by Ed Greenwood
“Enough!” Storm said sharply. “Consider us all impressed by your little cantrip, and end your magic at once!”
“I’m … I’m not, now …” Corathar stammered, swallowed, and then managed to add, “lady, this is not my doing!”
Storm looked along the row of war wizards, and then at the Summerstars. Frowning perplexity showed among the former, and growing, suspicious fear filled the eyes of the latter. Even Pheirauze looked uneasy. “Stop it,” Storm said firmly, “whoever is working this!”
The platter continued on its unhurried, drifting way. Storm sighed and vaulted the table in a swirl of silver hair, reaching out both hands to grasp the platter with its cargo of toppled and shattered glass.
She murmured the words that should have spun away all magic as her hands closed on the chased and fluted silver handles. Instead of the peaceful silence that should have followed, the world exploded in roaring flames.
White-hot and hungry they howled. Fire raced up from the floor to scorch the lofty beams of the feast hall. It rushed out of empty air and entirely hid the lady bard from view.
Wizards gasped curses and lady servants screamed as the flames roared on. In the rafters, a banner burned through and fluttered down in a lazy ribbon of sparks. Still the flames roared on, until Shayna was sobbing and even Erlandar was on his feet staring up at the ceiling of the hall and cursing in fear—fear that the whole roof would come crashing down on them.
Then, as suddenly as they had come, the flames were gone. They left behind cracking tiles, groaning stones, and the reek of burnt wood and human hair. The diners all stared at the thing of tottering bones and ashes that should have held a melted platter—and gasped in unison.
Droplets of silver and glass lay like glistening rain on the blackened and shattered tiles, yes. But standing at their heart was a faintly smiling, weary-eyed woman. Her silver hair was curling and writhing lazily around her, a forest of roused snakes. The ends of those silver tresses were blackened and shriveled, but Storm Silverhand was otherwise unharmed. They could see that clearly enough. Most of her clothing had gone with the vanished flames. Her gown was now no more than ashes and blackened tatters, clinging to limbs that seemed … unharmed!
The others stared at her. Storm returned their look, arms still spread to grasp a platter that no longer existed. She said mildly, “My roast boar was quite well cooked already, thank you.”
Her eyes darted from diner to diner as she spoke, seeking traces of guilt or disappointment or baffled fury in their eyes … but she found only smirks or looks of horror on the female faces, and the beginnings of avid admiration from the males.
There were two exceptions. Broglan of the war wizards looked even more worried than usual—genuine concern, she judged. And the elderly steward of the hall was aghast. Black beard and mustache trembling in his haste, he swept a cloth off a bare section of the serving table, and hurried toward her, raising it like a shield.
Storm thanked him with a smile. He reached her, gabbled out mortified apologies—as if what had befallen her was his fault—and whipped the cloth around her as an improvised gown. What was his name, now? The seneschal had rattled it off, complete with a list of the battles the old man had fought in, in his days as a Purple Dragon … Ah, yes: Ilgreth. Ilgreth … Drimmer.
“My thanks for your swift-witted kindness,” Storm told the old man, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder, “but I prefer garments a trifle less drafty. Perhaps you’ll conduct me to my room?”
Drimmer nodded almost beseechingly. He waved at her to accompany him, and then turned and scurried away. Storm followed, staring thoughtfully at his back. He’d flinched at her touch … but then, that was understandable when he’d just seen flames roaring up around her. Who knew what might have burst from her fingers?
A few paces away from the table she turned, favored all of the guests with a broad, easy smile, and said, “Save me some wine—I’ll be back!”
Then she turned her back on them all, tore off the tablecloth and swung it over her shoulder like a shawl, and strode away in Ilgreth Drimmer’s wake.
He hastened to one dais, turned at its doors, and gulped at her fashion rearrangement. “If you’ll follow me, gracious lady,” he said faintly, whirling back to face the door, “your chambers are this way.…”
The route he led her along was a long one, but Storm trailed him for only three passages and two rooms before she caught up with him, laid a firm hand on his shoulder, and said, “Catch your breath, good steward, and talk to me.”
