by Ed Greenwood
One highknight hesitated, and another burst forward to swing his blade at Elminster.
Alusair became a rushing wind that met him half a pace away from the Old Mage and sent him face-first to the floor, white-faced and shivering uncontrollably.
Stepping away from his twitching limbs, she faced the few knights who were left and gave them a glare that lasted until sword after sword was dropped.
When the clatter of the last one had died, she said, “Sit down here and await the recovery of your fellows. Do not follow the Sage of Shadowdale as he enters Our home, for it is also his home. He is always welcome here.”
She bent her stare upon them until the last knight had sat himself down, then gave Elminster a wry smile.
“Thank ye, lass,” he said quietly, bowing low to her. She held out her hand, and he bent and kissed it, never flinching from the cold that made the nearby watching highknights wince.
Then he rose, waved a hand at her in salute, and turned to trudge on into the undercellars.
“You’re welcome,” Alusair told his back. “Many have defended Cormyr. You, Elminster-more than me; more than my father; more than Vangey, damn him; more than anyone-are the one who’s defended Cormyr against itself.”
CHAPTER SIX
A CHALICE, MUCH BLOOD, AND A MASKED PRINCESS
I know not why the Open Feast’s held on the score-and-sixth night of Mirtul, lass,” Lord Parespur Bloodbright said testily, jerking at her arm to drag her attention back to him.
Amarune blinked at him, turning only reluctantly away from staring up at the magnificent gilded statues guarding the double doors of Dragontriumph Hall. They were, if she hadn’t lost count of grand staircases, three floors above the street and just about at the south wall of the royal palace.
“It just is,” snarled the young nobleman who’d hired her for the night, “and always has been, since the king was young. So stop asking tomfool questions, and start acting smitten with me. All I want to hear out of you is moans of desire for my manly charms and murmured thanks when I offer you something! You’re being very well paid for this, remember?”
Amarune nodded hastily, gave him a smile, and moaned as requested, lips parted to let every nearby eye in the palace see her tongue. Dropping her eyelids half over her eyes, she purred like a cat, as she often did when leaning forward from the edge of the Dragonriders’ Club stage-and Bloodbright brightened visibly.
“That’s the way of it!” he said delightedly. “Oh, they’ll be so jealous! I can’t wait to see their faces-Delcastle’s, most of all!”
“By my sword!” a splendidly dressed young noble exclaimed delightedly from behind them, striding around to stand in front of Bloodbright and adjusting his monocle as a deft excuse to thrust his nose practically into Amarune’s bosom. “Who is this enchanting creature, Bloodbright? Where’ve you been hiding her?”
“Heh heh,” her patron for the evening replied jovially, swelling up almost visibly as he started to preen. “Now, Reinlake, I can’t be giving away all my secrets. Ladies of taste know what they like, of course, and can’t help but cast their eyes at the most rampant stags, eh, what?”
The two young lords roared out almost identical dirty laughs and dug each other in the ribs like two drunken drovers, as Amarune smiled prettily up into Bloodbright’s face and kept her own countenance serene-and her eyes steady, not rolling-through extreme effort.
She was well aware of many other eyes on her, drinking in her dark beauty. She’d been receiving such stares since back at the palace gates. Not that she wasn’t used to avid looks, and more, throughout most evenings. Amarune knew she had a magnificent figure-more the result of a wasp-thin waist and a sleekly muscled body than the overly lush curves possessed by some of her fellow dancers at the Dragonriders’-and a strikingly beautiful face, thanks to eyes that were larger and darker than most. Add to that her long, swirling fall of dark hair and the graceful, flowing movements she’d worked so hard to make her unwavering habit, and she drew gazes wherever she went.
Even if Bloodbright proved to be a clumsy lover when he inevitably bedded her at the end of this long night, there were far worse ways to earn coin than to spend an evening as the hired arm-adornment of a young noble attending a palace feast. There’d be good food and better wine in her near future, as well as much to see and hear. Not just the splendors of the palace and its new-to-her gossip, but possible clients among the ambitious nobility who’d be attending. A chance to put names to faces, at least, and judge which lords she should “work” for, and which she’d probably prefer to avoid, when they sent their messengers. Only a bold few, such as Bloodbright, made it as far as the Dragonriders’ while out on their evening revelries; most preferred haughtier and more exclusive establishments, and only sent envoys into more common places to do their looking for them.
