Elminster Enraged

climbing by tying knots in it at intervals.

The lord constable had been trying gingerly to peer down over the jagged edge where his fortress now so abruptly ended, scrambling hastily back whenever stones sagged or fell away under his boots.

The moment Gulkanun tapped him with one end of Rune’s cord, he looked up, nodded, seized it, tied it around himself in a crude sling, and was over the edge almost before they could brace themselves to take his weight.

Rune snatched up a scrap of broken-off wall bracket to guard against the paying-out cord being sawn at by the raw edge of broken stone Farland had vanished over, but she’d barely crawled to where she could thrust it under the moving cord before it stopped moving and the lord constable called hoarsely, “Pull me up. I’ve seen enough.”

“So,” Gulkanun asked a few puffing moments later, as they helped Farland to his feet, “what’s ‘enough’?”

The lord constable shook his head, seeking words. He’d gone so pale that old scars and pimples stood out on his face like startlingly dark festival face painting.

“More than the tower’s gone,” he said grimly. “The whole south face … blasted away, every floor laid open. I could see the passages like a column of holes, all the way down. For now, that is. Everything’s sagging.”

As he spoke, they heard a long, slow clattering crash from somewhere below the edge. It was the sound of stones falling away from Irlingstar like a lazy rain, as the shattered blocks beneath them crumbled and slumped.

Farland winced as if someone were smashing a precious treasure. “There’ll be more of that. I don’t think anything’s safe, as far back as the central well.”

“The stairs where Vandur fell?” Arclath guessed.

Farland nodded wearily. He looked close to tears.

“Mind!” Longclaws said sharply, darting out to clutch at the lord constable and drag him back. A deep, yawning groan had begun in the stone around and beneath them.

As they all hurried back past where the fourth pair of doors should have been, the stones off to their right started to lean.

As they stared, that slow lean became an inexorable topple … and an entire pillarlike buttress of the castle wall collapsed. It broke up as it fell so its descent became a roaring cataract of tumbling stone that shattered several trees and carried them away in an instant-exposing two men who’d been hiding behind them.

Two heavily armed men in motley leather armor adorned with gorgets and codpieces and other mismatched pieces of metal armor here and there, among all the pouches and baldrics and dagger hilts.

The five agents and officers of the Crown stared down at them.

“I am the lord constable of Castle Irlingstar,” Farland growled. “Who are you?”

The two strangers looked back up at him, taking heed that the hands of the two men flanking him were rising as if to work spells-and that one of those hands looked like a bouquet of flowers whose leaves were rapidly growing into curling, questing tentacles.

“Uh, Harbrand,” one of the men-the one who wore an eye patch-blurted out, before jerking a thumb at his companion. “He’s Hawkspike.”

They both added rather guilty grins to these names.

“Ah … any chance of a room for the night?” Harbrand asked. “There’s a dragon flying around out here!”

The doors of the well-hidden chamber deep in the haunted wing of the royal palace of Suzail were firmly spell-locked. Some conferences required privacy even from royalty.

“Glathra, just get used to the fact that some things are going to be kept secret even from you. Until the time is right for you to know.”

Glathra glared back at the spiderlike Royal Magician Vangerdahast, and spat, “But I should have known all about this! It’s vital to my work!”

“It’s no more than a distraction from your work until we know it functions, and safely, so it can be relied upon,” Lord Warder Vainrence husked, from where he sat slumped in a chair. He was still weak and pale, but recovered enough from the spell trap that had almost slain him in the palace cellars to rise from bed at last. “If we can use it for a time before word of it spreads, we’ll gain that much more by it. And word will spread fast, mark you; in the first reports brought to me since I’ve been up and about, some nobles have already begun to talk of war wizards as recently seeming very ‘watchful.’ So until you truly needed to know …”

Glathra’s eyes blazed, but she turned from glowering at him to give her glare to the current Royal Magician of Cormyr.

Ganrahast merely nodded and told her, “Correct. Hence my orders to that effect.”

Wizard of War Glathra Barcantle slammed both fists down on the table in exasperation, then whirled to face the silent, silver-haired woman sitting beside her, and wagged a pointing finger almost in Storm Silverhand’s face. “Yet she knew-and she’s not even Crown-sworn, or of Cormyr!”

“She knew because she did most of the work of perfecting it,” Vangerdahast growled, advancing across the table like a crawling spider. Glathra shrank back in revulsion, hating herself for her fear and disgust and finding fresh fury in his unlovely grin. He knew how she felt about him and was coming at her deliberately!

“Just as I knew about it because I did the rest of the work,” the spiderlike thing added, ere turning abruptly and crawling away.

“And as it happens, Lady Storm is Crown-sworn-and is of Cormyr,” Ganrahast said quietly.

“Not to our king! Nor is she a citizen dwelling within our borders, who pays taxes to the Crown! She presumes a lot, on a title bestowed centuries ago!”

“As to that,” Vainrence said with sudden heat, “we wizards of war all presume a lot. It’s what we do. Now have done, Glathra. I’m not sure how much longer I can stay awake, and this is important.”

Glathra looked away from him, and at Storm Silverhand. Keeping silent, Storm gave her a friendly smile, but Glathra pointedly turned her head away.

And found herself looking at Royal Magician Ganrahast, who shook his head sadly as he drew a coffer from his belt, opened it, and began to set forth its contents, in a gleaming row down the center of the table.

Rings, all identical. Plain bands except for the little dragonsnout point each one bore. War wizard team rings.

“The new mindlink magic works through these,” he murmured.

“A mindlink that works?” Glathra was unable to keep all incredulity out of her voice.

Ganrahast blinked. “Well, ah … no one’s gone mad just yet.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I AM YOUR GENTLE REMINDER

Until now, we’ve not issued many of these,” Vainrence added, “but this last tenday, we’ve been getting them to all wizards of war we can reach.” He pushed one ring out of the row, toward Glathra. “This one’s yours. The rest are linked to others already being worn by several of our fellow Crown mages.”

Glathra eyed it suspiciously. “Are any of you wearing them?”

Vainrence raised his hand to show that he was.

“Anyone else?” She glared at the man-headed spider. “You?”

“Of course.” The spider rolled over like a toppled child’s toy, to display a bright ring snugged right up to the