The City of Splendors

by Ed Greenwood

  Watchmen were hurriedly scaling the barrier and taking up positions in front of it, as others came trotting out of alley mouths, drawing blades as they came.

  The street fight swirled closer, and Lark sat down. Faendra swiftly followed, leaving Naoni standing uncertainly, turning this way and that as she sought escape.

  “We can’t flee,” she concluded reluctantly, and crouched down just as a Watchman sprinted past.

  “Why do these things always have to happen on my watch?” he growled. “Why can’t they have their brawls …”

  His voice was lost in the rising clangs and cries of men trying to butcher other men, as the three crouching women watched the battle come reeling to meet them.

  A man whose face was a mask of blood hurried toward them out of the fray, ruby-red cloak billowing behind him. He’d been cut across the forehead and was running blindly, cursing fervently yet slowly, as if amazed.

  So much blood … so much blood …

  His wounds didn’t hurt all that much, but Lord Beldar Roaringhorn felt empty and betrayed, as if—as if the gods had been lying to him all along, and the world was very different from how he’d thought it worked.

  Scores—nay, hundreds—of fights he’d been in, his blade sending men reeling, and he’d never been cut before. Never. Wasn’t he invulnerable to such things, at least until his promised destiny was achieved?

  His wounding had been so hideously swift and easy. Just like Malark, under those falling beams …

  Watchmen were moving to intercept the young noble, snapping, “You, goodsir! You! Stop! Stand! The Watch commands you! Halt where you are!”

  The youngest Lord Roaringhorn wiped at his streaming forehead with the back of his hand and stumbled onward as the three women gawked up at him.

  He reeled on the littered cobbles as a Watchman came at him—and was suddenly looming above the three lasses.

  Lark made a sudden, wordless sound and rose to flee, and Beldar slashed out blindly at the sound, cutting only empty air as Faendra shrieked. He lunged, slipped, and came crashing into Lark.

  They fell heavily to the cobbles together, Beldar a sagging, dead weight. Two Watchmen sprinted over, blades reaching down.

  “Away!” Lark shouted at them, as fiercely as any warrior. “Get your steel away!”

  As the two officers stared down at her uncertainly, she waved down her blood-streaked front at the man whose surprisingly heavy body was sprawled across her lap, and snapped, “Can’t you see he offers no threat?”

  “Some sort of lord,” one Watchman said to the other. They traded quick, satisfied smiles.

  “So dawns the New Day,” Naoni whispered to Faendra, her gray eyes wide with horror. “Gods above, what has Father started?”

  Mrelder leaned back against the bolted door and stared down at what gleamed in his grasp: The Guardian’s Gorget. This small metal plate enabled the First Lord of Waterdeep to command the Walking Statues. Little was publicly known about it—few thought it more than mere “show” armor—but Mrelder’s life-long fascination with Waterdeep had led him to many of her secrets. He’d sought out and memorized every scrap of Waterdhavian lore in all Candlekeep.

  “What wait you for?” snapped Golskyn.

  “I’m holding history in my hands,” the sorcerer murmured, eyes fixed almost reverently on the Open Lord’s crest. “This touched royalty, as surely as has any king’s crown or warsword.”

  “You’re holding the future in your hands,” his father snarled, “and it’s time you realized your role in shaping it. What is a king but an accident of birth and blood? True men become, powerful tyrants take. All your life you’ve yearned for this city—if you’re my true son, you’ll stretch out your hands and take what you desire!”

  Mrelder nodded and put the surprisingly heavy gorget around his neck. Closing his eyes, he sought for the calm that would let him attune himself to it.

  Instantly vivid fire flashed through his mind: a path of golden light. He was swept along it at incredible speed, through thick woods. Suddenly a smoothly rounded black tower loomed up before him, and a spectral voice demanded the password.

  Of course. No man, not even Piergeiron, would wield such power without safeguards. The Open Lord and Khelben Arunsun were fast friends; of course the archmage watched Piergeiron’s back.

