mouthed, dumbfounded astonishment as Tavernmaster Undigho Belarran waved the short sword around and around his head, laughing and hooting in wild, loud incoherence as the blood flew from it to spatter faces and tables all around-and then lurched forward and butchered a staring cobbler, right in front of the man’s shrieking wife.
Then Belarran became a fat, panting whirlwind, racing here and there across the taproom and back, wildly and recklessly slashing and stabbing. Men swore, fumbled for daggers and belt-knives-and died, hacked and pinioned by a man no one believed could move so fast, even as they gaped at him doing so.
Belarran’s wife and his favorite ale-maid toppled over in their blood. The old miller’s dog was laid open from jaws to haunches. Then the wild-eyed tavernmaster slashed open the throats of two cowering guests in one huge swing of the blood-drenched sword in his fist and made it to the door.
He tarried not to trap and stalk the two wounded but feebly crawling guests still left alive, but burst out onto the main street of Darthing.
Villagers turned to give him greeting, frowned at what they saw, and then died as the tavernmaster rushed at them, hacking and slashing, hurling himself forward recklessly to chop at knees and wrists and ankles.
Folk screamed and shouted in fear, and some men came running with shovels and picks and the rusty swords of old wars, to try to ring the madman and slow his wild butchery. They failed.
Thrice the tavernmaster hewed down armed men who faced him, rushing this way and that at rolling-eyed random, so that none dared strike at him from behind for fear they’d suddenly be kissing his blade as he whirled to face them. Another Darthingar fell, and another, until the village blacksmith shouted at them to all strike at once, rushing in from all sides.
Two more died in that fray of clanging blades as the grunting, flailing-armed tavernmaster lashed out faster than ever-but it ended with Tavernmaster Undigho Belarran spitting blood and sagging to the ground with seven swords thrust through his body, like a large crimson pincushion.
“Well,” the smith said to Darthing’s chandler at his right shoulder and harness-maker to his left, “that’s tha-”
Something like gray-white smoke raced up out of the dying man at their feet and plunged right through them-chandler, smith, and harnessmaker-and the three Darthingar clutched their chests, reeled, and fell on their faces, dead.
The smoke-thing raced on down the village street-and it was laughing.
As villagers shrieked and stared, the mirth of what they could now see was a human-shaped wraith, its arms and legs trailing off into ragged wisps, became a howling guffaw.
The folk of Darthing turned and fled, pelting down stairs into their cellars to cower, panting, as Old Ghost veered through a few more of them, stopping their hearts as he plunged through the sobbing, running humans.
He soared on, gloating aloud in triumph, his voice a raw and terrible hissing. “The spells are all mine at last! I can snatch power enough to destroy Hesperdan! To destroy Manshoon! ”
He chortled as he raced on, sweeping east out of Amn faster than any racing hawk.
The old Netherese spells were poorly written. The incantations awakened stresses in the flowing and rebounding energies of the Weave they called on. A wizard could handle two active spells at once, but trying a third one tore that wizard apart every time. So had perished many wizards and sorcerers of Netheril. Yet only corporeal casters stood in peril. Old Ghost could survive having six working at once, perhaps more!
And what spells they were! Slow but titanic, they literally melted away land-rock and soil, energy flows, everything — into energies that Old Ghost-and only he! — could control, by directing their flows into the Shadow Weave rather than the Weave. He was getting good at doing so, now, and the beauty of it was that Mystra attributed the slight weakening of the Weave to Shar, but Shar couldn’t even sense his work.
Or so it seemed. If he was wrong, he might soon face the wrath of two angry goddesses… if he was wrong.
He’d noticed the castings also stole energy from portals, causing a marked increase in what sages of the Art termed “portal drink”-non-living items that vanished from creatures traversing portals. But what of that? Only creatures who lived and breathed and grasped after food and drink and each other had need of coins or clothes and such!
Casting another spell whenever he needed more strength, he would become one of the mighty. Ever- stronger, even able to rise up again like mist if “destroyed,” as long as creatures used portals anywhere in Faerun.
Old Ghost raced toward Cormyr, bellowing triumphant laughter.
As she trotted through the wet Arabellan night, Pennae was breathing hard and starting to limp as her leg stiffened.
Someone’s dagger had sliced her arm, and a Zhentish sword had more than nicked her leg. She’d slain both Zhents who’d wounded her, but that didn’t make their little gifts to her throb any the less, and if she lost her agility, her career-gods, her life — went with it.
Wherefore she’d left that happy little fray of Zhents and Knights of Myth Drannor butchering each other in the stables, and hurried a few streets across sleeping Arabel to here.
Dark, empty, and dripping Crownserpent Towers. The boarded-up mansion of a minor noble family that to her certain knowledge was extinct, unless undead could sire or bear living offspring. It was old and massive, with air- vents large enough for a skilled sneak-thief to crawl through, and doorposts a child could scale. Decaying moldings and crevices everywhere, and the sort of genteel decay that seeping water, rats, and birds caused.
All of which made it the perfect place to hide healing potions until they were needed.
Such as now, for example.
The rain was slackening, and the mansion was boarded up as tightly as ever. Good; she wasn’t in the mood to fight a street gang-or the servants of a new owner, for that matter.
She climbed up a doorpost, along the ornate stone cornice to a corner, then onto a wide stone windowsill adorned with a fresh duskfeathers nest. The bird sitting on it cheeped once in its sleep as Pennae’s foot came down softly beside it. From there, a long, aching stretch led to the lip of the roof-carving. She dug in fingers like claws, because everything was wet and it could be a killing fall from here.
Up and over, and there was the vent cover.
It slid off as readily as ever, and Pennae lowered herself cautiously down and in. Along the attic air-vent to the moot of six vents, down Hand on a precious vial, she froze. Murmurings. Voices. Mens’ voices. Crownserpent Towers, it seemed, was empty no longer.
Chapter 8
No fight nor foe of Cormyr ever angered me.
I had no wrath to spare, for it was twice or thrice daily provoked by all the confounded scheming.
Thrusting the precious vial she’d come for into her seldom-used throat pouch, Pennae crept along the vent- passage as stealthily as she knew how, until she was peering down through a grating at a sudden glow in a bedchamber that should have held only darkness, cobwebs, and mold.
It was a cold radiance, bright blue and glimmering. Magic.
A glow that came from an orb on a neck-chain, held on high by the robed and hooded figure that was wearing it.
A second, similarly garbed man held up a second orb, clearly in response to the first. “With both of these at work,” he said, his voice sounding male, Cormyrean, and old, “not even Vangey’s magic can see or hear us. Well
