The Herald

CHAPTER 16

"I have an idea,” Elminster announced suddenly.

“Of course you do,” the Srinshee, Alustriel, and Laeral all replied in unintentional unison-something that startled them into gales of laughter.

El overrode them all with a firm, “Heed me!” And then added, “For I’ll be needing aid-mind-steadying-from all of ye.”

“El,” Laeral told him crisply, “you’ve needed that for years.”

That brought a chuckle from the man himself, amid fresh mirth from the others, but then he said, “I’ve magically bound more than a few beings over the years. Some, I’m thinking, could wreak much havoc among the armies of Thultanthar gathered here.”

“And against the battered few Tel’Quess still fighting for our city,” the Srinshee said sharply.

“Only if they break through all the massed mercenaries I’m thinking of putting them right into the midst of.”

“What sort of bound beings?” Alustriel asked suspiciously.

“Dracoliches, dragons, beholders, and the like. Usually I thrust them into stasis, where they’ve been caught ever since, but in a few cases I bound them to a particular place, so they could no longer wander and maraud at will.”

“Dragons … beholders,” the Srinshee murmured, shaking her head. “And this will help my people how? By sending them to their graves all the sooner?”

“If you help me transform the bindings I’ve laid on them into prohibitions to keep them from translocating or flying,” El explained, “we’ll keep most of them ground ridden. Beholders dragging themselves along, dragons and dracoliches stalking like cats-they’ll be caught in the thick of well-armed hireswords who can hit back, and hit hard. Lots of hireswords. The armies far too numerous for the Tel’Quess of Myth Drannor to stand against. Think of these beasts as our army.”

Laeral winced. “I have some ethical qualms … convince me, El.”

“I bind nothing and no one lightly. These bound creatures are all menaces-and if I fall in battle, they’ll all be loosed anyway, wherever they are on Toril, without heralding nor any watch over where they go and what they do. Which will undoubtedly be to slaughter and despoil and devour. Why not have that havoc be visited on warriors who’ve taken coin to do butchery on others, in a forest-locked city far from what any of them hold dear, whose inhabitants have threatened them not at all? Let them earn their blood-coins for once. And if all this should thin the ranks of mercenaries, so be it. Better they fall, and all lands be somewhat the safer for the lack of so cheap and plentiful means of making war, than Myth Drannor fall and Shar or Larloch or something worse prevail, the Weave crash, and a new Spellplague or worse race like wildfire across the world, and countless beings be plunged into fear and misery and lives of desperate savagery, fighting every day just to stay alive in the face of-”

“Enough,” Laeral said firmly. “You’ve slain my qualms, not to mention any more qualms I may entertain for the next season or so. Let’s be loosing your beasts-only with precision.”

“Of course,” Elminster agreed. “That is what I need the three of ye to help with. I need ye to steady and guide me, so we translocate each beast to the best spot at the right time.”

“Though every moment we spend means more of my people fall,” the Srinshee said firmly, “we are going to begin by taking time enough to swiftly survey the strength of the foe, and just where they’re scattered. Fortunately, this was a survey I was already undertaking when you arrived. Sit down, all of you.”

“I-”

“Sit down. Or lie down; whatever brings most ease. Linking hands, all of us, in a ring. Attune to me.”

Both Alustriel and Laeral opened their mouths as if to protest, then nodded, sat, and reached out for Elminster- who was grinning at the Srinshee’s sudden fire-and for the Srinshee herself.

It took a moment for their minds to mesh, four so spirited and long-lived individuals, but when the inevitable tugging and surging subsided into a comfortable union, their linked minds flashed out to several pairs of small, darting forest birds, and rode their tiny minds and all-seeing eyes through the trees, sweeping over the Shadovar army ringing Myth Drannor. Everywhere within the city, there were skirmishes and fires and rushing armed bands … but not far off, there were thousands of mercenaries encamped, or waiting orders to advance into the city.

Elminster and the two sisters could feel the Srinshee’s despair growing as she saw just how many hireswords there were-and how few elves were left to stand against them.

“Do it,” she snapped at last. “A good big dragon there, and a dracolich there, and beholders here and here. So anyone fleeing will rush into the fearful running from another peril, not off by themselves to straggle through the forest for days and regroup to do mischief. Hem them in with terror. Then we watch, and unbind more beasts only as some of those fall. Yes?”

