Swords of Dragonfire

The Calishite wizard yawned. “Merchant Haerrendar, never try to threaten me again. Or should I call you Bravran Merendil?”

His host went as white as winter snow. “You know!” he gasped.

“Of course. It is the business of Talan Yarl to know such things.” The wizard’s smile was jovial as he stroked his scented, immaculately trimmed beard, but his eyes were ice cold.

“Moreover,” he added, “your threats are unnecessary. When Talan Yarl is bought, he stays bought. You have blundered; pray refrain from doing so again. You intend a little regicide at this revel, do you not?”

The man Suzail knew as Ostagus Haerrendar, dealer in barrels, kegs, and pipes, stepped back, shuddering. It was some moments before he swallowed and said faintly, “It seems to be your business to know all things, no matter how secret or dangerous to know.”

“It is more than my business; it is my life, or rather, the reason I still have one. Yet that does not mean I ever approach knowing all, merely that I like to know who I’m truly dealing with. Doing so, I find, saves excess spilled blood.”

The Calishite looked down at the still form on the table between them. “This would be Rellond Blacksilver, known to many young noble ladies of your realm as ‘Rellond the Roughshod’ for his crude and impatient lovemaking. A rake and a wastrel I expected to see dead and buried long ago, with some angry noble father’s sword having relieved him of both his life and what fills his codpiece. Yet I see that he lives. Drugged or enspelled. This worthless braggart has something to do with your cunning plan?”

“Drugged,” Merendil said stiffly. “And there’s no need to mock my cleverness-or lack of it. I’m paying you very well.”

“That is true. Your gold should be sufficient to make me contentedly accept any idiocy you might offer, I’ll grant. Yet humor me, Merendil. Unfold to me your scheme. I really want to hear it. Truly.”

“If your magic is sufficient to accomplish control of this man’s mind,” the nobleman said carefully, “Rellond Blacksilver will… do the deed. Stabbing the King of Cormyr during the dancing. Outraged, you will then reduce him to ashes-regrettably too late to save Azoun, but-”

“I will do no such thing, idiot. If I am using a spell to control your dupe, the war wizards will detect it before he or I am anywhere near the king, and we shall both be imprisoned and later mind-reamed and executed.”

“Ah, but you won’t be using a spell on Blacksilver!”

“Oh? How, then?”

“There’s a mindworm in his brain. You’ve heard of them?”

“I have indeed.” Talan Yarl looked thoughtful. “I know of only one mage who uses them successfully-and he had to flee Halruaa and go into hiding in Turmish to keep his life, after word spread. Is this his work?”

“I know not. The mage who did it-name unknown to us, but we believe he was an outlander-first placed a worm in a young noble lass, who in turn infected Blacksilver and some others. He has since disappeared. We believe Vangerdahast’s pet war wizards got him.”

“So how did you learn of this worm?”

“Though the mage-again, we believe-never knew it, he was being spied upon by War Wizard Sarmeir Landorl, who was working with me.”

“A war wizard. So I am necessary how, exactly? Are you and Landorl seeking a scapegrace? A dupe to be blamed for your villainy?”

“No! I need you to do this, because, well… Landorl’s disappeared.”

“Vangerdahast’s war wizards again?”

“We-we think so.”

“ ‘We’? Who is this ‘we’? You and-?”

Merendil reddened. “My mother.”

“Your mother? Oh, brave conspirator, to make war on kings with your aged mother? What is she-fivescore years old, by now? A bedridden bag of bones, or a grave you stand over and murmur questions by night?”

“I am not quite either of those things, yet,” a sharp voice said from just behind Talan Yarl’s ear. “Just as the poison on this dagger you’re feeling hasn’t entirely faded away either. Now, are you with us? Not that I’m sure how much of a choice you have, O Yarl who stays bought. I very much doubt that we can let you walk out of here, knowing what you now know.”

Talan Yarl had stiffened at the first touch of the dagger point, eyes widening in utter astonishment. Nothing should have been able to approach him unawares, let alone pass through his shielding spell without him even noticing. He took great care not to move, though he wanted very much to see the Lady Merendil.

“Why, great Lady,” he said now, the sudden sheen of sweat on his brow belying his smooth manner, “this puts quite a different complexion upon the matter. Consider me enthusiastically and steadfastly with you. Upon my honor.”

