Yet no gentler now their thirsty bite
Fear always lurking talons in the night
Lharanla Tassalan, Wandering Bard
from the ballad “In The Night”
first heard circa the Year of the Grimoire
He had to leave.
Sooner or later a Wizard of War would discover some need to use a spell-shielded chamber and walk in on him. Yet he might never again have this much safe, quiet solitude in which to think.
And by Mystra, Azuth, and the Purple Dragon, he had to think.
Cormyr was a deathtrap for him, now and henceforth. Even if Vangerdahast should happen to drop dead before the next highsun—and he’d not be surprised in the slightest if the Royal Magician turned out to be one of those mages who has to be slain six or seven times before it worked—war wizards did not forget.
Not that Onsler Ruldroun had ever been bright lightning and gasps of awe as a war wizard. He had managed to steal a few spell scrolls down the years and retain a spellbook that should have been passed on to Old Thunderspells, but that still left him as “competent, but no more.” He couldn’t hope to challenge anyone but a fumbling lackspells and survive.
So he would have to be what he’d been before Yellander’s gold had seduced him. Very careful. Until the bright empire could be founded, another mistake would mean death.
Which was why he’d dared to use the portals to take himself here after Boarblade was safe. He would have to disappear now and keep hidden, trailing along after Boarblade and the four. He’d keep close watch over their doings but stay unseen, using his spells to aid them only when he could do so undetected.
The four were on their way to join Boarblade already. Only the second man to whom he’d whispered had refused, and he’d managed to stuff that body down into the sewers. If he could manage it, those would be last individuals he would ever meet and have dealings with as Onsler Ruldroun.
Careful and cautious, that would be his way. From now on, he would work only through others, always hiding his true face.
As if it had heard his thought, his favorite hargaunt emerged at the top of the tapestry it had been hiding behind and flowed down the rich fabric toward him.
He reached out a hand to it, and it curled itself off the tapestry like a caterpillar to flow along his arm.
Ruldroun embraced it, kissing and then licking its wrinkled, purplish-brown warmth. It shifted in hue to match his skin and nuzzled him, emitting a purr he could feel more than hear.
His only friend, perhaps his only lover …
“Mother of my precious ones, I’ll hide my real face using you,” he murmured to it. “And when Shadowdale is ours, my beloved, you shall have the rewards I’ve promised, that you’ve been so patiently waiting for all these years. Your picks of the best humans to subvert and conquer: the strongest war wizard and Zhentarim agents who come skulking, the best Harper mages, perhaps even a Chosen of Mystra, if we dare that high. Persons of importance, who, when they return to the realms you desire to rule, can get you to rulers and those who choose rulers … and the real conquest of Faerûn can begin. Unnoticed by those who bluster and blow warhorns and gallop under banners.”
He was humming happily to match its purrings now, as he tenderly stroked the shifting, caressingly moving bulk of the hargaunt.
“A hargaunt empire, where humans made docile reap rich harvests and burn out diseases and stand together against monstrous foes.”
A sudden grin split Onsler Ruldroun’s weary face, and he said to the silent room around him, “And Telgarth Boarblade wonders why I hold my tongue so tightly!”
Flowing from his cheek across his face, the hargaunt purred.
Belthonder prided himself on never uttering an excuse—and never needing to. Once he’d had to tell Vangerdahast, “Not yet,” but the Royal Magician had known he was right and had smiled and nodded his approval.
Vangey knew who were his best Wizards of War.
And if Marim Belthonder was no longer as young and supple and devastatingly handsome as he’d once been, he was wiser, more artful in his persuasions, and just as tall. The women of Cormyr still smiled invitingly when he looked their way, which sometimes accomplished half his work for him.
Now, for instance. This path led to a glade where a certain nobleman’s wife would be waiting for him, cloaked against the night cold but probably wearing nothing much beneath it save boots. The moment his seeking spell was done, to make sure she’d come alone and wasn’t being followed by anyone suspicious, he would put on his very best smile and go to meet her.
