Bury Elminster Deep

CHAPTER SIX

Wizard of War Ellard Gauntur was young, callow, full of self-importance, and zealous. At the moment, he was decidedly not full of sufficient breath.

He was gasping with excitement and exertion, having just sprinted the length of the royal court with five Purple Dragons in full armor puffing and clanging along in his wake. He skidded to a stop in front of a door that needed his hand and a whispered password to open, exulting as he flung it wide.

He finally had a chance to do something important, to get noticed-to be a hero!

Oh, and do true service for Cormyr, too…

“There’s one portal that usually gets forgotten!” he’d shouted. “He probably won’t go that way-but if he does, we can be there to prevent him!”

His heart had leaped up like lit torchwood when he’d seen the Dragons nod. There’d been approval on the veterans’ faces! Clear in Narbrace’s expression, and Hethel’s!

Now they were through the door and pounding along the dim and narrow passage behind him, around this last corner and Someone was standing at the closet door. Someone in wizards’ robes!

“Mreldrake!” Gauntur shouted. “Hold!”

The wizard at the open closet turned to look at him-then rushed into it, leaving behind only the soundless flash of light that meant the portal had taken her.

Yes, her. It had been a woman, not Mreldrake!

A woman he’d never seen before.

In robes that “It’s him! ’Twas a trick! Those were Mreldrake’s robes!” Gauntur snarled over his shoulder at Narbrace. “With that food stain down the front by the-”

He reached the open closet door, caught hold of the frame, and swung himself in and right at the dancing glow of the portal, then skidded to a stop and caught his breath in sudden apprehension Whereupon Narbrace shoved him hard in the back and growled jovially, “Lead us, gallant Gauntur!”

And the portal’s glow claimed him.

“As per orders, saer,” the Dragon puffed, “after Narbrace, Hethel, and the rest all followed him through, I came back to you to report. Mreldrake’s gone to Marsember, if the lad’s to be believed, and-and I knew you needed to know this, without delay!”

“Very proper, Swordcaptain Troon, and well done,” Fentable agreed, nodding. “Go now-catch your wind first, there’s not that much need for frantic haste-and catch up to Narbrace and your fellows. I’ll inform the wizards of war.” He clapped the breathless soldier on one armor-plated shoulder and hurried away.

Troon nodded, gasping for breath, and staggered to a garderobe door. His bladder was bursting…

Not long after a distant door had shut behind the hastening understeward, and Troon had found relief behind a much closer door, a streaking shadow came racing down the corridor.

It halted for a moment to rise up and glare around, and then it plunged through a wall and was gone again.

Once a Steel Regent, always a Steel Regent. That Fentable was every whit as rotten as Mreldrake-but when had he got that way? Who had gotten to him?

Sometimes, Alusair thought, she still existed only because of her abiding rage.

The court weren’t such a sorry, corrupt lot in my day!

Were they?

Targrael awakened in the chill darkness of the crypt with a pounding headache. She hadn’t known death knights could have pounding headaches.

The reason for her mind-pain was clear, even through her glee at being loosed once more to dance with the living. Manshoon, as he jabbed her back to awareness with vicious mental thrusts that shattered the cloaks over many of her memories, was in a seething rage.

That arrogant beast Mreldrake had been seen departing the palace through the main magical gate to Marsember-the king’s tower portal-by a shining-eyed young war wizard and a handful of Dragons. Who must now be slain, every last one of them, in a hurry. With the bodies hidden to prevent swift and easy priestly questioning.

All to hide Mreldrake’s trail. Manshoon must find him very useful.

To the slaughter, then, Wizard of War Ellard Gauntur and Purple Dragon veterans Ilstan Narbrace, Gorloun Hethel, Mandron Saldar, Berent Thallowood, and Unstrarr Troon. You served the realm in life, but your swift and sure deaths are now required for Cormyr’s greater service…

Targrael set the coffin lid carefully back into place, glided through the darkness like a chill breeze, and departed the crypt in a swift, gathering gale.

Manshoon was with her, but riding her mind lightly, most of his attention elsewhere. She was a hasty, brute-force solution to a problem that had arisen just at the moment when he’d have preferred to enjoy something else. Just what that “something else” was, she knew not, nor cared.

She was awake again, and that was enough.

The royal palace and royal court were her home; she knew both buildings better than anyone else. Every last damp and long-forgotten cellar corner, every nook with an outside window-ah, it was just after nightfall-and every secret passage. So it was ease itself to flit unnoticed, a tall and silent shadow among so many pillars, to the passage that led to a certain closet.

She approached cautiously. The guard who ought to be standing sentinel had power enough to destroy her with ease.