“I’m utterly uninterested in your honor, mage. I want your blood-bond, sworn in a magefire pact. I want to know your blood will boil in your veins if you betray us. I find such mutual knowledge builds such stronger trust than honor.”

Swallowing, Talan Yarl managed a shaky smile. “That it does.”

Kahristra had been her personal maid these nine years, and to a lass who had seen little more than fourteen summers, that is a lifetime.

Wherefore Princess Tanalasta regarded Kahristra as a friend and a confidant, not a servant to be ordered around-nor someone she needed to act the dignified, glacially expressionless royal heir in front of. Wherefore she now pouted openly, as Kahristra finished dusting her with powder, until Kahristra stepped back, put hands on hips, and asked, “Tana, what’s wrong? Why this mood?”

The princess sighed. “I’m displeased that some stranger is sitting out there while I’m getting dressed. Can’t you send her away?”

Kahristra shook her head. “I can’t give her orders. She gives me orders.”

“What?” Tanalasta’s head snapped up, her brows drawing together in the frown that would always make her plainer than most women-and the very echo of her father the king.

“Yon woman,” the maid explained, lifting a finger to indicate the door that led out of the robing room into the retiring room beyond, where they both knew the unwelcome guest was sitting, “is a war wizard, and she’s here on your royal father’s orders.”

Tanalasta’s eyes widened in a mockery of incredulity. “So much I had guessed, but why? ”

Kahristra sighed. “There are certain suspicions that you might be endangered at this revel, if you aren’t protected.”

“You mean Vangerdahast is acting mysterious,” Tanalasta said disgustedly. “Again. He is the one who has suspicions.”

“Well… yes,” her maid confirmed, trying-not entirely successfully-to hide a grin.

“That man,” Tanalasta said, “is impossible! I wish someone would turn him into a frog, or a dragon would swallow him, or-or — something would happen to just take him out of all our lives!”

Kahristra shrugged. “In unfolding time to come, you just might get your wish. You can’t say plenty of folk haven’t tried. One of them is bound to succeed, some day.”

“You do realize,” the young man with the blazing yellow eyes said calmly, poised naked and magnificent above her, “that if we succeed in this, we must inevitably end up as foes.”

“Oh?” The hands of the lady merchant of Marsember tightened on his hips. “Does your Cormyr so firmly embrace fair Marsember, then?”

“As firmly as I’m embracing it now,” Terentane gasped, yielding to her hungry tugging.

“Well, now,” she snarled under his riding, through clenched teeth, “I suppose we will, at that. Years hence, I hope.”

“I hope so too,” Terentane panted-in the instant before the bed broke, beneath them, crashing to the floor.

Which groaned ominously, and started to cant, oh-so-slowly tipping as a worm-gnawed post gave way. Together, laughing wildly, the young man so powerful in his Art that Vangerdahast feared him, and the wily merchant twice his age who’d built her wealth into a rival of the Crown treasury, dashed out of the doomed room and down the stairs.

“ Must we use your rotting old boathouses for our trysts?” he protested, as they fell into each other’s arms again on a heap of old ropes at the bottom of the stairs, rats squealing and fleeing in all directions. Loud crashing through the wall beside them heralded the arrival of the shattered bed-piece by piece-onto the oar closet floor. Together they waited for the neatly racked oars, jarred loose, to topple… one, two, and then in a thunderous rush, many.

Between giggles, Amarauna Telfalcon told her newfound lover, “I–I thought it would be more romantic!”

He burst out laughing, and mirth conquered passion for a time.

They were oddly matched: an energetic mageling, rejected when he tried to join the war wizards by a Royal Magician awed by the strength of his untrained mastery of the Art and mistrusting his loyalty-and a ruggedly attractive, ruthless merchant shipper, owner of twenty cogs and caravels, a dozen warehouses in Suzail, and twice that many here in Marsember, who harbored no dream more burning than the desire to see Marsember free of Cormyr again. A Marsember ruled by its merchants-hard-working master merchants like the Telfalcons, meeting in council-rather than by corrupt nobles or sneaking, spying wizards.

When Terentane, the first man to look at her in a score of summers as anything more than a dupe to be fleeced or a rival to be shattered, reached for her again, Telfalcon playfully slapped his hands away.

