by Ed Greenwood
The black-armored death knight was still triumphantly uttering that last word when the secret door she was reaching for swung wide-and she and the armored Purple Dragon who’d opened it from the other side found themselves staring at each other.
“Hold!” he snapped, striding through the doorway and bringing the spear in his hand up to point at her breast. Its tip glowed with a hue that told Targrael its magic could destroy her. His shield came up, too. “Drop that steel and hands to the ceiling, you! Your name?”
A lionar, by his badge. Whatever next? What was a lionar doing stalking about the palace with a spear and shield?
“Having the temerity to challenge me, that’s what,” she murmured aloud as she ignored his order … and their locked stares both grew colder.
“Your name!” he snapped loudly and insistently.
Targrael sighed. This was becoming tiresome, and he was getting a very good look at her.
“Lady Highknight, to you,” she told him coldly, “and I’ll give the orders here, Lionar. Point that spear elsewhere or pay the price.”
The spear was suddenly almost up her nose. “You’re no highkni-”
“Enough,” Targrael snarled disgustedly, calling forth what sages liked to call “unholy flames,” right into his face-and sidestepping as she did so, to avoid any desperate spearcast. She held Gantharla’s dagger behind herself and didn’t bother to draw her sword. Not when his despairing howl would be over in another moment, and by then she’d be through the secret door and have it closed behind her.
Leaving the luckless lionar down for days, or worse. If he awakened at all, he’d be raving about his unfortunate encounter with one of the palace ghosts.
Pesky things, ghosts.
A lone chuckle bubbled forth in the great cavern deep in the heart of the palace undercellars. Ah, Targrael …
Once, the cave had been Baerauble’s most secret spellhurling chamber, where the founding archwizard of the human realm of Cormyr had conducted his boldest magical experiments.
Some of those castings had gone very awry, and it had become a place of crawling wild magic. Best abandoned, behind heavy wards to keep the unwary from blundering into deadly peril or venturing spells of their own that might bring most of the palace down on their heads in shattered ruin.
Wild magic had lurked there for centuries until the Spellplague had boiled it away and had left the great cave yawning empty, awaiting anyone’s arrival.
That arrival had befallen, and the anyone who stood there chuckling was a man who intended to soon rule Cormyr and more.
A man whose archwizardry would have given Baerauble himself pause, who stood alone yet rode the minds of many others.
Both in the cavern and in the depths of Targrael’s mind, Manshoon chuckled again.
Ah, but his Lady Dark Armor was a treat. He’d almost been seduced by his enjoyment of her coldly malicious mind into keeping her active too long. At an ever-increasing risk of losing her to the spells of frightened wizards of war as they finally awakened to the growing perils all around, as nobles poured into Suzail, the day of the council rushed nearer, conspirators plotted busily on all sides, blueflame ghosts stalked the streets slaying at will, and Elminster strolled the passages of their own palace uncaptured.
They were still an utter chaos of incompetent, overly officious fools, but they were starting to face life without Ganrahast and his faithful hound of a Lord Warder and-at last-trying to make some decisions themselves.
The wrong ones, thus far, and all of them too late, but even idiot magelings can’t help but notice a beautiful, elegant, and very dead woman striding around their palace in black armor of archaic style, defying all orders … and even idiot magelings can aim and trigger wands.
Yes, it was more than time to send Targrael back to her slumber to await the day when he’d need her again.
He’d need others, too, at least one war wizard among them, so it was time to also withdraw from the minds of Talane, Rorskryn Mreldrake, and various Stormserpent servants as if he’d never been there at all.
Which was something he-perhaps he alone-could do.
A certain Emperor Manshoon would need all his useful tools after Elminster was dead and he’d dealt with the pitiful remnants of Cormyr’s past; what was left of the wizards of war, of Vangerdahast, and of Alusair the Ghost Princess.
Then it would be time to rule, and truly loyal agents would be most useful.
Until then, no one would ever know they’d ever been his creatures at all.
