by Ed Greenwood
He wanted nothing at all to do with Lord Royal Erzoured Obarskyr and his little schemes, whether the man called himself’Baron Boldtree’ or not. That one was a smilingly cold-blooded, untrustworthy danger to all nobles. Those who rode too close beside him would lose their heads alongside him, when the time came.
And it would, he had no doubt of that.
No, this incipient traitor prided himself on being rather more subtle than softly smiling Boldtree. Let others admire the Lord Royal or the power he was gathering unto himself, all nobles and shadows and deadly doings; the pride of House Stormserpent had other, quieter steeds to ride.
At that moment, just when he was beginning to think he’d be forever toying with the almost-empty tallglass he’d been nursing, Marlin saw what he’d been waiting for and smiled. At last.
Ganrahast’s departure from the Open Feast had been gratifyingly abrupt. So would his be.
Setting his tallglass down on the feasting table, Marlin turned toward the garderobes, as if his haste was due to a need to relieve himself.
The hour was growing late, after all.
On his brisk way down Dragontriumph Hall, he saw something else that made him smile. Six war wizards at the feast whom old Jamaldro had unwittingly served with drugged wine-such a creature of careless habit, our senior cellarer, always setting out his decanters just so, long before they’d be needed, and trust the highnosed mages to want their own, oh-so-special vintage-were all slumping in their seats, as if overcome by drink.
Once he was inside the archway that led into the garderobes, where he could see out into the hall but its shadowed gloom would conceal him from those still by the table, under the lamps, Marlin turned, surveyed the Open Feast, and let his smile broaden.
Certain other guests had observed his departure and in turn had risen to depart. They were all heading his way, as they’d been paid to do. Like him, they would drift first to the garderobes and then sidle onward. Not home, but deeper into the palace.
The carelessness of whose guards was becoming simply shocking, these nights.
The noise of the feast was far behind them. They walked warily on into deepening, almost velvet silence. The passage was dark, and the room they were stepping into even darker.
“I’ve never been in this part of the palace before,” someone muttered. “No guards, no war wizards …”
“They’ve few enough left of either, these days,” Marlin Stormserpent told them calmly from the darkness at the back of the room. “You’re late.”
“We were followed,” came the curt reply from a man still wiping blood from his hands. He’d killed before, but butchering a war wizard had to be done in haste, before the mage could get out a spell or send some magical cry for aid. “We’ve taken care of our little shadow.”
“Darrake Harnwood?”
“Yes. We put his head down a garderobe shaft.”
“Good.” Stormserpent was pleased and let them hear it. “However, every killing is someone who will be discovered, probably sooner rather than later. So let’s be about matters.”
“We’re all here,” someone else said simply. “I counted.”
“I trust all of you counted the coins I paid you, too?” Marlin asked coolly, and without waiting for a reply told the men standing close around him, “The undead of the haunted wing are real, but very few. If you come with me and do what I’ve paid you to do, destroying the handful or so of skeletons and wraiths you’ll meet, you’ll have done Cormyr a great service.”
“Why are there undead in the royal palace at all?” someone muttered. “Have the war wizards grown so feeble as all that?”
Marlin smiled. “The war wizards command the undead, using them as guardians to keep everyone out of the haunted wing-where the Obarskyrs keep most of the wealth they seize from citizens, the dark magic they’ve collected over the centuries, and … certain prisoners. Nobles and commoners who have become too great a challenge to the Crown.”
“Belnar? Thol Morand?”
“Among others. And unless you want to join them, you must all keep as silent as the tomb-ha ha-about what you’ve done, until I can make sure all the undead are gone, or you’ll be seen in the city not as heroes but as the war wizards will portray you: traitors plotting against the Dragon Throne.”
“Ganrahast is so stlarning suspicious,” someone snapped. “He sees traitors behind every door and around every corner.”
“The war wizards,” someone else said gloomily. “The doom of the realm and its real rulers. Always, when there’s trouble, it’s the war wizards.”
“A threat to every Cormyrean-even the royal family,” another agreed.
