"Indeed, Gaskur. It went well," Marlin replied, making the gesture that told Gaskur he was dismissed for the night.

Smiling, the younger Lord Stormserpent watched his servant vanish down the back stair, then strode into his own rooms and started locking and securing doors.

He was just about done when blue flames erupted from a nearby wall, as the two ghosts of the Nine stepped into the room with dripping bundles in their hands. The thief, Langral, plunged one hand into his bundle-someone's cloak, darkened with blood-and drew forth a head that stared blindly past Marlin's shoulder, features frozen in terror.

The face of Seszgar Huntcrown; its look of fear was certainly preferable to its usual sneer.

Satisfaction became triumph. Deed done, that swiftly and easily.

"Take all that to the furnace," Marlin commanded, staring hard into their cold smiles and repeatedly visualizing the room, the way there, and tossing their bundles down into the flames. If the writings spoke truth, they should be able to see what he was thinking in his eyes. "Then return here to me without delay."

After what seemed like a long time, the two flaming men nodded, turned, and walked through his wall...at just the right spot for the shortest journey to the furnace.

Marlin surveyed the trails of blood they'd left behind, then went to his board-his private one, far better stocked than the one most guests ever saw-selected a flask of Rhaenian dark he'd noticed going cloudy, and used it to sluice away the blood. Gaskur could scrub away the faint results in the morning.

"Farewell, Lord Huntcrown," he murmured. "My, my, the dismembered bodies are piling up. I must remember to have Gaskur rake the bones out of the furnace ashes before a servant who might report them to Mother sees to that little ch.o.r.e."

He selected a clean flagon and the decanter that held his latest preferred throatslake: Dragonfire Dew, a fiery amber vintage from somewhere barbarous in upland Turmish. Cleansed throat and nose, kindled a fire below, and left a taste like cherries and blackroot on the tongue between. Ahhh...

He was well into his second flagon when his blueflame ghosts returned. He set it down, took up the Flying Blade and the chalice, and told them, "Well done."

Did those wide, steady, cold smiles waver a little when he began to will them back into their prisons?

It was hard, that much was certain, thrusting back an imponderable darkness in his mind that might have been their silent resistance or might just have been the weight of the magic. He was sweating when he was done-but he managed it, setting blade and cup, flickering an angry blue, on the table in a room suddenly empty of grinning, blazing men.

Right. I I am the master of Langral and Halonter...and soon, of many thousands more. am the master of Langral and Halonter...and soon, of many thousands more.

Taking up his flagon, Marlin made for his bedchamber. High time to snore a little and dream of being a mighty and ruthless king of Cormyr.

As he unbuckled and shrugged off garments and kicked them away across the floor, Marlin sipped more Dragonfire Dew and pondered the part of his scheme he'd neglected to tell his fellow n.o.bles.

He controlled no long-lost Obarskyr, but he was going to make make one. one.

His two blueflame ghosts-they were hardly ghosts, really, but he liked the phrase-would one by one, at his direction, slay all the highknights and war wizards. He'd replace those dear departed with his hirelings, one by one as they fell, until the Obarskyrs had no one attending them who was truly loyal.

Then, of course, it would be their turn. He'd slay them all, every last living Obarskyr, and then present one of the Nine he commanded-Halonter looked the more Azoun-kingly of the two-to Cormyr as a "true Obarskyr" from the past.

Throughout all of that, he'd keep his fellow conspirators handy, up to their blood-besmirched elbows in the killings and ready to be framed as scapegoat "traitors"-and slain before they could implicate him him-at any point in the proceedings where other Cormyreans became suspicious or any of his deeds got inconveniently witnessed.

Even if Lothrae produced more of the Nine and wanted to call a halt to his use of his two...well, Lothrae would hardly be eager to pa.s.s up the chance to rule Cormyr from behind the scenes.

It was, after all, one of the richest kingdoms in all the Realms.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

A STORM IN S SHADOWDALE.

It had been a glorious day in Shadowdale, but the sun was lowering in the deep forest of the hills around the dale. Long shafts of light stabbed in under the trees to gild ferns and set aglow the broad leaves of the asthen-thorn and halabramble bushes that cloaked the toppled trunks of fallen forest giants.

Storm Silverhand crossed a glade like a slow and patient shadow, making as little noise as possible. She'd meant to be there much earlier, but the need for stealth and leaving no clear trail conquered all else. She'd draped the wizard's cloak over her distinctive hair to make herself a cowled, anonymous figure.

Twice she'd sunk to her fingertips to crouch in motionless silence as foresters with ready bows came stalking through the trees, following the trapline trails aseeking dinner. Their bows were more to keep off bears and worse than to bring down game, but it seemed there was always one who'd loose a shaft first and worry about what it had hit later.

