by Ed Greenwood
“Oh? All the reports that have come to my ears speak of her visiting commoners,” Glathra snapped. “In smithies, sundries shops, tanners—and brothels. Not nobles in their high houses.”
“Ah, that would be her other mandate. Her obedience to the commandment of the Lady of Mysteries, the goddess all mages once held dearest, and will again.”
“What commandment?”
“To make the Harpers once more strong and numerous.”
“What? And you’ve let her do this? Raise an ever-present army of traitors in our midst?”
Ganrahast smiled gently. “And how exactly should we go about seeking to stop her? When we can instead watch from afar, and so learn exactly who each Harper is, what their skills are, and where they dwell?”
Glathra stared at him, chastened. “Oh. Ah. I see.” Then her frown drew down again. “How do we know she’s not aware of our scrying, and deceiving us?”
Ganrahast shrugged. “We know she is aware of our scrying. She’s told me—and the king—that Harpers want a stable, just, happy Cormyr, lightly ruled by a benevolent monarch. Happily, that’s precisely what King Foril wants, too. Storm doesn’t mind if we know who most of the Harpers are; she sees it as a good check and balance on Those Who Harp.”
Glathra frowned, shaking her head. “Yielding up such a weakness … I don’t think I’ll ever understand senior Harpers—or these self-styled Chosen of Mystra, either.”
Ganrahast smiled again. “I don’t think we’re meant to.”
The chasm was deep, its sides bare rock that was jagged in some places and smooth in others; the hardened flows of a volcano that was now nowhere to be seen.
What could be seen was an eerie purplish radiance deep down in the stony gulf, a glow that was sometimes half-bright and sometimes very dim. Great drifts and serpentine coils of shadow shifted constantly in the chasm air, undulating back and forth. A warm, sulphurous wind was blowing up out of the chasm. Those shadows were the smoke of some strange elsewhere blown upward by it, undulating endlessly as they came.
Horrid creatures came with them, long human-headed snakes with wings. There were also little ribbonlike eels that flew without wings, and spent much of their time restlessly coiling and uncoiling in the air. There were fat, wrinkled ovals with four batlike flapping wings each, that saw by means of a single oversized eye, and had cruel underslung jaws like sharks … and there were other things. They streamed up into Faerûn, riding the shifting smokes, in a tireless invasion that plunged almost gratefully into the dark wilderland forests above the chasm.
A sudden blue-white star flickered into being in midair above the gulf, in the heart of that flow.
The shifting shadows shrank back from it, bending away in their endless streaming … as it grew, faded, and coalesced into—
A long-limbed, unclad woman floating upright in the air with her long, long silver hair coiling and whipping around her like a great tangle of restless, energetic snakes. Her legs were together, but her arms were flung wide, and in her clenched hands were two things that blazed with vivid blue flames. A chalice and a sword.
Their flames howled and snarled in all directions with a quickening hunger, many of them arcing back and forth across their holder’s breast as the two blue fires sought to join, visibly scorching her.
She tossed her head in pain, biting her lip and moaning from time to time, as the blue flames grew brighter and larger, their searing tongues longer.
“Elminster,” the hovering woman gasped, “where are you? Be with me! Be with me now! Oh, I need your strength …”
She sobbed, then fought for air enough to cry, “Elminster! Hear me!”
That cry was loud and borne far on the rising wind from the gulf.
Yet aside from some cruel laughter from the winged snakes rushing past, there came no reply at all.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
THE PENALTY FOR TREASON Is DEATH
The Simbul let her head loll back on her shoulders. She was exhausted, shaking with weariness, and far from done.
And the pain was only going to get worse.
Back and forth across her the blue fire raged, faster and faster, the howls of the two balls of blue flame around her hands becoming a loud and continual roar as they built higher and higher. The dark creatures riding the shadows shrank back and mewed in fear as they scrabbled past.
