by Ed Greenwood
“Here we are in Immerford,” Durncaskyn told them, pointing but taking care not to plant his finger on it. They’d want to peer close, trying to pick out their own homes on those intricately drawn streets. “Right in the center of it all.”
He moved his pointing hand. “There’s Castle Irlingstar, hard by the frontier. Very difficult country between us, you’ll see. A determined man or a small band might struggle through, but if an army tried, we have a tenday’s warning, or even more.”
His hand moved again. “Now, over here, somewhere in these marshes, is an outlaw band that’s been butchering honest merchants on caravans traveling the East Way, and plundering their goods. The same caravans that bring trade to you, gentlesirs, that make it possible for all Immerfolk to feed themselves, to continue to live here and not become drudges in Sembia or dockhands in Suzail. We’ve been trying to quell word of just how many murders and robberies they’ve managed, because to foster rumor will be to harm Immerford’s future—your prosperity—far more than anything they’ve done, or are likely to do. We’re hunting them right now.”
He moved his pointing finger back to Immerford. “I’ve another little matter, right here at home. Someone who’s impersonating honest citizens long enough to inspect their outgoing shipments in the Longhand and Eskurlaede warehouses—just long enough to remove one or two smallish but valuable items, every time. Your shipments, gentlesirs, and your reputations and demands for repayment. I have to hunt down and stop that someone, before matters get much worse.”
His finger moved south along the East Way, to Hullack Forest. “And then there’s the little matter of the Owl Lord.”
“The what?”
“That’s what we want to know,” Durncaskyn replied smoothly. “A sorcerer, wizard, or perhaps warlock of power, who dwells in the Hullack and casts spells on folk traveling along the road nearby—especially if they camp for the night here, here, or here. He enspells them and worms one or two secrets out of them—magic they know the whereabouts of, or where their wealth is hidden or invested—something he can profit from. Soon thereafter, hired thieves exploit what he’s learned. We’ve only caught one, thus far, and he only knew he was working for a man in an owlhead mask and dark robes, who called himself the Owl Lord. I need to stop this danger before one of you becomes his next victim. ’Tis my duty, saers, to learn of such perils and to deal with them. At any time, dozens—scores—of Crown agents and informants, as well as vigilant upstanding citizens such as yourselves, are hastening here to report to me, so I can act. Just as you have done, here and now. So you see, saers, I have to be here.”
There was a moment of silence, wherein most of the burghers nodded, but Ergol Mrauksoun broke it. The hawk-nosed, energetic moneylender and landlord was still angry but controlling himself with visible effort. “I—we—Lord Durncaskyn, we are not mere dogs barking in the streets of Immerford! We are busy men, men with concerns that crowd us just as these crowd you, and—but—we’ve reached a point that—that—hrast it, this cannot go on, and we agreed to come here today to tell you so!”
“Yes,” Harklur interrupted, “to make it very clear—”
Mrauksoun glared his fellow burgher down, and seized the verbal podium again. “For us, these murders are it, my lord! We cannot accept things continuing like this! We demand you inform the king—not several score of faceless courtiers who can all safely forget they heard you, and do the same nothing they’ve been doing for years, but King Foril himself—that we are sick unto choking of ever-higher taxes without much to show for it save increasingly heavy-handed border patrols who almost daily stop and search any Immerman or maid departing town for smuggled goods, ever-higher local prices for … for everything, long waits for, well, anything at all—”
“Including Crown permissions!” put in raw-voiced Helmur Faerrad, Immerford’s jeweler and fine pastry maker.
Mrauksoun nodded. “Including Crown permissions—that have to come from Arabel or Suzail. We’re also increasingly dismayed at, shall we say, inadequate local protection provided for us by the Crown. These troubles you’ve just shown us are matters we knew little or nothing about! I’m speaking of the outlaws who’ve afflicted us for years. Why, Broadshield’s Beasts have been taking our sheep and goats for more seasons than I can call to mind, now, and growing ever bolder as the Dragons and all the king’s spies seem unable to even find or identify them, to say nothing of stopping them! Why, they’re even snatching oxen, now! Oxen, out of drovers’ sheds and stables! What we—what all Immerford—wants to know is: what are you going to do about it?”
