two he already had. Got me instead. Wasn’t best pleased. We parted company swiftly.”
“A third flame ghost? Would these be blueflame ghosts?”
Mirt nodded, bit into the lamb, and devoted himself to chewing. He looked out the window again.
Glathra’s mouth tightened, and she took a step closer to the fat man in the window seat. “And did you witness him commanding these ghosts? Calling them forth?”
“No,” Mirt said sweetly, turning back to deliver his reply through a mouthful of half-chewed lamb. “And, no.”
Glathra took another step closer. “In Cormyr,” she informed him flatly, “most folk have the prudent sense to speak to a wizard of war with something closer to respect.”
Mirt shifted his current mouthful into one cheek, and past its bulge replied, “And in Waterdeep, I’m accustomed to interviewing angry lasses when we’re both comfortably unclad and sharing a bed, some wine, and a full meal. On my earlier visits to Cormyr, good old Azoun was in the habit of handing me a bottle or six, and sharing a good hot meal while we talked, boots on the table. But, I understand the realm may have slid a bit since his death, and all backward upcountry places cherish their own quaint customs, and so I am making allowances. Ye, too?”
Some muffled chuckles wafted up from behind Glathra. She did not turn to see whom they’d come from.
“I could imprison, slay, or enspell you to servitude right now,” she pointed out calmly.
Mirt raised a greasy finger. “Correction, lass. Ye could try.”
He swallowed the lamb in his mouth, inspected the much-reduced leg for the best site for his next assault, and added mildly, “I’m the jack who defeated two angry young noble lords of Cormyr, in the mansion o’ one of ’em-despite two blueflame ghosts and the admittedly small heaps of enchanted items they were wearing and waving about. Ye might want to remember that.”
“Oh, I will,” Glathra said softly, signaling the wizards behind her to advance.
Mirt favored her with a disgusted look. “I’m eating, lass. Where were ye raised? In a stable?”
Glathra froze for a moment and then trembled in real rage as she drew herself up tall.
Mirt eyed her with interest. Well, now, it seemed she had been reared in a stable, and was sensitive about it, too.
This should be good.
If he survived.
“You really think they won’t have someone new guarding the door by now?” Rune asked curiously.
Storm shrugged. “You have a better plan?”
Rune winced. “Your hit strikes home.”
“I take it you, ah, took care of the guard here last time?” Arclath murmured. At their nods, he added cautiously, “Things might go differently. Being as the Council is… well, not being held right now, and I’m with you, and am heir of a noble House.”
“I’d not count on a friendly welcome,” Storm warned, “given all the lords running about waving swords and snarling treason hereabouts, not so long ago. Granted, we don’t look like hairy, surly bodyguards, but…”
Despite her wary words, her stroll was the height of ease and unconcern as she approached the door of the high house behind the royal stables. It was too small a place to be deemed a mansion, unlike the three homes that flanked it, all backing onto the stables, but its front door was solid and imposing enough to deny entry if no one answered her knock.
No one did, so Storm led the way she’d taken before, around into the garden to the side door. It was closed, but it opened when she turned its ring, admitting them into the same stately, deserted quiet they’d seen before. This time there was no struck-senseless wizard decorating the floor or Mirt grinning at them over him, but the pot he’d used to fell the war wizard was sitting mutely on the table at the end of the hall.
Storm held up a hand for silence and stood still, listening hard. After a few long, patient breaths, she stepped over the threshold and stopped to listen again.
Silence. She strode briskly forward and took the stairs down, heading for the back cellar and the tunnel under the stableyard that led into the palace.
“They could still have alarm or spying spells in place,” Arclath warned, “even if we hear and see nothing amiss.”
Storm nodded. “They usually do. Which is why we’re going to start hurrying, right… now.”
Amarune and Arclath obeyed. Storm led them along dim tunnels, through doors in darkness, down stairs beyond those doors, and out into the faint glows of the palace cellars. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, and they never saw another person, though she was obviously taking detours around well-lit areas where servants and courtiers were presumably at work.
“Where are you taking us?” Arclath murmured at her shoulder as she stopped to peer around a corner.
“The royal crypt.”
Arclath frowned. “Why?”
“She knows it’ll attract my attention, that’s why,” a soft voice that wasn’t Rune’s murmured in Arclath’s other ear, from a space that should have been too narrow for anyone to stand in.
He flinched, badly startled. Clapping hand to sword, he started to turn-and stared into a ghostly face floating in the air right in front of his nose. As Arclath gaped, feeling a chill emanating from that apparition, it gained apparent substance, the suggestion of a body starting to appear below it.
“Princess Alusair Obarskyr, sometime regent of the realm,” the face told him politely. “Well met, Lord Delcastle.”
The ghost’s gaze went to Amarune. “Lady,” she greeted the dancer gravely.
Then she turned to Storm. “Well? What?”
“You know what befell at the Council,” the Harper said gently. “We’re rallying your kin and the loyal courtiers to hold the palace and help restore order before things get more out of hand.”
“ ‘We’? You three?”
“With you and Vangey and Mirt, if you can get us all together, before we try to talk to Glathra.”
“Huh,” Alusair said dismissively, “that one. She’s up in the east wing trying to sink her claws into Mirt right now.”
“Then Vangey can wait,” Storm replied, “though he’ll be far from pleased. Let’s get to Glathra before she goes too far.”
“You’re several seasons too late for that,” Alusair retorted, growing even more solid. They could see the sword at her hip, now, and the long and graceful leg below it. “This way, stalwarts of Cormyr!”
Manshoon glanced at the two death tyrants. His two sturdiest, their bodies almost entirely intact, were almost good enough to pass for being alive, and in far better shape than his worst undead beholders. “Putrid in some spots, mummified or just crumbled away and gone in others,” Sraunter had judged those lesser death tyrants a day back, and Manshoon thought that description put matters very well.
The tyrants floated like limp, sleeping things at that moment, of course, lacking any direction from him. Yet, he’d just tested them both, fleetingly, and they’d turned and lashed out with gratifying speed. No longer needing to breathe, they should take no harm from Sraunter’s poisonous smoke.
So all that remained was Sraunter himself, with concoctions in hand…
The future emperor of Cormyr yawned. For a long time he’d thought vampires never got weary, but they felt mental strain every bit as much as living humans-or at least, this one did.
Yes, it had been a tiring day, and its ever-more-crowded parade of excitements showed no signs of being anywhere near over, yet-and why did things all happen at once? Was it the whim of the gods, their way of deriving maximum entertainment from mortal desperation? Manshoon looked again into his scrying spheres.
Three of the floating glows showed him the outside of Stormserpent Towers. The Crown force thundered on the doors and loudly demanded entrance, their encirclement of the walled mansion complete. Onward-or rather, inward-brave stalwarts of Cormyr! Take that collective stride too far…
Manshoon turned to his newest sphere. In its depths, Lady Narmitra Stormserpent lay on her favorite lounge, sweets in one hand and slender flagon in the other. She was in a savage rage at the temerity of these unwelcome guests. And so she had summoned servants to hiss vicious threats about their fates if they let the “barbaric intruders” in, and to give them grand orders to defend the mansion and defy all who tried to gain