The Simbul’s hands were blackened yet uncharred, burned but not consumed. The tongues of blue flames were twice her height, towering blazes that stabbed at the sky—and leaned inward to touch in the air high above her. There the blue flames wrestled briefly, then blazed forth with renewed fury, forming a single raging, roiling sphere of blinding blue flame that …
Boiled over, collapsing down into the gulf like an extinguished geyser. Behind that flood, from the chalice and the sword in The Simbul’s hands, came lances of blue, rays of eerie light that stabbed down into the roiling shadows in the depths of the chasm.
The Simbul turned in the air, tilting over until she could look down into the gulf below, moving her shaking arms to aim the rays issuing from the items she held, her body trembling with the strain. Stabbing at the rift far below.
Back and forth she moved, shifting the unfailing rays to rain down on the purple glow in the depths, seeking to obliterate it.
Slowly that radiance faded, darkening, and the shifting shadows faded with it, becoming tattered and sporadic rather than unbroken snakes.
The Simbul held her vigilance, watching and aiming intently, making certain the vivid blue fire she directed was consuming the shadows …
Suddenly those dark ribbons started to whirl around her, as if being sucked down a drain, the stream of monsters becoming a few struggling individuals, the shadows around them receding to reveal … still emptiness.
Shadows no longer shifted.
The purple glow was gone.
No wind blew up out of the chasm. It was merely a gulf of darkness and bare stones, not a rift breathing out a stream of monsters.
The Simbul floated slowly up out of the gulf, blasting the slowest of the last handful of monsters flapping toward the forests with a few fitful bursts of blue flame.
Then she flew away, slowly and wearily, hanging in the air like a dead thing.
Soon, Alassra, a soft yet mighty voice whispered out of the air all around her, the gentle words like thunder in her soul.
Soon shall come the rest you ache for. The rest you’ve richly earned.
The room was dark and small, but its furnishings were rich, and the lone chair was surprisingly comfortable for such an ornate monstrosity.
Sraunter the alchemist would have been nervous indeed, sitting alone in the dark, in a palatial Suzailan noble’s mansion where he knew he did not belong. Yet the future emperor of Cormyr was quite content to lounge in the chair in Sraunter’s body, booted feet up on a gilded side table, locked into the anteroom by his own hand.
He was not, strictly speaking, alone. He had the cowering remnant of Sraunter’s awareness for company, crushed into a dark corner of the man’s own mind, and he had several small eyeball beholderkin tucked into the bulging breast of his surcoat, in case he needed them to deliver swift messages, or warnings, or pursue anyone.
At that moment, however, he was relaxed and content, his attention several rooms away from his small, dark refuge.
In that other, brighter nearby room, a meeting was taking place. A moot he’d caused to occur with his mental meddlings. A gathering of several of his subverted nobles and as many other members of Cormyr’s nobility—men he hoped to recruit to his cause without having to invade their minds directly. For each mind he forced himself upon was one more possible gap in his armor, one more way for inquisitive wizards of war to detect him. So given the patience that the removal of Elminster afforded him, it was time to see if the unwitting could be swayed to his cause by argument and their own inclination alone, rather than coercion.
It was going well. The nobles around that table, their to
ngues eased by wine, were busily deciding that although the ruling Obarskyrs were utterly and historically corrupt, and should eventually be deposed for the good of the realm, in the short term the greater affront to the liberty and health of the kingdom were courtiers who deceive royalty, nobility, and commoners alike, enact Crown will to their own advantages, and (as old Lord Haeldown had just put it) “oppress all.”
It was agreed that regicide, however tempting to some, would bring open civil war and a long period of strife, despoiling the same fair realm they sought to free. So rather than take down King Foril—who was, after all, elderly and (as Lord Taseldon said) “like to die soon, anyhail”—they would instead seek to remove the worst of the courtiers.
Specific persons at court, the worst of the “jumped-up covert rulers of us all” (Lord Haeldown again) would be murdered in a series of “accidents.” Properly done, in a careful sequence, these removals should arouse a minimum of war wizard suspicion, and serve to weaken the efficiency of Crown service and promote younger, more corruptible courtiers into the forcibly created vacancies.
