ghost.
Farland cursed then, shaken-and the oaths he used were far fouler and more colorful than the splendor he’d been shown.
He flung away his dagger and started to weep.
The tomb was far colder than he remembered.
Especially on this chill sort of morning. Ground mists were rising and streaming knee deep through the trees as Manshoon strolled out of the tomb and went looking for a distant spot in the right direction, to teleport to across the Wyvernwater, and from there east and north, from high place to high place. The Crown mages might have been foolish enough to ride all night, but more likely they’d made camp beside the road, slept just long enough to rest the horses, and would be journeying again about now.
Manshoon stretched and smiled. Choosing a high and distant field, he cast a teleport to take himself there. Then again, from Nuth Tammarsaer’s high east pasture to Rauntaun’s Tor. Thence to the ridge behind Lockspike Fang. Standing atop it, on wind-scoured rock in a chill breeze with a startled eagle taking wing from its favorite lookout perch away from him, he could look down on Orondstars Road.
He chose the next bend in the road, so he could be standing nonchalantly waiting for them.
His captors were back, and terror was like a cold white arm coiled through him, chill fingers tight around his heart.
Mreldrake swallowed, then swallowed again. His throat was as dry as old bones, and he was trembling violently. He knew that they knew just how frightened of them he was … and he no longer cared.
At least they were smiling.
“We are pleased with your continued successes in the use of your new magic,” one said.
“You’ve become quite adept at murder,” another added approvingly, like a tutor praising a young child.
As he stared at them, standing facing him in the room they’d made his prison, almost close enough to touch, Mreldrake found himself suddenly longing to be back in the royal palace of Suzail. Even being under Manshoon’s hand had been better than this …
He was quailing inwardly just as much as he was quaking outwardly. They could slay him at will. How then could he, dared he, try to delicately inform them he’d made himself essential to working the magic he’d developed, and therefore-he hoped-unexpendable?
They were smiling at him now, almost fondly. Yet in their eyes, he could see it, yes, there was a glint of glee …
“Your attempts to save your own hide by working yourself into your new spell have amused us greatly. Be aware that we’ve no intention of killing you.”
Well of course not yet. Not when what he knew would be so useful in enabling them to swiftly and quietly conquer Cormyr.
They came around the corner, riding easily in the brightening morning.
Manshoon stood wide-footed, his arms folded across his chest, smiling faintly.
“Power is mine, and I
One man, alone in the wild borderlands, by his pose so insolently sure of himself, either meant an archmage or the visible decoy for a hundred hidden outlaws waiting in ambush.
“
Nonchalantly he released the spell he’d cast and held ready while waiting for them to ride into view.
Twelve Purple Dragons and their mounts were suddenly shrieking, tumbling carrion, their cries dying abruptly as his whirlcone tightened around them and its unseen blades of force started dismembering them in midair. Bloody limbs bounced into the ditch behind them, where the road curved back toward civilization.
“Ah, civilization,” Manshoon murmured, watching the two wizards survive unscathed thanks to their wards. Spent in saving them, of course, leaving them defenseless against his next spell. “We
Their first frantic magics flared and burst against his shield as he calmly and unhurriedly cast another spell. When it was done, one of the war wizards stood scorched and dazed on the road, his robes aflame and his horse gone. Only the untouched Crown mage managed a second spell against Manshoon’s shield, taking it down. By then, the future emperor of Cormyr had unhurriedly worked another magic-and the scorched wizard of war had become two booted legs surrounded by ashes, standing in the middle of Orondstars Road.
The surviving war wizard cast his strongest battle spell, rocking the road around Manshoon, whose conjured mantle absorbed the death sent so desperately to claim him. Its job done, the mantle sighed into nothingness, leaving him unguarded. By then, of course, he’d hurled a mind doom at the lone surviving Crown mage, and was inside the hapless fool’s head.
He shattered and conquered his mind in less time than it took his victim to sigh.
So this was enthusiastic young Wizard of War Jarlin Flamtarge. Well, well. Manshoon burned out his new minion’s war wizard ring until it had no powers left, and could no longer be traced from afar. Hultail was a remote post, neither important nor busy; Flamtarge hadn’t possessed a team ring.
“Have a good journey,” Manshoon said politely to the horse, gentling its mind with one of the spells he was proudest of, one of the few restorative ones he’d ever mastered.
Then he teleported back to Sraunter’s cellar in Suzail, but left his awareness mentally riding Wizard of War Jarlin Flamtarge. His newest mind pet, now riding on alone along Orondstars Road, bound for Castle Irlingstar.
The Simbul plunged down out of a midnight sky feet first, her silver hair billowing behind her.
Rushing up at her was a desolate, ruined keep, standing in a rugged vale deep in rocky wilderlands, a lonely riven fang.
It was not unguarded; malgodemons and nabassu in great numbers flapped up from those crumbling dark parapets to challenge her.
She plummeted, surrounded by a sphere of glowing blue radiance that faded into sudden visibility, a whirling open-work sphere outlined by the tightly curving orbits of many flying objects-no two alike, but all blazing with blueflame.
The dark flying guardians came at her from all sides in a vicious storm, but she smote them from the sky with spells hurled forth from her ever-swifter-whirling cage of blueflame, a cage that seared and melted to sighing tatters every demon that blundered into it, keeping them from reaching her. The cage fell with her, to touch and melt through the keep’s stone walls as if they were but air and shadows.
The cage descended still, drifting down, down through the heart of the ancient and riven fortress into an eerily glowing well in its depths. Yet another rift in the Realms, through which more demons were appearing, boiling forth in an endless fell stream.
The Simbul clawed at the air around her to pull the cage in tight, and make of it the rift-rending dagger she would need.
“As El would say,” she murmured aloud, “here we go again.”
Dagger and all, she slid into purple-white agony.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
