“Cheerful place,” Mirt commented, watching Vangerdahast’s approach to the double doors cause the expected sigils to glow into eerie visibility. Warning off tomb robbers and fools.
Well, he’d been both, in his day, and probably would be both again…
He glanced back at Fentable. The understeward looked a little the worse for being dragged down two flights of stairs and along more passages than Mirt had bothered to keep count of, to reach this cold, silent lower cellar.
The doors sighed open, and Vangerdahast said, “Thank you for looking away. Waterdeep is well lorded over, I see.”
Mirt managed to quell the snort he usually greeted such sentiments with, and watched a pale glow kindle out of the empty air as the spiderlike royal magician advanced cautiously into a large, dark vault.
“Are there occasional… problems?” Mirt asked warily, staying where he was.
“More than a few coffins have been opened since I was here last. I know it doesn’t appear that way, but I can tell. Leave the understeward, and come in. I’ll need your help with the lids.”
“And I’ll need your help blasting the undead when they burst out and try to throttle me,” Mirt replied meaningfully.
“You’ll receive it,” came the flat reply.
Mirt rolled his eyes and lurched forward. “Which one first?”
The seventh coffin Mirt opened with a grunt held an immobile, intact-looking man. Who moved not at all in the heart of the faintly singing magical glow that filled his stone resting place.
“Don’t reach in,” Vangerdahast warned.
“No fear,” Mirt retorted. “I was just looking for traps.”
“He’s caught in one. A stasis trap,” the royal magician snapped, scuttling to the top of a nearby royal catafalque to get high enough to look down into the open coffin.
“That’s the lord warder, Vainrence,” he added in a satisfied voice, the moment he’d surveyed the still form in the coffin. “Just step back and leave him be. I’m hoping one of the three remaining disturbed coffins holds Ganrahast. This is the last place in the palace I had left to check for the two of them.”
The next coffin contained the royal magician, in the same sort of singing, gently pulsing stasis.
“We dare not disturb them without a senior wizard of war on hand, in case spells are needed, fast. Swift casting is something I can’t do, given what I’ve become.”
Mirt regarded the spiderlike mage with interest. Vangerdahast hadn’t sounded bitter, only matter-of-fact.
“What do I do with the dolt I dragged down here?”
“Put him in that coffin, and set the lid back into place over him. He’ll keep until I have time to cast this same sort of stasis. I can manage it, but slowly.”
“Right, and then?”
“Let’s go get Glathra. She might as well do something useful, for once.”
Arclath looked around, wearily. Purple Dragons and war wizards were murmuring triumph to each other. Any moment now, they’d notice one noble lord in their midst-with a mask dancer clinging to him, and an infamous Harper with silver hair everyone recognized at a glance lying senseless at his feet. Storm looked as lost to the world as Elminster was, inside Arclath’s own head.
Silent, not answering. Gone.
“Rune,” he whispered, into the closest ear of the mask dancer whom he loved more and more with each passing moment, “if I carry Storm, can you take her feet?”
“Take her where?” Rune whispered back. “Into the palace?”
Arclath shrugged. Where else could they go? He very much doubted they’d be allowed to depart, if they tried to take Storm across the Promenade right now. Plenty of these men had heard Glathra’s orders.
Naed. They always seemed to be wading deeply in fresh, warm naed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ahem, ah, dauntless guardian? Saer Dragon?”
Mirt put what he fondly hoped would be taken for a friendly smile on his face, and lurched up to the palace guard with his hands empty and spread out before him, to show that he was unarmed. The man did not look friendly.
“I’m looking for the Lady Glathra. Wizard of war, usually in a hurry, loud and forceful? Ye know her, aye?”
The Purple Dragon turned his head to give the stout Waterdhavian a long, measuring look, from his untidy hair down to his flapping boots and back up again, before settling in one spot. Mirt saw that.
“Heh-heh. Pay no heed to this that rides on my shoulder. ’Tis a pet, no more. Harmless, I assure ye. Harmless.”
Close beside Mirt’s ear, Vangerdahast gave a low, warning growl.
Mirt hastened on. “So, saer, can ye take me to the Lady Glathra? Or tell me the way to where she might be found?”
“Why?” the Dragon made reply, shifting his spear from “ceremonial upright rest” to a menacing, ready position. “Who are you, and what’s your business with her? What are you doing down here, anyway?”
“Looking,” Mirt explained patiently, “for Glathra. I’m Lord Mirt of Waterdeep, visiting my good friend King Foril Obarskyr. As for my business with Glathra…”
He leaned forward to give a wink and a friendly leer, but the horrific result made the guard recoil-then flush with irritation at having abandoned his urbane, neutral manner, and snarl, “I don’t believe you. Show me your pass!”
Mirt sighed and strode past the man. “I pass,” he explained, “like this. See?”
“A jester, eh?” the Dragon snarled, lowering his spear to point at Mirt’s ample belly.
“Hey,” Mirt said agreeably, steering the spearpoint aside with one hand. “I take it ye’re unaware of Glathra’s whereabouts? Aye? Well, then, I’ll just be-”
“Halt! Stand and surrender, you! Lord of Waterdeep, indeed!”
The Dragon made a jabbing movement with his spear, threatening to use it if Mirt tried to flee. Then he stood it against the wall with one hand and drew his sword with the other.
“Consider yourself,” he said sternly, “under arrest. As my prisoner, you will accompany me without challenge or violence, seeking neither to deceive me nor to flee from custody. And we won’t be going anywhere near the Lady Glathra, believe me-”
Without warning, Vangerdahast launched himself like a striking spider, right into the Dragon’s face. The Dragon fell to the floor.
“So, what did ye do to him?” Mirt rumbled, stepping over the fallen guard and hastening at full lurch farther down the passage.
“Enspelled him to sleep, at my touch,” Vangey replied. “Dragons didn’t dare to be that officious in my day. With a visiting head of state, too!”
Mirt chuckled as he rounded a corner and caught sight of another guard, standing to attention against the wall under another lantern.
“So, care to place a little wager on the conduct of this next one?”
“No,” Vangerdahast replied flatly. “You provoke them-and I’m just a pet, remember?”
Mirt had the grace to wince.
Glathra’s reappearance at the greatly enlarged hole in the palace wall caused an immediate clamor, as war wizards hastened from all sides to try to push through the Dragons and speak to her.
“Silence!” she barked-and the Crown mages obeyed, in midword. All around them soldiers blinked, raised eyebrows, or grinned openly.
Despite the way she felt, still lying on the ground in pain and feeling utterly drained, Storm joined in the latter reaction.
Glathra had it, all right. Dominance, with a single word.
Yet the wizard of war wasn’t done. “You can report to me later. The engagement here is obviously over, yet I observe my orders have still not been carried out, despite an assembly of more loyal soldiers and oathsworn wizards in one place than I’ve seen for a good long time. So let this disobedience be remedied, forthwith. Use spells to paralyze these three-this mask dancer, Amarune Whitewave; this Harper outlander, Storm Silverhand; and this noble lord of Cormyr, Arclath Delcastle. They are to be taken into custody and chained to the wall in the main Westfront holding cell to await interrogation. Do this now.”