Torsard waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, the usual, ‘Mind under your beds—he’s everywhere! Everywhere!’ clap-cackle!”
“Cackle that was first uttered by whom?” Elvarr asked again patiently.
His son blinked. “Oh. Ah, the Princess Alusair, they’re saying.”
Lord Elvarr Spurbright winced, then chuckled. “Oho. Dearest Vangerdahast isn’t going to be pleased by that.”
“My old friend Yellander repaid me well. Those dolts didn’t know who I was, but they certainly knew where I was and what they had to bring to me. They even brought along his written instructions, to make certain they did everything just right.”
“And?”
“And I killed them, of course. Using the spell I’d been thirsting so long to use again—the spell, by the way, that means you dare not try to betray me—I drank their lives. Which is why I’m grinning like this. The life-energy of three men is raging in me like a flame!”
Telgarth Boarblade kept his face carefully expressionless. He had wondered why a man he remembered as a cold-eyed, veteran war wizard was babbling like a gloating maniac. So he hadn’t been rescued by a complete madwits, after all—just someone mostly mad-witted.
So, does taking a threefold life need three fatal blade thrusts? Something to ponder …
Onsler Ruldroun babbled on. “The beauty of it is, Vangerdahast can’t lay the smallest spell on me! No realm can confine me, and no—”
“What’s that?” Boarblade snapped to shut off this flow of insanity. He cocked his head and turned as if he’d heard something.
The war wizard or, Boarblade supposed, ex-war wizard—what did they officially do to war wizard traitors, anyhail, besides execute them?—fell blessedly silent. His eyes narrowed, and he thrust his head forward to listen intently.
Then he waved his hand in a swift spell.
After a moment, he nodded, scooped something from a belt pouch, and handed it to Boarblade. It was a small, ordinary-looking stone.
“Well done, Boarblade. You repay my freeing of you already. Throw that at the man you’ll find skulking outside. Hit him with it, but throw it slowly, mind. Underhanded, like a little girl swinging her arm back and forth to throw something as high as she can.”
Boarblade nodded, not asking for an explanation, but the bright-eyed wizard gave him one anyway.
“I need time to speak the awakening word, whilst the stone is in the air—to turn it deadly to the next living thing it touches.”
“There’s only the one person outside?” Boarblade asked quietly, wondering what innocent he’d doomed by his ruse—but not caring much—as he hefted the stone in his hand. “I can’t mistake my target?”
“Just the one man. Throw slowly, remember.”
Boarblade nodded and went out. Well, he’d worked for worse masters.
As the two princesses settled themselves in the chairs to which the Royal Magician had waved them, Vangerdahast himself closed and bolted the door, took up a wand from a sidetable close to it, and cast a careful spell that made the walls, floor, and ceiling all glow a deep, rich blue.
There arose a short-lived singing sound, and as it died away, so did the radiance, leaving everything looking as it had before.
“The strongest warding I know,” the wizard explained as he strode back to join them. “As I promised you, this meeting will be private.”
Princess Tanalasta’s gaze was cool, and her question politely calm. “So, Lord Vangerdahast, do our royal parents know it is taking place?”
Alusair looked around the small, simply furnished parlor. She didn’t recall ever having been in the room before, despite spending some years delighting in crawling, darting, and worming her way into everywhere in the Royal Palace. How had she never noticed that door at the back of the Horndragons’ Chamber before?
Stlarning magic.
Tanalasta grew tired of waiting for a reply that evidently wasn’t forthcoming.
“Yes, before you ask,” Tanalasta said into the deepening silence, “we are wondering why you, ah, ‘invited’ us here. We are also expecting some answers when we ask things, Vangey. Being of royal blood and speaking to a courtier and all.”
The Royal Magician settled himself in the chair facing the two princesses, surprised them both with a friendly little grin, and said, “Sorry, Tana. Deeper apologies if informality is going to offend you—either of you. A great part of my life has been spent watching over you and trying to shape you, however fumblingly and harshly, and I all too often think of you as something akin to granddaughters. I’m hoping, in the years ahead, we can even become friends.”