It had been years since Storm had been the Bard of Shadowdale in anything more than legend; she farmed her land and mothered Harpers under her roof no more. The folk of the dale would think her a ghost or a shapeshifter or perhaps an accursed reminder of the Spellplague-and try to put an arrow through her or set their dogs on her, as likely as not.

And it had been years since such violence would have been a pa.s.sing annoyance to her and no more. Increasingly she was more forlorn grim wisdom than mighty power. Alone, most of the time, too, though that bothered her less and less.

From the glade, it was a short way up through close-standing trunks and rising rocks to where a shoulder of rock reared out of the trees, moss-girt and dark with seeping moisture. Cracks and crevices aplenty gaped in its flank, some impressively large. Two were big enough to be termed "caves" to a pa.s.sing man's eye.

One, she knew, was a niche that went in no deeper than the length of a short man lying down. The other was her destination.

Or would be, after she'd turned at the last tree to look back and bide silent, listening long enough to make sure no one was following her.

Storm held still as gentle breezes stirred leaves above and around, until the birds started to call and flit about unconcernedly again, and she decided no one was on her trail. Whereupon she set the cloak down on the toes of her nondescript old boots, shrugged off her robe, undid the jerkin beneath it and doffed it, wrapped the cloak around herself, donned her clothing again over it-and strode straight to that deeper cavemouth.

Where she stopped, put her left foot carefully on a little ledge about shin-high up one side of the jagged opening, and kicked off, to leap forward into the darkness, taking care not to put her other foot down anywhere on the rocks by the lip.

As a result, the spring-spear mechanism remained still as she ducked past it, rather than slamming its long metal boar spear right through her body.

Several human skulls-that she'd helped gather, a lifetime ago-adorned the narrow and uneven floor of the natural cleft she was suddenly standing in, that ran deeper into the solid rock. Mere warnings.

She strode past them and into the real real guardian of the cave, hoping its magics hadn't decayed enough to kill her. guardian of the cave, hoping its magics hadn't decayed enough to kill her.

Harper mages had woven it long before, Elminster among them; a magical field to keep intruders out of this waystop hidehold in the forest. The Blue Fire had turned the ward into a roiling chaos that made living bodies shudder and terrified most who felt its touch, but the menaces it offered were meant to scare, not slay. If, that is, they still worked as intended and hadn't become something worse.

First came the blistering heat that robbed her of breath and drenched her in sweat in two steps. Storm closed her eyes to keep her eyeb.a.l.l.s from cooking, gasped for air through clenched teeth, and forced her way on.

On, as the inferno grew and all her garments hissed, the moisture baked and blasted out of them, into-in midstride-icy cold, a chill that froze the sweat on her skin and plunged her into helpless shivering. A cold that seared nostrils and lungs, stabbing at her like countless spikes-Storm had nearly died, too many years earlier, on hundreds of sharp-pointed metal needles, and knew what that felt like-then faded into the next part of the ward, the curtain she disliked the most.

Mouths formed in the air all around her, maws she didn't bother to open her eyes to see, blind eel-like tentacles that saw her without eyes. Worms ending in jaws with great long fangs that struck at her like snakes, then bit and tore, savaging her as she hastened on, trying to get through them without losing overmuch blood. The maws hissed and roared or gloated wetly nigh her ears as they drooled her her gore...as Storm stumbled across what she'd been expecting to find, heavy chain that clanked and skirled on stone beneath her. gore...as Storm stumbled across what she'd been expecting to find, heavy chain that clanked and skirled on stone beneath her.

The manacles, lying discarded on the pa.s.sage floor. She kicked them and plucked them up, through all the vicious biting, and clung to them as she fought her way on.

Then the biting mouths and their roaring were behind her, and she was walking in air that crackled and snapped as many small lightnings stabbed at her, raking their snarling forks across her skin, her muscles trembling in their grip, spasming and cramping painfully as she lurched on.

Out of that torment into another, a nightmare of half-formed, shadowy coils that tugged at Storm, tightening like so many ghostly yet solid snakes of t.i.tanic size, coils that always always, despite her upflung and clawing hands, managed to encircle her throat and start to strangle her, until she was walking arched over almost backward, caught beyond sobbing or gasping for breath, fighting through gathering dimness to-win free and snap back upright into a last torture of sharp, unseen points that jabbed at her eyes, solid shards of air that struck only at eyes and throat and mouth...to let go of her at last, leaving Storm staggering forward spitting blood from her many-times-stung tongue to regain breath and balance in the widening mouth of a cavern.

