our grounds, and feel a gaze upon you, turn around. As like as not, you’ll be staring into the twinkling eyes of the ghost, who’s been floating along right behind you!”
Two of the Flowers gave little embarrassed cries of fright. The third-Lathdue-uttered not a sound, but Crimmon saw a shiver travel the length of her shapely shoulders and arms. Her dark eyes never left his as he lowered his voice again, and went on.
“He never says a word, and does nothing but follow folk who scream and flee.” The young noble made a grand gesture, as if thrusting desperately with a sword. “Some have dared to attack him or charge straight through him. All such say they felt a terrible chill…and got a true fright when the smile ran off the ghost’s face like a cloak falling from someone’s shoulders.”
Lord Crimmon left time for another chorus of delicious moans of fear, and added more soberly, “When he’s watching you, but not grinning, they say, this a sign you stand in mortal danger.”
The three ladies laughed lightly in dismissal of such a ridiculous notion-how could a spirit know the fates and troubles of the living? — but their host did not join in their mirth, and it died away weakly as they looked into his face.
The gray Paertrover eyes that had seemed so dancing but a moment before, were dark and level as they stared past the Flowers at something that was making the color slowly drain out of Lord Crimmon’s face. The three ladies spun around…and joined in the deepening silence.
Floating behind them, perhaps three paces away, was a disembodied head, its face pinched and white, the plumes of the long helm that surrounded it playing about slightly in the breeze. Its eyes were fixed on Lord Crimmon’s, and its face was expressionless-and yet, for all that lack of expression, somehow sad and grim. All at once it began to fade away, becoming a faint part of the sun dappled light, and then a gentle radiance among shadows…and then nothing at all.
Silent servants deftly lit the lanterns as the evening shadows lengthened and the nobles rose from their joyous feast, goblets in hand, to stroll in the gardens. Lord Eskult was in rare good humor, his wit as sharp as it had been twenty years past, and so were his guests, brightened by good food, fine wine, and the success of their trade-talks. Even if their does ran with no Paertrover stag, it seemed they’d won a firm friend in the old Horse Marshal.
“Extraordinary!” Lord Belophar Battlebar boomed, the force of his breath blowing his great mustache out from his full lips. “A maze, but only knee-high…and sunken, too!”
“The pride of my dear departed wife,” Lord Eskult said, striding forth down its grassy entrance path with a gesture that told all Cormyr that he was proud of it too. “She wanted a maze like-no, better-than one she saw at some merchant’s house in Selgaunt, but she never wanted to get lost in it. One evening, the light fell fast, and she couldn’t find her way out before it was full dark. Well, she had a proper fright, and when she found some of the lamp-lads she marched straight out to the garden sheds and took up a scythe, panting and blowing out her nostrils like a charger after a good gallop, and set to work hewing. She fell asleep sometime before dawn, and I carried her in, bidding the morning servants to continue what she’d begun: cutting the highthorn down to the height you see it now. No one will ever get lost in Maeraedithe’s Maze again!”
“Gods above,” Lord Hornsar Farrowbrace exclaimed admiringly, “what a tale! What a woman! I can just see her, eyes afire…”
“Yes,” their host said, spinning around, “They were. They were indeed! Oh, she was splendid!”
Trailing along somewhere in the shadow of the tall and patrician Lord Corgrast Huntingdown, his daughter, the Lady Lathdue, rolled her eyes unto the darkening heavens. Lord Crimmon patted her arm and grinned. She realized who was reassuring her, and gasped in horror at having slighted his dead mother, even unintentionally- but he waved in merry dismissiveness as they all strolled on into the maze together.
The twisting coil of stunted highthorn entirely filled a sunken square of rich green turf surrounded on all sides by a rising slope of flowers crowned by fruit trees. Behind the trees was a stone wall, pierced in the center of each of its four runs by a stair leading down into the maze. Benches and statues stood here and there among the flowers, some of them already adorned with lamps, but there were none in the maze itself. “This is beautiful,” Lady Chalass Battlebar murmured. “Did you ever play here, Crimmon?”
