He’d long since discovered Tulbard’s weakness: buttered snails. Buttered snails served in spiced wine, to be specific. As prepared by either Gocklin’s or The Bright Sammaer, rival exclusive upstairs dining clubs along the Promenade. So if Tulbard wasn’t out prying into someone else’s business, he was likely to be at either Gocklin’s, or …
There. Gocklin’s. The scrying image showed Tulbard clearly, alone at a back corner table, belching politely behind his hand as he applied himself to a second heaped platter of steaming hot snails.
Manshoon teleported himself there, to a bare stretch of elegantly tiled floor beside an unoccupied table at the far side of the back alcove the haughty club staff had relegated the war wizard to-and fed Tulbard a generously fatal amount of stabbing lightning. It crackled all around the war wizard, clawing at a suddenly visible shielding around the astonished man … that collapsed to the floor but drank the last winking sparks of the lightning as it did so.
Manshoon struck again, using the swiftest and most unobtrusive spell he had ready. A forcedagger, that struck invisibly wherever he pointed his finger. If Tulbard wasn’t wearing any protection over his heart …
Ah, but Tulbard was. A molded, silk-sheathed throat- and chest-plate. Evidently other upstanding citizens had been annoyed by Tulbard’s diligence in the past. Or the man feared the entire world was out to get him.
Manshoon settled for slicing the war wizard’s fingers to ribbons, and ruining the spell the man was desperately trying to cast.
Snails finally forgotten, the man surged to his feet, so Manshoon obligingly hamstrung him.
Tulbard crashed onto the table, then to his knees, trying to sob out something. Probably a spell.
“Just die, annoyingly persistent Crown mage,” Manshoon murmured, advancing out of his corner.
It was perhaps a dozen strides to where Tulbard struggled on the tiles, but before the future emperor of Cormyr had taken two of them, a noble who’d been dining at a table not far away had lifted his fingers from his fingerbowl, dried them, taken a scepter from his belt-and walked across the room to shield the stricken war wizard.
Manshoon now faced a stern-looking lord who was going gray and running to fat. Lord … Tauntshaw, wasn’t it? One of the wealthy city lords, an investor and landowner. Who was aiming that scepter as if he knew how to use it.
With a sigh of disgust, Manshoon sent a spell at him that should have him shrieking in fear, wetting himself, and fleeing headlong through the club. A noisier frill than most archmages sought, when indulging in murder, but-
Hrast it if the meddling lord wasn’t protected by a shielding spell, too! Was everyone in Suzail a dabbler in the Art, or did they all just have spare coins enough to buy small arsenals of magics they fancied they might just need someday?
Lord Tauntshaw’s scepter spat howling death at Manshoon.
Who sneered, as his many-layered shieldings easily foiled it, and kept walking. He’d have that scepter, and leave two victims rather than one …
Men hastened nearer from all over the club, and Manshoon saw wands in the hands of several house wizards, and nobles brandishing all manner of toys.
No. Another time. Sraunter’s cellar beckoned.
The unknown mage who’d been stalking toward Lord Tauntshaw-and the moaning, weeping wizard of war on the floor behind him-vanished in mid-step.
A house wizard cast a swift spell. It made a soft white radiance blossom where the man had been, a glow that roved around hastily, then faded away.
“He’s gone,” its caster announced. “Not lurking and invisible. Nor will he or anyone else soon be able to teleport back into where I just searched.”
Many crowded around the wounded man, and around Lord Tauntshaw, offering congratulations. Lord Phaelam gave Tauntshaw a friendly pat on the arm. “Deadly little toy you have there. Well done. I didn’t think you even liked war wizards.”
“I don’t,” Lord Tauntshaw said shortly. “Yet I like even less attacks upon the institutions of our kingdom. To attack a wizard of war is to assault Cormyr-and if we don’t defend our fair realm, it will fall, and we shall have nothing.”
He turned back to his own table, and the dressed roast that would be cold by now, and added over his shoulder, “Fittingly, for we shall deserve nothing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Unnh,” Mirt told the whirling-past world, wincing as his thighs started to really ache. “I’m getting too old for this. Hrast that interfering noble! I want that coach back!”
The world offered no reply.
’Twas being just as helpful as it usually was. Underneath him, his borrowed horse merely tossed its head and relieved itself one more time, not slowing in the slightest.
Not that he wanted it to. Mirt turned for another cautious look back. Aye, they were still right behind him, still hot for his blood.
He’d ridden far and fast, and that had to be Halfhap ahead, just over the rise.
Ah, so it was-but, hrast and damn, there was a mounted Purple Dragon patrol, outbound from Halfhap, on the road beyond the rise.
They moved to stop him, of course. Mirt bellowed at them and waved wildly at them to move aside, but his spent horse was slowing and shying already, he wasn’t going to manage it-
“Curse you!” he shouted at the Dragon officers who closed in to intercept him. “Don’t you let folk use the roads you build?”
“Hold!” they both commanded sternly, rather than answering him.
Mirt looked back over his shoulder. The pursuit was thundering right along, and he could see Purple Dragons among them. Naed.
“I’m holding,” he growled at the patrol blade who’d just taken hold of his horse’s bridle, “but I need you to listen.”
The thunder of hooves behind him grew, and some of the riders were shouting to the patrol, to catch and hold this “dangerous thief, this noble slayer!”
Noble slayer? Oh, aye, the coach …
Mirt shouted Durncaskyn’s message into the faces of the frowning Dragons who were surrounding him.
Some of them at least were listening. He could tell that from their faces-in the last few moments before his pursuers, riding hard, crashed right into the midst of the patrol.
Horses reared, kicked, screamed, and bucked, men fell off everywhere, other men cursed or shouted orders, someone blew a war horn, someone else drew his sword and started hacking, a dozen Purple Dragon blades sang out of their scabbards, and-
“Bugger this,” Mirt growled to himself, somersaulting forward out of his saddle into the ditch. If he could roll and manage not to break anything, come up and relieve one of these stoneheads of his horse, and get past …
The spell that struck him made everything seem to hush, so it was in an eerie peace that Mirt noticed that everything-shouting men pointing at him, rearing horses, swords being swung-was happening slowly. Very slowly.
Then his gaze was caught and held by the dark, level eyes of a man riding with the Halfhap patrol, who had to be a war wizard. The young, severe-looking man who’d enspelled him.
“Listen to me,” Mirt tried to call to him. “I need you to … to …”
The silent, slowing world went away, except for those severe and disapproving eyes. The mouth beneath them wasn’t smiling, not at all …
“You have a visitor, saer,” the Purple Dragon murmured, unlocking Mirt’s manacles. “He’s been searched thoroughly, but beware-some of these nobles have poison hidden away in right sly places.”