Neld ran to the nearest tack table. Fast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Got you here, didn’t it?”
Glathra Barcantle stiffened as if she’d been slapped, then turned slowly, trembling hands clenched and a wordless, rising-pitch snarl escaping her lips.
Her towering rage at discovering no danger at all in the royal wing, that she’d been duped, and that she’d awakened Obarskyrs for no good reason had not been improved by angry royal aspersions upon her competence.
She was facing a sleepy King Foril right now, and he continued to be none too amused.
So an unwelcome voice from behind her was a last slapping insult, by the throne!
“Give me one good reason,” she hissed as she addressed a spiderlike intruder that had somehow gotten past several posts of guards and into the outermost anteroom of the king’s own bedchambers, “why I should not blast you to your grave, right now.”
“You’ll be dooming the realm, entirely for your own selfish ambition and shortsighted stupidity,” the black, wraithlike head atop spiderlike human fingers replied calmly, lifting one finger to wag it at her disapprovingly. “To put it diplomatically.”
The king had caught up a scepter that could do all the blasting that might be necessary to dispose of all of his guests and most of the wall beyond them, too, but was staring past Glathra at the walking head atop the high back of his best guest chair with interest rather than fear.
“Are you who I think you are?” Foril asked quietly. “Vangerdahast?”
“I am,” the spiderlike thing replied. “And I needed to lure this noisy wizard up here so I could converse with her before a royal audience. Vastly increasing the chances she’ll listen and obey.”
Glathra exploded. “What? Don’t presume to give me orders! Your time is past, old man-by the Dragon, your time as a man is past!”
“I serve the realm still. And do so far better than you’ve ever done, Barcantle. Bluster, highhanded rudeness, and lashing out before you consider consequences is never superior to subtle manipulations-even if you weren’t now facing a city full of angered nobles just itching to find provocations. So spare me your shouts, and tender me your ears and whatever small part of your brain you still use for thinking.”
“How dare-? I’ve never been spoken to-”
“Indeed, and what a problem that’s created! Now, will you listen?”
Glathra folded her arms across her chest and tossed her head. “I don’t even know you are the infamous royal magician! You look like a construct an ambitious but not accomplished mage might cobble together! The words we’re hearing from you right now could be those of any traitor noble, Sembian, or other foe of the Dragon Throne!”
“Or they could be my own. Foril, call to mind the line of verse Queen Filfaeril left to you, written in a locket, but say them not.”
The king frowned then nodded. “I remember them.”
“ ‘The Crown of the Dragon is a thing so heavy, that I send my love to all who may wear it when I am dust, because only love can hold it high,’ ” the spiderlike thing declaimed, then asked, “Believe I’m Old Vangey now?”
“No,” Glathra snapped, before the king could speak. “Scores of courtiers know those words now, because of various royal scribes and palace gossip and the Highknights’ use of parts of it, some time back, as pass phrases.”
“Very well,” the wraith-spider replied and murmured something too softly for either the king or the wizard of war to hear.
Foril’s scepter suddenly vanished from his hand, two suits of armor in the corners of the anteroom stepped down off their plinths and knelt to the king, and a dusty stone statue at the end of the room shifted its pose to hold forth and open the stone book it was carrying, revealing it to be a pipe coffer holding three pipes and four small and rather moldering lines of pipeweed.
“Do you believe me now?” the spiderlike intruder asked rather testily. “I come on a matter of some urgency, as it happens, and would rather not deprive the crowned head of Cormyr of any more royal slumber because I’m being challenged to do tricks.”
“I believe you,” King Foril Obarskyr said firmly, “and that should be sufficient. What do you want, Royal Magician Vangerdahast?”
“To tell Your Majesty that I’ve found Ganrahast and Vainrence in magical stasis, down in the royal crypt.”
“What?!” The king and wizard of war shouted that word together.
“Reduced to what I’ve become,” Vangey continued calmly, “I can’t cast the necessary spells if they awaken crazed or hostile or enthralled by a foe of the realm. So, I need Glathra here to gather four or five war wizards of experience and accomplishment, and go down and release them.”
“Is this another ploy, old madwits? Another deception?” Glathra spat. “What sort of trap awaits us down there, hey? You just want us all gone, so you can rule again!”
“I want nothing of the sort,” Vangerdahast snapped. “Other than to know just why you didn’t search the palace well enough to find them yourself, days ago. I would hate to think you were either that incompetent or that much of a traitor.”
Glathra went white. “You dare accuse me of treason?”
“Yes. Twice now. I’ll do it again, if you’re hard of hearing. Foril, will you please order this witch to go down to the stlarning crypt and free the royal magician and the lord warder? I don’t need to sleep anymore, and even I’m getting weary of endless snappish debating.”
A sudden commotion erupted outside the doors, the gruff challenges of veteran Dragons overruled by stern orders-and then the doors were flung wide.
Three Crown mages stood there. Seeing the king in his nightrobe, they hastily went to their knees. “Forgive us, Your Majesty, but there’s grave peril! Statues and suits of armor-solid stone ones, and empty suits, that is! — are on the move, all over the palace! They’re tramping places and rearranging things, and we can’t-”
The wraith-spider chuckled, muttered something, then said, “Sorry. That should all stop now. I hope.”
The war wizards all stared at the spider-thing, and some of the Dragons behind them raised spears as if to try to stab at it over the heads of the gaping mages.
“Behold,” Vangerdahast said gleefully. “Here are the wizards you’ll need, Glathra. You might actually reach the crypt before highsun, if you stop arguing and start obeying!”
Glathra glared at him. “I-”
“Can provide us with no good reason not to go down to the royal crypt to investigate Lord Vangerdahast’s claims,” the king said firmly. “Wherefore, I now give you, Lady Glathra, these explicit orders-you are to free the royal magician and lord warder if you find them, and bring them unharmed here to this chamber without delay, that I may converse with them. You are to take these wizards and all of the loyal Dragons outside my doors except Launcel and Tarimmon, there, who will remain as my guardians. Go. Go now. See that this is done.”
With alacrity Glathra bowed low and replied, “It shall be, Majesty.”
After she’d swept out, she looked back to see if the wraith-spider was offering any menace to the king-but it had vanished.
She hesitated, but the king gave her a cold look. She hurried off toward the nearest stair.
The royal crypt was a long way down from there.
“Th-the Three Dolphins Door,” Neld quavered. “Now, will you stop hitting me?”
Mirt gave him a jovial grin and slap on the back that almost pitched the hostler off the coach and onto the rump of one of the hindmost horses.
“Of course,” the Waterdhavian agreed. “Down ye get, now, an’ run along, an’ I’ll say nothing at all bad about ye to the royal magician. A pleasure, Master Neld-a distinct pleasure!”
Neld said something in an incredulous voice as he launched himself in a heroic leap out from the drovers’ seat to the hard cobbles of the Promenade, quite a distance to one side of the coach.