“Spoken royal promises,” Lady Marantine said crisply, “are worth the proclamations they’re not written on.”
The king grinned like a young lad enjoying himself hugely, and turned to Ganrahast. The stone-faced Royal Magician reached under his nightcloak and produced a scroll, which he unrolled with a flourish to display to those at the table.
It was an already-written, signed, and sealed royal proclamation, outlining all that the king had just promised.
Amarune looked at the large, uncrumpled parchment, and then at Ganrahast’s chest, and shook her head. “How did you carry all that?”
“Magic,” he assured her solemnly. “It’s all done by magic.”
The drow who was now Elminster stopped thinking of how she might train young Rune-and the difficulties that would undoubtedly attend her appearing to Amarune Whitewave in the body of a dark elf, albeit a beautiful female drow-and stepped to one side, sinking down among the stalagmites and rubble nigh the tunnel wall.
I heard it, too, Symrustar said. A weapon being readied.
El nodded silently. Thanks to El’s very recent work with silver fire and the spellbooks in the ruined drow citadel, ironguard was one of the spells she could now call on at will, without incantation, gesture, or components. She now did so. But it afforded no protection at all against enchanted darts or other weapons, or against poison. If need be she could use the silver fire-of which she still had a leaking overabundance, thanks to what the drow of the citadel had done to Symrustar, but she did not want to spend it in such a manner if she could avoid it.
She heard another tiny sound, the most fleeting of clinks. Metal, touching stone or other metal as it was moved; probably a blade being stealthily drawn, in another spot from the first noise that had alerted her. So more than one steel-armed foe awaited, just ahead. Drow, most likely, given the largely successful stealth, but they could be dwarves or gnomes or even humans. Now, which of those foes would show the most patience?
El had been making good time along a tunnel deserted in the wake of the glaragh, and had walked far from the riven citadel, moving faster than any wary pursuer not using wings or scuttling along the passage ceiling. She’d kept close watch on the ceiling, both before and behind, and seen nothing more than occasional small bats, beetles, and spiders. The glaragh had evidently devoured or frightened away anything larger and more intelligent.
Yet she’d passed through several caverns where the great worm could have taken a different route. She’d kept following the breeze, because the tunnel, though far from straight, was tending onward in the general direction she desired to head. The glaragh might not have taken this particular tunnel, this far. Fair fortune, even for the most favored of Tymora, only lasted so long … and the luck of Elminster of Shadowdale, it seemed, had now turned.
Her ears caught the faintest of hisses, sibilants of words she couldn’t quite make out. Someone whispering in Undercommon into the ear of someone else; someone with a high-pitched, light, soft speaking voice. Drow, or she was a real arachnomancer.
Not that this new body would protect her in the slightest. Priestesses of Lolth were not loved at the best of times, and if caught alone were likely to be …
You have been caught alone, El, Symrustar reminded her tartly. So, now?
Now, of course, it was spell hurling time.
For an archmage with mustered spells ready, this would have been a mere moment’s concern. For a prepared and unharmed Chosen of Mystra, with Mystra and the Weave to call upon at will, even less of a challenge. But for what was left of this particular Chosen, right now …
El backed away around a buttress of joined stone pillars-fused stalactites and stalagmites-surrounded by a small forest of lesser stone fangs, and sank down again.
Was that movement, across the tunnel?
Aye, someone seeking to steal forward and flank her. Over there, too, a flash of movement-not forward or back, but a raised hand flicking fingers in intricate patterns. The silent sign language used by drow. Letting a tight smile cross her face, El cast a long, careful spell that would shape stone, on the fissured roof of the tunnel ahead, directly above where most of those waiting to pounce on her were probably waiting. If a worker-of-Art forced stone into a shape that was anchored insufficiently-a large inverted mushroom, say-then sought to rapidly flatten it out …
With a sharp crack and roar, a lot of stone ceiling plummeted down, to crash amid shouts and shrieks, shatter, and hurl shards in all directions.
El spared no time watching or gloating. She was already snatching out knives and turning to face-
Her stealthy outflanker. The dark elf sprang up over rubble along the far wall and raced toward her, firing a handbow as he came.
El’s first flung knife met the bow’s dart in midair, sending both missiles skittering wildly aside. El’s second snarled across a bracer on the charging drow’s raised forearm. And El’s third found one of the drow warrior’s eyes, and made the last moments of his charge collapse from a hard sprint into a wavering, dying stagger.
El danced back down the tunnel, turning to face the area where she’d brought the ceiling down. More drow warriors rushed her from there, some bleeding from jagged cuts made by flying shards of stone. Males, every one, a scarred and ragtag bunch clad in all mismatched manner of salvaged, patched, and no doubt stolen armor. Outcasts, seven strong-no, there were nine or more. None of whom would revere or obey a lone priestess, no matter how tall and menacing she seemed.
A scrape of sword on stone behind El made her spin around and leap for the tunnel wall at the same time.
Five more drow males were coming at her from behind, grinning unpleasantly.
Surrounded, greatly outnumbered, and-
Doomed?
“Symrustar,” El told her gently, “ye’re not helping.’
Drow rushed in from all sides.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Royal Magicians and the senior courtiers they most trusted have been many things down the long years of Obarskyr rule over the Forest Kingdom, but one thing they were not-often-was fools.
Wherefore it had long been the practice in Cormyr to order matters such that one official or soldier watched over another, as part of daily duty. So it was that in Castle Irlingstar, Lord Constable Gelnur Farland was warden of Irlingstar’s prisoners, commander of those who guarded them and responsible for that guarding, but did not have command of the keep itself. Above Farland was the seneschal of Irlingstar, Marthin Avathnar, who gave direction to the lord constable and was in charge of the physical upkeep of the castle, but in truth had the most essential task of being a watchdog over any lord constable who might get too friendly with such urbane and wealthy noble prisoners.
Avathnar was a pompous little man, short and stout but proud of his appearance when he strode around Irlingstar in his brightly polished silvered armor. Yet he was neither dull-witted nor lax in his diligence, and had reported three lord constables in his time, all of whom had promptly been reassigned and one of whom had soon met with an unfortunate “accident” that many suspected hadn’t been accidental at all. Word of that had reached him, Avathnar knew, as a gentle reminder not to stray from the path of diligent loyalty.
He hadn’t the slightest intention of doing so. Cormyr was the fairest land in all the Realms, not to mention the best place to dwell in any hopes of enjoying a retirement to a modest country estate with a decent cellar of wine, boar and rothe enough to eat roasts every night if one wasn’t sick of them, and a fair young wife to wait upon one’s needs-even if one was short and unsteady and afflicted with bunions.