Targrael awakened in the chill darkness of the crypt with a pounding headache. She hadn’t known death knights could have pounding headaches.
The reason for her mind-pain was clear, even through her glee at being loosed once more to dance with the living. Manshoon, as he jabbed her back to awareness with vicious mental thrusts that shattered the cloaks over many of her memories, was in a seething rage.
That arrogant beast Mreldrake had been seen departing the palace through the main magical gate to Marsember-the king’s tower portal-by a shining-eyed young war wizard and a handful of Dragons. Who must now be slain, every last one of them, in a hurry. With the bodies hidden to prevent swift and easy priestly questioning.
All to hide Mreldrake’s trail. Manshoon must find him very useful.
To the slaughter, then, Wizard of War Ellard Gauntur and Purple Dragon veterans Ilstan Narbrace, Gorloun Hethel, Mandron Saldar, Berent Thallowood, and Unstrarr Troon. You served the realm in life, but your swift and sure deaths are now required for Cormyr’s greater service…
Targrael set the coffin lid carefully back into place, glided through the darkness like a chill breeze, and departed the crypt in a swift, gathering gale.
Manshoon was with her, but riding her mind lightly, most of his attention elsewhere. She was a hasty, brute-force solution to a problem that had arisen just at the moment when he’d have preferred to enjoy something else. Just what that “something else” was, she knew not, nor cared.
She was awake again, and that was enough.
The royal palace and royal court were her home; she knew both buildings better than anyone else. Every last damp and long-forgotten cellar corner, every nook with an outside window-ah, it was just after nightfall-and every secret passage. So it was ease itself to flit unnoticed, a tall and silent shadow among so many pillars, to the passage that led to a certain closet.
She approached cautiously. The guard who ought to be standing sentinel had power enough to destroy her with ease.
The door that led into the passage stood ajar, and no one stood guard at it… or anywhere within sight.
She used her sword to thrust the door open and tiptoed into the passage.
Where the silence held.
Everything was deserted.
Peering around a corner, she felt her eyebrows rise.
She was more than a little surprised to find the closet door open and the portal completely unguarded-after all, it was a way in and out of the heart of Cormyr’s power, and restoring it to safe reliability after the Spellplague had cost at least seven war wizards’ lives-but Targrael wasted no time in speculation or tarrying to wait for trouble. She strode fearlessly into the portal’s glow.
The far end of the portal-a cold, humid, and dark upper room of the king’s tower in Marsember that she remembered from long, long ago-was also deserted.
Well, now. The surprise deepens steadily, she thought.
There was the uncomfortable stool provided for the guard, and yonder the lidded chamberpot, the three lanterns hung on their hooks, and…
The mirror. Ah, yes, and didn’t the last true Highknight of the realm look lovely that night? Black armor and silver-edged black sword, bareheaded with her long, wild hair more white than gray. Framing a fine-boned face that had dead white skin to match, though there was a patch of mold growing on her cheek…
Targrael shrugged, giving her reflection a smile. Yes, mold or not, it was as cruel a face as ever.
She preened for a moment longer, her hand on her hip, to see if Manshoon’s anger would flare.
Yet he seemed not to notice, his attention even fainter. Whatever else he was seeing to was far more important to him, it seemed.
Which just might afford her the chance she needed…
Sword in hand, Targrael ducked through the open archway she knew young Gauntur would have taken, wondering if she could get to Ildool’s Veil before Manshoon realized what she was up to.
“But he’s one of our wizards,” a soldier growled under his breath, somewhere up ahead. “He’d go up to the spell chambers where they keep the magic, wouldn’t he? Not down to the docks like a sneak thief!”
“That’s why young Gauntur’s running back and forth like a chased chicken,” another Dragon replied. “He left us here to make sure Mreldrake doesn’t just fetch something and come right back to the portal, to get back to the palace.”
“Huh! The last place I’d run to, with Glathra after me! Still, splitting up your forces is nigh as foolish, so perhaps they don’t teach wizards of war basic sense…”
“Oh, well said, soldier,” Targrael murmured as her sword whipped across his throat. “I almost regret having to kill you. Yet-as you both know well-orders are orders.”
As she shoved the reeling, dying warrior away and slashed at his fellow Dragon, she saw the frightened face of her newest foe for an instant, on the far side of the sparks that flew as his desperate parry met her blade.
“So who are you, loyal Dragon?” she greeted him regally. “Saldar or Thallowood?”
The soldier gaped at her. “You know-?”
“Far too much, I’m afraid,” Targrael replied, driving his warsteel aside with her own and chopping his throat with the edge of her free hand.
The man sobbed for breath as he fell. She slammed down atop him, both knees to his belly, and chopped ruthlessly with her steel. His blade was easily sent flying from his numbed sword hand, and she brought her sword back in under his chin as she leaned forward, bringing them face-to-face. “Your name?”
“S-Saldar,” he gasped.
She smiled like a playful lover, kissed the end of his nose, and purred, “And what was the name of your friend, whom I dallied with first?”
“Thallowood,” he gulped.
Targrael slit his throat.
Heedless of how much of his blood drenched her, she sprang up and ran on. The king’s tower-what luck!
Now, if young Gauntur had been kind enough to have headed higher in the fortress, to the loftier rooms where wizards of war kept their trinkets and luxurious sleeping quarters… not to mention a certain old Crown secret known as Ildool’s Veil…
He had. Exulting, Targrael raced up the stairs after a young and panting Purple Dragon who was trying to catch up to at least two more. Gauntur would be with the foremost pair, to be sure, unless he was even more of a reckless young fool than she suspected. Even Highknights knew better than to challenge renegade wizards of war alone, when loyal and ready swordswingers were at hand.
Just two floors higher was the Veil, icy cold and endlessly whispering. A curtain black as night and everpresent, it was a field of magical force created long ago by Thayan mages hired by the villainous Lord Ildool, and deemed too useful to destroy.
Useful because those who ventured into its chill darkness and tarried there long enough were freed of all scrying, tracing, and prying-from-afar magics…
Ah! Of course! Much magic was kept in the chamber next to the Veil, and young Gauntur was no doubt eager to get in there and use most of it. Notably a scrying sphere that might help him find Mreldrake if his quarry had been truly stupid and not cloaked himself from it…
At the next landing Targrael caught up to Troon. Tapping the young Dragon on the shoulder, she easily caught his sword as he spun around to gape at her, and dragged him down until their lips met. Stifling any cry he might make, she drove her blade up under his chin.
He convulsed in her embrace and spat blood helplessly into her mouth. Targrael enjoyed its iron tang as she held him through brief and violent death spasms. When he sagged, she let him sprawl on the steps, and continued on.
The two remaining Dragons were veterans whose names she’d recognized; she would not overcome them so easily. Yet defeat them she must-the trick was to do it either without Gauntur knowing, or in a way that made them shields against the young fool’s magic, until she could get within sword’s reach of him…
