The man with the iron bar never saw it coming. The chair slammed into the back of his head, splintering one of its legs, and he went down, toppling on his face with a crash.
The nearest bullyblade looked back over his shoulder, startled by the sounds. Rensharra threw her chair, as high and hard as she could.
It hit the floor right in front of him, bounced, and crashed down onto his foot.
He howled and hopped in pain-right onto Mirt’s blade. Who used it like a handle to swing the gutted man around into the last one, slamming them both against the wall.
Then the stout and wheezing Lord of Waterdeep snatched up the fallen iron bar and brained both bullyblades several times, just to make sure. When they lay still in their spreading blood, he turned back to the man Rensharra had felled and battered the back of his skull, thoroughly.
“Are you all right, lass?” he panted, straightening up from his bloody work. “Did they-?”
“Hit me a time or two, that’s all,” the lady clerk of the rolls replied, her voice quavering just once. “But they were going to cut out my tongue, and then-and then-”
Her voice soared into tears, and she rushed into his arms.
“Have some fun,” Mirt grimly finished her sentence for her, holding her tight. “Pity we’ll need a priest, now, to make what’s left of
So it was that Lady Dawningdown was very soon thereafter brusquely evicted from her own coach, where it stood in the palace foreyard waiting for her bullyblades to return with word that Rensharra Ironstave had been satisfactorily dealt with.
She took one look at the face of the old fat man hauling her forth from her back corner as if she weighed nothing at all, and another look at Rensharra Ironstave’s stern face, and then looked away. Without a word, she took herself off across the palace yard as fast as her cane could help her scurry.
A moment later, her coachmaster and both coachjacks all came hurtling down face-first onto the cobbles, bouncing in the dust and cursing and clutching bleeding and broken noses-and her finest day coach was rumbling away as fast as the fat old man could whip its horses, out onto the Promenade with a rising rumble.
“Stop, thief!” she dared to call, then, shaking her cane at the dwindling conveyance. Not that anyone heeded, of course. The palace doorjacks merely gave her shrugs when she informed them what had befallen, so she crisply told them all something stern and clear, and started walking.
By the time she reached the eastgate, to complain to the Purple Dragons on gate guard duty and demand fast riders be sent after the stolen coach, she thought better of demanding anything of them at all. The coach had almost run over those guards as it raced out of the city, and they were still muttering about arrogant nobles and telling each other they’d recognized the Dawningdown arms on the doors, oh, aye, to be sure …
Muttering some choice curses of her own, Lady Dawningdown marched over to the nearest rental coach, to hire passage home across half of Suzail.
Prudence, even for expendable mindslaves of the future emperor of Cormyr, was occasionally desirable.
So it was that for the last leg of his journey, Wizard of War Jarlin Flamtarge had let his horse go and departed Orondstars Road for the concealment of the trees bordering it.
Now, however, the walls of Irlingstar loomed above him. He stepped down into the road for the last few trudging strides uphill to the nearest gate, where he swung the great clacking knocker, identified himself to the guards, and was admitted.
The lord constable, it seemed, was busy in an upper passage. He told the anxious guard he’d find his own way there, and set off up a stair. At its head was a long passage running the length of the fortress, or so it seemed. There was also another stair, leading higher, but for the moment, Flamtarge ignored it in favor of strolling down the long passage.
The first cell doorway had a bored-looking noble standing in it. Who spat at the passing war wizard the moment Flamtarge was close enough.
With a sneer, the Crown mage hurled a blasting spell into the noble’s face. It flared into harmless brilliance as it was intercepted by an unseen ward that stretched across the doorway. The noble decided it was his turn to sneer.
Well, well. This would not do at all. Manshoon cast a spell Flamtarge did not know, burning a hole in the ward for just long enough to immolate the sneering noble.
As smoldering bones collapsed in a heap of swirling ashes, he gave them a jaunty sneer, and proceeded on down the passage.
Former Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake tried to appear calm. He was sitting alone in his locked and spell- sealed prison, but of course his captors were watching everything he did, and listening, too.
Their requirements had been clear. So it was that despite the successful string of Irlingstar deaths, Mreldrake was making minor adjustments to perfect a means of magically wielding his conjured, wraithlike shearing edge of force from afar. This blade could bypass wards by being willed to manifest within them, but his captors wanted it to be able to shear through wards, or at least pass through them without delay or impairment.
Yet despite their carping, their dozens of tiny criticisms, what they’d ordered had been accomplished. The lord constable of Irlingstar was dead.
So it was with satisfaction, albeit weary satisfaction, that Rorskryn Mreldrake took a break from dealing death in Irlingstar and making future slayings more elegant to stretch his cramping fingers and sip some tea.
He was no traitor. What he’d done was for the good of Cormyr-and so, both just and right. Many courtiers and nobles wouldn’t see it that way, of course, but they were the villains, not he. Ah, this tea was … comforting. Yes.
Only their families might decry his judgment that the imprisoned nobles of Irlingstar were utterly expendable. Why, he’d heard even timid backroom palace scribes describe them as wastrels and troublemakers that Cormyr-and everywhere else-would be better off without. So there was nothing at all wrong or villainous about using them as the subjects of his … experiments.
The explosions had been unfortunate, but such things happen when one is experimenting. They were no more than the unforeseen results of trying to shape his cutting edge of force into handlike shapes, to try to wield magic items from afar. Every such attempt had been disastrous. Contact between his edge and enchanted items always made the magic items explode. And the backlashes always left him unconscious and mentally reeling for quite some time thereafter.
Even the most stubborn of his captors seemed to have seen enough of such disasters. He’d unwillingly and unintentionally proven that it wouldn’t work-his edge couldn’t be used to work other magics from a distance. However, just using the forceblade to slice throats worked quite well. So, let the throats to be sliced henceforth belong to foes who mattered.
Such as Manshoon, and the one called Elminster, too …
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I … I did not know dragons took such an interest in the doings of humans,” Harbrand said feebly. “Aren’t we just, uh,
“Belt
The dragon chuckled again, with a deep thunder that shook the cavern-and their back teeth.
“I did not begin life as a black dragon,” it told them. “I call myself Alorglauvenemaus now, but in truth I’m a man-a wizard, transformed by my own Art. Once, I was feared within the Brotherhood and unknown outside it.”
“The Brotherhood? The Zhentarim?” Harbrand asked.
“Yes. I am Hesperdan of the Zhentarim. I took dragon shape nigh a century back to keep watch over the
