He tried to shriek and managed to get out a gargling wail-as Storm ran him hard back into the nearest wall, knocking him cold against its stone carvings. As he started to sag in her arms, she took him by one elbow and the opposing thigh and flung him into the next wizard.
By which time the last wizard had gone gray and toppled to the floor, as Alusair hovered in his chest, freezing his heart. Behind him, the mage she’d chilled just before that was crawling away down the passage as fast as he could, with the one whose innards she’d bruised sobbing in terror and feebly trying to follow.
Alusair sped to where she could grin into Storm’s still-angry face. “Want me to fell the fleeing?”
Storm frowned. “Just long enough for me to get their rings and wands off them.”
“Glathra and the other senior war wizards can readily trace Crown-enchanted items from afar,” the ghost warned.
Storm nodded. “If we can put, say, a ring into the keeping of Marlin Stormserpent without his knowing it-in his clothing or belt-it’ll draw them to him. Or we can use the wands as lures, if we hide them in places we want war wizards to find.”
Alusair gave a low laugh of agreement as she swooped down the passage. A moment later, the most distant fleeing mage moaned in pain and fear as she plunged into him.
Storm watched her sport with the two crawling men for a moment, then relieved Harbrow and the other two nearby mages of their rings and wands.
“El,” she murmured, pulling off a boot, “I need you to take over Rune’s body and walk her out of here. The war wizards slept her.”
Where is “here”? Are we escaping the palace?
“Yes,” Storm told the briskly flowing ashes. “Again.”
Well, ’tisn’t as if we haven’t done it before. Glathra still furious with us?
“You could say that,” Storm replied dryly.
Good. So long as a wizard of war is enraged at us, we’re doing something right.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
M irt tossed the empty decanter onto the empty bed, glared down at both, and let out a growl.
It was no use. He was as restless as a prowling cat with the flea-itch.
As he’d always been, when it came to ponderings. He always mulled over matters better while he was striding somewhere, doing something, rather than sitting idle and alone in luxury… and ever-deepening boredom.
Night had fallen, but no matter. If he could walk Dock Ward in Waterdeep and bring his unlovely old hide home more or less intact, he could stroll the well-lit Promenade of Suzail and have a better-than-fair chance of returning to this tarted-up rental hovel in one piece, too.
The coins were hidden where only a strong and determined thief could hope to take them from, flattened behind a wardrobe it would take two strong men-or one sweating, straining, snarling, fat, old Waterdhavian lord-to shift. He had his blades; the desk would mind his key; there was enough loose coin down his boot to buy a cuddle with a dancer if his wandering feet took him past such a place…
“Moneylenders aren’t alive if they aren’t finding trouble,” Mirt muttered aloud, “and if ye wander a city, trouble generally soon finds ye. Aye.”
Down the sweeping, dark-carpeted stairs he went, under the soft light of many ornate hanging lamps, and wheezed his way out into the street.
Marlin Stormserpent strode along the shuttered shopfronts, his darkest cloak swirling around him in the wind of his own haste. His oldest, quietest boots made little sound as he hurried through the night.
He was so excited he was almost choking, and a small worm of fear was rising in his throat, blossoming swiftly now. Illance’s plan had seemed so gods-sent, so right, back at Staghaven House, but now…
Well ahead of him, two blue flames moved quickly in the deepening darkness, side by side. His ghosts were heading straight to the palace.
To imperil the king.
Either the nobles were taking their time mustering warriors and buffing their boots so as to look their best when they broke into rebellion, or the Dragons had done a very thorough job of scouring the city-well, this part of it, at least-of armed and excited folk in the streets.
The Promenade, under its usual warm and plentiful lamps, was but lightly traveled in its long sweep around the soaring, imposing bulks of the vast, many-windowed royal court and the older, more castlelike royal palace. Oh, there were people about, aye, all of them afoot-not a cart or wagon to be seen-but no one was shouting or waving a sword or anything else. Most folk were walking alone or in pairs or trios; the only larger group Mirt could see was a watch patrol-Dragons with a war wizard, talking quietly and looking far from excited.
Yet out of lifelong habit, Mirt looked back fairly often as he walked. His first glance was to fix his inn in his mind, the way it looked by night, so he could readily find it again. His second was to mark anyone who might be following him, who’d been in the street at his first glance and seemed to have moved since in a way that suggested Mirt of Waterdeep might be of interest to them.
None such rose to his notice.
Well, hardly surprising, that. He was, after all, no one at all to anyone but a handful of folk currently alive, in this time so long after he’d expected a waiting grave to find him. Living for centuries was for archwizards or god-tainted priests, not fat old moneylenders with smart mouths, who liked to provoke people who thought themselves powerful or important. Why Mirt looked back a third time and revised his thinking in an instant.
“Talandor! Caztul! Caztul caztul!” he exploded.
There was no mistaking the two men wreathed in ceaseless bright blue flames. Walking purposefully toward him, with drawn swords in their hands.
“Kelstyn, gelkor, and hrasting sabruin!” he added to surrounding Suzail, as he started to hurry, rushing along with his battered old boots-the same footwear that had made the inn’s grandly garbed seneschal visibly wince-flapping loudly.
If they were giving chase, there was only one halfway-safe place for him. The damned palace. Again.
“This city is cursed-or I am!” Mirt growled as he picked up speed, lurching from side to side in his loudly wheezing haste to be elsewhere.
“I’m too old for this,” he muttered. “Damned deadly magics! Why don’t these rats-underfoot war wizards police them, hey?”
He hoped to lead the two slayers into the midst of those same Crown mages; if he could dart through or into the detaining arms of war wizards, mayhap his flaming pursuers would come right after him-and the Dragon Throne’s tame mages would destroy them.
He cast another swift look back and pushed himself to lurch along faster.
Aye, the wizards were his best hope.
Provided, of course, he reached the palace before the ghosts caught him.
Manshoon had managed to forget how irritating the mind of Understeward Fentable could be.
The trouble lay in Fentable’s character; the man was moderately cunning, had learned the arts of deft manipulation and subtle misdirection, and derived real enjoyment from intrigue and the cut and thrust of palace diplomacy.
However, he was only about a fifth as clever as he thought himself to be, and so shallowly gleeful in his petty chasings after this chance to browbeat a lowly courtier or that opportunity to emphasize his superior rank in dealings with someone just a little below him in court standing that it left Manshoon seething.
“Tiresome” was a polite way of putting it. Wherefore, Manshoon rode Corleth Fentable’s mind with a savage, impatient edge to his control. He’d thought it imperative to learn the state of things inside the palace-but wished he hadn’t bothered.
The king was in hiding, heavily guarded, and the ever-ambitious Glathra was kinging it as ably as her tireless bullying would reach. While chaos reigned, minor courtiers traded whispered rumors behind closed doors, and higher-ranking court officers cowered in various unexpected chambers, well away from their offices and usual posts, so Glathra’s scurrying messengers couldn’t readily find them.