by Ed Greenwood
Hawkspike looked at Harbrand, and Harbrand looked back at Hawkspike. Then they both put spurs to their mounts, to hurry on toward Irlingstar.
Complaining, their exhausted horses broke into uneven gallops, plunging two bruised and unhappy riders into fresh, lurching saddle-buffetings.
The two surviving partners in Danger For Hire traded a second set of glances.
After which they both reined in their mounts, hard.
If that dragon came their way …
Both somehow clung to their saddles through the wild rearings, kicks, and buckings that followed.
But then they decided instead to leap off and tether the snorting, head-tossing beasts to nearby trees in frantic haste. The men got their saddlebags undone and safely rushed into cover.
Their swords and daggers had been freshly sharpened, and went through the tethers in a trice, freeing the nags to wander at will.
Into the yawning jaws of an angrily swooping dragon, for instance …
The two hireswords sprinted back into the trees, grabbed up the saddlebags, and ran.
They were soon panting hard—the saddlebags were hrasted heavy—but kept at it until their wind ran out.
Whereupon they crashed down into the dead leaves and dry needles, to lie there side by side, gasping.
They were well away from where they’d freed the horses, but a bit too far into the deep gloom of the endless forest.
They looked to where the sunlight was brightest. They’d go back to the edge of the forest, where the road was, and skulk the rest of the way to Irlingstar on foot, keeping under the trees.
Explosions, dragons … those extra offerings to both Tymora and Beshaba hadn’t won them anything different than their usual luck.
“I told you,” Harbrand said suddenly, “stolen things are no good as offerings. Goddesses can tell.”
Hawkspike’s reply was swift, pungent, and probably more of an affront to Tymora and Beshaba than any altar offering could have been.
“I am Lord Constable here,” Farland reminded the tall, laconic, slab-faced war wizard sharply.
“So you are. I’d almost managed to forget that, despite your nigh-constant minders,” Gulkanun replied. “Almost.”
And he winked.
Farland was mildly astonished to find himself on the verge of smiling. This Duth Gulkanun was … likeable. All too vocally ironic, but far less irritating than Lord Delcastle, Master of Mockery, yonder. Hrast it, he liked this man.
“Very well,” he said, turning quickly to glare at the other war wizard—the one with the curse that shapechanged his hand continually. As usual he had moved silently to stand too close. Close enough that he’d be crowding any man, not just a jailer trained to guard against such things, to keep prisoners distant, and give himself enough room to swing a mace or a sword.
This man, he did not like. Sly and sharp tongued, entirely untrustworthy in word and deed. A felon, Farland would have deemed him if meeting him for the first time and not knowing this Longclaws was a wizard of war. He’d fit right in with the noble guests in Irlingstar.
Aye, the man struck him as properly a prisoner, not any sort of respectable Crown officer. If they’d been alone, Farland would have reminded him sternly in an instant that the penalty for treason was death.
“Very well,” he repeated, advancing on the irritating Imbrult Longclaws until the man—satisfyingly, but lord constables learned to claim and count such small satisfactions—gave ground, “we’ll do it your way.”
“And trust what answer I return with?”
Farland nodded, and he managed to quell a sigh ere he echoed, “And trust whatever answer you get.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
A ROOM FOR THE NIGHT
Not surprisingly for a fortress built as a prison, Castle Irlingstar didn’t have many outside balconies. One of its few opened off the records room, adjacent to Farland’s own office.
Wizard of War Gulkanun headed out onto it now, Longclaws following him as far as the records room. There the curse-ridden wizard turned, leaned back against the desk, and drew two wands from his belt. Though he said not a word, his intent was obvious: to keep everyone at bay, back where they couldn’t see what Gulkanun did. The magic of opening a small breach in the wards was a war wizard secret, and would be kept that way.
Farland glowered at Longclaws, who met his gaze with a faint smile. They both knew what Gulkanun was doing, but that didn’t mean the lord constable had to like it. So many folk were trying to give him orders in his own castle that he was on the verge of losing track of them all, hrast it.