Still guffawing, Lord Reinlake swept past them into the hall, and Amarune found herself being whirled along in his wake, on Bloodbright’s arm through a chicane of hanging lamps and tapestries into the bright and noisy gaiety of Dragontriumph Hall during an evening court feast.
The Open Feast, she’d been curtly told before Bloodbright had run out of patience, was called that because-out of a tradition so venerable its origins had been forgotten-no royalty attended, so the feasters could speak more freely.
They were certainly doing that. And enthusiastically shouting, singing, and making rude noises and impersonations, too. Not that Bloodbright was going to stand for her stopping long enough to really see or hear any of it yet; he was thirsty and was heading with swift urgency around the long table that dominated the room to a dimly lit archway where a cellarer was shooing servers with platters of tallglasses out into the great chamber like bees leaving a hive. Thirsty guests in the royal palace were not to be kept waiting.
The din in the hall was deafening. A chapbook scribbler like Flarm “Mouth of Suzail” would have described the scene around Amarune right now something like: “Over splendid food in luxurious surroundings, bright young ambitious things mingle with jaded nobles and urbane courtiers, fluted wineglasses in hand, discussing the morrow of Cormyr-and jockeying for power in that future.” Amarune knew that, because those were the very words Flarm had used to describe last year’s Open Feast. Tress had kept that yellowing chapbook and had produced it triumphantly for Amarune’s perusal upon hearing of this night’s work.
What-if Flarm could be trusted-was evidently the usual long feasting table ran like a lance down the length of Dragontriumph Hall, lined with chairs for a formal dinner. That night, however, it was set for “catch table,” where diners helped themselves to platters and moved freely about. She’d talked to some of the girls who’d been to other feasts, and knew that later, once many guests had become weary of drinking and nibbling-or drowsy thanks to overindulgence-the few who preferred to sit and eat more than circulate and talk would be joined by many more in the chairs, but at the moment almost everyone was standing and talking.
And talking.
By the gods, she’d heard shrieking children’s fights that were quieter!
Bloodbright stopped with a smile in front of an elder servant he obviously knew, who was pouring wine from a decanter into tallglasses deftly plucked from a server’s platter and offering them wordlessly to feaster after feaster, accepting dregs and empties in return with practiced and politely silent elegance.
“Fair evening, my lord!” the cellarer smiled and extended that smile with a nod in Amarune’s direction, without making it a leer. “Lady!”
She smiled back at him then looked swiftly and-she hoped-longingly up at her patron, who flushed with pleasure as he took a tallglass and replied. “ ’Tis indeed, Jamaldro! Charsalace, is it? Ah, good, good! A glass for my lady!”
One was put into Amarune’s fingers with a deft flourish, and Bloodbright smilingly propelled her away along the dim rear expanse of the hall, where knots of nobles were standing, drinks in hand, talking excitedly.
He strolled a winding w
ay through them, obviously showing her off. Amarune kept her eyes firmly on him, an expression of ardent worship on her face, but listened hard to the snatches of converse they were passing.
“… oh, it’s haunted, all right! An entire wing of the palace! That’s why they built this new one we’re standing in, see?”
“I heard it was magic raging through it that they couldn’t stop, that made them shutter yon wing and leave it abandoned-for years, now! Surely we’ve priests enough to end the hauntings in all that time, no matter how many there are!”
“Essard, Essard, you should find one of your servants with kin working at the palace and ply them with drink some night-your worst wine will do-and hear the real tales told around here! They’ve tried priests in plenty! They’ve even reclaimed rooms here and there, for a few months … but again and again they find courtiers and war wizards lying dead in its passages!”
Despite herself, despite having heard wilder rumors about the haunted wing of the palace scores of times, Amarune trembled in delicious fear.
