Then with slow care, they closed in, cruel grins widening.
'Know any holy spells that'd be really useful about now?' Semoor shouted desperately over his shoulder.
'No!' Doust shouted back. 'Do you?'
They stepped apart long enough to turn and stare at each other, as if some divine deliverance might be found written across the face of one of them for the other to discover.
Jhessail looked helplessly up at them, clutching the heavy and unfamiliar sword she so hoped she'd not have to try to use. They were going to die. Here, a few breaths from now. This wasn't some bardic ballad, where an improbable rescue would burst upon them all.
She could see that same realization in the faces of her two friends, as they peered at each other, found no up-any-sleeve escape… and let all hope drain out of their eyes.
'Tluin!' they snarled, in emphatic unison, and spun around to slam shoulders against each other once more. Waving their maces and staring at the battle around with empty, despairing faces, they prepared to die.
Telgarth Boarblade slipped through the study door, glided to a halt in front of his employer, and bowed, saying nothing. Aside from his eyes, asking an eager, wordless question as to how he could tender service, his face was an impassive mask. Rhallogant Caladanter might be an unobservant fool, but from time to time rather more sharp-witted folk had been known to visit him.
Boarblade already knew why he had been summoned and Caladanter's intentions regarding him, but he let nothing of that show in his expression or manner. Letting one's guard drop or getting careless had meant death long before he'd ever come to Cormyr and let the foolish young Caladanter heir 'discover' him.
Caladanter was reclining in his favorite chair, one glossy-booted leg up on a footstool carved into quite a good likeness of a snarling panther. The decanter beside it was already almost empty, and the ring-dripping hand that waved that huge goblet so jauntily trembled visibly. Drunken sot.
'Boarblade,' Rhallogant greeted him almost jovially, leaning forward like a bad actor broadly overplaying a sly conspirator. 'I've a task for you. A dangerous task. A secret task.'
'Lord?' Boarblade murmured, taking a step closer to signify that he heeded his employer's lust for secrecy, and bending forward to show how eager he was to hear the great secret that might be imparted.
'I need you to kill a man.'
Chapter 2
What Traitors are up to …And if it should come to pass, between dragonslayings Or late nights of downing fiery oceans of strong drink In the hungrily enfolding arms of too-willing wenches, That we for once have time to stop and use our wits, Let there then be no shortage of matters to ponder.
In Cormyr, there never is; two things, at least, They never tire of considering:
Whose bed lusty King Azoun will conquer next And what these traitors, or those, Are up to since this morn.
Kill a man, indeed.
If Caladanter had meant those words to shock his most trusted bodyguard, they failed to do so. Little wonder. This was not the first time he had ordered such a deed. Boarblade merely nodded and waited.
'You are familiar with Lord Eldarton Feathergate. His usefulness to me is ended. Go to Feathergate, slay him in a way that will notIeaA all the Wizards of War in the realm right back here, get away unseen, and return here promptly. The customary reward will be waiting for you.'
Telgarth Boarblade had been able to control every muscle of his face for years. It was no work at all to keep the sneer off it now. Customary reward, indeed.
Telgarth Boarblade knew the reward Caladanter intended him to receive upon his return wasn't the usual satchel of gold coins but a hail of arrows from a dozen waiting archers, whose work would leave no one alive who knew of Rhallogant Caladanter's treasonous intentions but Caladanter himself.
'And you would trust such a fool as yourself?' Boarblade murmured, in mild rebuke. 'The rest of us are not the gaps in your armor, Lord.'
Rhallogant Caladanter blinked at his bodyguard in disbelief. 'Hey? Quoth you-?'
'Lord Caladanter,' Boarblade said firmly, 'the time has come for you to know one of my secrets.'
The young nobleman was staring at him as if he had several heads, and he was going pale. Good.
'I am a wizard,' the Zhent announced in a low voice, taking a step closer to Caladanter-who flinched as if his bodyguard had drawn a sword with a menacing flourish, instead of spreading his empty hands reassuringly, ' but not a war wizard. Rather, I spy on the Wizards of War for the royal family. I serve the Obarskyrs.'
Boarblade held up one hand in a 'bide easy' gesture and added, 'Yet the king does not hold your little plot against you. Rather, he sees it as your love of our fair land and anger at what is being done to it goading you into trying to do something to aid Cormyr. The king is saddened that like so many highborn of your age, you have been so misled by the villainous Vangerdahast as to think the royal family of Cormyr your foe. Not at all! The Obarskyrs consider themselves the prisoners of the Royal Magician and his sinister Wizards of War and want to make common cause with dissatisfied nobles against the scheming mages who have ruled the Forest Kingdom for far too long. The king has need of you, Lord Rhallogant Caladanter, and intends you for high rank at Court and much wealth and power, when the fell power of Vangerdahast is broken!'
Rhallogant Caladanter responded with impressive alacrity. Unfortunately, the only action he took was to drop his mouth open and gulp several times, like a hungry bullfrog too clumsy to catch flies buzzing around his tongue.
When it became obvious the now white-faced noble was unable to find anything intelligible to say, Boarblade continued.
'For years, I have been spying on the war wizards for the royal family. I know they are the true traitors in Cormyr, who have oppressed all highborn in the realm, letting the Obarskyrs take the blame-and goading angry lords into treason that Vangerdahast then uses as pretexts for further hampering the rights of all highborn. You know this too, if you think about it. Have the war wizards not recently suffered scandal after scandal, all involving self-interested traitors in their ranks?'
Boarblade paused to let Caladanter nod. The frightened young noble managed to do so. Eagerly and repeatedly he nodded, like some sort of string-pull toy, excited hope now joining the terror that had shone so starkly in his eyes.
By Bane and the deft hand of Manshoon, this weakling couldn't be trusted to aid the Brotherhood, even out of abject fear! So no hint of the Zhentarim must ever enter his head.
Boarblade pressed on. 'Saying or doing anything against the Obarskyrs will only get you dead-unpleasantly, painfully, and shamefully so. And consider: Why have you contemplated disloyalty to the Dragon Throne? Not out of personal hatred for a royal family you have barely met, surely. No, you schemed purely to avenge slights done to the highborn of our Forest Kingdom and to wrest what power has been taken from nobles back into noble hands. Yes?'
Caladanter found his voice at last. 'Y-yes!' he almost shouted, and then clapped a hand over his mouth in fresh fear, looking beseechingly at his bodyguard for acceptance.
Boarblade gave it to him, smiling the warm smile of an admiring friend. Young Lord Caladanter actually sighed in relief-as the lying Zhentarim thrust the collar that would enthrall him around the foolish lordling's neck and tightened it, hard and fast.
'So instead of marching yourself sttaight to a needless execution that will end the Caladanter line in disgrace, why not win back power for nobles and the Dragon Throne for the Obarskyrs and us all by working with me in my
