by Ed Greenwood
The dark figure dwindled and took on fullness—smooth, buxom curves of flesh, half revealed by a low-cut, ruffled bodice above a dark sash and slit skirts. Bare feet padded on stone. An anxious-looking maiden blew a kiss to one of the skulls, and stepped into the mists.
On their other side, a pale form waited—a warrior with no eyes. It howled soundlessly, raising the stump of a shattered sword with menacing intent. Another of the real phantoms of the keep.
The chambermaid laughed and strode right through it, using the light it radiated to adjust her garments more provocatively. Still laughing, she went on into dusty darkness.
It was time to feast again.…
* * * * *
“Mystra guard me,” Storm muttered as she set the door bar in place and went wearily around the room, checking for intruders. She’d already looked for secret entrances and moved the bed to one side, just to be safe. Now exhausted, she wanted to relax within that safety, however false or flimsy it might really be.
She yawned, and felt suddenly homesick. She wanted to be in her own bed, with the green growing things of Shadowdale all around her. “You’re getting old, lass,” she told herself. “Wanting to stay in one place and become a part of it—that was the sign Mystra warned of.”
… The Mystra who is now gone, she reminded herself silently. The Mystra who’d dared to challenge Helm, and so left all her Chosen to go unguided into this new age. And how she needed guidance. The man she’d loved—and seen brutally torn apart in battle, years ago—apparently roamed this backcountry keep burning out men’s brains.
Sudden tears rose raw in her throat, threatening to overwhelm her. “Maxan,” she gasped aloud. Memory brought his smiling face in front of her again, and she remembered the warm strength of his arms.…
Storm shivered, fought down a sob, and shook her head in denial. She waved at empty air to bid the memories of her dead man begone and leave her in peace.
She was suddenly tired of it all. When such good men were torn away from her and all Faerûn, who could care about self-important magelings and sneering Summerstars? Let them all go down, and …
Storm shook her head as she turned back the covers. Nay. Nay, not so harsh. Shayna Summerstar and Ergluth Rowanmantle were swimming in her mind’s eye. Behind them, coming up with that weary smile, was Renglar, the seneschal. They mattered. All of Cormyr mattered.
“It matters to me,” she told the silent room. She unbuckled the dagger sheath on her left shoulder. “It always matters to me.” She tossed the sheathed dagger onto the bed and reached for the matching one on her right shoulder. “That’s the problem,” she told it with a rueful smile.
The bedchamber, which had maintained a dignified silence during this soliloquy, continued to do so. Storm stripped off her war harness, rubbed at the places where the leather straps had chafed, stared at them critically in an oval wall mirror as tall as she, waved cheerfully to the wizard she suspected was scrying her through the mirror, and went back to the boots she’d stuffed full of discarded daggers.
Driving one into the door frame and another into the foot of the bed, she murmured some words over each. Then she did the same to a pair driven into either side of the frame of the mirror.
Two spells well spent. If any living thing but herself passed between a pair of daggers, it would receive both blades, flying full tilt, and the spell would jolt Storm awake.
She shook her head at having to take such precautions, sniffed at one armpit, and murmured, “I am getting a little musky.”
Whatever Pheirauze Summerstar might think of her, it seemed the keep servants considered her a guest to be honored. Under its padded metal cover, the bath proved to be deliciously warm. Storm propped her long sword within reach, shed her scanties, and sank thankfully up to her chin in the waiting waters. Warm ripples almost went up her nose; she chuckled and resisted the momentary impulse to play at being a sea-serpent and rise from the waters to bite and drag down a hapless floating wooden back-scrubber. She was just too tired.
“Syluné,” she said aloud, “ ’tis I—the bold bad Bard of Shadowdale. How goes it?”
As she’d hoped, her distant sister heard her own name spoken, recognized Storm’s voice, and used a spell to let them farspeak mind to mind.
Dozing in the water, lazily running handfuls of scented soap shavings over her limbs, Storm chatted silently about the current sad state of mastery and maturity among Cormyrean war wizards, and the grim, unfolding run of murders. “It looks bad, I fear.”
