Who would kill him in an instant or three if he so much as suspected it was all a ruse, and those more than a dozen war wizards were so much utter fiction.
Manshoon’s smile was as hard as cold crypt stone. “I can think of no magical defenses you can have, fat man,” he remarked with menacing softness, “that will protect you against me if I choose to destroy you now. In slow, writhing agony.”
Mirt chuckled, and took the seat right across from Manshoon. “Ah, so you still can’t think-clearly enough and ahead far enough. Yer usual problem, if you don’t mind me pointing it out. The salient point on the table between us right now is this: you don’t know what defenses I have. I, however, obviously do. Care to be foolish enough to think I’m bluffing?”
Manshoon scowled, then shook his head.
Mirt produced a belt flask with two metal flagons clipped to it, and poured them both wine.
He handed one flagon across the table to Manshoon, who regarded it dubiously. Mirt took it back, drank deeply from it, and handed Manshoon the other, still-full flagon.
Slowly, Manshoon put out his hand, took it, sipped-and then smiled. The wine was splendid.
He sipped again and savored it, sitting back and letting it roll around on his tongue.
Mirt leaned forward and rumbled, “So, Scourge of Westgate and Zhentil Keep and the gods alone know how many other places … why don’t we sit this one out, the two of us? Hmm? At least until half Toril is done tearing itself apart?”
Manshoon regarded the fat and battered man across the table thoughtfully for a long, silent time before he said, “Convince me.”
He sipped again. “More of this wine ought to do it.”
CHAPTER 17
In the third of storm’s kitchen cupboards he rooted through, Arclath made a discovery. He drew the square, human-head-sized wooden box out into the light, set it on the kitchen table, and used his dagger to warily undo the latches and flip the lid, then peered in.
Rune watched him tensely from across the room, where she was washing radishes in one of the sinks.
Arclath relaxed with a pleased little crow of satisfaction.
“Well?” Rune asked, daring to relax a little.
Triumphantly, Lord Delcastle lifted something large and round out of the box, drew aside the soft black cloth swaddling it, and held it up. A crystal ball.
“We shouldn’t,” Rune told him, though she knew she was looking at it longingly.
“You need to know what’s happening,” her man replied. “It’s eating you, not knowing. I can see that. Hells, anyone could see that.”
“Put it back in the box,” Rune told him firmly. “For now. But leave the box out.”
“While I scour all the rest of the cupboards?”
“Lord Delcastle,” Amarune replied, assuming the manner of a mildly peeved noble Cormyrean matron, “do you really think it prudent to plunder the secrets, if nothing more, of so gracious-and powerful-a host? I hardly do.”
Arclath shrugged. “Prudence, my good lady, has never been one of my strengths. If the Dragon Throne values me at all, it is this well-known lack of prudence that they cherish. So …” He advanced on the next bank of cupboards, but couldn’t resist glancing over his shoulder to see Rune’s reaction.
In doing so, his gaze fell upon the pantry door. Or rather, upon its frame. Where his thoughts seemed to linger.
“I wonder …,” he said thoughtfully.
“What?” Rune asked, finishing with the radishes and reaching for a hand cloth to dry her hands.
His only reply was to open the pantry door, stand back, and peer at the revealed lintel, threshold, and standing frame. Then he reached out warily, wrapped his fingertips around the lines of the molding, and tugged gently.
And with the softest of sighs, the door frame swung open on hidden hinges, to reveal a hidden cupboard behind. The narrowest of cupboards, within the thickness of the stone wall, its door only a finger’s width or two wider than the palm of his hand. It was full of bone tubes with carved end caps.
Cautiously, he drew one out. There was a word graven on the nearest end cap, and repeated on the side.
“Teleport,” Rune read aloud, over his shoulder, thankful she could move with swift silence when she wanted to. She snaked her arm under his and deftly snatched the tube out of Arclath’s fingers. “We’ll be needing this.”
Arclath grinned, but also crooked an eyebrow. “Can you pull off a spell like that?”
Amarune gave him her best cold glare. Under its weight, he added hastily and falteringly, “I mean-so powerful, need practice, wizards of much experience, usually …”
“I am Elminster’s heir. His new Chosen One,” Rune reminded him icily. “I can do anything.”
Her man decided it was his turn to tender a withering look.
Rune smiled wryly, but didn’t blush. “Magically, that is,” she admitted, “and in all this spell chaos, perhaps as well as any caster can.”
She lifted her chin in determination. “If I have to, I have to. There is no ‘fail,’ or we all fail.”
Arclath shook his head, smiling at her in obvious admiration.
“Stop mooning over me and hand me that crystal ball,” Rune snapped. “And don’t drop it.”
Arclath put it into her hands with exaggerated care. “You’ve used one before, of course?” he asked, as gently as any deferential servant.
“You know I haven’t,” she flared. “Stop trying to be helpful and-and eat some radishes!”
And she set the sphere-gods, but it was heavy, far heavier than she’d expected-on the table on its swaddling cloth that she tugged into a ring around it.
That did nothing at all to stop the crystal rolling. The hand-carved and well-worn tabletop was a little less than level. She put out a hand to pin the sphere in place, but sighed. She couldn’t use it while holding it, could she?
Without a word, Arclath reached into the box, brought out a thick slab of wood with a bowl-shaped depression sculpted into it, and set the sphere into this rest that had obviously been made for it.
Amarune thanked him with a grimace, flung her arms wide to clear her head, and leaned forward to peer into the empty, colorless depths of the crystal.
Not empty, no, there was something there after all … stirring …
She had to focus on people-well, Storm, of course-or places. That is, memorable fixtures that sat in one spot unmoving, like trees. The problem with people, she half remembered something Elminster had mentioned in passing, was that they moved, and had thoughts of their own, and so were hard to “settle on.”
So it was with Storm. To call to her to mind was to see Rune’s own memories, of Storm turning to smile, Storm speaking sharply, Storm looking impish as her hair reared up like a snake about to strike, Storm … Rune sighed. She could call Storm to mind vividly enough, but her parade of memories did nothing at all to the crystal.
So, then, places, or rather, things in places. That distinctive rotten stump, the one the size of a large oval dining table that Arclath had scrambled over to …
She could remember it, all right, and something stirred in the crystal, its heart going milk white, but then her sharpening concentration veered, as if she was on a racing horse that decided on its own to turn sharply to the right.
Well, then, that sapling she’d put her hand on, to catch her breath, after … no, the same thing was happening. Veering to the left this time, mind, but …
Something was blocking her.
Oh.
The mythal.
Of course.
So, focus on something outside the mythal. Downdragon Tor.
And the milky hue in the depths of the crystal spun, winked, flashed, and Rune was seeing the same view she and Arclath had enjoyed upon their arrival there. Just like that.