Tabarast looked up from a fire that just wouldn't light, shaking his scorched fingertips, and asked somewhat testily, "What is it now?"
"I was scrying Nethrar," Beldrune of the Bent Finger panted, "as the dream bid me, and there's news! The Lady Dasumia has just taken the throne and named the Chosen One as her seneschal. Elminster is Court Mage of Galadorna now!"
Ilbryn stared at the trotting mage's back for a moment, then broke into a fluid dash that swiftly brought him abreast of Beldrune. He reached up, caught hold of one bobbing shoulder in its fashionable slashed and pleated claret-hued silk, and snapped," What?
Spun around to face blazing elven eyes by fingers that felt like talons of steel, Beldrune groaned, "Let go, longears! You've fingers like wolf jaws!"
Ilbryn shook him. "What did you say?"
Tabarast fumbled in a belt pouch, dropped a shower of small, sparkling items, and held one up between finger and thumb, muttering something.
A lance of shining nothingness coalesced out of the air and thrust forward, unerring and as swift as leaping lightning. It took Ilbryn right in his ribs, shattering his shielding spell in a cascade of small and wayward cracklings and snatching him off his feet.
He hit the phandar tree with brutal force, ribs snapped like dry kindling crushed in a forester's fist. Ilbryn sobbed and choked and writhed, fighting for breath, but the spell held him pinned to the trunk. If it had been a real lance, he'd have been cut in two... but that knowledge afforded him scant consolation. Through red mists of pain he glared almost pleadingly at the two human mages.
Tabarast regarded the trapped elf mage almost sorrowfully and shook his head. "The problem with young elves is they've got all the arrogance of the older ones, with nothing to back it up," he observed. "Now, Beldrune, speak up for the hasty youngling here. What did you say?"
Curthas and Halglond stood very straight and still, their pikes just so, for they knew their master's turret window overlooked this section of battlements ... and that he liked to look out often on moonlit nights and see tranquillity, not the gleam and flash of guards fidgeting at their posts.
They stood guard over one end of the arched bridge that linked the loftiest rooms of the Master's Tower with the encircling battlements. It was light enough duty. No thief or angry armsman for three realms distant would dare to come calling uninvited on Klandaerlas Glymril, Master of Wyverns. The dragonkin he held in spell-thrall were seldom unleashed, when they did come boiling out of their tower on swift wings, they were apt to be hungry, fearless, and savage of temper.
One guard risked a quick glance along the moonlit wall. The stout tower that imprisoned the wyverns stood, as usual, dark and silent. Like the rest of Glymril Card, it had been raised by the Master's spells from the tumbled stones of an ancient keep, here on the end of a ridge that overlooked six towns and the meeting of two rivers.
It was moonlit and gloriously warm this night, even up on the ever-breezy battlements of Glymril Card, and it was easy to drift into a reverie of other moonlit nights, without armor or guard duties, and...
Curthas stiffened and turned his head. Bells? What could be chiming up here on the battlements at this time of night?
He could see at a glance that the walls were deserted. Halglond was already peering down the walls and into the yards below, in case someone was climbing the walls or coming up the guard stairs. No. Perhaps someone's escaped falcon, still with its jesses, had perched nearby ... but where?
The sound was faint, small...yet very close, not on the ground far below or in one of the towers. What by all the storm-loving gods could it be?
Now it seemed to be right under Halglond's nose, swirling. He could see a faint, ragged line of mist coiling and snaking in the air. He swept through it with his halberd, and small glowing motes of light gathered for a moment along its curved blade before winking out... like sparks without a fire.
The chiming wind curled away, moving along the battlements. He exchanged glances with Curthas, and they both trotted warily after it, watching it grow larger and brighter. From behind them came the faint squeal that heralded the shutters of the Master's turret window opening. Perhaps it was one of his spells.. . or not, but they'd best chase it down even so. This could well be a test of their diligence.
It led them to the Prow Tower at the end of the ridge, where rocks fell away in almost cliffs beneath the castle walls, and there it seemed to quicken its dancing and circling. Curthas and Halglond closed with it cautiously, separating to come at it from different directions, with halberds to the fore and crouching low to avoid being swept over the battlements into a fall, no matter how fierce the wind became.
The chiming rose to a loud and regular sound, almost annoying to the ears, and the mist that made it spiraled up into a vaguely human form taller than either of them. Both guards stabbed at it with their pikes, and suddenly it collapsed, falling to become a milky layer of radiance awash around their boots.
Curthas and Halglond traded looks again. Nothing met their probing pike thrusts, and the chiming was silent. They shrugged, took a last look around the curved tower battlements, and turned to head back to their posts, If the Master wanted to tell them what it had been, he would, If he kept silent about it, 'twould be best if they did, too, and...
Halglond pointed, and they both stared. Halfway back along the way they'd come, the mist was dancing along the battlements. It had a definite shape, now... and the shape was female, barefoot and in flowing skirts, with long hair flying free in her wake as she ran, a faint chiming in her wake. The guards could just see through her.
In unspoken accord they broke into a run. If she turned across the bridge they were supposed to be guarding...