There was no reply. She turned to see what might be preventing him from speaking, only to see him a good twenty paces off, taking a goblet and decanter from a gleaming tray carried by a servant. “He moves swiftly when he wants to,” Lady Shamril commented to Chalass.
“Hmmph,” she replied, “not as swiftly as I want to.” With a nod of her head she indicated the four older nobles in front of them.
“Well, if I ran Cormyr…” Lord Farrowbrace was saying, apparently unconscious of the fact that the nobility of the realm uttered that phrase even more often than the gently born, a rung down the social ladder, discussed the weather. Lord Huntingdown and their host were both interrupting him, gesturing airily with flagons almost as big as their heads, to illustrate how, begging his indulgence, they’d be like to run Cormyr just a tad differently, thus and so…
“Gods,” Shamril muttered, “let’s get gone! They’ll start talking about which noble houses will rise and which will fall when a new king takes the throne, next…”
“That brings to mind the solemn question upon which the future of fair Cormyr stands,” Lord Battlebar boomed. “Who among us shall rise, and who fall, if Azoun-gods preserve and keep our king-should die tomorrow?”
The three Flowers groaned in unison as Shamril spread her hands in a disgusted “I told you so” gesture. “Shall we be off after Crimmon?” she hissed. “They’ll be at this all night, given wine enough! I…”
“No,” Lady Lathdue said with a dangerous smile, laying a hand on Shamril’s arm. “No running away now! We’ve a wager, remember? I want to see our fathers’ faces when we make a play not for Crimmon, but for his father! Where will they look? After all, the Baron as son-in-law- albeit one old enough to sire them-gives them more power at court, and a shorter wait for the gold, if they can bend him into parting with coins before Crimmon does, or the grave takes him!”
“The wager was for the most daring way to steal a kiss from old Eskult,” Chalass reminded her with a frown. “I don’t want to cross my father! He’ll half flail the flesh off my behind if I disgr…”
“In front of our fathers is the most daring way!” Shamril said with sudden enthusiasm. “Ladies, watch me!” She strode away through the maze, catching up her gown to unconcernedly step over walls of highthorn and catch up with the four lords. Chalass and Lathdue stared at her progress with mingled apprehension, awe, and delight.
“She’s going to do it,” Lathdue said in low tones, as if pronouncing doom fast coming down upon them all. “Oh, gods above.”
It was coming down to full night now, but the lamps gave light enough to clearly show what befell at the heart of the maze. They saw Shamril glide past Battlebar and her own father, duck under Lord Huntingdown’s arm. Lathdue erupted in swiftly-smothered giggles at the look of horrified astonishment on her father’s face at the swj den, bobbing appearance of a young lady clad in a very scanty green silk gown from under his own languidly-waving arm-and come up to Lord Eskult Paertrover.
The Baron of Starwater chuckled at whatever Shamril said then, and proffered his arm with exaggerated gallantry. Rather than surrendering her own arm, the young Lady Shamril spun past the old lord’s hand to press herself against him, lace-cloaked breast to medal-adorned chest, and thigh to thigh. Lord Eskult looked surprised, but pleasantly so. His teeth flashed in a smile as she raised her lips, obviously demanding a kiss, and he bent over her as if he was a young brightblade, and not an old and red-faced baron of the realm.
Chalass bit her knuckle to keep from screaming in delight as Shamril stretched her white throat a trembling inch or two farther, ignoring a sudden startled oath from her father. Lathdue shook her head, murmuring, “Crimmon should be watching this! His father’s got more than a bit of the old fire in his veins yet, I…”
A sharp snapping sound echoed through the soft evening air, followed by the vicious hum of a crossbow bolt snarling through the air toward the two trembling bodies. It seemed to leap out of the gloomy air like a bolt of black lightning, stabbing between old lord and young, playful lady.
Blood burst forth in a sudden, wet torrent as the bolt took Shamril through the throat. Hair danced as her head spun around with a horrible loose wobble. The Flower of House Farrowbrace made a bubbling sound- the last sound she’d ever utter-as the bolt hummed On across the garden, plucking her out of the old lord’s grasp to fall
