Cormyr

Chapter 19: Chess

Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR)

Two men sat in an antechamber of the palace. Ostensibly they were off duty, enjoying a quiet game of chess in the quiet of the royal wing. In reality, they were war wizards, and they were very much on duty. They were here to ensure that none of the nobles gathered to see the dying king wandered where they weren’t supposed to… such as into the presence of the crown princess. With both the royal cousins dead or nearly so, no one but a war wizard could comfortably order about a noble of the realm without unpleasantness. War wizards could, however, because they were experts at unpleasantness.

The drifting silvery spheres in the water clock patiently marked the passing minutes as Kurthryn Shandarn frowned over the forest of tall, spindly white pieces sculpted of moonstone. They were emblazoned with the Purple Dragon of Cormyr, and the carved features of the king were said to be a good likeness of the long-dead King Galaghard. That wasn’t going to help his position much, though. He sighed, moved the turret carved with the arms of Arabel along a file of the board, and looked up.

Huldyl Rauthur met his gaze and made his move without hesitation. He was a short, stout man whose temples were almost always beaded with sweat, but he was a better crafter of new spells than Kurthryn, and they both knew it. For all that, Kurthryn outranked him. The war wizards were funny that way, a lot of enforced teaching and learning of humility went on, and there were still a lot of covert tests of loyalty. Those who failed such things usually simply vanished.

Kurthryn frowned down at the board again. Then, reluctantly, he moved his other turret, the one that bore the arms of Marsember, and sat back to survey the board. Huldyl’s bat riders-mounted wizards on oversized bats that were the counterparts of Kurthryn’s noble knights-were slashing through his line of soldiers. Huldyl moved a bat-mounted wizard and took one of those pawns now.

“One little dragon down,” he announced calmly. Kurthryn nodded absently and frowned down at the board again. The palace was as silent as a tomb around them, with the king still dying and all, and they’d both had ample opportunities to lose games of chess to each other yestereve and today. The other shift of war wizards, Imblaskos and Durndurve, were dice-and-cards men who played Wheel-of-Spells and Chase the Dragon and left the chess pieces undisturbed. Which had led to this long multishift match and Kurthryn’s present grim position.

Damn these dark days for Cormyr, anyway! Kurthryn tried to concentrate on his increasingly muddled defenses, noting that one of Huldyl’s death priests was threatening to slash in and take any one of three of his little dragons if he wasn’t careful.

A shadow flickered at the edge of the mage’s vision. Kurthryn looked up to see Aunadar Bleth stride past, on into the royal wing. The young nobleman was frowning and seemed to have acquired new lines on his face over the last few days. Kurthryn looked over to Huldyl, who had obviously been watching Bleth’s approach for some time, and the junior war wizard met Kurthryn’s eyes and shrugged. Technically the young noble was one of the very people they were here to stop, since he was a young noble. But then this particular young noble was the favorite of the crown princess, perhaps the next king of Cormyr-no, he’d be called a prince consort, wouldn’t he? Neither of the mages felt like denying Tanalasta what little comfort she could find just now… or offending the possible future queen.

Moreover, Tanalasta was Azoun’s eldest daughter, and word was going around the palace that the Lord High Wizard Vangerdahast himself, head of their brotherhood, was a traitor to the crown in her eyes, trying to make himself regent while Azoun lay dying downstairs. Fear made few folk love war wizards at the best of times, if the people came looking for scapegoats, Suzail-nay, all of Cormyr-might suddenly become a very unsafe place for those in the purple robes of the war wizards.

So where did the Royal Magician stand now? Several nobles had said loudly that any man who’d try to climb on the Dragon Throne while the king lay stricken in a bed not far off was a scoundrel, even if pieces of paper protected him from the charge of open treason. Such a man was morally unfit to be lord of anything, let alone the most powerfully ranked mage in all the land, whatever his true magical might.

One war wizard, an earnest young man from the Wyvernwater shores called Galados, had even confronted old Thunderspells about it last night-and had not been seen since. Whispers were spreading among the Brotherhood even now-wild rumors about a lot of things. Unable to concentrate on his game, Kurthryn Shandarn rubbed his eyes and voiced one of the rumors now.

“Anyone heard from Galados yet?” he murmured across the board. Huldyl did not look up.

“Nothing,” he said in a low voice. “Yet remember, none of us has been able to find Princess Alusair, either. She must be shielded. I wonder why.”

Kurthryn shrugged. “Who knows what precautions she usually takes in the Stonelands? They say Zhentarim lurk thereabouts all too often. I’d carry a magical device to hide my presence from other mages if Lord High Thunderspells’d spare me one.”

Huldyl grunted. “When you rise to such importance, let me know.”

Kurthryn chuckled and made a mildly rude gesture.