“He wants something,” Alusair told her sister.
“Well of course he wants something,” Tanalasta said. “Everyone we ever see or meet always does. However, I quite take your point—this wizard never bothers to be polite to anyone except Mother and Father unless he wants something he can’t force or command out of them.”
She turned her gaze back to the Royal Magician. “However, being as we are speaking in private, I don’t care in the slightest if you call me Tana, Vangey.” She glanced at her sister again. “Loos?”
Alusair shrugged. “He can call me anything he wants. If he gets too rude, I’ll switch from ‘Vangey’ to ‘Thunderpot.’ Now can we get on with this?”
“Yes.” Vangerdahast sighed with just a hint of weariness. “Why don’t we?”
“Buried, and the manure pile heaped back over the grave,” Boarblade reported, deciding not to use any extra words. Not when his babbling master could supply far more than would ever be needed.
“Good,” Ruldroun said. “Close the door.”
When Boarblade turned back, the former war wizard was standing silently in the far corner of the room with two wands in his hands, both of them trained on Boarblade.
The long runner-rug that had been lying on the floor between the door and that back corner had been twitched aside to reveal a sequence of chalked circles, like a row of stepping stones, each touching its fellows, between where he was standing and where his new master was regarding him from. The dangers were very clear.
“So, Telgarth Boarblade,” Ruldroun said quietly, “the time has come for a little truth on your part. You are a mage of some small ability, yes?”
“Yes.”
“You have been a Zhentarim for years.”
“I have.”
“You have not mentioned this to me.”
“You’ve never asked nor intimated a desire to know about my past.”
“Your past? Are you now intimating that you are no longer a Zhent? And will not work with them again?”
Boarblade nodded. “Yes. When you snatched me out of my imprisonment and offered me service with you, I accepted, and that ended all previous allegiances. If you should ever order me to feign loyal membership in the Brotherhood, I will do so—but even before being taken by the war wizards, I had decided that the Zhentarim were fast becoming a den of vipers who all hunted for themselves, exhibiting only enough obedience to avoid being counted among the hunted. A Cormyr stripped of cohesive war wizards would be a benefit to all, so I continued with my assigned task, but I had already begun to work on a means of faking my own death and disappearing. My judgment of the Brotherhood has not changed.”
“You still seek a Cormyr where bickering factions of nobles rise to dominance, and the Obarskyrs lose the iron control their Wizards of War grant them?”
“I believe that would be better for all than the Cormyr we stand in now. I now seek nothing but what you want me to seek.”
“Well said. Spells laid upon your mind prevent me from prying into it or affecting your feelings and views. Banish them.”
Boarblade sighed. “I cannot. They were laid upon me by Zhentarim far more powerful than either of us. I cannot even begin to touch them. If you or another broke them, doing so would not only drive me mad, it would instantly alert senior Zhents as to what had happened and precisely where I was. It would also make me their tool to work through. I hardl
y think it likely you would want to face the spells of Lord Manshoon coming out of a body he doesn’t mind risking in the slightest.”
Ruldroun’s eyes flickered. “That would not be my preferred choice of situations, no. So I must trust you—yet I cannot trust you.”
Boarblade shrugged. “Consider. Every man in all Faerûn who is not a priest or wizard of power has to trust others without seeing into their minds—and many of them manage to do so. Sometimes that trust is justified and even rewarded. I intend to justify and reward your trust. Blood oath, if you prefer?”
Ruldroun could not hide his surprise. “That’s the very spell I was going to insist upon. Better and better. Telgarth Boarblade, I could get to like you.”
“And I, you, my lord. Even after the killings and betrayals start.”
“I confess myself delighted with your candor, Vangey,” Princess Tanalasta said. “I would go so far as to say I doubt very much if anyone in Cormyr right now is having as blunt and candid a converse about matters of the realm and loyalty and other weighty concerns.”
“See me as pleased, too,” Alusair agreed, “yet annoyed that you’ve never seen fit to treat us as this close to equals before.”
