by Ed Greenwood
“Exactly,” Farland agreed. “So how do we get through the night ahead of us, and wind up alive come morn?”
“Work on the wards,” Lucksar suggested. “Use them to make new walls, and doors that can’t be forced. After we securely confine all the remaining prisoners in separate rooms for the night, we work a ward around all of them, wrapping them in one big box. Then we work on the wards to securely seal all exterior doors. Then confine all the guards and staff except the six of us together in a cluster of rooms that include the kitchens but are away from all doors—so any kitchen back doors must be excluded—and ward them into their own box. And then we barricade ourselves separately in rooms we can lock from within, and get some sleep. All save for Wizard of War Gulkanun and myself; we’ll stand watch.”
“Over each other,” Gulkanun said wryly.
Farland nodded wearily. “I like the sound of that. The rest of you?”
He saw nothing but nods. “Good. Let’s do it,” he said, draining his goblet and heaving himself to his feet with a grunt of pain. “I’m not getting any younger.”
“Or prettier,” Lord Delcastle muttered, but Farland had been expecting some such comment, and managed a grin. Before the inevitable yawn.
Rensharra, it appeared, had a private passion for sky blue silk and gilt. Lots of gilt. Carved, curlicued ornamentations everywhere, all heavily gilded.
Mirt tried hard to keep his eyebrows from climbing to the top of his scalp and staying there.
The rest of her small tallhouse was tastefully luxurious, a long, narrow haven simply and sparsely furnished in creams, rich crimsons, and new but deep-stained, polished wood. The bedchamber, however, was dominated by a tentlike bed in Old Tashlutan style, with streams of blue silk descending from a central crown to its corners, and from there flaring in pinned-down pleats to the floor. Gilded flourishes were everywhere: the sheets, the pillows, even the hrasted carved, upswept corners were gold …
“So, Lord of Waterdeep,” the owner of the grandiose tent teased, eyeing Mirt from its far side. “Care to … catch me?”
“Well, now,” Mirt growled, “if it comes to pouncing, are you a kitten—or a tigress?”
“Come and see,” Rensharra purred.
With a roar Mirt lurched around one end of the bed—only to receive her gown in the face as his intended prey tossed it at him in the wake of her cartwheel away, across the bed.
She came up smiling. “I find it warm in here—do you?” Her eyes pointedly raked him from head to flopping old seaboots, ere she kicked off her own fashionable anklestar boots and fled from the room.
Mirt pursued her, obediently unhooking his jerkin as he went.
The attic door stood open, its glowstone unhooded to light the way, so he followed.
The light proved to be coming from the far end of the attic, where a clattering noise announced that Rensharra Ironstave was the owner of a box hoist, and had just ridden it down out of sight, probably into her cellar.
Mirt grinned and started working the winch. All good fun, this …
He was wheezing in earnest by the time the box appeared up out of the depths—containing her underslip, of course—and he was able to step into it and thankfully let go of the crank.
His plunge down the shaft was as noisy as it was swift, so it wasn’t until it ended with a dull, meaty thud that he noticed something was amiss.
Of course, the black-gloved arms sprawled out from under the box, and the thin ribbon of blood sliding out to join them, were the sorts of sights he’d seen all too often before.
He could tell at a glance that the arms were far too brawny to belong to Rensharra, so he spared them no more attention than to snatch up the needle-pointed dagger they’d let go of—covered in sticky orange-green Calishite poison, of course. In his experience, hired slayers sent to silence targets of lower rank than nobility and rulership seldom traveled alone.
The only light coming into the cellar spilled down an ascending stair at the far end of what looked to be the typical labyrinth of apple baskets, crocks of preserves, and shelves of oddments, so Mirt headed toward it.
He was halfway there when Rensharra screamed, and something made of crockery shattered loudly. Mirt went up the stairs like a bellowing bull, trying to sound frightening enough that anyone who’d cornered the lady clerk of the rolls would be distracted from making an actual kill by the volume and apparent formidability of an impending attack.