“Yes,” three mind-voices agreed, and plunged into Elminster’s memories, following him down to the black elder wyrm Harlotharaur, bound in a deep mountain cavern on the northern edge of Amn after it had gloated to El that nothing and no one could stop it poisoning the wells of human cities and the streams that watered mountain villages, to destroy humans in their tens of thousands, and so rid the land of a pest that endangered all other creatures.

The bindings on the dragon were thus and so … Alustriel and Laeral twisted them, and when the roused Harlotharaur stretched its wings and sat up in fell glee to smite the bindings and win its freedom, the Srinshee smilingly plunged into the dragon’s mind, pinned its every muscle, and held it immobile as she translocated it to precisely the spot she’d chosen-and then flung it into a daze.

When the wyrm recovered, not all that many handfuls of moments later, all trace of the four minds that had so violated it were gone, but it was ringed by angry and fearful humans who were even now assailing it with everything they could swing, hurl, or thrust.

Almost gleefully it gave battle, rearing up and lashing out in one titanic surge. Broken bodies were flung high into the air, or sent spattering off trees all around-and Harlotharaur roared in exulting challenge, and set about harvesting more bodies to hurl. It gathered itself for a bound into the air, and flung out its wings for one great beat-only to feel nothing. The muscles that should coil and let it bound into the air twitched and spasmed instead of obeying, and the wings drooped; they could spread but not beat down with any force at all, nor hold an edge …

In baffled rage Harlotharaur tried again and again, throwing back its head and howling its fury. And then it lowered its head and reached out with its claws and jaws, and dug into the armed humans around it, savaging them and scattering them like dried leaves, and then savaging them some more.

By then, the Srinshee was already rooting through Elminster’s deep memories, dismissing the seething pain it caused him with a brisk, “The sooner we’re in and out and done, the sooner you can start mending your mind-something you should have given more thought to long ago.”

Finding the dracolich he wanted her to find, the Srinshee pounced.

Its cold eyes stared around vainly in the lightless, frigid water and swirling mud. El, Srinshee, Laeral, and Alustriel could all feel its puzzlement, and now, as they drifted in more closely to its flashing thoughts, could hear what it was thinking.

Who were these awakeners? They were-they were in its own mind, nowhere to be seen …

Anger and fear blossomed and rose in the bone dragon’s thoughts. It was Tlossarylathaunglar by name, one of the oldest and most fell creations of the Cult of the Dragon, long frozen by El’s will and Art in the silted depths of a frigid Underdark lake after it refused to stop using its spells and undead brawn to cause collapse after collapse in the Realms Below, crushing entire deep gnome cities and flooding a huge network of caverns that were home to drow, duergar, and dwarves alike by shattering lake basins in the bedrock above them. All for the delight of slaying and the goal of opening vast subterranean caverns it could fly through, and rule over …

Now, Tlossaryl was aroused.

It was appalled to find itself in the grip of a mind far mightier than its own, enraged to feel the attentive awareness of that other, hated mind that had bound it, and frightened to discover that two other minds of power were also in contact with it. Its struggles were feeble-or rather, crushed before they could amount to anything-until it was suddenly elsewhere, in the blinding light and warmth, in air instead of water, and surrounded by so many angry and excited minds that the dracolich was overwhelmed anew, and frankly cowered.

Then the four minds that had gripped it so powerfully were gone, and it was free. Attacked by thousands of armed humans rushing at it from all sides, but unhampered at last-at last! — and so, free to give battle. It beat its bony wings, shattering trees and swiftly learning how entangled by the forest it was-and also discovering that it had lost the power to fly; that part of its undeath and magic had been stripped from it.

That plunged it into a darker, deeper rage than it had ever felt in all its life and unlife, and it lost no time in venting that fury. The minds all around it flared up into fresh rages of their own-and fear. Fear that Tlossaryl reveled in, as it slew, maimed, and slew some more.

By then, the Srinshee was thrusting ruthless mental barbs-long black lances of her contempt and revulsion-deep into the mind of the eye tyrant Xoraulkyr, shattering its arrogant confidence that it was superior to all other minds, and had been ensnared by the human Elminster only through luck and deceit. While it was still reeling mentally, too aghast at being so wounded to gather the will to slap down any of the four minds riding it, it was suddenly no longer in the bricked-up Waterdhavian cellar Elminster had put it into stasis in, but-elsewhere.

