Bury Elminster Deep

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Got you here, didn’t it?”

Glathra Barcantle stiffened as if she’d been slapped, then turned slowly, trembling hands clenched and a wordless, rising-pitch snarl escaping her lips.

Her towering rage at discovering no danger at all in the royal wing, that she’d been duped, and that she’d awakened Obarskyrs for no good reason had not been improved by angry royal aspersions upon her competence.

She was facing a sleepy King Foril right now, and he continued to be none too amused.

So an unwelcome voice from behind her was a last slapping insult, by the throne!

“Give me one good reason,” she hissed as she addressed a spiderlike intruder that had somehow gotten past several posts of guards and into the outermost anteroom of the king’s own bedchambers, “why I should not blast you to your grave, right now.”

“You’ll be dooming the realm, entirely for your own selfish ambition and shortsighted stupidity,” the black, wraithlike head atop spiderlike human fingers replied calmly, lifting one finger to wag it at her disapprovingly. “To put it diplomatically.”

The king had caught up a scepter that could do all the blasting that might be necessary to dispose of all of his guests and most of the wall beyond them, too, but was staring past Glathra at the walking head atop the high back of his best guest chair with interest rather than fear.

“Are you who I think you are?” Foril asked quietly. “Vangerdahast?”

“I am,” the spiderlike thing replied. “And I needed to lure this noisy wizard up here so I could converse with her before a royal audience. Vastly increasing the chances she’ll listen and obey.”

Glathra exploded. “What? Don’t presume to give me orders! Your time is past, old man-by the Dragon, your time as a man is past!”

“I serve the realm still. And do so far better than you’ve ever done, Barcantle. Bluster, highhanded rudeness, and lashing out before you consider consequences is never superior to subtle manipulations-even if you weren’t now facing a city full of angered nobles just itching to find provocations. So spare me your shouts, and tender me your ears and whatever small part of your brain you still use for thinking.”

“How dare-? I’ve never been spoken to-”

“Indeed, and what a problem that’s created! Now, will you listen?”

Glathra folded her arms across her chest and tossed her head. “I don’t even know you are the infamous royal magician! You look like a construct an ambitious but not accomplished mage might cobble together! The words we’re hearing from you right now could be those of any traitor noble, Sembian, or other foe of the Dragon Throne!”

“Or they could be my own. Foril, call to mind the line of verse Queen Filfaeril left to you, written in a locket, but say them not.”

The king frowned then nodded. “I remember them.”

“ ‘The Crown of the Dragon is a thing so heavy, that I send my love to all who may wear it when I am dust, because only love can hold it high,’ ” the spiderlike thing declaimed, then asked, “Believe I’m Old Vangey now?”

“No,” Glathra snapped, before the king could speak. “Scores of courtiers know those words now, because of various royal scribes and palace gossip and the Highknights’ use of parts of it, some time back, as pass phrases.”

“Very well,” the wraith-spider replied and murmured something too softly for either the king or the wizard of war to hear.

Foril’s scepter suddenly vanished from his hand, two suits of armor in the corners of the anteroom stepped down off their plinths and knelt to the king, and a dusty stone statue at the end of the room shifted its pose to hold forth and open the stone book it was carrying, revealing it to be a pipe coffer holding three pipes and four small and rather moldering lines of pipeweed.

“Do you believe me now?” the spiderlike intruder asked rather testily. “I come on a matter of some urgency, as it happens, and would rather not deprive the crowned head of Cormyr of any more royal slumber because I’m being challenged to do tricks.”

“I believe you,” King Foril Obarskyr said firmly, “and that should be sufficient. What do you want, Royal Magician Vangerdahast?”

“To tell Your Majesty that I’ve found Ganrahast and Vainrence in magical stasis, down in the royal crypt.”

“What?!” The king and wizard of war shouted that word together.

“Reduced to what I’ve become,” Vangey continued calmly, “I can’t cast the necessary spells if they awaken crazed or hostile or enthralled by a foe of the realm. So, I need Glathra here to gather four or five war wizards of experience and accomplishment, and go down and release them.”