“Not for me the clumsy mind-reamings of Cormyr that so often drive wizards of war and those they violate into madness,” Manshoon told the dark emptiness around him, as his beckoning finger brought a decanter and a great crystal goblet floating out of the darkness to his hands. “Vampire I may be, but I am before all else a real archwizard; I ride minds and depart them leaving no traces that lesser fools can find.”
Simple truth, not vainglorious boasting; he had worked hard on crafting spells while others played tyrant or meddler. He could do things no mage of Cormyr could even hope to achieve through magic. Hah, he could do things most would think impossible.
Manshoon unstoppered the decanter and poured, savoring the delicate scent of the rare and ancient elven vintage wafting up from the goblet.
Very soon, Targrael would step through yonder door and put into his hand the enchanted dagger that he could compel into magical flight to swoop and fell Elminster from behind, if a fight with the Old Mage should erupt before the old fool’s carefully plotted doom befell him.
Once the dagger was his, he could send the death knight back to well-earned rest. He no longer needed her to guard this cavern, as he had it ringed with undead beholders under his command, and he’d fully mastered a living beholder body of his own-and blasting that mind had been a feat to celebrate-to occupy whenever he pleased.
Or if someone destroyed the human body he was using.
Manshoon scowled at that thought, remembering who had slain more of his bodies than anyone else, down the centuries … and had played with him, as an unwitting tool, even more often.
“Elminster,” he whispered gleefully, “you will die. Very soon now.”
Soon indeed, for as he’d intended and so patiently arranged, the Sage of Shadowdale was alone.
Elminster’s lover had gone howling mad again, and his lone remaining loyal ally and healer, Storm, was off to Shadowdale to see to her. Where both silver-haired bitches would die or be kept too busy fighting to cling to their lives to return to Suzail in time to help the kindly old Sage of Shadowdale. What he’d made his dupe Mreldrake tell the Highknight Starbridge should ensure as much.
That diligent hammer of Cormyr’s foes should even now be scouring the dale for signs of Elminster and his two silver-haired wenches, believing those three were preparing to magically attack King Foril just after his council.
Manshoon sipped and nodded appreciatively. Yes, his plans were unfolding nicely.
He would use Talane to kill Gaskur, the mind he’d most often inhabited and of necessity altered, in Stormserpent Towers-after enspelling Gaskur to look like Ruthgul. Scrying to make sure Amarune Whitewave saw Ruthgul dead, he’d then dissolve his spell so she’d witness her dead client “melting back” into Gaskur, a man she should not know.
That little ruse should frighten her into repudiating Elminster rather than agreeing to work with the Old Mage.
Not that she had much aptitude for magic. Whitewave was very little more than an accomplished thief, and could be slain with ease-but she was far more useful as Elminster’s tormentor. If she repudiated her ancestor, it would crush the old fool more than anything Manshoon himself could do.
And Elminster must suffer.
Rejection or betrayal at the hands of everyone the Sage of Shadowdale depended on should bring on that suffering nicely, before an unexpected longtime foe-the oft bested and belittled Manshoon-revealed himself and killed the old goat.
Manshoon smiled at h
is decanter. “And when Elminster is dead and these hands have slain him, I’ll be out from under his shadow at last,” he told it. Then he noticed it seemed to have half-emptied itself rather quickly.
He shook his head. That was the problem with decanters …
It was time to bid farewell to the mind of Marlin Stormserpent, too. A young fool doomed by his own ambitions, yet thus far playing his useful-if unwitting-part.
“I have loosed him like a wild arrow among the court and nobility of Cormyr, to see how many lives he can reap before he’s brought down,” he purred. “Whereupon someone else will seize the blueflame ghosts and use them against their rivals and foes … and so on.”
Watching that bloody, ongoing game would be great entertainment.
Wherefore it was almost time for young Stormserpent’s guide Lothrae to fall silent-which meant, of course, a certain meddling Manshoon would be departing the mind of Understeward Corleth Fentable, too.
Something moved in the distant darkness, a boldly striding, curvaceous shadow. Targrael, there at last and offering him the double-bladed dagger precisely as he was compelling her to-with one of its points held against her own throat and her other arm behind her, so he could destroy her with ease with the gentlest of shoves.
