Good old Storm. Good lass. She knew what it was like, the roughness and pain of hurling magic.
She knew what it was like to have Mystra and then lose her.
“Storm!” Mirt called hoarsely, fighting for breath. “Silverhand! Hey, lass-here! Wait for me a breath or two!”
Storm had just ducked into an alley, dragging the limp Rune with her. She stuck her head back around the corner, saw Mirt, and grinned.
“Get in here,” she ordered. “You can stand guard.”
“What?” Mirt wheezed, joining her. “Ye have to let fly, then?”
Storm rolled her eyes. “No, I have to try to get Elminster’s mind back closer to what it should be.”
Mirt nodded and dragged out his dagger. “Glathra’s after me,” he warned, turning to plant himself in the alley. “With a whole lot of Dragons’n’magelings. Don’t they ever sleep?”
“Not if we don’t let them,” Storm replied, kneeling over the slumped Amarune and touching their foreheads together. “It’s all part of our clever plan for conquering all Cormyr.”
“Huh,” Mirt growled, “it strikes me there’s far too many folk in this city busy hatching clever plans for conquering all Cormyr.”
A shuttered window swung open beside him, revealing the head and shoulders of a bored-looking maid. Without really looking, she tossed a basinful of dirty wash water out into the alley.
Mirt ducked. As the water-hurler reached out to close the shutter, he came up grinning into her startled face, waving his dagger. “Are ye one of them?”
Accompanied by a startled scream, the window slammed hastily shut again.
“He’s getting better,” Storm reported, “but that’s mainly due to Rune being young and strong. I need peace and quiet lasting long enough to really heal him.”
“Then let’s be up and staggering again before Glathra’s hounds get here,” Mirt growled. “If we cut through this alley to the next street south, double back the way we’ve come and up that second lane along, we’ll get to the damnably expensive inn I’ve taken a room at, and can spend the night there.”
He gave her a hopeful leer and added, “Two lasses, one a mask dancer and the other with silver hair that moves by itself? ’Twill do wonders for my reputation.”
Storm gave him a look. “Mirt, your reputation needs something a little larger. Conquering a kingdom, fathering dragons… that sort of thing.”
Mirt drew himself up and gave her his best grin. “It does? Well, now… just whereabouts in this bright realm do ye keep yer dragons?”
The most powerful-at-Art wizard in all Suzail was also the wealthiest, but had not become so by ignoring credible requests for his hire.
Even requests that came after full night had fallen.
So it was that by invoking his name, rank, and family wealth, Lord Arclath Delcastle won admittance past an expressionless porter.
Who led him along a passage lined with two dozen rows of magnificent and identical armored warriors who turned in perfect unison and utter silence to regard him after he passed-and whom he strongly suspected were recently created helmed horrors, the sort of guardians a handful of the oldest and wealthiest noble Houses boasted a single one of, each.
The passage opened into a lofty hall dominated by two curving staircases ascending into unseen gloom. It was lit by the pale, silver-blue glow of an endlessly cycling mobile of floating swords, daggers, and stranger pointed and barbed weapons that hung in the air above the center of the chamber.
The porter led Arclath straight across the room and under the weapons, without paying them any attention.
Arclath noted bloodstains on the floor-old and faint, but unmistakable, and more than a few-under the silently flashing and gleaming blades.
Seeing them, Arclath could not help but look up at the whirling storm of steel. At least until he was safely out from underneath it.
Whereupon, his eyes fell upon a new menace. It seemed Larak Dardulkyn liked to impress, or rather intimidate, his guests.
Only after the visitor tore his gaze from the whirling scimitars and falchions did he notice four direhelms, the smoothly flying armored guardians that looked like armored men, brandishing two swords each. Men, that is, who were simply missing from the waist down.
One floated watchfully above each of the visible doors out of the chamber. Their heads turned smoothly to follow Arclath’s progress across the room.
The porter led Arclath to the door across from the one he’d entered by, opened it, and wordlessly waved the Fragrant Flower of House Delcastle through.
Into a gloomy, high-ceilinged audience chamber of black-painted paneling adorned with strange-looking symbols Arclath strongly suspected were for show, having no real meaning or use at all.
Unless, that is, they were examples of the recent fashion among archwizards to enspell drawings or painted runes. Magic unleashed at a touch, or if the drawn device was damaged.
Yes, that was likely, wasn’t it?
The room held a simple black table, with two chairs facing each other down its sleek length.
Arclath made no move to go near them but strolled slowly around the room, peering at the runes and glyphs-or impressive-looking, mock-mystical nonsense symbols, if that’s what they were-as he passed. No other door was visible in the room except the one that had been firmly closed behind him, but of course any of these panels might open. Or the floor or ceiling, both of which had their own symbols. Their faint glows were the only lights in the room.
Arclath strolled, and no one came.
On his third slow circuit of the room, he thought one of the symbols had changed behind his back to a new configuration, but he could not be certain.
Impressive. Or trying hard to be.
Time stretched. Arclath waited alone in the dusty silence for an audience that, it started to seem as unmeasured time unfolded, might not befall until morning.
Upon reflection, he found that this bothered him not at all. Here, deep in this fortresslike mansion that shouted out the fell arcane power of its owner everywhere one looked, he was-or at least felt-safe from Elminster and Storm, Glathra and all her wizards of war, Stormserpent’s blueflame ghosts, the third ghost and whoever was controlling it, and all other mages ambitious nobles might hire.
As a wizard for hire, Larak Dardulkyn had a reputation for being both coldly impolite and very expensive, so if Arclath was going to succeed in enlisting his services against Elminster, to keep Amarune-and his own mind, too-safe, he had best be patient and polite.
Idly he tried to figure out what he could of the layout of this floor of the mansion. He was probably slightly more than the height of a tall man above the streets that surrounded the place on three sides, judging by the number of steps he’d ascended to the front door, and… well, unless the tales about wizard’s houses being larger inside than they were on the outside were true, he’d walked pretty much clear across the width of the building. There should be a street on the far side of that wall.
This had once been old Raskival Rhendever’s house-a crabbed old merchant Arclath could just remember from his youth, a hunched-over man with two canes. Before that it had belonged to Lord Sarlival, last of his line, who’d kept a mistress there with the full knowledge-and abiding fury-of his wife. Or so the tales Soundlessly one of the panels opened, and a tall, rather homely man with unpleasantly glittering black eyes stepped into the room, his high-collared black robes swirling.
Ah, yes. Menacing archwizard; must look the part.
“Lord Delcastle,” Dardulkyn said coldly. “What do you want?”
“To hire you to protect me and another person I am fond of from a mage who wants to control our minds.”
Dardulkyn raised one eyebrow and indicated one of the chairs with an abrupt thrust of his hand. “Sit.”