wasn’t numb-looked over at Mirt, then at Amarune.
The fat merchant’s hair was all on end, his face was smudged, and smoke curled up lazily from his jerkin. Or whatever that dirty, shapeless upper garment the old Lords of Waterdeep wore was called.
Rune’s face was no longer teary and vacant. It was alert and angry.
“El?” Storm whispered.
“Who did that?” the Sage of Shadowdale’s familiar voice snapped, out of Rune’s beautiful mouth.
“Dardulkyn. The most powerful archwizard in Suzail, probably in all Cormyr. He’s standing in yonder window.”
“Is he, now? Well-”
The second spell struck then, a blast that plucked them up and hurled them like gale-driven leaves down the street, tumbling and helplessly cursing.
“Enough of this,” Elminster spat, when they were all lying on the cobbles again. “Storm, heal me!”
“He’s sending his helmed horrors after us-”
“Then start healing me now.”
Storm turned her head. “Mirt, help me. We need to get around that corner, then find a doorway or an alcove for me to use, while you gallantly hold off all helmed horrors until I’m done restoring El.”
Mirt gave her a wordless, wary “you’ll be lucky” grunt, then started crawling. “I must warn ye,” he growled as he wormed slowly past her, looking rather like a kitchen midden heap on the move, “that my vanquishing- helmed-horrors skills are a mite rusty. Piergeiron only has-er, had — two of ’em, and thought ’em too precious for us to really smite.”
“All we need is for you to delay them long enough,” Storm replied, crawling to where she could reach Arclath and roll his stiff body over. Reaching back, she tugged at Amarune to keep her crawling, too.
“Huh,” Mirt growled, reaching out a hand to help roll the frozen young noble. “The older I get, the longer ‘long enough’ seems to get.”
“I’ve noticed that, too,” Storm agreed, scrambling forward to catch and cradle Arclath’s head before it crashed down on a cobble. “I believe some call it ‘progress.’ ”
“Oh? ‘Some’? What do others call it?”
“The general decline of the realms, sliding ever faster and inevitably into the Abyss, crawling chaos, and eventual obliteration.”
“Ah. So, I should make my coins now, hey?”
“Hey,” Storm agreed, breaking into a smile.
Broryn Windstag could not remember a time before Delasko Sornstern had been grinning at his elbow. They’d done nigh everything together for years; they still did almost everything together.
And in the wake of Stormserpent’s vow to carry out Lord Illance’s bold plan, they had wasted no time hastening to their favorite “private place,” a certain shady back corner of the Sornstern family gardens, where they could talk things over without being overheard by anyone.
It would have dumbfounded them both-and plunged them into cold, despairing terror at the thought of all the treasons they’d so casually discussed-to learn their every jocular comment was being overheard and committed to memory by a Highknight of the Crown who’d been tailing Windstag for years. A certain Sir Talonar Winter, who looked very much like the better portraits of the great King Azoun, fourth of that name, and who was lounging above them on a bough of a mighty shadowtop at that moment.
A man who’d become so comfortable on that bough overhanging the bower where the two friends were wont to talk that he could arrive and depart soundlessly, even in utter darkness, tall and spike-topped Sornstern walls or no walls.
Yet the two lordlings remained blissfully unaware of their audience, and so spoke untrammeled by prudence. Just as they were discussing Marlin Stormserpent’s chances just then.
“Yes, straight through the perimeter wall of Stormserpent Towers. Solid stone feet thick, mind, not where there was a gate or hidden door. Strode without stopping, blue flames and all, leaving not so much as a scorch mark.”
“Not a secret door?” Windstag asked disbelievingly, a second time.
“Not,” Sornstern confirmed. “He swore to this, insisting he was sober and had seen it all very clearly. The two of them stepped through a wall without muttering any sort of spell. In a spot where the stones were solid-he checked, just after. And Indur would never embellish or tell us false. He knows full well his neck would pay the price.”
Windstag nodded. “So tell me about these blueflame ghosts.”
Sornstern leaned back to look up at the night stars-what few of them he could see around the great dark canopy of the shadowtop looming overhead. Even if he’d had a glowstone on a pole to peer properly by, he had no chance of seeing the Highknight who was listening so intently, because the Highknight was not in the habit of handing such chances to others, even headstrong and idiotic young noble lordlings.
Not that Delasko Sornstern was looking for anyone. He was enjoying the moment, savoring this rare time when Windstag was listening to him.
“My father, Haedro,” he began slowly, “has a hobby.”
He paused then, just to see Broryn lean forward eagerly and acquire the first signs of impatience. Before it could flare into anger, he continued.
“He collects lore and relics of famous adventurers of the past. Years ago, he heard all about those famous adventurers, the Nine. Not the heroic tales bards and old tavern gossips like to tell, but all about the Nine. How they ended, to be specific.”
“The Silverhair Sister-Lurl or Laeral or some such-fell under a god’s curse, right? After she put on the Crown of Horns, and it ate her brain?”
Sornstern winced at Windstag’s words. “Y-yes, you could put it that way. She went evil, at least until the Lord Archmage of Waterdeep, the Blackstaff, rescued her and took her as his wife-”
“Funny how that happens, hey? Off with that gown and behold my cure!” Windstag leered.
Out of long habit, Sornstern supplied the expected nod and enthusiastic grin. “Yes, I’ve noticed that, too! What we missed by not being born mighty wizards, hey?”
“Hey, indeed. So, she went mad and bad, and the Nine scattered, never to reunite,” Windstag almost chanted. “See? I remember a little of what my tutors droned on about… see?”
Sornstern nodded and grinned again. “Well done, to have emerged from that flood of drivel with anything salvaged at all! You have it right, and some of the Nine were hired by a certain rich merchant of Athkatla. Unbeknownst to them, that merchant was under the influence of an archmage who desired to bind longevity and resilience into magic items by imprisoning the vitality of living beings within them, and-”
“Those Amnians! Sell their own left arms, they will! Can’t trust them for half a trice or the scrapings off a copper coin!”
“Ah… well said, you can’t indeed! Well, this wizard easily overcame the adventurers with spells and bound them into items of his making. Later, at least one, more likely two, of these enchanted things fell into the hands of the Stormserpents.”
For the first time, Windstag stopped looking enthusiastic. An eye-narrowing thought had struck him. “Just how is it that you know that?”
“My father,” Sornstern replied triumphantly, “and he had it from that infamous hot-breeches Old Mage the tales all tell about: Elminster of Shadowdale. In return for hiding the Sage of Shadowdale for a night and letting him drain a decanter of half-decent wine. The old fool thought he was getting Father’s best.”
The two lordlings snorted and sneered together for the thousand-thousandth time over the gullibility of the lower classes, ere Windstag stiffened as another thought struck him.
Leaning forward excitedly, he asked, “So just how many of the Nine were bound into items? How many does Marlin control?”
Sornstern shrugged. “I think just the two, but in truth I know not. I did notice that Marlin said nothing at all about blueflame ghosts to us, for a good long time after he was sending them out into the city.”
Windstag smiled. “Would you, if you stood in his boots? They’re his secret weapon against the Obarskyrs.”
“Or us,” Sornstern told his friend thoughtfully. “Or us.”
