As if that had been a signal, the air filled with hurled daggers and swords, spinning at the court mage from roaring men on all sides...only to ring off an invisible barrier, every last one of them, and fall away.
Ilgrist looked down at the body of Belundrar, which had broken his circle of fire and was busily being burnt in two by its flames, and murmured "Blasted to smoking ruin. A true patriot...and see how much he accomplished, in the end? Come, gentlesirs! Let us have your submission. I shall be the new king of..."
"Never!" Baron Hothal thundered. "I'll die before I'll allow su..."
Ilgrist's mouth crooked. "But of course," he said.
He made a tiny gesture with two of his fingers, and the air was suddenly full of the twang and hum of crossbows firing, from the throne guard up in the balconies, their faces white and blank, their movements mechanical.
Warriors groaned, clutched vainly at quarrels sprouting in their faces or throats, and fell. Hitherto-concealed crossbows spat an answer from many baronial armsmen around the chamber...and the helmless Hothal, his head transfixed by many bolts, staggered, then toppled onto his side.
Baron Maethor would have tasted as many flying deaths had he not possessed an unseen barrier of his own that kept both hurled daggers and crossbow bolts from him. Many of his unarmored men fell, but others surged forward to drive daggers into the faces of Hothal's armored guardsmen or raced up balcony stairs to carve out a bloody revenge on Galadorna's throne guard.
The chamber erupted in a flurry of hacking, stabbing steel, the thunder of armored men running, and screams...all too many screams. There was fresh commotion at two of the throne room doors, as royal soldiers with halberds in their hands elbowed ways into the room...then a bright flash and roar that shook the chamber even more than the lightning had and left dazzled men blinking.
Into the ringing echoes of the blast he'd caused, transforming a score of Baron Hothal's best knights into so many bloody scraps of armor embedded in riven paneling, the court mage shouted, "All of you...hold! Hold, I say!"
Commoners, throne guards, and the men of Maethor who were left, with their master in their midst, all turned to look at the wizard. The ring of fire around Ilgrist was gone, and the mage was pointing across the chamber, at...
The burned and broken body of Lord Tholone, now struggling jerkily to sit upright, its legs still much-twisted ruin. It turned sightless, despairing eyes to the watching men and worked jaws that had already drooled much blood for some time before trembling lips said the horribly flat and rattling words, "Pay homage to King Ilgrist of Galadorna, as I do."
Bonelessly the body slumped...an instant before it burst apart in a blast that spattered many of the surviving warriors. One of them snarled, "Magecraft said those words, not Tholone!"
"Oh?" Ilgrist asked softly, as the twisted, blackened crown of Galadorna flew smoothly out of the wreckage into his hand. "And if so, what will you do?"
He straightened the crown with a sudden show of strength, and unseen spell-hands lifted the mantle of court mage from his shoulders. It fell unheeded to the floor as he stepped forward, settled the battered crown upon his brow, and said loudly, "So let all Galadornans kneel before their new king. I shall rule over Galadorna as Nadrathen, a name I've known rather longer than 'Ilgrist.' Bow down!"
The shocked silence was broken by the rustlings and scrapings of several armsmen going clumsily to their knees. One or two of Maethor's men knelt, one was promptly knifed from behind by one of his fellows and fell on his face with a gurgling cry.
King Nadrathen regarded the knot of richly garbed men with a gentle smile and said to their midst, "Well, Maethor? Shall Galadorna lose all of its barons this day?"
There was a rustling from behind him. Nadrathen turned and stepped back in the same motion, protective magics plucking his feet from the floor, to drift gently down a good pace back...and stare in open-mouthed surprise.
The mantle of the Court Mage of Galadorna, let fall by Nadrathen scant moments ago, was rising from the floor again, to hang upright as though a rather tall man was wearing it.
As the wondering court watched, a body faded into view within the mantle...a hawk-nosed, raven-haired human wearing nondescript robes and a faint smile. "Nadrathen?" he asked. "Called the Rebel Chosen?"
"King Nadrathen of Galadorna, as it happens," came the cool reply. "And who might you be? The shade of a court mage past?"
"I am called Elminster...and by the Hand of Azuth and the Mercy of Mystra, I challenge thee to spell duel, here and now, in a circle of my rais..."
"Oh, by all the fallen gods," Nadrathen sighed, and black flames suddenly exploded out of his hands with a roar, racing in a thick cylinder, like a battering ram, at the newcomer.