“Is this another ploy, old madwits? Another deception?” Glathra spat. “What sort of trap awaits us down there, hey? You just want us all gone, so you can rule again!”

“I want nothing of the sort,” Vangerdahast snapped. “Other than to know just why you didn’t search the palace well enough to find them yourself, days ago. I would hate to think you were either that incompetent or that much of a traitor.”

Glathra went white. “You dare accuse me of treason?”

“Yes. Twice now. I’ll do it again, if you’re hard of hearing. Foril, will you please order this witch to go down to the stlarning crypt and free the royal magician and the lord warder? I don’t need to sleep anymore, and even I’m getting weary of endless snappish debating.”

A sudden commotion erupted outside the doors, the gruff challenges of veteran Dragons overruled by stern orders-and then the doors were flung wide.

Three Crown mages stood there. Seeing the king in his nightrobe, they hastily went to their knees. “Forgive us, Your Majesty, but there’s grave peril! Statues and suits of armor-solid stone ones, and empty suits, that is! — are on the move, all over the palace! They’re tramping places and rearranging things, and we can’t-”

The wraith-spider chuckled, muttered something, then said, “Sorry. That should all stop now. I hope.”

The war wizards all stared at the spider-thing, and some of the Dragons behind them raised spears as if to try to stab at it over the heads of the gaping mages.

“Behold,” Vangerdahast said gleefully. “Here are the wizards you’ll need, Glathra. You might actually reach the crypt before highsun, if you stop arguing and start obeying!”

Glathra glared at him. “I-”

“Can provide us with no good reason not to go down to the royal crypt to investigate Lord Vangerdahast’s claims,” the king said firmly. “Wherefore, I now give you, Lady Glathra, these explicit orders-you are to free the royal magician and lord warder if you find them, and bring them unharmed here to this chamber without delay, that I may converse with them. You are to take these wizards and all of the loyal Dragons outside my doors except Launcel and Tarimmon, there, who will remain as my guardians. Go. Go now. See that this is done.”

With alacrity Glathra bowed low and replied, “It shall be, Majesty.”

After she’d swept out, she looked back to see if the wraith-spider was offering any menace to the king-but it had vanished.

She hesitated, but the king gave her a cold look. She hurried off toward the nearest stair.

The royal crypt was a long way down from there.

“Th-the Three Dolphins Door,” Neld quavered. “Now, will you stop hitting me?”

Mirt gave him a jovial grin and slap on the back that almost pitched the hostler off the coach and onto the rump of one of the hindmost horses.

“Of course,” the Waterdhavian agreed. “Down ye get, now, an’ run along, an’ I’ll say nothing at all bad about ye to the royal magician. A pleasure, Master Neld-a distinct pleasure!”

Neld said something in an incredulous voice as he launched himself in a heroic leap out from the drovers’ seat to the hard cobbles of the Promenade, quite a distance to one side of the coach.

Mirt gave him a cheery wave and brought the coach to a rattling stop outside the Three Dolphins Door.

Four impassive guards held their positions, spears slanted just so, as if he, his coach, and their dust weren’t there at all.

Behind the four Dragons, the double doors that made up the Three Dolphins “Door” started to swing inward.

Smoothly the door guards swung around to face inward, so that whoever was departing the palace would pass between them.

“These prisoners,” an officer’s voice inside began suspiciously.

“I have my orders,” came a flat reply, then the same voice snapped some orders of its own. “Forward. Into the coach. Remember, my wand is ready.”

Storm Silverhand strode out of the palace in shackles and dangling chains, her head bowed. The Lord Delcastle followed her, then Amarune, also in shackles. Behind them came the War Wizard Tracegar, his wand in hand.

Storm stopped in front of the coach and waited. After a long span of hesitation, one of the outer-door guards stepped forward, opened the coach door, and folded down its pair of steps. She ascended, and the other two prisoners followed, under the frowningly suspicious stares of all the guards.