“It’s not just a matter of avoiding detection as the wizards of war start prying in earnest, just before the council,” he told her with a smile as he took the proffered dagger. “I’ll soon be too busy to move my pawns around, with nobles galore arriving in a great flood of highborn scorn and pomposity. My attention will be on a series of subtle mind-invasions of lords and ladies of the realm, to decide who will be my future tools, and who-in a land burdened with far too many troublesome nobles-is swiftly expendable.”
“Of course, Lord,” Targrael murmured, going to her knees before him.
Manshoon smiled down at her, seeing in her mind as well as her eyes that if he wasn’t compelling her to this subservience, she’d be trying to swiftly and savagely slay him right then.
“Let’s get you back to your nice cold tomb to await more slavery to me,” he murmured, letting go of decanter and goblet.
Both floated contentedly where they were, in midair, as Manshoon drew his Lady Dark Armor to her feet and waved her away on her last stroll through the palace-for a while.
A part of his awareness went with her, riding and compelling her, but her part was done; almost all of Manshoon’s attention was back on what he’d conjured at the center of the cavern; his scrying scenes, his many eyes on Cormyr.
In a wider ring outside their glows, his living beholder slaves hung still and silent in the air, eyestalks hanging as limp as the fronds of dead plants. He’d given some of them bone-shearing pincers, too. They were ready to be unleashed up into the palace whenever necessary to make Foril’s courtiers, wizards, and guards alike very busy.
Or sent out to guard the ways into this cavern, relieving their undead counterparts, his death tyrants, to spread slaughter and mayhem in the halls and chambers of state above.
Yet that was the same brute force approach that had failed Manshoon time and time again down the centuries, before Fzoul-and, gods blast the man, a certain Sage of Shadowdale-had taught him patience.
Not to mention deftness and subtlety. Never use a mace to smash what an apparently random breeze could topple.
Wherefore it was time to watch and learn and do the right subtle things, as befitted a future Emperor of Cormyr, Sembia, Westgate, and Amn, too. Or wherever he chose to rule.
Oh, there were formidable foes standing in his way, to be sure … but there was only one Manshoon.
“One Emperor but many bodies,” he murmured. “None of them the copies of myself Elminster could so easily find and destroy. Neither he nor the foes of my future will be able to recognize me as easily as the Sage of Shadowdale did. That’s one mistake behind me now, forever.”
The nearest of his scrying scenes was a view of a small and nondescript office among a trail of similar offices at the rear of the palace, where Sir Eskrel Starbridge was sitting sourly behind his desk.
Manshoon sent his mind racing out. He’d prepared the highknight’s mind already, and his arrivals had become deft; Starbridge should feel only a slight irritation, if Manshoon did nothing but eavesdrop on the thoughts rushing past …
The desk was, as usual, littered with scraps of paper covered with encoded scrawls. Starbridge gazed at them idly as he listened to the last of his agents and contacts reporting in. Two more senior highknights had been slain in as many days, leaving Eskrel Starbridge right where he’d dreaded ending up-behind that desk.
The desk had a spell on it cast by the legendary Vangerdahast, one barely understood by his successors. That spell empowered a faint, almost ghostly voice to speak to whoever sat at the desk, all the way from distant Shadowdale, where the stone linked to the spell on the desk had been carried on mission. Through the link, Starbridge’s predecessor had given commands to that northern dale and had heard reports. All of them, like the one just ending, saying the same thing.
Shadowdale had been hunted high and low for any sign of the legendary Old Mage, but it seemed Elminster couldn’t be found at the moment.
Bah. Shared failure was no easier to swallow than a personal failing.
Not that sitting exasperated in this stuffy little room was going to mend anything.
“Must I do everything myself?” Starbridge growled. “Am I doomed to spend my life surrounded by blundering incompetents?”
At least two of the wizards and highknights crowded into the office stiffened, but most grinned wryly, and young Baerengard even dared to jest, “Well, you did choose to dwell in Cormyr, sir.”
