Huldyl grunted. “When you rise to such importance, let me know.”
Kurthryn chuckled and made a mildly rude gesture.
Huldyl returned it idly and asked, “Are you going to move another piece tonight, or shall we just talk?”
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”
“As the sage said to the serving girl,” Huldyl responded wryly. “Old Thunderspells is probably fretting behind a shield of his own right now.”
“Fret? Him? Why?” Kurthryn moved a noble knight, and then, seeing the weakness he’d left, winced.
Huldyl shrugged and moved his death priest to topple one of the little dragons, ignoring the move Kurthryn had feared he’d make. “Our elder wizards, Vangerdahast among them, can’t even get any straight answers out of Princess High-and-Mighty about the governance of the realm.”
Kurthryn’s eyebrows rose, and he looked involuntarily over his shoulder to make sure that the outermost door of the chain of rooms that led to Crown Princess Tanalasta’s apartments was closed. It was. “Couldn’t Laspeera Inthre penetrate the royal thoughts?”
Huldyl smiled thinly. “She could if Tanalasta and her fiance Bleth weren’t both wearing spell shields taken from Azoun’s personal cache of seized and pillaged magic.”
It was Kurthryn’s turn to shrug. “Ah, well, if you’ve got it, use it. Handy, being king. Down through the years, you can seize a lot of magical gewgaws from the disloyal.” He looked down at the board in front of him and moved one of his bishops out of harm’s way.
“Mother Laspeera,” Huldyl said admiringly. “Now there’s a woman I could wish was younger, and I older. What a worker for the realm-and mother to us all.”
“And naught has been seen of her for days. She has gone missing in all this,” said Kurthryn. “Like Alaphondar the sage.”
“And like Galados,” added Huldyl, snaking a hand over the board. His death priest moved again, and another of the little Purple Dragons died.
Kurthryn sighed at the discarded chess piece as his colleague set it down beside the board, the latest member of a slowly growing group. He laid his hand on his queen to move it in front of old Galaghard, but the piece felt somehow warm and wet and uncomfortable under his fingers, and he drew his hand away again. Studying the board, he suddenly saw the sly attack Huldyl had prepared, and he hastily moved his king instead. The bishops and the noble knight were just going to have to take their chances.
Huldyl smiled. “I’m glad we don’t use that foolish rule the Calishites prefer… touch it and you must move it.”
“Oh-yes,” Kurthryn responded. “Small-minded etiquette for small-minded folk, eh?” Then he sighed again as Huldyl’s smile widened, and the junior war wizard brought that damnable death priest back across the board again to menace both Kurthryn’s turret of Arabel and his other knight.
“Who taught you to play this game? Old Thunderspells himself?” Kurthryn protested, looking down at the shambles of his position. Huldyl was going to be able to strike down his choice of at least two pieces while Kurthryn tried to move the rest of the Glory of Cormyr out of the way. He peered across the board at the enemy witch-king- Gondegal, some called it-secure behind the pair of black turrets, and sighed. There was just one chance… time for a little distraction. He leaned forward to deliver his most juicy secret.
His colleague was chuckling smugly. Kurthryn stilled that sound and left him gaping with his softspoken words. “I’ve been told that certain senior priests in this city, with the aid of a powerful archmage whose identity they are keeping secret, have discovered the cause. The poison that killed Bhereu and bids fair to kill both Thomdor and the king is a liquid-borne toxin that works through the bloodstream inside a man. The reason spells have failed to neutralize this poison is that it generates its own dead-magic zone.” He moved his knight.
Huldyl whistled low. The dead-magic zones, proof from any spellcasting, were a legacy of the Time of Troubles, when the gods walked Faerun. “So can they foil it now?” Huldyl asked, wild-eyed, leaning forward over the board in his excitement.
Kurthryn shrugged. “They’re working on it.”
The junior wizard sat back, rubbing his chin. “Who could have crafted it? A Red Wizard of Thay, perhaps, or another powerful lich or archmage? But who did it? Almost absently he moved one of his pieces.