  The archmage watched …

  With dawning horror, Mrelder realized there was a burning in the back of his mind, the shadow of a strong—and growing—presence. An alien will blossomed in his head, like a glowing web of power. A small, bright tendril twisted from it, questing deeper, closer …

  Gods above! He’d drawn the attention of the Lord Mage of Waterdeep!

  And he was mind-linked to the Blackstaff!

  Mrelder tore the metal off with desperate hands and flung it away. It was still in the air when he hurled the most powerful detachment spell he knew at it, a magic crafted to break the hold of a scrying device and turn its power back upon the seeker.

  The gorget flared into brilliant red flame an instant before it crashed into the wall, searing right through a tapestry and biting into the stone beyond. Then it rebounded and fell, leaving dusty wool smoking in its wake.

  Golskyn pounced on the smoldering tapestry, tore it down, and emptied two ewers of water over it. The stench of wet, burnt wool filled the room.

  His son paid little heed. Mrelder crouched over the fallen gorget. It seemed whole and unharmed, its flame gone.

  He touched it with a cautious fingertip. It was already cool.

  Warily he picked it up. There was no lingering sense of the seeking magic.

  Strong hands seized his collar and dragged him to his feet. Before he could draw breath, Golskyn slammed him against the wall so hard that Mrelder’s vision swam. The gorget fell from his numbed fingers.

  His father leaned close, hands at Mrelder’s throat and face contorted with rage. “Fool!” he snarled. “I should have let this wretched city burn and you with it!”

  Strong spellglows flickered around a bare spellchamber in Blackstaff Tower, lighting the awed faces of Khelben’s apprentices. They’d been working for hours now, building a web of glowing, humming lines of magical force without really knowing what they were doing.

  The Blackstaff was directing them as gracefully as any dancer, crooking a finger here and silently beckoning there to call forth their castings in precise places, as the spellweb grew to fill the room. The apprentices were accustomed to Laeral’s encouraging murmurs and directions, but Khelben Arunsun worked in silence, black robes swirling, and the web was brighter and had risen faster than anything Laeral had ever guided them through. Only he knew what he was striving for, and he—

  Was reeling, suddenly, clutching at his head with both hands and screaming.

  As the apprentices stared at him in rising terror, Khelben swayed as the lines of force plunged into him, converging with terrifying speed.

  There was a soundless crash that rocked the room, rippling waves of magic raced out past their ankles to slam into the wall and strike clattering shards of stone free … and the great spellweb was gone, leaving only a faint, fitful glow around the rigidly upright body of the Lord Mage of Waterdeep, whose eyes were wide, staring wildly and unseeingly in different directions and whose mouth was slack and drooling, even before he started to topple.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘Tammert!” the wild-eyed apprentice sobbed, long hair still crackling about her shoulders in the swirling chaos of magic that was eddying around them like so many tugging waves of sparks. “Is he dead?”

  Tammert Landral had once, several rooms below this one, tried to put a sword through Qilué of the Chosen and been scorched by silver fire for his pains—and he was the closest of them all to the fallen Lord Mage of Waterdeep. He swallowed, stretched out a hand that he snatched back hurriedly when magic rose up from the Blackstaff’s apparently intact body to shock into him with a burning, menacing snarl, and replied, “I—I don’t think so. Get Mar
esta! And Araeralee! Hurry!”

  The apprentices of Blackstaff Tower being what they were, his order would have ordinarily evoked not obedience but a flurry of dispute and loftily offered opinions, but just now almost everyone in the room wanted desperately to be somewhere else. Aside from Tammert and Callashantra, who stood uncertainly right where she’d been when she’d shouted to him, the room emptied in a few frantic moments.

  While Tammert hoped desperately that Maresta Rhanbuck, motherly whirlwind that she was, and Araeralee Summerstar, of whom the Lady Laeral was so fond, would know what to do.

  “Mother Mystra, guide us,” he prayed fervently, going to his knees and sacrificing a spell from his mind to make his prayer flame up and hopefully be heard. “Oh, that Laeral was here!”

  However, it was the impish and beautiful little seductress Jalarra who next appeared in a doorway, to say brightly, “Everyone just came tearing past me like all the devils in the Nine Hells have come visiting! What’m I missing? I—oh.”