Huldyl returned it idly and asked, “Are you going to move another piece tonight, or shall we just talk?”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”

“As the sage said to the serving girl,” Huldyl responded wryly. “Old Thunderspells is probably fretting behind a shield of his own right now.”

“Fret? Him? Why?” Kurthryn moved a noble knight, and then, seeing the weakness he’d left, winced.

Huldyl shrugged and moved his death priest to topple one of the little dragons, ignoring the move Kurthryn had feared he’d make. “Our elder wizards, Vangerdahast among them, can’t even get any straight answers out of Princess High-and-Mighty about the governance of the realm.”

Kurthryn’s eyebrows rose, and he looked involuntarily over his shoulder to make sure that the outermost door of the chain of rooms that led to Crown Princess Tanalasta’s apartments was closed. It was. “Couldn’t Laspeera Inthre penetrate the royal thoughts?”

Huldyl smiled thinly. “She could if Tanalasta and her fiance Bleth weren’t both wearing spell shields taken from Azoun’s personal cache of seized and pillaged magic.”

It was Kurthryn’s turn to shrug. “Ah, well, if you’ve got it, use it. Handy, being king. Down through the years, you can seize a lot of magical gewgaws from the disloyal.” He looked down at the board in front of him and moved one of his bishops out of harm’s way.

“Mother Laspeera,” Huldyl said admiringly. “Now there’s a woman I could wish was younger, and I older. What a worker for the realm-and mother to us all.”

“And naught has been seen of her for days. She has gone missing in all this,” said Kurthryn. “Like Alaphondar the sage.”

“And like Galados,” added Huldyl, snaking a hand over the board. His death priest moved again, and another of the little Purple Dragons died.

Kurthryn sighed at the discarded chess piece as his colleague set it down beside the board, the latest member of a slowly growing group. He laid his hand on his queen to move it in front of old Galaghard, but the piece felt somehow warm and wet and uncomfortable under his fingers, and he drew his hand away again. Studying the board, he suddenly saw the sly attack Huldyl had prepared, and he hastily moved his king instead. The bishops and the noble knight were just going to have to take their chances.

Huldyl smiled. “I’m glad we don’t use that foolish rule the Calishites prefer… touch it and you must move it.”

“Oh-yes,” Kurthryn responded. “Small-minded etiquette for small-minded folk, eh?” Then he sighed again as Huldyl’s smile widened, and the junior war wizard brought that damnable death priest back across the board again to menace both Kurthryn’s turret of Arabel and his other knight.

“Who taught you to play this game? Old Thunderspells himself?” Kurthryn protested, looking down at the shambles of his position. Huldyl was going to be able to strike down his choice of at least two pieces while Kurthryn tried to move the rest of the Glory of Cormyr out of the way. He peered across the board at the enemy witch-king-Gondegal, some called it-secure behind the pair of black turrets, and sighed. There was just one chance… time for a little distraction. He leaned forward to deliver his most juicy secret.

His colleague was chuckling smugly. Kurthryn stilled that sound and left him gaping with his softspoken words. “I’ve been told that certain senior priests in this city, with the aid of a powerful archmage whose identity they are keeping secret, have discovered the cause. The poison that killed Bhereu and bids fair to kill both Thomdor and the king is a liquid-borne toxin that works through the bloodstream inside a man. The reason spells have failed to neutralize this poison is that it generates its own dead-magic zone.” He moved his knight.

Huldyl whistled low. The dead-magic zones, proof from any spellcasting, were a legacy of the Time of Troubles, when the gods walked Faerun. “So can they foil it now?” Huldyl asked, wild-eyed, leaning forward over the board in his excitement.

Kurthryn shrugged. “They’re working on it.”

The junior wizard sat back, rubbing his chin. “Who could have crafted it? A Red Wizard of Thay, perhaps, or another powerful lich or archmage? But who did it? Almost absently he moved one of his pieces.

“Who’s trying to become ruler of Cormyr?” Kurthryn responded grimly.

Huldyl threw up his hands, barking out a short, mirthless laugh. “Every third noble between here and Arabel, that’s who! There’s no shortage of those who might want to.” He rubbed his chin again and added thoughtfully, “And when subterfuge, plotting, and poison are the means, those who might not have spells nor swords strong enough to take the throne might have their chances.”

“You mean this man who’s wooing Tanalasta might really be after the crown?” Kurthryn shook his head in disbelief. “If it’s him in truth, why does Bleth not marry her first and make his claim clear before starting all the bloodshed?”

“It could be someone else,” Huldyl said, with another shrug. “I mean only that soft words and velvet handshakes have won as many thrones as the rising and falling of blood-drenched blades.”

Kurthryn waggled his eyebrows. “Been reading too much Tethyrian poetry, have we?” He moved his knight again.

