by Ed Greenwood
The Mage Royal turned back to Narnra, relaxing her spell to let the thief down off the wall onto her feet again. "Let's end this all the sooner, if you're willing. Narnra, I think I know enough about who you are now. Now, I'd like very much to learn all you know, suspect, or have overheard as rumors in Waterdeep of any campaign to overthrow the Obarskyrs."
"The who? Oh … the ruling family here, hey?" Narnra looked at Laspeera then pointed to her own forehead. "Vouch for me in this, yes?" She turned and met Caladnei's eyes, and the moment she was staring into them said slowly and firmly, "Not… a … thing. I've heard nothing at all about anything political in Cormyr. Nothing until I got here, and all that Rightful Conspiracy gabble in the cellars-and I'm still not sure exactly what it was about. Discontent with the Crown, yes, but-" She shrugged.
"Keep to Waterdeep, Narnra. Purchases of swords, or the hire of warriors? Backed by merchants or nobles of Waterdeep? War-horses? Hedge-wizards being hired for trips overland? The places might not be in Cormyr; they could be Westgate, or Saerloon and Selgaunt in Sembia, or Athkatla … or Iriaebor."
Narnra shook her head. "No, Mage Royal, I swear to you, nothing like that. A few horses and wagons between one merchant and another, yes, but nothing that could mean war-and no huge chests full of coins setting off anywhere, either. Not that anyone in Waterdeep would be fool enough to let word get around about something like that, anyway."
"Truth, Gala," Laspeera said softly. "Utter truth."
The Mage Royal smiled and nodded. "Well enough. We had to be sure." She took another step closer and asked quietly, "Do you know any magic, Narnra? How to cast spells?"
"No. If I did, would I be . . ." Narnra let her voice trail off instead of asking something bitter.
"I'm sorry, Narnra. Is the body we can see now your true shape?"
"Yes," Narnra replied, taken aback. "How could it not be?"
"How indeed." Caladnei did not take her eyes off Narnra as she asked over her shoulder, "Speera, has every answer given me by Narnra been completely true?"
"No, Mage Royal. There's one thing she wanted to be true, but stood in some doubt over."
"And that was?"
"Living kin. Until recently she was sure she had none . . . but now knows better. The knowledge does not please her."
In the silence that followed, Caladnei eyed Narnra thoughtfully, and then asked, "Are you going to tell me, Narnra, without greeting the wall again?"
The Waterdhavian clenched her teeth, looked at the floor, and burst out, "You've no right to do this. I don't want to spend the rest of my days being hunted by every gods-cursed wizard in Faerun! Can't I keep this one secret? It's nothing to do with Cormyr!"
"I must be the judge of that," the Mage Royal replied softly. "Come, Narnra, what harm can saying a name or two do you? If 'tis nothing to do with Cormyr, as you say, then it can't be a lineage exiled from here, and so . . ."
Glarasteer Rhauligan cleared his throat loudly, and Caladnei looked over at him, stepping smoothly back from Narnra to do so.
"You thought your parents were dead, right?" the Harper asked Narnra.
She looked into his eyes and said, "Yes."
"You've never had siblings, aye?"
"Yes."
"So you've just learned your mother-or your father-was alive, hey?"
"Yes," Narnra said, shrinking back from him as if he was going to hurl something at her.
"You followed a wizard here, didn't you?"
Narnra glared at him and kept silence. Four people stared at each other in the vast and otherwise empty room before Laspeera asked, "You're the daughter of Elminster of Shadowdale, aren't you?"
Narnra shot her a look that had daggers in it and-reluctantly- nodded. Her voice, when it came, was barely a whisper: "I… fear so."
She looked up swiftly. Rhauligan was eyeing her with bright interest, while Laspeera's eyes had a strange expression that held several things, pity foremost among them. Caladnei was frowning.
"In the cellars of Marsember, Elminster certainly didn't seem to be treating you as his daughter," she observed, stepping closer again.
Narnra drew in a deep breath and told the floor tonelessly, "I don't think Elminster knows he sired me."
The Mage Royal turned to Laspeera. "Does this seem likely to you?"
