that floated in the air in the middle of the glade. 'Get ready to take it down.'
The three wizards who'd conjured that sphere no longer looked like a trio of wealthy Amnians. They had been staring intently at the spell-spun scene back at Ombreir, and continued to do so, saying not a word in reply.
The vizier was not accustomed to being ignored. 'Jaelryn!' he snapped, choosing the weakest mage, the one he knew was more afraid of him than the others. 'Did you hear me?'
Jaelryn kept silent, and the vizier glared at him, suddenly aware that all three wizards were standing motionless, staring fixedly into the sphere as if enthralled.
'Jaelryn?' Ongalor shouted, alarmed. 'Orauth? Maundark?'
'They can't hear you,' a calm feminine voice announced from right behind the vizier.
He whirled, jumping back as he did so, the rings on his fingers winking into life.
A barefoot woman in the tattered, filthy remnants of a rotten but once-grand black gown stood facing him, her long, wavy silver hair coiling and lashing around her shoulders like a nest of restless snakes.
'Who are you?' Ongalor snarled, feeling the tingling that meant the greatest smiting magic of his rings was almost ready. 'And what have you done to my wizards?'
The woman stared at him with open contempt in her eyes. Those eyes flared silver—and the vizier's rings exploded, taking Ongalor's fingers with them.
Gods,
He found himself on his knees, screaming, waving his hands violently to try to dash the pain away—and failing.
'You should tend 'your' wizards better, Vizier,' the silver-haired woman sneered. 'Just now, they're entranced by the Weave, and their fates depend on what I find in their thoughts. As for me. . . most folk know me as the Simbul. I serve Mystra, and the land of Aglarond. I've been watching you for a long time, Harlo Ongalor, and am quite happy to be your doom.'
'My—? What did I ever do to you?' the vizier sobbed, trying to struggle to his feet and reach the wand at his belt with the bleeding ruin of his right hand.
'When I wore the guise of Alathe, you had me flogged to the bone for disputing your trade dishonesties with you in Athkatla.'
The Simbul took a step closer and added calmly, 'When the prettiest of the bedchamber-lasses you rented out in Murann died of her treatment at your hands—glass shards thrust into someone will do that, Ongalor—I took her place, and you promptly had me fed to your dogs.'
The wand at the vizier's belt slid itself up, past his desperately grabbing hand, and turned in the air, just out of his reach, to menace him.
'And in Crimmor,' the silver-haired woman continued, 'when I posed as that trade envoy from Sembia and refused to be threatened into signing the deal you wanted, you had me felled in the street with a slung stone to the back of my head, and drove your wagon over me—three times, Ongalor, just to make sure you'd broken as many bones as you could. Then you laughed in my face and snatched my purse.'
The Simbul bent closer and added, 'Your life is so full of such cruelties that you may not recall just three slain women out of so many, yet I'm sure if I bother to give you time enough, you'll remember at least one of those slayings. Even if, just now, you can't put a..
And she smiled at Harlo Ongalor as the wand began to glow.
It was a soft smile that held all the mercy of the grin on the face of a hungry wolf.
* * * * *
As the Just Blades rode down the hill, those standing ready inside the gates of Ombreir were shocked to see a dead herald hanging limply in the air at their fore, head lolling, spitted on a trio of lances.
'A herald! There'll be trouble over that,' Mirt muttered.
'There will, indeed,' Ralaerond Galespear said softly at his shoulder. Something in the heir's drawl made Mirt look at him—in time to see the horse breeder's handsome good looks melt away into taller, broader-shouldered, feminine beauty.
A silver-haired woman who looked somehow familiar snatched Mirt's sword out of his hand, handing him Galespear's rapier with the words, 'Here. Sorry it's such a toy.'
A moment later, he was missing his best dagger, too, and she was striding away through the gates.
'No one should follow me past the gatehouse,' she snapped, silver hair swirling. 'The barrier stands.'
It shimmered around her as she spoke, but she walked through it unharmed to meet the advancing army.
'We come to parley!' one of the younger Gauntyl knights shouted. 'See you not the herald?'
'There will be no parley with you, who dared to treat a herald so,' the lone woman told him. 'I'll grant you only one gift: swift death.'
The knight sneered. 'How generous! Just you, against us all?'
She shrugged. 'If some of you would like to be gallant and retire while I butcher the rest, be assured I'll get to you all eventually.'
'You're mad!' barked a Gralhund warrior, stalking to meet her.
'That's true enough,' the woman agreed. 'So, shall we?'
Reluctantly, shaking his head, the Gralhund warrior swung his axe at her—and she danced aside, sprang behind his swing to thrust steel into his armpit, and spun to slice open the throat of another warrior with her dagger.
'Doomed,' Loraun murmured—but stared, jaw dropping, as the stranger with the silver hair slashed, thrust, leaped, and slew, a tireless butchery that took her into the heart of the Just Blades.
Everyone in Ombreir watched in deepening awe, waiting for her inevitable fall... a fall that did not come.
'Twenty or more, already,' Mirt mumbled, shaking his head. He could see some sort of warding magic was turning aside hurled lances and fired arrows from the woman, but still. . .
Sheer weariness should drag her arms down soon, and they'd overwhelm her.
'I weary of this,' they heard her say, through some trick of her magic—in the instant before beams of silver fire lashed out from her eyes, to blast to ashes Prince Uldrako and the senior Gauntyl and Gralhund knights riding with him. 'Now begone, or I'll slay you all!'
She buried her steel in another two warriors—and the rest of the Just Blades shouted, turned, and fled, leaving more than sixty fallen on the hill.
The woman watched them go, then turned and walked back to the gates, drenched in blood not her own and leaking silver flames here and there where she'd been wounded.
'The barrier still stands,' she warned those gaping at her.
'I'd not seek to depart, were I you.'
She handed back Mirt's bloody sword and dagger, and told him, 'I need a bath, and trust your cooking best. Make me some of that shieldfry of yours. There's still enough of Ambror left for a good meal, I think.'
Mirt gave her a hard look, as men gagged or winced around him, and decided she was jesting. He hoped.
'Cook for me up in South Tower,' she ordered. Then she commanded everyone else, 'Where not one of you will go, until Mirt and I come down out of there.'
* * * * *
The fire quickened. Mirt set two pans to warming over it. No need to weaken a shield when he had cookware. He laid Ombreir's best leg of lamb on the cutting board, hefted the cleaver, and set to work.
Silver hair swirled in the doorway, shedding a fine mist of water. Her bath was done already. 'You know who I am, don't you?'
He nodded. That night, years ago, had just come back to him. 'Dove, of the Seven,' he growled. 'Saw you once, dancing at the Bright Bared Battlelass, in Waterdeep.'
Dove grinned. 'Couldn't resist the name of that place. Pity 'tis gone. So you've seen all of me.'
Mirt nodded. 'Thews and thighs to out-muscle mine,' he said. 'So what brings a Chosen of Mystra into the
