“No one knows,” Ganrahast replied.

“But,” Glathra added with wicked glee, “I suspect Elminster is behind it, that it’s an attempt to flush out the mysterious noble who commands that blueflame ghost-and it’s highly likely the Blazon will suffer greatly in the trouble that’s bound to erupt.”

“Including the trouble we will undoubtedly cause, after your scrying turns up something we absolutely must rush in to deal with?” Ganrahast asked dryly.

She widened her eyes into an innocence that fooled no one at all.

“Undoubtedly,” she said solemnly.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

RATHER NOISY BATTLES

The Blazon was packed that warm and breezy Handras Eve. Half of fashionable Suzail had shown up, crowding the doors to get in. They stood tightly packed along the walls and between the tables. More, who’d tried in vain to get inside, were milling around in the streets and down alleyways, all around.

Inside, all eyes were locked on the stage-that is, on the small cleared space where a lone dancer was leaping and whirling, her bare body glistening with sweat and ceaseless blue flames wreathing her body.

There had been no such space a few breaths ago. A despairing Daerendygho Vrabrant had gone to the trouble of having the Blazon’s tiny stage torn down, a new floor installed where it had been, and new chairs and tables brought in to fill the space. However, to his open-mouthed horror, several patrons had suddenly put down their tankards in unison, murmured magic-and made certain chairs, tables, and the startled diners seated on or at them vanish. The revealed wizards had similarly disappeared an instant later, leaving only their tankards behind.

This had not amused Wizard of War Glathra Barcantle, who was standing on a nearby rooftop trying to oversee a team of Crown mages, a lot of Purple Dragons, and a covert force of Highknights. She was already uneasy at the dozen-some bands of bullyblades and hedge wizards loitering in the alleyways below, obviously sent by various ambitious nobles. This evening was racing toward real trouble.

The sudden appearance of some startled diners, with tankards, platters of fried bustard, the tables those were standing on, chairs, and all their belongings in the middle of one filthy, refuse-choked alleyway did not strike Glathra as particularly helpful, though it made some of the wizards on the roof with her chuckle.

“Just watch for blue flames,” Glathra snapped at them, returning her attention to the conjured scrying eye floating in the air before her.

In it, she could see the Blue Flame, whom she’d been entirely unsurprised to learn looked very like a certain Amarune Whitewave.

“Elminster,” she snarled, as she kept one eye on the sensuous dance for any sign of something suspicious, and with the other tried to survey what she could see of the crowded audience. “You’re behind this, you are…”

She could tell Amarune was dancing elsewhere, and magic-Elminster’s, for all the gold in the palace vaults-was making the dancer’s image appear in the Blazon, and providing the cold, burning-nothing blue flames wreathing it, too.

There! A man among the many along one of the club walls toppled forward, face-first into the lap of a startled drinker at the nearest table, and a blue, flaming glow could be seen behind him. Men started abruptly scrambling to flee from that spot, clawing and shoving, as a figure surrounded in flowing blue flames stepped through the wall, sword first, stabbing ruthlessly at anyone in the way.

Shouts went up in the alleys-other scrying eyes besides Glathra’s were in use-and the bullyblades started to surge forward.

Dragons looked to Glathra. “Lady?”

“Stay where you are!” she ordered. “We couldn’t get through all the flesh down there, anyhail! Wait and watch, to see where we should rush, before we do it!”

Chaos had erupted inside the Blazon. The lone blueflame ghost was stalking through the crowd, apparently seeking specific nobles to slay. Everyone was shouting or screaming, swords and daggers were out everywhere, and men were fighting viciously just to get out of the club, hacking and trampling those in their way.

As the bloodshed grew, tables overturned, and chairs were hurled, the dancer danced on.

A stretch of the Blazon’s outer wall abruptly vanished, as some hired mage or other cast a spell no one should use in crowded city streets-and the elder Lord Wintersun, surrounded by a tight knot of bullyblades, charged inside.

He was making for his white-faced and weeping son, who was about seven men distant from the pursuing ghost and vainly trying to get farther away-as behind him, one by one, those seven fled or were hewn down.

Another spell burst right behind the ghost, shooting flames in all directions and flinging the blueflame slayer into the air and halfway across the club. Howls and shrieks arose as the fire spread, and in a trice men who were aflame were staggering helplessly about, tripping over the wounded and senseless.

“Firequench!” Glathra shouted at the four war wizards who’d prepared for that duty. “Now!”

Someone else’s spell brought another section of the Blazon’s outer wall down, and patrons fled wildly, streaming out into the streets in all directions.

“Keep watching the ghost!” Glathra snarled at the senior war wizards standing with her. “Whatever happens, don’t let it slip away!”

“Uh, Lady Glathra?” one asked, daring to pluck at her sleeve.

“What?” she almost spat in his face, fury rising fast. He pointed over the rooftops.

Where a beholder had just risen into view and was floating serenely nearer.

“Lady!” an older, deeper-voiced Crown mage called, before she even had time to gape. “Over here!”

“We must get down there!” the ranking Highknight snapped, waving to his men. “Down the stairs! Move!”

“I give the orders here!” Glathra almost shrieked, but his reply, delivered at the full run without even bothering to look in her direction, was a silent but emphatic gesture of the sort never seen in polite company.

With a wordless snarl of rage, Glathra rushed across the roof to the deep-voiced mage, to see why he’d hailed her.

In the alley below, marching in a line abreast with their swords out and ruthlessly slaying the few bullyblades who hadn’t sense enough to flee from them, were five blueflame ghosts.

“The Blazon’s burning,” Mirt rumbled as they hastened together along a sidestreet.

“And not a moment too soon, from all Arclath’s told us of the place,” Storm replied as they came to a corner where their way joined a larger street. “Now, if I’ve guessed right, our lone blueflame ghost should be fleeing now and coming right along… here.”

“Fleeing? I didn’t think they ever fled!”

“They do when their commander wants them to, or when they face five of their own kind. See?”

In the distance, down the street, a wall of bright blue flame was moving closer as five ghosts walked abreast, striding swiftly along the street.

“Oh, naed,” Storm muttered. “Things can never just be stlarning simple, can they?”

She was eyeing the unmistakable shape of a beholder, descending silently in a smooth and unhurried arc, to float just above and behind the line of ghosts.

And in front of Storm and Mirt, about a dozen paces away, a noble was standing facing the ghost who’d been in the Blazon. The lord was holding something that was glowing blue, something flat and about the size of his hand. The ghost, still walking hurriedly toward him, was fading away.

Its flames pulsed in time with flares of light from whatever the lord was holding.

“Lord Calantar?” Storm whispered.

“Ye know him?”

“By sight. I’d never have guessed he’d be the…”

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