No, lying low and keeping his beholders hidden was best, for a while.
He would work through Dardulkyn-he had, after all, managed to destroy everyone who’d seen his tyrants-and use various lesser thralls, servants and carters, to try to discover just which Cormyrean noble besides Marlin Stormserpent commanded a blueflame ghost.
This stealth should keep him away from Elminster’s notice, too. He would wait until the Sage of Shadowdale revealed himself, and then pounce and destroy Elminster again.
“And bury him deep, this time,” he told the cellar fiercely, as the shop bell rang and he started up the stairs. “As often as it takes, until he’s gone forever.”
“Well?” Marlin Stormserpent snapped. It was full morning and foresters would be about, all too soon. His bodyguards should have managed this a lot faster.
“Done, lord,” came the flat, almost sullen reply. “The huntsman and all six lodge guards are dead.”
“Wrap the bodies in the oldest tent of those up in the rafters, and take them to the bear den up by Blackrock, right down in the rocks at its mouth, for the bruins to devour. Don’t be seen, and don’t trail blood from here to there. Leave Ghalhunt here with me.”
“As you command,” the man replied, almost insolently, and strode away.
Shaking his head in exasperation, Marlin went the other way, to where the doors of the Windstag hunting lodge-his, now, for a few nights at least-stood open and waiting.
Windstag could find another huntsman, and any lout of an armsman could be a lodge guard. It wasn’t as if House Windstag lacked coins enough…
Ghalhunt at least had sense enough to light and stoke the firewood that had been left ready in the lodge hearth, to drive the chill damp out.
With a sigh of contentment, Stormserpent settled himself in Windstag’s big lounge chair, right in front of the hearth, and kicked his boots off, the better to toast his cold and aching feet. He’d always coveted that particular chair…
He gave Ghalhunt a nod of thanks as the bullyblade rose from the hearth.
“Just going to fetch more wood in, lord, before any nosy foresters come by and want to know who all the strange faces belong to.”
Stormserpent nodded, satisfied. The shed was perhaps ten strides away; Ghalhunt would be back in no time to get a morningfeast going. At the very thought, his stomach rumbled loudly.
He heard the bullyblade chuckle at that as he went out, the door squealing ever so slightly in the man’s wake.
The next thing he knew, something had been tossed into the fire, scattering sparks. Something round, that set up an angry hiss. Something that stank of… burning hair?
Marlin Stormserpent sat up, rubbing at his eyes. He must have dozed off.
Was that-what was that, in the fire?
A log slumped, the object he was staring at rolled over, and he realized he was looking at Baert Ghalhunt’s dully staring severed head.
But who-?
He tried to look back behind him, but the high wings of the chair were in his way. Blue flames, cold and tireless, were flickering above and behind them, and he grabbed frantically for the Flying Blade. His fingers closed around the familiar, reassuring weighty curves of its hilt.
Then a man he’d never seen before strode into view around the chair, smiling down at him with sword drawn. A cruel smile on the face of a man wreathed in blue flames.
A blueflame ghost, but not one of his!
Then hard, cold hands took hold of him from the other side of the chair, holding his arms with iron strength. He strained to draw his sword, managed to get it halfway out with a sudden jerk-then felt the coldest, keenest pain that had ever blighted his life.
His hand had been hacked off.
His other arm was grabbed by the man who’d walked around the chair to smile at him, and forced down onto the chair arm. A blade wreathed in blue flames chopped down again, and Stormserpent screamed.
He was lost in pain, he was staring in disbelief at the two streaming stumps of his arms-and above them, standing side by side to smile down at him, three blueflame ghosts. Strangers, all of them.
The Flying Blade and the Wyverntongue Chalice were lost to him. He couldn’t call forth his own two blueflame slayers now, to save him.
If it wasn’t too late for any saving…
He could feel his own life flowing out of him, pumping out of him…
This couldn’t be happening! Couldn’t…
He was Lord Marlin Stormserpent! Didn’t they know that? How dare they?
Someone else was strolling unhurriedly around the three ghosts and reaching down long, shapely arms to pluck up the Blade and the Chalice. His Blade and Chalice.
Marlin stared up at her in dimming, dying disbelief. Blearily he beheld a tall, slender, beautiful human woman with a cruel face and dark, rage-filled eyes, clad all in black, with a silver weathercloak around her shoulders. He’d never seen her before, either.
As she set the sword and the cup down on a sidetable he hadn’t the means to reach, Stormserpent saw the bloody point of a dagger protruding from her black-garbed chest, thrusting out between her breasts.
He was fading fast, his lifeblood flowing out of his useless stumps with every heartbeat. He tried to raise them toward her, and his effort earned him a cold sneer.
“W-who are you?” he managed to gasp.
“The Lady of Ghosts,” came the mocking reply. “I gather blueflame ghosts. Yours are a most welcome addition to my collection.”
She strode closer. Marlin stared at the blood-drenched point standing out between her breasts in dull, dying fascination.
She smiled. “Like it? I seek the man who put it there. A well-known wizard named Manshoon. You’ve heard of him, I’m sure, but have you seen him hereabouts? Recently?”
Marlin shook his head.
“Is anyone else in Cormyr collecting blueflame ghosts?”
“One appeared… at the Council,” he replied weakly, tasting his own blood in his mouth. “No one knows who commands it.”
She bent suddenly and took hold of his throat, her grip cruelly tight.
“Do you tell me truth?” she hissed, blue flames suddenly dancing in her eyes.
Marlin shuddered and tried not to choke. “Y-yes.”
Eyes burning into his, she shook him.
Then, suddenly, she was telling him a tale, the words whispered low and fast.
“The one called Manshoon literally stabbed me in the back, years and years ago, and as you see, left his dagger in me, pommel-deep. I’m under a curse and cannot die until the spell is broken-so I live in constant agony. Worse than what you’re feeling now, worm of a noble.”
Marlin had just enough strength left to shake his head in disbelief.
“I am driven,” she hissed into his face. “Driven by my pain and hatred to seek Manshoon’s death. I dare not have his blade plucked out, because doing so will alter the enchantments on my body, and I’ll literally rot while staying alive. Undeath may be my fate, but it’s one I don’t want to choose yet.”
Straightening, she hauled the dying noble up out of the chair to stand with her, hanging from her grip on his throat and shoulders.
“I’m on Manshoon’s trail,” she whispered. “He is the collector of blueflame ghosts; he was busy gathering them all those years ago, when we first met. By assembling my own collection, I hope to lure him out of hiding. To me. Within my reach at last.”
Lord Marlin Stormserpent stared at her glassily, his eyes dark and empty.
“So,” she snarled, “is there anything you can tell me to help me find Manshoon, doomed noble? Anything at all?”
But she was shaking a dead man. While she’d hissed words at him, Stormserpent had died.
With a soft curse, she dashed his limp body to the floor.
The walls of the room, deep on the lowest level of the palace cellars, were furred with dark, sickly-looking green mold, and the air was damp and fetid.