Before Durncaskyn could make any reply at all, the shortest of the burghers, the gnome wheelwright Askalan Larcloaks, pushed through the taller humans and growled, “Lord Durncaskyn, listen ye well: Our continued loyalty to King Foril Obarskyr turns on this. On just how well you and yer Crown officers handle the investigation of these killings at Irlingstar—including how you and yours treat Immerfolk as they investigate. Not just the cooks and kitchen maids and porters were from here, mind! There are good—and popular—Immerfolk shut up in that castle! The young Lords Cornyn Risingbroke and Yarland Amflame were locked away there for no more than saying a few foolish things about the Crown, and trying to forge trade alliances in Sembia without bothering to tell some nosy palace clerks what they were up to!”
Durncaskyn nodded, his teeth set. Gods, but his wounds were aching hard and deep! “I recall the lords well, goodsirs, and desire their speedy return to full freedom and to Immerford. I only hope the openly rebellious comments that got them incarcerated were errors of youth and not firm beliefs on their part—for like any loyal officer of the Crown, I must uphold the law, and trust in the law to serve all, equally.”
There were some audible snorts from the burghers. They knew as well as he did that those of high birth or station, or having much coin, received better treatment under the law than outlanders, or the poor, or peasants with few friends. Everyone in Immerford had heard of younglings forced to join the Dragons after falling into debt or being caught at some minor crime, and over the last thirty summers or so public regard for the soldiery had slowly shifted from “our trusted protectors” to something closer to “the devils on our doorsteps we know, and must endure.”
Durncaskyn watched their faces, and he knew what they wanted to hear, what he must say.
“Goodsirs, you have my personal promise, solemn and made before the gods as well as all of you, that I will do everything in my power—everything—to see that the murderer or murderers are revealed, that all that drove or enticed them to do as they did is made plain, and that they are fittingly punished. Wizards of war will be called in, I’ll demand whatever aid seems necessary from the palace, and these foul killings won’t be forgotten, treated lightly, or excused because of who the slayer or slayers may be. This I swear.”
They nodded and murmured again, sounding a trifle friendlier. This was language they understood, plain speech that they trusted. Durncaskyn held out his hands to them, empty and palm up, like a beseeching beggar.
“I need you to have patience, to trust in me—and in return, I promise to entrust you, when all the investigating is done and the time is right, with all we learned, to tell you everything. I’ll invite you back here to this office, and tell all.”
“Well, now,” Halston the cooper spoke up, “that’s as fair speech as I’ve heard in many a day. Something I can shake on without hesitation.”
And he reached out a long arm to clasp Durncaskyn’s hand firmly, starting a rush to do so. The king’s lord moved out from behind his desk to reach every burgher, and by slow and continuous steps forward succeeded in starting them back toward the office door.
They drifted out, talking excitedly among themselves about the good lads Risingbroke and Amflame, dastardly Owl Lords, and those right thieving bastards the Beasts. Durncaskyn moved with them, clapping backs and making promises, but keeping his gaze and manner firm until they were well and truly down the stairs.
> Turning back to his office again, he permitted himself the luxury of a prolonged and heartfelt rolling of the eyes that would have made all of his sisters giggle, and rather despairingly decided to send the dregs of his local duty team of war wizards to Irlingstar. Better atrocious investigators than no investigators at all.
As he sat back down at his desk and surveyed the map gloomily, his field of view showing him that there was no one lingering who might overhear, he muttered under his breath, “They’re the last three stlarning mages I’d willingly send anywhere—except into exile, to plague someone else. And every last one of the Gods Above help us all, I’m sending them into the thick of a prison where a murderer’s on the loose.” He brightened a trifle. “Perhaps they’ll provide him with some fresh victims.”
Then his gaze strayed to the papers littering the floor, and he fell into gloom again. “Huh. And if they do, it’ll mean more paperwork.”