  Eyes going very wide, she stopped, feeling the magic still roiling around the room wash over her, and peered across its fading, flickering glows at the sprawled body of Khelben Arunsun.

  “What happened? Is he—?”

  “I don’t know,” Tammert told her grimly, not turning to take his eyes off the fallen archmage for a moment. “Go get Maresta, will you?”

  Surprisingly, Jalarra whirled around to do just that—and let out a little shriek of alarm as Maresta and Araeralee almost flattened her in their own hasty arrivals.

  “We’ve sent a calling-spell to the Lady Laeral,” Maresta panted, looking more flustered than any of them had ever seen her before, “and we can only hope—”

  There was a soundless flash, and the room suddenly held one more person. Jalarra shrieked again.

  “Have we trained you that badly?” the Lady Mage of Waterdeep demanded, from where she stood towering over Tammert. “That ‘hope’ is the only thing you can think of to do?”

  She whirled around, saw Khelben, and hurled herself at him. Tammert almost gratefully flung himself out of the way.

  The apprentices watched Laeral crawl atop the Blackstaff, eyes closing as if she was trying to feel something. Then she turned her head, gave them a grim nod, and announced, “Backlash—and a bad one.”

  The apprentices kept silent, not knowing what to say.

  “Maresta,” Laeral added briskly, “you’re in charge. Waterdeep must believe the Lord Arunsun is still here and at work. All of you: if anyone asks, we’re both here but we’re busy, right? If anyone gets insistent, tell them we’re busy with Mystra.”

  There was another soundless flash, and all of the glowing, swirling magic in the room was gone. The stones where the Lord and Lady Mages of Waterdeep had lain were bare and empty.

  Tammert Landral trembled, then, and started to sob in awe. A vast smile was unfolding in his mind amid silver fire … fire that swept over him in wordless reassurance.

  “Tammert!” Maresta snapped. “What befalls?”

  “Mystra,” he managed to gasp. “She heard my prayer!”

  White motes of light danced in Mrelder’s darkening vision. His father’s hand tightened on his throat … the winking lights swirled faster, flashing like tiny stars and clustering ever-brighter.

  “Fool!” thundered Golskyn, giving the sorcerer a shake that let Mrelder sob in a breath but brought pain bursting through his head like a stabbing lance. “I waste my time chasing a magical trinket, only to have you lose your nerve and destroy it?”

  “No,” Mrelder managed to croak. “Not … destroyed.”

  The cruel grip loosened. “Then why did you cast it aside? Why hurl spells at it?”

  Mrelder cautiously backed away, shoulders scraping along the wall. “My knowledge of the gorget was incomplete,” he husked, head pounding. “Didn’t realize … trying to use it … would mind-link me to Khelben Arunsun.”

  He waited for his father’s explosion.

  To his surprise, the ghost of a smile flitted over Golskyn’s face. “Ah. And how fared Waterdeep’s archmage, when you left him?”

  “How fared?” Mrelder echoed, not understanding what his father was asking. “I … took no time to inquire after his health. My only thought was to sever the link: through it, he could find me. Find us.”

  “Indeed,” Golskyn agreed, that odd smile still lingering on his face. “I find myself reluctantly impressed by this archmage of yours and his sensible precautions. After all, it would not do to let just anyone command a stone golem as tall as fifteen men—to say nothing of eight such golems. If such control was easily mastered, it would not take long for the mustered Walking Statues to smash down this entire city, every last building of it.”

  “Yes,” Mrelder gasped. “Most magics this powerful bear many safeguards and wards.”

  “You could not be expected to know them all,” the priest said soothingly. “In time you’ll discover them. Now put on the gorget again, that we may learn more.”

  Dread shimmered icily down Mrelder’s spine. He wasn’t sure what terrified him more: the thought of donning the gorget or his father’s silkily mild tone, the searing promise of silver fire or the calm before the tempest.

  “I am … no match for Khelben Arunsun,” he said at last. “He could take over my mind as easily as you could assimilate a giant rat’s tail.”

  “An unfortunate comparison, but one we’ll leave unexplored for the nonce,” Golskyn replied, sounding calm, even amused. “Are you afraid of this archmage?”

