into an empty room together. “So it’s the king and queen we most have to worry about.”
Ushering them in, he closed the door firmly and pointed at it. “Guard that,” he ordered Islif, who wordlessly hefted her sword and took up a stance facing it.
Vangey nodded and pointed Doust at a taller-than-a-man painting on another wall, and Semoor at a wardrobe on a third. “Those are doors, too. Guard them. If any war wizard-or anyone else, even the king himself-tries to come in, shout out and try to stop them.”
Returning the center of the room, he beckoned Florin, Pennae, and Jhessail to stand with him, and spread his hands on high, as if to dramatically commence spellcasting.
“Right,” he barked. “No scrying crystals. Let’s go hunting war wizard traitors. Applethorn, where are you?”
“Ah, so prudence at last takes hold of our Royal Magician,” Ghoruld Applethorn purred, “despite the overconfidence that dooms him. Just who will protect you, Vangey? Your own oh-so-puissant spells? A handful of backcountry blunder-neck adventurers?”
Shaking his head, Applethorn unhurriedly worked a spell that turned him into the likeness of a plinth like all the others-a plinth with a hand that carefully lifted the glowing crystal atop itself and did something that made that sphere go dark like the rest.
Around that resting crystal, fingertips sank into the top of the plinth, as Applethorn’s voice spoke mockingly from it. “So-behold-I hide me. Can you find me? In time? Before what Margaster unleashes finds you? ”
“Careless, Ghoruld, careless,” Margaster murmured, turning away from his scrying whorl. “Don’t announce me and what I’m doing to all listening Cormyr! You’re becoming expendable.”
Kneeling on the stone floor, he flipped back a corner of the carpet to reveal a row of nine words chalked on the flagstones. Touching each in turn, he said it aloud with firm, grave precision.
Then he rubbed them all away.
In a dark, dusty secret passage elsewhere in the Royal Palace of Cormyr, each of Margaster’s words sounded out of the empty air-one at a time, in turn-above a row of nine skulls resting on little stands along a shelf.
Each skull wore an old warrior’s helm and each was connected by a trail of dried blood-a deliberately drawn line of blood-down from its stand to the shelf, and from the shelf all the way down the wall, and a little way across the floor to an unscabbarded sword lying on the flagstones.
As each word was spoken, the skull linked to it rocked, glowed briefly, then rose into the dusty air and melted away, leaving an empty helm floating in the air.
Dust swirled and coalesced, until it would have been clear to anyone watching-if there had been anyone alive to watch in that dark and deserted passage-that shadowy, wraithlike shoulders connected each empty helm to arms that seemed but more shadows, yet were able to lift, hold, and wield a sword.
Nine solid, real swords were plucked up from the floor, to be hefted and swung in eerie silence. The shadows trailed away raggedly below each set of shoulders; none of the nine shadow-things had a torso or legs. They were little more than ragged wraiths.
Nine helms turned this way and that, as if the emptinesses within them were looking at each other, and conferring.
Then, with one accord, nine bladewraiths flew down the passage.
Amid the inevitable fanfare, the King and Queen of Cormyr entered Anglond’s Great Hall arm in arm, giving the guests and courtiers serene smiles and nods.
Not letting his broad smile slip in the slightest, Azoun muttered to Filfaeril, “This has all the makings of a disaster.”
“Now, Az,” she murmured back fondly, “like most things, it’s only a disaster if you act like it’s a disaster.” She patted his hand. “So don’t. Seduce someone instead.”
Azoun growled faintly, to let her know her teasing had been heard, and they proceeded smoothly on, pretending not to hear the whispers of “treason” that were loudly racing around the hall and raging along the balconies.
Filfaeril smiled up at the folk there, as she always did, then turned to look back over her shoulder at the balconies behind, to make sure no one felt ignored. She nudged their linked arms to signal her royal husband to do the same. Cheers rang out, from here and there across the hall, and were taken up by servants and Purple Dragons until the hall was a-roar.
Up on the balconies, merchants and their wives crowded the rails. Impassive, full-armored Purple Dragons stood among them, at intervals. Each held a cocked crossbow, pointed straight up at the ceiling, and was vigilantly surveying the crowd below.
Amid the hubbub, the royal couple glided across the miraculously clearing floor of the hall-that “miracle” caused by war wizard suggestion magics-to meet the envoy of Silverymoon.
She responded, moving forward at the same pace, as her tall, elegantly beautiful aides and maids fell away from around her-and Cormyreans all over Anglond’s Great Hall gasped at the revealed beauty of the Lady Aerilee Hastorna Summerwood.
She was as tall as Azoun, and strikingly beautiful. Slender in dusk blue shimmerweave, as fluidly graceful as a wave riding across fair seas, she was a half-elf with dark, arched eyebrows, pale high cheekbones, a lush and kindly smiling mouth, and eyes like two great, deep sapphires. She was barefoot, and the shifting clingings of her ankle- length gown left little doubt to any eye that she was bare beneath it.
She greeted the King of Cormyr with a herald’s respectful bow and fair words, but turned without pause to embrace Queen Filfaeril and give her a deep kiss, almost as if they were lovers. A long, tender kiss that left Azoun blinking in pleased surprise, and the hall buzzing with murmured comment.
“Oh, joy, ” Dove and Dalonder Ree sighed in unison, from about sixty feet apart. “It begins.”
“This,” Dalonder added, as he watched the Lady Summerwood extend a long arm almost as an afterthought to gather the king into a three-way embrace, “is going to be an interesting evening.”
Vangerdahast murmured something, and a tiny coffer appeared in midair in front of him.
He reached for it, opened it, and told Jhessail, “Touch only the unicorn-headed ring. Take it out, but don’t put it on, or allow even the smallest part of any of your fingers to pass into its circle. Just hold it up in front of me.”
She nodded and did so. A swift flick of Vangey’s hand made the coffer go away again, and he carefully worked a spell on the ring.
A red glow rose from it, and began to pulse. Jhessail’s face tightened in pain and she started to tremble. “Keep hold of it!” the Royal Magician snapped.
The lady Knight nodded grimly, as a scene slowly built in the air between them, of a deserted stone room lit by a single scrying crystal that was pulsing and glowing with the same red hue as the ring she was holding. In the depths of that crystal, the Knights could see a tiny image of themselves standing with Vangerdahast, in the room they were now in.
The crystal sat on a plinth of dark stone, one of a ring of identical plinths; the others all had dark, inactive crystal balls atop them. Every plinth was circled in chalk, and those circles were linked by raylike lines to a central, empty circle.
Peering hard at the plinths, Vangerdahast snapped, “See you the plinth under the glowing crystal, Florin? Look at the chalk drawn around it, at the slight variations in circle and line from what’s been drawn around the other plinths. If the crystal went dark, could you tell that one plinth from the others?”
“I… yes,” Florin said firmly. “Yes, I could.”
“Good. That plinth is in truth a war wizard, a traitor to the realm. Go and slay him with steel, striking as fast as you can and keeping low, for he can with a word cause all those crystals to burst and spray deadly shards everywhere. Go out through the wardrobe, turn left, and run like a storm wind; my voice will guide you thereafter.”
Without another word Florin raced across the room, drawn sword in hand, plunged through the wardrobe, and turned left.
“Faster!” Laspeera snapped, as yet another guardpost of Purple Dragons moved to bar their way, uncertain frowns on their faces.
Tathanter Doarmund thrust his warshield spell forward like a battering ram, but on its flanks Dauntless in his tatters and most of the dozen other Purple Dragons were already plunging ahead. The ornrion bellowed, “Make
