There was a stir among the guards, and he could see crossbows being lowered. They obviously recognized the passenger who’d alighted.
“Open the gate,” came a crisp, simple order.
Mirt hid a smirk. The voice was a very good imitation of the Lady Glathra Barcantle’s shrill of excitement, but it was Elminster’s very good imitation.
And now the guards were opening the gate, and “Glathra” was climbing back into the coach.
Mirt waited for the rap on the coach roof before he urged the horses forward again, and they rumbled out of Suzail into the last dark hours of the night.
Or were they the darkest hours of the morning?
Even after twenty seasons of leading raids in those dark hours, Mirt had never decided.
He waited until they were out of bowshot from the walls before opening the little hatch that let a drover talk with passengers, and asking, “Where now?”
“We take the coach to the paddocks nigh Eastgate,” Elminster’s voice came up to him, “and leave it there, hobbling the horses. Then we go for a long walk on Jester’s Green, well out from the walls. We’ll go well west, around to the Field Gates. Accompanied by this pet war wizard of ours, we’ll trudge back into the city through them at daybreak, looking suitably different than we do now. We’ll be burying those shackles.”
“Oh?” Mirt growled. “What’re ye going to make me look like?”
“Old Lord Helderstone,” Elminster told him. “He has no heirs and has dwelt in seclusion in Sembia for years-no one in Suzail should know that he’s dead yet. I know where a handsome fortune in coins can be had, and ye can lord it up in a highnose inn as long as they hold out. Storm will be thy servant. I’ll make Rune look like a retired Highknight I recall, who died a few months back, who’s now in Suzail and investigating just why rich old Lord Helderstone has returned to Cormyr-in other words, which faction of treason-plotting nobles he’s drenching in floods of coins-and the rest of the time she can look like Amarune and be with Arclath, the two of them keeping well away from ye.”
“While I do what?”
“Wench, trade, work a few swindles, get rich-in short, be thyself,” El replied. “No noble of Cormyr would spend a score of summers in Sembia who did not love coins and the winning of them.”
“And what will ye be doing?”
“Trying to hunt down and slay Manshoon, and hold Cormyr together, and find and come to command or destroy all the blueflame ghosts, of course.”
Mirt shook his head slowly. “Ye’re as crazed as ever.”
“Of course.”
Mirt could hear Elminster’s grin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The morning sun was reaching bright fingers in through the windows. None of the dozen senior wizards of war gathered around the long table, which almost filled this locked room on an upper floor of the sprawling royal court, cared a whit about sunlight, however.
Their minds were on darker things, specifically, the foremost current threats to the realm.
The royal magician of Cormyr and the lord warder had been too long absent from such conversations, and there was much to catch up on.
“Of course our tirelessly treasonous nobles are brewing civil war in earnest in the wake of this disastrous Council,” the Lady Glathra was declaring, “but there are other, smaller players we must now pay attention to.”
Ganrahast held up his hand to stop her. “I want you to list them for us in a moment, lady, but first-Erzoured?”
“Our ongoing work to, ah, take care of every crony and ally he develops,” a thin and dour mage replied, “continues, and he remains isolated, as he has found himself time and time again. Many of the nobles’ factions and Sembian and Suzailan merchant cabals are reaching out to him right now, but he has joined none of them, yet-and all of them fear the possibility he’s a spy for the king.”
Dark chuckles made note of that irony, ere the royal magician stilled them with his hand again and asked, “Glathra? Those smaller players?”
“Targrael, the death knight who believes herself the true guardian of Cormyr. The rival claimant for that role, the ghost of the Princess Alusair. Whoever sent the eye tyrant to attack us last night. The scuttling wraith-spider-I know of no better name for it-who claims to be the infamous Vangerdahast and certainly commands as much about the palace as that royal magician was reputed to-statues, and the like-not to mention the escaped Elminster, and his companion Storm Silverhand, who for some years have stolen magic from us, in the palace.”
“Have any of these joined in common cause with ambitious nobles, while we’ve been… asleep?” Vainrence asked with a frown.
“Not that we know of,” Glathra said slowly, after no one else ventured a reply, “yet all of them are capable of such treason.”
Ganrahast snorted. “So is any dog or passing falcon. We must avoid raising phantoms and fearing them. The real foes are formidable enough.”
“I do have my suspicions about one of us,” Glathra added, raising a finger, “though I admit it is early yet for my alarm to have gained any serious substance. Yet, we all follow our hunches or noses or itches… and this is my newest.”
Ganrahast waved at her to continue. “Raise your suspicions. Please.”
“Welwyn Tracegar,” she replied bluntly. “Last night I ordered him to take three persons into custody for questioning-Storm Silverhand, Lord Arclath Delcastle, and a mask dancer of the city who seems to be descended from the notorious Elminster, one Amarune Whitewave. He did this but has since vanished, along with the prisoners and a man calling himself Mirt, who claims to be a Lord of Waterdeep. Though that name was better known in Waterdeep about a century ago.”
“We can all banish our suspicions about Wizard of War Tracegar,” Ganrahast announced firmly, “and leave him be, to operate without hindrance.”
Glathra leaned forward to look at him, frowning. “Why?”
“I’ve taken counsel with Vangerdahast-or what is left of him-and we have agreed on this,” the royal magician replied curtly. “Ask me no more.”
Eyebrows went up all around the table, but Glathra merely sat back and asked the ceiling, “Will there come a day when someone else besides a former royal magician-who richly earned himself a very fell reputation-will decide things for the Forest Kingdom?”
“Vangerdahast swore to dedicate his life to guard Cormyr, and he is still guarding Cormyr. Guided by wisdom and experience none of us can match,” Ganrahast replied quietly. “In this, I am willing to trust him for a little longer.”
“How little?”
“We’ll see.”
This cellar was beginning to feel like a prison cell. Manshoon paced it, thinking dark thoughts.
He was back in the body of Sraunter, who was given to such gloomy thinking-but the worrying that was consuming him at that moment was all his own.
He could find no trace of Mreldrake or Targrael-or Talane!
Dared he creep back into Understeward Corleth Fentable’s mind, using one of his wagon drovers, who supplied the palace with foodstuffs daily, to reach Fentable? And so seek to learn the current thinking of the Crown?
Or was it time to lie low, going nowhere near the palace? He could instead take fresh measure of the war wizards, with an eye to which ones he could isolate and destroy or ruin with scandal, either by entrapment or deceit.
It went against his desires to lurk idle and let others seize power-it had angered him just to return his beholders to hiding in the cellar-but perhaps that was the best path to take over the next few months. He could work through Dardulkyn to keep some sort of watch over the various ambitious nobles…
He nodded, feeling grim.
He’d succumbed once again to the urge to take a direct hand in things, and the results had been disastrous.
Two beholders gone, for scant gain, and his presence very close to being revealed or at least suspected strongly enough to set the wizards of war to hunting him.