Realms of War

* * * * *

The strong morning sun did not seem to shine on the dust churned up by the horses trotting hastily out through the gates. Vizier Harlo Ongalor and the three Amnian heirs who did everything in unison seemed in a great hurry to be elsewhere—and Mirt suspected the sun was avoiding their dust for the same reason it couldn't reach into the stables on so bright a morning: magical barriers conjured by Ongalor's wizard allies. This one would be to keep arrows and crossbow quarrels from Ombreir striking them down from behind as they rode away, and the stables' barrier to keep anyone else from taking a horse to flee the mansion before the Just Blades came slaying.

'Good riddance,' grunted Elgan, standing on the wall-walk with Mirt and everyone else, as they all watched the four horsemen dwindle over the flank of the nearest hill. 'Now at least the killings will end, and we can try to decide what to do about yonder approaching army, before they butcher us all.'

As he spat thoughtfully down over the wall into the moat below, a shrill scream split the air behind them—a scream that ended in a wet splattering—in the courtyard of the darm-fruit trees.

It seemed Elgan had been mistaken.

* * * * *

Mirt looked down at the shattered body sprawled in a puddle of blood that was still spreading. Larl Ambror, or had been. Amn now held one fewer wine merchant—or, perhaps, one fewer wine merchant's double.

Lady Roselarr had taken one look at the corpse, shrieked, and fled up the grand staircase like a whirlwind.

'Seems someone wanted her newfound love to fly,' Deln muttered.

Mirt smiled sourly. 'Think Ongalor's wizards did it, from afar? Some compulsion spell or other?'

Deln shrugged. 'Why him? Taking you down would be his best strike against us.'

'Oh? Wouldn't that be the best way to scare everyone into fleeing Ombreir?'

'If we can. I'm thinking they threw up barrier spells we haven't even guessed at yet, to make this place a pris—'

Deln stopped speaking in astonishment. Darmon Halandrath had mounted the stair. Gaping, everyone watched him ascend, a great rolling mound of struggling flesh surging upward.

'Tymora and Tempus preserve us,' Tauniira muttered.

'Or Yurtrus gnaw our bones,' Hargra added.

Panting and sweating, Halandrath reached the upper level and lurched in the direction of his bedchamber. Before he was out of view, Helora Roselarr reappeared, coming back down the stairs with her arms full of gleaming, gilded—and obviously heavy—coffers. Her face was white as bone and set hard with determination, her eyes red from the tears still streaming down her cheeks.

'Whatever,' Ralaerond Galespear drawled, 'are you doing?'

'What you should be doing,' she snapped back. 'Fleeing this deathtrap just as swiftly as I can!' She tried to push past him, toward the open front gates, and found herself surrounded by frowning Amnians and Mirt's warriors.

'We're going to die here, every one of us!' she cried, voice rising. 'I doubt these Just Blades—if they're truly anywhere near here at all!—will find anyone left alive here in Ombreir, when they do come riding in! Someone hiding among us is butchering all the rest of us, and smiling up his sleeve all the while! I—'

Words failing her, she launched into a shriek of frustration, rammed a blinking Torandral out of her way with one of the coffers she was cradling, and shouldered her way through the rest of the warriors—who looked to Mirt for instructions. He waved a hand to indicate they should let her pass.

In her wake, Darmon Halandrath came thundering back down the stairs, clutching a leather satchel to his gigantic belly and howling for breath, sweat streaming down his nigh-purple face like a river. 'M-make way!' he tried to bawl, but lacked the breath to make it more than a hoarse wheeze. 'Make—'

Mirt gestured curtly, and his warriors cleared a path for the gigantic Amnian.

One or two of the other Amnians started to follow Roselarr and Halandrath in their march to the gates—only to halt in horror, and stare.

As she passed through the gatehouse, Helora Roselarr seemed to catch fire.

She shrieked, took two blazing steps, then seemed rooted to the spot, held up from falling by the sudden roaring fury of flames streaming up from her to the sky.

Blinded by sweat and trotting hard, Halandrath almost blundered into her, lurching to one side at the last moment—and bursting into flames of his own. 'No!' he cried wetly, flinging his fat arms wide. 'Nooooo!'

Mirt and the others watched in grim silence as the flames rose higher, two bright columns licking black smudges of smoke into the sky.

In mere moments Roselarr and Halandrath became ashes on bones, then bones straining to run on, then collapsing bones. One of Roselarr's coffers sagged open, spewing out a wet flood of melted gold, but the other burst with a little pop, sending forth an assortment of gem-adorned rings, bracelets, hairpins, and other small items that winked and glowed with magical radiances. . . that seemed to get ensnared in the air by an unseen hand or current, that sent them flying away in a common direction, along the front of the mansion wall. Faster and faster they streamed, curving to hug the wall at its every bend, and before the watchers had found time to draw more than a few breaths, they came into view again, racing along, having circumnavigated Ombreir. They sped past once more, a glittering stream, and in their wake something small and golden amid the blackened and guttering ruin that had been Darmon Halandrath rose to join them... followed by other... somethings.

'Those are magic items, aren't they?' Torandral asked.

Mirt nodded.

'Why... why are they circling the walls like that?'

'They're caught in the barrier Ongalor's wizards left behind,' Mirt replied, 'cast all around Ombreir, to trap us all inside.'

As if his words had been a cue, a plume of smoke rose into the sky from the far side of a nearby hill. Up over the brow of that hill, with the swiftly thickening smoke behind them, came riding an armed and glittering host, with a banner flapping at their fore.

It was a black, five-spired crown on gold, the Crown of Prince Uldrako. The Just Blades had come at last.

* * * * *

'They must have finished looting the Narthaen mansion, and set fire to it,' Mirt mused aloud. 'Which means they have every intention of sleeping here tonight.'

As his warriors muttered and readied their weapons around him, Gralhund and Gauntyl banners unfurled alongside the pretender's banner, to fly openly.

Tauniira shook her head at the sight of them. 'They mean to make you rue your choice of employers, Mirt.'

'Won't the magical barrier protect us?' Torandral asked, fear and excitement making his voice shrill.

Mirt and his veterans shook their heads.

'It'll go down the moment they reach it,' Mirt growled, 'and they'll have us surrounded by then. Even if they lack a wizard with any wits about him, Ongalor and his spell hurlers are scrying us from afar. They'll take it down, and soon, now.'

* * * * *

'The barrier,' Harlo Ongalor said, staring into the moving scene he could see in the sphere of glowing radiance