The door that led into the passage stood ajar, and no one stood guard at it… or anywhere within sight.

She used her sword to thrust the door open and tiptoed into the passage.

Where the silence held.

Everything was deserted.

Peering around a corner, she felt her eyebrows rise.

She was more than a little surprised to find the closet door open and the portal completely unguarded-after all, it was a way in and out of the heart of Cormyr’s power, and restoring it to safe reliability after the Spellplague had cost at least seven war wizards’ lives-but Targrael wasted no time in speculation or tarrying to wait for trouble. She strode fearlessly into the portal’s glow.

The far end of the portal-a cold, humid, and dark upper room of the king’s tower in Marsember that she remembered from long, long ago-was also deserted.

Well, now. The surprise deepens steadily, she thought.

There was the uncomfortable stool provided for the guard, and yonder the lidded chamberpot, the three lanterns hung on their hooks, and…

The mirror. Ah, yes, and didn’t the last true Highknight of the realm look lovely that night? Black armor and silver-edged black sword, bareheaded with her long, wild hair more white than gray. Framing a fine-boned face that had dead white skin to match, though there was a patch of mold growing on her cheek…

Targrael shrugged, giving her reflection a smile. Yes, mold or not, it was as cruel a face as ever.

She preened for a moment longer, her hand on her hip, to see if Manshoon’s anger would flare.

Yet he seemed not to notice, his attention even fainter. Whatever else he was seeing to was far more important to him, it seemed.

Which just might afford her the chance she needed…

Sword in hand, Targrael ducked through the open archway she knew young Gauntur would have taken, wondering if she could get to Ildool’s Veil before Manshoon realized what she was up to.

“But he’s one of our wizards,” a soldier growled under his breath, somewhere up ahead. “He’d go up to the spell chambers where they keep the magic, wouldn’t he? Not down to the docks like a sneak thief!”

“That’s why young Gauntur’s running back and forth like a chased chicken,” another Dragon replied. “He left us here to make sure Mreldrake doesn’t just fetch something and come right back to the portal, to get back to the palace.”

“Huh! The last place I’d run to, with Glathra after me! Still, splitting up your forces is nigh as foolish, so perhaps they don’t teach wizards of war basic sense…”

“Oh, well said, soldier,” Targrael murmured as her sword whipped across his throat. “I almost regret having to kill you. Yet-as you both know well-orders are orders.”

As she shoved the reeling, dying warrior away and slashed at his fellow Dragon, she saw the frightened face of her newest foe for an instant, on the far side of the sparks that flew as his desperate parry met her blade.

“So who are you, loyal Dragon?” she greeted him regally. “Saldar or Thallowood?”

The soldier gaped at her. “You know-?”

“Far too much, I’m afraid,” Targrael replied, driving his warsteel aside with her own and chopping his throat with the edge of her free hand.

The man sobbed for breath as he fell. She slammed down atop him, both knees to his belly, and chopped ruthlessly with her steel. His blade was easily sent flying from his numbed sword hand, and she brought her sword back in under his chin as she leaned forward, bringing them face-to-face. “Your name?”

“S-Saldar,” he gasped.

She smiled like a playful lover, kissed the end of his nose, and purred, “And what was the name of your friend, whom I dallied with first?”

“Thallowood,” he gulped.

Targrael slit his throat.

Heedless of how much of his blood drenched her, she sprang up and ran on. The king’s tower-what luck!

Now, if young Gauntur had been kind enough to have headed higher in the fortress, to the loftier rooms where wizards of war kept their trinkets and luxurious sleeping quarters… not to mention a certain old Crown secret known as Ildool’s Veil…

He had. Exulting, Targrael raced up the stairs after a young and panting Purple Dragon who was trying to catch up to at least two more. Gauntur would be with the foremost pair, to be sure, unless he was even more of a reckless young fool than she suspected. Even Highknights knew better than to challenge renegade wizards of war alone, when loyal and ready swordswingers were at hand.

Just two floors higher was the Veil, icy cold and endlessly whispering. A curtain black as night and everpresent, it was a field of magical force created long ago by Thayan mages hired by the villainous Lord Ildool, and deemed too useful to destroy.

Useful because those who ventured into its chill darkness and tarried there long enough were freed of all scrying, tracing, and prying-from-afar magics…

Ah! Of course! Much magic was kept in the chamber next to the Veil, and young Gauntur was no doubt eager to get in there and use most of it. Notably a scrying sphere that might help him find Mreldrake if his quarry had been truly stupid and not cloaked himself from it…

At the next landing Targrael caught up to Troon. Tapping the young Dragon on the shoulder, she easily caught his sword as he spun around to gape at her, and dragged him down until their lips met. Stifling any cry he might make, she drove her blade up under his chin.

