Elminster Must Die

Again.

Sigh. Mustn’t let yon blood dry and the stain really set in …

Elminster sighed. Either this was a very slow night for Dragons walking patrol in Suzail, or the butchery inside yon club was truly impressive.

War wizards were still arriving-pairs and trios, each with a sword-jangling Purple Dragon escort-and hurrying into the Bold Archer.

From which the Dragons would soon emerge to stand talking with their bored, pebble-kicking soldiers who’d arrived earlier, and wait.

Presumably for the growing assembly of wizards inside to decide something or finish casting something-or fall asleep.

Gods, what did the callow young idiots who called themselves wizards of war do, these days? What could possibly be taking them so long?

Or were they all spewing their guts out in shock and disgust at the sight of so much carnage? By all the gods that still walked, weren’t jacks or lasses who joined the war wizards expecting much blood in their lives ahead?

If not, why not? Were they all utterly ignorant of the world they strode around in?

Elminster sourly abandoned asking silent questions that the alley around him couldn’t answer.

After all, who was he to demand answers about anything, an archmage who couldn’t control his own trembling fingers?

He’d have to go and see and hear for himself. Using yon alleyway refuse hatch, for instance.

He glided over to it, found it ajar, shook his head anew at the carelessness of Cormyr’s guardians, and listened hard.

About the length of his arm away from him, two swordcaptains had just begun to confer.

Swordcaptain Tannath was out of breath and none too happy. “Well, Dralkin? I got here as fast as I could; where’s the fire?”

“Out,” Dralkin said grimly, standing just inside the innermost door of the Bold Archer. All the lanterns had been lit and allowed to blaze up full; the room was bright, and every man could see the pool of blood that began at his boots and stretched away into a wrack of furniture and torn, draped bodies like a sticky crimson lake. “This would be what bards like to call ‘the bloody aftermath.’ Just before they start spewing up their suppers.”

Tannath was dispassionately scanning the severed limbs and hacked and staring faces. “I’d say more than a few noble families are going to be howling for vengeance come morning.”

“Aye, and our heads for not preventing it before it befell, when they can’t find anyone else handy to blame,” Dralkin agreed. “The spellhurlers have just cleared out to concoct something to head them all off. Not to mention to try to decide-though how a man decides such a thing, I wouldn’t know-if some plague of marauding madness has befallen Suzail this night.”

“Right, I’ll ask the obvious one,” Tannath asked heavily, his breath back. “Who did this?”

Dralkin shrugged. He caught sight of Arclath and Amarune’s pale and set faces at the rear of Tannath’s patrol, but went right ahead and said what he’d been going to say anyway.

“We’ve talked to two men who ran like stags before a forest fire and got away alive. They say two men who never stopped smiling, with blue flames that scorched nothing burning all over them all the time, did all this. They told everyone they were here to carve up Lord Seszgar Huntcrown-and did. His body’s missing, though Wizard of War Scorlound took away a finger he thinks was Huntcrown’s.”

“So these two flame-enchanted slayers hauled their prize carved meat back to whoever sent them, to prove they’d done the deed, and earned their fee,” Tannath said grimly.

“Of course. That’s not what’s riding me right now, though,” Dralkin replied. “Here’s why I want you upset and brooding, too: With all the nobles who want to get here camped in Suzail for this council, is this just the beginning? How many are these flaming murderers going to be sent to harvest, hey?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

TO DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF BEING KING

Gaskur’s face was carefully expressionless as he admitted the three tardy nobles, but he led them up the back ways of Stormserpent Towers in almost undignified haste. On another occasion that might have earned him kicks and curses from the young Lords Windstag, Dawntard, and Sornstern, but not in the common mood that governed them just then.

Their hasty departure from the Dragonriders’ Club had been followed by a near-race to Staghaven House, the Windstag family mansion, to shelter in its garden summerhouse until the Dragons who’d skulked along behind them from the club gave up and turned back to report their whereabouts. Then the three had taken the tunnel under the street that led from Staghaven’s walled grounds to the Windstag-owned luxury stables, and from there down more than one back lane to reach Stormserpent Towers.

The journey had taken more than time enough for their anger to cool into fear, self-cursing, and worry-not just of missing out on Stormserpent’s delicious schemes, but for stern consequences or at least annoyingly hampering war wizard suspicion ahead for themselves.

“There you are!” their host snapped as they came into the room in an untidy rush, Gaskur closing the doors behind them as he withdrew. “Too busy drinking to attend covert little meetings of treason on time?”

“Sorry, Marlin,” came a swift reply that left the room blinking in astonishment; none of the six nobles who heard it had harbored the slightest inkling Kathkote Dawntard even knew how to apologize-to anyone.

“Aye,” Broryn Windstag mumbled. “The family purse’ll be much lighter by highsun tomorrow, once the Dragons show up at Staghaven House.”

Sornstern was nodding; the three lordlings were the very picture of apologetic and chastened nobility.

Marlin Stormserpent sighed and turned from the board where he’d been filling himself a tallglass from his favorite decanter. “What happened?”

The explanation was an untidy collaborative affair that made the heir of House Stonestable snort loudly-and the other two nobles seated around Stormserpent’s table roll their eyes a time or two.

For his part, Stormserpent drained his glass at a gulp and had to refill it. When their mumblings died away, he barked, “None of you were so drunk or angry as to threaten retribution on the Dragons or Delcastle when you gained more power, did you? Did you?”

“No,” all three of the late arrivals replied with puzzled frowns, genuinely believing they hadn’t-and, luckily for them, therefore sounding convincing.

Marlin Stormserpent shook his head in exasperation and waved them toward his decanters. “Sit. Lack of self-governance-and tardiness-once court and palace are aware of us, will cost you your heads, so consider what you’ve just been through a warning to be remembered and heeded. Now, where were we?”

With Marlin still on his feet pacing excitedly, there were-or would be, once the tardy trio got their glasses filled-six nobles around the table, all young heirs of lesser Houses. That is, scions of families who had long been frustrated that larger clans, such as the royal Houses of Crownsilver and Truesilver, and perennially masterful wealthy schemers like the Illances, always crowded them out of all real power.

Most of the lesser nobility had quietly striven for centuries-against several handfuls of Obarskyr kings-to force the Dragon Throne to give them “their due.” Marlin’s conspirators, however, were largely drawn from newbloods, families ennobled after the exilings of House Bleth and the dispossessions of the Cormaerils and others.

Young and wealthy nobles can find sycophants and toadies in plenty, but friends among their fellow nobles are rarer to come by and harder to keep, among all the feuding, pride, and burning ambition. Nobles tend to cling fiercely to the few real friends they do make-and friendships had inevitably complicated Marlin’s choice of conspirators. Choosing a man he wanted might well bring along a second one he might not have ever chosen to