“Ye’ve probably pounced on the truth,” El said thoughtfully, “yet there’s another possibility—a worse one. Ganrahast’s busy back in Suzail with threats to the Throne, and from what admittedly little I’ve seen of the wizards of war left here to mind their wall imprisoning us, now that it’s cast, they seemed like the younger, greener, less powerful Crown mages.”
“That someone could easily overcome,” Myrmeen sighed, “and take down the wall, so only the spellstorm is left. Which means any number of warriors and thieves and spies can come scaling the walls and wriggling down wood chutes and smashing windows to get in here with us.”
“Exactly,” El confirmed. “Luse, once we’ve cornered our latest masked marvel, could ye shoot on up to that roofless room I tarried in, a while back, and have a look around at the war wizards? So ye can tell us, later, if there are any, and if they look like real war wizards to ye? Don’t race back to tell us right then, mind; I’ve more pressing need of ye back guarding the kitchens against those who’d poison us all.”
“You’re just full of pressing needs this last day or so, aren’t you?” Alusair teased. “Let’s corner this latest intruder first, and then I’ll certainly—”
And then she moaned, a despairing cry of wordless pain that seemed to recede eastward, a long way, ere it faded.
They were still hearing its keening fall when the surrounding air buffeted them as if it was a dry and silent ocean wave rolling in the same direction, outward from … who knew what?
“El!” Myrmeen snapped. “What just happened?”
Elminster staggered and went to his knees, clutching at his head and then shaking it slowly.
“Someone,” he muttered, “just opened one of the gates inside Oldspires—I don’t know which one, or precisely where. And it wasn’t Mystra … or any god, probably. It was a smaller, quieter working than that.”
“So who—?” Mirt growled, dragging Elminster back to his feet.
El shook his head. “I know not,” he said wearily. “And we’ve lost our spy and guide, for now. I’ve bolstered her enough with the Weave that she should survive—but she’ll be suffering; Luse just can’t withstand that sort of surge and be flying around in her full powers.”
“I heard her wail, and felt the gate opening, all right,” Myrmeen agreed. “So let’s find this new skulker and take ourselves back to the kitchen. Whoever—or whatever—is coming through that gate will find us soon enough.”
“So far as I can tell,” Mirt said slowly, “the Steel Princess was leading us toward the north row of bedchambers—where we put our four male guests. So if we head in that direction …”
“What if this skulker is no lone burglar, but a skilled slayer or spy working for—well, it’d have to be Manshoon or Malchor, wouldn’t it?” Myrmeen asked.
“The ‘what ifs’ we could conjure up in but a few breaths could well fill a wagon or two,” El reminded her. “I’d prefer we trust our eyes and ears, because if our speculations are wrong, and we heed them and do the wrong thing, and—”
“Yes, I quite see,” the former Lady Lord of Arabel agreed. “That could lead us gravely astray.”
Mirt held a finger to his lips for quiet as he led them out into the staue chamber, a widening of the end of a passage with four doors, opening out into the grand staircase and the bedchambers that had been given over to Skouloun, Maraunth Torr, and Calathlarra. He pointed at the doors of the three rooms as he looked at Elminster with a silent query on his face, and El nodded and came forward with his master key. Mirt and Myrmeen positioned themselves to deal with trouble, and El then unlocked Calathlarra’s door and stayed back to watch in all directions outside as Mirt and Myrmeen swiftly searched the room.
Finding it empty, they came out again, and El relocked the door so they could do the same to Maraunth Torr’s room, and then Skouloun’s. Dark and empty, all of them. They proceeded past the grand staircase to the Chamber of the Founder, a lounge for the guests of the Lord Halaunt, dominated by the glower of an ugly statue of the first Lord Halaunt, and stole across it like burglars past the rooms of Malchor and Manshoon, to try the door of a vacant bedchamber.
Where Mirt and Myrmeen found no one, as usual.
Until, that is, they had turned to leave, when Mirt happened to glance up into the gloom of a tapestry beside the door and saw two hands clinging to its support rail, nigh the ceiling. Without a word he lurched to the door, to depart—and without warning planted one fist deep in the tapestry, right about where the man hanging behind the tapestry would keep his stomach, or possibly tenderer organs below that.