He convulsed in her embrace and spat blood helplessly into her mouth. Targrael enjoyed its iron tang as she held him through brief and violent death spasms. When he sagged, she let him sprawl on the steps, and continued on.

The two remaining Dragons were veterans whose names she’d recognized; she would not overcome them so easily. Yet defeat them she must-the trick was to do it either without Gauntur knowing, or in a way that made them shields against the young fool’s magic, until she could get within sword’s reach of him…

“What’s through this door?” a man snapped. “Perhaps he went in here!”

Watching Gods Above! One of the Dragons was heading to the Veil!

Targrael swarmed up the last flight of stairs so swiftly she generated her own wind; its chill made Narbrace turn to face her as she reached the head of the stair. It was simplicity itself to thrust the tip of her sword through the open front of his helm-huh, he was the first of those she was hunting wise enough to wear a helm-and into his face.

Narbrace gurgled out his lifeblood as she stalked forward, twisting her sword and thrusting upward at the same time to make sure he died. That noise was enough to make Gauntur, who was on the far side of the half-open wizards’ armory door, call, “Narbrace? Is aught awry?”

Targrael smiled a brittle smile and moved to the wall beside the armory door, letting the dying Dragon slide off her gore-spattered sword.

Gauntur stuck his head out of the door at about the same time that the last Dragon-Hethel-emerged from the room with the Veil, saying, “There’s something in there that you’d best see, saer mage-”

The Dragon broke off to gape as he saw Gauntur staggering forward, clutching his slashed throat in a vain attempt to keep blood from spraying all over the stair he was about to topple down.

His tall, sleek slayer left his side, and stalked toward Hethel with a wide and gleeful smile on her face.

Her dead face.

The Purple Dragon backed away, starting to swear. Then he frowned in thought and glanced over his shoulder, obviously deciding it would be good to stand and defend the doorway of the room he’d just stepped out of, if he ducked back through it and Targrael gave him no more time to think of tactics or curses.

Thrust, parried, ducked low for a lunge that became a parry and forced the Dragon’s sword high, flung herself at his ankles in a roll, used the edge of her hand against the back of one knee as she pivoted around his ankle in a swift scuttling that left his sword biting only flagstones behind her, hacked up at his face and made him lose all balance in a wild parry, then tripped him over backward, over her.

He landed in a heavy, bouncing crash, and she pounced. Throat sliced open then up, up and sprinting for the Veil before he began his last choke.

I’m not betraying you, Master, I’m just carrying out my orders. Still busy killing the six you sent me after…

The Veil’s cold was like a welcoming caress. She was always cold, but this whispering left her skin tingling-alive, as she’d not felt in many a year-and her mind suddenly empty of Manshoon and all else.

Targrael shuddered, as if in the highest throes of lovemaking.

Free at last.

The magic crashed into Manshoon’s mind-and his waiting wards. He felt a shrieking, clawing instant of swirling chaos, of magic clawing vainly at magic, that for a moment gave him the feeling of an icy tingling, then swirling, veil-like darkness, and loss…

Manshoon blinked reflexively, unharmed and with an unwavering smile on his face, in the wake of what was Lord Relgadrar Loroun’s most powerful magic.

The old noble was retreating from him with reluctant defeat all over his face, letting fall the hand that bore hissing streamers of smoke where an ornate ring had been.

“That was the defense you were trusting in?” Manshoon asked incredulously. “Dear, dear.”

And he struck. Plunging through a pitiful excuse for a ward and into Loroun’s undefended mind, making it his with ruthless speed.

It was a dark and twisted mind, a place that felt almost welcoming. As with Crownrood-whom Loroun detested as a rival but measured as at least enough of a man to have the wits to be a rival-Manshoon was now master of a lord who plotted treason with eager gusto and fell intentions.

As his hold over Loroun deepened, he watched a slight smile to match his own slowly spread across the noble’s face.

A sudden storm broke over Marsember with an ear-splitting crash, the sky splitting in bright lightning that stabbed past the highest windows of the king’s tower. Then the rain came, hammering against the double-thick panes loudly enough to drown out anything less than a shout.

All of which suited Targrael just fine. The guards came down the stair from the roof in a drenched and cursing rush, charging right past the spattered blood without seeing it in the dark, lightning-shot wetness as their boots, cloaks, and scabbards all shed streams of rainwater.

Targrael stood still and silent behind the door that was only just ajar, listening to them pound past. The heavy trap door slammed down behind the last of them, two miserable men who spat water out of their mustaches to trade friendly insults and fervent desires to get “down below, to the fires” and warm themselves.

