Crownsilver stared into Yellander’s gentle smile, then took up his goblet and sipped as his host had done-and doubled over in sudden sharp agony, as something caught fire in his throat and gut.
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t…
The world spun, he slid helplessly out of his chair, everything going oddly green-and Maniol Crownsilver found himself on the floor, writhing and gasping, staring up helplessly into Yellander’s tight smile and cold, cold eyes.
His host unhurriedly produced another goblet and poured some of its contents into Crownsilver’s mouth-a flood that brought cool relief, coursing through him in a racing flow that banished his pain as if it had never been.
“Always keep antidotes handy,” Yellander said brightly, reaching down a hand to help Crownsilver to his feet. “Sound policy for every poisoner.”
Settling thankfully back into his seat, Maniol Crownsilver shook his head in disgust. “That demonstration was not necessary.”
He waved his hand as if to banish all memory of what had just occurred, and said, “What I don’t understand is why you two don’t own all Cormyr-Obarskyrs, war wizards, Purple Dragons, stinking Marsember and all-already! You could have been sending long caravans of loaded trade-wagons, or mounted, weapon-gleaming armies, through that portal!”
Eldroon shook his head. “Listen not to minstrels’ tales. Portals will never replace caravans for overland trade. Even if the way you’re using is free of some fell and ancient evil watching over it in the belief that all who use it are their rightful meals, the ways themselves occasionally ‘drink’ or melt away things taken through them.”
“ ‘Things’?”
“Coins, swords, trade goods. Anything you’re wearing or carrying.”
“Which is why,” Yellander put in smoothly, “you can step through a portal in your best armor, waving your sword-and arrive at the other end naked, with your sword hand empty.” He sipped from his goblet. “Something of a crestfallen disaster for your mounted, weapon-gleaming armies.”
“So our trade has been well and truly disrupted,” Lord Eldroon concluded. “Wherefore we want the Knights of Myth Drannor and particular war wizards and Zhentarim dead, and their corpses missing or reduced to scattered dust-so not even beyond death will they be able to tell anyone about certain things they may have seen in our warehouse.”
“Which, by the way,” Yellander added, “also contains many legitimate wares, stored for other traders.”
Eldroon nodded. “We only need six-and-twenty or so slain, but they must be the right six-and-twenty.”
Crownsilver frowned. “Adventurers, war wizards, Zhents-so you’re going to start a war in the streets of Arabel? How, exactly, without dragging every war wizard in all the realm-and half the Purple Dragons too-down on our heads like so many hungry war-dogs?”
“No,” Yellander snapped, “not Arabel. We’re not dolts, man.”
“Halfhap,” said Eldroon.
“ Halfhap? ”
“Walled town, well on the way to Tilver’s Gap, going eas-”
“Yes, yes, I know it. Why Halfhap?”
“It has a lure we can use. With your help.”
“All right,” Lord Crownsilver said warily, “suppose you tell me first how my help is a key to this cunning scheme. Then you can tell me the cunning part, and all about this lure.”
Yellander smiled thinly. “Well said, Maniol. Here ‘tis then, bluntly: you’re being watched.”
“By?”
“The war wizards, who else? They’re very interested in you right now, expecting you to either take your own life or more likely work treason in a rage against your recent losses. So, upon our signal, you will bait our hook by hiring a few bullyblades and gathering your most able servants for a little run to Halfhap-telling said servants why of course, so they can tonguewag it all over Suzail-to find and seize Emmaera Dragonfire’s magic for your own.”
“Ah. That’s your lure.”
“Indeed. The persistent local legend of the hidden, never-yet-found magic of Emmaera Dragonfire. More properly Emmaera Skulthand, but minstrels prefer her nickname, of course. Long dead, cloaked in many wild bards’ tales-just the sort of thing adventurers, Zhents, and our ever-meddling war wizards all find irresistible.”
“So given that very irresistibility, why hasn’t someone plundered Emmaera’s magic long since?”
Yellander shrugged. “Perhaps they have. It certainly isn’t in Halfhap, so far as we can tell.”
“And given that the war wizards undoubtedly know that too, how exactly do you expect the lure to work?”
Lord Eldroon smiled. “You cover ground the two of us have argued over a time or two before. Let us share our conclusions with you.”
“Please do.”
“Well, if we make sure the Knights of Myth Drannor and particular Zhents-and, once our favorite adventurers have reached the Oldcoats Inn in Halfhap, certain war wizards too-overhear news that the dead woman’s long-lost spellbooks, wands, and all have been discovered behind a false wall in the deepest cellar of the inn, but that no one dares approach them because a ring of floating, magically animated swords guards them-”
“Swords that blaze with all-consuming dragonfire,” Yellander murmured.
“Guardian swords that blaze with all-consuming dragonfire,” Eldroon agreed. “The Knights and the war wizards are sure to race to claim such a prize. As the rumors we spread and the hook-baiting your hurried preparations and travel serve to make that ‘sure’ even more certain.”
Crownsilver nodded. His face seemed to be getting used to wearing a slight frown. “And how will that help you? Once they discover there’s nothing there, won’t they all just leave again?”
“Ah, but there isn’t nothing there. There’s a spell Dragonfire cast, an illusion of her spellbooks, wands, and baubles. The war wizards have searched that old decaying barn of an inn dozens of times, and banished her spell, too, but it keeps returning. It was her lure-and one of the reasons we bought the inn some years back.”
“Her lure, you say? So where is her magic, really?”
“No one knows, and we’ve never wanted to waste coin, time, and lives finding out. The inn cellars serve us as way-storage, and the new keeper serves us, sending us coin that the rooms above bring-the rooms that aren’t full of our bullyblades.”
“So the Knights go down into the cellar…”
“And we pounce.” Lord Eldroon smiled. “Or rather, our bullyblades do, using all the back passages and curtained-off corners in the cellars; crossbows that fire bolts tipped with our poisons, and that sort of thing. They can bring war wizards down dead just as easily as they can foolhead adventurers.”
“And when it’s all done,” Lord Yellander added, sliding aside the top of the table between them to reveal a velvet-lined storage niche that held a string of cheap-looking beads and a note that read Caution: necklace of fireballs, “this will provide a blast-the-bodies pyre to thwart war wizards spell-prying into dead brains.”
“And how will you get there in time to use it?”
Yellander smiled softly. “By means of the other reason we bought the inn. The portal into its back pantry. Yes, another portal; the realm’s riddled with them.”
Old Ghost drew the last three runes of the spell in his mind, silently and emphatically thinking of the words that ended the incantation as he did so, in deft and exacting sequence.
And the swirling, building spell-glow rose into a bright fist, trailing sparks, that opened to him and flooded over him with a rapture sweeter than he’d ever felt in his long existence before.
He’d now mastered every one of the ancient Netherese spells! At last!
Gleefully he soared up out of the roofless “haunted” ruin in the hills of upcountry Amn he’d been using as a spell chamber and raced through the dark tangled wood like a howling storm, darting through the gaps of a badly boarded-over back window into a tavern storeroom, and thence out into its smoky bustle like a half-seen, streaking arrow-that plunged right into a human host. He had every exultant intention of riding the man mercilessly.
The hitherto fat and lazy master of the Bright Mare Fine Tavern, best (and only) drinking-house in the rural Amnian village of Darthing, suddenly flung himself across a littered card table, viciously punched a warrior twice his size in the throat, snatched out the gargling, strangling man’s short sword and slashed that same throat open, and then bounded up, howling.
The taproom of the Bright Mare was as crowded as usual-and every jack and lass in it stared in open-