What he saw in the room above—her dining hall, by the looks of it—was Rensharra at the top of an ornamental pillar, clad only in net leggings, a clout, and a decorative black lace belt, kicking frantically at the hands of a masked and gloved man in black leathers who was half up atop her sideboard, trying to catch hold of her ankles to haul her back down. She’d just pulled off her dethma and was flailing him across the face with it, its metal-tipped breast cups clanging with every blow, as high and shrill as metal windchimes.
A second man in black leathers lay sprawled motionless on his back across the dining table, his jaw gaping and the shards of what must recently have been a large crockery flower flute scattered around his head—water, flowers, and all.
Mirt laughed aloud at what he saw, shouted, “Never fear, lass! I’ll save you!” and charged down the room, snatching up a chair as he went.
The man trying to snare Rensharra turned and dropped to the floor, clawing out and hurling a belt knife at his large and loud new foe.
Mirt batted it aside with the chair and threw his own newfound knife. It struck the man’s neck, stuck there for a moment, then continued on its way to quiver in the wall above the sideboard.
The man cursed, sounding more frightened than furious, and grabbed another knife from his belt.
Mirt threw the chair.
The man howled in pain as the hurtling furniture smashed some of his fingers, drove his arm back around behind him, and sent his second knife clanging and clattering into a corner. Then the chair hit the sideboard and rebounded off it, one leg askew, to strike the man from behind. It slid onward a little way with the somewhat dazed man draped atop it—but when it stopped, its rider tried to turn to face Mirt and haul out a short sword.
He’d half-managed it, starting to sway and shout something desperate that came out strangely slurred—so the knife bore strong Calishite poison—when Mirt reached him. And planted a firm, hairy fist in his face.
A nose shattered, blood spurted, and the owner of both went down, toppling to the floor like one of those proverbial felled trees.
As Rensharra screamed again, Mirt was already looking up at her to give her his best reassuring grin, so he saw where she was looking and knew instantly that the source of her fresh fear was back down the room behind him. He ducked, grabbed the chair he’d just thrown, and threw it again, back down the room.
Peering after it, he watched a furious man in the latest expensive and stylish lords’ evening garb dance aside with a flourish of his rapier and snarl, “I’m not losing this wager! How many hired sword swingers does it take to butcher one silly bitch of a palace scribe, anyhail?”
“More than you brought,” Mirt informed him, lurching to meet the noble and plucking up chairs as he went.
The noble sneered at the first one, was staggering after the second, and was swordless, dazed, and bleeding from a scalp graze after the third and last chair. It happened to be the last seat on Mirt’s side of the long dining table, so the Lord of Waterdeep planted one boot in an available crotch—taking care to angle up and under, so as not to break any toes on the inevitable armored codpiece—and as the stricken noble doubled over, put his best roundhouse right into the man’s throat.
The noble went down with a dying sob as Mirt grinned in ruthless satisfaction. Aye, it’s hard to go on breathing through a shattered and flattened throat. Their master’s fall left four armed retainers he’d brought along still to deal with—but one look at their master jerking and strangling on the floor had them whirling around to flee headlong.
> Mirt decided to snatch up the noble’s rapier and pursue them, to at least ventilate a few backsides. If witnesses telling tales to the Watch could be whittled down to one man, or several wounded men, the Watch might have fewer lies to wade through—or mistakenly swallow.
So it was that he returned to Rensharra drenched in blood, none of it his own, to find her barricaded in her bedchamber. The rest of her garments seemed to have vanished.
“My hero!” she gasped over the tangled barrier of furniture, her eyes alight. “No one ever fought to the death for me before!”
She tossed aside the splintered chair leg she’d been ready to club the wrong intruder with, and started flinging aside elements of barricade with furious energy and a fine disregard for dated styles of furniture, to welcome her right intruder.
“You deserve a reward,” she panted, when she’d cleared enough for her to drag Mirt into the room. “Come and claim it.”
A moment later, she demonstrated those words had been a command, not mere suggestion or entreaty, by taking hold of his blood-soaked belt and hauling, hard.
They fell into the waiting tent together.