This Gulkanun—a decent sort, as far as war wizards went—needed the breach to spell speak with Glathra Barcantle back in Suzail, to report the deaths and inquire if the two new prisoners were indeed the undercover Crown agents they claimed to be.
Glathra. The lord constable’s fingers went again to the pendant he wore, hidden from view beneath his ever-present gorget. It was a token from her, that she’d given him on a tender night long before matters had ended so badly between them.
“Use it if ever you need me at your side,” she’d said, her eyes large and dark. Words he’d never forget.
So why was he so all-fired glad that some slab-faced wizard of war was talking to her now, so he didn’t have to?
The Crown mages marched back into the room, far sooner than he’d expected. Farland snatched his fingers away from the hidden pendant as if it might burn them.
“Suzail now knows about the killings,” Gulkanun told him, “and these two can be trusted; they are what they claim to be.”
Farland inclined his head. “My thanks, saer.” He turned to Amarune and Arclath. “Deepest apologies to the both of you. I hope you’ll appreciate that a lord constable cannot be too careful.”
“Of course,” Arclath said graciously, as Amarune nodded.
Farland smiled and waved one hand at an apparently solid wall. He saw Lord Delcastle crook his eyebrows, and he hastily leaned forward with his keys to forestall whatever clever—and irritating—comment the noble might make, to unlock the secret door. Making a swift “stay back” Crown signal he knew the two mages would understand, he led the two prisoners—ah, undercover agents—through the door.
The room beyond was small, windowless, and had no other door, only ventilation holes about the size of a small man’s wrist in opposing corners. Crammed into it was a cot that served both as a bed and as a seat for use with the low, plain table beside it—a table that held a decanter, two stout wooden mugs, a dome-covered earthenware platter, and a lanceboard set up for a game.
Farland lifted the dome to reveal wedges of cheese and sausages, and pointed at the decanter. “Wine.” As graciously as any socially climbing Suzailan hostess, he waved the two Crown agents to seat themselves, stepping back to give them room.
“Yours for the night, Crown agents,” he said gently, from the door. “We’ll confer on the morrow.”
Then he stepped outside, slammed the door—and locked them in.
“So what,” Elminster murmured aloud, “would Brannon Lucksar do?”
Use the secret war wizard way in, Symrustar suggested dryly, inside her head. If the chapbooks and tavern tales can be believed, there always is one.
El sighed, nodded, and started along the castle wall, trailing his fingertips along the dark, rough stones and watching his rings closely. If they glowed, that just might mean a secret entrance.
If not …
Hammer on the prison doors and try to seduce the guards who show up. That should get you arrested.
“Everyone should carry a Chosen in their head,” El murmured aloud. “They’re so helpful.”
In the back of his mind, Symrustar made a very rude sound.
Arclath charged the door, furious, but he might as well have been hammering on and clawing at solid stone.
Pulling and tugging and shoving the immobile door vainly, he called the lord constable some choice things ere he gave up,
panting, and spun back to Amarune.
“I’m sorry, Rune,” he sighed. “I was such a fool! I should have seen that coming, should’ve—”
Amarune’s fingers tapped across his lips, to still his speech. She gave him a crooked smile and held up one of her boots. She must have slipped it off while he was attacking the door.
He watched her press with her finger and thumb at the front corners of its heel, where the heel curved in before flaring out again to underlie the rest of the foot—and pull gently, straight back.
The heel slid off the boot, revealing itself to be the hilt of a short dagger. “Careful,” she breathed, holding it up. “This is razor sharp.”
“Where did you—?”
“Storm. She got it from a Harper in Suzail for me.” Rune set the dagger on the table and shook the boot, her hand cupped to catch whatever fell out of the revealed cavity in the foresole that the dagger blade had been sheathed in.
