a balefully grinning figure some three wagon-lengths away, running closer fast.
Now stop. Right now. Try to go calm. Let me use thy arms.
“Yes, master,” Arclath said sarcastically but obeyed. His arms and shoulders moved seemingly of their own volition, a warm darkness that wasn’t him rising at the back of his mind, his body dropping into a lunge with sword raised.
Targrael swerved wide and then turned and lashed out with a slash from one side, of course-but Elminster had already cast Arclath’s good blade at the cobbles right in front of her racing feet. It clanged as it bounced; she stumbled over it; he sidestepped-and then, with a grace that Amarune might have envied if she hadn’t been busy screaming his name as Storm shoved her on into the alarmed Dragons-he cast a spell.
Motes of light appeared in a swift, rushing circle in the wake of his nimble fingers, rushed together into a single pulsing light that flared into a cone of what seemed to be bright sunlight, and caught Targrael full in the face.
When it struck her sword, the blade shattered with an ear-splitting shriek, bursting into deadly shards that flew in all directions. One of them spun right across Targrael’s face, and another laid open her shoulder.
She howled in anguish and staggered back.
Snatch up thy sword and run her through. Take care to keep hold of it-she won’t fall or seem to be hurt much.
Arclath obeyed and did almost lose his sword as the death knight roared and spun away from him in a frenzy of pain, lashing out blindly with the twisted stump of her sword.
Now run, lad. Don’t play hero. Get in among the Dragons.
Arclath obeyed happily this time, and pulling back his weapon, sprinted into a knot of soldiers, most of whom seemed to be glaring at him, their swords drawn.
A handful of reinforcements trudged down the street from the direction of the Eastgate-more Dragons, but not fresh ones. The new arrivals looked exhausted, travel-stained, and far less grandly armored than the palace guardsmen. Some of these new arrivals were behind Arclath, milling around between him and the snarling, shuddering Targrael.
Ahead, Arclath saw his Rune staring anxiously over Storm’s shoulder at him. Even as he gave her a reassuring smile and espied Mirt arguing with a Dragon who had grabbed hold of his shoulder, he saw a man whose stern face he remembered from around the palace. At the same time, Storm greeted the man, “Well met again, Sir Starbridge. Will you be needing to see my chest again?”
“You handed us a merry journey back from Shadowdale,” he growled. “We’ve just walked the last leg, from Jester’s Green. What’s all this? What mischief are you up to now?”
“Trying to keep from being cut down in the street,” Storm replied-a moment before Wizard of War Glathra Barcantle thrust her head out of the gap where the door had been, saw Storm and then the others, and snapped, “You! Men, arrest these people! Her, and her, and the fat man there, and Lord Delcastle yonder!”
Mirt shook off the Dragon he’d been arguing with as if the man were a straw doll, and roared, “Fat man? Who’re ye calling a fat man, Shrewjaws?”
Whatever reply the blazing-eyed Glathra might have made was lost in her sudden jaw-drop of astonishment, as a Purple Dragon far across the Promenade was flung into the air to crash down among his fellows, and another man screamed in agony.
Heads turned, men gaped-and more Purple Dragons were hurled aside, streaming blood.
Lady Targrael was back on her feet and swinging two swords whose owners wouldn’t be needing them anymore. She was really angry now, and coming through anyone in her way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
J ust one? We face just one?” a gruff Purple Dragon lionar demanded disbelievingly. “Well, why haven’t you jacks downed her by now? What by the Rampant Dragon is-”
He broke off to gape as a severed head flew past him to bounce off the shoulder plates of a swordcaptain nearby, drenching the man in blood ere it tumbled down to be lost to sight underfoot. It had been wearing a Dragon helm.
“Sabruin!” he gasped in disbelief. “What manner of-”
Another Dragon fell, and his slayer ran along his toppling body, swinging swords in both hands against the soldiers now crowding around her and hacking at her almost desperately.
The lionar gaped again. She looked dead, this lone woman butchering her way through palace guards who should have been able to withstand a thousand women with ease.
“Sir Eskrel Starbridge,” the lionar heard the sharp voice of the Lady Glathra rising from behind him, “attend me. You and two of your Highknights. Tell the others to arrest and imprison the four persons I identified, in our dungeons, and quell this disturbance. They may call on the services of all the wizards of war who are here-it seems whoever is attacking, yonder, bears heavy magical protections. I have far more pressing matters to attend to right now than street butchery. Our oh-so-loyal nobles are gathering forces under arms all over the city, and Larak Dardulkyn may be involved.”
“Just what else befell here, while I was out hunting a false Elminster?” Starbridge demanded.
“Later, Highknight,” Glathra replied crisply. “Later.”
Lips set in a thin and furious line, Manshoon hissed out the short incantation and sat back to watch what befell in the shifting glows of his scrying eyes.
The blast was sudden and terrible, destroying the wagon and everyone close to it. Knowing what was coming, the future emperor of Cormyr had darkened that particular sphere almost to black, to avoid being blinded; the moment the flash had passed its height, he rekindled it, and was in time to watch the dung wagon spread itself and its contents in a thin, wet layer over the walls of the buildings at the far end of the street.
Of his wagon, the eye tyrant within it, the horses and Purple Dragons and war wizards-with any luck, every last person who might have seen the smallest glimpse of what the wagon was carrying-there was no sign.
Except for a red fog in the air and bedewing the street, not to mention the wide but shallow pit that had replaced the sweep of worn cobbles where the wagon had been standing.
Manshoon watched shards of glass fall in a gentle rain out of the sky, looking for any larger movements that might mean a warrior had survived or a Crown mage had shielded himself somehow.
Nothing. He’d gazed longer, now, than a wounded man could hold his breath. Still nothing.
He’d managed it. Kept his secret, and done it far enough from the mansion that Dardulkyn couldn’t be blamed outright.
Not that he considered the reckoning even, between himself and Cormyr. A dozen-some magelings, perhaps twice that many Dragons…
The Forest Kingdom still owed him four senior war wizards, or more. Beholders didn’t come cheap.
Letting out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, the future Emperor of Cormyr and Beyond looked one last time at the blood-drenched street, reflected that it was high time to check on the other two wagons, and Something caught his eye, in another glowing scene. Or rather, a lot of somethings: Purple Dragons, their swords out and gleaming back reflections from some lanterns in a Suzailan street, and a bright and steady conjured glow that showed him the familiar facade of the palace behind it.
They were gathering around a lone, embattled figure, swords rising and falling, rising and fall…
Targrael!
In the street outside the palace, taking on a good third of the Crown soldiers in Suzail who were awake at this hour.
Manshoon stared at the battle for a moment more, seeing wizards of war, the hole in the palace wall where a door ought to be, and… was that Amarune Whitewave? Elminster?
He sprang from the chair, landing at a full sprint, heading for another of his beholders.
A living eye tyrant at the height of its powers should make for a dandy battle. After he made utterly stone-