“Who’s trying to become ruler of Cormyr?” Kurthryn responded grimly.
Huldyl threw up his hands, barking out a short, mirthless laugh. “Every third noble between here and Arabel, that’s who! There’s no shortage of those who might want to.” He rubbed his chin again and added thoughtfully, “And when subterfuge, plotting, and poison are the means, those who might not have spells nor swords strong enough to take the throne might have their chances.”
“You mean this man who’s wooing Tanalasta might really be after the crown?” Kurthryn shook his head in disbelief. “If it’s him in truth, why does Bleth not marry her first and make his claim clear before starting all the bloodshed?”
“It could be someone else,” Huldyl said, with another shrug. “I mean only that soft words and velvet handshakes have won as many thrones as the rising and falling of blood-drenched blades.”
Kurthryn waggled his eyebrows. “Been reading too much Tethyrian poetry, have we?” He moved his knight again.
Huldyl snarled in mock rage. “Aye, the same place you were reading books on how to play chess!” His death priest slid delicately across the board to slay Kurthryn’s advancing knight. “So much for sneak attacks, ‘good my lord,’” the junior wizard added.
With a weary sigh, Kurthryn moved one of his bishops. If this game bore any relation to reality, Cormyr had not long to last. “So what do you think of this young Bleth?”
Huldyl shrugged again. “It’s the princess who has to kiss him, not I. You know how I feel about sneering, lazy, idiot nobles. Granted he’s been crisply and ably delivering what few orders Tanalasta has deigned to decree thus far, but who’s to say how much of those orders are his intentions or embellishments? She never steps out of her chamber of sorrows to check!”
“Sounds like the Obarskyrs need a bit of steel in the old bloodline,” Kurthryn murmured.
“Hah! The line forms down the hall to marry the crown princess and father a long line of strapping sons,” Huldyl said sarcastically. “Shall I save you a place?”
“Nay. I fear, ‘good my lord,’ that I lack what is most needed,” Kurthryn replied, mimicking the tones of a cultured court official.
“Stamina?”
“Deafness,” Kurthryn replied flatly. “Have you heard Tanalasta when she’s in one of her moods? Such as when she is going over the account books, and finds a three-silver-piece error? Or hounding down some delinquent creditor or slipshod contractor? Nothing’s worth years and years of that! Not Cormyr, not fabled Myth Drannor at its proverbial height, not gold-buried Waterdeep right now!”
Huldyl chuckled and moved his much-traveled death priest back to a safer spot. “So what’s the latest out in the city?”
Kurthryn’s senior rank brought more reports to his ears than Huldyl ever heard, and he shared the relevant bits of the most recent one now. “Well, our esteemed Vangerdahast does have some significant and slowly growing support for his regency-the old heart-of-the-realm noble houses, mainly-but this Bleth, pet hound of the crown princess, is lining up nobles as fast as he can hand out bribes and twist arms on behalf of Tanalasta ruling as queen.”
“So who will win?” Huldyl asked quietly, and before Kurthryn could even lift his shoulders to shrug, added, “Nay, forget I asked that, instead, tell me: Who do you think offers the better road ahead for the realm?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot,” Kurthryn admitted. He grinned weakly when his colleague made a silently sarcastic so-who-hasn’t? gesture. “Both sides have their merits. I think Vangerdahast has the wisdom and experience to be much the better ruler, and without courtiers and senior nobles and royal cousins and what-all between him and us, he can use us of the war wizards far more swiftly than Azoun could move us to his will. Cormyr will be less corrupt and faster to respond to crises.”
“Yes, but will the people believe that?”
Kurthryn frowned and shook his head slowly. “No, they won’t. They never do. They’ll never trust magic, because they think of it as something their nasty neighbor would use against them if he could, and they’re always afraid the lot of us are as bad as their nasty neighbor. And with respected bards reminding them from time to time