Alone and almost blind in near darkness, the only light coming from faint, fitful pulsings of the roiling ward behind her, Storm gasped and stretched and panted, seeking an end to her trembling as she tore off robe and jerkin again, to take off the war wizard cloak so she could wrap it firmly around the manacles and keep them from clinking.

After what seemed a very long time, she felt her body would obey her again. Not bothering to dress again, Storm caught up her clothes, the magics she'd brought, and the m.u.f.fled manacles, and strode through the deepening darkness for a long way, across the level stone floor of a great cavern, until a faint glow became visible ahead.

She headed for it, and it became several glows, close together and down low and flickering feebly, at about the same time as the smooth stone under her boots started to slope down and the faint echoes of her progress changed, making it clear that the unseen ceiling of the cavern was descending as she went on, to hang close above her, the cave narrowing, descending, and getting damper.

And starting to stink, too. Not the smell of decay or earth or stone, but the musky stench of an unwashed and filthy human.

Then, at last, Storm reached the source of the glows and the reek.

Her sister Ala.s.sra, once queen of Aglarond and forever infamous in legend as the mad Witch-Queen and slaughterer of Red Wizards, the Simbul, was sitting alone, naked and filthy, with her feet in a pool. The water that fed it dripped down the cave walls in a dozen ceaseless flows.

Still shapely under the filth, still silver-haired, Ala.s.sra looked perhaps a lush and well-preserved forty-odd winters-but also, by the same scrutiny, seemed an utterly mad, keening wreck.

Gibbering and drooling wordlessly, she rocked and swayed back and forth, eyes staring wildly but seeing nothing.

A long, heavy chain that Storm knew ended in a shackle around her sister's ankle rose out of the water past her, to end at a ma.s.sive metal ring set deep into the rock. It had been forged by dwarves but enspelled by Elminster and all of Ala.s.sra's sisters who could work magic powerful enough, its links bearing Ala.s.sra's blood slaked in her silver fire, let out in wounds they'd gently made. It called to her across the world, a ceaseless whisper she could ignore when lucid, but that lured her slowly but irresistibly whenever her mind collapsed. A binding she could easily remove but would not want to; the only comfort and companion she would crave. When her mind was in ruins, it could make her feel wanted and not alone, as long as she embraced it.

It was doing that right now.

So Ala.s.sra wasn't dying or under attack. She was just...more mindless than ever before.

Storm set down the magics and her discarded clothing, laid the manacles on the garments and unwrapped them with infinite care to avoid telltale rattlings, then left those shackles lying, draped the magical cloak around her neck, and went to her sister, embracing her wordlessly.

The Simbul stiffened in alarm and wonder then gasped in pleasure as she felt the cloak against her skin where it was pressed between them.

The cloak began to glow-the same eerie blue as the blue fire from the skies had been-as her body started to absorb its enchantments. Ala.s.sra clawed and clutched at it like a desperate, starving thing.

Her gasps became moans of pleasure then groans of release as her arms tightened around Storm, and she kissed her sister with dreadful hunger.

"El!" she cried, in a raw, rough-from-disuse voice. "El?"

"Sister," Storm said gently between kisses, "'tis me: Astorma. Ethena."

"Esheena," the Simbul hissed in mingled disappointment and gratefulness, relaxing as awareness returned. The wild fire faded from her eyes, and she stared into Storm's gaze as they lay on the wet rock nose to nose. the Simbul hissed in mingled disappointment and gratefulness, relaxing as awareness returned. The wild fire faded from her eyes, and she stared into Storm's gaze as they lay on the wet rock nose to nose.

Then she wrinkled her nose.

"Faugh!" she spat. "I she spat. "I stink!" stink!"

And she flung herself into the water, dragging Storm with her.

The pool was every whit as cold as Storm had expected, numbing her instantly. She'd be chilled for a day or more, thanks to her soaked breeches and boots, but that was a worry for later.

At the moment, Ala.s.sra was laughing with delight amid water aglow as the last of the cloak's magic pa.s.sed into her and it crumbled to nothingness. "Did you bring some soap? Or one of those new Sembian scents?"

Storm made a face. "Do I look as if I want to stink like a cartload of jungle flowers crushed into the blended lees of an extensive wine cellar?"

"You," her sister said happily, "look like you can and do shrug off everything and serenely take from life what you seek, letting all else drift away without getting bothered over it."

She spread her limbs and floated, submerged except for her face. "Thank "Thank you, Storm. Thank you for myself back...for a little while. So, what's afoot in the wider world outside this hidehold? What are you up to? And El-where's he right now, and what foolishness is driving his deeds?" you, Storm. Thank you for myself back...for a little while. So, what's afoot in the wider world outside this hidehold? What are you up to? And El-where's he right now, and what foolishness is driving his deeds?"