“The Dragon Throne, like any other throne, stands on legs—those who obey royal commands. If we remove these legs, one by one, there will come a time when the throne will fall,” Lord Blacksilver gloated.
“And though the penalty for fell treason is death,” Lord Taseldon added, “pruning the realm of corrupt, loyal-only-to-themselves courtiers is something very different. Something … patriotic!”
“So who, my lords,” the chancellor of the realm purred, “should be first courtier to be pruned?”
There was a little silence, broken by everyone starting to speak at once. This name was cast onto the table, and that one, with almost obscene enthusiasm … and when the rush of suggestions at last faltered and silence came again, one name had been mentioned far more than any other.
Rensharra Ironstave, lady clerk of the rolls. As the head of tax appraisals for Cormyr, she might be the friendliest of creatures, yet by the very nature of her office still be a thorn in the sides of all nobility and wealthy landowners. As it happened, she was not the friendliest of creatures. Stubborn and sharp-tongued, a shrewd woman who seemed able to sense deceit before it was wholly laid out before her, she steadfastly refused to be bribed or cozened—and seemed to take enthusiastic delight in revealing even the most minor deceptions of the nobility, making public examples of their attempts to evade taxes.
In his antechamber, Manshoon smiled. So it was to be self-interest foremost, after all. Well, it was good to know how truly noble the nobles of Cormyr were.
Lord Haeldown said, “I used to think our war wizards were all little Vangerdahasts—young foolhead wizards from all over the Realms he tracked down and cast mind magics on, so they became his little thralls. Mayhap they were. He certainly seemed to learn everything that befell behind closed doors all over the kingdom as fast as if he’d seen and heard it himself. Yet I doubt that outland Caladnei woman, nor this weak-nothing Ganrahast we’re saddled with now, have managed the same trick. These days, our wizards of war make mistakes, often work against each other deliberately or unwittingly, and seem no more cohesive than, say, our Purple Dragons. There’s no mighty mage lurking behind them who can flit from head to head as he pleases and move them all like strikers on a lanceboard. That’s how Vangey survived all those assassination attempts, you know. He’d leave his body to be hewn down and leap across half the realm to land in another head, then turn around and conjure up another body for himself.”
“I agree, that’s what the war wizards have been like,” Lord Taseldon agreed, “but no longer. These last few days they seem … different. Watchful, ready for trouble. Now there is a wizard linking their thoughts together—for the first time in as long as I can remember.”
Lord Loroun leaned forward in interest. “Who? Surely not that nice, sensitive fool Ganrahast?”
“Hah! If he could do so, he’d have been doing it all these years, no? It’s not his name they’re whispering around the palace. The one they are giving tongue to, courtiers and Dragons alike, is ‘Elminster.’ ”
Lord Haeldown waved that notion away with one wrinkled hand. “The legendary Mad Mage of Mystra? He’ll be thousands of years old now—if he’s still alive! You really think us all dullards enough to believe that?”
“No, I think our great-grandsires got fooled, and theirs before them. I’ve heard talk that Elminster has lasted down the centuries because he isn’t one man, but wizard after wizard that Elminster’s mind floods into and conquers. Dozens at once, so some can’t help but survive, whatever befalls. That drives them all mad, of course, but what wizard isn’t? Right now, I think he’s inside the head of every last damned wizard of war—or soon will be.”
Manshoon stiffened in his comfortable chair, his jaw dropping open. His face was suddenly hot, the mirrors all around showing him that his eyes were blazing …
Could this be so? Could Elminster really be commanding the minds of Cormyr’s Crown mages?
The future emperor of Cormyr got up and started to pace, which in the tiny anteroom was not easy. He paced, over and over, his mind lost in furious thought.
It could be so! Every last damned wizard of war …
“Urgh!” Harbrand grunted in pain, rebounding off his saddlehorn for the fifty-four-thousandth time, and rubbing at the eye beneath his eye patch. It itched, whereas his groin had long since become one huge and tender bruise. “These saddles aren’t getting any more comfy!”