Belthonder flexed his fingers before working the spell—precise and elegant, that was how all castings should be—and stepped away from the trunk of the sheltering shadowtop to give himself room.
The Sword That Never Sleeps promptly sliced through his throat and several of his fingertips as it raced past.
It looped and came racing back to bury itself quillons-deep in Belthonder’s heart before the body had even begun to topple.
Then it twisted and flew backward, freeing itself from flesh and bone. Glistening with the best war wizard blood, the sword flew away, vanishing back into the night.
Armaukran’s enchantments were peerless in some regards but merely adequate in others. Old Ghost was almost out of earshot before the noblewoman’s screams began.
Drathar had no intention of playing the dead hero. So far as he knew, no Brotherhood superior was scrying him now. How he carried out the orders Hardtower had relayed to him was his business. Stop the Knights from reaching Shadowdale, kill as many as possible, and above all get the Pendant of Ashaba. Clear enough.
Yet there was no need to try for all three goals in one fray. That probably would get him killed, going up against a chartered band of adventurers. Killing one or two and wounding others so as to slow their travel would be solid work for this night.
So he could hang back and use his spells to watch. Or to whisk himself away if the need arose.
Let the dirlagraun—displacer beasts, most mages called them—take on the Knights of Myth Drannor and die in his place. The sword-sharp spell he’d cast on its claws had lengthened them into razor-keen, hooked talons as long as sabers, and the shielding spell he’d cast on the beast should hurl the first spell they sent at the dirlagraun right back where it had come from.
Perhaps—just perhaps—that would be enough. If not, there would be other nights before even Knights on fast horses could reach Shadowdale. And these Knights were walking.
And every night would hold another dirlagraun—or something far more interesting, if his spells could find and conquer it.
At them, my champion! He sent that burning thought and pulled out of its mind. There were two priests and a mageling up on that ledge.
Eagerly, barely needing his urging, the dirlagraun bounded up the scree, loose stones hissing and rolling under its paws—and pounced.
Omgryn cared not a whit if others got the praise. What mattered to him was that he knew—along with Belthonder, Vangerdahast, Laspeera, and even Queen Filfaeril and her lord husband, King Azoun himself—that he and Belthonder were the Royal Magician’s best war wizards. The spellhurlers Vangey turned to when Cormyr stood in need, the two who could get the hardest tasks done—and do them well.
Which was why he was stepping out of a noble lord’s hunting lodge at this darksome time of night, between two spell-frozen guard dogs, to pick his way around twoscore guards who were now snoring their ways through service to four different masters.
Behind them, those four masters sat slumped and silent, in no need of bodyguards nor any other sort of servant ever again.
They were the lord’s second son, a Sembian trader, a merchant of Zhentil Keep, and a Dragon Cultist poisoner. All sitting dead around a table behind Omgryn, with the fire that would consume the poisons they’d been trading, their bodies, and the lodge, too, magically kindling among their unseeing faces.
Omgryn had to hurry. Deltalon and the others would be waiting, and it was risky t
o keep a portal open for long in this country, with that pulsing glow that drew wild beasts like nothing else. They—
The flying sword that swooped out of the night almost slashed Hendran Omgryn’s head right off his shoulders. His head bobbled loosely, gore spraying in all directions from beneath it, as its jaw wagged up and down in a vain, dying frenzy that failed to frame the words Omgryn’s darkening mind was so desperately trying to shout.
“The Sword That Never Sleeps!” he wanted to cry. “Beware! It’s real! It’s here in Cormyr! All Wizards of War, beware!”
All he could manage was a wet, energetic gurgling. Until the racing sword severed what was left of his neck and sent his head spinning off into the darkness. His body flopped down into brittle shrubs with a crash, and the head bounced twice, amid much smaller crashes, then rolled.
Almost to the boots of Lorbryn Deltalon, as he hastened forward in a crouch, a wand ready in his hand and two younger war wizards at his back.
“Is it—?” one of them gasped.