In return, Syluné told her how things were growing on the farm, and of the latest happenings in Shadowdale. She did not bid her be careful, offer assistance, or remind her of half a dozen things to be wary of. Storm was thankful for that, as always, but was startled to hear her sister observe quietly, “Something has upset you more than usual. Give, lady.”
Storm sighed, but did not bother to hesitate or deny. “I used the ‘last thing the eyeballs saw’ spell on a decent old warrior slain in my bedchamber,” she told her sister aloud, “and it seems our killer is, or at least wears the likeness of my man, Maxer.”
“Oh, Storm,” was all Syluné said, but there was a long lifetime of compassion in her voice.
Hearing that, Storm felt fresh tears well up, and added firmly, “Oh—one thing more. Our Happy Dancing Mages are so sure that evil lady Harpers are dismantling Cormyr stone by stone that one of them used a spellblade on me, and spilled some of Mystra’s fire.”
“Not something you can afford to dispense endlessly,” Syluné observed, understanding at last why Storm was so weary. Her exhaustion was obvious; speaking aloud during farspeech was something the bard did only when she was very tired. “You’d best sleep. Fare thee well.”
Storm found herself climbing out of the now-cool bath. Her sister’s mental equivalent of a kiss tingled on her cheek. She padded to where towels awaited, and then to bed.
Chosen of Mystra don’t need to sleep, but someone seemed to have forgotten to tell Storm’s body that. She’d been wounded before, and swung a sword for hours in battle with her own blood raining down around her in tongues of silver flame … but she’d been younger then.
Now it felt good to lay her unsheathed long sword ready on one side of the broad empty bed, and curl up against the pillows to stare into the night. She lost herself in the silent songs that lived in her memory, ballad after ballad, as the wee hours trailed quietly by.
It wasn’t long, of course, before Maxan’s face swam up to her again. He was laughing across a campfire somewhere deep in the High Forest as he tossed a bowl to her. She reached out to catch it, and found herself cradling nothing and staring at the empty bed around her.
“Oh, Maxan,” she whispered, “why did you have to leave me so alone?” With sudden speed, she snatched a pillow onto her raised knees and hugged it to herself before the tears came.
* * * * *
Even a woman who carries centuries of sorrows can run out of tears and drift into dry-eyed melancholy. Tossing aside her sodden pillow, Storm decided not to get off the bed and get a decanter of something fiery. Instead, she began to sing softly again, keeping to ballads she and Maxer had not enjoyed together. Perhaps knowing everyone else had troubles, too, would make her feel better.…
Some time later, she was silently singing the final, mournful verse of “The Old Wandering Knight” when there was a sudden burst of blue-green light, a rush of displaced air—and something limp and heavy crashed down atop her!
Even as she thrust it away and rolled to her feet, calmly commanding her discarded underthings to blaze with the radiance they’d been enspelled to emit, Storm had a good idea of what she’d see.
She just didn’t know whom. So she stood with a boot in one hand and her other hand thrust into it, on the hilts of a quartet of daggers, and peered narrowly at her bed in the growing light.
On the pillows where she’d lain was someone else—someone who’d never move again. Someone who could never have teleported himself to wh
ere he now sprawled, facing her.
It was one of the young, clever war wizards … Murndal Claeron, that was the name … in his robes and the tattered remnants of a cloak. His boots bore the dust of little-used passages—in the Haunted Tower, no doubt—and his skull seemed to have been burned out from within. The eye-sockets that stared at her were black, empty pits, and the gaping mouth lacked a tongue. As she watched, a trickle of ash fell from it to the linens where she’d been lying moments before.
Storm sighed to mask her involuntary shudder. Someone obviously believed in less-than-subtle warnings. “Scream,” she snarled aloud, in case the someone was listening for that very reaction right now, and drew in a deep, tremulous breath. So much for relaxing; she had a long night of work ahead of her.
She started for the bed, automatically reaching to roll her sleeves back out of the way. She chuckled a trifle harshly: dressed like this, she didn’t have any sleeves.…
Seven
KNOWN BY HIS RING
Dark and savage rage was rising in Broglan Sarmyn as he stalked up to the closed door of Storm’s bedchamber.
Murndal had never returned to the study.