As Tracegar got into the coach with them, one of the guards peered up at Mirt, then snapped, “I’ve not seen you before, and you wear no uniform! Who are you?”

Mirt gave the man a hard stare. “Ask the king. Keep in mind that your low rank will limit the answers you’ll get. And may well wind up lower, when you’re done asking.”

Tracegar rapped on the inside roof of the coach then, so Mirt flicked his whip, clucked to the horses, and set the coach in motion, his stare never leaving the guard’s eyes.

Unhindered, Glathra’s prisoners were conveyed in stately splendor up the Promenade-and out of her reach.

For a while.

The Lady Deleira Truesilver was not in a good mood. Wherefore, fools and those who merely happened to displease her did well to get themselves out of her sight and stay there. Though it was true she was eye-catchingly beautiful, lithe, and elegant, her exquisitely styled white hair contrasting with her flashing yellow eyes, it was the edge of her tongue and the weight of her formidable wits and character they were apt to remember instead, on nights like this.

To put it plainly, she ruled Truesilver House like a tyrant, and in the so-late-they-were-early hours since her reappearance from her chambers, she had verbally demolished two of her kin and a few servants for various stupidities. Having grown tired of having to find fresh words to find so much fault when it seemed to besiege her on all sides, she retired to her chambers again, dismissing her maids and locking them out.

Certain of her inner chambers had bars as well as bolts, and she used these with the deft vigor of a woman half her age, her movements both graceful and imperious.

When the last door was firmly fastened, leaving her only the windows, balconies, and certain secret passages as ways of departing her self-imposed retreat, the Lady Truesilver turned and began to disrobe as she walked toward her favorite bedchamber, kicking off her dainty boots and then doing off her gown and petticoats and hurling them aside for all the world as if she were a club dancer.

When she was down to the most scandalously brief of clouts-definitely the fashion of club dancers, and not aging noble matriarchs-she padded barefoot to a particular relief-carved wall panel, did something to the eye of the doe carved on it and then something else to a moon depicted in a panel across the room-and then returned to the first panel, put two fingertips around some gnarled tree roots in the carving, and drew the panel gently open.

The revealed recess beyond was just large enough for her to hide in-she’d done so just twice, and one had been only a short trial-but held, on foldout hooks, things that did not look at all ladylike. She drew them out, one by one, draping them on handy furniture: boots, several weapon-belts, and then some garments.

The tight leathers of a thief.

All that was left in the closet were wigs-long, dark hair that hung on their hooks like cowls-and a coil of dark, slender cord.

She shook out the leathers, reached for the well-oiled, supple breeches-and froze.

The curtains that framed the door to her balcony were swirling, and no one should have been there to make them move.

Someone was. Not of Truesilver House, but someone she’d never seen before. An intruder. Dark, agile, feminine… and bearing a drawn sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

Lady Truesilver glanced over at her swordbelt- just out of reach, slung over the back of a chair, with her dagger-baldrics impossibly distant on the lounge beyond-and asked calmly, “Who are you, and what do you want?”

“I am one who has served Cormyr since your grandmother was young,” the intruder replied almost mockingly, the voice female, gentle, and at the same time colder than Deleira Truesilver’s frostiest tones, “and I want to know your secrets. Talane.”

Lady Truesilver stiffened. No one should know that she was She whirled and fled, seeking her innermost bedchamber and a door she could slam between her and this intruder.

Who shed a dark helm as she sprang across the room like a panther and pounced, slamming Deleira Truesilver bruisingly to the floor and easily overpowering her in a chilling, steel-strong grip.

“Not so fast,” the intruder hissed, their faces almost touching. An eerie glow came from between the unfamiliar woman’s teeth. “Your death can be easily achieved, but I want what you know first.”

“And just how are you going to get that?” Lady Truesilver snarled defiantly, arching and struggling, trying to buck her attacker off.

“Like this,” Targrael replied, opening her mouth to reveal a glowing white gem on her tongue-before she forced Deleira Truesilver’s jaws open with iron-hard fingers, and kissed her.