Out dropped something small, wrapped in silk. She did something deft with her fingers and thumb that splayed the silk bundle open, and Arclath found himself looking at an array of lockpicks.
“I’m the Silent Shadow, remember?” Rune whispered with a smirk.
Slowly, Arclath smiled back.
His lady glided close and embraced him. The better to murmur disbelievingly into his ear, “Are those two truly wizards of war? Have you ever heard of a war wizard who has to live with a magical curse?”
Arclath shook his head. “No, and—”
He promptly forgot whatever else he was going to say as the floor surged under their feet, as if trying to rise to meet them. The table, decanter, and all sprang into the air, and the whole room rocked and swayed to the tune of a deafening, growing thunder.
Dust fell in a sudden, heavy cloud, and as Arclath spun Amarune around and rushed her to the nearest wall, trying to shield her, pebbles pelted them, and larger stones could be heard crashing down here and there.
The stones around them groaned alarmingly … but as that ominous sound deepened, the thunder faded, as did the shuddering and swaying.
Long moments later, only the dust still moved, swirling chokingly, setting them both to coughing. As they hacked and shook, everything else quieted.
Then light abruptly flooded in. The door that had been locked was snatched open again, and a frowning Gulkanun was reaching through it to clutch at Arclath’s arm.
He hauled the young lord back out of the cell—Rune right behind him, hopping as she reassembled her boot and got it back on—and into Farland’s office.
Where the dust was thinner, though some cracks had made jagged paths down the walls that certainly hadn’t been there before—and Longclaws was restraining the lord constable, one hand clutching the man’s gorget and the other holding a wand warningly in Farland’s face.
“Come,” Gulkanun commanded grimly, turning his head to extend that order to his fellow mage and the lord constable, as well as Rune and Arclath. “For now, we’re keeping together.”
Longclaws released Farland and waved him toward the door. The lord constable burst through it at a grim run, the rest of them right at his heels.
Two murders, and now an explosion they were rushing off to investigate—
“Ah, adventure!” Arclath exclaimed delightedly.
Beside him, Rune rolled her eyes.
Unexpectedly, Gulkanun started to chuckle.
The mood among the duty detail of war wizards on the battlements of the naval base at the eastern end of Marsember was sour … and getting worse. A full-throated storm was rushing ashore, right over them, nigh-drowning Marsember for the ninth time that tenday. The rain had worked its way up from pelting to lashing down, then to hammering the flagstones and cobbles hard enough to bounce back up and wet chins from below. Now, as usual, it had begun to slant like the murderous down-thrust lances of aerial cavalry, driving stingingly into even the most carefully cowled face.
The Crown mages huddled in their weathercloaks, their hoods up and shoulders hunched, already drenched and getting colder. Rain-warding spells were useless up on the battlements, thanks to the old, powerful, and many-layered wards that protected the towers against hostile magics. They tried to squint through the deluge—with even less success than they managed to ignore the wet creeping into their boots and running down their necks inside their weathercloaks.
“Tluining weather,” one wizard muttered. The one beside him nodded in miserable silence. They were all eyeing, with more than a little suspicion—or trying to, in the storm, and didn’t the smugglers and slavers love these sorts of storms?—a ship running into the public trading harbor. It was bucking the wild waves down there, amid all the rocking, rising, and falling moored ships, and—
It was time. Every last one of them was intent on his work. Diligent fools.
Manshoon said the last word of the incantation, and his spell took him from dry but overcast Suzail to the naval battlements of storm-lashed Marsember in an instant.
He appeared right behind the line of war wizards. Just as he’d planned. He allowed himself the moment necessary to form a wide smile of satisfaction before he spread his hands and cast his next spell.
It dashed all the wizards of war against each other, bruising and breaking limbs and leaving some dazed or nigh-senseless, before thrusting them up into the sky in a tight, feebly struggling tangle. They hanged there in midair, stabbed at by the lightnings of the passing storm, while he cast his next spell with unhurried precision.