Specifically, a glade in deep shade, roofed over by the interwoven branches of a thick stand of duskwoods, where shades and arcanists of Thultanthar were arguing over where to send their “idiot troops” to most swiftly smash what elf resistance remained.

“I’ve always hated commanders who led from the rear,” the Srinshee whispered into Xoraulkyr’s mind confidingly, her words carrying into the thoughts of her three companions. “Let them taste unleashed beholder, and learn a little!”

An instant later, Xoraulkyr thudded heavily to the trodden moss of the forest floor, eyestalks writhing in pain. It sought to soar, to lash out at these astonished humans before they could work the magics they were even now frantically calling up-but found, as the Thultanthans scattered, fleeing for the encircling trees, that it couldn’t even rise off the ground. At all. It was what it had always been: a beholder of massive size for its kind, a sphere the size of a small human coach. Which meant it was so heavy that if it rolled without great care, it crushed its own eyestalks under its bulk.

Xoraulkyr painfully rediscovered this very flaw just before the first spells tore into it. Their force awakened agony and flung it away in a clumsy, bouncing roll, to fetch up against the trunk of a large duskwood where the eye tyrant rested, stretching its eyestalks in a swift wild spasm and then unleashing its magic back at those who’d just harmed it.

The glade erupted in magic so ferocious that trees started to topple, or were blasted to shards that were flung far away through the forest.

By then, the Srinshee was dumping another beholder into another group of commanders, a gathering of mercenary war captains who were strolling and chatting idly, pursuing war in far idler fashion than the shades and arcanists. To a man-and they were all men, ruthless louts of veteran killers, every one-they were most interested, at the moment, in emptying wineskins as fast as their servants could pour them into flagons. The war captains were toasting their guests, a dozen hired mages, but the Srinshee made sure none of those wizards would be fleeing with all that much alacrity, by breaking one ankle of each mage she saw.

And then she let go of El’s hand to break the ring and give them all a moment to breathe and collect their own wits, while she called on the mythal she’d helped shape, to let her far scry the four centers of mayhem they’d just kindled.

“Mayhem,” she commented with some satisfaction, after she’d looked for a few moments at each fray, “is certainly spreading. It might just become widespread among the besiegers of Myth Drannor, if you can find us four more champions as powerful as that quartet among your bindings, El.”

“I believe I can,” Elminster replied, managing a slow grin. It felt good to be rid of burdens, and he was carrying so many.

“Good. Do so. Then I’ll leave you three to get on with destroying Weave anchors, and-”

“Destroying Weave anchors?” El came to his feet in a wild rush, aghast. “We’ve been renewing them, and crafting new ones! Why, the Weave may collapse, and cause all magic to go wild, if we take away its anchors! What-”

“Madness is this? Desperate times, desperate measures, my fire-sword! You’re right about the danger, of course, but Larloch-and Shar-expect you to rush around strengthening anchors. They are depending on it. Only if the Weave holds strong here, around the mythal, can they drain the one and take over the other. They need someone else to hold the Weave steady so they can snatch it all, whereas if you sever it from its local anchors here, it becomes not a target stretched and held taut for their snatching, but a ragged bit of cloth blowing in wild winds that they can scarce see, let alone seize, as they rush past. Trust me.”

El winced.

“Yes,” the Srinshee told him softly, “I know you have just trusted and been betrayed, but I am no Larloch. Trust me. Destroy anchors, just hereabouts, as swiftly as you can-but take care to choose and destroy those that anchor both the mythal and the Weave, first. Wise crafters would have overlapped none, but … elves and humans alike are all too often unwise.”

“And lazy,” said Laeral.

“And in a hurry,” Alustriel added.

“Indeed,” the Srinshee agreed. “And have not all of us been all of those things, betimes? Yet let us not be those things today. Too much rides on victory. Which is why I’ve come back. Myth Drannor stands imperiled, so I am here.”

Laeral regarded her unsmilingly. “You truly believe the city can be saved?”

The Srinshee shrugged. “Buildings are just that-buildings. The community has already been lost, turned from lives unfolding freely into waging constant war … but the people can be saved, some of them, to return and refound and rebuild once this threat is past. I’m here to salvage what Tel’Quess I can, and friends to the elves too. I came back because I could not bear to see it all be lost, while I did nothing. You three have brought me hope; with your meddling, perhaps Shar and the Shadovar who serve her, and Larloch who seeks to exalt himself, shall not prevail.”