“He’s shaking,” the drow murmured warningly to Gulkanun, nodding her head at Longclaws as the spell-cursed war wizard staggered wearily into his room and slammed its door.
“Means he’s exhausted,” Gulkanun said tersely. “He did most of my ward work, knowing I had to last the night awake standing watch. With you.”
The dark elf nodded. Longclaws had been the last of their colleagues to retire to a room. All of her suggested alterations of the wards were done, and everyone was beyond tired. She and Gulkanun regarded each other, neither of them smiling. Silence fell. In it, the curvaceous dark elf strolled slowly toward Gulkanun.
“I would prefer you kept your distance,” he muttered.
“You still don’t trust me,” she murmured accusingly, still advancing.
“Back,” he ordered her sharply.
Not slowing her same leisurely pace, she came right up to him, and reached out with one slender, long-fingered hand. Those fingers were reaching for … his wrist—of the hand he was using to grasp the butt of a still-sheathed wand.
Out from behind Gulkanun’s back, snake-swift, came his other hand, with a long needle in it, to jab that dusky drow hand.
“I suspected you’d try something, drow!” he said grimly. “I’ll—”
Her arms were closing around him, needle-transfixed hand and all, as he snarled and snatched out that wand, to feed her—
Nothing at all, as he stiffened and went silent. Frozen and helpless.
Elminster had flowed through feebly and vainly clawing dark elf fingers into Gulkanun—and overwhelmed the war wizard’s mind.
It took Manshoon some time to find any wizards at all in Hultail. Farmers taking slowly creaking carts to market could be seen everywhere, filling the muddy streets, but were well outnumbered by unhappily bawling rothé, goats, lambs, and oxen penned outside the fleshers’ and butcher’s yard. There was even activity at the wagon sheds, where a Moonsea-run wagon needed a new wheel and rails yestereve at the latest.
Yet there was no sign of the modest keep he’d expected to find. It wasn’t until he caught sight of a small tile-roofed stone cottage half-hidden under some sprawling old trees at the back of the moat-and-palisade-surrounded Watch yard that he saw what he was looking for—a line of wizards’ robes hung out on a washline.
Real dusk was drawing down, and a lamp was lit in that cottage, but only one man emerged to take in that washing before dewfall. A lone, unconcerned man, who waved cheerfully at the various members of the Watch who were—with their armor off, down to their breeches and shoulder braces—dumping out kitchen wash water into a pit ere returning to their barracks. So the duty war wizards in Hultail were sadly depleted in numbers, it seemed. Three down to one, without anyone seeming alarmed in the slightest. Which meant they were on duty nearby or out on a mission.
Manshoon fetched himself another decanter from what he’d been able to salvage from Dardulkyn’s cellar, sat back at his ease, and farscried around Hultail anew. Finding a continued distinct lack of wizards.
So, as real darkness came down, he peered along the Wyvernwater banks and up and down the Thunderflow, seeking blazing torches or activity. And still found nothing. The roads, then, the one to Thunderstone first.
There! Winking, bobbing lights … lanterns on lancepoles, held by mounted Purple Dragons. Armed and equipped for rough country, and riding in a ring around, yes, two wizards of war. Crown mages making speed through the night in wild country, which meant great urgency. They were heading for Thunderstone—and almost certainly, beyond Thunderstone, Castle Irlingstar. Well, now …
Yes, well now, indeed. Manshoon allowed himself a gleefully ruthless smile.
“So, my lords?” Young Lord Raegl Halgohar was handsome and charming and seldom had to pay to fill his bed. His dalliances of the early evening had been with two sisters from Suzail who’d clawed scratches he was quite proud of all down his back, before he’d left them to the hungry mercies of his groom and his page. He himself had proceeded to this gathering of noble wagerers with just his bodyguards—who were happily gossiping with the bullyblades of fellow wagering nobles in the outermost chamber, over the very best spiced eel fest bites. “Your faithful spell hurlers were yawning like bored cats on my way in, so I know you’ve been spell-watching the fun. How went the slaying of Rensharra Ironstave?”
Someone cursed feelingly, by way of reply.
