“Where are you headed?” one of them asked softly.
“To the high mages working on the mythal,” Storm replied politely, not slowing.
The elves frowned, neither stepping aside. “How is it that you know-?”
Storm dodged between them with a liquid shift of her hips that lifted Arclath’s eyebrows appreciatively, and murmured, “I was one of several who suggested the augmentations.”
The elves started after her, but then stopped and sighed as Arclath went wide around them one way, Amarune did the same in the other direction, and Storm turned around to watch, from well beyond them now.
“It would be wiser, humans-” one of the elves began, but Storm shook her head and smiled.
“I’ve never quite had leisure enough to wait to become wiser,” the silver-haired bard told the sentries. “I’ve always just had to go ahead and do things now.” A few retreating steps later she added brightly, “ ’Tis our curse, we short-lived humans!”
Then she turned and hurried over a little ridge, to come down through duskwoods into a landscape of little lawns and grassy paths and curving stone walls amid the trees, where the wild forest gave way to soaring elven architecture.
Arclath and Amarune joined her, looking around in pleasure at the sweeping curves and spires of the City of Song. The fighting hadn’t yet reached this far, but the litter of war was everywhere.
And so were the sentries. None of the elves who stepped forth to challenge the three hurrying humans had ready bows or spears ready to hurl, thanks to the mythal augmentations, but they were far less than pleased at “outlanders” seeking to get to the high mages, and Storm had to talk her way past sentry post after sentry post with increasing difficulty.
Arclath and Amarune kept their heads down and their mouths shut, knowing that without Storm-whom many of the elves knew-they’d have been attacked long ago.
For her part, though her voice remained gentle and courteous, it was clear from the increasingly flat brevity of her converse that Storm’s temper was growing shorter and shorter.
“Easy, Lady Storm,” Arclath muttered, as they finally won their way past a particularly rude sentry, and strode on. “Their ways are … their ways.”
Rune gave him a withering look, and he shrugged sheepishly. Less than eloquent, to be sure, but …
“Thank you, Arclath,” Storm told him softly, wrapping one long and shapely arm around him and squeezing. “I’ve never had much use for obstinate stupidity, but your point is taken. And your support appreciated.”
Arclath struck a heroic pose that made her snort.
An instant later, something crashed through the limbs of some distant trees. Boulders plummeted and rolled, downed leaves and boughs crashing in their wakes.
“A catapult load,” Arclath murmured. “I’d been wondering why they hadn’t got around to that earlier. One could spread fire all too well …”
His words trailed away as he realized what the arrival of the boulders meant.
“Yes,” Storm said grimly, seeing his face. “The high mages are failing in earnest.”
“So, should we be hurrying?” Amarune asked. “Or is there really anything we can do?”
Storm sighed as the next sentries-a trio, this time-appeared from behind some trees ahead, and moved to intercept them.
“ ‘One does what one can,’ ” she quoted the old saying. “ ‘And the result must be taken as good enough.’ ” She shook her head, and muttered, “Though my sister Dove always hated that saying. Now I know how she felt.”
The next load to rain down out of the sky and bounce bloodily, right in front of Storm this time, were the dismembered limbs and torsos of battle dead. There were some human remains, but all too much of it was elf flesh.
Fresh … and not so fresh. The staring, dusty-eyed heads were the worst.
The sentries recoiled from what spattered or rolled at their feet, and Storm sighed again.
It was early in the evening of this twelfth day of Marpenoth. Which meant that only the earliest and most eager of the idle and wealthy nobles in Suzail had found their ways to the Memories of Queen Fee.
So they could be first with the latest and juiciest gossip, of course.
“They’re saying,” Lady Shalais Wyrmwood burst out breathlessly, eyes dancing with excitement, “that Myth Drannor has fallen, and all the Dales too!”
“As even my great-grandsire often observed, ‘they’ say many things,” Lord Illance said sourly. “Where’s the proof? Lay before us some details, lass! A vagabond hiresword army has to be paid, remember! What they can seize from the elves and the Dalefolk is their own booty, theirs in addition to their promised coin. And last I heard, they hadn’t been paid at the agreed-upon time, and were getting a mite surly about it. So before you have the fabled City of Song with all its proud elves and the Dales with their sturdy farmers overthrown, routed, and taken, hearken to this: I’ve noticed, down the years, that armies always win their greatest victories in rumor, and do rather less well on the battlefield.”
“You’d not say that, Lord Illance,” Lady Rowanmantle snapped, “if you’d seen the wasteland that was once the glittering heart of Sembia. Why-”
“And have you seen it, Lady?” came his frosty interruption. “Have you seen anything at all beyond what can be glimpsed from the highest towers in this city, in the last three decades? I think not. Wherefore you must needs rely on the same racing and loose-tongued rumor that so informs young Lady Wyrmwood here.”
At the next table, Lord Harflame set down his goblet to sneer. “They’ll be at our gates next! Run and hide your jewels and your best gowns, ladies!”
“Yes, and go about in our frilly scanties,” old Lady Rowanmantle said caustically. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Amondras? You always were a lecherous, drooling, tasteless boor!”
“Odds blood, what a sharp-tongued liar you are, Arletta! How would you know what I taste like, hmm? And were I as lewd as you claim, I’d even want to see your old dragon-scarred hide bared, whereas the truth of the matter is that I’m far more selective! Young Shalais here, Delaunthra yonder, and one or two others, not the whole aging herd of you!”
“Herd, Lord Harflame? Herd!?”
“Yes, ‘herd,’ to be sure. Although perhaps that’s a disservice to my cows, who still yield milk and give me calves, and are on the whole far easier on the eyes, and most certainly on the ears, than you old battle-axes!”
Mirt hid a wide-and getting broader-grin behind his oversized goblet. This was better than a play! They’d be throwing food and dashing wine at each other next!
So as not to be noticed by anyone who might curb their tongue when reminded there was an outlander present, he settled himself a little lower in his seat in the darkest corner of this exclusive upper room in the Memories of Queen Fee. The most fashionable and expensive club along the Promenade in Suzail was sparsely populated just now, but then it was early yet. Many of the regular noble patrons were at home, with large and sumptuous meals and more than a few goblets of good wine still to get through, to fortify themselves for the serious imbibing that went on in the Fee.
Rank amateurs in debauchery to a veteran glutton and drunkard like the oldest living Lord of Waterdeep, but after all, these were Cormyreans; they went at such things far more lightly than in the Deep.
“Well,” observed Lord Renstameir Haelrood, as he swept into the room with a club servant scrambling in his wake to retrieve his casually discarded, many-feathered hat and gilt-trimmed cloak, “I see you’re all hard at work trying to dismantle each other’s tempers and reputations, as usual, rather than concerning yourselves with the weightier matters that should ensnare the attention of us all. We’ll find it hard to go on leading a kingdom if we find it destroyed beneath us on the morrow. Care you nothing for what’s happening across Faerûn?”