"The fathering? Very. The not knowing all of his offspring and their doings does surprise me, yes. I thought the Old Mage knew damned near every time any wizard in all Faerun scratched himself."
Caladnei nodded and turned back to Narnra. "You realize the danger if word of your parentage spreads." Her words were not a question.
The thief from Waterdeep nodded and said bitterly, "All too well." She shrugged. "But as I seem doomed to spend whatever short remainder of life is left to me as a helpless captive, tossed from one ruthless wizard to another-present company very much included-it hardly seems to matter."
Caladnei's eyes were thoughtful. "What will you do if I release you?"
Narnra shrugged again. "Steal all I can, probably, until I've coins enough to buy caravan-passage back to Waterdeep . . . unless, while thieving here in Cormyr, I like what I see enough to stick around."
Caladnei smiled sourly. "As Mage Royal, I've a better idea: You can serve yourself best if you stay alive and serve Cormyr at the same time."
"Serve how?"
"As a paid spy while you thieve-with occasional offers of additional monies for more daring tasks of plundering or 'placing' items to be found … as Rhauligan, here, does for us."
"So it's agree or you'll kill me?"
"Oh, no," Caladnei said softly. "I need information about Cormyr's foes. It'll be much more useful to simply spread the news around Suzail that you're Elminster's daughter, and watch the wolves come out of hiding to get at you."
"I'll still die!"
The Mage Royal shrugged. "We all do, sooner or later-and you'll be free to die in your own way, just as you believe all of us overbearing sorts are." She waited. "Well?"
Narnra slid down the wall until she was sitting, sighed loudly, then told the carved dragon ceiling, "I'm furious at being at the mercy of any wizard." She turned her head to glare at Caladnei and added, "I think I'll tell you so."
Rhauligan's amused snort was echoed-in far more ladylike manners-by the two Cormyrean women.
"Moreover, before I agree to anything, I need to know not just the 'or else,' but also the 'what else' and the 'what about after,' too."
Caladnei was almost smiling. "And those things would be?"
"The bad things you're not yet telling me about this . . . and what happens to me when the Mage Royal of Cormyr deems me expendable."
Caladnei's smile appeared, wry but full. "Prudence at last. A bit late, but making an appearance nonetheless."
She knelt close to where Narnra was sitting and said, "To save Cormyr, we are all expendable. However, 'tis my hope that you'll become so useful to us all that you serve loyally for years to come-whereupon you might be rewarded with a 'way out.' A title, a nice mansion to live out your wrinkled years … a better 'after' than many can hope for. As for the 'what else,' I need to know your trustworthiness and so would begin by mind-reaming you directly."
"Turning me into some sort of brainless slug?"
"No. I'll never deal pain, mind-to-mind, as Elminster did. No, if you were found wanting, I'd put you through a portal back to Waterdeep."
Narnra almost sprang up from the wall. "You can do that?"
"Oh, yes. I must warn you that the portal I know will deliver you into a very public room of state in Peirgeiron's Palace. Have you a swift story ready?"
"Being the daughter of Elminster ought to do," Rhauligan murmured-earning him three glares at once.
Narnra bit her lip. "And … I'd just go back to Trades Ward? No one following me?"
Caladnei shrugged. "Not from Cormyr."
Narnra looked at her. "This mind-ream: What will it do to me?"
"Show me your thoughts and memories as I ru
mmage. If you'd like to reassure yourself as to your fate at my hands, I can easily make the mind-ream a two-way affair so you can judge me while I do the same to you."
Narnra stared at the Mage Royal, awed and strangely excited- and suddenly angry again. She scrambled up, took a few stumbling steps away from Caladnei, waving at the Cormyreans to stay back from her, and leaned her head against the wall. "I … let me think."
"Of course," Laspeera said softly.
Breathing heavily, Narnra stared at the toes of her boots and thought hard. How did she feel?
Did she trust these folk? Laspeera seemed motherly, Rhauligan was-Rhauligan, dedicated to his task … and Caladnei had beaten her like a backstreet bully with magic-but not killed her when the slaying would have been easy and Narnra had been stupid enough to goad her. Repeatedly.
So how did she feel? Truth, now . . .