A flash of light erupted as their tongues met that Deleira Truesilver felt, like a silent roar of surf crashing through her very bones, and she felt the cold, somehow minty feeling of magic awakening within her.

Her attacker was now more than a stronger, colder body than hers, holding her down. There was another mind in hers, a dark and looming presence growing larger and closer.

Lady Truesilver did not hear the words that Targrael spoke then so much as she felt them.

“The royal magicians of Cormyr left some very interesting magics hidden around the palace. This was the one that most interested me.”

Enthralled and helpless, Deleira Truesilver couldn’t move or speak as the dark malice of her foe’s cruel, hostile mind flooded into hers, drowning her in shivering darkness…

The Horngate, of course, was locked and barred for the night. The stone-faced guards there crisply informed Mirt that they had no intention whatsoever, short of the correct horncalls from the palace, or the king himself wagging “crown and scepter” in their faces, of opening it before morning.

“All Cormyreans know these rules,” one of them added sharply. “Climb down from there, man, and yield up to us your name, your business here, the land you hail from, your passengers-and their destination. Now.”

Mirt sighed. “I have my orders, an’ they don’t sit well with the ones ye’re giving me, man. So a little less of the ‘now,’ if ye don’t mind.”

“But I do mind, saer! Now, there are ten crossbows aimed at you, so I’m going to tell you agai-”

“If ye put a quarrel through any of my passengers,” Mirt roared, “ ‘tis yer lives as’ll be forfeit, idiot Dragons! Now, down bows, an’ pay heed to who’s stepping out of my coach!”

His shout rang back at him off the closed gates, and he sat down sweating, hoping very much he’d bought Elminster enough time to think of something.

Under him, the coach made the slight rocking that meant its door had been opened and someone was stepping down.

There was a stir among the guards, and he could see crossbows being lowered. They obviously recognized the passenger who’d alighted.

“Open the gate,” came a crisp, simple order.

Mirt hid a smirk. The voice was a very good imitation of the Lady Glathra Barcantle’s shrill of excitement, but it was Elminster’s very good imitation.

And now the guards were opening the gate, and “Glathra” was climbing back into the coach.

Mirt waited for the rap on the coach roof before he urged the horses forward again, and they rumbled out of Suzail into the last dark hours of the night.

Or were they the darkest hours of the morning?

Even after twenty seasons of leading raids in those dark hours, Mirt had never decided.

He waited until they were out of bowshot from the walls before opening the little hatch that let a drover talk with passengers, and asking, “Where now?”

“We take the coach to the paddocks nigh Eastgate,” Elminster’s voice came up to him, “and leave it there, hobbling the horses. Then we go for a long walk on Jester’s Green, well out from the walls. We’ll go well west, around to the Field Gates. Accompanied by this pet war wizard of ours, we’ll trudge back into the city through them at daybreak, looking suitably different than we do now. We’ll be burying those shackles.”

“Oh?” Mirt growled. “What’re ye going to make me look like?”

“Old Lord Helderstone,” Elminster told him. “He has no heirs and has dwelt in seclusion in Sembia for years-no one in Suzail should know that he’s dead yet. I know where a handsome fortune in coins can be had, and ye can lord it up in a highnose inn as long as they hold out. Storm will be thy servant. I’ll make Rune look like a retired Highknight I recall, who died a few months back, who’s now in Suzail and investigating just why rich old Lord Helderstone has returned to Cormyr-in other words, which faction of treason-plotting nobles he’s drenching in floods of coins-and the rest of the time she can look like Amarune and be with Arclath, the two of them keeping well away from ye.”

“While I do what?”

“Wench, trade, work a few swindles, get rich-in short, be thyself,” El replied. “No noble of Cormyr would spend a score of summers in Sembia who did not love coins and the winning of them.”

“And what will ye be doing?”

“Trying to hunt down and slay Manshoon, and hold Cormyr together, and find and come to command or destroy all the blueflame ghosts, of course.”

Mirt shook his head slowly. “Ye’re as crazed as ever.”

“Of course.”

Mirt could hear Elminster’s grin.