Elminster Must Die

lot of forest!”

“Yes,” the first man told him firmly. “Search we will-not trees, idiot, but every last cave in all the forest. Yet I doubt it’ll come to that. Once we find a hint of magic, we’ll have found Elminster.”

Storm sighed soundlessly and backed away. Right past the sentinel she’d passed on her way in-just as unnoticed as during her arrival.

She would have to deal with them before she headed back to Suzail … or Alassra would be dead with half-a- dozen arrows in her before this lot were done looking for El.

Who would just have to deal with the council on his own, Cormyr fall or Cormyr stand.

Oh, Mother Mystra, come back to us.

That fierce prayer was answered by the utter silence she’d been expecting.

The empty silence she’d heard for a hundred years.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

WELL EARNED

Marlin poured himself another glass from his favorite decanter and nodded approvingly.

This Jharakphred was the best artist for hire in Suzail, it seemed.

A nervous, simpering little runt of a man, to be sure, as he stood there holding the protective cloth covers he’d just stripped from the two portraits he’d painted-but the best.

There was no arguing with the two boards lying flat on Marlin’s table. They weren’t just good likenesses of Lord Draskos Crownsilver and Lord Gariskar Dauntinghorn-they were old Draskos and Daunter.

“You like them?” the artist asked nervously, misinterpreting Marlin’s silence. “I followed both lords for days, until they told their bodyguards to run me off. With cudgels.” He rubbed at some bruises, reflectively, then left off to add proudly, “I think I got them right, though. Very true to life.”

“Very,” Marlin agreed with a smile, stepping forward to hand the man the promised fee. “Well earned.”

Jharakphred beamed, bowed deeply to his noble patron with the heavy pouch of gold clutched in both hands, turned away-and never saw Marlin’s smile widen into a beam to match his own as two men blazing with silent blue flames from head to toe stepped out from behind tapestries both before and behind the artist and ran him through.

“Take him to the furnace,” Marlin ordered, plucking the gold back out of convulsing claws that would never hold a brush again, as the impaled man gurgled and shuddered on two swords at once. “You know the way. Mop up every last spot of blood ‘twixt here and there, then return to me.”

His will more than his words compelled the two silent slayers, but Marlin enjoyed giving orders. Besides, he needed the practice. It wouldn’t do to sound less than regal when the time came.

Soon.

What seemed a very short while later, silent blue flames erupted out of the nearest wall. Marlin smiled and, as both Langral and Halonter emerged, beckoned them over to the pair of portraits.

“These men … would you know them, across a room or down a dark street? Look well, until you will.”

He pointed at the painting on the left, so vivid and lifelike that it might have been the living man it depicted, somehow rolled out flat on Marlin’s table.

A burly, fierce-looking lord, going white at the temples but possessed of a warrior’s confidence and rugged good looks, staring hard out of the painted board at anyone viewing it, with a frowning challenge in his ice blue eyes. “Lord Draskos Crownsilver, patriarch of the Crownsilvers.”

Then Marlin waved at the other picture. A faintly smiling, smoothly handsome, dark-haired man with steel gray eyes, this one. A sleek, dangerous old sea lion. “Lord Gariskar Dauntinghorn. Like the other, head of his family.”

The two flaming men-or ghosts or whatever they were-stood in silence looking down at the two portraits for a long time, ere they both finally nodded.

Marlin smiled again. “When I compel you to,” he told them, “you’ll enter whatever club or inn or wing of the royal court I direct you to and kill them. Bearing their bodies away with you to a place I’ll tell you of, so they cannot be found and brought back to life.”

And as they nodded once more, eyes on his, he bent his will on them, forcing them back into the chalice and the Flying Blade again.

It was still a struggle but an easier one this time; when he was done, a single swipe of his fingers sufficed to wipe the sweat from his brow.

Then he reached for the handy decanter of his favorite wine, seeing with approval that his steward had freshly filled it since the morning, and pondered his plan.

If his coerced slayers slew these two key senior nobles during the council, he’d at one stroke remove the most capable and stubborn resistance to any change in rulership, plunge the realm into uncertainty and turmoil, and lure any investigating highknights and war wizards within reach of the deadly blades of Langral and Halonter.

The flower of House Stormserpent sipped thoughtfully. And smiled again.

It was high time to take himself back to the Old King’s Favorite to survey the fresh crop of nobles arriving early for the council.

There might well be some other nobles fair Cormyr would profit from the removal of. To say nothing of the fortunes of one Marlin Stormserpent.

Once settled at his usual table, Marlin made haste to hide his face behind a full goblet of something refreshing, so as to not to be so obviously listening to the talk rising excitedly all around him.

Word spread as swiftly as ever in Suzail. The Purple Dragons on watch were all in an uproar; that young and sneering braggart Seszgar Huntcrown had been murdered in a club, along with all his blades-servants, bodyguards, and hangers-on, every jack of them-by two mysterious slayers who did their deadly and unlawful work wreathed in constant blue flames!

That would bring out the wizards of war after morningfeast on the morrow, to be sure. Or so ran the shared opinion of the nobles dining and drinking-mainly drinking, at such a late hour-in the Favorite.

There were far more lords in the place than usual, Marlin noticed; the city was starting to fill up with nobles who spent much of their time at their upcountry keeps and hunting lodges.

They knew they could find good food and properly fawning service at the Favorite at that hour, without all the din and roistering of more common clubs-and without most of the perils of such places, too. Most nobles mistrusted their fellow lords even more than they disdained commoners and hated Crown and court; even there, in the Favorite, they’d brought their wizards along for protection. Their House wizards, most of them, though a few had hired outlander mages as bodyguards. That was only to be expected; it was commonly accepted but officially unconfirmed truth that the war wizards trained, influenced, and even infiltrated the ranks of the House wizards, and spied on all noble-hired spellhurlers anyway. So there would always be some nobles whose mistrust of their House wizard overcame any miserly instincts.

Marlin smiled wryly to himself, recalling what courtiers called such lords. “Incipient traitors.” Well, for their part, nobles had far less polite terms for most courtiers.

Lord Haelwing, two tables away from Marlin, was one of those mistrustful nobles, it seemed, and had no doubt given his bodyguard wizard some blunt and specific orders before proceeding to the Old King’s Favorite and commencing to drink himself into insensibility.

So the mage, a Sembian of slim mustache and cold eyes hight Oskrul Meddanthyr, was seated at the table beside the drunkenly snoring heap of his employer. A table acquiring an interested audience of young nobles and wealthy pretenders to nobility, who had eagerly seized the opportunity to ply a talkative wizard with drinks and question him about the unfolding ways of the world.