Huldyl snarled in mock rage. “Aye, the same place you were reading books on how to play chess!” His death priest slid delicately across the board to slay Kurthryn’s advancing knight. “So much for sneak attacks, ‘good my lord,’” the junior wizard added.

With a weary sigh, Kurthryn moved one of his bishops. If this game bore any relation to reality, Cormyr had not long to last. “So what do you think of this young Bleth?”

Huldyl shrugged again. “It’s the princess who has to kiss him, not I. You know how I feel about sneering, lazy, idiot nobles. Granted he’s been crisply and ably delivering what few orders Tanalasta has deigned to decree thus far, but who’s to say how much of those orders are his intentions or embellishments? She never steps out of her chamber of sorrows to check!”

“Sounds like the Obarskyrs need a bit of steel in the old bloodline,” Kurthryn murmured.

“Hah! The line forms down the hall to marry the crown princess and father a long line of strapping sons,” Huldyl said sarcastically. “Shall I save you a place?”

“Nay. I fear, ‘good my lord,’ that I lack what is most needed,” Kurthryn replied, mimicking the tones of a cultured court official.

“Stamina?”

“Deafness,” Kurthryn replied flatly. “Have you heard Tanalasta when she’s in one of her moods? Such as when she is going over the account books, and finds a three-silver-piece error? Or hounding down some delinquent creditor or slipshod contractor? Nothing’s worth years and years of that! Not Cormyr, not fabled Myth Drannor at its proverbial height, not gold-buried Waterdeep right now!”

Huldyl chuckled and moved his much-traveled death priest back to a safer spot. “So what’s the latest out in the city?”

Kurthryn’s senior rank brought more reports to his ears than Huldyl ever heard, and he shared the relevant bits of the most recent one now. “Well, our esteemed Vangerdahast does have some significant and slowly growing support for his regency-the old heart-of-the-realm noble houses, mainly-but this Bleth, pet hound of the crown princess, is lining up nobles as fast as he can hand out bribes and twist arms on behalf of Tanalasta ruling as queen.”

“So who will win?” Huldyl asked quietly, and before Kurthryn could even lift his shoulders to shrug, added, “Nay, forget I asked that, instead, tell me: Who do you think offers the better road ahead for the realm?”

“I’ve thought about that a lot,” Kurthryn admitted. He grinned weakly when his colleague made a silently sarcastic so-who-hasn’t? gesture. “Both sides have their merits. I think Vangerdahast has the wisdom and experience to be much the better ruler, and without courtiers and senior nobles and royal cousins and what-all between him and us, he can use us of the war wizards far more swiftly than Azoun could move us to his will. Cormyr will be less corrupt and faster to respond to crises.”

“Yes, but will the people believe that?”

Kurthryn frowned and shook his head slowly. “No, they won’t. They never do. They’ll never trust magic, because they think of it as something their nasty neighbor would use against them if he could, and they’re always afraid the lot of us are as bad as their nasty neighbor. And with respected bards reminding them from time to time of how High Magess Amedahast died all those years ago battling the first war wizards, who can blame them?” Moodily he moved his king again.

Huldyl was nodding in somber agreement. “There’s another thing, too,” he added. “With a clear, unbroken Obarskyr line, everyone knows who has the right to sit on the throne. The moment a regency muddies the waters and someone marries one of the princesses, a rival noble will think he’s better suited to rule than the one who snared the princess-and once that starts, we won’t have a Cormyr unless the land can somehow endure every last noble family in it killing off all their rivals, until there’s no great house left. Then one of us will have to choose a commoner to wear the crown.”

“Ah, yes,” Kurthryn agreed grimly, “choosing the right commoner. The fun never ends, does it?”

“We probably won’t have to worry about having to make any such choice,” Huldyl said. “Remember, this whole thing has been forced upon us by a treasonous murderer, or perhaps a band of murderers. You really think they don’t have something of their own in mind for Cormyr? We’ll be lucky if we even find out who they are before they have our heads bouncing and rolling down the banks of Lake Azoun!”

“I think it’s Sembians-perhaps with help from Westgate, or even Amn. Merchants, anyway, who look upon Cormyr as a rich little breadbasket that they can empty faster if they don’t have a king in the way of their grasping hands,” Kurthryn said. “They may have bought or duped a few Cormyreans, and they’ll probably put a puppet noble house on and around the throne, but it’s outlanders doing this to Cormyr. I’m sure of it.”

“I’m not,” Huldyl replied in a voice of doom. “This has all the feel of a home-brewed plot.”

“How so?” Kurthryn asked dubiously. “You think some old noble with a grudge or ambitious young one can get his hands on a dead-magic toxin? Someone who’s very powerful in magic must be involved, someone better than even our Lord High Wizard, or he’d have cured the king by now.”