She looked into their eyes, one after another, and then added, “Now enough grand words. El, yield me up some more monsters!”

And she plunged right through his eyes into his mind, plucking at the minds of the two silver-haired sisters as she passed, and dragging them down and into the warm and familiar murk of Elminster’s busy mind along with her. Images flashed past them, one melting through another with bewildering rapidity, some half familiar, some very strange. El steered the racing meteor that was the Srinshee, taking her down, down to where runes glowed and wrote themselves over and over in his remembrances, secret words were whispered, hiding places under stones and behind concealing spells were revealed, and-a mind flayer came striding.

It had baleful eyes, as it reached out its tentacles in another place and another time, uncoiling to stab into both Elminster’s ears, to feed-but was instead ensnared in his waiting trap, stiffening in dismayed disbelief as its intrusion plunged into waiting magic meant to hook it alone, setting mental barbs deep so that to tear away would be to lose the greater part of its intellect. It tried to tear free anyway, tasting terror for the first occasion in a long time, but the leaking chaos washing across its thoughts, that lessened it and bewildered it, left it powerless to resist the tightening spell … and so it was that the illithid Qhelaraxxalarr was frozen, its mind whirling in an endless loop, its muscles locked. Shoved into a closet, hooded, and as the endless darkness began, sunk into a torpor by a chilling spell it had never felt before, even as it heard the thudding echoes of the closet being boarded up, blows that seemed to come from a vast distance, and that were followed by fainter hammerings that went on for a much longer time, as a false wall was built in front of the closet.

“Perfect,” the Srinshee decreed. “Mind-wounded beyond recovery, but goaded by fear and anger into the feeding hunger. It won’t last long, the moment the mercenaries see what’s in their midst and any Shadovar with them decree it not of their recruiting.” She whirled it away as Laeral and Alustriel worked busily on lifting Elminster’s spells, and it was gone.

“Next!” she commanded briskly.

“How about another dragon? Only a little one, but deadly. It can’t fly, having no wings-nor does it have a breath weapon-both thanks to arcanists of Thultanthar, as it happens, and their eagerness to experiment on dragonkind. But it can take human shape, and once it escaped the arcanists and went on a slaying spree, slaughtering any human mage it could find. ’Ware the poisonous stinging tail.”

“You do have quite the menagerie, don’t you?”

And so the unleashing went on, El groaning at the upheaval in his memories as long-forgotten oaths and sealing spells and bindings were dredged up.

“Hurts,” he gasped several times, and by the time the last bound creature-a one-armed lich that wielded some very creative magics- was set among an encampment of the besiegers, El was staggering in a murk of his own making, lost to the world.

When he ran into his third tree, gentle but firm arms embraced him and sat him down, and from somewhere nearby he heard Alustriel murmur, “He’s not doing well. A little silver fire?”

“No,” the Srinshee said emphatically. “That’ll draw arcanists galore down on us, and quite likely Larloch too. No, just let me …”

She murmured something, and cool, blessed relief flooded through Elminster’s roiling thoughts like dappled sunlight dancing through leaves and falling through high windows onto the dark floor of his mind.

He was barely aware that he was being lifted and carried, by Laeral and Alustriel, who grunted and staggered from time to time under his dead weight and the awkwardness of conveying him over tree roots and the uneven forest floor. More than once, he felt a magical force thrust up beneath him out of nowhere, as if the air had suddenly become a firm and solid hand, to hold him up over the roughest stretches, or where the trees stood so thick and close that he had to be turned on his side and slid through and around boughs and trunks, to …

A place where he started to tingle all over. A Weave anchor!

He was propped against a tree trunk-a shadowtop, by the feel of the bark, and as large across as the wall of a good-sized cottage-and left there, as Laeral and Alustriel and the Srinshee moved to form a box, with each of them and himself as a corner. The magic they worked then roused his mind out of the Srinshee’s healing mist, into full awareness of the forest around him again, and of what they were doing.

Destroying a Weave anchor, that was also one of the places the mythal of Myth Drannor was rooted. It was like shifting a downspout while storm rain was racing down it, rain that tugged at him and tore a little of his essence away.