The death knight wished them every comfort, so long as they kept well away from these upper rooms until she was done searching them. The bodies of the six she’d been sent to slay were heaped against a back wall in the concealing darkness of the Veil, and unless any betraying ribbons of blood ran out from them to alert more diligent Dragons, or someone came along with a lantern and saw that some of the seas of water now adorning the tower flagstones were dark red, nothing looked amiss.

“I care not!” a man’s gruff voice floated up to her as a door banged open several floors below. “A far worse storm than this one will hit Suzail if we don’t keep vigilant, Swordcaptain! I want-”

Another door banged, taking whatever the Dragon officer wanted well beyond the reach of her ears.

Targrael smiled, willed the storm to rage on all night, and set about searching the rooms of the uppermost level. What she was seeking was old, dark, heavy, and decidedly unflattering. A one-piece warrior’s helm of oiled metal that bore no device or ornamentation, except a whimsical little etching of a wizard’s tall hat above the eyeslit.

A night helm. Or perhaps the Night Helm.

The tales said the legendary meddling mage Elminster had only given one to the Highknights of Cormyr. Perhaps he’d made the thing himself, though she’d never heard of him doing smithy work.

A “last defense” for an Obarskyr heir on the run, he’d termed it. The thing cloaked the mind of its wearer from all magic, so he-or she-couldn’t be magically found or influenced by wizards of war or anyone else.

Vangerdahast had hated the very idea, of course, and had tried to confiscate the thing and outlaw its possession or acquisition-but Caladnei had held a different view, and he had instead advocated making many night helms, to be held in secret, guarded storage until need arose.

Targrael knew not if any such helms had been made, but palace lore insisted Elminster’s gift had not been destroyed nor had any curse cast on it, but rather had been hidden away somewhere “well out of Suzail.” In Marsember, most rumors suggested. At the top of the king’s tower in the damp and often rebellious port, one whisper specified.

Targrael very much hoped that particular whisperer had been right, and the helm was here, so it could hide her from Manshoon henceforth. And of paramount importance, hide her from his scrying spells before he came looking for her.

She flung open a door and started searching. The gods smiled upon her thrice in this; first, the king’s tower was old and massive, made of stonework that did not hide new construction well, and hadn’t been built with hideaways in the first place. Secondly, Cormyrean armories, magical ones in particular, were strongholds where items were carefully crated, shielded from each other by stone half walls or even full walls with stout doors, and everything was tidy. Lastly, as a Highknight, she knew how most Cormyrean seneschals and garrison commanders liked to arrange things-and that they did not like to face nasty trap spells or alarms when snatching up arms in an emergency. Such spells would be found lower in the tower, commanding the stair up to the top levels, not on the upper levels themselves.

Unless, of course, even more idiocy than she’d thought had crept into the minds of the upper ranks of Cormyr’s wizards, soldiers, and her fellow Highknights in the long years when she’d been resting in that tomb.

The Night Helm was nowhere to be found in the first chamber or the second, though she did acquire a useful trio of daggers in forearm and ankle sheaths-but it was the first thing to strike her eye in the third room.

She peered around swiftly for traps, alarms, or paralyzing-bite spider guardians, saw none-and picked up the helm.

Nothing happened.

With tense excitement, Targrael examined the helm carefully to make sure nothing was inside, like a blade set to snap across the wearer’s throat, or any sharp inner points coated with suspicious substances. None.

She hadn’t needed to breathe for over a century, but as she lifted the helm, she realized she was trying to hold her breath.

In sudden impatience, she hauled it down over her head, settled it in place, and peered out of its eyeslit at the room around her.

Nothing happened. Silence.

Utter silence, that is. The ever-so-faint, everpresent singing sound that had been in her head since Manshoon’s first trampling invasion was gone.

Gone.

She was free.

Truly free.

Unleashed and with the leash torn away, let loose to follow her own desires. To serve Cormyr properly once more.

Free to hunt Manshoon down. And do the same to Elminster the meddler and the incumbent fools of the court, the current courtiers and wizards of war-from the doorjacks on up, most of them were incompetent traitors and fools who endangered Cormyr by their very presence.

Yes, she was free to be herself again. No archwizard’s slave, but the guardian of Cormyr.

The guardian of Cormyr. Its sole true bannermaster. Her every thought and moment once more devoted to calculated deeds that would advance Cormyr to new greatness. Unmoved by sentiment and misplaced loyalties to traditions or the House of Obarskyr or anything else. She would be the clear-headed, dispassionate agent of the Forest Kingdom.

Unless, of course, she ran into that bitch Alusair again.