Starbridge gave the youngling a sour look. When he’d been Baerengard’s age, idiots this callow would never have been considered for the mantle of highknight, but these dozen-some filling his office were almost all the highknights the Forest Kingdom had left. Untrustworthy, insolent puppies.
“I will lead an expedition to hunt down Elminster,” he declared. “I’ll take nigh all of you, plus a few of the more competent wizards of war-those with brains enough not to get themselves killed if they try something so difficult as camping, and who’re capable of enough basic civility that we can stomach their company. Those here in this room, for instance. We leave tonight.”
Several highknights stirred as if they wanted to speak, but only one plunged into dispute with him. Young Narulph, of course.
“I think an expedition is far less than wise-is, in fact, a very bad idea, given that Ganrahast and Vainrence still can’t be found. Is it right and prudent that we depart the palace at this time, when the Obarskyrs may need our aid at any moment, with all the nobles of the realm gathering here for the council?”
Highknights had always owned the right to speak bluntly to superiors-even the reigning monarch or regent-without fear of reprisal, and the open debate this fostered had time and again served the realm well, but Starbridge had little time for Narulph’s usual “Do nothing is best” stance.
“I’ll have none of that,” he snarled. “If the roof above our heads fell in and killed us all right now, there are still plenty of wizards of war left to defend Cormyr. Some of them-Arbrace, Belandroon, and Hawksar, to name three-are even almost as competent as they themselves think they are.”
The handful of mages present all grinned at that.
“If we’re not here to save their precious little behinds for them, again,” Starbridge added, before Narulph could think of some other idiocy to spout, “perhaps-just perhaps-they’ll grow some backbone, and we’ll all discover they’re good for something besides strutting around muttering darkly about how the realm would fall every tenday or so, but for their oh-so-secret efforts.”
One wizard lost his smile, another snorted back laughter, and the rest winced.
“Anyone else?” Starbridge barked. “Speak out now, because once we’re at work, I’ll take a very dim view of anyone trying to confound the res
ults I’m seeking, or deciding on their own to just change things a little.”
No one said a word. Not even the sullen-looking Narulph.
“Right,” Starbridge said heavily. “Hear then my orders: Everyone is to depart the palace, starting now and leaving by ones and twos. We’ll all meet again-before highsun, if you want to stay a highknight-at the Stone Goat paddock marker out on Jester’s Green. Mounts, provisions, weathercloaks, and all have been gathered ready there long since, under guard. Fetch only the weapons you most want with you, and tell no one where you’re going or what you’re about. If anyone follows you to the Goat, I’ll deal with them. Swift, now! The sooner gone, the sooner back again-whereupon Narulph here will be able to sleep on his bed of fears a little less fitfully. Dismissed.”
Everyone broke into chatter and headed for the door, and Sir Starbridge rose from his chair with an air of quiet satisfaction. He’d be in a saddle soon, rather than this gods-stlarned chair behind this triple-be-damned desk, and that was worth any number of urgent all-hands missions.
So, where had he put that blasted cloak?
Manshoon turned away from both Starbridge’s mind and that scrying, enjoying the same satisfaction that the gruff head highknight was feeling.
Another deft manipulation bearing fruit, another piece in the building mosaic …
On to the next piece, over there in that scene …
Shrouded in the gloom where moonlight was feeble, the muddy midyard was deserted.
Or almost deserted. It was furnished with a few small, moving shadows.
It was the same city mid-yard where Arclath Delcastle and the Crown messenger Delnor had seen a certain mask dancer carrying her nightsoil bucket to a dung wagon.
There were no wagons in the yard at the moment. The prowling shadows belonged to cats out hunting-and a few furtive, smaller, scuttling things that darted from crevices across the yard’s few strips of uneven cobbles to handy heaps of fallen refuse, then on into tangled, thorny clumps of weeds, in hopes none of the cats would manage a successful pounce.
High above the midyard, a much larger shadow moved. The size of shadow that would attract the interest of Purple Dragons on Watch duty, had there been any in the midyard.