Shocking him utterly awake. He blinked and groaned.

“Get up!” The Srinshee was shoving at his chest and armpits, trying to make him stand from where he’d slumped down the tree trunk. “Up! The sooner you’re on your feet and able to think, the sooner I can be fighting! I can win you more time by defending my city than helping you three do away with anchors-which must be done with care, remember, or the Weave will be lost!”

“And Mystra,” Alustriel warned.

“Not necessarily. That’s the foremost reason Mystra is hiding from the wider world-to withdraw herself from the Weave as much as possible. She told me so, and said her other important reason is to not provoke Shar into taking a hand openly-lest the Dark Goddess sweep the most important mortals who oppose her off the board before we have a chance to play.”

“This isn’t a game,” Laeral flared.

The Srinshee turned to her. “Isn’t it? To Shar, it certainly is. Remember that. She doesn’t want to destroy the prize to win it, or she’d have done so long ago. Playing the game is what sustains her, not winning.”

The sisters both stared at her, openmouthed, as Elminster tried to remember how to nod. And managed it with some satisfaction.

“After she destroys or enthralls all mortals,” the Srinshee added, almost fiercely, “where will she gain the loss, forgetfulness, and oblivion she feeds upon? Did you never ponder why the world hadn’t been destroyed by the gods who feed on destruction long before any of us could have been born? It never ends-it’s not meant to. If we defeat Shar’s pawns now, she’ll withdraw and seduce new ones and scheme anew. If you think of her thus, and talk not of ‘forever’ and other absolutes, it becomes easier to bear-and easier to correctly foresee what any deity will do. Even the mad ones.”

“Especially the mad ones,” Elminster muttered.

“Which, from the point of view of most crofters and shopkeepers, is every last one of them,” Laeral said wryly.

Alustriel, however, was frowning at the Srinshee. “How can you be sure of what Shar will do?”

“I know her,” came the bleak reply. “Far better than I care to. I was the Herald of Mystra before El was-stars and seas, before any of you were born. I met many of the gods, often.” The Srinshee shook her head and added in a whisper, “I am … too old for this now.”

She turned away. “So come on. If he can’t walk straight yet, bring him.”

Elminster waved away helping hands, started striding after the Srinshee-and fell flat on his face.

Grinning and shaking their heads, Laeral and Alustriel hauled him to his feet, put their arms around his shoulders, and started walking him through the forest. Six stumbling steps later they lost patience, exchanged glances, slid long locks of silver hair under their burden’s thighs from behind, and boosted him off his feet into a chair lift.

Enthroned, Elminster was whisked over a wooded ridge, across a tangled ravine beyond, and over a second ridge. Where mercenaries came charging out of the trees with a triumphal roar.

The Srinshee sighed, waved one arm without slowing, and paid no attention at all to the startled cries of pain-or the thuds and abruptly-cut-off yells that followed, when the weapons and bucklers racing away from her towed their mercenary owners into swift and brutal meetings with trees.

Not a single besieger reached the two silver-haired women and the bearded old man bouncing between them.

“Here!” said the Srinshee, a ridge later, as they came upon an ancient stump the size of a large coach, with a tiny spring fountaining out between its rotting roots. “Triangle, the three of us, and put El between us. When the anchor breaks, mind you thrust the leakage into him!”

It was Laeral’s turn to frown. “But won’t that-?”

The Srinshee gave her a look that was somewhere between patiently polite and withering.

“Ah.” Laeral winced. “You’ve done this before. Yes.”

The anchor gave way with frightening ease, and Elminster’s body arched and bucked as Weave and mythal energies snarled through him, leaking out of his mouth as brief blue flames.

He rolled over, coughing weakly.

The Srinshee clapped him on the back, kissed the startled face he raised to her, and announced briskly, “Right, only forty-two more to go! I’m off!”

And she hurled herself away through the air like a sling stone-to slam into an arcanist who was just stepping out from behind a tree to hurl a blasting spell at Elminster and the two sisters. He was flung backward into an awkward stagger, and the Srinshee pursued him, slicing his throat open with a dagger as she flashed past.

About then, she noticed the arcanist she’d felled was just the foremost of a dozen more hastening through the trees to investigate the magical turmoil of the anchor being destroyed.

She fetched up on a high bough, rebounded off the trunk it had grown out of to reclaim her balance, and cast a spell of her own.