It was early indeed for insistent servants to be rousing Broglan from the chair where he’d finally fallen asleep, waiting for the young wizard’s report. They rushed him down chilly corridors, heedless of his stiff, aching limbs and urgent need to relieve himself. All of it was at the behest of a shameless outlander Harper who hid her insolence behind the title of Chosen of Mystra! Hah! He could style himself First Prophet of Azuth if he’d happened to have so brazen an ego, and take on the same airs.…
He was a dozen angry paces from Storm’s door and the expressionless Purple Dragons flanking it when a shadow stepped away from the wall in front of him. With a start, he recognized Ergluth Rowanmantle, the boldshield of Northtrees March.
“What is this—a court meeting?” Broglan snapped. “This had better be worth rousing me at this hour.” Close on the heels of his words came the faint cry of a rooster from the vale beyond the keep walls. “Bloody Harpers,” the wizard added—and of course, the bedchamber door in front of both men swung open at that moment.
“A favorite expression of mine, too,” Storm agreed mildly, waving at them to enter. She wore a fine court gown, complete with earrings to outdazzle those of the old Summerstar aunts. A pectoral flashed and gleamed all down the low front where her gown was cut away.
Broglan found himself looking where that pectoral was designed to make him look. He harrumphed and fixed a gimlet eye on the Bard of Shadowdale. “You summoned me, Lady Silverhand?”
“Both of you, actually,” Storm told him calmly. “You’ll find the reason why in the bed there. Lord Rowanmantle, if you’d be so kind?”
Ergluth gave her the weary look of a man who knows just what unpleasant thing is coming. With one hand, he turned back the bedclothes. Murndal Claeron lay on his back, spread-eagled on the linens, his head dark, burned out, and hollow.
Broglan stared, openmouthed, and found no words to say. Empty, sightless eye sockets stared up at him, and the mouth was a similar gaping void. Something with talons had shredded the enchanted cloak, but he could see no sign of the false scepter.
“Suppose you tell us,” the boldshield said, after a swift glance at the white-faced leader of the war wizards, “just how this mage came to be here.”
“I’d also like to know that,” Storm replied. “Whoever sent this unfortunate to me in the wee hours—he appeared in midair, and fell right on top of me—must be familiar with a spell unknown to me: magic that can teleport the dead.”
Broglan made a wordless sound of denial and disbelief.
“He was on a mission for you?” Storm asked quietly. “Where was he going when he left your study?”
They waited, but Broglan merely shook his bowed head and covered his eyes. The boldshield made a certain gesture; his men withdrew and closed the door, leaving the three of them alone in the bedchamber with the sprawled corpse.
“All the younger magelings found it necessary to go and do urgent things at the same time yestereve,” Ergluth said grimly. “No doubt their scurrying was to achieve one purpose: allowing this luckless boy his chance to slip away unseen. Where did he go, Broglan?”
The war wizard shook his head again.
“He went into the Haunted Tower, didn’t he?” Storm asked quietly.
Broglan’s head snapped up; his eyes were wild. “No!”
“He may have been heading elsewhere,” Storm continued relentlessly, “but to get there he had to avoid Ergluth’s guard posts. And to do that, he got himself into the dark ways where he could travel unhindered.” She sighed. “He was heading for the crypt, wasn’t he?”
Broglan said nothing, but they could tell from his sudden stillness that she’d hit upon the truth.
Storm shook her head. “Well, another wizard is dead, and can tell us nothing.” She walked away from the bedside, adding, “I doubt he can be restored, short of direct divine intercession.… Mystra doesn’t tend to do such things even for great mages, to say nothing of ambitious novices. He’s gone.”
She turned to face them both, and asked with exasperation, “Sir Broglan, isn’t it about time we started to work together? While you indulge in your little plots and secrets, your magelings go on dying. I can’t fight to protect someone I don’t know is out there, roaming the keep like a thief.”
That stung. Broglan’s head jerked around to face her fully, and his eyes blazed. Still he kept silent. The Purple Dragon commander put his hand on the hilt of his sword, took a slow step away, and turned to watch the wizard narrowly.
