When she fetched up against a wall, Amarune got the stopper back in, then took the flask with her as she lurched to her bed and flung herself down on it.

"What by all the h.e.l.ls am I going to do?" do?" she hissed aloud. she hissed aloud.

The walls maintained their usual eloquent silence, and she sighed, let her shoulders sag in the first part of a shrug of helplessness she didn't bother to finish, then in sudden irritation pulled off her boots, one after the other, and flung them hard against the wall.

Wrenching off the cloak was harder, and she was panting by the time she whirled it into the air and watched it swirl down to the floor.

The sweat-soaked robe came off with comparative ease, and she hurled it onto the highest peak of her piled-up dirty laundry.

Whereupon the heap rose up with a grunt, and a bearded old man was smiling at her, her smallclothes still decorating his head.

Amarune stared at him then flung herself up off the bed, opening her mouth to scream-and Elminster hurled himself atop her, moving surprisingly fast for such such seemingly old bones, and thrusting two or three of her underclouts into her mouth to stifle her shrieks.

They bounced on the bed together, the old man on top and Amarune clawing at him and making m.u.f.fled "mmmphs" as his bony old knees and elbows landed on various soft areas of her anatomy.

Growling, she started to swing and kick at him wildly, and the old man sighed, plucked up her-thankfully empty-copper chamberpot from where he'd found it earlier under the edge of the bed, and brained her with it.

The room spun and swam. G.o.ds and little chanting priests, the minstrels told truth: one does does see stars...sometimes... see stars...sometimes...

Amarune fell back on her pillows, clutching her head and groaning.

Whereupon the old man got off her, caught up her cloak from the floor, and wrapped it firmly around her, pinioning her arms to her sides, and propped her up on her pillows like a firmly efficient nurse.

"I'm very sorry I had to do that to ye, la.s.s," he announced, trundling back down to the foot of her bed and perching there, "but we must must talk. I need ye. talk. I need ye. Cormyr Cormyr needs ye. h.e.l.ls, needs ye. h.e.l.ls, the Realms the Realms needs ye." needs ye."

Amarune groaned again, trying to peer at the gaunt, white-haired intruder as she struggled free of her cloak. He made no move toward her. The moment she could move her arms freely, she clutched the cloak more tightly around her-though it was more than a little too late to guard any thin wisp of modesty she might still have possessed. He was obviously waiting for her to speak, so she did.

"Who...who are you?"

"Elminster," came the prompt reply. "I used to be a wizard. Yes, that that Elminster. Well met, Great-granddaughter." Elminster. Well met, Great-granddaughter."

Amarune couldn't help herself. "Great what?" what?"

She stared at him in the sudden silence, open-mouthed. He filled the pause by smiling and nodding, but by then she was frowning again.

"Elminster? But you can't can't be! Why-" be! Why-"

"'Can't'? Did I hear the word 'can't'? Amarune, do ye know anything anything about wizards, at all?" about wizards, at all?"

"But how-? The G.o.ddess Mystra..."

"Ye will be unsurprised to learn," the old man told her in very dry tones, "that 'tis a long story. Right now, I'd rather hear just what ye-and young Lord Delcastle-are up to." young Lord Delcastle-are up to."

"Why?"

Elminster regarded his great-granddaughter with something that might have been exasperation, or just might have been new respect.

"This has been a long evening already, aye? Let's go somewhere that has good wine and decent food and talk a bit. I've found dancers like to talk. Anything to keep from doing the other things customers expect them to do, I suppose."

"So this Amarune is the famous Silent Shadow," Wizard of War Glathra Barcantle mused, sounding entirely unsurprised. "You obviously didn't know that until just now, so what made you suspicious of her? Or were you governed by a paramount interest in a mask dancer who might be willing, for coins enough, to do more for you than merely dance?"

Arclath Delcastle stared rather coolly back at his interrogator. "I've seldom seen a need to pay anyone to fill my bed, Lady Wizard. Handsome, remember? n.o.ble? Dashing, yes?"

Glathra's expression remained coldly unimpressed.

He sighed, waved dismissively, and added, "Ne'er mind. I was interested in her for a reason you already know; I wanted to learn why she'd been listening to what Halance, Belnar, and I were discussing about the council. Particularly now that Halance and Belnar are so suddenly and violently dead. Though I grant that it's both unusual and unfashionable for n.o.bles to be so, in this day and age, Lady Glathra, I do do happen to be loyal to the Crown." happen to be loyal to the Crown."

"We know that," she replied quietly, "and that's why I've brought you here. We have a proposition for you, Lord Delcastle."

"'We'?" Arclath asked pointedly, staring around the room. The two of them were sitting facing each other across a shining expanse of table, and the palace chamber around them was bare of all guards, war wizards, scribes, or anyone else. Just a few portraits, a tapestry or two, and a lone closed door. "Have you a twin? Or are you using the royal 'we,' and there's been a royal marriage I'm not privy to that I should be congratulating you about, Lady?"

As if his questions had been a signal, one of those tapestries was thrust aside by a firm hand, and Delcastle found himself staring into the wise old eyes and familiar face of King Foril Obarskyr of Cormyr.