As El, Laeral, and Alustriel watched, the Srinshee’s working became a mighty explosion in the heart of those approaching arcanists. Tattered bodies-some collapsing into disembodied heads, limbs, and hands in midair-hurtled in all spattering directions.

Then, with a cheery wave, she was gone.

“Well,” Alustriel said rather ruefully, “that seems to be that. We’re on our own.”

“Which means,” El agreed, “that we’d best be finding the next anchor. She remembers where they all are. I … recall a few. Luse, Laer, ’tis done like thi-”

Laeral gave him a withering look, and pointed through the trees.

“Ah,” Elminster said hastily, “my apologies.”

“Accepted, Old Mage,” she replied pointedly, leading the way.

Which meant the Shadovar warriors who burst out of the next thicket came at her first, thrusting bills and glaives that she easily turned aside with her hair.

Alustriel’s swarm of a dozen racing blue-white bolts arced and swooped into as many faces-and Elminster contributed an echo spell that followed up the magic missiles with stunning lightning.

Most of the mercenaries fell, but a few snarled in pain and kept coming, swinging swords and axes rather unsteadily.

The three Chosen met them blade to blade.

“After this anchor, we need only take care of forty-two more, remember,” Elminster panted, amid the clang and clash of steel. “That should be enough to collapse the mythal at our bidding.”

“Only?” Alustriel asked archly, as her tresses dashed two helms together hard enough to crumple metal. “Your words delight me.”

“We must all find our delights where we can these days,” Laeral commented, ducking under a vicious axe swing and slamming the pommel of her blade hard into the ear of her would-be butcher. Who reeled right into Elminster’s backswing.

Laeral sprang away from the gory result. “Don’t get blood on this, you! It never all comes out!”

A mercenary was startled enough by her complaint to turn and gape at her, just for an instant-and that was all Elminster needed.

“Back in brawling form?” Alustriel grinned at him, as he rose from downing that last man and saw that there were no more mercenaries left to fight.

El smiled and shrugged. “Got my wind back, at least. Help me remember, you two; if we see the coronal, we must tell her where the portal that brought us here is located. When the city falls, it and the other portals nearby will be the only ways she’ll be able to get any Tel’Quess out.”

Laeral laid a hand on his arm. “You think any of us will get out, El?” she asked softly.

El shrugged. “Acting as if I know we all will is always best.”

Laeral gave him a wry smile. “So you’re always bluffing, no matter the danger?”

Elminster drew himself up and made a dignified reply. “Manipulating, please. ‘Bluffing’ is such a crass word. Merely bending others to do as I’d like them to do, by means of a little acting. Ye learn these things, when ye’ve lived through as many falls of cities and utter Realms-rending disasters as I have …”

Luse and Laer stared at him, then burst into wild, helpless laughter.

The Wizard of War and the six Purple Dragons with him came to a stop in the dingy back street in Suzail, all of them wearing deepening frowns.

“So just where is this treason you speak of?” The young mage’s tone was openly suspicious. “This looks like all too good a place for an ambush, if you ask-”

“I didn’t,” the fat and wheezing man in the well-worn and food-stained clothing and the flopping wrecks of old seaboots interrupted, “and you needn’t worry. I’ll be going first.” And he flung open the nearest door.

“Yes,” the wizard snapped, “but how do we know you aren’t working with some miscreants, and leading us right into their clutches?”

Mirt caught hold of a good fistful of the young war wizard’s splendid doublet and dragged him down until they were nose to nose.

“You can come with me, young fearfulguts,” he growled, “because I’ll be needing you. But mind this: no casting spells, and no yelling at enemies of the Crown, until I say so, hear? You may have standing orders and the shiny authority of the Dragon Throne-but I’ve managed to keep myself alive for more years than you’ve seen, without having spells down both arms and stuffed up my backside to resort to! So, do we have an agreement?”

“W-we do,” Narancel replied, with as much dignity as he could muster. He made a little show of brushing the breast of his doublet smooth again with apparent unconcern.

“Good.” Mirt grinned at him. “Then follow me up these stairs quietly.”

“But-but this building’s been cleared out for a tenday, after two clerks came down with blacktongue! We-”

Mirt’s withering look reduced the protesting mage to silence, and he followed the rotund and wheezing merchant up the narrow and dim back stairs as quietly as possible. As he did, Narancel wondered why they didn’t just go in the front way, but he took care to wonder it mutely.