“The sooner they’re all killed off,” Marlin told his hirelings smoothly, “in a series of accidental demises too deft and veiled to raise any general alarm, the better.”
That brought nods, and he added quietly, “Now come. Into the haunted wing. Swords out, all.”
Great arched doors had been locked across the main passage, but there was an easy way around them, through a room whose connecting doors were neither locked nor barred.
When they got three steps beyond that room, two skeletons strode to meet them-one a dust-shrouded, floating assembly of bones too decrepit to fit together anymore, the other newer and more intact.
Stormserpent strode straight on, raising his sword and pointing at the undead. “Hack them apart. Then shatter all the bones. No shouting, no clangings. Do this quietly.”
Fear rose in him as empty eyesockets turned his way. They were dead or should be dead, not moving forward in silent menace, swords lashing out-
One of his hirelings snapped, “Quickly-before something else shows up!”
There followed a general rush and a frenzied hewing and hacking.
Stormserpent peered ahead into the gloom. The faint glows of old lighting spells, long unrenewed, kept the empty wing from pitch darkness, but he’d have been much happier if he’d dared bring lots of lanterns and walk along in proper brightness. In the shadows, anything could be …
Anything was. Another less-than-whole skeleton with a zombie-no, two zombies-lurching in its wake. Behind them, something dark, almost batlike, glided. One of the wraiths. Real trouble.
Marlin turned to his hirelings. “Get them!” he hissed. “There’ll be more! You and you-watch behind us and our flanks!”
He was scared, all right. He could taste it, and the excitement was making him tremble. Not that he’d have dared such a thing at all if he hadn’t had his amulet. An old family treasure that the gods alone remembered which errant ancestral Stormserpent had got and from where, that was said to render the one who wore it “immune to what undead can do, beyond purely physical woundings.”
Not that there was a Stormserpent alive who’d tested those claims. A visiting Sembian had confirmed there was “strong magic” on the nondescript, tarnished little pendant and had ventured the opinion that it should protect Marlin-but not anyone with him-against life drain, soul reaping, and other such necrotic dooms. But the Sembian had admitted that was just his guess. And it would be an idiot’s death to trust overmuch in a greedy outlander’s guess.
The skeleton was down; one shattered bone skittered past Marlin’s boots. The zombies, too, had been hewn apart by men with their teeth clenched in distaste.
The sword wraith hung back; Marlin took a step toward it and ordered, “Stand together, now. Some of these horrors can leap around.”
His hirelings were only too happy to obey; they were still drawing together into a shuffling ring, holding their swords very carefully to keep from slicing each other, when what the wraith had been waiting for appeared.
Down the passage toward them came a helmed and armored warrior with gray, dead flesh, and eyes that blazed with an eerie emerald glow. More of that glow flickered and played around its arms and shanks as it stalked forward, moving far more like a living warrior than the undead they’d faced thus far.
“It’s just one guardsman and what use
d to be a highknight,” Marlin announced dismissively. “Hack yon greeneyes apart, but keep your eye on the wraith. The highknights were used to sneaking and stabbing, not facing down bands of armed men. As long as we keep at it, once it’s alone, we can take it easily. Just keep hacking.”
He proved to be right. The hirelings hacked in frantic fear the wight went down swiftly, literally cut apart as it fought and the wraith tried to stab and whirl away, only to find itself pursued and hewn down.
Well, then. It was proving easy.
Moreover, the wraith had tried something on Marlin with its sword-a blade that had seemed almost a part of it, a thin line of shadow no different than the rest-that had numbed and chilled him for a breath-snatching moment … then simply had faded away. A warmth spread from his amulet and steadied him.
Well, then. Not that the heir of House Stormserpent saw any need to tell his hirelings about the amulet, nor that he felt any more emboldened then when they’d first gathered.
“We go on,” he ordered. “I’m not expecting the gold to be just lying around. If we’re to find it at all, we’ll need time enough to really search. Let’s find and destroy the rest of these walking dead.”