The man behind the tapestry made an involuntary
eeep
sound, and fell to the floor—where Mirt gave him no time to ready any weapon or gain his feet, but hauled hard on some unseen part of him, and flung—sending the man sailing helplessly across the room into a solid meeting, face-first, with the far wall.
Where Myrmeen promptly put a knee in the small of his back and her arm around his neck and bore him to the ground, gently murmuring a greeting into his ear that promised him death if he failed to surrender and cooperate.
“I serve the Dragon Throne,” came the gasped response. “To harm me is a crime punishable by death or exile. Unhand me, in the name of the regent and of the Royal Magician.”
“Right,” Mirt growled, as Myrmeen rolled over and dragged the masked man over on his back with her, “unhand you where? Wrist? Elbow? Or just save all the judging and measuring and have your arms off at your pits?”
Before their captive could utter a reply, Myrmeen snatched his mask away and called softly, “Lantern!”
Silently Elminster unhooded it, and they gazed down on a temporarily blinded and blinking face that no one could put a name to, but that Myrmeen and Elminster both remembered seeing in the grand hallways of the Royal Palace of Suzail.
“So who sent you in here, and to do what?” Mirt growled.
The young man clenched his eyes shut and replied, “I’m forbid—
Unngh
.”
“Sorry,” Myrmeen murmured unapologetically, “but I’m afraid my knee slipped. It has a habit of doing that. You’ll understand, I’m sure. We lady lords of the realm spend so much time on our knees.”
“The Lord Warder ordered me to obey the commander of the wizards of war stationed here at Oldspires, and I have,” came the grudging response.
“
Inside
Oldspires,” Mirt growled, “or d’you mean the merry band of wizards watching and maintaining the ringwall? And it
is
still there, and they are, too, yes?”
“It is, they are, and yes, those charged to watch and guard the barrier.”
“How many are there? War wizards, Purple Dragons, and others like you?”
“That’s a state secret.”
“
How many
?”
“Bluster all you like, saer, I’ll tell you nothing of our strength!”
“Well, who commands? One of the Purple Dragon officers we’ve seen, or a wizard of war?”
“A wizard. Of course.”
“So he sent you in to do what? Kill us?” Myrmeen asked crisply. “Spy on us, or someone in particular? Procure something specific?”
“Lady, I cannot—”
“Nameless functionary, you
shall
answer my questions. As a lady lord of the realm—”
“
Former
lady lord of the—”
“As a champion of the Dragon Throne, appointed guardian of the realm by no less than the Royal Magician of Cormyr
and
the Court Wizard of the Realm, too, my authority outstrips that of any mere wizard of war commanding a force on the ground. Now answer me, without delay, or I’ll deem you a traitor and deal with you accordingly!”
Mirt chuckled. “Is ‘deal with you’ your polite phrase, here in Cormyr, for ‘torture the truth out of you’?”
“It could very well be,” Myrmeen said crisply. “And Nameless here has one swift way of finding out.”
“I—” Their captive let out a gusty sigh and said, “I’m here to kill only if you three had been slain by a wizard not of Cormyr, who’d gained control of this house and Lord Halaunt’s magic. My foremost task is to find out what’s happened within these walls and report that back as swiftly and fully as possible, so it reaches the Lord Warder’s ears. Spells cast here have been detected by those on duty at the ringwall, so our information—that magic can’t work in Oldspires—is obviously wrong or outdated, and the Lost Spell and every one of the wizards who gathered here to gain it has been deemed such a danger to the realm that—”
“Aye, we know the elegant phrases of courtiers’ blather,” Mirt interrupted, leaning close to the man in Myrmeen’s grasp. “So tell me now, are you one of them Highknights?”
“You, saer, are an outlander, and as such have no authority to—”
“
Answer
him,” Myrmeen suggested into the young man’s ear, silken steel in her soft voice.
“I-I—no, I’m not. Yet.”
“Ah,” El commented over his shoulder without turning his head, the lantern steady on the captive’s face but his eyes and attention now fixed on the dim chamber outside, “I quite see. If ye succeeded in this, ye might just become one, eh? Well, go and tell the wizards out there that a strong threat may yet come bursting out of Oldspires to menace them, and the Forest Kingdom beyond them if they prove not up to their guardianship. More than that, we cannot yet say. The situation is as, ah, murky as usual in a Cormyrean regency.”
