There, as she’d expected, the Fang of Baerovus glowed, as it protruded from the heart of a warding-rune that had kept it from entering the crypt.
She had it with her now.
Oh, this was going to hurt.
Stepping into the little cavern behind the wall, she bent over, choosing where she would fall, making certain she had space enough to lie. The slow, cold drops of water seeping through the stone above her chilled her back as she brushed against them. Yes, this place would do. It would have to.
She undid her leathers above her belt, laying bare her midriff, chose the spot with one careful finger-and slowly thrust the Fang of Baerovus into herself, driving the blade up under her ribs.
Every inch tore a fresh gasp of pain out of her, and she shuddered helplessly.
“I,” she hissed at the unhearing stone around, “am a Highknight of Cormyr. The Highknight of Cormyr!”
Then the agony overwhelmed her, and she sank down with a moan, trembling…
This was her doom, or her last slender hope.
Would her undeath slowly drink the magic of the dagger, healing and strengthening her, despite the agony she now felt?
She dared not move around the palace-where Alusair might find and finish her, or foolish war wizards destroy her. Not as weak as she’d become, even before tasting the Fang.
She would be a long time healing, if this worked at all… a very long time.
But then-she smiled coldly-that was the one thing she did have left. Time.
“What was that?” a Dragon snapped, his sword hissing out.
“A stone tumbling out of a water-soaked wall,” Glathra replied briskly, not slowing in the slightest. “It’s why we no longer use this part of the cellars much. Too many springs seeping out of the stones. Walls were built to seal off the worst parts, but that was centuries back, and they fall, stone by tumbling stone, with no one here to care or rebuild. Don’t worry, there’s quite enough solid rock left to hold the palace in place up above our heads. All four cellar levels and six floors of it, just here.”
“I thought I heard someone moan,” the soldier muttered, looking behind them. Glathra sighed.
“Lord Warder,” she commanded, “you have the right wand handy; are there undead behind us?”
Vainrence smiled, used the wand, and reported, “No.”
Glathra turned to the Dragon, the Highknight with her, and the other three Dragons carefully avoiding her eyes. “Happier?” she asked the soldier briskly.
“Yes, lady,” he replied, managing to convey not even a hint of a sigh. Or a curse.
“Good.” She swept on. “We have much larger worries.”
“Loyal blades,” Vainrence spoke up, “I presume you’ve heard the names Garendor, Argrant, Orkrash, Wyshbryn, and Loagranboydar?”
“The sages who’ve spent years digging through ancient court records, down here somewhere?” the Highknight asked.
Glathra gave him a sharp look, but he added stoutly, “The entire palace knows as much. What we don’t know, any of us, is what they’re looking for. Tidying up and organizing doesn’t take years.”
“Well,” Glathra said tartly, “it can, but yes, those five have spent most of their waking hours in certain deep palace cellars doing rather more than putting records in order. They’ve been tracing royal and noble lineages.”
The Highknight snorted, which earned him another sharp look.
“Yes, clever Sir Hawkmantle, they’re, as you so subtly hint, not merely reading records any commoner can consult in the right royal court offices, any day they choose to. We’re hoping these sages can, by referencing recorded incidents from the past, identify nobles who have, or are likely to have, any inherited personal talent for the Art.”
“You’re hunting the noble who commands a blueflame ghost,” one of the Dragons said quietly.
Glathra stopped dead, so swiftly that they almost ran into her, and gave the man a flat, expressionless look. “I see there’s nothing at all wrong with your wits, Sir Jephford.”
“For years,” the lord warder told the ceiling, “our wizards of war have scorned using such methods to learn more about our nobles’ mastery of magic, trusting instead to scrying and to subversion of-even placing our own mages among-the House wizards hired by all nobles who can afford to do so. Yet this long-practiced vigilance has thus far failed to identify who controls the ghost who slew nobles at the Council, so…”
“You’re willing to try other methods,” Sir Hawkmantle finished the sentence. He did not add “at last,” but his tone of voice made doing so unnecessary.
If the Lady Glathra’s glare could have melted manhoods, he would have suffered such a fate on the spot.
The lord warder flung out an arm to bar Glathra’s way. “I will go first.”
“Lord Vainrence,” Glathra began, “there’s no need-”
“Oh, but there is,” he said firmly. “The little tellsong I cast across the passage here is gone. Meaning powerful magic has been cast, very close by.”
“A tellsong? You never-”
“No, I did not. A secret is something one person knows. Once two know it, that ‘secret’ is better termed ‘realm-wide gossip.’ Wait here.”
Glathra stayed where she was, a little shocked. Vainrence had never been so curt with her before.
A moment later he returned and pointed to two of the Dragons. “With me. You two, guard the Lady Glathra. Swords out.”
Everyone exchanged grim looks.
A few breaths later, Glathra was summoned to join the lord warder and learned why.
The passage they’d been following ended in a large room, which in turn opened into a huge storage cellar. The cellar held the records and the room where the sages worked, in a crowded den of chairs, floating glowstones for lamps, and tables.
No longer. Not only were there no men to be seen nor any hovering glowstones, the furniture and every last record had been reduced to ashes.
Including five neat little piles, standing in a line along a great rectangle of ash that marked where a table had been.
The conflagration had raged long enough ago that all smoke and smell had fled, and everything was cold. Yet a lingering, sickly yellow-green glow played and flickered feebly here and there among the ashes, from the magic that had done this.
“Treason,” Glathra whispered. “Right here, beneath our feet. Beneath the king.”
“Stand back,” Vainrence ordered, spreading his arms. “I must try to learn what befell here.”
Glathra turned and made shooing motions, frowning at the Highknight, who seemed reluctant to move.
He and one of the Dragons obeyed as the lord warder began a long and careful incantation.
Glathra turned back to face him, to intently watch the spell’s results. It was hard for any one person to notice all the details when such a revelation took shape, because so much was revealed so quickly ere it all faded. A second casting would be only a poor echo of the first, a third a ghost of the second, and so on.
Vainrence cast the spell unhurriedly, careful and precise, finishing with a careful flourish.
And the world exploded.
Sir Eldur Hawkmantle was quick. As the blast erupted in front of him, he sprang back, trying to twist around in the air-which promptly gave him a hard shove in his ribs and in a whirling instant slammed him hard into a passage wall that had been far behind him.
He lost consciousness for a moment amid the rolling, booming echoes and swirling dust, but when he was aware again and could move, he discovered he and one wincing and groaning Purple Dragon were the only folk coming to their feet.
Vainrence had unwittingly triggered a waiting trap. A blast of some sort that had-he stared at ashen corpses, crumbling as he watched-fried the other three Dragons, because they happened to be closest.
He dimly remembered seeing Glathra and Vainrence scream, brief tongues of flame spurting from their eyes and mouths ere they’d toppled. Wincing at that memory, he went to them.