“Sabruin!” he gasped in disbelief. “What manner of-”
Another Dragon fell, and his slayer ran along his toppling body, swinging swords in both hands against the soldiers now crowding around her and hacking at her almost desperately.
The lionar gaped again. She looked dead, this lone woman butchering her way through palace guards who should have been able to withstand a thousand women with ease.
“Sir Eskrel Starbridge,” the lionar heard the sharp voice of the Lady Glathra rising from behind him, “attend me. You and two of your Highknights. Tell the others to arrest and imprison the four persons I identified, in our dungeons, and quell this disturbance. They may call on the services of all the wizards of war who are here-it seems whoever is attacking, yonder, bears heavy magical protections. I have far more pressing matters to attend to right now than street butchery. Our oh-so-loyal nobles are gathering forces under arms all over the city, and Larak Dardulkyn may be involved.”
“Just what else befell here, while I was out hunting a false Elminster?” Starbridge demanded.
“Later, Highknight,” Glathra replied crisply. “Later.”
Lips set in a thin and furious line, Manshoon hissed out the short incantation and sat back to watch what befell in the shifting glows of his scrying eyes.
The blast was sudden and terrible, destroying the wagon and everyone close to it. Knowing what was coming, the future emperor of Cormyr had darkened that particular sphere almost to black, to avoid being blinded; the moment the flash had passed its height, he rekindled it, and was in time to watch the dung wagon spread itself and its contents in a thin, wet layer over the walls of the buildings at the far end of the street.
Of his wagon, the eye tyrant within it, the horses and Purple Dragons and war wizards-with any luck, every last person who might have seen the smallest glimpse of what the wagon was carrying-there was no sign.
Except for a red fog in the air and bedewing the street, not to mention the wide but shallow pit that had replaced the sweep of worn cobbles where the wagon had been standing.
Manshoon watched shards of glass fall in a gentle rain out of the sky, looking for any larger movements that might mean a warrior had survived or a Crown mage had shielded himself somehow.
Nothing. He’d gazed longer, now, than a wounded man could hold his breath. Still nothing.
He’d managed it. Kept his secret, and done it far enough from the mansion that Dardulkyn couldn’t be blamed outright.
Not that he considered the reckoning even, between himself and Cormyr. A dozen-some magelings, perhaps twice that many Dragons…
The Forest Kingdom still owed him four senior war wizards, or more. Beholders didn’t come cheap.
Letting out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, the future Emperor of Cormyr and Beyond looked one last time at the blood-drenched street, reflected that it was high time to check on the other two wagons, and Something caught his eye, in another glowing scene. Or rather, a lot of somethings: Purple Dragons, their swords out and gleaming back reflections from some lanterns in a Suzailan street, and a bright and steady conjured glow that showed him the familiar facade of the palace behind it.
They were gathering around a lone, embattled figure, swords rising and falling, rising and fall…
Targrael!
In the street outside the palace, taking on a good third of the Crown soldiers in Suzail who were awake at this hour.
Manshoon stared at the battle for a moment more, seeing wizards of war, the hole in the palace wall where a door ought to be, and… was that Amarune Whitewave? Elminster?
He sprang from the chair, landing at a full sprint, heading for another of his beholders.
A living eye tyrant at the height of its powers should make for a dandy battle. After he made utterly stone-cold certain of his foe, this time.
Nay, lad, no more heroics. Not yet.
“So when, Old Mage?” Arclath snapped, seeing hard-faced Highknights shouldering their way through the Dragons toward him. “They’ll have Rune in a moment or two!”
Not in this fray, they won’t. Head up the street toward Eastgate a bit, then turn in toward the palace. Don’t run, or the Dragons will key on ye. Brisk and purposeful-stride like a lionar or an ornrion. That’s the way of it, aye.
Arclath held his sword low but ready, staring down soldiers rather than offering them battle, and won his way past more and more of them.
A flash of light reflected off their helms and faces, from behind his left shoulder.
Then another, amid shouts of anger and pain.
Arclath risked a look. Crown mages had tried to fell Targrael with spells, but failed to strike her down as she battled in the midst of so many Purple Dragons. Soldiers had paid the price of those magics, and were less than happy. Their comrades, around them, were angry, too.
Arclath had barely managed to sigh and take another step before he saw something that snatched away his breath and made him freeze where he stood, in one heart-fisting moment.
Out of the nightgloom over the tall buildings facing the palace across the wide Promenade, something as large as a coach was gliding.
Something spherical, with a huge fanged maw surmounted by a lone, malevolent eye the size of a table. Around the sphere curled ten long and flexible eyestalks that were moving into a staring halo of ten gleaming eyes, all of them glaring down at the mailed men in the street.
Rays of magic lanced out from those eyes, rays of ruby and ale-brown, dead white and fell, sickly yellow-green.
And Dragons died. Those who didn’t were left to shriek, try to flee, writhe in wild pain, or turn madwits upon their fellows, hacking and crying out in wordless despair.
Save for the small knot of soldiers battling the death knight. The beholder swept over them and left them untouched, in its eagerness to get at the Cormyreans near the doorway.
In its racing, gleefully burbling hunger to get at Rune.
The street rocked under the most foolish of the Crown mage-hurled spells, a blast that flung some Dragons off their feet and forced the rest into ducking and dancing for balance.
At the heart of the frenzy, one sword thrust into the throat of a swordcaptain and the other hacking hard at a desperately parrying telsword, Targrael grinned mirthlessly and went on slaying, never slowing in her endless dance of lunging, slashing, parrying, and spinning around to gut or hurl aside the inevitable clever fools trying to take her from behind.
Something caught her eye, up high behind her right shoulder.
She risked a swift glance at it as she turned that way, taking advantage of the fading aftershocks of that last spell to stab at the faces of men still fighting for balance. A man blinded by a forehead cut is a poor fighter, and she needed as many poor fighters around her as she could acquire, to keep them from overwhelming her with sheer weight and numbers, holding her down, and dismembering her.
As she slew and slew, wondering how long it would take a Dragon officer to summon up wits enough to think of just such a strategy, Lady Targrael took a second look at the movements and revealed light she’d glimpsed a moment ago, high up on the dark front of one of the tall buildings that faced the palace across the Promenade.
Curtains were being pulled aside and tied back up there, revealing the low light and dark fineries of one of the exclusive upper-floor clubs that overlooked this stretch of the Promenade. Faces were eagerly crowding the windows, peering down at the fray.
Well, now. It seemed even drunken, dunderheaded nobles could notice shouts and swordclangs and the street-shaking blasts of reckless spells if such tumult went on long enough. No doubt they were deeming this battle grand and exciting entertainment, and taking bets on who would down whom, and how soon and how bloodily Then there were screams from the street around her, and the eager watchers at the windows started to cower back.