“Unless he’s behind it all,” Huldyl returned. “Who better placed to lead priests astray? And those of us who tried to help, too? All your point about the means of slaying really tells us is that the traitor or traitors have money enough to buy powerful magic. The deadly means might have come from anywhere in Faerun… perhaps the far Tuigan Wastes, or the lands of the far south, or across the seas to the west. What better place to find something that’ll baffle our best healers?”

Kurthryn nodded. “That feels right, that argument-but nothing in your words really proves it’s traitors here at home. Cormyr has no shortage of foes who’d like to see it gone… rich Sembians who’d like to expand their holdings, in particular.”

“Ah,” Huldyl said, leaning forward, “but which of those outsiders wants their prize of Cormyr damaged or ruined by strife? None of them. Who can’t see any way to what they want but strife? Someone who dwells here and has a place in society he knows he can’t be budged from. And who would benefit most from Azoun’s death and chaos in Cormyr?”

“Well,” Kurthryn responded, “who? You tell me! Alusair doesn’t really want the crown. She’s happiest playing lady adventurer across half Faerun, at her own whim. Apparently Tanalasta doesn’t want it either. This Bleth would probably be happy as prince consort, but he dare not move quickly to take real power or half the nobles in the realm’ll set him straight-and have him murdered if he ignores their rebukes. All of the nobles would probably like to strengthen their influence, wealth, and holdings, but no one noble house will be allowed to rise above the rest once the Obarskyrs are gone. They all regularly backstab each other, and they have no central leader. Their distrust of each other is so strong that they could never have one!”

“Go on, master plotter,” Huldyl said eagerly, waving at his friend to continue.

Kurthryn took a deep breath and added, “The military is loyal, by and large, to whoever sits on the Dragon Throne. The people always suspect us war wizards of treachery against the crown, but surely if there was some plot within our ranks, we’d have heard of it or smelled something. Besides, Vangerdahast keeps us on a short leash.”

“It all comes back to Vangerdahast, doesn’t it?” Huldyl said grimly.

They nodded to each other, both facing the same unpleasant possibility. The Lord High Wizard was powerful enough, perhaps, to create the deadly poison. One war wizard who’d confronted the old mage about his planned regency had disappeared. Vangerdahast was spending a lot of time trotting around, whispering with nobles, but he had said nothing, beyond a few curt orders, to his own war wizards. Moreover, he was usually a master at spreading rumors and swaying the people-yet this time he’d done nothing in that line, even with the folk of Suzail blaming the royal plight on any wizard who was handy. What was the old vulture’s game?

“Well,” Kurthryn said heavily, “at least we know at last what has laid the royals low. If I know old Thunderspells-and he is as loyal as I believe him to be-we’ll probably have a cure for it in days.”

“Too late for Bhereu.”

“Too late for him, but we could even lose Baron Thomdor and survive. So long as the king does not die, Cormyr will see itself through this crisis as it has through so many others. Even a king lying abed for years will save us from civil war… I hope.”

“You have more hope in you than I do,” Huldyl said gloomily. “And-“

Whatever else he may have said was lost forever as a lone figure in blue and silver, stumbling a little, came forlornly up the hall toward them. It was the priestess of Tymora, Gwennath, coming from the direction of the royal quarters. She was as white as Kurthryn’s chess pieces.

The war wizards exchanged a look, and Kurthryn put out a gentle hand. “Lady? Is there aught we can do for you?”

“Pray,” the priestess said in a trembling voice. “Pray for me… and for him… and for the realm. I have failed. Baron Thomdor is dead.”

She shook off his comforting hand, burst into tears, and strode away, sobbing out a prayer to Tymora.

The two wizards looked at each other again. “Check,” Huldyl said bitterly, moving his bat-mounted mage to threaten Kurthryn’s king.

Slowly Kurthryn reached out and tipped Galaghard over to signify his surrender. “We’d better go see,” he said wearily, and they got up in a swirl of robes and strode down the hall. Although they hurried, there was really no need to hurry now.

When they were gone, the moonstone queen that had felt odd to Kurthryn’s fingers earlier pulsed, shifted its position slightly, and then slowly flowed, like syrup, down over the edge of the board to the floor, where it rose, growing with terrifying speed, to become… a woman in a plain, dark, revealingly cut gown. She wore a locket on a black ribbon at her throat, with hair the color of honey and eyes like warm flames.

Emthrara the Harper, who with Laspeera had unlocked the secrets of the abraxus, unclenched her right fist. In her hand was a white chess piece: the queen she’d been. She set it on the proper square of the board, murmured, “Check indeed, good sirs,” and glided to one wall of the antechamber, where her deft fingers probed, pushed, and finally opened a hitherto hidden door in the paneling. Without a backward look, she slipped into the darkness beyond and was gone. The door shut behind her with the faintest of clicks, leaving the room dark and empty. Once more this part of the palace felt like a tomb.