In the cross-passage beyond waited the lady servant. She tried not to look nervous as she shrank from two restless panthers, who pulled taut the rattling chains that held them. They leaned forward, licking their lips and staring hard at her.
The other end of those chains was wrapped around the strong and hairy hands of a smiling man. Dark eyes, a goatee, and a cruel face between, the Master of the
King's Beasts, looking every bit as dangerous as the two great cats he was walking.
Bolifar gave him a slow, deliberate nod and received the briefest of brow-inclinations in return. Not an unexpected insult, but something Vangerdahast should be apprised of nonetheless. It sat not well when beast-tamers thought themselves higher in rank than senior War Wizards.
Their stair crossed the hall where the panthers crouched and switched their tails. They stared a little less hungrily at a bony old wizard than they had at the curvaceous grace of his guide. The lady servant ascended the next flight, relief written plain down the splendid curve of her back. Bolifar Geldert followed, clutching his writing satchel a trifle more tightly than usual. He took care not to hasten-even when he heard the rattle that meant the master had loosened the chains. The first panther who dared to sink claws or fangs into this War Wizard would also be the last.
There were no beasts in the next passage their stair crossed, but silent hurrying servants and a pair of stiffly saluting guards. Gods above, hadn't he asked for a chamber with a door he could lock, somewhere off the "little-used, out-of-the-way upper passages"?
There was nothing at the top of this last stair but a closed door. Metal rattled as the lady servant turned her key. Her touch brought the glowstone adorning the door-plate to crimson life. In its ruby light, she aimed and pressed a key, warm from its ride in her bodice, into Bolifar's hand. Without a word, she slipped past him down the steps and was gone.
Thoughtfully Bolifar watched her go. He unhurriedly turned and pushed the door open, stepping into the deep darkness beyond. Unfamiliar this turret-top room might be, but it was also heavily spell guarded and isolated-just the place he needed to write his report.
Vangerdahast had waited long enough-far longer than his patience was wont to stretch. What Master Mage Geldert had learned thus far of possible traitors to the crown in the minor noble family of Cordallar would have to be set down right smartly; Old Hammerspells was undoubtedly pacing his chambers already and scowling like an Immersea storm.
Bolifar gave the warm and waiting darkness a rueful smile. Vangy's scowl was fated to grow darker soon. This old War Wizard was here, at the top of too many steps- rather than in his usual offices in the Royal Court-because he had his suspicions about the involvement of certain of his fellow War Wizards in the plotting of House Cordallar.
Hun. Feeble intrigues compared to those here in hell, hut i can feel magic near-and getting nearer. No leading astray, now!
None. The memories merely unfold....
Vangerdahast found himself yawning again. Quite deliberately he reached out to the nearest candle and snuffed the flame between his finger and thumb.
The pain brought him fully awake. Letting the smoke curl up undisturbed, he stepped back and shot a glance across the chamber. The tall, slender form was slumped and still: Sardyl, sitting patiently in her usual chair, had slipped into slumber.
It was late. Time had passed-too much time. The chambermaids would long since have begun clucking at the thought of the Royal Magician's personal messenger and scribe shut in with him this late, this long. As if the Lady Sardyl Crownsilver didn't trust Vangerdahast absolutely... almost as deeply as he trusted her.
"Wake, lass," he said, stroking her cheek with one finger, far more gently than the chambermaids would have believed Old Hammerspells was capable of.
Sardyl blinked awake and looked a silent question up at him.
Vangerdahast nodded impatiently, angry at the tardy Geldert. "Aye, fetch him," he growled and wheeled away to pace across the room once more, seeing not the desks littered with tomes and parchments, but his increasingly welcoming bed and much-needed sleep. "Give him no more time. I'll have whatever he's got ready now," he added, quelling yawn after yawn.
Without a word, his scribe rose, stretched like a cat, and set off to bring back Master Mage Geldert from the airret she'd conducted him to earlier. Vangy turned by his desk and watched her go. The Lady Sardyl Crownsilver might not have spells enough to best a good guardsman yet, but she was far more blessedly silent and tactful than a dozen of his most senior War Wizards-and more trustworthy, too.
Mmm. Trust, Always a rare commodity in Cormyr.
Ho, ho! A little lust in the offing, perchance?
[mental eyebrow raised] Devil, ye make me look like a prude-and that, I fear, is an accomplishment.
The door at the top of the stairs was still spell-locked. Sardyl lifted a shapely eyebrow and raised her hand again, feeling the faint prickling that told her she hadn't been mistaken. "Bolifar," she called softly, knowing how small the turret room beyond was.