He doubted very much they’d find any gold at all, or prisoners-being as he’d invented all of that earlier this evening, above the gleam of the silver finery on the feast table. Just as he’d invented the “ball of spellplague in the little coffer” to lure the Royal Magician away from Dragontriumph Hall. Word of which had passed from his hired informant to the ear of War Wizard Vainrence, who’d sent word on to his superior Ganrahast via the understeward of the palace … it was nice to know war wizards could be just as gullible as anyone else.
Not that Marlin was bothered about what these hirelings might think; very few of them were likely to live long enough for their opinions about anything to matter.
They advanced through the haunted wing in a small, tight band around him, confident and quiet, ready for trouble.
Marlin allowed himself a small smile and the words, “Good work. I’ll have more of it for you all, soon enough.”
Empty promises were always a useful tool.
He had no intention of trusting in these sword-brawn swindlers after that night. Not if he could control even a few of the Nine.
The Nine. The blueflame ghosts …
He couldn’t wait to have them at his beck and call, to send into danger like this on his behalf.
Very soon, he’d have two of them. The Flying Blade had long been a treasure of his family, and he knew where the Wyverntongue Chalice was.
He could almost taste the power.
Lothrae had promised. Until together they controlled four or more of the Nine, those they did have would be Marlin’s to command as he saw fit-and, by the Dragon Throne, there was a lot he planned to do with them before that fourth ghost was found!
Below, in the deep gloom, Marlin Stormserpent and his band of hirelings advanced cautiously along the great passage that ran down the heart of the haunted wing.
Princess Alusair turned from the rail of the balcony where she’d been watching them, as swiftly as if she’d been thrusting a sword.
“I could kill all these fools in less time than it would take you to get down yon stairs to hail them,” she hissed. “Why shouldn’t I? Why, Old Mage?
Why?”
The chill emanating from her made Elminster’s teeth chatter, but he stood his ground. “I know how ye feel, lass.”
“Seething,” she snapped. “That’s how I feel, right now. So put an arm around my shoulder and soothe me, wizard. Or by my father’s sword, I’ll be down from this balcony and killing them all, before you can-”
“Easy, Alusair. Easy,” he murmured, doing just as she’d bade him. His arm encountered nothing solid, only a terrible cold. A flesh-freezing chill that made him stagger, yet he tried to hold her comfortingly. And failed.
Alusair watched him stumble back against the nearest pillar, gray and gasping. Her face was not friendly.
“Not yet, lass,” he muttered at her when he could speak again. “There’ll come a time to smite these worms, to be sure. Probably not long from now.”
She glared at him. “Not yet, not now, await the right time … how can you be so farruking patient, Old Mage?”
Elminster shrugged, looking back at her with eyes that blazed with the same rage that was almost choking her.
“It helps,” he whispered fiercely, “to be insane.”
“They seem rather disappointed to find only dark emptiness, shrouded furniture, and a distinct lack of chained maidens, imprisoned nobles, and heaps of gold,” Alusair said tartly, a little later. “Poor little pillagers.”
She peered down from a high balcony in the last room of the haunted wing. Young Lord Stormserpent seemed to be tugging something out of an inner pocket in the breast of his darkly fashionable jerkin. “What’s he up to now?”
Elminster shrugged. “That’s a map, so I’d say he’s now going to tour the palace in search of a magic he thinks is hidden here.”
“One of his precious Nine? Can’t I kill him now? Really, El! You may not care what is stolen or despoiled in these halls, but this is my home-I care very much!”
Then she saw that the old wizard’s hands clutched the balcony rail so hard they were white and shaking.
It seemed Elminster had discovered that he cared very much, too.
“Heartened, saer?”
“Of course,” Marlin replied, smiling a real smile. “Not a man lost, and all the undead who dared stand against us destroyed with admirable ease and swiftness. We’ve time left to try to accomplish something that should prove much easier than facing down hauntings.”
“Oh, aye?” The hiresword’s voice held a subtle note of disbelief. He’d survived being hired by many overconfident patrons before-and hoped to live long enough to be hired by many more again. “So we’re bound deeper into the palace?”
