As she passed through the gatehouse, Helora Roselarr seemed to catch fire.

She shrieked, took two blazing steps, then seemed rooted to the spot, held up from falling by the sudden roaring fury of flames streaming up from her to the sky.

Blinded by sweat and trotting hard, Halandrath almost blundered into her, lurching to one side at the last moment-and bursting into flames of his own. 'No!' he cried wetly, flinging his fat arms wide. 'Nooooo!'

Mirt and the others watched in grim silence as the flames rose higher, two bright columns licking black smudges of smoke into the sky.

In mere moments Roselarr and Halandrath became ashes on bones, then bones straining to run on, then collapsing bones. One of Roselarr's coffers sagged open, spewing out a wet flood of melted gold, but the other burst with a little pop, sending forth an assortment of gem-adorned rings, bracelets, hairpins, and other small items that winked and glowed with magical radiances. . that seemed to get ensnared in the air by an unseen hand or current, that sent them flying away in a common direction, along the front of the mansion wall. Faster and faster they streamed, curving to hug the wall at its every bend, and before the watchers had found time to draw more than a few breaths, they came into view again, racing along, having circumnavigated Ombreir. They sped past once more, a glittering stream, and in their wake something small and golden amid the blackened and guttering ruin that had been Darmon Halandrath rose to join them… followed by other… somethings.

'Those are magic items, aren't they?' Torandral asked.

Mirt nodded.

'Why… why are they circling the walls like that?'

'They're caught in the barrier Ongalor's wizards left behind,' Mirt replied, 'cast all around Ombreir, to trap us all inside.'

As if his words had been a cue, a plume of smoke rose into the sky from the far side of a nearby hill. Up over the brow of that hill, with the swiftly thickening smoke behind them, came riding an armed and glittering host, with a banner flapping at their fore.

It was a black, five-spired crown on gold, the Crown of Prince Uldrako. The Just Blades had come at last.

'They must have finished looting the Narthaen mansion, and set fire to it,' Mirt mused aloud. 'Which means they have every intention of sleeping here tonight.'

As his warriors muttered and readied their weapons around him, Gralhund and Gauntyl banners unfurled alongside the pretender's banner, to fly openly.

Tauniira shook her head at the sight of them. 'They mean to make you rue your choice of employers, Mirt.'

'Won't the magical barrier protect us?' Torandral asked, fear and excitement making his voice shrill.

Mirt and his veterans shook their heads.

'It'll go down the moment they reach it,' Mirt growled, 'and they'll have us surrounded by then. Even if they lack a wizard with any wits about him, Ongalor and his spell hurlers are scrying us from afar. They'll take it down, and soon, now.'

'The barrier,' Harlo Ongalor said, staring into the moving scene he could see in the sphere of glowing radiance that floated in the air in the middle of the glade. 'Get ready to take it down.'

The three wizards who'd conjured that sphere no longer looked like a trio of wealthy Amnians. They had been staring intently at the spell-spun scene back at Ombreir, and continued to do so, saying not a word in reply.

The vizier was not accustomed to being ignored. 'Jaelryn!' he snapped, choosing the weakest mage, the one he knew was more afraid of him than the others. 'Did you hear me?'

Jaelryn kept silent, and the vizier glared at him, suddenly aware that all three wizards were standing motionless, staring fixedly into the sphere as if enthralled.

'Jaelryn?' Ongalor shouted, alarmed. 'Orauth? Maundark?'

'They can't hear you,' a calm feminine voice announced from right behind the vizier.

He whirled, jumping back as he did so, the rings on his fingers winking into life.

A barefoot woman in the tattered, filthy remnants of a rotten but once-grand black gown stood facing him, her long, wavy silver hair coiling and lashing around her shoulders like a nest of restless snakes.

'Who are you?' Ongalor snarled, feeling the tingling that meant the greatest smiting magic of his rings was almost ready. 'And what have you done to my wizards?'

The woman stared at him with open contempt in her eyes. Those eyes flared silver-and the vizier's rings exploded, taking Ongalor's fingers with them.

Gods, the pain!

He found himself on his knees, screaming, waving his hands violently to try to dash the pain away-and failing.

'You should tend 'your' wizards better, Vizier,' the silver-haired woman sneered. 'Just now, they're entranced by the Weave, and their fates depend on what I find in their thoughts. As for me. . most folk know me as the Simbul. I serve Mystra, and the land of Aglarond. I've been watching you for a long time, Harlo Ongalor, and am quite happy to be your doom.'

'My-? What did I ever do to you?' the vizier sobbed, trying to struggle to his feet and reach the wand at his belt with the bleeding ruin of his right hand.

'When I wore the guise of Alathe, you had me flogged to the bone for disputing your trade dishonesties with you in Athkatla.'

The Simbul took a step closer and added calmly, 'When the prettiest of the bedchamber-lasses you rented out in Murann died of her treatment at your hands-glass shards thrust into someone will do that, Ongalor-I took her place, and you promptly had me fed to your dogs.'

The wand at the vizier's belt slid itself up, past his desperately grabbing hand, and turned in the air, just out of his reach, to menace him.

'And in Crimmor,' the silver-haired woman continued, 'when I posed as that trade envoy from Sembia and refused to be threatened into signing the deal you wanted, you had me felled in the street with a slung stone to the back of my head, and drove your wagon over me-three times, Ongalor, just to make sure you'd broken as many bones as you could. Then you laughed in my face and snatched my purse.'

The Simbul bent closer and added, 'Your life is so full of such cruelties that you may not recall just three slain women out of so many, yet I'm sure if I bother to give you time enough, you'll remember at least one of those slayings. Even if, just now, you can't put a.. finger on it.'

And she smiled at Harlo Ongalor as the wand began to glow.

It was a soft smile that held all the mercy of the grin on the face of a hungry wolf.

As the Just Blades rode down the hill, those standing ready inside the gates of Ombreir were shocked to see a dead herald hanging limply in the air at their fore, head lolling, spitted on a trio of lances.

'A herald! There'll be trouble over that,' Mirt muttered.

'There will, indeed,' Ralaerond Galespear said softly at his shoulder. Something in the heir's drawl made Mirt look at him-in time to see the horse breeder's handsome good looks melt away into taller, broader-shouldered, feminine beauty.

A silver-haired woman who looked somehow familiar snatched Mirt's sword out of his hand, handing him Galespear's rapier with the words, 'Here. Sorry it's such a toy.'

A moment later, he was missing his best dagger, too, and she was striding away through the gates.

'No one should follow me past the gatehouse,' she snapped, silver hair swirling. 'The barrier stands.'

It shimmered around her as she spoke, but she walked through it unharmed to meet the advancing army.

'We come to parley!' one of the younger Gauntyl knights shouted. 'See you not the herald?'

'There will be no parley with you, who dared to treat a herald so,' the lone woman told him. 'I'll grant you only one gift: swift death.'

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