“Of course, my lord,” Immaero Sraunter purred. “I have just the thing.”
Lord Danthalus Blacksilver reddened a little, concluding that this alchemist would have to be silenced, and soon. Before the man’s loose tongue spread dark rumors across the city of a certain inadequacy—gods, the man’s false delicacy was revolting!—on the part of dashing Lord Blacksilver. He couldn’t have his good name—
The alchemist leaned over the counter, putting his throat within tempting reach of Blacksilver’s little nail-cleaning knife, and murmured conspiratorially, “You must be an utter lion, milord. All the other lords your age who maintain residences in Suzail came to me years ago. Not that I ever name any names, you understand. Or I’d have all the young ladies crowding in here trying to buy extra dosages, and that would be dangerous for lords less able and fit than yourself.”
Blacksilver relaxed, trying not to make his sigh of relief too gustily obvious. Something slender and cool touched his palm. He closed his fingers around it and stared down at it before the alchemist had quite straightened and drifted away. It was a tiny vial of pale blue, translucent liquid.
“Just four drops, into any trifling amount—or large quaff—of milk or water,” Sraunter murmured. “Not wine or stronger drink.”
Blacksilver closed his fingers around the vial, smiled, and plucked forth the purse that held just his “handyspending” gold coins.
A lion among lions, rumor promised.
This little foray had been worth it, after all.
“See?” Arclath said cheerfully. “Both still alive, not so much as a spell-sent ‘Boo!’ to disturb our slumbers …”
Amarune gave him a sour look and rattled the stout chains coming from the manacles that had just been locked around their wrists. “And these are nothing, I suppose?”
“Merely part of the clever deception we Crown agents are working. Four hundred lions a month, remember?”
Rune sighed. “I wish I could be as jaunty about it all as you are. How do you manage it, dear? Is it part of being brought up noble, or being well on the way to becoming an idiot?”
“Both those things,” the heir of House Delcastle agreed merrily, “and being not far off madwits helps, too. That’s probably how Elminster’s done it, all these centuries.”
His Rune winced. “Old many-times-grandsire El … I wonder where he is now?”
As the shop bell tinkled its soft chime in the wake of the departing Lord Blacksilver, Manshoon permitted himself a satisfied smile.
After all, Sraunter would have smiled on his own at that moment, if Manshoon hadn’t been riding his mind. Another profitable sale, of something so simple yet so desired. Not that he cared a whit for the weight of Sraunter’s purse. No, he was satisfied because it had gone so well. He really was schooling himself to patience and subtlety in manipulating his subverted nobles. Andolphyn, Loroun, and now Blacksilver. That left just Crownrood, of the important ones.
As “everyone” knew, most of the nobility opposed the Crown and tried all manner of minor seditious and treasonous ploys and gestures. Thus, nobles doing so under his coercion were unlikely to arouse suspicions of anyone being involved in those little ploys but the nobles themselves. Whereas if he took to meddling with the minds of courtiers, such tamperings were far more likely to be noticed by wizards of war.
The solution, to a patient man, was to slowly prune the ranks of those Crown mages, using justifiably enraged or drunken nobles to do so. He’d already subverted a handy collection of expendable lords, but it occurred to Manshoon that another handy collection of younger, demonstrably Crown-hostile nobles already existed: those relatively few captives kept in isolated cells beneath High Horn, where Purple Dragons and wizards of war were numerous, alert, and close by. And then there were the inmates of an entire prison keep out on the remote eastern border of the realm, where Dragons were few and Crown mages even fewer: Castle Irlingstar.
Well, now …
It was slow and sometimes hard work, this climb. Always avoiding the temptation, even for an instant, to use the rock that had been smoothed by the dragon’s spewings into an easy trail. In places it was a slick chute, aye, but more often the smooth-melted rock had been left a mere shell of itself, pierced by many tiny holes above hidden cavities, so a firm boot could crush it down into a bootprint that was unlikely to slip. Yet that would undoubtedly make noise, and there was a dragon waiting up above.