“Of course. I must check the accuracy of these maps and find the way to the legendary Dragonskull Chamber.”
“Where the Royal Magician died?”
“That’s the place,” Marlin said cheerfully, consulting his map again and then waving at the armed men around him to turn down that side passage.
Most of Suzail knew no one dared enter the Dragonskull Chamber.
Most of Cormyr knew that name belonged to a heavily warded spellcasting chamber hidden somewhere deep in the royal palace, that was shunned because the Royal Magician Caladnei, ravaged by the Spellplague, had died inside it one night eighty years before.
Among courtiers and nobles, it was said that not even the most powerful war wizards could penetrate its mighty wards. Dragonskull still stood dark, empty, and shunned, its never-locked doors closed, because of its many warding spells. Those magics had been so twisted in the Spellplague that all spellhurlers avoided them; they still worked and were linked to so many other spells laid on the palace down the centuries that they couldn’t be destroyed without a lot of careful, exacting quelling and dispelling-for who still alive knew or remembered all that those magics were holding up, or binding in check?
The twisted wards still roiled constantly, in a way that unsettled the minds of all mages. Marlin himself had once seen a white-faced war wizard spewing up a good meal before collapsing on his face in his own mess, and had been told the man had ended up that way by merely trying to walk across the infamous chamber-despite giving up and fleeing right back out again after only a few steps.
However, neither he nor any of these hireswords, unless they’d been lying to him-and deserved any doom they tasted, thereby-were spellcasters.
He and all Stormserpents had a very good, longstanding reason for wanting to get past the roiling wards around the Dragonskull Chamber. Unfinished family business that even in his youth had excited him. Something he’d long dreamed of taking care of …
Seizing the Wyverntongue Chalice.
Alone among living men-thanks to the unfortunate demises
of certain of his kin, Marlin Stormserpent knew where the chalice was hidden. A secret not even Caladnei and Vangerdahast had known, something hidden, presumably, even from the very ghosts of the palace. Behind a false wall-and those tainted, roiling wards that had so effectively kept nosy war wizards at bay-in a forgotten room behind, but not actually in, the Dragonskull Chamber.
So, thanks to years of energetic and handsomely paid spies and informants, he had maps of the palace, many accounts of where the room he was seeking must be, and a strong band of armed men around him, inside the palace and moving fast.
Oh, yes, Marlin let himself smile more broadly than he’d beamed for many a day. He was trembling so much that Thirsty shifted recklessly inside the breast of his jerkin, his stinger grating along the metal plates he wore across his chest.
Lord Marlin Stormserpent, who might soon be so much more, allowed himself an eager chuckle. He could almost feel the chalice in his hands …
CHAPTER EIGHT
MUCH BRAZEN CREEPING ABOUT
Where are they heading, d’ye think?” Elminster gasped, as he fetched up against a doorframe and clung to it, fighting for breath.
Where the ghostly princess could fly, he had to walk. Even when he sprinted, he couldn’t move nearly as fast as Alusair.
She’d long since taken to repeatedly racing off to check on Stormserpent’s band and then returning to the Old Mage, as he panted his way along dark palace passages, hoping he’d not meet anyone.
If he did, he planned to pose as old Elgorn-with the aid of strips torn from some linens he’d purloined in the undercellars and had just wound around most of his face in a false bandage-and tell some tale or other about discovering how long it had been since certain footings had been checked. “Mustn’t let this grand place fall down about our ears, look ye!” he’d growl.
For years around the palace, he’d been old Elgorn Rhauligan, “repairer and restorer of the ever-crumbling stone, plaster, tapestries, and wood of these great buildings.” Not to mention a descendant of the famous Glarasteer Rhauligan. Who didn’t usually work alone, of course; Elgorn trusted in his scarcely younger sister, Stornara, to remember things and calculate stresses for him. Hardly anyone ever told her she looked like the old portrait of the Lady Bard of Shadowdale anymore, with Elminster’s masking magics to make her appear as old as he.