“I worked on Murndal’s body most of the night,” Storm said, “trying to learn something—anything—from it. His cloak bore magic before someone—our slayer, no doubt—tore it to ribbons, and he carried the usual components for spellcasting. His boots say he walked in dusty places, and he tried to defend himself with a dagger that’s gone, now … and that’s about all he can still tell us.”
“Shall I order the scouring of the Haunted Tower?” Ergluth asked.
Storm shook her head. “From what I’ve seen, our murderer would not be found … and could roam the keep while your armsmen were searching the tower. It is a place with its own phantoms, and thus would give chances for them to mistakenly hurt each other. You were going to issue crossbows, were you not?” Ergluth nodded silently, and she shook her head. “A recipe for disaster,” she told him, “though I admit I haven’t thought of anything much better.”
“So you have no counsel for us?” the boldshield asked.
Storm spread her hands. “I’d like to cast some silent watch spells on you and your senior officers, and on Broglan and all of his war wizards.”
Ergluth raised an eyebrow. “And just what do ‘silent watch’ spells do?”
“Allow me to see out of the eyes of anyone I cast it on, for about a twelve-count, when they call my name aloud,” the bard told him. “Once only, and only if they call desiring to summon me, not if they merely say my name in normal converse.”
Ergluth nodded. “This seems wise,” he said. “Will it take you to the person calling on you?”
Storm shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “If they look around, I may be able to see enough of their surroundings to teleport to them. Otherwise, it at least lets me see who’s attacking them.”
“You don’t sound all that hopeful,” the Purple Dragon commented.
Storm gestured to the bed. “What length talons did that? I think we’re dealing with a shapeshifter.”
“A Mal … Malinaug—er, Malaugrym?” Ergluth asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.
The bard shrugged. “I can’t tell that yet, one way or the other.” Her eyes went to the war wizard. “Well, Broglan? What say you?”
“To your spell? No. Absolutely not,” the mage replied. “No war wizard of Cormyr dares allow someone else to spy on him!”
“Ah,” Storm said,
“but it’s quite all right for you to spy—to use your word—on others?”
“What d’you mean?” Broglan snarled, eyes afire again.
Storm waved a hand at the man-high oval mirror on the wall, its frame still bristling with daggers. “Which of your men was watching me last night? Did he like what he saw?”
Broglan flushed scarlet. “Madam,” he began icily, “I assure you—”
“I doubt you can in truth assure me of anything,” Storm said quietly. “Yet it is not my purpose to humiliate anyone or argue; I merely want us all to be better protected by working together. What can I promise, or do, to make your ‘absolutely not’ become a ‘yes’?”
“I—nothing,” Broglan said heavily. “I must protect my men and myself against possible treachery. If Lord Vangerdahast ever heard of my allowing a possibly hostile outlander to gain any magical influence—or even potential influence—over a war wizard …”
“He’d huff for a few minutes and then tell you never to do it again,” Storm said smoothly, “without clearing it with him first. Am I right?”
Broglan shook his head. “A reprimand would be the very least I could expect,” he muttered.
“Broglan,” Storm said crisply, “worrying about your career prospects is a bit pointless if you wind up dead—forever dead—because you ran around afraid of offending rules. If you want to die blindly for your realm, go join the soldiery. I’ve seen plenty of Purple Dragons do just that.”
Ergluth Rowanmantle’s brow darkened. He shrugged. A tiny smile plucked at the corners of his mouth, and he turned away, murmuring very softly, “The worst lashing a man can suffer—under the tongue of an annoyed lady bard …”
Neither of the others paid him any heed. Broglan’s voice was rising in anger. “Since you arrived, Lady Silverhand, you have persisted in ignoring the rightful authority vested in officers of the Crown of Cormyr, treating us as lackeys—or ridiculing us as fools and empty blusterers, trusting in your Harper rank and your gender to escape the consequences of such insults! I’ve had quite enough of it, and my patience is now at an end! Either you’ll show a little deferential obedience and cooperation, or you’ll be shown some shackles and a cell to wear them in! Now, tell us straight: who is this murderer? You recognized that image you conjured up from the seneschal in the crypt. Who is it? I command you to share that information with the boldshield and myself. We are the only lawful investigators of the unjust and protectors of the right in Firefall Vale.”