Thalance and Erlandar both nodded soberly. "We can take orders," the younger Lord Summerstar said quietly. "I'm just glad to have some sort of plan to follow, at last."
He looked down at the silver-haired woman at their feet, where she was settling the last lid onto a tureen, and asked, "Lady Storm, will you lead us?"
"No," she said, rising smoothly. "I have to go and think-and, to cover all of you, hunt shapeshifters while I'm at it." She smiled at them all, and then said briskly, "I believe that side table over there, if you upend it, can bear all the food at once; if two of you carry it like a litter, the rest can guard. Just remember to set it down at once if you're attacked."
"You're going off by yourself?" Broglan asked. "Lady, is that wise?"
Storm rolled her eyes at him. "Broglan, if I'd stuck to what was 'wise' down the years, I'd be long dead. Mystra would have given up on me, and I'd have lived and died a house drudge in some village or other in the North, safe and growing daily more bent and crabbed and frustrated. If I were wise, I'd never have come here-I'd have stayed safely at home working on my farm until word came that Cormyr was awash in blood, and the king and Lord Vangerdahast were able to change their shapes at will, and the realm was whelming for war! Speak to me not of 'wise,' all right?"
"Yes," Thalance told Insprin, "she's definitely a marchioness."
"Definitely," the thin, gray-haired elder wizard agreed.
"Right," Storm said. "Be about it, then. Broglan, before the lot of you leave this chamber, tell Ergluth or whichever officer is at the doors where you're going-and ask him to tell Corathar where to find you when he returns." She started away.
Storm turned, silver hair swirling about her shoulders, and added, "Of course, bear in mind that when you see him again, it might be the foe walking into your midst-but then again, it might just be a scared young mage, of lesser powers than the rest of us."
"I'll test him by asking about his noble past," Erlandar offered.
"If the foe can take the memories of those he slays," Storm reminded him, "he already has those of Athlan, and Pheirauze, and the gods know who else in this kingdom!"
"Get gone," Broglan growled, "before you raise our spirits too high, and make us overconfident!"
They chuckled hollowly, and Storm turned away again.
Thalance watched her go and murmured, "There goes a woman I'd go on my knees to wed …"
"After me, boy," Erlandar told him. "I'm th-"
"No," Broglan said firmly from beside them, startling them both into silence. "After me."
With unhurried confidence, the Bard of Shadowdale strode past the guards-after all, if your enemy can be anywhere, why run? She went up the first flight of stairs she found, and then down the next staircase toward the cellars, only to double back and climb again. There was an unused closet she'd seen on her way to the fire … a gown-room, by the looks of it.
There it was. Storm looked up and down the deserted passage. She cautiously hooked open the door, and found herself looking at the dead, burnt-out husk of a Purple Dragon. She sighed and caught the corpse as it toppled past her, cradling the dead warrior to lay him gently down. The sightless eyes of an empty skull stared up at her.
"Helm or Tempus guard you, soldier," she murmured, and dragged him into the nearest room along the passage-a dusty, sheet-draped guest bedchamber. It would not do for anyone to find him right outside the closet she'd chosen.
She cast swift glances up and down the passage again, but the fear that now gripped servants and armsmen alike meant that they went nowhere alone. No one had even replaced the burned-down torches along this hallway. She wondered briefly if the foe had subsumed the servant who usually did that task, and then shrugged and started to undress.
When she was bare, she dropped her pectoral into one boot, snatched up the scabbarded sword and bundled everything else up around it, and stuffed them all down behind a bucket at the back of the closet. Then she stepped into the small room after them and firmly closed the door, shutting herself into the darkness.
She did not need light to work her spell, just a moment of peace to call it forth. In a drifting moment, she would become an unseen, flying phantom that could wander at will around the keep, spying out shapeshifters and their mischief.
A moment of unguarded dreaming… she was adrift amid fire, both amber flames and silver. Out of them swam the red-scaled head of a dragon, watching her. Its great, dark eye blinked at her … and then seemed to dwindle through the mists … no, it was growing smaller, and turning to become-a vivid, glistening. teardrop on a brassy handle: an ornate metal scepter surmounted by the dragon's eye. She slid past it. It was gone in the mists, and she was starting to be able to see the dark walls of the gown-room around her.
As she rose, featherlike, to fly out into the keep, Storm shook her head in puzzlement. What did the dragon have to do with this?
"Saw through my scheme, did she? Hah! 'Twas but an idle tactic! No one shall escape me! None shall leave Firefall Keep alive! Hahahahahahaha!"
The figure shouting those echoing words lashed out with hands that spat lightning from each finger, scorching the stones of the dark chamber around him. A phantom flew away, as if startled by the outburst, and was chased by deep, bellowing laughter.
The capering, tentacled man making that sound suddenly fell silent, and asked in the icy, patrician tones of Pheirauze Summerstar, "What buffoon disturbs my home?"
He whimpered for a moment, and then said in quite a different voice, "Have they fallen yet? Well, see to it, man! See to it!"
And he raised his hands and hurled fire-a raging, white-hot ball that roared across the chamber and crashed into the far wall, sending flames flying about the room. The man sighed.
"Please," he said in infinitely bored tones, examining nails that swiftly grew into talons. "Spare me."
Then he howled like a hound in despair. He set off at a run, cackling and howling by turns, blasting stone walls, steps, and statues around him with golden-green flame. Stone exploded into rubble on all sides as he raged, trying to sing and bark and spit out words all at once.
"I'm rich, sire, and you cannot trouble me anymore!" he called to a mirror that had gathered dust for over a century-before he shattered it with all the fire he could muster.
"Yes," he breathed a moment later, voice hushed but trembling with emotion. "A Summerstar would do this…"
"All I know is," he snarled, interrupting himself with a harsher, deeper voice, "we as wear the Dragon spends all our spare time dyin' for the king, that's all!"
"What gods-accursed plan …?" he asked the empty air as he capered down a hall.
He whirled around. "He made it," he told the passage with quiet fury, "as if we had never been."
"I–I-" he said in anguish, and went to his knees. His face melted and ran like butter in the sun. He howled with all the strength in his lungs, "Why can't I remember my name?"
That agonized shout echoed down the empty rooms for a long time. "Name, name, name" came faintly back to him, as he held his head in his hands and sobbed.
Or tried to. As he clasped his cheeks, his head melted away from between his cupped hands, and ran down onto the floor, glistening like blood. Though the room was dark, it reflected back a dancing radiance as it flowed across the floor: the flickering shadows of silver flames.
"Take it," Insprin Turnstone told the young noble. "We can worry later if that's mold."
Thalance Summerstar nodded, turned awkwardly with the heap of long, curl-ended bread loaves the wizard had thrust into his hand, and started back on his way. Insprin waved four of the Purple Dragons to follow him and turned back to the dusty corners of the pantry.