The High Dragon of the Forest Kingdom was wearing a simple circlet on his brow and hunter's garb of jerkin, belt, breeches, and boots of plain leather. Of the finest make and tailored to fit his lean, trim body. A simple belt knife rode his hip, and discreet rows of plain rings-most of them enchanted, no doubt-adorned his fingers. He was smiling.

"Nothing so dramatic, Lord Delcastle," the king said dryly." The Lady Glathra was speaking on my behalf and was aware of my presence-as, now, are you."

By then, Delcastle was out of his chair and down on one knee. Foril looked pained and waved at him to rise.

"Up, up, lad; I've servants enough to do that far too often for me as it is. I need your loyalty and your friendship, not your knees ruined on my behalf. n.o.bles who can be eyes and ears for me are rare and precious things in this kingdom, now as ever; we need to talk."

"Majesty," Arclath replied with a smile, rising, "it so happens that talking is one of my strengths."

"I find myself strangely unsurprised," the king told him dryly, taking up his chair and coming forward to the table.

Amarune knew The Willing Smile only by its reputation. A rundown, seedy, low-coin brothel on a formerly fashionable street in Suzail, where wrinkled old harridans and a few wide-eyed younglings desperate for quick coin entertained toothless old men desiring to deceive themselves that they were still bold lions of youth and vigor whose very names left Cormyr in awe.

She was surprised to find it a clean, quiet, and dimly lit grand house that seemed to stretch on forever, run by a matron more motherly than alluring, who obviously regarded Elminster as an old and trusted friend.

"Mother" Maraedra patted the limping graybeard on the arm when he greeted her, nodded after he murmured in her ear for a moment, and then led them through lushly carpeted halls adorned with many full-length portraits that were probably doors into the rooms of the women depicted in them, to a back room decorated like a successful but careful-with-coin family's private parlor, where a table was set for four.

Humming to herself, she shuffled through a door and returned almost immediately to set before them bowls of cubed redruth goat cheese, biscuits, and an herbed paste of oil and crushed and roasted vegetables.

Then she slipped out again, holding up a finger as if in warning to them to say nothing until her return-and again, came back into the room swiftly, this time with tallgla.s.ses, which would have done any n.o.ble House proud, and a large decanter.

Then she bowed, smiled, and backed out of the room, waving in silent farewell, and in the same gesture, as she pulled the door closed on herself, bade them converse.

Elminster gave her a low bow, waved Amarune to a chair, and poured her wine. She peered at it critically, suddenly realizing she was ravenous and thirsty, and sipped. It was very very good wine, perhaps the nicest she'd ever tasted. good wine, perhaps the nicest she'd ever tasted.

Elminster spread paste on a biscuit with a small, almost circular paddle-a knife of sorts, but it could never be used to stab anyone-and handed it to her. When she took it, he thrust a cube of cheese her way.

"I'm neither a princess nor helpless," she murmured, but gently. He seemed to mean well, and, well...many old folk had curious courtesies.

"Good," he replied. "I'm counting on that. So-though it knows this not, yet-is this grand old world around us."

Munching hard, Amarune settled for raising her eyebrows in a bewildered "Are you always always this crazed?" look. this crazed?" look.

Elminster smiled. "Ye are by now fairly certain I'm a madwits. Ye have some doubts, though they diminish, that I am who I say I am and that we're related, and ye want to know what I'm raving on about-without much wanting to have any part of it. Do I read ye right thus far?"

Amarune helped herself to more cheese and spread herself another biscuit. "Hard and steady into the harbor, so far," she agreed, fixing him with her best "This had better better impress me" look. impress me" look.

"Ye are young, agile, good-looking, and no fool. So ye have figured out that the career of a thief bids fair to be a short one, and mask dancing will win ye fair coin only so long as thy looks hold out. No n.o.ble lordling until young Delcastle has shown signs of sweeping ye off the Dragonriders' stage and into his mansion with a t.i.tle around thy throat, and ye face at least two dark foes and know not where to run. In short, thy young life is looking darker ahead, not shining and bright."

"Still heading hard and true for the nearest wharf," Amarune agreed grimly. "Right now, I can't even pay for this cheese-let alone the wine-without leaving myself too short to please creditors who are quite likely to treat me far more harshly than Mother Maraedra."

"I'm paying, la.s.s. Considering what I'm going to be asking ye to do, filling thy boots with gold right up as high as thy throat won't begin to be fee enough."

"You want me to take part in one of your spells? As some sort of sacrifice? Does it involve bedding thirteen n.o.bles at once?"

Elminster chuckled. "Nay to your last query, and 'in a manner of speaking' is a fair but also fairly useless answer to your first two questions. I want to train ye."

"As some sort of wizard? wizard? Sorry, but-" Sorry, but-"

"As my successor."

"Doing what, exactly?" Amarune eyed the old man across the table sidelong. She found him likeable but nothing near trustworthy. He probably was was mad, and just how, it seemed, she was about to find out. mad, and just how, it seemed, she was about to find out.

