She turned back to Starbridge. “The ring, sir.”
Eskrel Starbridge seemed to be struggling with himself. He glared at her, face shifting through a variety of not-quite-readable expressions, then tore open his collar, plucked forth the little bag she’d spoken of, and produced the ring.
Storm took it stepped forward and kissed him full on the mouth, put an arm around him and waltzed her way around behind him as he was still blinking in astonishment, stepped back-and was gone.
Leaving the Cormyreans blinking at each other across a hollow full of unconscious men.
Narulph broke the silence with a sudden, angry oath. “You let her get away! Without even telling us how to get the horses!”
Starbridge shook his head slowly. “When she kissed me, his name and a word just appeared in my mind: ‘Denneth Rhardantan,’ and ‘glimmerdeep.’ ”
He shook himself again, as if awakening, and snapped, “Get these dolts awake-they work for the Crown, so be gentle-and let’s be finding the trail to Mistledale. If this council goes as ill as I fear it will, I want to be back in Cormyr before it erupts into war!”
His command all stared at him; he gave them a glare, waved his arms, and roared, “Did you hear me? Move!”
They moved. All except the war wizards Mereld and Lemmeth.
“Sir Highknight,” Mereld asked quietly, “are you all right? What else did she do to you?”
Eskrel Starbridge stared back at them for a moment and then said, “I’m under no glamour, if that’s what you fear. Put down those sticks, Lemmeth; they’re not wands. She just took them from the kindling to make fools think they were seeing a wizard with wands, so they’d leave him be. She told me that, too.”
He started across the hollow. “And she gave me a look into her mind,” he added in a whisper. “I don’t think I’ll be sleeping for some while. I know now what real loneliness feels like.”
The two war wizards stepped into his way, wearing frowns. “We’d better get you to-”
Starbridge gave them a wry grin and shook his head. “I’ll be all right. You see, I know now what true love feels like, too.”
“What’s wrong?” Marlin Stormserpent snapped.
Windstag was too out of breath and too terrified to be coherent. He put his head down almost against Marlin’s belly, gasping and shuddering. “Get us inside! Magic-don’t know whose-yours? — snatched us here!”
Marlin bundled the three nobles through the door and slammed it in a whirlwind of haste, then rushed them along a dark passage, up some stairs, and into a room in Stormserpent Towers that none of the three had ever seen before. The Lords Dawntard and Sornstern promptly fainted.
Marlin gave them a grim look then snapped at Windstag, “Catch your breath, then tell me your tale.”
Nodding, head down, and panting too hard to speak, Windstag fumbled in the breast of his disarranged jerkin and brought out-a glowing hand axe!
“Ha ha!” Marlin burst out, snatching it from him. “Well done! Oh, well done!”
And he rushed from the room, chortling in triumph.
Broryn Windstag fought to get in two gasping breaths more of air, then forced himself into a run, up and after Stormserpent.
Who was luckily still visible, racing up a narrow servants’ stair in the dimly lit distance. Windstag struggled after him, lungs burning, lurching like a drunken man in his pain and weariness, but clawing his way up the stairs and keeping Marlin-or at least the glowing axe-in sight.
Stormserpent ended up in the room where he always met with them. Axe in hand, he spun around, pointed at Windstag, and commanded, “Be still. Don’t move or speak until I’m done with the ritual.”
He turned away without waiting for a reply, so Windstag lurched to his usual chair and collapsed in it. Where he leaned on the table, still gasping loudly, able to do little more than stare at Marlin Stormserpent.
Who turned away for a moment, his elbow moving as if his fingers were busy getting something out of his own clothing, then turned back to face the table and Windstag.
Holding the axe up as if saluting with it, Marlin read from a scrap of parchment that he hadn’t been holding moments earlier. “Arruthro.”
That word seemed to roll away across a greater distance than the room could contain-and the air darkened. At first Windstag thought it was his own labored breathing that was making things seem that way, but then he felt a tension, almost a singing, in the air, too.
That definitely hadn’t been there, before.
“Tar lammitruh arondur halamoata,” Stormserpent announced, speaking loudly and slowly.
The room seemed to grow colder. Windstag swallowed a curse.
“Tan thom tanlartar,” Marlin added-and the hand axe silently erupted in weird blue fire. Raging flames raced down his arm to the elbow and then wreathed it and the axe in an ongoing inferno that-Windstag stared-seemed to cause Stormserpent no pain at all, nor even scorch his clothing. No heat was coming from it, only a deepening chill.
“Larasse larasse thulea,” Marlin declaimed, and the room went icy.
An instant later, the blue flames sprang from the blade of the axe, a flood of fire that arced to the floor and then rebounded up again in an upright column, a surging, rising thing that grew and grew. With a darkness at the heart of those rushing flames that slowly … became a man.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
At the sight of a man in the heart of the blue flames, Marlin Stormserpent laughed in triumph-but his mirth faltered when the flames fell to the floor with a crash, like the contents of an upended bucket of water, and were suddenly gone.
Leaving behind someone who was not wreathed in endless blue flames like Langral and Halonter had been.
Stormserpent joined Windstag in gape-mouthed, astonished staring.
Standing in his meeting room was an unlovely man in rumpled leathers who was stout-no, fat-and wrinkled with age and hard living. And who was staring back at him with a shrewd, measuring look.
“W-who are you? One of the Nine?” Marlin managed to ask when he found his voice again.
“Do I look like a bare-behind dancing girl? The Naughty Nine are all taller than me, lad, and far more shapely, too-though I’ll agree they don’t make cozy lasses like they used to! Nay, lad, I’m no dancer, whate’er yer preferences. I’m a bit of a trader and not much more, these days, though I guess ’tis no secret I’m a lord of Waterdeep.”
“Whaaat?”
“Nay, nay, no need for awe and astonishment. I,” the old man said sardonically, drawing himself up in mimicry of a grand ruler and striking a heroic pose, “am Mirt. Sometimes called the Moneylender, and more often-hem-called much worse things.”
Marlin stared in disbelief, growing a frown, then swiftly tried to force the old man back into the hand axe, as he could control Langral and Halonter.
Nothing happened.
“Sit down!” he snapped. “And-and cover your eyes with your hands!”
Mirt the Moneylender lifted one bristling eyebrow. “Children’s games, is it? I always wondered what wealthy younglings got up to when-”
“This one, a lord of Waterdeep?” Windstag sneered scornfully. “He sounds like a merchant from the docks!”
Mirt dispensed a dour look. “I am a merchant from the docks, loud buck! And who might ye be, with yer scorn and yer fancy clothes? Ye look like nobles, both of ye, but I know every last born noble of the city, lass and jack, an’-”
“We are nobles of Cormyr,” Marlin Stormserpent snapped. “And you stand in Stormserpent Towers in the fair city of Suzail, right now. ‘Now’ being the Year of the Ageless One, as it happens. I doubt Waterdeep would suffer the likes of you to be among its lords these days!”