Ilgreth slid frightened eyes around to meet hers. With a puff of ash, a strip of blackened gown fell away from her shoulders. He quickly looked away again. “Talk? What about?”
“Lord Athlan’s death—and anything untoward that’s befallen since,” Storm said crisply, ignoring the ongoing ruin of her gown. Another scrap drifted away from the still-sturdy cuff about her left wrist.
“I—I don’t know where I stand, Lady,” the steward replied frankly “How far will what I tell you travel?”
“Do you mean, will I reveal that you told me things?” Storm asked, eye to eye. He nodded, and she said firmly, “Not at all. I heard nothing from you except: ‘This room is yours, lady.’ ”
His face split in a sudden grin, and his eyes dipped involuntarily to survey her smooth curves—which made him blush and the smile hastily vanish again.
Storm laughed merrily and said, “Look all you want! I’m not ashamed of this body—but it still amazes me how many men are!”
That make him look quickly away again and sputter through his mustache, “Have done, please, lady. We’re almost at a guard post.”
Storm sighed, wove the tablecloth around herself, and assumed a stately stride at his heels. He slowed, matching her mood. They swept past the startled guards in silence. They were two rooms beyond, at the midpoint of a long hall lined with statues, when he spoke again.
“There have always been deaths in the keep,” he muttered abruptly, so that Storm had to bend forward over his shoulder to hear. “Mainly among us—the servants, I mean—and always in the Haunted Tower. Warnings to us, to keep out. Once it was a chambermaid and a hostler who’d gone there together, if you take my meaning. They were found by the daily guard patrol, lying in each other’s arms—headless.”
He walked on a few more paces for emphasis before adding, “We never found the heads.”
They passed through another door and turned left down the hall beyond. Drimmer looked cautiously up and down it before continuing. “Lord Summerstar was different—as was this last one. They were both found burned out inside, like something had sucked their innards away. Well, no; burned them out from within, more like. I saw ashes trail from the body when they laid my Lord Athlan on the table to be shrouded.”
“ ‘This last one’—the Harper, you mean?”
The steward came to an abrupt halt. “Ah—no, lady … haven’t they told you?”
Storm sighed. “Obviously not. Why don’t you tell me, then?”
Ilgreth Drimmer nodded. “There’s been a third gone, just before your arrival, lady. The war wizards think you struck him down.”
“Why?” Storm asked calmly.
The old steward’s eyes flicked sideways to assure himself that she was as level-hearted as she sounded. She was. He replied, “A Harper pin was found on the body—and it was not the pin belonging to the dead Harper. I fear Sarmyn thought it was a boast from you.”
“Whose body was this?”
“One of the war wizards who came here to learn who slew Lord Summerstar … Lhansig Dlaerlin.”
“I’ve never heard that name,” Storm said with a wrinkle of her brow. “What can you tell me about him?”
The steward shrugged. “I saw him only a handful of times, and briefly. A wizard who was always smiling … a sly one. ’Twouldn’t surprise me if he knew more secrets than many folk wanted known.”
Storm nodded, managing not to sigh. Everyone’s favored foe. “And how was he fo
und?”
“The man was struck down in a garderobe, after a feast,” Drimmer said, “burned out, like the others.”
“Nowhere near the Haunted Tower?”
“Nay, lady. Just outside the hall where you’ve been dining,” the old steward said. He fumbled with his keys. “These chambers are yours, and I should tell you that the wizards’ve ordered a doorguard to stand right here as soon as you retire.”
“To keep me from creeping around Firefall Keep in the dark hours,” Storm murmured, “in case I should fall and hurt myself.”
Ilgreth Drimmer’s mouth twisted into a wry grin. “In a manner of speaking, lady, yes. I’ll just light another lamp in here, and—”
He broke off with a queer, sobbing sort of gulp, and stood very still. Storm had to thrust him aside to see what he was staring at.
The center of the room held a fine, gray-cloaked bed whose backboard soared up into an overhead bunting. It faced the door through the open doors of a small antechamber. Her luggage, most of it opened, lay at the foot of the bed. In its midst sat the seneschal of Firefall Keep, waiting for them.