"I am...old. More than a thousand winters old. Yet I live still, because...I have a job to do. Ye might call it 'Meddler On Behalf of Mystra.' I wander the world meddling in things-the way kings rule, the way folk think, how they roast meals when they can get meat; all of that-to make the Realms better. Oh, and get no thanks for it, save many attempts to kill me."

"So I'd expect, if you meddle with how kings rule. So Mystra has been dead for a century, and you're giving up, is that it?"

"Almost," he whispered.

Studying him, Amarune went on munching, astonished at how quickly the cheese and biscuits seemed to have vanished. The old man had eaten, so far as she could recall, just one of each. She frowned; were they tainted with something?

"You eat the last few," she ordered.

Elminster smiled, shrugged, and started spreading himself a biscuit.

Watching him devour some cheese then the biscuit and wash them both down with wine, Amarune asked curiously, "Weren't you the one who was supposed to have been Mystra's lover, or some such?"

"Yes," Elminster agreed simply.

"So who warms your bed these days?"

"A mad queen. Not often."

Amarune shook her head then watched him refill her gla.s.s.

Well, this would make a good slumbertime tale, until she fell on her face and into the land of dreams...

"Tell me more," she said, sipping. Happy dancing hobgoblins, but this wine was good!

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

TO F FILL T THY B BRAIN WITH W WEAPONS.

So ye see, la.s.s, that's the dream I'm still living for. Imparting hope, making this little thing better and then that one, for all, not just the rulers and the rich...and doing it all in the name of Mystra."

"To keep her memory alive."

"Exactly. To keep her name and what she stood for firm and deep in the memories of folk, so there's a chance-a ghost of a chance, mind, but better than none-that she'll return."

"So the deeds, the fireside and tavern tales...ghost stories, indeed."

"Ah, now, forget not the faithful!"

"Oh, yes, the hidden cult of Mystra-worshipers I'd have to lead. Well, that that would certainly make me feel special, if I went in for such things." would certainly make me feel special, if I went in for such things."

Elminster gave her a sour look across the table. "Is that all ye've been hearing, in my blathering? 'Tis not about Mystra, nor thy power or benefits-'tis all about the dream of setting things right in the Realms, which I and Storm Silverhand and the Simbul and all the other Chosen devoted so much of our lives to, through the Harpers and by other means. Even if Mystra never returns to us, we will have bettered the Realms-worth doing in itself, la.s.s! Achievements far greater than most kings or priests ever even intend to accomplish, let alone the paltry results they manage!"

Amarune poured herself the last of the wine and sat back with a sigh, eyeing the man who claimed to be her ancestor.

"You want me to carry on with this self-appointed, never-finished work of saving the entire Realms," she said grimly. "Cast aside work I do well and take pride in, the life I've built for myself-a life I like like, mind, no matter how low and coin-poor it may be-and do dangerous and, no doubt, often illegal things and be thought crazed by everyone, for...a dream. Your Your dream. The dream of a century ago, of dead G.o.ds and struggles lost and done when my mother was yet young." dream. The dream of a century ago, of dead G.o.ds and struggles lost and done when my mother was yet young."

Elminster smiled. "Aye. I knew knew ye'd see to the heart of it in an instant. That's my la.s.s; blood runs true." ye'd see to the heart of it in an instant. That's my la.s.s; blood runs true."

"I have not not agreed to anything, old man," Amarune told him angrily. agreed to anything, old man," Amarune told him angrily.

"True, true. Yet, having seen the world more clearly, ye will. Not now, not perhaps for years yet, but...ye will. Ye will find ye cannot cannot stand back and look away when there are wrongs that need righting and suffering that need not be and things that could be better for all and less cruel for many. We're meddlers, we cursed few. 'Tis in the blood." stand back and look away when there are wrongs that need righting and suffering that need not be and things that could be better for all and less cruel for many. We're meddlers, we cursed few. 'Tis in the blood."

"Not my blood," Amarune snapped. "I've more sense."

"Ah. That would be why ye go out brawling of evenings with Lord Arclath Delcastle," Elminster told his nigh empty tallgla.s.s dryly. " 'Tis the sensible sensible thing for a mask dancer to do." thing for a mask dancer to do."

Amarune flushed crimson. "I like like Arclath. And if the king's writ means anything, it should mean la.s.ses and jacks of Cormyr can choose their friends freely, n.o.ble or common, rich or poor, and not answer to Arclath. And if the king's writ means anything, it should mean la.s.ses and jacks of Cormyr can choose their friends freely, n.o.ble or common, rich or poor, and not answer to anyone anyone for it. Given years enough, it should make the realm stronger, as all citizens know each other better, and no one will sneer at a freeman or goodwife because of the name they were born with or the-" for it. Given years enough, it should make the realm stronger, as all citizens know each other better, and no one will sneer at a freeman or goodwife because of the name they were born with or the-"

"Ye preach to the converted, la.s.s," Elminster murmured. "Who d'ye think fixed the wording of the writ, one night while Foril lay snoring not a spear-length away? Took me much of the night to fake his fist, so he'd look at the changes in the morning and think he had roused himself in the night to make them, not that someone else came stealing in to set things to rights."