"Die, and trouble my coronation no more," the new king of Galadorna told the sudden inferno of black flames that erupted where his spell had struck. All over the chamber murmuring armsmen were crouching low behind pillars and railings or slipping out doorways, and away.
Black flames howled up to the ceiling...and were gone, snarling up to some lofty otherwhere. The man in the mantle of court mage stood unchanged, save that one eyebrow was now raised in derision. "Ye have some aversion to rules of combat or defensive circles? Or were ye in some haste to remodel this part of thy castle?"
Nadrathen cursed...and stone blocks were suddenly raining down all around them, plunging down from empty air to shake the chamber with their thunderous landings. Stone shards sprayed in all directions as the floor shattered, more armsmen fled, shouting in fear.
No stones struck either Nadrathen or Elminster, it was the turn of the Rebel Chosen to lift his brows in surprise.
"You come well shielded," he granted grudgingly. 'Ulmimber...or whatever your name is...do you know what I am?"
"An archmage of accomplished might," Elminster said softly, "named by Holy Mystra herself as one of her Chosen...and now turned to evil."
"I did not turn to evil, fool wizard. I am what I have always been, Mystra has known me for what I am from the first." The king of Galadorna regarded his challenger bleakly, and added, "You know what the outcome of our duel must be?"
El swallowed, started to nod, and then suddenly grinned. "Ye're going to talk me to death?"
Nadrathen snarled, "Enough! You had your chance, idiot, and now..."
The air above them was suddenly darker and full of a host of ghostly, faceless floating figures, cowled and robed, trailing away to nothingness as they swooped, thrusting cold and spectral blades at the hawk-nosed mage.
As those blades transfixed Elminster, they slid in without gore or resistance … and became dwindling smoke and sparks, taking their wielders with them.
Nadrathen gaped in astonishment. His words, when he could find them, came in a gasp. "You must be a Ch..."
Behind the self-styled king of Galadorna, unseen by either dueling mage, a long-fingered female hand had slid into view, protruding from the still-solid, upright back of the riven Unicorn Throne with blue motes of risen magic dancing around it. Those long, flexing fingers now leveled a deliberate finger at the back of the unwitting Rebel Chosen.
Nadrathen's eyes widened, bulging for one incredulous moment before all his glistening bones burst together out the front of his body. Behind them as they bounced, a bloody, shapeless mass of flesh slumped to the floor, spattering El's boots and the throne with gore.
El sprang back, gagging, but the bones and the horrible puddle that had been Nadrathen were already afire, blazing from within. Blue-white, wasted magic swirled above flames of bright silver as men cried out in disgust and fear all over the chamber. El watched a thread of silver rise straight up from those flames to pierce the ceiling and burn onward.
He never saw the sunlight stab down into the throne room from high above, he was staggering back to fall heavily on his knees by then, as magic that was not his own shocked into him, surging throughout his spasming, weeping body.
Baron Maethor swallowed. He dared not approach the man-high conflagration that had been "King" Nadrathen, but this challenger-mage was on his knees blindly vomiting silver flames onto the smoking floor. Galadorna could be free of over-ambitious mages yet.
"Hand me your blade," he murmured to an aide without looking, extending his hand for it. Just one throw would be enough, if...
A tall, slender feminine figure stepped from behind that conflagration, bare thighs above high black boots flashing through slashes in midnight-black robes. "I think I shall rule Galadorna," Dasumia said sweetly, blue motes still swirling about one of her hands. "Ascending my throne in this Year of Mistmaidens -- this very hour, in fact. And you shall be my seneschal, Elminster of Galadorna. Rise, Court Mage, and bring me the fealty of yon surviving lords and barons...or an internal organ from each, whichever they prefer."
Nine: Glad Days In Galadorna
The wise ruler leaves time among audiences and promenades for receptions of daggers...usually in the royal back.
Ralderick Hallowshaw, Jester
from To Rule A Realm, From Turret To Midden
published circa The Year of the Bloodbird
Dark fire snarled and spat, and the slender elf in dark robes staggered back, groaning. Ilbryn Starym's three hundredth or so encounter with the wards of dark fire around the Castle of the Lady had not gone well. Her power was still too great, even in her absence ... and where by the Trees Everlasting was she, anyway?
He sighed, glared up at the dark, slender towers so high above him in the twilit sky, and...
Was sent almost sprawling by a hard and sudden impact. He whirled to do battle with whatever fell guardian had charged him and found himself staring at the receding boots of one of the two buffoon-mages who were also encamped outside the walls of Dasumia's fortress.