There was no reply. Sardyl frowned, cast a quick look back down the stairs to be sure no guard was watching, and turned her hand in a swift circle as she murmured the words of a spell known to very few, even among the War Wizards.
The lock spell died with a tiny flash, and she turned the door ring and went in.
The lamp was lit, its soft light falling warm and steady across the turret room's rug, chair, table, and wall map.
All of these things, and the lamp itself, occupied their usual places-but the chamber was entirely empty of' Bolifar Geldert, his pens and ink, his parchment and blotter, and his writing satchel.
There were no corners to hide in. Sardyl looked up, found the ceiling every bit as bare as it should have been, and took two smooth steps into the room. She turned slowly, looking all around, reaching out to touch nothing. The windows were closed, their solid-slab shutters locked from within, and there was no sign of anything unusual in the turret room. Neither was there any sign of Bolifar Geldert.
The Lady Crownsilver's mouth tightened. She backed hastily to the doorway. From there she cast a magic-seeking spell into the turret room-and found only what had always been there: the old, many-layered magics on the map. Preservative enchantments laid down well before she'd been born, perhaps before her grandmother's birth.
Yet, standing here, she did not feel alone, somehow.
Eyes large and dark, Sardyl took several steps back and cast another spell, one that sought out invisible creatures. When it found none, her face grew white and grim. Securing the door, she spell-sealed its lock again. With the added flick of a finger, she made her seal different from another caster's, and went to find Vangerdahast.
Ah, a whiff of mystery! Snow me more!
Of course.
"If what Lady Crownsilver says is true," the sage said, an edge of asperity in his voice as he knuckled the last sleepiness from his eyes, "I've been brought up several hundred stairs to see nothing."He took two restless steps along the passage and then turned back to look up the last flight of stairs. At its top, the mightiest wizard in Cormyr stood glowering at a closed door.
The sage burst out, "Is there no trace of him? I mean-could the man not simply have taken himself away somewhere? There're over a thousand rooms in this wing alo-"
The Royal Magician turned and gave the Court Sage a level look. "Alaphondar," he said flatly, "we know our work. I'd not have summoned you to bear witness without trying to trace the man first. My spells would find him, if he were alive and anywhere in Faerun, unless he's magically shielded." He turned his head to the third person present. "Is that your seal, lass?"
"It is, milord," Sardyl said quietly, her fingers poised over the door ring. "Shall I break it'"
Vangerdahast frowned. "No, let me." He made a little wave of his hand that everyone in the palace knew meant "stand back," and cast a spell that neither the sage nor the scribe had ever seen before. They heard a snarl of magic race away from the other side of the door, a faint whistling echo as if it had struck the walls and come shuddering back, and then-silence.
Sarclyl and Alaphondar both looked at the Royal Magician. Vangerdahast stood with his head bent to one side, listening intently to the stretching silence. After a long time, he stepped forward and flung open the door.
The turret room was just as Sardyl had left it.
Alaphondar frowned. "Who lit the lamp?"
"Bolifar, apparently," Sardyl replied. The sage looked at Vangerdahast as if expecting a different answer but received no utterance at all. The Royal Magician was hastening to the shutters.
He held his hands over them for a moment before turning the thumb-keys on their locks and throwing them wide. Long-unused wood squealed and stuck momentarily. Dust curled up from the sill into the wizard's face. Vangerdahast sneezed like a bull bellowing in a thunderstorm. The sage and scribe joined the Master of the War
Wizards at the sill. They looked down over a sheer drop of a hundred feet at the cobbled courtyard below and saw the faces of startled guards in the lantern light, gazing back up at them.
Vangerdahast let the sentinels get a good look at his face, watering eyes and all, but said nothing. These shutters hadn't been opened for some time. Anything entering or leaving by way of them would have been reported. He nodded sourly. He hadn't expected to see blood below or anything of interest hanging from the turret roof above, and his expectations were met.
The Royal Magician drew his stout body back into the room and turned, rocking slightly like a heavily laden cart dragged around a tight corner. "Is there anything," he snapped at Sardyl, "different about the room since your earlier look? Anything at all... the smallest detail or impression."
The shapely Crownsilver turned with more grace than the portly wizard. She wrinkled her nose as well as her brow when she frowned. "The rug... it seems different, somehow... more worn." She shrugged and added, "Yet how can that be?"
Neither man replied. Vangerdahast was already bending over the rug suspiciously, gathering its weave in his hand and plucking it up to glare at the solid stones of the floor beneath. Alaphondar knelt and almost angrily poked and prodded at hitherto-hidden flagstones, seeking a seam that would part or something that would shift.
After some fruitless time he sighed, straightened his back, and looked at Vangerdahast. "Well, O master of weaves?"