Vangerdahast sighed. “Forgive me, Highnesses, but before now, you frankly weren’t ready for this. Oh, I’ve no doubt you thought yourselves ready. Your royal father did, too, quite a bit younger than either of you are now. Yet he wasn’t ready until he was almost a decade older than you, Tana. He was still putting his desires of the moment before his love for the realm.”
“His desires of the moment?” Alusair said. “I’d say he does that still. A chambermaid here, a passing merchant’s wife there, a—”
“Loos!” Tana snapped. “That’ll do!”
“Hoy! I thought we were being blunt and candid,” the younger princess replied. “Or are you still trying to set limits, the way Vangey here is?”
“Highness,” the wizard said reprovingly, holding up a hand to signal Tanalasta not to make angry reply, “as I’ve told you, I am not—”
“Oh, but you are,” Alusair retorted. “You control every conversation you ever have, Vangey. Even when answering direct orders or queries from the king and queen. By what you say and don’t say—and what you refuse or oh-so-gravely warn must not be discussed—you set limits. You set limits for nigh everything in the realm. ’Tis one of the things you do. Someone has to do it, I suppose, though why you, I’ve never found a good answer for. My mother the queen would be far better at it, and even Alaphondar. I—”
“Loos, please, enough,” Tanalasta interrupted. “I agree with all you’re saying, but I find it beside the point, unless we’re somehow going to murder this man sitting facing us. Decrying what he does and is simply wastes all our time. I want to hear rather more blunt truth from him, in case we never have such a chance as this again.” She leaned forward in her chair and said to Vangerdahast, “So tell us a story, wizard. About why the Knights of Myth Drannor were sent away and what’s been happening with them, and as much as you see fit to reveal about the conspiracy within the Wizards of War—and what you were just up to in the Lost Palace.”
“Very well,” Vangerdahast agreed. “Where to begin?”
“We can begin with my expressing, as politely as I can,” Alusair said, “what my elder sister is too well-bred and polite to say: how damned angry we both are, wizard, that we didn’t even know the Lost Palace was anything more than a legend! You call this preparing us to guide—or in her case, rule—the realm?”
The Royal Magician sighed. “I suppose you’ll explode if I say you weren’t yet ready to be told such things?”
“Yes,” Alusair told him sweetly. “And all over you, too.”
Vangerdahast didn’t—quite—smile. “Then, being by far the wisest man in all Cormyr, I’ll not say that.”
Despite her best attempts not to, Princess Tanalasta snorted.
Chapter 19
DRAWN DAGGERS HAUNTING ME
In dark corners of the room I see you
Eyes like drawn daggers haunting me
Cold so cold my breast you pass through
Hunting me, hunting me endlessly
Why did you kill yourself and leave me?
Dark self-slaying can never be right
Hear me my love, I do so want thee
Come a-haunting, come chill me this night.
Jorn Tareth, Bard of Marsember
From the ballad “Haunting Me”
First performed in the Year of the Blade
The rapture that had made Onsler Ruldroun babble so excitedly was lessening. He was becoming more and more a watchful, closemouthed, careful man.
His true self, presumably.
“There is one thing I would like to know, Lord,” Boarblade said before Ruldroun became even more taciturn. “You impersonated the wizard Gheldaert Howndroe as fire investigator and wrote about that—or did not write about that, rather—in a war wizard duty book. Why? It has set war wizards to being suspicious of each other, and the royal family and certain high-ranking courtiers to watching closely the Wizards of War. Wouldn’t it have been wiser to let matters stand as casually as they have always done, with no one’s suspicions aroused about anything? Easier for you to work and with less risk of being noticed?”
“Easier is not a goal I strive for,” Ruldroun replied, “and never has been. Inside the war wizards, I wanted Howndroe under suspicion so as to hamper his work. Outside their ranks, I wanted the wider realm to foster renewed suspicion that the Wizards of War are corrupt, and deadly conspiracies actively flourish within it, to this day. Wizards suspicious of their fellows are far more likely to hesitate in battle or not risk their own necks as much or even refuse to obey orders they disagree with. I need them that way, for my little scheme to work. And as the Lords Yellander and Eldroon discovered, I will do almost anything to aid and further my scheme.”