I'm more terrified than eager. And I'm angry. Angry at myself for being afraid, angrier still at Caladnei and Rhauligan for bringing me by force into this choice. I'm burn-the-gods furious with Elminster for siring me, just walking away, and luring me here from the streets I know.
"Truth," Laspeera said gently from behind Narnra. "Every word utter truth."
Gods, yes, she's been reading my every thought. . .
Narnra spun around with a frightened snarl, expecting to find all three Cormyreans closing in around her-but everyone was just where they'd been before, Caladnei still kneeling.
"If I agree to this . . . this madness," Narnra asked in a voice that was far from calm and steady, "when will this mind-ream take place?"
The Mage Royal of Cormyr rose slowly to her feet, smiling a little wryly. "In such matters, there's never any better time for boldly reckless action than . . . right now."
Fifteen
WHEN MARSEMBAN MERCHANTS GO WALKING
My son, it's not the standing merchants you need fear. It's when they get to walking somewhere that you'd best beware. It takes a heap of coming trouble for someone to get a merchant to walk anywhere.
The character Farmer Crommor, in Scene the First of the play Troubles In The Cellar by Shanra Mereld of Murann, first performed in the Year of the Griffon
The outermost of the ward-spells that cloaked the far corners of the room in roiling mists flared into coppery flames of warning, and a telltale chimed.
The darkly handsome young man clad all in black-open-fronted, flaring-sleeved shirt, tight leather breeches, and gleaming
black boots-took his crossed feet down from the footstool, laid aside his book and his goblet, and rose from his chair.
He passed his hand over a dark sphere of crystal that shared its own upswept, teardrop-shaped duskwood plinth with an outer ring of smaller spheres. Another ring of roiling mists obediently wavered into emerald radiance and displayed an upright image in the air: a white-faced man in brown robes that matched his thinning hair was standing uncertainly in the midst of the emerald mists.
The man in black smiled and touched two of the smaller spheres. Two rings of mist fell away into nothingness, and the third took on that emerald hue. The Red Wizard then passed his hand over the largest sphere, and the scene of Huldyl Rauthur vanished.
"Enter the archway and proceed," he told the air calmly. "The way before you is quite safe."
The emerald mists at his feet flowed away to one wall in a purposeful flood and climbed it to outline an archway on the unbroken stone-which promptly split to reveal a long, rough tunnel through rock. A hesitant figure was advancing along it.
"Be welcome," the Red Wizard said quietly. "Importance brings you, I trust?"
"Y-yes," Huldyl Rauthur made reply, as he entered the chamber. "I believe 'tis time." The War Wizard was chalk-white with worry, and his face glistened with so much sweat that it dripped from his chin.
A weak reed, Master Rauthur, Darkspells thought. And weak reeds break.
"Good," Harnrim Starangh told the man he'd bought. "Return to the chamber you came from, and I'll follow in a matter of moments."
As soon as the fearful Rauthur started back down the passage, Starangh passed a hand over a crystal and sent mists billowing up between them once more. He drained his goblet in a long, unhurried quaff, plucked one of the crystals from the plinth and slipped it into his codpiece, and said words to the empty air.
Two men were promptly standing before him, blinking in startlement and alarm. They went pale when they saw who was standing facing them.
Starangh gave the merchants Bezrar and Surth a sharklike smile. "I hope you've eaten well. You're going on a journey."
"Eh? What j-" Bezrar began, but fell silent as Surth kicked his ankle savagely.
Starangh let them both see his smile turn soft and menacing and commanded, "Stand still and silent. Please."
They did so, and he cast an intricate spell that laid a fog of for-getfulness on them. Until it expired, they'd be compelled to seek the retired Mage Royal, being drawn always in his direction-but stripped from them was all remembrance of why they were seeking Vangerdahast or who'd enspelled and sent them. Anyone trying to break the spell before it ran out would reduce the two Marsembans to quivering mindlessness.
They stood like two gaping statues, no longer seeing the man who worked a second, minor spell to place images of the animated suits of armor known as helmed horrors in their minds. "When you see such a one," Harnrim Starangh told his two minions gently, "one of you will throw one of these at it, so as to strike it."