The whole palace knew the Princess Alusair rode the halls of the haunted wing on a spectral horse. In utter silence and in full armor she went, wild-eyed and with a bloody sword in her hand, passing through walls, floors, ceilings-and foolish courtiers-freely. The touch of her sword slew, and her ghostly hand passing through you chilled you to the bone and left you shivering for days. Those she just glared at were haunted by her eyes, seeing her cold gaze again and again in their waking hours thereafter. Why-
Amarune felt a sharp pain just under her ribs. Lord Bloodbright had noticed her head turning away and had pinched her, hard. She looked swiftly back up at him-and found herself meeting an almost murderous glare.
She grimaced a swift and silent apology and hastened to move against him like a roused wanton, grinding against his hip. That restored his smile, but Amarune found herself right beside some old blowhard of a fat merchant in wine-stained velvet who’d evidently decided that this chatter about the Ghost Regent was sorely in need of some supercilious correction.
“You would do well to remember,” he brayed, “that the Princess Alusair is what is popularly known as a tormenting ghost, and shares those shadowed halls with risen-from-their-graves courtiers who now walk as skeletons, decrepit skeletons, and shambling horrors-these last being the same walking dead known in less refined cities, such as Waterdeep, as ‘zombie rotters.’ ”
He winced, lip curling in exaggerated disgust at such nomenclature, waved a chubby and many-ringed hand that glistened with the grease of the batter-fried prawns he’d been devouring with zealous greed, and added, “There are also a few battle wights-once palace guards-and even sword wraiths, these last being the remnants of corrupt highknights, who fly about wielding black swords. Deadly, utterly deadly.”
“You’ve seen all these grisly spirits personally, Orstramagrus?” The younger Lord Dawntard was a sly, sardonic man, and even his friendly utterances sounded like sneers. This one was none too friendly and was delivered in a voice already slurred with drink.
The fat merchant flushed. “More than a few, young Kathkote. More than a few.”
A hiss of gleeful anticipation arose among the cluster of courtiers and young nobles standing near. Even Amarune knew that reply was a deft dig, to be sure; the elder Lord Dawntard, Kathkote’s father, had been a bold farfarer across the Realms in his day, whereas the son had never ventured farther from Suzail than the family hunting lodges, upcountry. Dawntard’s usual companions, the younger lords of Windstag and Sornstern, chuckled aloud as they pressed closer, so as to miss nothing of Dawntard’s furious reaction.
Unexpectedly, Kathkote grinned. “Oooh, cleverly said, Old Ostra, cleverly said. You do have some dash left in you.”
Lord Broryn Windstag’s face actually fell in disappointment. The big, florid, blustering scourge of stags and bold warrior had obviously been hoping for a fight, with his everpresent toady Lord Delasko Sornstern at his elbow.
A cellarer deftly steered full tallglasses of dragonslake into the hands of all three lords, pointedly serving the merchant and the courtiers from a decanter of Charsalace-a fine wine, but very far from dragonslake-so as to leave the lords preening at the silent recognition of their status.
Bloodbright seemed to have little taste for tarrying where bullying young rivals might try to snatch the mysterious lovely on his arm away from him; he whirled Amarune hastily away. Almost to the far end of the room, where the high windows of Dragontriumph Hall afforded a view of many lighted windows across the courtyard. Courtiers not exalted-or idle-enough to be invited to the Open Feast were hard at work behind those windows, in the huge, curving string of interconnected buildings known as the royal court, which shielded the royal palace on two sides from all the bustle and unwashed rest of Suzail.
Amarune had a brief glimpse of tall, dark portraits mounted on the pillars between those windows. Each was startlingly realistic and life-size. There was a masked princess wearing one crown and holding another that dripped blood, and there was a king in blood-drenched armor, rising up in his saddle at the heart of a gory battlefield to hold a gleaming chalice aloft in laughing triumph.
Stirring scenes that caught the eye and imagination. Obarskyrs, no doubt, but which ones, and why had they been painted thus?
She knew she dared not ask the man whose hip she still rode, who was starting to parade her down the other side of the long table.
