they should be. Then she shifted her sword belt one last time to make certain it caught on none of the crisscrossing baldrics.
Good. Time to be hunting.
Talane caught up a magnificent ankle-length shimmerweave night-cloak-the sort of frippery worn to show everyone Truesilvers could casually outspend any dozen lesser noble Houses, every bright shopping morning-and pulled it around herself to conceal her leathers from any servants who might witness her departure. Taking a last look around her bedchamber to ensure things that should be hidden were, she stepped out onto her balcony.
Where the climbing cord she kept secured behind the stone griffon carving at the east end of the balcony was waiting. One kick off the wall and a swift plunge down onto the softest mosses of her gardens later, she would be on her way to her back garden door and the night-shrouded city beyond.
“Amarune Whitewave,” she whispered to the night, as the black cord hissed past her chin, “you are one dead mage.”
“She was right there, Lady Barcantle!” a hoarse-voiced man shouted down the passage, pointing. “Right where the fat man is!”
Mirt had regained his breath, rubbed his sore feet-he was getting a mite old for running for his life on hard cobbles across far too much of a city-and restored his clothing to rights. Then, with a sinking feeling, he peered in the direction of that shout and beheld fully helmed and armored Purple Dragons. Lots of them. With more than a few wizards behind them.
They were coming toward him fast, with swords and spears out, and were looking his way in a decidedly unfriendly manner.
“Aye, right where the-naed of the Dragon! The door! The stlarning door’s gone!”
A voice Mirt knew rang out. “Mirt! Mirt of Waterdeep! Stand and surrender, you miscreant, or your very life is forfeit!” Lady Glathra sounded furious.
“Ooops,” Mirt growled, turning hastily and lurching in the direction of the doorway. Which, he thought to himself as he started to run again, gathering speed as he wheezed his way across the Promenade, was a rather grand word for “gaping hole where a good stout door recently was, and still ought to be.”
Wizards. ’Twas always wizards that brought the real trouble. Them and yer fell creatures of the night with their elder magic.
Aye. Now, feet fail me not…
Mystra, fail me not… Ohhh, the pain.
Elminster was vaguely aware that he was out under a night sky, hurrying over damp, faintly foul-smelling cobbles, with a fainter sea smell under the dung and rotting refuse, and the familiar strong, curved warmth of Storm was pressed against him and carrying him along.
“Him” meaning Amarune, of course. Who still seemed to have all her limbs and the usual manner of moving them, though her vision was a tear-filled blur and her ears rang and echoed in ceaseless cacophony.
That could have been worse, he told himself dully, through the splitting agony in his head. He’d been caught in a wild backlash he should have anticipated, standing right in the wards. Like any fumbling first-time hedge wizard…
“S-storm?” he managed to mumble. He couldn’t mindspeak her, even pressed together as they were. That part of his head was all churning, roiling dark fire.
“El,” Storm said soothingly, shifting her grip on him to something slightly more comfortable, “I’m here. I’ll heal you when we get somewhere safer. Don’t try to talk or mindspeak unless you really must.”
Good old Storm. Good lass. She knew what it was like, the roughness and pain of hurling magic.
She knew what it was like to have Mystra and then lose her.
“Storm!” Mirt called hoarsely, fighting for breath. “Silverhand! Hey, lass-here! Wait for me a breath or two!”
Storm had just ducked into an alley, dragging the limp Rune with her. She stuck her head back around the corner, saw Mirt, and grinned.
“Get in here,” she ordered. “You can stand guard.”
“What?” Mirt wheezed, joining her. “Ye have to let fly, then?”
Storm rolled her eyes. “No, I have to try to get Elminster’s mind back closer to what it should be.”
Mirt nodded and dragged out his dagger. “Glathra’s after me,” he warned, turning to plant himself in the alley. “With a whole lot of Dragons’n’magelings. Don’t they ever sleep?”
“Not if we don’t let them,” Storm replied, kneeling over the slumped Amarune and touching their foreheads together. “It’s all part of our clever plan for conquering all Cormyr.”
“Huh,” Mirt growled, “it strikes me there’s far too many folk in this city busy hatching clever plans for conquering all Cormyr.”
A shuttered window swung open beside him, revealing the head and shoulders of a bored-looking maid. Without really looking, she tossed a basinful of dirty wash water out into the alley.
Mirt ducked. As the water-hurler reached out to close the shutter, he came up grinning into her startled face, waving his dagger. “Are ye one of them?”
Accompanied by a startled scream, the window slammed hastily shut again.
“He’s getting better,” Storm reported, “but that’s mainly due to Rune being young and strong. I need peace and quiet lasting long enough to really heal him.”
“Then let’s be up and staggering again before Glathra’s hounds get here,” Mirt growled. “If we cut through this alley to the next street south, double back the way we’ve come and up that second lane along, we’ll get to the damnably expensive inn I’ve taken a room at, and can spend the night there.”
He gave her a hopeful leer and added, “Two lasses, one a mask dancer and the other with silver hair that moves by itself? ’Twill do wonders for my reputation.”
Storm gave him a look. “Mirt, your reputation needs something a little larger. Conquering a kingdom, fathering dragons… that sort of thing.”
Mirt drew himself up and gave her his best grin. “It does? Well, now… just whereabouts in this bright realm do ye keep yer dragons?”
The most powerful-at-Art wizard in all Suzail was also the wealthiest, but had not become so by ignoring credible requests for his hire.
Even requests that came after full night had fallen.
So it was that by invoking his name, rank, and family wealth, Lord Arclath Delcastle won admittance past an expressionless porter.
Who led him along a passage lined with two dozen rows of magnificent and identical armored warriors who turned in perfect unison and utter silence to regard him after he passed-and whom he strongly suspected were recently created helmed horrors, the sort of guardians a handful of the oldest and wealthiest noble Houses boasted a single one of, each.
The passage opened into a lofty hall dominated by two curving staircases ascending into unseen gloom. It was lit by the pale, silver-blue glow of an endlessly cycling mobile of floating swords, daggers, and stranger pointed and barbed weapons that hung in the air above the center of the chamber.
The porter led Arclath straight across the room and under the weapons, without paying them any attention.
Arclath noted bloodstains on the floor-old and faint, but unmistakable, and more than a few-under the silently flashing and gleaming blades.
Seeing them, Arclath could not help but look up at the whirling storm of steel. At least until he was safely out from underneath it.
Whereupon, his eyes fell upon a new menace. It seemed Larak Dardulkyn liked to impress, or rather intimidate, his guests.
Only after the visitor tore his gaze from the whirling scimitars and falchions did he notice four direhelms, the smoothly flying armored guardians that looked like armored men, brandishing two swords each. Men, that is, who were simply missing from the waist down.
One floated watchfully above each of the visible doors out of the chamber. Their heads turned smoothly to follow Arclath’s progress across the room.
The porter led Arclath to the door across from the one he’d entered by, opened it, and wordlessly waved
