'I wasn't thinking of becoming a war wizard,' Jhessail said.
'I wasn't thinking they'd accept you,' he rerorted. 'Now, O great mage, about all these other liches and our friends the snorting boars-'
'Yes?' Islif asked from above them. 'I've been called worse, mind, yet even a farm lass prefers not to be mistaken for-'
Jhessail and the two priests looked up, as the last of the cloth crumbled away from between Doust's fingers. Florin, Islif, and Pennae smiled down at them, back in their proper shapes.
'Always thought you were a real pig, underneath,' Semoor greeted Florin with a grin.
'Careful,' Pennae said. 'Any priest fool-tongued enough to make any jests about sows or anything of the sort is going to regret it-as the toe of my boot makes reply to that!'
Semoor looked at Doust, who raised a warning finger and said over it with a smile, 'Hail, fellow destroyer of liches!'
The Light of Lathander grinned. 'Aye, wait'll they hear about thatsx a temple! Real fire-at-the-altar deeds- and ours!'
'Ahem,' Jhessail tremulously reminded them both, 'forget not one thing: We have to find a way out of here, somehow, and get to a temple, first.'
'Indeed,' a familiar male voice said from out of the darkness.
The younger Princess Obarskyr of Cormyr had made it back to her chambers without anyone in the stables or Palace seeing her in her commoner's garb, but she had been missed, and neither her maids nor the old, scarred war wizard nor yet the younger but no-less-scarred Purple Dragon guard commander had been all that pleased with her.
In the end, Alusair had planted her hands on her hips, faced them all across the receiving room of her chambers, and said, 'You all seem to forget that I'm a child. Well, children-even princesses, and yes, even in civilized Cormyr-get to play and have adventures, and I was busy doing those things.'
'You,' her senior maid said, 'stopped being a child about seven days after you were born.'
'And whose fault is that?' Alusait said, finding herself on the verge of tears and made even angrier by that humiliation. 'I can't even squat on a chamber pot without being spied upon! All the Watching Gods damn you all, can't I even-'
She caught herself on the very precipice of blurting out what she'd been out doing, but by then the Purple Dragon ornrion, bless him, had growled, 'I've heard enough. Leave the royal miss alone, all of you. Damn me if I'd not feel the same way, were I standing in her boots. Er, slippers.'
He turned for the door, windmilling his arms so as to sweep all the rest of them along with him, and added, 'Now let's get out of here and leave her some peace. I'm sure you'll all take the opportunity to report her or scold her yourselves over the next day or so, anyhail, so-'
The war wizard protested something in an angry whisper as they shouldered through the door together, but the guard commander didn't bother to whisper his response. 'I see that as your problem. Get Old Thunderspells to cast some sort of waist-down chastity spell on her if that's what you're so worried over.'
Then, blessedly, Alusair was all alone, except for the glaring senior maid and two chambermaids who'd carefully kept silent and out of sight in the inner rooms.
Alusair curtly dismissed old Tsashaeree two words into the tirade she was starring, then rang the bell that would bring in the two Purple Dragon door guards to escort her out. They came grinning, one of them giving her a wink, and Alusair was careful not to let Tsashaeree see her winking back. She didn't want to give anyone the idea that she needed Dragons at her elbows day and night.
Alusair went in through the rooms to submit to the deft and deferential attentions of the chambermaids. They seemed in awe of her, for once, but this night that gave her no pleasure. She was too restless, too apprehensive that there would be consequences, and all for nothing. The Harper might have forgotten his promise or be half Faerun away from hearing her entreaty-or lying wounded or even dead somewhere, never to answer any summons again.
Lying in her bed in the dark, that same restlessness kept its hold over her, and she tossed and turned for what seemed like an eternity.
She must have fallen asleep in the end-because she certainly came awake when a male whisper asked softly into her ear, 'You wanted me, Highness?'
The wizard Targon stood alone on the high balcony of a tower in Zhentil Keep, glaring out into the night. It wasn't something Targon often did, but then there was no one near to see him doing it and think his behavior strange.
Old. Ghost made his new host body smile wryly. 'Twasn't all that surprising, this lack of spying Zhentarim, given just how many Horaundoon had slaughtered before word had properly spread to bring down any official wariness.
Right now, it was taking all Old Ghost's will to reach across the distance between them and tug the unwilling flying sword back from even more happy slayings. Armaukran was a thirsty blade, and Horaundoon, it seemed, really hated a lot of Zhentarim.
Wherefore it was time-and more than time-for them to talk.
The warding spell Targon had cast around himself was ready to turn aside Armaukran's piercing point and deadly edge if the blade somehow outpaced his ability to govern Horaundoon's will, but Old Ghost really didn't think Horaundoon would be that stupid.
The sword came streaking out of the night with a flourish, arrowing poinr-first but then sweeping up, twisting in the air, and coming to an abrupt but silent stop in the air just out of reach of Targon, vertical with hilt uppermost.
'Well met,' Old Ghost said.
'I'm finding I enjoy removing unworthy elements from the Brotherhood,' was the response. 'I hunger to eliminate more.'
'I'll return you to that delight soon enough,' Old Ghost told the sword. 'How many have you slain? And who, specifically?'
'Fourscore and a few,' Horaundoon replied. 'Harkult and old Gesker and some magelings who were fawning over them, paltry wizards I knew not. No one else I can put a name to, but many, many priesrs of Bane, mostly underpriests because I could catch them alone and unseen-oh, and one little spy.'
Targon lifted one eyebrow in silent query, and the sword explained, 'A beholderkin the size of my fist or a little smaller. A little floating eyeball that was hovering by the shoulder of a wizard who got away.'
Old Ghost made his host body nod. 'He wasn't the only one to escape you. Your work is causing tumult in the Brotherhood, with every Zhent suspicious of his fellows and many of the senior wizards conducting their own 'investigations' into who's behind the slayings.'
'Dozens of futile inquiries, yes. One Brother suspecting all his fellows of meaning him murderous ill is hardly unusual, but the elder Zhentarim have started giving orders and handing me an increasing problem. They are retreating inside warded and spell-guarded fortresses and sending their greenest magelings and most lowly acolytes out to do Zhent business. It is slowing and crippling Brotherhood work but leaving me with few targets worth slaughtering. More than that, Manshoon seems to have gone missing. Many senior Zhentarim have tried to contact him and met with only silence.'
Old Ghost shrugged. What mattered it, if Horaundoon knew this? He shared something that had for years been his host body's greatest fear and secret, one that Targon knew would someday bring about his death, very soon after the moment Manshoon discovered he knew it. 'That silence is almost certainly real. Manshoon is probably off on one of his little magic-gathering forays.'
'Gaining new magic is certainly a good way to remain atop the Brotherhood, yes,' Horaundoon agreed. 'What forays, exactly?'
Old Ghost discovered with some amusement that Targon's fingers were drumming idly on the stone balcony rail. So this body retained some will of its own, after all. He must take care to remember that.
'From the days before there was a Black Brotherhood,' he explained, 'Manshoon had the habit of venturing alone around Faerun, usually in disguise, to ah… explore. It's how he first met the eye tyrants, I believe. Translocation spells and old portals are handy things.'