Hawkspike’s reply was a sullen growl. His own creaking rides were always uncomfortable, owing to his hanging as heavily in even a high-cantled saddle as a sack of potatoes. “You should’ve worn a bigger codpiece!”
“There are no bigger codpieces, friend Hawkspike! Not when one is—”
“Endowed like several competing stallions? I’ve heard your lines before, remember? Tell me, did they work on Old Skullgrin?”
“Hawk, Lady Dawningdown is our client. I’d hardly have managed to land us our commission—or escaped her mansion without my backside tasting a good lashing—if I’d been foolish enough to let my tongue run that freely!”
“It’s run a mite too freely before,” Hawkspike reminded his partner sullenly.
Harbrand sighed. “Hawk, this is getting us nowhere, and despite these sad excuses for horses—”
Their third pair of stolen mounts had been less fresh and fit than they’d gambled on, and for the last little while had been stumbling and faltering under them, clearly exhausted. However, this wild mountain country was no place to stop in. Raw rock peaks on one side, the outlaw- and monster-haunted Hullack Forest dark and close on the other …
“—we are drawing near to Irlingstar—”
“At last.”
“—at last, indeed, and it’s more than time for us to settle on a plan—however tentative—for how we’re going to fulfill Lady Dawningdown’s commission.”
Hawkspike spat on a defenseless stone they were passing. It wasn’t the one he’d aimed for, but it was a stone. Not that they were rare targets, along this gods-forsaken excuse for a road. “So talk.”
Lady Dawningdown had hired them to free her son and heir, young Lord Jeresson Dawningdown, who was imprisoned in Irlingstar. They were to get him across the border to Bowshotgard, a hunting lodge in forested northern Sembia.
However, it had dawned on both surviving partners in Danger For Hire that they were more likely to be handed their own deaths at Bowshotgard rather than their promised payment, so they devised their own variant to Lady Dawningdown’s arrangements.
They would free Jeresson, get him into Sembia, drug him to sleep and then bind and hide him. Then they’d hire a Sembian intermediary to go to Bowshotgard with the news that Hawkspike and Harbrand were betrayed by hirelings and slain, and those hirelings are now heading back to meet with Lady Dawningdown and demand a huge ransom for Jeresson. The intermediary would claim to venerate Bahamut, Lord of Justice, above all other gods, and to be shocked by the
behavior of his fellow hirelings—so he fled, to reveal Jeresson’s whereabouts to those at Bowshotgard, and enable them to go rescue him.
If those at Bowshotgard didn’t believe the intermediary, or enspelled him to learn the truth, or slew him, Hawkspike and Harbrand would simply move on, forgetting all about the Dawningdown coins, to try their fair fortune in northeastern Sembia and more distant locales. But, if the Dawningdown allies at Bowshotgard sallied forth to go find Jeresson, Danger For Hire could covertly plunder all they could carry off from Bowshotgard, by way of payment in lieu of their commission, and move on far wealthier.
However, all of this thinking began with the glib words “free Jeresson,” and that was the part of it all that still needed discussion. They had the sleep drug, and plenty of waxed cord to bind a prisoner with. They even had a capture hood, to muffle and blind a captive. They had a vague idea of the layout of Castle Irlingstar, and the names of its seneschal and lord constable. And that was about all they had.
Harbrand gave his partner a weak, twisted smile. The sort of grin that more sheltered and civilized folk would have called a “sheepish” smile.
“Well,” Harbrand began, not having the slightest inkling of what he was going to say next, “I—”
Something gray rose into view above the trees, then, and he thankfully interrupted himself to point and say, “Behold! Our destination, Castle Irlingstar!”
Hawkspike grunted wordlessly, managing to convey his deep lack of being impressed. “Looks like a—”
Whatever architectural judgment he’d been planning to deliver was lost forever in what happened next.
There was a sudden, thunderous roar that rebounded off many mountainsides, and a bright flash amid billowing smoke, as an explosion burst upward from the battlements of the prison castle.
In its wake, something huge and black and scaled flapped hastily away from the keep, roaring in startled pain.
A dragon! A black dragon, its groans deep and angry as it circled back into the mountains.