Elminster Enraged

matters-that our reach is neither strong nor sure.”

Lord Loroun flushed and said coldly, “I seldom need lectures on how to be noble from older men. I seldom listen to them twice. After the first one, I draw my sword and duel-removing anyone’s need to listen to that particular source of advice ever again. Be warned, lord.”

“Ah, the young are so subtle, too,” Haeldown told his tallglass, raising it to the light to enjoy the play of color in the wine. “And patient. Straight to the threat, without any wit beforehand. Perhaps it’s because you can muster none, hmm?”

“I’ve no need to listen to this-” Loroun retorted angrily, planting both hands on the table as if to rise, but Lord Taseldon slid a long and elegantly tailored arm across Loroun’s chest with a sigh.

“Loroun, this elder lord dug a pit before you, and you leaped right into it. Learn, master your temper and stretch your patience, and learn some more. It’s how youngbloods last long enough to become sly old dogs like Haeldown, here. Now let’s get back to discussing the failure of our initial attempt to murder the lady clerk of the rolls, and more importantly, how things will be different this time.”

“Tonight,” Loroun snapped, “you didn’t even try for a slaying at a dining lounge! I want it to be public, dramatic, so all Suzail sees and talks about it! How does it strike fear in anyone, if we poison her alone in her bed, and the palace can pass it off as fever?”

“He took her to Razreldron’s,” Taseldon replied, “and with all those private booths-”

“Huh,” Lord Haeldown grunted, “and all those lowcoats Purple Dragon officers, who just love to run their swords through people!”

“-quite so, lord; and with all those lowcoats officers, we’ve little chance of success. However, later, when they seek a bed to dally in …”

Loroun smiled slowly. It was a fox’s satisfied smile.

Lord Haeldown frowned. “Sword them while they’re rutting? Seems unsporting to me! Still, there are worse ways to go …”

He held out his tallglass, Taseldon and Loroun clinked theirs against it, and they all chortled together.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE SWEETEST SIGHT

I never thought the sweetest sight I’d see this tenday would be a drow handing me a goblet of my own wine,” the lord constable of Irlingstar grunted. “Yet I thank you.”

The way his eyes roved up and down the shapely dark elf bending over him made it clear he was regarding drow in a whole new way.

“Inside this,” she replied in dry tones, “I’m Brannon Lucksar, wizard of war, remember?”

“Oh, er. Ah. Of course,” Farland grunted, flushing.

They were all back in his office. New guards were in place on the door the two hireswords had fled through, and none of the doubled guard detail had keys to the locked and closed door they were standing watch over.

Aside from bruises-Farland’s knee was so stiff he lurched along rather than strode-and a slight, recurring ringing in Arclath’s and Gulkanun’s ears, they seemed to have recovered from the explosion unscathed. Gulkanun and Longclaws even seemed to be starting to trust the dark elf.

“I … I’m sorry we were so stern with you,” Longclaws said to her. “I … well, I still find it hard not to be alarmed when I find myself staring at a drow.”

Lucksar shrugged and smiled. “I feel somewhat alarmed when I see the hands assisting me turn into tentacles, or”-she gestured at his hands-“vinelike sucking things. Yet I step past that and move on, for the Dragon Throne.”

“Indeed,” Gulkanun said politely. “You seem … preoccupied.”

“I am,” the dark elf replied, taking care not to look directly at Arclath and Amarune. She’d mind-touched both while reviving them, so they knew she was Elminster. They’d been rather quiet since then; best not to make it harder for them by looking their way or talking to them overmuch. It would be all too easy for an “El” to pass their lips, and all war wizards would have been warned about Elminster skulking around the kingdom, by now …

“Well?”

El shook her head. “Turning over all I’ve seen and heard since arriving in my head, to see if anything occurs to me.” She looked at Farland. “You’re sure those two who escaped hadn’t managed to get into the castle before the blast, when you discovered them?”

Farland frowned then shook his head. “They couldn’t have. No. Absolutely not. Nor did they strike me as the sort of killers who’d pounce and then get clear so swiftly. Twice.”

Gulkanun nodded. “I judge them as you do. Not skilled enough.”

El nodded. Good, he’d successfully turned aside Gulkanun’s query. He was preoccupied, but not by anything to do with uncovering murderers or hurlers-of-bombs. Yet. Rather, he was trying to think of a good place to remove and hide the team ring he was wearing, in case Vangerdahast or Ganrahast or anyone else could trace him-or launch hostile magic, like the mind-touch from afar he’d felt, just before the blast had flung it away from him-through it. He had to remove it without Gulkanun or Longclaws or anyone else noticing, and stash it somewhere it wouldn’t be found but that he could readily retrieve it from …

Hmm … Every jakes in Irlingstar was thoroughly inspected before and after each use to prevent them being used as ways of transferring items from prisoner to prisoner. There was very little extraneous furniture-Hells, very little furniture at all-to offer places of concealment for anything …

“I’m tired, if none of the rest of you are,” Farland announced. “We need a battle plan. The six of us against everyone else in Irlingstar.”

Arclath nodded. “Until we know who’s been killing and causing the blasts-and they may not be the same persons-we have to treat the guards, the prisoners, and the passages and stairs where some unknown intruder might be lurking, all as foes.”

“Exactly,” Farland agreed. “So how do we get through the night ahead of us, and wind up alive come morn?”

“Work on the wards,” Lucksar suggested. “Use them to make new walls, and doors that can’t be forced. After we securely confine all the remaining prisoners in separate rooms for the night, we work a ward around all of them, wrapping them in one big box. Then we work on the wards to securely seal all exterior doors. Then confine all the guards and staff except the six of us together in a cluster of rooms that include the kitchens but are away from all doors-so any kitchen back doors must be excluded-and ward them into their own box. And then we barricade ourselves separately in rooms we can lock from within, and get some sleep. All save for Wizard of War Gulkanun and myself; we’ll stand watch.”

“Over each other,” Gulkanun said wryly.

Farland nodded wearily. “I like the sound of that. The rest of you?”

He saw nothing but nods. “Good. Let’s do it,” he said, draining his goblet and heaving himself to his feet with a grunt of pain. “I’m not getting any younger.”

“Or prettier,” Lord Delcastle muttered, but Farland had been expecting some such comment, and managed a grin. Before the inevitable yawn.

Rensharra, it appeared, had a private passion for sky blue silk and gilt. Lots of gilt. Carved, curlicued ornamentations everywhere, all heavily gilded.

Mirt tried hard to keep his eyebrows from climbing to the top of his scalp and staying there.

The rest of her small tallhouse was tastefully luxurious, a long, narrow haven simply and sparsely furnished in creams, rich crimsons, and new but deep-stained, polished wood. The bedchamber, however, was dominated by a tentlike bed in Old Tashlutan style, with streams of blue silk descending from a central crown to its corners, and from there flaring in pinned-down pleats to the floor. Gilded flourishes were everywhere: the sheets, the pillows, even the hrasted carved, upswept corners were gold …