Arclath crossed his arms in front of his face and throat, clutching the pommel of his drawn sword foremost, and launched himself at the window, hoping it bore no strange spell or other that would hurl him back.
It didn’t.
The crash was tremendous.
Arclath was vaguely aware of shards hurtling out in all directions, a strip of garden about as wide as the shoulders of a large man, a dark Suzailan street beyond it-and between garden and street, an ornate, many-curlicued, wrought-iron fence that looked quite sturdy.
It was.
He crashed into it and slid down it, trapped between stone mansion and fence. A fence that could no doubt spit lightning or extend iron claws if Dardulkyn had time enough to make it do so.
Snarling in frantic effort, Arclath leaped up, caught hold of the upper curlicues, and launched himself up and over, landing with a crash and the ringing clang of his dropped and bouncing sword.
A noise that should bring a watch patrol down on him in a trice, in a good neighborhood like this.
He rolled, snatched up his sword but didn’t waste time trying to snatch his breath, found his feet, and started to run.
No patrol, of course- why were there never any blasted Dragons when you needed them?
“A rather frosty converse,” he heard Dardulkyn announce calmly. “Late night bargainings seldom go well. However, I can’t allow an energetic and talkative young noble to escape me, knowing what he now does. So, a simple spell will hold you, Arclath Delcastle, until my horrors collect you.”
Arclath dashed to one side of the street, trying to hide himself from where the archwizard could see and aim. Did paralysis magic work like that? He couldn’t remember; he had only heard it talked about twice, and “Oh, hrast,” he cursed, feeling a sudden creeping lassitude, his limbs slowing. “Oh, no! No…” It was like trying to stride through a neck-deep pool of placid water.
He tried to fight his way onward but slowly became aware that, although his heart was pounding and his limbs were straining, his surroundings just weren’t changing any longer.
He was standing still.
Oh, naed.
“Hold!” Mirt grunted. “A man was running our way, up ahead there-and he’s just stopped.”
“Awed at the sight of the famous Mirt the Moneylender, Lord of Waterdeep, no doubt,” Storm replied from just behind him, as she towed the lolling and loose-limbed Amarune along. Rune could walk by herself, all weakness gone, but had to be led to keep her from falling.
“Nay, lass, not ‘stopped’ normal-like. Paralyzed by magic. I’ve seen it done often enough. Someone froze him midstride. An’ damn me if he doesn’t look familiar.”
“What sort of familiar?” Storm asked warily, trying to see past the fat man’s bulk.
“Arclath Delcastle sort of familiar,” Mirt replied, a few lurching strides later. “By the looks of things, he just burst out yon window. The one with the dolt in evil wizard robes standing glaring out of it.”
Storm clamped a hand on Mirt’s shoulder to bring him to a stop, then peered around him as if he were a large, concealing boulder. “Oh, he didn’t.”
“Obviously he did,” Mirt rumbled. “Didn’t what?”
“Went to see the calmly ruthless Dardulkyn, wizard-for-hire most puissant of all Suzail, to hire himself some magic,” Storm replied. “Means to ward away Elminster from certain minds, no doubt.”
“And negotiations went poorly?”
“It seems so. Rumor declares Dardulkyn has a personal army of helmed horrors, so he’s probably watching over Arclath until they can collect him.”
“So, we collect him first,” Mirt growled, lurching forward again and dragging Storm along with him, “and use Arclath as our shield against his spells, being as the lad’s already frozen, hey?”
“Hey,” Storm agreed ruefully, expecting something terrible to smite them at every step.
Mirt didn’t look toward the window or walk warily. He simply tucked Storm under one arm to keep her on his far side from the wizard’s mansion, lurched up to Arclath, thrust his free arm between two noble legs and up to catch hold of the back of Arclath’s belt, boosted the frozen lord up onto his hip, and kept on walking.
The first spell struck them about six paces later, as Mirt was busily turning Arclath to keep him between them and the window.
It dashed them all down in hard-bouncing pain and sent lightning sizzling away across the cobbles.
As those snarling little bolts faded, Storm-who was chin-down on the cobbles, tingling everywhere she wasn’t numb-looked over at Mirt, then at Amarune.
The fat merchant’s hair was all on end, his face was smudged, and smoke curled up lazily from his jerkin. Or whatever that dirty, shapeless upper garment the old Lords of Waterdeep wore was called.
Rune’s face was no longer teary and vacant. It was alert and angry.
“El?” Storm whispered.
“Who did that?” the Sage of Shadowdale’s familiar voice snapped, out of Rune’s beautiful mouth.
“Dardulkyn. The most powerful archwizard in Suzail, probably in all Cormyr. He’s standing in yonder window.”
“Is he, now? Well-”
The second spell struck then, a blast that plucked them up and hurled them like gale-driven leaves down the street, tumbling and helplessly cursing.
“Enough of this,” Elminster spat, when they were all lying on the cobbles again. “Storm, heal me!”
“He’s sending his helmed horrors after us-”
“Then start healing me now.”
Storm turned her head. “Mirt, help me. We need to get around that corner, then find a doorway or an alcove for me to use, while you gallantly hold off all helmed horrors until I’m done restoring El.”
Mirt gave her a wordless, wary “you’ll be lucky” grunt, then started crawling. “I must warn ye,” he growled as he wormed slowly past her, looking rather like a kitchen midden heap on the move, “that my vanquishing-helmed-horrors skills are a mite rusty. Piergeiron only has-er, had — two of ’em, and thought ’em too precious for us to really smite.”
“All we need is for you to delay them long enough,” Storm replied, crawling to where she could reach Arclath and roll his stiff body over. Reaching back, she tugged at Amarune to keep her crawling, too.
“Huh,” Mirt growled, reaching out a hand to help roll the frozen young noble. “The older I get, the longer ‘long enough’ seems to get.”
“I’ve noticed that, too,” Storm agreed, scrambling forward to catch and cradle Arclath’s head before it crashed down on a cobble. “I believe some call it ‘progress.’ ”
“Oh? ‘Some’? What do others call it?”
“The general decline of the realms, sliding ever faster and inevitably into the Abyss, crawling chaos, and eventual obliteration.”
“Ah. So, I should make my coins now, hey?”
“Hey,” Storm agreed, breaking into a smile.
Broryn Windstag could not remember a time before Delasko Sornstern had been grinning at his elbow. They’d done nigh everything together for years; they still did almost everything together.
And in the wake of Stormserpent’s vow to carry out Lord Illance’s bold plan, they had wasted no time hastening to their favorite “private place,” a certain shady back corner of the Sornstern family gardens, where they could talk things over without being overheard by anyone.
It would have dumbfounded them both-and plunged them into cold, despairing terror at the thought of all the treasons they’d so casually discussed-to learn their every jocular comment was being overheard and committed to memory by a Highknight of the Crown who’d been tailing Windstag for years. A certain Sir Talonar Winter, who looked very much like the better portraits of the great King Azoun, fourth of that name, and who was lounging above them on a bough of a mighty shadowtop at that moment.
A man who’d become so comfortable on that bough overhanging the bower where the two friends were wont to talk that he could arrive and depart soundlessly, even in utter darkness, tall and spike-topped Sornstern walls or no walls.