“It is,” Deltalon said, backing away as the first flames started to lick up out of the lodge windows. “Back to Tsantress, and through the portal. I saw what did this.”
He worked a shielding spell faster than the two younger war wizards had ever seen one cast before. “Move!”
They turned and ran. As he pelted along in their wake, hoping his shielding would fend off a long, deadly sword swooping point-first at his back out of the night, Deltalon wondered what he dared tell them.
Best discuss this with Vangerdahast first. Word of these slayings was spreading among the Wizards of War but was being kept as secret as possible from the general populace. Not that Cormyreans were fools. The whispers were flying about the realm already.
About as energetically as that deadly sword.
Deltalon shivered as the glow of the portal loomed up, the anxious face of Tsantress beside it.
“Get through, lass!” he panted. “Unless you’d prefer a brief new career as a pincushion!”
Then he launched himself into the air, hoping he could move faster than the sword.
“Tluin!” Semoor shouted in horror, really coming awake for the first time. Gleaming amber eyes were staring right at him as the fanged jaws beneath them opened wide. It was blue-black and six-legged, this beast, with two tentacles thrusting up into the air from its shoulders, long whip-like things that swirled overhead. It was large and sinuously graceful, like an emaciated panther, and—
It lunged at him.
He clenched his teeth and swung his mace—and a flaring-ended tentacle slapped out of the night to smash it away, arm and all, snatching him aside from those jaws and flinging him into Islif. They crashed and rolled into the scree.
Behind him, a spell-glow bloomed—and then flashed. Jhessail shrieked, Florin cursed, and Pennae shouted, “No spells, holynoses!”
Semoor devoted himself to frantic praying and even more frantic clawing his way back to his feet, so he could whirl around and watch—
Doust get raked with huge talons that tore away his breastplate with a shriek of metal that drowned out the Tymoran’s own frightened cry. Then Doust was slammed to the ground by those two great tentacles that struck and struck and struck again.
Florin sprang in to cut at the tentacles, sword in one hand and dagger in the other, and the beast rounded on him with frightening speed. The ranger’s blades seemed to hack at the monster yet slice only empty air, again and again.
“ ’Tis a dirlagraun!” Islif shouted from nearby. She charged past Semoor, heading for the beast’s rump. “Wide slashes, Florin! Swing wide!”
A tentacle came at her as the great catlike thing turned its head and snarled. Semoor stopped staring and ran forward. Anger was rising in him, red and warm, as he rushed along, a good four running strides behind Islif. Her slash drove the tentacle away behind her, letting her run right in and spring onto the thing’s bony back—dagger first.
It was a small fang, but it bit deep. The dirlagraun roared and arched, bellowing its pain at the stars, and Florin hacked at its throat and forelegs.
Its roar became a wild shriek as it backed hastily away from the ranger, shaking a gory limb that bore a paw no longer—and Islif clung to its neck, drawing daggers from all over herself and driving them in as she went, hurrying to the head, thrust after thrust.
The displacer beast shuddered and thrashed under her in obvious pain, arching its tentacles up to flail at her as hard as it could, battering her.
It kicked at Florin with its talons and snapped at him, too. He ducked under its belly to slash at it from beneath; crouching between its legs, he could hardly miss.
Semoor reached the dirlagraun and struck aside its ratlike tail with his mace. Rushing to its nearest hind leg, he planted himself, took his mace in both hands, and swung.
Part way through it, his mace smashed into something hard that gave slightly as the dirlagraun squalled and hopped, its numbed rear leg threatening to buckle under it.
Semoor found himself tumbling face-first into the stones, dumped aside in the frantic thrashings of a beast that was simply trying to get away. The beast slid and flailed its way back down the scree slope. Riding it, Islif drove her dagger into one amber eye—and was flung off as the thing reared, bucked, shrieked, and tried to roll, all at once.
The dirlagraun landed heavily, rolled, and bounced to its feet, only to stagger sideways—with Florin racing along amid wildly spraying stones to stay with it, slashing again and again at its throat.