"Meddling in Cormyr, as usual," Storm replied. "He sent me because he wants all the fun for himself."

"Hah, as usual," as usual," her sister told the cavern ceiling. "He always tries to keep me away from the best moments, too. I'd have slain thrice the Red Wizards, down the years, if he wasn't always-" her sister told the cavern ceiling. "He always tries to keep me away from the best moments, too. I'd have slain thrice the Red Wizards, down the years, if he wasn't always-"

"Ala.s.sra," Storm told her with mock severity, hauling herself out of the water and hissing at the chill she felt as streams of it ran from her to rejoin the pool, "you haven't left two-thirds of the Red Wizards alive, so far as any of us can tell, at any time since you started defending Aglarond. You couldn't couldn't have claimed three times the Thayan lives you did. Trust me." have claimed three times the Thayan lives you did. Trust me."

"Oh?" Ala.s.sra grinned archly. "Why start now, after all these years? Tell me more news. Not about El-you're helping him, of course-but of the wider Realms. Any kings toppled? Dragons tearing cities apart? Realms obliberated by angry dueling archwizards?"

"Oh, all of those," Storm chuckled, running both hands through her hair to shed fresh streams of water as she cast a swift glance back at the manacles and the rest of the magic she'd brought. "Where to begin?"

"Thay, of course," her sister said promptly. "I always want to hear what calamities have befallen the Thayans lately. Why, alathant so partresper I...what's kaladash, ah-"

Their eyes met, and the wildness was back in the Simbul's. And a moment of desperation, too, almost of pleading, before they rolled up in her head. Then they sank half-closed, making her look sleepy.

"S-sister-," she managed, in one last struggling entreaty.

Storm plunged grimly back into the pool and reached for her sister as Ala.s.sra started to slip under, babbling in earnest.

That hadn't lasted long.

Mystra d.a.m.n it all.

Storm tugged her feebly thrashing sister-who was starting to bark like a dog-up out of the water, rolling her far enough away from it that only a determined crawl-and Ala.s.sra was beyond doing anything anything in a manner that might be termed "determined"-could get her back to a swift drowning before Storm returned. in a manner that might be termed "determined"-could get her back to a swift drowning before Storm returned.

Then she crawled back to her cloak and the manacles, water running from her soaked breeches and boots in floods that thoroughly drenched the sloping stone beneath her knees.

Storm shackled her sister to the wall ring, wrists crossed and hands behind head. That put most of her back in the water again-but unless something tore Ala.s.sra's arms from their sockets, the short length of the manacles would keep her face clear of the surface.

Giving Storm time enough to gather plenty of wood for a large fire and rocks to warm around it, to get herself and her sister dry.

Drenched and dripping, jerkin in hand to bundle twigs in, she lowered her head and trudged grimly back out through the ward again.

She hadn't expected the cloak to win Ala.s.sra's sanity back for long-its enchantments were relatively feeble, after all-but it had lasted a much shorter time than she'd expected.

Which was, as they said, bad. Storm hadn't brought all that many enchanted gewgaws with her.

Huh. El had better liberate a lot lot of magic from the royal palace or the n.o.bles of Cormyr coming to council, if he ever wanted to see his beloved sane again. of magic from the royal palace or the n.o.bles of Cormyr coming to council, if he ever wanted to see his beloved sane again.

Once La.s.s was over the initial frenzy, the rage that always accompanied her slide back into idiocy-and who wouldn't scream and fight, knowing they were sinking back into that? that?-she'd be fine. A survivor who'd fight like a tiger to cling to life. The ankle-chain didn't keep her from the water; it kept her from walking out of the cave, absorbing the ward as she went.

Even chained a long way from it, she was unwittingly reaching out and leeching its power, draining it ever-so-slowly to keep herself alive. Water, she had, and food she needed not, as long as she had magic to drink from afar...

Yet if ever La.s.s got out to wander the vast forest that surrounded the Dales and cloaked most of the land between Sembia and the Moonsea, she'd be just one more clever prowling beast awaiting fearful foresters' arrows. And the jaws and claws of larger, stronger prowling beasts.

Those were watchmens' manacles, recent Cormyrean forgework stolen from down in the Dale. They neither had nor needed keys, and locked or opened by sliding complex catches on both shackles at once, something that could be done easily except by anyone wearing them, the cuffs being rigid. Unless they were put on a shapeshifter, or someone who had tentacles, that is...

Well, La.s.s had always hated malaugrym and doppelgangers and anything with tentacles; she was hardly likely to work any magic that could give her such features, even if she did somehow regain sanity enough to work any magic at all.