  Fear was something Lord Unity of the Amalgamation scorned, but dishonesty he simply would not tolerate. Knowing this, his son nodded reluctantly.

  “Then consider this: Whatever doom Khelben Arunsun might visit on you is a mere possibility, whereas what I, Golskyn, will do here and now if you do not try to master the gorget is a cold and final certainty.”

  The priest strolled away, then turned back to face Mrelder, still wearing that faint smile. “Perhaps,” he added, his tone still disconcertingly reasonable, “that serves to put matters into proper balance?”

  Because he had no choice, Mrelder lifted the Guardian’s Gorget with quaking hands and placed it around his neck. He sensed …

  Nothing.

  The tendril of magic connecting him to the silver fire of the great wizard’s mind was gone.

  Mrelder breathed an intense sigh of relief. The shields he’d unintentionally raised fell away. With their passing, a faint glow of magic filled his thoughts.

  The link was not quite gone, but it was changed. No longer a road that ran two ways, it was fading fast but sending Mrelder an image such as he might have seen in a scrying bowl—one whose powers were swiftly dimming.

  Khelben Arunsun lay in slumber, beard singed and hands and face blackened as if by fire. What seemed to be deep green woods surrounded him, and a woman with long silver hair knelt over him, her eyes closed and her lips moving like someone praying.

  The vision receded, dwindling behind him as if Mrelder was riding away from it, until dark mists closed over all. Then the faint glow of magic faded entirely, and Mrelder opened his eyes and gave his father a jubilant smile.

  “The archmage,” he announced, trying to sound victorious rather than relieved, “won’t trouble us for some time.”

  Golskyn nodded as if he’d expected Mrelder’s triumph. “And the gorget?”

  “Nothing more,” Mrelder admitted. “Yet.”

  Golskyn nodded, very slowly. “If Piergeiron lives, we will find him. In time, he’ll tell us what we wish to know.”

  The likelihood of this struck Mrelder as slight indeed, but he knew better than to do anything but nod agreement. He cast the spell that allowed him to sense the little copper badge Piergeiron wore.

  “He still lies below,” he announced, frowning in surprise.

  The angry din from the street was diminishing, which meant order was being restored. Surely tending the fallen First Lord would be paramount in the minds of the
Watch!

  The two men hastened back down into the smoke-filled street. Mrelder promptly pulled Golskyn aside to let several frantic Watchmen rush past, carrying on their shoulders a fat, ragged-mustached man wearing floppy sea-boots, seaman’s breeches, and a blood-stained tunic.

  Then the sorcerer led the way through bodies and wreckage and suspiciously frowning Watchmen to the alley where they’d dragged Piergeiron.

  There they stopped in dismayed silence. The signboard that had felled the Open Lord had been tossed aside. Piergeiron was gone.

  “Well?” the priest demanded coldly.

  A glint of metal caught Mrelder’s eye. Kicking aside the twisted splinters of a wooden crate, he plucked up the Open Lord’s helm. The copper badge was still affixed to it; the spell of binding he’d placed to keep it there had done its job. This was, alas, cold comfort.

  He turned the helm so his father could see the badge. “The spells worked as intended,” he said haltingly.

  Golskyn regarded him with disgust. “Better you should have fed him the copper piece in his morningfeast sausages. Then your ‘spell of binding’ could have been put to better use!”

  “We were set upon, officer,” Korvaun Helmfast repeated for perhaps the tenth time, feeling the cold stares of the Watchmen who stood in a tight circle all around, “as I told you. We were simply walking past that quaffhouse, and they all came charging out at us.”

  “And you had no blades drawn? Made no gestures? Said nothing?”

  “No swords and no gestures,” Taeros put in. “As I recall, we were explaining what a quaffhouse was to Lord Jardeth at the time.”

  That earned him a sneer of disbelief from the grizzled old Watch rorden. “Come now, milord! You seriously expect me to believe that your friend here—” He waved at Starragar, who, with his glittering black cloak and blood-smeared face, looked like a large carrion bird—“is unfamiliar with alehouses?”

  A chorus of sarcastic chuckles arose from the surrounding Watchmen.