“ This is supposed to get me ready to play at being this Yassandra? So just what, exactly, do lady war wizards do all day?”

“No, this was supposed to stop me getting nervous, and brooding over what could go wrong; remember?”

Amarauna turned a wooden cross-latch to let a door in the wall fall open-and oars come spilling out in a wooden flood. “Is it working?” she asked innocently.

Terentane’s sudden roar of laughter was so strong that it took him some time to master himself enough to pounce on her.

“Oh, you rogue! ” She laughed, as he caught her and whirled her around and down. “Come here.”

“Demands, demands, demands,” he growled, in a steadily more muffled manner.

So skillful was his tongue in the moments that followed that Amarauna finally relaxed, purring, eyes closing as she enjoyed the moment.

Then she heard a singing in the air that shouldn’t have been there, something quite different from the lapping and creaking of the boathouse, and her eyes snapped open.

She could not help but gasp. There, hanging in the air above them both like golden icicles, were nine glowing swords, long and keen, their points close enough for her to reach up and touch. “Terent?” she dared, trying to keep her voice from quavering.

“Nice, aren’t they?”

She managed not to shiver. “Yes.” When he made no reply, she asked, “You called them here?”

“Willed them here. Watch, but don’t move a muscle.”

Whatever reply Amarauna Telfalcon might have thought of making was lost in the hissing of blades as they sliced the air, falling just beside her bared skin, flats rather than edges touching her-two down each side, another two either side of her ankles, and the last “You young bastard! ”

“You old bitch,” he said affectionately-as the blades all slid silently skyward again, lifting in magnificent unison. “Let’s go kill war wizards.”

“Halt!” the war wizard ordered, as three Purple Dragons stepped out of darkened doorways to stand in front of him, drawing their swords.

The Knights kept on running.

“Get out of the way, in the king’s name!” Islif ordered, her voice firm and deep.

“ I speak for the king here!” the wizard snapped. “I say again: Halt! Throw down your weapons, and yield yourselves!”

“We seek the Dragondown Chambers!” Pennae shouted. “Where are they?”

“I gave you an order!” the war wizard thundered.

“I ignored it!” Florin roared back, with a violence and volume that startled everyone. “In Azoun’s name, wizard, I order you to stand aside! In Filfaeril’s name, I order you to assist us! Defy these orders at your peril! ”

“Nice,” Pennae said, as Florin’s bellow echoed away down the passage.

And then the Knights reached the Purple Dragons, and the wizard barely had time to howl, “We will not!” before swords were ringing off swords. Pennae rolled like a ball under a guard’s boots, and the Dragon fell helplessly on his rear, bouncing hard and sending the wizard staggering back.

Pennae launched herself into the air with a firm boot planted in the fallen Dragon’s stomach and her arms spread wide.

As Florin’s mighty swing numbed a desperately parrying Dragon’s sword hand and sent him staggering aside, and Islif did the same to the third Dragon, Pennae struck the wizard’s chest with one knee, driving him over backward. He received her grin and kiss just before he struck the stones hard enough to know no more-which was about the time Doust and Semoor tore off Islif’s Dragon’s helm and together ran him head-first into the passage wall and oblivion, and Florin’s solid punch felled his Dragon into similar unconsciousness.

“Oh,” Jhessail murmured, standing over the bodies shaking her head, “we are going to be in such trouble.”

Florin looked up, rubbing his knuckles, and growled, “I am beginning not to care.”

Seven more swords appeared in a winking whirl of drifting sparks to join the nine already hanging in the air. Terentane struck a triumphant pose that would have looked far grander if he hadn’t been young, pale, on the bony side, and stark naked. “Behold the Dragonfire swords, lost for so many years!”

Amarauna smiled. “Or rather, your counterfeits, crafted this last tenday.”

“Indeed.” Terentane dusted his hands briskly. “So. The gods themselves granted that I was in Halfhap. Two dead war wizards I managed to get out of the ruin of that inn with my spells: Yassandra Durstable-that’s you-and Brors Tamleth-that’ll be me. They’re in that family vault you use for smuggling right now, where they should be just fine unless some misfortune strikes that house and they decide to trundle the dear departed all the way over the mountains to the vault-before the revel’s over.”

