Dragons gasped and swallowed as those flames died away, shrinking to nothing, to reveal a body that was covered with a shapely tattoo of the Royal Arms of Cormyr. The painted maid blew Andemel a kiss, flickered, and was suddenly a bearded, hawk-nosed old man in plain gray robes.
“Elminster!” several armsmen gasped in startled recognition.
“Just another pillar of the palace,” the Mage of Shadowdale told them dryly. “Well met, Vangy, loyal armsmen, and good merchants of Cormyr. Is this a private party?”
Vangerdahast glared at him with a look as sharp as a drawn sword. “Elminster,” he asked in a dangerously soft voice, “what are you doing here?”
“Paying Sabrast’s tax debt—with handsome interest, ye’ll note—and advising ye, in a friendly manner, to reconsider thy rightful demand for his performance of hard labor.”
Precept Murauvyn opened his mouth to say something, licked his lips, and looked at Vangerdahast.
The Court Wizard asked softly, “And just why would you do this?”
The bust of Azoun in the corner was suddenly surrounded by a vivid amber radiance that drew every eye. It winked, twisted into the shape of a harp for a fleeting instant, and then slumped into a gleaming, slithering heap of gold coins and glass-topped coffers full of gems.
“Rogue he may be, but I—as well as many unwitting folk of Cormyr—are indebted to this knight of thine for certain supportive actions he hath rendered.”
A clearly furious Vangerdahast snapped, “And if I refuse to accept your payment? What then?”
“Well, then,” Elminster replied mildly, “I’ll be forced to end my protection over certain treasures here in the palace … and, I’m afraid, they’ll revert to their true forms.”
“Elminster,” Vangerdahast snarled, “are you threatening me?”
The Mage of Shadowdale looked shocked. “By the gentle mercies of Holy Mystra, no,” he purred. “Just volunteering some more friendly advice—about consequences, this time. Some of those treasures, ye see, will no doubt be angry when they awaken.”
“Angry? Awaken? Elminster, you’ve placed monsters in the midst of our palace?”
“Nay—am I to blame, if various kings of Cormyr have an eye for valuables others fail to nail firmly down, and bring them home?”
“Elminster Aumar,” Vangerdahast said tightly, “enough bandinage. Just what sort of monsters are in our halls under your control?”
The Mage of Shadowdale resumed the shape of the curvaceous maiden in the gown of leaping flames and gave the nearest Purple Dragon a welcoming, pouting wink. “Ah … dragons,” he told the ceiling innocently.
“Dragons?”
“Only three—or was it four? And only a small sort of dragon,” El replied.
In the shocked silence that followed, the lady in the flaming gown took Sabrast’s arm and added sweetly, “I’ll just go and tell the chancellor ye accept Sir Sabrast’s belated but generous payment, shall I?”
Vangerdahast swallowed, closed his eyes, and croaked, “Wine … I need wine. Lots of it.”
As she glided through the curtain, the lady in flames snapped slender fingers. Full wineskins appeared out of nothingness and rained down on the Royal Magician.
It was hardly the fault of the Mage of Shadowdale that the third wineskin burst when Master Raurild tried to catch it—and that the fourth hit the momentarily blinded merchant on the head and also broke, drenching Vangerdahast and Precept Murauvyn, and spraying everyone else in the alcove with wine.
Ruby, of course.
BY ALL THE FIRES OF HELL, IS THERE NO END TO THESE TRIVIALITIES? MAGE, HOW DOES ONE LIVE YEAR UPON YEAR AND DO SUCH … SUCH
WASTE?
[furious volley of mind bolts]
[wizard screaming down into torn, broken darkness, and dripping, motionless silence]
[diabolic satisfaction]
Fifteen
HALASTER COMES CALLING
Black talons closed cruelly on shuddering, cringing white flesh.
THERE YOU ARE! AGAIN YOU TOY WITH ME!
Bulging arms plucked and tore at the thing that might have been human, shaking it furiously—so violently that some bleeding appendages fell off.
[whimper]
HAH! SOME VAUNTED ARCHMAGE YOU ARE!
[spell flash, rattle of spell-spun chain]
[sizzle of burning flesh, howl of pain]
HAH! THAT JOLTED YOU, DIDN’T IT? YES, I CAN HURL SPELLS BETTER THAN MOST MORTALS? BEHOLD, YOUR VERY OWN COLLAR AND CHAIN? GOOD DOG.
[laughter]
What … have ye done to me?
PUT YOU ON A LEASH, TO KEEP OTHER DEVILS FROM EATING YOU—OR WORSE.
There’s worse? [wry amusement]
OH, YES. WHY, IF Y— BUT NO. WE’LL NOT SPEAK OF SUCH THINGS. TRYING TO WORM THE SECRETS OF HELL OUT OF ME? MORTAL, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PLAYING AT?
[mental chuckle] Well said.
There was a moment of menacing silence, there on a smoking ridge in Avernus, before Nergal laughed too.
HUMAN, I BEGIN TO THINK I’M GOING TO MISS YOU.
You’re leaving? So soon?
[mental snort] IDIOT. A JESTER AMONG WIZARDS, YOU ARE. DOWN, DOG, AND COME BACK THIS WAY WITH ME, AND I’LL HEAL YOU A LITTLE? I DON’T WANT A TRAIL OF BLOOD TO BRING US UNWANTED ATTENTION.
Where are we going?
SOMEWHERE ELSE. [bellow of laughter] STEW ON THAT, CLEVER WIZARD. THINK HUMANS ARE THE ONLY ONES MIGHTY IN MAGIC? WHY, I KNOW A SPELL THAT CAN BIND A DEMON FOR A HUNDRED YEARS IN THE SHAPE OF A SWORD? WE CALL THEM “DOOMBLADES.” THERE AREA DOZEN OR MORE WANDERING AROUND YOUR PRECIOUS TORIL RIGHT NOW, IN VARIOUS UNWITTING HANDS? YOU STEAL ANY SWORDS LATELY, WIZARD?