blameless citizens and not prisoners, I have every confidence I can leave this in your hands. The count of the dead is now-?”
“Ah, still seven, Yar-ah, Saer Blamreld.”
“Just ‘Blamreld,’ Raventree. We’re all wizards of war here!”
“Uh, yes, sae… er, Blamreld.”
Blamreld scratched his bulbous, unlovely nose. “Search the place again. Loose floorboards, bookcases that move, any wall that looks thick enough to hold a hidden passage… seek not just young Stormserpent but every last sword and chalice, goblet, flagon, or loft-stemmed metal bowl. Oh, and any concealed coin, gems, or weapons. Bring them all here to me. Our fox has probably fled, but if he has a den here, I want it found.”
Raventree managed to hide his sigh of exasperation with a curt nod before he raced off into the mansion again.
Yarjack Blamreld strode away, passing the steady stream of underpriests arriving to help tend the still- coughing folk of Stormserpent Towers. Lady Stormserpent had been safely whisked to the palace, apparently healthy, and safely away from the clumsy interrogations of young Raventree. That was what mattered.
That, and the beholders, of course. If those terrors were real and not illusory. Glathra and all the veterans had to hear about them, at once.
Out on the Promenade, an air of worry and excitement prevailed-and everyone was talking, in a din that made Blamreld wince more than once. Many commoners with hastily loaded carts seemed to be in a hurry to leave the city, and servants in a riot of liveries seldom all seen at once under the open sky in Suzail were milling about trading gossip about the war at Council.
Interestingly, although watchful Dragons were much in evidence, there was no sign at all of nobles or their bodyguards, nor any fighting in the streets.
The talk around Blamreld as he strode purposefully back to the palace was in agreement on one matter, though: Cormyr was heading for civil war. Fast.
“I’m getting too old for this,” he muttered to himself, tearing out another generous handful of beard.
Wizard of War Welwyn Tracegar shook his head grimly. “They’re saying Foulweather was killed, and Briarbroke, too. Not that either’s much loss, but if the realm is plunged into war…”
“Barelder and Tantorn, I heard,” his fellow Crown mage Joreld Nurennanthur replied, as they strode along Battlebanners Passage paying no attention at all to its familiar and seemingly endless succession of faded trophies. They were headed for a moot with the Lady Glathra that neither was eager to attend. “Not worth anyone fighting for, wouldn’t you say?”
“Huh. I’m thinking some lords’ll fight over anything at all, right now, and that’s what Glathra and the rest are so worried about. I just hope her worry doesn’t mean she gets to screeching and cuts our pay or sets us to guarding dung heaps in the stables, or some such. She’s a right battlebrand when she gets going!”
“I wish she would get going, somewhere far from here! Then the rest of us could sit down over wine and good cheeses and the best palace cooking, king and every last lord, and sort it all out. Or just sit feasting and arguing for a year or more, while we go on living our lives with nary a hint of war! Why-”
Someone burst out of a door and raced across the long passage, far ahead. One person. A man with a sword.
Tracegar and Nurennanthur traded looks, then shrugged in unison. Such a sight would be cause for full and instant alarm at any other time, but since the disaster at Council, the palace seemed bursting with scurrying servants and messengers, and clanking Purple Dragons, too.
Those Dragons waved shields and spears wherever they went, and though this hadn’t been a Dragon in armor, and he’d had a sword and not a spear, it was just one man.
They strode on and looked left and right when they reached the spot where the running man had crossed the passage. The door he’d come through and the one he’d left by both stood ajar. The narrow passages beyond both were empty and dimly lit. As usual.
They exchanged glances again, then hastened on their way. Being tardy in appearing before Glathra would not be wise.
“So which lord was trying hardest to slice up the king, anyhail?” Tracegar asked. “I came to the west doors, staring straight into twoscore brawling lords, and couldn’t see a thing befalling the royals!”
Nurennanthur snorted. “Well, that’s a matter of some dispute, as old Hallowdant is fond of saying. I got there too late to-”
Engrossed in this exciting discussion, both men entirely missed the beautiful young woman who sprinted across the passage right behind them, her hair streaming behind her, following the same route the man with the sword had taken.
An ambitious young wizard of war, whom both Tracegar and Nurennanthur held a low opinion of, could hardly miss her, however-being as she ran into and right over him as he stepped out of a room with his head down, intent on the scroll he’d just selected.
The scroll went flying; he crashed to the flagstones fighting for breath and feeling decidedly bruised; and his assailant raced on without a moment’s hesitation.
Toward the well-lit Loyal Maid’s Hall, as it happened, so Wizard of War Surgol Velard could watch her gale-swift sprint.
To his mind, an unfamiliar young woman running through the palace could only mean trouble. She must be a thief-or worse.
Having regained his feet and his breath, Surgol Velard raised his hands grandly, aimed his wand with his usual unnecessary but satisfying flourish-and sent her to sleep.
Velard walked over and blinked down at the fallen woman. Crown and Throne, but she was beautiful! Not much older than he was, if that. This was one interrogation he’d handle himself.
His first, and overdue. Veteran war wizards seemed to think him unready for such duties, but thankfully- during this brief reign of chaos-there were no older Crown mages around to order him about, finding fault with what he said and did, or to step in and sweep him aside.
“Guards!” he called hopefully, excitement rising in him. “Guards!”
Two duty Dragons were always stationed in Loyal Maid’s Hall, and he was pleased when they came trotting, respectful frowns on their faces just as if he were the lord warder, or Lady Glathra in full roar.
“Manacle this captive,” he ordered sternly, “and secure her by the throat to a wall ring in the Mages’ Dutychamber off the Long Passage. The keys here in my hand, the moment you’re done.”
“Of course, saer,” they murmured, plucking up the limp woman as if she were a rag doll. A beautiful rag doll that needed handling as gentle as it was thorough.
“What’re you doing to her?” Velard snapped.
“Orders, saer. All captives to be searched for weapons, saer.”
“Unless I countermand such standing orders, loyal blades! Stop pawing her, and get her to the dutychamber!”
“Yes, saer.”
Was that unison reply sullen? Well, no matter. As long as they obeyed.
“Bear up, Lord Stormserpent,” Illance said sternly. “You can’t expect to prod the sleeping lion and then quail when it awakens with a roar.”
“B-but they’ve been waiting for this,” Marlin hissed at him, eyes wild. “The man with the beholders, the one who takes over minds! He’s of the palace!”
“A courtier?” Illance asked sharply. “How do you know this?”
“He’s been in my head,” came the snarled reply, accompanied by a trembling grab for the nearest decanter.
After a long, deep swig-amid the gasps that greeted his latest words-Stormserpent added, “I know not his name or face, but he’s someone of rank who gives orders. Not a maid or cook or doorjack-someone who matters.”
“These beholders,” Lord Illance snapped. “Were they alive-or did they look dead or wounded, perhaps rotting? Think hard, now. Try to remember how they looked.”
Marlin stared at him then blinked. Frowned, and blinked again.
“They did look rotten, here and there,” he said slowly. “Yes…”