El was hoping to find a side cavern that would let her avoid the wyrm. If not, she had magic enough to get past a dragon … if she handled matters just right.
Aye, there was always that “if.” Hrast it, there was never just the easy way, never a time to relax. Right now, it was best to remain wary, and move very carefully, never—
There was a sudden change in the breeze from above, then an echoing, hissing roar. El shrank back into the cavern-wall cleft she was in and braced herself, thrusting knees and elbows against the rock. Even before the acrid stink hit her, the green flood close in its wake, she knew what had happened.
The dragon had breathed acid again.
CHAPTER
TEN
HIGH TIME FOR SCREAMING AND CURSING
Elminster shut her stinging eyes and tried not to breathe as a fine mist of acid drifted past. The main hissing flood, gurgling like a rushing stream, was already on and down, heading for the Underdark below.
The wyrm had probably been listening for small noises that would tell it a creature was climbing toward it, and had concluded, despite the care El had taken, that such an unwanted visitor was indeed ascending its lair’s back door. Or perhaps the dragon had arranged some sort of alarm—even a spider or some other tiny cave inhabitant, as a spy—to warn against all intrusions from the Underdark. After all, Elminster certainly would, if she’d been a dragon lairing in a cave connected directly to the vast drow-infested underworld.
Down the chain of caverns the acid flowed, striking rocks into bubbling spume and drifting caustic mists, tumbling and hissing past El in her cleft. Some way below her, something screamed, shrill and sudden and very briefly, a cry that was cut off in an ugly choking.
El dared to lean out of her cleft enough to peer down, and only just caught sight of a dark, dwindling mass being swept along in the fading green glow. Dragon acid was as swift and ruthless as the wyrms that spewed it.
A dark elf? Someone or something that sounded as if it could sing and talk when it wasn’t death screaming, that—strike that, who—had been following her up from that tunnel where she’d fought the outcast drow. Possibly it had been one of them, a lurking outcast she’d never seen.
Hrast it, too much death followed her, clung to her like a rotting cloak! Even when she fought no one, and hurled not a spell, folk died around her, as if the gods had cursed her to be Walking Death.
Why?
She’d been sick of it centuries ago, yet it went on and on, showing no signs of slackening. She was so sick of it now.
But she doubted very much if how she felt would make one whit of difference. The violent deaths were going to keep happ
ening around her. Let them not include his Rune, or her Arclath, hrast it.
Mystra forfend, Symrustar commented quietly.
“Aye,” El whispered, softly enough that her words should carry no distance at all. “Mystra forfend, indeed.”
She let silence fall, and waited a long time before daring to leave the cleft and climb on. When she did, she took great care to keep as quiet as she could, no matter how slow her progress.
After all, that brief scream from her ill-fated follower had been loud. Somewhere ahead and above, an alerted black dragon was waiting.
The lord constable of Irlingstar peered around the ready room. It did not take him long.
Despite his experience of monster scourings and battles with border raiders, Farland’s stomach heaved. He fought down his urge to spew, then worked his way around the blood to look into every bedchamber.
They were spartan rooms, and none of the mages had brought much to the castle to clutter them with. They had small, simple wardrobes, customarily left open against the ever-present damp, and all of them stood open. No one was hiding in any place he couldn’t see, because there was just nowhere to hide. A guard ward glowed faintly around a stack of shared spellbooks on a bedside table, preventing opportunistic thefts by prisoners—or anyone else.
The youngest of Irlingstar’s duty war wizards lay dead, sprawled in the middle of the ready room, headless and handless. Those severed bits of him were nowhere to be seen.
There was no trace of the other four Crown mages at all. Except for the blood.
The lone corpse was spread-eagled in a great pool of gore that filled the center of the room. It was a well-built chamber, its flagstones covered with a thin slurry of rough-pour that sloped ever so slightly away from the walls, to gather any wetness in the center of the room. Only that had enabled him to skirt the blood, for there was so much of it that the body lay in a still-slick pool that had to be two fingerwidths deep at its heart, or more.