He would wait forever, now. Renglar Baerest sat atop the duffels in Storm’s open strongchest, his booted legs spread. Between them his chest and gut had been torn open, clothes and all, to reveal a slumped chaos of entrails and gore in which a lone, delighted fly was buzzing. Over this carnage the seneschal grinned at them, two staring eyes fixed forever on the doorway where they stood.
Those eyes were the only scraps of familiarity left on a head that had been otherwise burnt away to a bare, charred skull. A fall of ash lay thick upon the shoulders of the corpse, and it wasn’t hard to see where it had come from.
Drimmer made a few broken, whistling sounds, and Storm saw that his mouth was moving. He was trying to say something, but finding no words.
“A fourth death,” she murmured to herself. “Cormyr used to be quieter than this.”
The old steward started to tremble. Storm’s arms went protectively around his shoulders. “He went in battle, Ilgreth,” she told him gently, “as he would have wished.”
The old man sobbed, trying to nod. Tears ran down his face as he turned to her, blindly took hold of two locks of her hair, and snarled, “He was my last friend, lady! The last man left who swung a sword with me for the realm! Oh, gods look down! May they give you the power to do what I beseech you to!”
“And what’s that, friend?” Storm asked, cradling him to her breast as if he was a small child.
The old man raised blazing eyes to her, and hissed through his tears, “Find the one who did this to Renglar! Find him—or it—and tear them apart! And if it takes my hand in aid, even if it costs my life, too—call for it!”
“Sir, I will do so,” Storm told him, looking deeply into his eyes. “This I swear.”
A flame of hope kindled in Drimmer’s old eyes. “Gods bless you, lady,” he whispered. “Gods bring you victory.”
Storm looked at the seneschal’s skull-smile and his fear-filled, staring eyes. She swung her gaze back to meet the steward’s own. She managed a wan smile, and said, “They don’t owe me a victory, Ilgreth. But they do owe one to four men no longer with us—and perhaps many more if the cause of all this isn’t soon found and stopped.”
As the words left her mouth, the seneschal’s skull suddenly toppled from his shoulders, bounced once on his thigh, fell to the floor, and rolled to her feet.
As its dead eyes gazed up at them, Drimmer burst into fresh tears. Storm held him, and then, softly, lifted her voice in the first mournful cry of the “Soldier’s Farewell.”
At her feet, Renglar Baerest went on grinning.
Five
DEATH OLD AND NEW
“Legendary godservant, my left elbow!” Erlandar Summerstar snorted. Elbow was not the word he’d first thought of. “She’s a saucy wench who wraps herself in a few protective spells and knows a few tricks.”
“Good uncle,” the Dowager Lady Zarova Summerstar said firmly, “can we speak of other things? Unwelcome a guest as she may be to some of us, my son’s written wishes did bring her here. I am more shocked at what befell her than I am at the discovery that if her clothes burn away, she’s naked. I trust none of these mages here would deal in such deadly magic—and yet who else could have done it?”
All of the diners stared at her; the younger dowager spoke so seldom that some of the servants in the hall had never before heard her voice.
Her daughter Shayna, heiress of the Summerstars, nodded. “I, too, would like to hear what the gentlemen of the Sevensash have to say for themselves,” she said firmly. “Lady bard or no lady bard, flames nearly brought down the roof of this hall, and I would know why.”
She turned her head, emerald eyes flashing, and caught the frowning gaze of Broglan Sarmyn. Pheirauze and Erlandar added the weight of their regard, and Broglan suddenly found himself dancing on the ends of six hard gazes, and finding them all too much like daggers.
“I-It’s no doing of any of us,” the worried-looking senior wizard said hastily, looking from one hostile Summerstar to another. “We’re just as … mystified as any of you.”
“Why?” Pheirauze said cuttingly. “We’re not the experts in magic here—you are. We’ve dined in this hall for more nights than I can count, year after year, never seeing flames roar up out of nowhere—until now, when you are here: a row of war wizards, skilled in battle magic. What else but your guilt am I—are any of us—to conclude? I’ve half a mind to summon that Purple Dragon commander here to send a complaint about you to the court, forthwith.”