The black-clad wizard took the limp hands of the two oblivious men, and posed them so those of each man were cupped together. From a basket beneath his reclining chair, Starangh scooped many small, shiny, identical objects into those waiting palms: rune-graven ovals of metal that bulged plumply at their centers but thinned to the breadth of armor plate nigh all their edges.
He smiled at his two enchanted idiots, stepped around them to lay a hand on the backs of both of their necks at once, and pronounced another word that made them both vanish.
Humming a jaunty song, Harnrim Starangh made a last adjustment of his crystals and rode a plume of mist down the passage to join Rauthur. It was time to go hunting-for Vangerdahasts were suddenly very much in season.
* * * * *
Aumun Tholant Bezrar blinked, wiped his sweating face, and looked wildly in all directions with every evidence of utter bewilderment. Trees, aye, definitely trees.
As always, standing behind him like one more tree trunk, was his companion in so many crimes, Master Malakar Surth.
Surth was clutching a handful of something that looked like oversized silver coins, and frowning in puzzlement.
Bezrar looked down and discovered that his own fat, sweaty palm was cradling another handful of the same things: ovals of gleaming metal graven with intricate runes-nothing he could read or had ever seen before, but the same things on each one. These long-as-his-fmgers gewgaws bulged in their middles like snail-cakes but were flattened out all around the edges like, well, again like snail-cakes.
So where by all the cozy Nine Hells had these come from-and where was here, anyhow? And how . . . how had he and Surth gotten here?
"Uh, Surth?" he asked, seeking some answers. "Surth?"
"Bite your tongue til it bleeds," Marsember's richest dealer in scents, wines, cordials, and drugs snapped, employing the standard polite port expression for what slightly more highborn Cormyreans usually rendered as "Belt up" or (if they were priests or elders) "Be silent."
Surth was glaring around at trees and vines and the deep damp green vista of more trees, that stretched away in all directions from the narrow trail they were standing on. His manner made it clear that he was blaming the trees themselves for being here-at least for the few moments it would take him to find someone nearby to blame.
"I don't know either," he muttered, as his face turned slowly to regard his longtime partner. And darkened.
"What did you do to get us here, Bez? You must have done something! You're an idiot, you know that? An idiot! You
must have fiddled with something enchanted or lit the fuse of that . . . that. . ." His face went clouded, almost frightened, and he waved a dismissive hand. "You know: that . . . man."
Bezrar drew himself up like an indignant walrus, puffing and sweating, and jabbed Surth's chest with one fat, hairy finger. "Now, you listen here, O mighty Malakar! You're the one who's always dabbling with Shar-magic, dark little toys and mumble-spells and all that untrustworthy idiocy! B'gads, you wound me, you do! Twasn't anything I did to get us here! 'Twas that smiling . . . some magic word . . . that green glow . . . him … he gave us these, didn't he?"
He thrust out his handful of shiny gewgaws and said, "He must've, because I sure by all the happy dancing gods haven't seen 'em before! You're holding some too!"
"I know that, you fat little dolt," Surth snarled. "I can see and feel, you know!"
"Odd's fish, but you can't think half as clever as you think you can, now, can you-hey?"
"Oh yes, I can," Surth snarled, reaching for the hilt of his knife.
"Well, then, use your thinking part, whatever 'tis, and tell me how we got here and what these things are and how we get back to Marsember!" the fat smuggler roared, his longknife already out and jabbing warningly at Surth's knife-hand. "Because sure as Shar's a dark lass, this ain't Marsember!"
His shout echoed a little way through the damp trees, and something unseen scuttled away from beside the trail nearby, leaving a trail of quivering leaves.
Malakar Surth drew in a deep breath, wrestling down his temper, and with a firm hand pushed the point of Bezrar's wavering knife aside. "Let me think," he snarled.
Bezrar gave him a sour expression and flourished his hands in mimicry of a high-nosed Marsemban servant bidding a Marsemban noble to pass this way, or partake of this platter of viands, or do something.
Surth stroked at his chin as if its clean-shaven point was home to a handsome beard, stared around at the trees, and muttered, "Can't tell where the sun is, and we mustn't get off the trail. This forest is big!' He shivered suddenly and muttered, "Mustn't be here when night comes."