Two flights up, he heard voices. Mens’ voices where there should be none. Mirt turned with a warning finger held straight up against his lips, then went on. The wizard followed, taking great care to be as quiet as he could.

They were close enough, now, to hear what was being said.

“So you see, I’m prepared to pay you this handsomely just to do your duty. Nothing beyond the rules, nothing that can get you in trouble. You are supposed to inspect noble estates-and their city properties too-from time to time, without warning, to make sure what they tell the Crown tax clerks to be so is, in fact, so. Oh, the particular nobles on my little list, here … ah, your little list, yes? … will be less than pleased, but then, they always are, aren’t they?”

“It’s-if anyone higher finds out-” That voice was anxious, and was echoed by the wordless murmurs of others. Worried others.

“Ah, but they won’t, if none of you talk. See how short that list is? All you have to do is remember one name each from it-just one-and it becomes your choice, and I destroy the list, and-behold! — there’s no evidence left, at all! Now, what say you?”

“I–I-oh, I don’t know …,” the worried voice mumbled, sounding very unhappy.

Which was when Mirt laid a firm hand on the war wizard’s arm, tugged meaningfully, and let go to lurch and wheeze his way through the door and around the corner to give the room of startled men-six palace courtiers and one Manshoon-a nod of greeting and a lopsided grin.

“Well done, men of Cormyr! Well done!” he told them heartily. “You passed this little test as Cormyreans staunch and true! Proving yer honesty and loyalty to the Crown as boldly as any battle-tested Purple Dragon! The Forest Kingdom is proud of you!”

Clasping his hands behind his back, he started to stroll. Mainly to make sure the tremulous young fool of a war wizard had indeed dared to follow him into the room-aye, he had, thank all the gods for small beneficences-but also to put one or two courtiers between him and any little magic an annoyed Manshoon might hurl.

“You rightly saw through the stratagem our peerless actor here”-he waved at the glowering Manshoon-“was so smoothly attempting to recruit you into abetting. It would create dissent among certain noble families whose support the Dragon Throne sorely needs right now. You didn’t know it, but more than a dozen Wizards of War have been watching and listening to it all! Worry not; every last one of you has impressed them. Young Narancel here will escort you back to your offices now, and will echo my praise. Cormyr’s future is bright in your hands!”

Mirt swung around to give Narancel a look. Damned if the young pup wasn’t shaking like a sapling in a fall wind, but at least he knew his cue, and nodded, waving to the courtiers to come with him.

They bolted, almost upsetting their chairs in their relieved haste, and were gone in a door-banging trice. Leaving Mirt alone with a seething Manshoon. The onetime ruler of Zhentil Keep and of Westgate, founder and longtime leader of the Zhentarim-and a vampire, to boot.

Who would kill him in an instant or three if he so much as suspected it was all a ruse, and those more than a dozen war wizards were so much utter fiction.

Manshoon’s smile was as hard as cold crypt stone. “I can think of no magical defenses you can have, fat man,” he remarked with menacing softness, “that will protect you against me if I choose to destroy you now. In slow, writhing agony.”

Mirt chuckled, and took the seat right across from Manshoon. “Ah, so you still can’t think-clearly enough and ahead far enough. Yer usual problem, if you don’t mind me pointing it out. The salient point on the table between us right now is this: you don’t know what defenses I have. I, however, obviously do. Care to be foolish enough to think I’m bluffing?”

Manshoon scowled, then shook his head.

Mirt produced a belt flask with two metal flagons clipped to it, and poured them both wine.

He handed one flagon across the table to Manshoon, who regarded it dubiously. Mirt took it back, drank deeply from it, and handed Manshoon the other, still-full flagon.

Slowly, Manshoon put out his hand, took it, sipped-and then smiled. The wine was splendid.

He sipped again and savored it, sitting back and letting it roll around on his tongue.

Mirt leaned forward and rumbled, “So, Scourge of Westgate and Zhentil Keep and the gods alone know how many other places … why don’t we sit this one out, the two of us? Hmm? At least until half Toril is done tearing itself apart?”

Manshoon regarded the fat and battered man across the table thoughtfully for a long, silent time before he said, “Convince me.”

He sipped again. “More of this wine ought to do it.”