“Lady,” came the deep voice of Ergluth Rowanmantle from behind her, “I am here.”
The diners turned in their chairs, startled.
“I don’t recall summoning you,” Pheirauze snapped at him, nettled. “Why—?”
“Nevertheless,” the eagle-eyed officer said flatly as he strode forward, “I am here. My duty to the king requires it of me. I bring a question: where is Thalance, and when did he leave you?”
“Why?” the elder dowager lady almost snarled. “What are you accusing him of?”
“Nothing, lady,” the boldshield told her, towering over her chair. “I need to know where he is, so that I can protect him.”
“Against what?” Erlandar asked, eyes narrowing.
“Against whomever—or whatever—murdered your seneschal in my bedchamber,” Storm Silverhand replied, stepping out from behind the Purple Dragon. Instead of a gown, she wore a well-used leather war harness—armor that bristled with swords and daggers in plenty.
The steward of the feast hall quavered behind her for a moment, a neatly folded tablecloth shaking in his hands. He then scurried to the sideboard to serve sherries and wines to the assembled company.
Most of them looked like they needed such bracing refreshments. They stared at Storm’s warrior garb, even more astonished than they had been after the flames.
“What?” Erlandar repeated, glaring at Storm in open-mouthed disbelief. “What’re you playing at?”
“I’m not the one who’s been playing at things around here, Lord Summerstar,” Storm told him crisply. “Renglar Baerest is sitting on my luggage with his guts torn out of him—and his skull burned bare and empty. After what befell Athlan, is the word ‘murdered’ still unfamiliar to you?”
Shayna gave a little scream, and her face twisted. Her hands flew to her mouth. Down the line of pale war wizards, someone’s face—Hundarr’s, was it?—creased in revulsion. He gagged over his empty plate.
Ergluth Rowanmantle went to stand watchfully behind the Summerstar heiress, never taking his eyes off the other diners. He’d been staring at faces intently since Storm’s first words, trying to catch sight of a suspicious reaction. Of course, he reflected grimly, he couldn’t watch the absent Thalance.
The stout, bewhiskered boldshield loomed like a mountain over Shayna. His eyes were cold as his gaze met the shocked, angry glares of Erlandar and Pheirauze Summerstar. His hairy,
muscular arms were crossed in front of his chest—but the fingers of one hand rested on the haft of his mace of office. The fingers of the other were on the pommel of the heavy broadsword he wore. “Where is Thalance?” he asked quietly.
Pheirauze flushed crimson. “How dare you imply—” she began, voice rising in a magnificently trembling cry of outrage.
“I imply nothing, Dowager Lady,” Ergluth rumbled, drowning out her words without seeming to raise his voice in the slightest. “I leave such subtle nonsense to those who have the leisure for it—such as the nobility of Cormyr. I ask a simple question, in the king’s name, and expect a clear and swift answer of you: where is Thalance?”
“I—I know not,” Pheirauze snapped, blinking. “I’m not the lad’s keeper!”
“Lucky him,” someone among the war wizards murmured quite clearly.
The boldshield turned and snapped, “Find Thalance Summerstar at once! Guard him, hold him in one place in the name of the king, and report back!”
“Sir!” the Purple Dragons by the door chorused. They rushed out, leaving only two of their number behind, standing on either side of the door. For the first time, the Summerstars noticed that these guards were hefting loaded and ready slings, and looking alertly at all the diners.
The war wizards were beginning to look scared now. Neither Storm nor Ergluth were surprised when Broglan Sarmyn suddenly rose and leaned forward, fingertips on the table and face contemptuous. “Threatening nobles in their own home is hardly prudent—and never polite. If a man lies dead in a bedchamber, who better to ask how he got there than the occupant of that room? Boldshield, the outlander among us is one of the folk we wizards of war are taught to beware—one of the bringers of trouble we’re charged with keeping the realm clear of. If anyone is to answer questions about murders, let it be her!”
Silence was his only reply. He turned to glare at the Purple Dragon commander. “To answer your question: I saw Thalance rise and leave, not long ago, and have no trace of an idea as to his whereabouts now. But I have a question for you: was there a Harper pin on or beside the Seneschal’s body?”