“You’re … letting me go?”
“Aye. Ye’re young, seem reasonably intelligent and full of promise, and the realm always has need of the at least somewhat loyal and somewhat competent, so ’twould be a waste to have thee end up as a corpse now. Which is, I fear, highly likely if ye tarry in these halls much longer. We have what Ganrahast or Vainrence like to call ‘a situation’ unfolding here, even as we blather.”
“Blather?” the young less-than-Highknight repeated a little dazedly, as Myrmeen released him and Mirt hauled him to his feet.
“Have that hearing of thine seen to by a good healer, lad, will ye?” El responded, as they frog-marched the young man down the passage to the entry hall. “Oh, and ask Ganrahast from me if he’s been foolish enough to try to open a gate here inside Oldspires a short while ago, will ye?”
“A
gate
? You mean a—a portal?”
“His mind is softening under the strain,” El observed mournfully, as the young man was freed a step inside the entry doors, which Mirt then opened with a bowing flourish that would have done credit to any steward. El then shook his head and added, “Prospective Highknights, these days …”
The nameless not-yet-Highknight gave him a frowning look, then squared his shoulders, waved a farewell, put his head down, and rushed into the swirling fog of the spellstorm—now lit by the cold gray promise of the coming dawn—with the same swift and pelting enthusiasm as Drace Taulith had sprinted into it.
Mirt grinned at his dwindling back, secured the doors, and hastened to join Elminster and Myrmeen in the kitchens.
“Oh, good,” Myrmeen greeted him, from where she was standing guard at the door. “There are the trays of braerwings to roast, and here’s the first skillet of antidote base to simmer.
Try
not to get them mixed up.”
“Your task,” El told Mirt quietly, “I’ve something pressing to do.”
He went out without waiting for a reply, and started walking the rooms and passages of Oldspires.
As he feared, there was no sign of Alusair, though he called her name a time or six, and sent questing thoughts out, reaching with the Weave.
Silence. Empty silence.
It lasted until he’d reached every corner of the ground floor of the mansion. Whereupon he stopped and swallowed a bitter curse. Luse, brave Luse, tart and stalwart and … gone? Well, she’d come along on this willingly, and gone down, if gone she was, the way the Steel Princess would have wanted to go—in harness, fighting for Cormyr.
The way they’d all go, very soon, if they weren’t careful.
Trumpet fanfare over the graves. So, so many graves …
Enough! Back to the crisis at hand. Down to the cellars …
So, now, if Shaaan was a fan of the Mhair viper, they’d need some leaves of thrale, ground hrath nut, and … oh, Talona, ’twould not do to forget that last ingredient—ahh! Heart thorn! Dried whole, not the powdered muck Braelith had made his fortune selling, in the days when the Shaar routes were …
He shook his head impatiently to leave that reverie behind before he plunged wholly into it. Not
now
. He was indulging too often in these forays into the past.
Fresh will to go on or not, he was getting too old.
Yet Rune wasn’t
ready
. Might not be for centuries yet. And still the foes came thick and fast, scheme upon dark plot upon sly peril.
Hah, and hadn’t they always?
Azuth had said as much, back at the death of …
No. Later. After the matter of Halaunt and the Lost Spell had been put to rest, and Cormyr delivered from the latest threat to the Dragon Throne.
He found the right storage larder, and gathered the herbs and spices he’d thought of, adding roumrel and astig root and demmaethur along the way. And then, of course, found he’d accumulated too large an array of ingredients to carry, and unconcernedly stripped off his robe to make into a carrysack to bear all he needed back to the kitchens.
Nine venoms he knew how to counter, without rummaging through the Weave for minds that might or might not care to answer. Six of those poisons were quite likely favorites of the Serpent Queen, though he’d not kept as close an eye on her as perhaps he should have, down the years.
She’d been the Blackstaff’s burden, after all, and that had been back in the days when Mystra—the first Mystra—had trusted her senior Chosen and they’d trusted each other, so casting an eye over the work of another was seldom done.
There was, after all, always too much work to go around. And
that
had never changed.
So it was back to doing the good he must because it was pressingly needful and he owed someone dear, and because no one else would. It was time to try to find what was left of Luse, if he could, and bring her back, as much as he could.