“Yes,” he murmured aloud. “Magic seems to fail again and again, so let us try older, more brutal methods.”
He went to gather what he’d need to work a spell to reach out to all of his subverted nobles at once. Well, all who were still in Suzail.
He needed them to hurry to Delcastle Manor at once. With their freshest poison and favorite weapons.
“Lord Durncaskyn?”
The voice was polite, and cultured, and unfamiliar. Durncaskyn looked up from his desk.
A well-dressed man with the sort of slender walking stick only nobles and the wealthiest Sembian merchants used was standing at the door to his office, an expensive leather scroll case in his hand.
“Yes?”
“King’s Lord Lothan Durncaskyn?”
“Yes,” Durncaskyn repeated. “The king can only afford one local lord here in Immerford, let me assure you. And who might you be?”
The man strode to Durncaskyn’s desk, uncapped one end of the scroll case, and with a deft flick of his wrist spun a document out of it, flipped it up in to the air with a practiced flourish to unfurl it, and thrust it at Durncaskyn.
“I am known professionally as Rantoril, and I’m here to honor this agreement.”
Durncaskyn took the parchment, but kept his eyes on its deliverer-as the man smoothly drew something long and slender and steely out of the case, and drew it back to launch a stabbing lunge.
Durncaskyn was already hurling himself and his chair over backward, so he missed seeing whatever it was that felled Rantoril, but he heard the meaty smack of its strike. And the heavy thud of the assassin hitting the floor.
He rolled to his feet, snatching out his belt dagger, and … found himself ringed by booted feet.
He looked up.
The tall and slender woman smiling down at him had hair as silver as polished ceremonial court plate armor-hair that hung down to her knees. She was dressed like a forester, in leathers and high boots, and wore a long sword at her hip that looked like it had come from the royal armory.
“Storm Silverhand,” she introduced herself gently, reaching out a hand to help him up.
Durncaskyn took it, and he was astonished at her strength. The owners of the other boots proved to be youngish men and women who were also clad as foresters, but had normal hair. One or two of them might even have been Immerfolk. Some of them were lifting Rantoril’s limp body and bearing it away.
“Who … what …?”
“I’m the Marchioness Immerdusk, traveling the realm in the name of the king. These good people are Harpers-as am I-and your recent visitor was a Sembian who’s never been known as Rantoril before. He’ll sleep for a day or two. He was hired by Lord Leskringh.”
“Leskringh? That old-”
“-hind end of a rothe, as you were going to say, has been taken into custody and will be tried by his peers within a tenday, with Rantoril giving evidence. I’m afraid one of your clerks was badly wounded; I’ll be leaving a Harper in his place to guard you.”
She clasped Durncaskyn’s arm affably, steered a goblet of his own wine into his hand, then strode for the door.
Durncaskyn blinked. “But … where are you going?”
“To greet the relief force Mirt is bringing you, before one of them strikes down the wrong person and plunges all this end of Cormyr into civil war,” she replied sweetly, without slowing.
“No,” Arclath breathed. “Gods, no.”
A moment ago, their trudge to the gates of Delcastle Manor had been a matter of weariness. Until they’d seen the gates standing open, askew, bodies sprawled beyond them.
Arclath had rushed forward, Rune racing to stay at his side and Elminster right behind.
Arclath’s home looked like a battlefield.
There were pools of blood, buzzing with flies, inside the gates and up the drive, with forever-silent Delcastle retainers and splendidly dressed men-Great Gods, prominent noblemen of Cormyr! — lying dead everywhere.
They’d been much hacked, their lifeless staring eyes almost hidden beneath swarming flies. The fighting had been with swords and daggers, and it had been brutal.
The doors of the mansion itself yawned open, with dead men heaped on the steps. Arclath rushed inside, calling his mother’s name, with El and Rune right behind him. They found more dead Delcastle servants, and more dead nobles.
Aside from the flies, there was a terrible silence. No moaning wounded, no defiant men with blades … just the dead.
Arclath made for his mother’s bedchamber.
Lady Marantine Delcastle was sitting propped up against the end of her palatial bed, her legs pinned under three dead nobles. More slaughtered lords made a thick and bloody carpet all the way to the door.
She was covered with blood, her head slumped onto her shoulder. A slender sword, crimson and black with darkening gore, had fallen from her hand, but she still clutched a dagger, ready on her breast.
Her fine gown was slashed to ribbons, one shoulder carved open to the bone. Many blades had pierced her.
“Mother!” Arclath wept, clawing dead men aside to uncover her, reaching to cradle her.
At his touch, she stiffened and whimpered. El cast a swift spell to heal, and another to banish pain.
Arclath’s look was beseeching. “Can you save her?”
El shook his head, slowly and grimly. “Too many poisons warring in her-every last one of these lords must have tainted their blades. Only the poisons struggling in her veins has kept her alive this long, but … no. ’Twould need a god, Arclath, and I’ve never been one of those.”
He reached out to cup Marantine’s cheek, to lift her head upright. “Yet the pain is gone from her now. That much I can do.”
Arclath embraced his mother fiercely, his arms trembling, and kissed her.
She opened her eyes and managed a twisted smile up at him through his tears.
“Be happy with your dancer, my son,” she gasped, blood welling out of her mouth with every word. “Live long, and win yourself a happier ending than I have …”
Then she slumped, her eyes fixed on his, going dark and endlessly staring.
Lord Delcastle collapsed in racking sobs. Amarune cradled his shoulders, holding him close.
Elminster watched them for a moment, then reached out and gently stroked Marantine Delcastle’s eyelids down over her staring eyes. One wouldn’t stay down, retreating to give her a grotesque wink.
“This is enough, and more than enough,” the Sage of Shadowdale snarled suddenly, standing bolt upright. He spun away and stalked across the heaped dead, reaching out with his mind as he went.
He was three rooms away before he found a noble, buried under three others, who wasn’t quite dead yet.
The mind was going dark, sliding inexorably into extinction, but there was still a glimmer …
Elminster plunged savagely into that dying mind, to read whys and whos and …
“Manshoon! Of course!”
He stalked through the house and out into the Delcastle gardens.
Looking up into the sky, with the bloodstained sward of the manor grounds stretching out on all sides, he threw back his head and furiously called Manshoon to battle.
He did not have to wait long.
Rising into the sky above bustling Suzail came six, seven … nine spherical hulks the size of small coaches, gaping-mawed flying spheres that looked dead and rotting, covered with snowy and sickly green furred molds-yet moving, their dangling eyestalks lifting and writhing as folk shouted and ran, on the streets below.
As one, they drifted purposefully toward Delcastle Manor.
The only man standing in the Delcastle gardens watched them come, his lip curling. Manshoon had sent his beholders rather than coming in person. Of course.
Elminster raised his hands, murmured a spell that smote undead with silver fire-and blasted them down.