“I thought you were working for them.”
“I was—skillfully enough that they thought so, when in truth they were doing my bidding, never realizing it. Time and again they ordered me to advance my own aims, thinking the plotting was theirs. Their deaths robbed me of many resources and of the convenience of having them to take the blame for whatever I did but hampered me no more than that. I am merely going to order you to do what they would have sent Brorn Hallomond and Eerikarr Steldurth to do. Get after these Knights, slaughter them without being seen by anyone, get their bodies hidden—or better, devoured or burned to ashes—and gain possession of the Pendant of Ashaba.”
Boarblade nodded. “And when they disappear and the pendant of lordship with them? You think Vangerdahast isn’t going to send someone to check on the Knights? You think the Harpers won’t, with Storm Silverhand living right there? Nor the Witch of Shadowdale meddle?”
Ruldroun gestured with one of his wands as if it were a baton of the Court master-of-pages.
Five amorphous humps emerged out of the folds of the curled and twisted runner-rug and flowed a little way toward Boarblade before rearing up like the arms of eager recruits, foolishly volunteering.
Five hargaunts.
The wizard smiled. “Four men I yet hold will be going with you. You five will become the Knights of Myth Drannor—and I’ll bestow memories in you all that will show Khelben Blackstaff working this impersonation.”
Boarblade stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“That might work, at that,” he said. “But there are six Knights, not five.”
Ruldroun shrugged. “You choose which one dies.”
“So this Lost Palace of Esparin has been used by Baerauble, Amedahast, Thanderahast, and all the rest for centuries to imprison every last war wizard or other mage in the kingdom who went mad?” Princess Tanalasta’s incredulity had lifted her voice to a mere shred away from a shriek.
“Well, yes,” Vangerdahast said. “As a preferred alternative to blasting them to death after we’ve battled them up and down the realm and scared all Cormyreans into f
earing creeping madness afflicts every wizard in the process.”
“And you’ve been sending loyal Cormyreans as well as passing opportunists off to unwittingly camp above this place for years, luring them with the promise of becoming Baron of the Stonelands?” Alusair said. “Before all the Watching Gods, wizard, you can sit here and say this and dare—dare—to sit in judgment of anyone else in all the realm?”
“Highnesses, Highnesses!” Vangerdahast said hastily. “Tana, Loos, please! This has been policy in Cormyr since its founding. There are mad elves in there, from the days when forests covered the land and your ancestors lived in cottages on the water’s edge, clustered around log-wharves that had to be rebuilt after the clawings of the winter ice every spring!”
“ ‘And as all men have been dastardly villains before me,’ ” Tanalasta quoted the lines of a play, “ ‘I find I have no other option but to be dastardly in my turn—’ ”
“Lasses, please! ’Tis not like that at all!”
“So how then is it, wizard?” Alusair spat. “Convince us with your oh-so-clever tongue!” She drew back her sleeve to reveal a spell-warding amulet chained to it. “And kindly refrain from trying to spell-cozen my mind. This isn’t the only shield against such tricks I’m wearing!”
“Princess! I would never—”
“No-ho? You stlarning well invariably, Thunderspells!”
The Royal Magician of Cormyr stared at her, face red with anger and embarrassment—a face that was now quivering. Then, suddenly, he burst out laughing, hiding his face in his hands, shaking his head, and finally throwing up his hands in surrender.
“Well,” he said, when he could speak again, “you have me there. Dead guilty, as accused.”
He looked from one simmering princess to the other, seeing no smiles. Triumph glittered in Alusair’s eyes, while disappointment ruled Tanalasta.
Sighing, he looked down at his fingertips and told them, “I can see this is going to be a long talk among the three of us. Very well, put yourselves in my boots for a moment. You are newly in the post of Royal Magician, learn of this particular secret of the realm, and—do what? If you don’t like binding mad undead spellcasters away in a ‘lost’ underground stronghold, what then do you do with them? No blustering, please. Try to make that decision calmly.”
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