walked on, Delcastle airily declaiming something about local architecture, the Dragon strode a little way down the street into another, deeper doorway to await their next look back.
Throughout all of this, the rest of the Dragons studiously failed to notice their departing fellow, returning instead to their aimless back-and-forth strolling and muttered conversations.
Elminster let them get well and truly into these before he slid out from behind the crates and walked slowly out of the alley, hunched over, affecting a rolling limp, and paying the milling Dragons not even a glance. They returned the favor.
So as the Dragon skulked down the street from doorway to doorway, a hunched and limping old man followed him.
Around the curve of shuttered shopfronts, as the street bent in a southerly direction, all four went.
Elminster considered the Dragon’s shadowing about as subtle as a series of warhorn blasts, but Arclath, at least, never looked back.
Neither did the Purple Dragon, so when the Dragonriders’ was a little more than a city block away, the stooped old man limped a little faster.
Which meant that he calmly caught up to the Purple Dragon in the space of a few breaths to murmur in the man’s ear, “Have my apologies, loyal blade, but I fear common thuggery is about all I can manage, these days.”
“Err-uh?” the startled soldier grunted intelligently, turning to face Elminster-and receiving a well-worn dagger pommel hard and squarely right between his eyes.
As the senseless Dragon slumped heavily into Elminster’s arms, leaving him staggering under the sudden weight, Lord Arclath Delcastle decided it was finally time to look suspiciously behind him.
However, all he saw was a drunken Purple Dragon staggering down to a wavering chin-first meeting with the cobbles, a sight that evidently didn’t strike him as suspicious at all.
As he shrugged, opened the door of the Dragonriders’ Club, and waved Amarune inside with another low and florid bow, Elminster rolled the Dragon against the nearest wall, out of the way of any wagons or carts, and ducked into the nearest alley that came furnished with a handy heap of refuse to hide behind. After all his years, he knew the night streets of Suzail
With a grunt or two, El leaned his weary limbs against the alley wall and settled down to wait for Amarune to reappear.
“Pleased, Lord?”
“Indeed, Gaskur. It went well,” Marlin replied, making the gesture that told Gaskur he was dismissed for the night.
Smiling, the younger Lord Stormserpent watched his servant vanish down the back stair, then strode into his own rooms and started locking and securing doors.
He was just about done when blue flames erupted from a nearby wall, as the two ghosts of the Nine stepped into the room with dripping bundles in their hands. The thief, Langral, plunged one hand into his bundle-someone’s cloak, darkened with blood-and drew forth a head that stared blindly past Marlin’s shoulder, features frozen in terror.
The face of Seszgar Huntcrown; its look of fear was certainly preferable to its usual sneer.
Satisfaction became triumph. Deed done, that swiftly and easily.
“Take all that to the furnace,” Marlin commanded, staring hard into their cold smiles and repeatedly visualizing the room, the way there, and tossing their bundles down into the flames. If the writings spoke truth, they should be able to see what he was thinking in his eyes. “Then return here to me without delay.”
After what seemed like a long time, the two flaming men nodded, turned, and walked through his wall … at just the right spot for the shortest journey to the furnace.
Marlin surveyed the trails of blood they’d left behind, then went to his board-his private one, far better stocked than the one most guests ever saw-selected a flask of Rhaenian dark he’d noticed going cloudy, and used it to sluice away the blood. Gaskur could scrub away the faint results in the morning.
“Farewell, Lord Huntcrown,” he murmured. “My, my, the dismembered bodies are piling up. I must remember to have Gaskur rake the bones out of the furnace ashes before a servant who might report them to Mother sees to that little chore.”
He selected a clean flagon and the decanter that held his latest preferred throatslake: Dragonfire Dew, a fiery amber vintage from somewhere barbarous in upland Turmish. Cleansed throat and nose, kindled a fire below, and left a taste like cherries and blackroot on the tongue between. Ahhh …
He was well into his second flagon when his blueflame ghosts returned. He set it down, took up the Flying Blade and the chalice, and told them, “Well done.”
Did those wide, steady, cold smiles waver a little when he began to will them back into their prisons?
It was hard, that much was certain, thrusting back an imponderable darkness in his mind that might have been their silent resistance or might just have been the weight of the magic. He was sweating when he was done- but he managed it, setting blade and cup, flickering an angry blue, on the table in a room suddenly empty of grinning, blazing men.
Right.
Taking up his flagon, Marlin made for his bedchamber. High time to snore a little and dream of being a mighty and ruthless king of Cormyr.
As he unbuckled and shrugged off garments and kicked them away across the floor, Marlin sipped more Dragonfire Dew and pondered the part of his scheme he’d neglected to tell his fellow nobles.
He controlled no long-lost Obarskyr, but he was going to
His two blueflame ghosts-they were hardly ghosts, really, but he liked the phrase-would one by one, at his direction, slay all the highknights and war wizards. He’d replace those dear departed with his hirelings, one by one as they fell, until the Obarskyrs had no one attending them who was truly loyal.
Then, of course, it would be their turn. He’d slay them all, every last living Obarskyr, and then present one of the Nine he commanded-Halonter looked the more Azoun-kingly of the two-to Cormyr as a “true Obarskyr” from the past.
Throughout all of that, he’d keep his fellow conspirators handy, up to their blood-besmirched elbows in the killings and ready to be framed as scapegoat “traitors”-and slain before they could implicate
Even if Lothrae produced more of the Nine and wanted to call a halt to his use of his two … well, Lothrae would hardly be eager to pass up the chance to rule Cormyr from behind the scenes.
It was, after all, one of the richest kingdoms in all the Realms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It had been a glorious day in Shadowdale, but the sun was lowering in the deep forest of the hills around the dale. Long shafts of light stabbed in under the trees to gild ferns and set aglow the broad leaves of the asthen-thorn and halabramble bushes that cloaked the toppled trunks of fallen forest giants.
Storm Silverhand crossed a glade like a slow and patient shadow, making as little noise as possible. She’d meant to be there much earlier, but the need for stealth and leaving no clear trail conquered all else. She’d draped the wizard’s cloak over her distinctive hair to make herself a cowled, anonymous figure.
Twice she’d sunk to her fingertips to crouch in motionless silence as foresters with ready bows came stalking through the trees, following the trapline trails aseeking dinner. Their bows were more to keep off bears and worse than to bring down game, but it seemed there was always one who’d loose a shaft first and worry about what it had hit later.