“It did not go,” Lord Haeldown explained rather smugly. “As in, she did not die. Again.”
“Thanks to our fat and aging champion of a Lord of Waterdeep?”
“Indeed,” Lord Loroun said shortly. “That old rogue is costing me a fortune.”
“Whose?”
They all laughed politely at the old joke. It was an open secret among the Suzailan nobility that Loroun had moved from slavery and buying and selling city buildings into targeted moneylending that involved slaying his debtors and seizing all he could of their holdings before kin or other creditors arrived.
Lord Taseldon and Lord Haeldown wore satisfied smiles.
“Ah,” Halgohar interpreted, sitting down across from them. “You wagered against, again?”
“We did,” Taseldon confirmed, pushing a decanter and a tallglass across the table. “Join us in a drink to our continued success?”
“Gladly.” Halgohar looked down the table. “Loroun, where are you finding all these incompetent assassins? Accomplished killers can’t be in that short supply.”
“After all the attempted settling of scores between rival lords gathered here in Suzail for the council, you’d be surprised,” came the dark reply. “So many bodies were dumped in the harbor a few nights back that they blocked two main sewer grates. The Dragons were so gleeful when they started recognizing faces that they hushed it all up.”
“Hmm,” Halgohar commented, as a darker thought struck him. “I wonder how often that sort of hushing happens?”
Loroun’s smile held no mirth at all. “You’d be surprised.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
I AM THE AMBUSH
Ah, ye used carrion crawler brain fluid. Good. The paralysis will soon pass, leaving this body as usable as before.
The voice inside Gulkanun’s head felt human, and male, and … old. Ancient and mighty, a mind of depth and power, accomplished in both worldly experience and in the Art. A mind that had seen much, done much, shaped magic for centuries …
You knew King Berost? Berost the Bold? You’re that old? Gulkanun thought.
I am. My name is Elminster. Aye, that Elminster. Best known these days as the Sage of Shadowdale. Widely rumored to be a madwits old mage who deludes himself into claiming to have been a Chosen of Mystra. I am mad, and old, and a mage—and that claim is true.
I … I … Gulkanun thought.
Be neither awed nor alarmed, Duth Gulkanun. Ye serve
a worthy cause, and command respectable Art, and greater than that, good morals. Kindness, fairness, diligence; ye’d be surprised to know how truly rare these are, and ye have them all. Which is why I need ye—and Longclaws, and all the other worthy wizards of war of Cormyr, from Royal Magician Ganrahast to the rawest novices.
Need me? Need us? Gulkanun thought.
Aye. A door seemed to slowly swing wide in Gulkanun’s mind, spilling out bright glory … glory that rolled forward to embrace Duth Gulkanun, sweeping him along in a bright, rising flood that shared the goddess Mystra’s commandment to recruit the wizards of war to work for a better future for Cormyr and all the Realms, a commandment laced with Elminster’s own excitement.
Gulkanun found himself ecstatic, moved by a greater joy than he’d ever felt before, a gleeful plunge into glorious certainty. He could believe this invader in his mind, trust this powerful intellect touching him, because he could see that it was all true. There truly was a goddess of magic come back from oblivion, a good and true and wonderful Mystra, and she had indeed commanded Elminster, her once and again servant, to find blueflame and seal rifts to guard the Realms, to recruit the wizards of war and bring new glory to Cormyr, and …
I have never been able to so clearly know I’m being given truth, before. It is … wonderful, beyond all wonder I’ve ever felt before. This is trust. Gulkanun thought.
It is. Now, will ye stop being suspicious of this beautiful dark elf? She was a fell and evil servant of Lolth before, though young and of little accomplishment, but she has no mind but mine, now. We should waste no more time, but work together henceforth.
Yes, oh yes! Starting how? What should we do right now? I—Gulkanun thought.
Rough hands were suddenly clawing at Gulkanun, pulling him away from the drow he dimly realized he’d been embracing like a lover.
He turned, mind a-tumble with Elminster and the glory he’d brought shining in it, to look into the angrily frowning face of Imbrult Longclaws.