Elminster’s reply, as he headed into the garderobe, was a rude noise.
Storm chuckled and rolled over on her back, stretching her arms, legs, and hair wide, and flexing them.
She was in the midst of gently groaning as she wiggled her cobble-worn toes, and their aches all throbbed in response, when she heard the unmistakable sounds of the inn’s guards admitting someone into Mirt’s rooms, across the hall from their own.
Springing out of bed, she snatched a robe around herself and went across to Mirt’s forechamber, where Amarune and Arclath were smilingly greeting a still-dozing Mirt.
Who had obviously spent the night snoring in the forechamber’s most massive armchair, after wenching and then dismissing the wenches, and then enjoying all he could manage of the best decanters on Lord Helderstone’s sideboard, which now littered the carpet around his floppy-booted feet.
“Afraid you’d lose them all when you stopped being Lord Helderstone?” Storm asked, waving her hand at the array of emptied glass.
Arclath chuckled, but Mirt’s response was a growl that was only a trifle more jovial than surly. Then his eyes focused on her, and he brightened, sitting up a little to properly take in the sight of a barely clad Storm.
“Now that fashion I like, lady. Are ye succumbing to my charms at last?”
“No,” she replied fondly, “I was finally getting some sleep. And unlike some old rogues around here, I like to occasionally get out of garments I’ve been living in for days. It gives the lice a little excitement.”
Mirt started scratching himself.
“Never saw the point of exciting lice, myself,” he growled. “Maggots, now…”
“Maggots? I thought I heard someone discussing morningfeast!” Elminster put in, from the doorway behind Storm. “Yet I smell nothing sizzling.”
“Oh, no?” Mirt leered at them both. “I’ll wager something was, in yon bedchamber last night.”
Storm rolled her eyes. “How often do you lose your last coin in foolish wagers, I wonder? Where is your cook, anyhail?”
She strode into the kitchen-and stopped dead.
The cook’s severed head was staring in terror at her from where it sat, beneath a handful of eager flies, in a skillet on a cold and unlit hearth. That end of the room was drenched with blood, but the rest of the cook was nowhere to be seen.
“Someone’s sent us a warning,” she told the others over her shoulder.
There was a rush to look-and Amarune recoiled, Arclath winced, and El and Mirt looked grim.
“It’s more than time for Lord Helderstone to disappear,” El muttered. “He had other old foes among the nobles, I’d say.” He looked at Mirt. “Sorry, old friend.”
Mirt shrugged and grinned.
“Where’s the rest of her?” Arclath asked, peering around the blood-spattered kitchen.
“Carried off into undeath,” Storm replied crisply, “or left somewhere to make trouble for us in the eyes of the Crown. Let’s move.”
Every now and then, when walking the haunted wing of the royal palace, one came to a high window whose shroudings had fallen to let in the bright sunlight.
Radiance that fell in shafts down into the gloom of the deserted galleries, illuminating thick dust that hung in the air like lazily swirling snow.
Targrael liked the haunted wing. It was more home to her than the cleaner, busier, noisy chambers where the courtiers worked, walked, and talked.
Yet, she wasn’t here in this particular corner of the shunned part of the palace this day for a pleasure- stroll.
For years she’d heard rumors of this or that hidden royal cache of enchanted weapons. Most of the tales were overblown, over time transforming a glowing dagger or ring hidden in a hollow bedpost into a small armory boasting many flying suits of armor and figurines that became snarling lions or flying dragon steeds, but she’d found a few palace treasures herself, and learned enough to know that there were larger ones. Or had been, once.
Of particular interest was a “marcher in blue flame” mentioned in a long-ago scribe’s description of items Salember the Rebel Prince had once publicly gloated over, that had apparently never been seen again since. She’d been hoping the five sages who’d been closeted secretly combing palace records for years now would turn something up… and it seemed they finally had.
It wasn’t much, just a line at the end of a Jorunhast note: “The three pillars safeguard the most perilous.” One more cryptic taunt, most might well term it, but to this lady Highknight, it meant something more.
There was just one pillar in this whole reach of the palace sculpted into the semblance of a triangular cluster of three fused pillars.
A pillar that stood like a prow where a little three-room-long side wing branched off the main block of the palace, rooms that on all five floors had once housed senior war wizards, the spell-crafters and researchers too old to ride in hard country and take to battlefields.
The young Palaghard, while still a prince, had once written a note to a young lady who’d caught his eye that “If you need to hide, Druth’s pillar swings wide.” Now, a wizard of war hight Jereth Ardruth had once dwelt in one of those rooms, and the triple pillar would have formed the endpost at the back of Ardruth’s-Druth’s-closet.
A stretch, but worth investigating. Blueflame ghosts could be used to bring down House Obarskyr and plunge the realm into years of thronestrife-but blueflame ghosts under her command could keep Cormyr strong, the Dragon Throne better guarded than ever before.
The wizards of war had sunk beyond untrustworthiness; the current royals were weak; and the highest- ranking courtiers a more corrupt and venal band of pompous greed-heads than she would have thought tolerable, even to a weak king.
No, it was all up to her.
And with the blueflame ghosts hers, she could at last…
This one. This was the door.
Closed and locked, but that meant little to a death knight. Drawing her sword, she positioned herself just so, aiming her blade so it would plunge down the crack where door met frame, and swung it high.
Before bringing it down with all her might, straight and true, to slash through the forged locking mechanism in one great shriek of metal.
Then she gently pulled on the door ring, let the great door swing wide, and went in.
The room beyond was a mess, of course. The windows had broken long ago, and generations of pigeons and whir-wings had nested on the desk, shelves, and bed, winter snows and winds had scattered parchments across the floor and set about rotting them into the moldering ruin of carpet, and the closet was right over- there.
Its curtain fallen, its The door she’d just forced slammed shut behind her, and a doorbar thudded into place. Targrael whirled around with a snarl, sword up.
A woman was facing her, leaning indolently on a sword of her own. Someone she knew. The ghost of the Princess Alusair Nacacia Obarskyr. The Steel Princess. The Steel Regent.
“Well met,” Alusair said dryly. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Targrael wasted no time in words. She sprang at her hated foe with a snarl, bright blade singing.
“You traitor and stealer of Obarskyr secrets,” Alusair added almost gently, flying up into the air to parry and draw Targrael out into the room.
The death knight charged, trying to pounce and hack the ghost down to the floor in a flurry of slashing swings.
Though the princess might be insubstantial as a wraith, she was solid enough to hold and swing the weight of a sword-even a sword made of her own ghostly self, sharpened momentarily to the strength and keen edge of warsteel. So she could be hurt.
Alusair laughed amid the clang and skirl of steel. “Is that your best, kitchen-cleaver-maid? How many beds did you have to warm to get made a Highknight?”
“I never!” Targrael shrieked, stung to speech at last. “You bitch! You evil, reckless-of-the-realm, rutting slut of a-”