It struck them like a falling castle wall, and flung them high and far through the storm clouds, trailing a few ragged shouts, to rain down out in the open sea beyond the breakwaters, broken and dead.
Manshoon looked to the right, then to the left. Heads were turning far along the battlements, at the corner towers where Purple Dragon sentinels stood, in the only posts in all Cormyr where they were allowed to eschew armor and to stand without spears at the ready.
Some of those sentinels were starting to run in his direction, and to shout. What he’d done to the Crown mages had been seen.
Manshoon smiled almost fondly at the running men. “This thinning of the war wizards,” he murmured, “is going to be as easy as it is enjoyable.”
And as the fastest of the running soldiers came close enough to see the face of their future emperor, he gave them a broad smile of greeting—and vanished, leaving only bare, rain-swept flagstones for them to hack and stab at.
Dust was everywhere, though the rumbling and shaking had stopped. Farland was coughing hard but sprinting as if he didn’t need to breathe or rest, along grim stone passages and down gloomy stairs and along more passages and up yet more stairs. Panting, Arclath, Amarune, and the two war wizards kept right on his heels.
Everywhere they ran, they heard shouting. Frightened, aggrieved prisoners bellowing through the gratings in their cell doors. Demanding to be let out, or crying for aid, or shrieking and sobbing that they were hurt, by all the gods, and needed “Succor, now!”
“Anyone who can plead eloquently isn’t hurt that badly,” Longclaws commented as they rushed past entreaty after entreaty—and into a din of fresh ones, ahead.
As they hurried on through the dust-shrouded fortress, it seemed most of the noble prisoners of Irlingstar were more frightened than hurt. A few were wandering dazedly, blinking through masks of thick dust, freed by the blast as walls had cracked, and the wards around their cells had faded.
The fear serpent spells that had been prowling the corridors were gone entirely, and as Farland and the others hastened, increasingly they saw prisoners who were almost free. Cell doors yawned wide or had fallen, but the men they were meant to confine were trembling in midair, caught in stubbornly persisting wards that kept them on the verge of being held in place; they could struggle forward very slowly, if they strained and fought with all their strength.
Farland kept going. Past the steep stair where dead Vandur still lay, awaiting a proper investigation before burial—and providing m
eals for the rats until the blast had sent them scurrying, no doubt. Past the boarded-up shaft that had served as a “food up, chamber pots down” elevator until too many prisoners had been wedged in it head-down by cruel fellow inmates and left to die. All the way to the series of heavy doors that guarded the approach to the south tower.
The first set of doors was locked, but the lord constable of course had the keys, and barely slowed on his way through the doors. The second pair of doors was cracked but still standing, the locks twisted but holding. Farland’s stout kick served where his keys no longer could.
The third set of doors sagged half-open, locks and latches broken and the spandrels above shattered and sagging. There was daylight beyond them where the fourth pair of doors should have been, that opened into the south tower.
Lord Constable Farland skidded to an awkward halt just beyond the third doors and gaped, too shocked to spew obscenities.
The south tower was … missing.
Instead of stone rooms and ramparts ahead, they were treated to a cool breeze and a splendid view of the Thunder Peaks marching away south, on their left, with the last winding bend of Orondstars Road just below and the great dark green carpet of Hullack Forest flooding away south and west for as far as they could see.
Farland moaned, as if he were about to be sick.
Amarune frowned at the cold, then calmly pulled her jerkin up to her chin to hold it there, so she could unwind the cord she’d wound around herself, under her breasts.
Gulkanun gave her a grin and took one end of it. Longclaws and Arclath assisted, her beloved gesturing to her to spin around. She obeyed, swiftly yielding into their hands a neat coil of black cord she’d long ago prepared for climbing by tying knots in it at intervals.
The lord constable had been trying gingerly to peer down over the jagged edge where his fortress now so abruptly ended, scrambling hastily back whenever stones sagged or fell away under his boots.