Maglor’s thin, cruel mouth tightened, and he shook his head. Some day he’d be mighty enough to destroy Old Ghost… somehow…
He felt a sudden tingling, as if every hair of his body was standing up on end. Well, they probably were, because the faint, dead-white glow that followed, tinged just for an instant with green, meant only one thing: out of empty air, by fell magic, the eerie, flowing wraithlike thing known as “Old Ghost” was joining him in his workshop.
From where, he knew not, nor could he do more than speculate as to how; the word “magic” was an explanation so broad as to be meaningless. He wasn’t even certain what Old Ghost was. A fell intelligence that could speak, yes, and probably once a solid, mortal human wizard.
Probably.
Now, Old Ghost was Maglor’s all-too-familiar Zhentarim superior, and Maglor wasn’t sure if he hated it more than he was terrified of it-or whether his terror outstripped his hatred. The latter, he supposed, as he’d never dared try to “Maglor,” Old Ghost said, in that hoarse whisper of a voice that never began with any greeting, “I have a task for you.”
Maglor bowed his head. “I willingly serve.”
The glowing, drifting presence made a sound that might have been a snort. “You remain a poor liar. Save your breath, and heed well. You are to deal with the upstart Swords of Eveningstar before they endanger our profits.”
“Who or what are the Swords of-”
“Adventurers, who just personally received a charter from King Azoun-along with his order to undertake an exploration of the Haunted Halls. They will be here soon, and are bidden to report to Winter. Their very presence may disrupt our caravan traffic, for even if they haven’t been ordered to report anyone they see in the Stonelands, some war wizards will have been ordered to spy on them, and so will be where we don’t want them to be.”
“ ‘Deal with’?”
“Eliminate them. Without attracting Purple Dragon attention to our smuggling activities in Eveningstar.”
“I’ll see to it at once.”
“You will indeed. Or else.”
And Old Ghost faded away, making this the shortest moot Maglor had ever “enjoyed” with it. The Zhentarim upper ranks must be busy.
Nonetheless, as he snuffed the last of the candle-lamps and headed for the stairs up to his cold and lonely bed, Maglor was trembling.
The sickening chill of Old Ghost’s nearness-a bone-deep cold that stole his strength and left him retching on the weak brink of unconsciousness, on the rare occasions when Old Ghost swept through Maglor-always left him trembling.
Agannor snored like handfuls of gravel sliding down a shield.
Bey was slower and deeper, like the call of a distant and melancholy war horn.
Florin, however, lay silent, because he was awake. Again.
Too full of that strange tingling to get back to sleep. It was with him always now, a faint singing by day but a louder whispering by night. He couldn’t make out the words, no matter how hard he strained, but somehow felt no evil, nor threat to him. “The favor of Holy Mielikki,” Hawkstone had murmured, just for him to hear. “Given to you, lad, to blaze within you until Our Lady of the Forest comes to touch you herself.”
And that was all the great ranger had said. He’d gone in with them to the table, but a bare two breaths later, when Florin-who very much wanted to talk to his former tutor, about the tingling and so many other things-had looked for him in all the scrapings of chairs and the king’s jovial words and servants scurrying to set out dishes, Hawkstone was simply gone.
Vanished, as if the very air had swallowed him, without anyone else seeming to notice his absence or even remark on his being there in the first place. They’d said nothing, any of them, about Florin receiving the favor of Mielikki. Whatever it was.
The tingling was growing inside him now, as if responding to his attention. What was it?
Oh, he’d talked to Doust and Semoor about it, and even Jhessail for a moment or two. When he mentioned it, they remembered it-vaguely, speaking words without interest or emotion, as if discussing something overheard about someone they knew not-but had nothing useful to say. Or even to suggest, beyond going to see a cleric of Mielikki. Which obvious deed he was already eager to do-if he ever found one. Those who’d come to Espar had been wanderers, as was the way of rangers and druids, and he’d never met a “treecloak,” as the druids called the clerics of all the woodgods in Cormyr. Yet it sounded very much as if the goddess herself was going to visit him. And “touch” him, whatever that meant. It must mean some sort of change or awakening in him, though, or why would Hawkstone have brought this power that now tingled within him to wait for it?
Unless he was entirely wrong, and it was something unknown.
Florin’s long sigh of bewilderment roused Agannor to snorting confusion, but the son of Hethcanter Falconhand and Imsra Skydusk slid down it a long, long way, deep and dark, until morning.
“Get in here,” Jhessail hissed, hauling Doust into the room. “We’ll have half the inn up if you stand out there-and they’re sure to want to know why you’ve come visiting and we’re so upset. One word spills out about wraith-nightmares and half Cormyr will be telling the other half that we’re cursed, and should be turned away from their doors, shunned, and all the rest of it.”
“Wraith-nightmares! S-so you dreamed the same thing!” Doust stammered, as they bundled him inside.
Martess set the unhooded lantern down on the wide shelf that crossed the back of the room, plucked up the sheet to cover herself again, and gave the priestling of Tymora a level look. “We did. Now just why did your dream bring you here, to the two of us? Or rather, to come as silent as a thief, then just stand there? Were you planning to hold up yon passage wall until morning?”
Doust blinked at Jhessail, suddenly aware that aside from her boot socks, she wore very little. Jhessail spread her hands unconcernedly, then pointed at Martess. “There’s only the one sheet, and I have my socks, so she has it.”
Doust sat down hastily on the floor and turned his back on them. The two women exchanged glances then got back into bed; the air was cold.
“I’m waiting,” Martess said. “How long does it take you to invent answers?”
“I’m not… forgive me. I dreamed that a wraith-thing-shapeless but it could see me, and rear up, and it was evil — was slithering like a snake, and, well, flowing some of the time, too. It came into my room, slithered around Stoop, then reared up and looked at me. It gave me a sneer, then went out under the door again. I put on my boots-our room is so cold that we both slept in our clothes-and went after it, but in my head I could see where it was going. It came here, and I reached to take down the passage-lamp and burned my hand on it. That’s when I realized I was awake. I left the lamp and hurried down to your door as swift as I could, and was standing there wondering what to do when you… opened up.”
Jhessail looked at Martess, who said slowly and distinctly, “Tluin. Gods-hrasting, stlarning-tluin. Tluin. ”
Jhessail sighed. “I feel the same way, but cursing’s going to help us not at all. What was it? And did it do anything, to any of us? I don’t want to ride into danger thinking one of my friends, riding beside me, is really an evil monster inside, just waiting for the best chance to slay the rest of us.”
“Is that what it really was, d’you think?” Doust asked. “What if it was, say, a sign from the gods?”
“Surely the gods, being so greater than mortals, could craft a sign we could understand,” Martess said sharply. “Otherwise, what good is it? Do they think we’re going to go running to a random priest and ask what it meant? We know we’d only get his guess, and might not follow it, so what good would that do the god? If a dream isn’t a means of shoving us into doing or not doing certain things, why go to the trouble of crafting it?”
Doust nodded. “And which god sent it?”
Jhessail sighed. “None of this talk of ours matters. We’ve no way of knowing it’s to do with the gods or not. What if it’s a ghost that haunts this inn? Or a prowling monster? Or spell-sent by a wizard to hunt for something? It could be none of these things; we just don’t know. Now, if the gods want us to do something, they can tell us. Plainly. Otherwise, all this guessing is just that: our guessing. Or a priest’s guessing-and hear me well: I’m not spending the rest of my life wondering if I should do thus and so in accordance with someone else’s guesses. Guesses that could very well be wrong. And they will be someone else’s guesses, because I’m not wasting any time trying to guess anything.”