Stabbing tentacles finally sent him sprawling, but the dirlagraun behind them was doing no more fighting.
It was scrambling wildly away, dying and in pain.
Leaving Doust and Jhessail down and Pennae—where was Pennae?
As if in reply to Semoor’s silent question, a man cursed somewhere out in the night, and Pennae called, “Like it? The next one’ll find your heart!”
She grinned down at Semoor, a dagger glittering in her hand, and he decided it was a good time to faint. So he did.
To become the new Lord Yellander or at least get a farm or house or something that had been Yellander’s from a grateful Crown, he’d have to present King Azoun—or Vangerdahast, more likely—with some great and loyal deed.
That wasn’t going to be easy, and it had just become harder. Much harder.
For the four hundredth time, Brorn ran his fingers across his left cheek to feel the smooth, bare bone there. It was spreading. The eyebrow on that side was gone, and much of his forehead was bone, now, too. Tluin.
When he drew back his hand, he saw that it had begun to appear on his fingertips. They, too, were bone. For a moment he rubbed them frantically along the rough stone edge of the casket lid, where one of the cracks was, but that wore it off not in the slightest. Nor caused any pain. There was no bleeding.
He held his fingers up, the better to peer at them curiously. It wasn’t that his flesh and skin were withering away. No, the bone was growing over him, cloaking his flesh with an outer armor. He could still move and flex his body, just as before, but there was a heaviness, a shell atop the left side of his face and the ends of all the fingers of his left hand now. It deadened sensation. He could feel things he touched or held, but at a little distance, as if through a gauntlet.
It was something amid the corpse leavings. It must have been. While he was healing, it had crept into him somehow.
And just might be stealing Brorn Hallomond from himself.
He cursed loud and long, standing there alone in the forest, then turned back to the casket and bitterly thanked the boneshards and dust therein.
For stealing his life from him, perhaps.
He strode away, hoping his clothes could hide his skeletal limbs when things got that far.
He doubted that war wizards would let him see the Royal Magician or anyone else when they saw a walking skeleton heading their way.
Alaphondar leaned forward across the table. The Royal Sage seemed as calm as ever, but the
gentle, reassuring smile he put on his face made Rhallogant Caladanter, sitting on the other side of the table, shake in his manacles.
“Be at ease, Lord Caladanter,” the sage said. “You’ve been most helpful thus far, and the Crown is pleased. Thus far. You are here today merely to answer another question, if you can.”
He paused to give the young noble a chance to rush in and fill the silence, and the terrified Rhallogant Caladanter obliged. “I—I’ll do anything! Ah, say anything! I will!”
“That’ll be helpful,” Dalonder Ree muttered sarcastically from where he stood lounging against one closed door out of the room.
The lady in battle leathers whom everyone addressed either as “Dove” or “Lady Dove” leaned against the other closed door.
“The … gentlesir in whose company you were found had some aims in life, some things he was striving to accomplish. Did he speak of them to you, at all? If he, say—to speak entirely in fanciful ‘what ifs’—ran away from us, right now, where would he go, do you think?”
“I … I—Yes, he did, but I know not,” Rhallogant babbled. “He … he … oh, let me think!”
“Please, be our guest,” Ree murmured. “There’s a first time for everything.”
His fingertips burned briefly. A counterspell.
Drathar flung the dagger down, cursing.
Oh, ’twas a knife, and a good one. Useful enough and beautifully balanced for throwing. Plain, too; not traceable. Yet it held not one shred of a means of tracing her or working magic on her from afar. Of course.
Drathar threw back his head and went on cursing, loud and long, snapping out the words rather than shouting them. Beasts lurked in these wild woods, and he wasn’t seeking to battle one just yet. Retrieving the knife—at least he knew it was clean, so they couldn’t spell-trace him through it—he started walking along the game trail to keep his passage as quiet as possible.
It was too cold, before dawn, to sleep anyhail, even if he hadn’t had a raw pain high in his chest, just in from his shoulder.
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