Yet the two lordlings remained blissfully unaware of their audience, and so spoke untrammeled by prudence. Just as they were discussing Marlin Stormserpent’s chances just then.
“Yes, straight through the perimeter wall of Stormserpent Towers. Solid stone feet thick, mind, not where there was a gate or hidden door. Strode without stopping, blue flames and all, leaving not so much as a scorch mark.”
“Not a secret door?” Windstag asked disbelievingly, a second time.
“Not,” Sornstern confirmed. “He swore to this, insisting he was sober and had seen it all very clearly. The two of them stepped through a wall without muttering any sort of spell. In a spot where the stones were solid-he checked, just after. And Indur would never embellish or tell us false. He knows full well his neck would pay the price.”
Windstag nodded. “So tell me about these blueflame ghosts.”
Sornstern leaned back to look up at the night stars-what few of them he could see around the great dark canopy of the shadowtop looming overhead. Even if he’d had a glowstone on a pole to peer properly by, he had no chance of seeing the Highknight who was listening so intently, because the Highknight was not in the habit of handing such chances to others, even headstrong and idiotic young noble lordlings.
Not that Delasko Sornstern was looking for anyone. He was enjoying the moment, savoring this rare time when Windstag was listening to him.
“My father, Haedro,” he began slowly, “has a hobby.”
He paused then, just to see Broryn lean forward eagerly and acquire the first signs of impatience. Before it could flare into anger, he continued.
“He collects lore and relics of famous adventurers of the past. Years ago, he heard all about those famous adventurers, the Nine. Not the heroic tales bards and old tavern gossips like to tell, but all about the Nine. How they ended, to be specific.”
“The Silverhair Sister-Lurl or Laeral or some such-fell under a god’s curse, right? After she put on the Crown of Horns, and it ate her brain?”
Sornstern winced at Windstag’s words. “Y-yes, you could put it that way. She went evil, at least until the Lord Archmage of Waterdeep, the Blackstaff, rescued her and took her as his wife-”
“Funny how that happens, hey? Off with that gown and behold my cure!” Windstag leered.
Out of long habit, Sornstern supplied the expected nod and enthusiastic grin. “Yes, I’ve noticed that, too! What we missed by not being born mighty wizards, hey?”
“Hey, indeed. So, she went mad and bad, and the Nine scattered, never to reunite,” Windstag almost chanted. “See? I remember a little of what my tutors droned on about… see?”
Sornstern nodded and grinned again. “Well done, to have emerged from that flood of drivel with anything salvaged at all! You have it right, and some of the Nine were hired by a certain rich merchant of Athkatla. Unbeknownst to them, that merchant was under the influence of an archmage who desired to bind longevity and resilience into magic items by imprisoning the vitality of living beings within them, and-”
“Those Amnians! Sell their own left arms, they will! Can’t trust them for half a trice or the scrapings off a copper coin!”
“Ah… well said, you can’t indeed! Well, this wizard easily overcame the adventurers with spells and bound them into items of his making. Later, at least one, more likely two, of these enchanted things fell into the hands of the Stormserpents.”
For the first time, Windstag stopped looking enthusiastic. An eye-narrowing thought had struck him. “Just how is it that you know that?”
“My father,” Sornstern replied triumphantly, “and he had it from that infamous hot-breeches Old Mage the tales all tell about: Elminster of Shadowdale. In return for hiding the Sage of Shadowdale for a night and letting him drain a decanter of half-decent wine. The old fool thought he was getting Father’s best.”
The two lordlings snorted and sneered together for the thousand-thousandth time over the gullibility of the lower classes, ere Windstag stiffened as another thought struck him.
Leaning forward excitedly, he asked, “So just how many of the Nine were bound into items? How many does Marlin control?”
Sornstern shrugged. “I think just the two, but in truth I know not. I did notice that Marlin said nothing at all about blueflame ghosts to us, for a good long time after he was sending them out into the city.”
Windstag smiled. “Would you, if you stood in his boots? They’re his secret weapon against the Obarskyrs.”
“Or us,” Sornstern told his friend thoughtfully. “Or us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
I f ye can hurry, lass, now would be a fair good time to do so,” Mirt growled from the mouth of the alcove.
“Helmed horrors?” Storm asked, not moving from where she lay pressed against Amarune, forehead to forehead. She was so close…
“Aye. A dozen or more. Floating down the street as menacing as ye please. Striding on air.”
Storm closed her eyes. “How far off?”
El was almost completely himself again. Almost.
“About ten strides. Nay, six now. Too stlarned close-!”
Mirt grunted that last word as the foremost empty suit of armor descended onto the cobbles in front of him and swung its greatsword, its baleful inner fire pulsing.
Steel rang on steel as Mirt parried, puffing. He dared not duck aside with the lasses behind him needing to be shielded. The horror swung again as a second one floated down to the cobbles.
Mirt shook his head. The moment it walked up beside the first one, he was a dead man. “Storm?” he growled. “Got any miracle magic? I need it now!”
“Aye,” came a familiar deeper, rougher man’s voice from behind him. “I believe I do.”
Mirt sighed with relief and lurched aside. As the horror promptly stepped forward into the spot where he’d stood, to swing its sword again, Elminster murmured something-and the night exploded in an angry emerald flame.
Or was it a bolt of something else? With a weird burbling sound that was part exulting song and part keening saw, it spiraled down the street in a slowly expanding, blazing cone, plucking the walking suits of armor up into itself as it went. Every last one of them.
Greatswords, gauntlets, and helms could be seen whirling around and around the moving, expanding glow, swept down it as it sputtered, darkened, sputtered again-and abruptly winked out.
Leaving the street dark and empty, save for one blackened, bouncing helm that clanged on the cobbles and fetched up beside Mirt’s boots, ruby red internal fire still roiling inside it.
El reached down with one of Amarune’s long-fingered, graceful hands, caught up the helm, and murmured something swift and simple over it that made its red fire shrink smoothly into an endlessly whirling sphere. Then he tossed it to Storm. “Keep this for healing later, when we need it.”
He stalked along the street toward the corner. Mirt lurched along warily in his wake. Shapely young lass or not, she moved like Elminster when he was angry-and when Elminster was angry, things tended to get spectacular.
Dardulkyn was no longer at his window, and the panel inside was closed across the hole where Arclath had burst through it.
Elminster regarded the broken shards around the edge of the missing window for a long, silent breath, then lifted his arms and unhurriedly worked a spell.
The mansion wall vanished with a roar, laying bare the innards of half a dozen rooms and causing an overhang of suddenly unsupported roof-slates to groan, lean forward-and drop, one by one, to shatter loudly on the ornate iron fence below.
Mirt gaped, then winced.
As a door at the back of one of the shattered rooms flew open and an astonished Larak Dardulkyn stared at the sudden ruin of one end of his home.