“We take this passage, to the bend there. See that square stone, right down by the floor? Kick it with your boot. Another stone should move out a bit, right in front of you. Push in on it, hard, and a hidden door will open.”
“Better and better. Is there any treasure hereabouts that no one would miss, hey?”
“No,” Vangey said flatly. “Yet the royal magician of the realm has been known to reward those who serve Cormyr well.”
Mirt followed the instructions, and a door grated open with surprisingly little noise. He dragged Fentable through it and went on, the door swinging closed the moment the understeward’s dragging boots were clear of it.
A bare breath later, just as he was opening his mouth in the pitch darkness to ask the spiderthing on his shoulder for more instructions, he heard a commotion on the other side of the wall.
Many men in boots were hurrying around the corner he’d just vacated, and at least one woman was with them. The Lady Glathra’s unmistakable voice was berating them as they went, telling all within earshot that she was simply spitting mad, and someone was going to pay for it; and that she wanted to know just who’d dared to rouse this part of the palace, and she’d ring his clanging gong for him, good and hard.
Mirt and Vangerdahast were both wily old veterans, so they waited until the sounds had died away to utter silence before they chuckled. In unison.
The King’s Forest was a cold place at this time of deepest night, shrouded in streaming wisps of mist and awake with eerie calls.
One of those sounds was coming from a shallow dell not far from the Way of the Dragon. It was the deep, loud snoring of an exhausted young lord of Cormyr.
Pillowed on a bodyguard’s cloak and lying on the layered cloaks of two more, Marlin Stormserpent was deep in his dreams, wrapped in his own cloak, while his shivering bodyguards stood grim guard over him.
“He’s not paying us near enough for this sort o’ duty,” one of them whispered hoarsely, not for the first time.
“Shut it,” came the familiar reply, made more curtly than ever.
“Hear that?” the third bullyblade hissed, sword singing out. “Something’s coming-yonder!”
They caught a glimpse of distant blue flame through the trees, and fearfully roused their lord, shaking him and nudging him with their boots in hasty unison.
The master’s blueflame ghosts were coming back, and the cursed beyond-dead things obeyed only him.
He came awake as fearful as they were, sweat-drenched and cursing, and had to scramble up to have both Blade and Chalice ready in hand when the two flaming slayers stalked up to him, dragging a hairy mass larger than both of them. It was leaving a wide, wet trail of gore through the leaves and fallen logs, which made the bodyguards look even grimmer and shuffle until they stood together, swords out and watchful.
“What is it?” Stormserpent asked, unenthusiastically.
“You ordered us to get evenfeast. Behold. It’s a bear-everything else in the forest fled from us.”
The three bullyblades traded silent glances that all said, “That surprises me not,” as loudly as if they’d bellowed it.
Stormserpent merely nodded, held up the Chalice and the Blade, and bent his will upon the two ghosts. Who leaned forward as if in belligerent challenge but said nothing.
In eerie silence the noble strained, trembling and going pale… and slowly, very slowly, the men wreathed in cold blue flames faded away, their last wisps rising up into the two items the lord was clutching.
Stormserpent let out a deep sigh, let his hands fall to his sides, then turned and snapped at the three bullyblades, “Butcher yon bear, light the fire you laid, and start cooking it. You can wake me again when it’s done.”
Crossing Chalice and Blade across his breast as if he were a priest sleeping vigil on an altar, he laid himself down on the cloaks and closed his eyes.
The bodyguards grudgingly set about following the orders he’d just given. As they bent down around the bear with their daggers out and started sawing, the looks they sent their master’s way were almost as baleful as the ones the blueflame ghosts had been offering him, a dozen breaths before.
“Cheerful place,” Mirt commented, watching Vangerdahast’s approach to the double doors cause the expected sigils to glow into eerie visibility. Warning off tomb robbers and fools.
Well, he’d been both, in his day, and probably would be both again…
He glanced back at Fentable. The understeward looked a little the worse for being dragged down two flights of stairs and along more passages than Mirt had bothered to keep count of, to reach this cold, silent lower cellar.
The doors sighed open, and Vangerdahast said, “Thank you for looking away. Waterdeep is well lorded over, I see.”
Mirt managed to quell the snort he usually greeted such sentiments with, and watched a pale glow kindle out of the empty air as the spiderlike royal magician advanced cautiously into a large, dark vault.
“Are there occasional… problems?” Mirt asked warily, staying where he was.
“More than a few coffins have been opened since I was here last. I know it doesn’t appear that way, but I can tell. Leave the understeward, and come in. I’ll need your help with the lids.”
“And I’ll need your help blasting the undead when they burst out and try to throttle me,” Mirt replied meaningfully.
“You’ll receive it,” came the flat reply.
Mirt rolled his eyes and lurched forward. “Which one first?”
The seventh coffin Mirt opened with a grunt held an immobile, intact-looking man. Who moved not at all in the heart of the faintly singing magical glow that filled his stone resting place.
“Don’t reach in,” Vangerdahast warned.
“No fear,” Mirt retorted. “I was just looking for traps.”
“He’s caught in one. A stasis trap,” the royal magician snapped, scuttling to the top of a nearby royal catafalque to get high enough to look down into the open coffin.
“That’s the lord warder, Vainrence,” he added in a satisfied voice, the moment he’d surveyed the still form in the coffin. “Just step back and leave him be. I’m hoping one of the three remaining disturbed coffins holds Ganrahast. This is the last place in the palace I had left to check for the two of them.”
The next coffin contained the royal magician, in the same sort of singing, gently pulsing stasis.
“We dare not disturb them without a senior wizard of war on hand, in case spells are needed, fast. Swift casting is something I can’t do, given what I’ve become.”
Mirt regarded the spiderlike mage with interest. Vangerdahast hadn’t sounded bitter, only matter-of- fact.
“What do I do with the dolt I dragged down here?”
“Put him in that coffin, and set the lid back into place over him. He’ll keep until I have time to cast this same sort of stasis. I can manage it, but slowly.”
“Right, and then?”
“Let’s go get Glathra. She might as well do something useful, for once.”
Arclath looked around, wearily. Purple Dragons and war wizards were murmuring triumph to each other. Any moment now, they’d notice one noble lord in their midst-with a mask dancer clinging to him, and an infamous Harper with silver hair everyone recognized at a glance lying senseless at his feet. Storm looked as lost to the world as Elminster was, inside Arclath’s own head.
Silent, not answering. Gone.
“Rune,” he whispered, into the closest ear of the mask dancer whom he loved more and more with each passing moment, “if I carry Storm, can you take her feet?”
“Take her where?” Rune whispered back. “Into the palace?”
Arclath shrugged. Where else could they go? He very much doubted they’d be allowed to depart, if they tried to take Storm across the Promenade right now. Plenty of these men had heard Glathra’s orders.
Naed. They always seemed to be wading deeply in fresh, warm naed.