She ran right past it, heading toward the binding-racks and bloodstains of Bloodtop Tower, where...when the Master had prisoners he no longer needed...the wyverns were sometimes allowed to feed. That was a good way off, and the ghostly lady seemed in no hurry, the pounding guards gained on her swiftly.
A dark-robed figure was coming across the bridge...the Master! Halglond hissed a curse, and Curthas felt like joining in, but the mage ignored them, turning to join the chase along the battlements well ahead of his two guards. He carried a wand in one hand.
The guards saw her turn, hair swirling in the moonlight, amid the binding-racks, and silently beckon the Master of Wyverns, as coyly as any lover in a minstrel's ballad. As he approached her, she danced away to the edge of the battlements. The hard-running guards saw him follow warily, wand raised and ready. Glymril looked back at them once, as if deciding whether or not to wait until they reached the Tower, and Curthas clearly saw amazement on his face.
Not of their master's making, then, and unexpected to boot. They did not slow in their now-panting sprint... but even so, Curthas knew the strange foreboding that precedes by instants the sure knowledge that one is going to be...just...too late.
The woman became a snakelike, formless thing, and the shocked guards heard a long, raw howl from Klandaerlas Glymril as something bright whirled around him in a swift spiral, climbing toward the moon.
An instant later the Master of Wyverns became a roaring column of flame that split the night with its sudden fury. Curthas clutched at Halglond's arm, and they came to a ragged, panting halt together, all too close to where the battlements joined Bloodtop Tower. There was a booming thump, and something exploded out of the pyre, trailing flames down into the inner courtyards: the wand.
The guards exchanged fearful looks, licked dry lips, and started to back away in fear. They had managed two strides before the stones beneath their feet rippled like waves on a beach and started to slump and fall.
They fell into oblivion with the gathering roar of Glymril Gard collapsing ringing in their ears.
As the moon saw that great fortress crash back down into the tumbled ruin it had been before Glymril's spells had rebuilt it, a bright and triumphant mist danced over the rising dust and fading screams, its chimes mixed with cold, echoing laughter.
The court mage looked at the guard captain's grim face and sighed. "Who was it this time?"
"Anlavas Jhoavryn, Lord Elminster: a merchant from somewhere south across the sea. Brass work, sundries, nothing important, but a lot of it. Many coins here over many seasons. His throat was cut."
Elminster sighed. "Maethor or one of the new barons?"
"L-lord, I know not, and hardly dare s..."
"Your hunches, loyal Rhoagalow."
The guard captain glanced nervously from side to side, El smiled crookedly and leaned over to put his ear right to the man's lips. "Limmator," the officer breathed hoarsely, El nodded and stepped back. No particular surprise if Rhoagalow was right, Limmator was the only baron...or lordling...in Galadorna busier in dark corners with bribe, threat, and ready knife than Maethor of the Many Whispers.
"Go and dine now," he told the exhausted guard officer. "We'll talk later."
Rhoagalow and his three armsmen hurried out, El took care not to sigh until the antechamber was quite empty.
He murmured something and moved two fingers a trifle. There was a faint thump behind one wall, as the spy there abruptly went to sleep. El gave the section of wall a mirthless smile and used the secret door he wanted to keep secret a little longer, taking the lightless passage beyond to one of the disused and dusty hidden rooms in the House of the Unicorn. A little time alone to think is a rare treasure some folk never seize for themselves ... and others, the truly deprived in life, cannot.
Three barons had died so far this year, one of them with a dagger in his throat not two steps from entering the throne chamber, and six...no, seven...lesser lords. Galadorna had become a nest of vipers, striking at each other with their fangs bared whenever the whim took them, and the court mage was not a happy man. He had no friends, anyone he befriended soon ended up staring sightlessly at a ceiling of a morning. There were whisperings behind every door in the palace and never any true smiles when those doors opened. El was even getting used to the sight of dark ribbons of blood wandering out from behind closed doors, perhaps he should Issue a decree commanding all doors in Nethrar be taken down and burned.
Hah to that. He was becoming what he knew they called him behind his back: "the Flapping Mouth That Spews Decrees." The barons and lordlings constantly tried to undercut royal authority, or even steal openly from the court, and his Lady Master was no help at all, using her spells too seldom to engender any fear that might in turn breed obedience.
There came a faint scratching sound from off to his left. Elminster pulled on the right knob and a panel slid open. Two young guardsmen peered into the dimness. "You sent for us, Lord Elminster?"
"Ye found the scrolls, Delver, and...?"
"Burned, and the ashes in the moat, lord, as you ordered, mixed with the dust you gave me. I used all of it"
Elminster nodded and reached out a hand to touch a forehead. "Forget all, loyal warrior," he said, "and so escape the doom we all fear."
The guard he'd touched shivered, eyes blank, then turned and hurried back into the darkness, unlacing his breeches as he went. He'd been heading for his quarters when the sudden, urgent need to use a garderobe had come upon him, and led him into the disused wing of the palace.
"Ingrath?" the court mage asked calmly.