Where the chatter sounded even more interesting.
“Ho, Marlin! I know you were hard at work on something to do with our shared hobby! Anything you can discuss, yet?”
“Heh, no, not yet, Mellast. Not yet. It’ll be worth the wait though, believe you me.”
“… ah, but that wouldn’t be smugglers at all! That’d be our daring Silent Shadow!”
“Silent Shadow? Sounds like something fat old noblewomen titter over and vie to be ravished by!”
Amarune managed not to stiffen. Well, we all have our secrets …
“Perhaps so, perhaps so. D’you mean to say you’ve not heard of him? Or her, for all I know!”
“Milvarune is so backward, my dear Jhalikoe. We stagger along from season to season hearing almost nothing of fair Cormyr except the exploits of Krimsal-quite the villain, that one. Almost like our nobles out east!”
“Oh, he’s no worse than a lot of our other Cormyrean lords, believe you me; he’s just more open about what he’s up to-most of the time. Right now, he’s in hiding, and no wonder, considering some of the murders and mutilations he managed this last winter.”
“Ah.” The envoy from Milvarune was obviously newly arrived in Cormyr. He thanked a server with a silent smile and nod for the tallglass that had just been steered into his hand. “Yet I take it this Shadow is more a thief than a slayer? More like your Skult and Vandarl?”
“Ah, so your staff has told you some useful things; good, good. Yet the Silent Shadow’s not like Skult or Vandarl at all. That is to say, they all steal, yes, but ‘Skull and Van’ are thieves for hire, and good ones. You’d best beware of them; our wealthy nobles can’t use either to rob fellow nobles, because these two miscreants are wise enough to refuse such tasks-but can freely use them to rob or harass non-noble creditors or those who get above themselves and presume to challenge nobles when it comes to competing in trade matters. The Shadow, now, is different. A loner, a thief of great daring, who works by night, purloining coins and jewelry from seemingly inaccessible nobles’ bedchambers and locked tower-top rooms.”
“Ah, I see! So fat old noblewomen would titter and coo over him!”
“Indeed! Oh, you’re going to fit in here in Suzail just fine!”
Abruptly firm fingers dug like daggers into Amarune’s elbow and steered her away. Lord Bloodbright, it seemed, knew just how long tarrying could continue before it became obvious eavesdropping.
They threaded their ways through gusts of laughter and around a drunken courtier noisily imitating an effeminate visiting noble of Sembia in
a manner that would have earned him a death-challenge had any Sembians been within earshot, to a cluster of men speaking in low tones, almost face to face. One was the darkly handsome Lord Rothglar Illance, a lordling Amarune had been warned about. Not that she’d have failed to be on her very best behavior anyway, with Illance’s tall, muscular mountain of a bodyguard, Marlazander the Mighty, standing right behind his lord, constantly peering this way and that, looking for trouble with a face of cold menace.
Bloodbright firmly led Amarune to the table, where some feasters had started to take seats. As they approached, Bloodbright went tense against Amarune, who saw the reason why a moment later.
One of the highest-ranking servants of the palace had just slipped into the chamber and was advancing in smooth haste toward them.
Or rather, was approaching a man seated at the feasting table almost right in front of them, whom Amarune only then recognized: Ganrahast, the Royal Magician of Cormyr.
Understeward Corleth Fentable bent over beside Ganrahast, murmured something, then stood smoothly back and turned away. Amarune knew that although Fentable hadn’t once glanced in their direction, she and Bloodbright had been noticed, judged, and almost certainly found wanting.
She forgot about that a moment later, when Ganrahast, the leader of the wizards of war, rose from his seat wearing a frown-and hurried out.
Faster than Amarune had ever seen any war wizard move before.
Many of the nobles around were frowning, too.
Evidently the Royal Magician had been moving faster than any of them had ever seen him move before, too.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NOBLES, SHADOWS, AND DEADLY DOINGS
But what of Baron Boldtree?”
Marlin Stormserpent made haste to drift away from that question and the excited young nobles listening to it, thankful he’d kept to his feet and had no need to rise from a chair, and so be noticed moving away.