“Hardly likely,” Amarauna granted. “Yet something we should remember. Sembians with that much coin have their family vaults spell-shielded, but it is in Cormyr-and war wizards, like brigands, poke their long noses into everything.” She grinned, then, and added, “Hmm. Like some young prodigies-at-Art I could name.”

Terentane rolled his eyes. “So let them poke. They can hardly do so in time. My spells will make us look like Durstable and Tamleth, and we rush to the Palace to triumphantly show them to Vangey. We only now won free of the Oldcoats wreckage, but look what we have!”

“And our act should get us through the war wizards on guard duty?”

“Yes, because all the important and powerful ones will be in the hall that’s hosting the revel; by the time we get to them, we’ll be close enough that I can let the swords ‘go wild.’ I’ll drop our disguises when we’re out of sight somewhere, and start killing war wizards-just striking at anyone who launches a spell. I can do that by feel, sitting in some back room far from all the screaming and Purple Dragons running around shouting and waving their swords at nothing, trying to protect the royal family. I only want to kill war wizards-Vangerdahast, of course, and as many more as possible-and should soon be able to win a position in the war wizards, what with scores of them dead and because I’ll then stand forth dramatically and hurl a spell before all the gawping Court that will dramatically destroy these deadly blades, saving the realm for everyone to see!”

Amarauna Telfalcon reached out her arms. “Whereupon you’ll help me make Marsember slowly and softly more and more independent, and Cormyr’s rule there weaker and weaker, as the years pass?”

Terentane strode over into her arms and kissed her with a fierce, impatient tenderness. “Of course,” he said. “You have my word on it!”

Bravran Merendil snarled and waved his hand again, “Phaugh! That wizard’s well gone, but his stink remains! Why do Calish-”

“Bravran, that will do! His scent may not be all he left behind.”

“Yes, but-”

“Not a word!”

“But-”

“Not a word, Bravran!”

Lady Imbressa Merendil had indeed seen fivescore summers, but magical potions had held back much of the ravages of age. She looked like many a wealthy matron of sixty summers, painted here and there to cover the worst of the wrinkles that could no longer be held entirely at bay. Her eyes flashed dark fire, her wide mouth looked always eager to laugh, and even an observer seeing her but fleetingly and for the first time knew at a glance she was no fool. She cast a strong shielding spell with the same swift expertise that had so impressed the departed Calishite in working the magefire blood-bond. Elegantly frail she might be, but her Art was as strong as many a veteran war wizard’s.

Her fretting son tried to speak again when the shielding was done and singing in the air around them, but she put a sternly reproving finger to her lips and worked another spell, this one a scrying-ward that rose within the shielding to wall out the world in steel gray mists.

“ Now you can speak freely, my son. In the brief time left to you before you must cease to be Ostagus Haerrendar for a time, become Dorn Talask, and get yourself to the revel.”

Dorn Talask was a Palace courtier whom Bravran Merendil happened to closely resemble. He would, if Lady Merendil’s agents failed her not, very soon be taken and slain.

Bravran nodded impatiently, and then burst out, “Mother, what if Blacksilver stabs Azoun but doesn’t manage to kill him? The king’s known to be a great warrior!”

“A mere scratch will do. The dagger blade is poisoned.”

Her son did not look reassured. “But Azoun is protected against so many venoms, by spell and antidote and deliberate dosing exposures!”

Lady Merendil smiled. “Not this one. It’s a Chultan distillate my best poisoner devised for me before he died.” Her voice turned wistful. “Ah, Laerakkan.”

Bravran Merendil waved away those last words he didn’t want to hear, an expression of distaste on his face, and snapped, “What? But you didn’t tell me this!”

“Of course not. The Calishite would have read it in your mind. He was reading you like a bright unrolled scroll, all the time he was here. It was all I could do to deflect his probes away from what you know about me-see the sweat on my brow? We can’t let him know about the poison.”

“Why not?”

“For two reasons. First, he’ll want it enough to slay us both and take it, rather than taking part in our risky venture at all. He needs no revenge on the Obarskyrs, remember. To him, all of this seems ill-planned madness.”

“And the second reason?”

“The very same poison is going to be on your blade, and you are going to stab him with it. Calishites are blackmailing serpents, given a chance, and I’m not about to give this one anything.”