He held his blade up and ready. “I want to like you. I want to trust you. Yet, your mind is like a mighty mountain, where mine is a small stone.”
He hefted his sword, looking steadily into Amarune’s eyes over it. “I believe a mind that much more powerful than mine, belonging to a mage who’s had a thousand years and more to practice deception, can lie to me. Not just with words as any man does, but mind-to-mind.”
He looked at Storm, then back at Amarune. “Is this not true?”
“It is,” Elminster admitted, “yet there’s another truth you should be aware of, Lord Delcastle. Such a deception can’t succeed when other minds share in the contact and don’t want to deceive. Storm? Alusair?”
The ghost and the silver-haired woman both nodded and started toward Arclath, but the young noble held up a warning hand.
“Don’t bother. I’ll grant I’ve been told truth, a princess and a centuries-old Harper attesting to it. It matters not. There’s still nothing that you can say, any of you, to make me agree to let you take over my body. I hate that you can do that to Rune, and even more that she agrees to it, but you can-so isn’t that, before all the gods, enough? The rest of us have to make do with one body in life! If it’s torn apart, we die. Why must you take over her and me and then someone else, building your own army of mind-slaves? Hey?”
“To save the world,” El whispered, “and never an army.”
“Sage of Shadowdale, forgive me,” Arclath replied curtly, “but I still don’t believe you. I saw in your mind that you must recruit Cormyr’s war wizards. Are they not an army?”
“A question, Lord Delcastle,” Storm asked softly. “You swear you’ll never let Elminster into your head or let him ride your body. If Cormyr’s survival hung in the balance, or Amarune’s life, or the continuance of House Delcastle… would you trust me to enter your mind and control your body?”
Arclath stared at her, feeling his face going hot. He was aroused by the idea and ashamed of being so; could they tell that? Could they all tell that?
Storm always looked so wise; Elminster always seemed two strides ahead of whatever he thought… and the Princess Alusair had done much, years and years ago…
He couldn’t take this. Fool or not, he could not He had to get away, off by himself to think. Away even from Rune.
Slamming his fist against the wall, Arclath spun away from it and ran, swinging his sword as he sprinted as if the empty air were foe upon foe that had to be slashed open and slain.
No one called his name or ran after him. No one at all.
Lord Broryn Windstag looked up from the nearly empty decanter and scowled.
“Back again? Aereld, I told you to leave us alone! We’ve important matters to discuss-”
The old steward bowed very low. “Y-yes, Lord Master! Please believe me when I say I interrupt you with the greatest of reluctance! You have a visitor, a lord who was a great friend of your father and always welcome in this house, who tells me he comes on a matter of great urgency!”
Windstag grimaced. The priests had healed him, but somehow the pain lingered-and he hated surprises.
“Well,” he snarled testily, “announce him, then!”
The steward bobbed even lower then scurried away, returning before Windstag could finish trading “What now?” looks with his frightened cronies Stonestable, Ormblade, and Handragon. Had the Crown killed Marlin? Were they next? And who was this unexpected “The Lord Traevyn Illance,” Aereld declaimed grandly, bowing low.
The white-haired lord gave the steward a tight smile and strode into the room. He bore a black walking stick and wore a half-cloak, in the old fashion. His boots were so old and smoothworn that they fitted him like a lady’s elbow-length gloves.
“Broryn,” he asked gently, “how are you? Word reached my ears that you’d been wounded.”
Lord Windstag grinned up at him in genuine pleasure. Illance had been a longtime friend and creditor of his father, and was the one man Broryn had been reared to trust.
Traevyn’s sneering son, Rothgar, was no friend to Windstag, Stormserpent, and the others at this parlor table, but the elder Lord Illance was a different sort of man.
“Lord Illance,” Broryn said eagerly, rising to offer his hand, “be welcome! I’ve paid priests and been healed, and count myself fortunate not to have been at this Council, where I might have taken worse harm!”
“That’s good to hear,” Illance replied, espying an empty chair against the wall and reaching for it. Aereld got there first.
As Illance sat and looked wordless thanks at the steward, he made a swift hand signal that sent the old servant racing from the room. Windstag’s eyes narrowed.
“Will you take wine, lord?” he asked, but Illance waved the offered flagon aside.
“I’m not here to drink, lad.” He looked around the table. “Forgive my bluntness, but what has befallen this day forces swiftness upon me. These gallant young lords with you-do you trust them?”
“With my life,” Windstag said slowly. “Why?”
Illance picked up the nigh-empty decanter, held it up to catch the light, and told it, “I have heard Lord Broryn Windstag makes common cause with Lord Marlin Stormserpent-and others. Are these men all numbered among those others?”
Around the table faces tightened into wary expressionlessness, and hands stole to daggers.
“Yes,” Broryn Windstag admitted. “Again, lord, I ask you: why?”
Illance set the decanter down. “Our brave kingdom is plunging into a time of… strife. Sides will be taken, and those who try to avoid declaring their loyalties will suffer. Here I find myself greeting what some might term a ‘faction.’ I happen to represent an older and more numerous faction that sees itself as too small to prevail in most struggles. Wherefore, I seek to recruit like-minded nobles, joining factions into a larger alliance that might succeed in both saving and reshaping bright Cormyr.”
“I confess myself interested, lord,” Handragon murmured. “A faction that seeks what, exactly?”
“You are wise enough to seek no names. A test passed.” Illance let a fleeting ghost of a smile touch his lips. “Know that certain lords of this land believe our good but often misguided King Foril should be, ah, protected by a group of nobles-ourselves and those who join with us. We will hire outland wizards to advise the king-’control’ is such an ugly word-as we employ mages, mercenaries, and loyal Cormyreans who cleave to our cause, to hunt down and exterminate those foul subverters of the throne, the wizards of war.”
He sat back and looked into the eyes of the young lords around the table, watching them relax in relief… then lean forward in excitement.
Good. The ring on his finger that could slay them all would not be needed. Yet.
Lord Windstag could read faces, too. “I think I speak for all of us,” he said eagerly, “when I say we are most interested in-”
The door banged open without benefit of steward or announcement, and a panting, wide-eyed arrival was in the room before a single dagger could be drawn.
“Save me!” Marlin Stormserpent gasped, almost collapsing onto the table. “You’ve got to hide me!”
“From whom?” Handragon snapped.
“Who’s after you?” Lord Illance asked sharply, twisting a ring on his finger until it glowed.
Stormserpent’s eyes were wide with terror as he waved a heavy chalice in one hand and a bright-bladed sword in the other.
“He bursts into your mind,” he hissed in Illance’s face, “and hunts you with beholders!”
Everyone was on his feet, talking at once. Decanters toppled, rolled, and shattered unnoticed.
“What happened, Marl?” Ormblade demanded, his voice louder than the rest. “Who’s after you-”
“Hold!” Handragon shouted, drowning out the rest of the question. “Who’s this?”
He was pointing at the door.
Which stood open again. Framed in it stood the wincing steward, with a man whose stance and garb suggested he was a house servant, but of another household.