There arose a short-lived singing sound, and as it died away, so did the radiance, leaving everything looking as ir had before.
"The strongest warding I know," the wizard explained as he strode back to join them. "As I promised you, this meeting will be private."
Princess Tanalasta's gaze was cool, and her question politely calm. "So, Lord Vangerdahast, do our royal parents know it is taking place?"
Alusair looked around the small, simply furnished parlor. She didn't recall ever having been in the room before, despite spending some years delighting in crawling, darting, and worming her way into everywhere in the Royal Palace. How had she never noticed that door at the back of the Horndragons' Chamber before?
Stlarning magic.
Tanalasta grew tired of waiting for a reply that evidently wasn't forthcoming.
"Yes, before you ask," Tanalasta said into the deepening silence, "we are wondering why you, ah, 'invited' us here. We are also expecting some answers when we ask things, Vangey. Being of royal blood and speaking to a courtier and all."
The Royal Magician settled himself in the chair facing the two princesses, surprised them both with a friendly little grin, and said, "Sorry, Tana. Deeper apologies if informality is going to offend you-either of you. A great part of my life has been spent watching over you and trying to shape you, however fumblingly and harshly, and I all too often think of you as something akin to granddaughters. I'm hoping, in the years ahead, we can even become friends."
"He wants something," Alusait told her sister.
"Well of course he wants something," Tanalasta said. "Everyone we ever see or meet always does. However, I quite take your point- this wizard never bothers to be polite to anyone except Mother and Father unless he wants something he can't force or command out of them."
She turned her gaze back to the Royal Magician. "However, being as we are speaking in private, I don't care in the slightest if you call me Tana, Vangey." She glanced at her sister again. "Loos?"
Alusair shrugged. "He can call me anything he wants. If he gets too rude, I'll switch from 'Vangey' to 'Thunderpot.' Now can we ger on with this?"
"Yes." Vangerdahast sighed with just a hint of weariness. "Why don't we?"
"Buried, and the manute pile heaped back over rhe grave," Boarblade reported, deciding not to use any extra words. Not when his babbling master could supply far more than would ever be needed.
"Good," Ruldroun said. "Close the door."
When Boarblade turned back, the former war wizard was standing silently in the far corner of the room with two wands in his hands, both of them trained on Boarblade.
The long runner-rug that had been lying on the floor berween the door and that back corner had been rwitched aside to reveal a sequence of chalked circles, like a row of srepping stones, each touching its fellows, between where he was standing and where his new master was tegarding him from. The dangers were very clear.
"So, Telgarth Boarblade," Ruldroun said quietly, "the time has come for a little truth on your part. You are a mage of some small ability, yes?"
"Yes."
"You have been a Zhentarim for years." "I have."
"You have not mentioned this to me."
"You've never asked nor intimated a desire to know about my past."
"Your past? Are you now intimating that you are no longer a Zhent? And will not work with them again?"
Boarblade nodded. "Yes. When you snatched me out of my imprisonment and offered me service with you, I accepted, and that ended all previous allegiances. If you should ever order me to feign loyal membership in the Brotherhood, I will do so-but even before being taken by the war wizards, I had decided that the Zhentarim were fast becoming a den of vipers who all hunted for themselves, exhibiting only enough obedience to avoid being counted among the hunted. A Cormyr stripped of cohesive war wizards would be a benefit to all, so I continued with my assigned task, but I had already begun to work on a means of faking my own death and disappearing. My judgment of the Brotherhood has not changed."
"You still seek a Cormyr where bickering factions of nobles rise to dominance, and the Obarskyrs lose the iron control their Wizards of War grant them?"
"I believe that would be better for all than the Cormyr we stand in now. I now seek nothing but what you want me to seek."
"Well said. Spells laid upon your mind prevent me from prying into it or affecting yout feelings and views. Banish them."
Boarblade sighed. "I cannot. They were laid upon me by Zhentarim far more powerful than either of us. I cannot even begin to touch them. If you or another broke them, doing so would not only drive me mad, it would instantly alert senior Zhents as to what had happened and precisely where I was. It would also make me their tool to work through. I hardly think it likely you would want to face the spells of Lord Manshoon coming out of a body he doesn't mind risking in the slightest."
Ruldroun's eyes flicketed. "That would not be my preferred choice of situations, no. So I must trust you-yet I cannot trust you."
Boarblade shrugged. "Consider. Every man in all Faerun who is not a priest or wizard of power has to trust others without seeing into their minds-and many of them manage to do so. Sometimes that trust is justified and even rewarded. I intend to justify and reward your trust. Blood oath, if you prefer?"
Ruldroun could not hide his surprise. "That's the very spell I was going to insist upon. Better and better. Telgarth Boarblade, I could get to like you."
"And I, you, my lord. Even after the killings and betrayals start."***** "I confess myself delighted with your candor, Vangey," Princess Tanalasta said. "I would go so far as to say I doubt very much if anyone in Cormyr right now is having as blunt and candid a converse about matters of the realm and loyalty and other weighty concerns."
"See me as pleased, too," Alusair agreed, "yer annoyed that you've never seen fit to tteat us as this close to equals before."
Vangerdahast sighed. "Forgive me, Highnesses, bur before now, you frankly weren't ready for this. Oh, I've no doubt you thought yourselves ready. Your royal father did, too, quite a bit younger than either of you are now. Yet he wasn't ready until he was almost a decade older than you, Tana. He was still putting his desires of the moment before his love for the realm."
"His desires of the moment?" Alusair said. "I'd say he does that still. A chambermaid here, a passing merchant's wife there, a-"
"Loos!" Tana snapped. "That'll do!"
"Hoy! I thought we were being blunt and candid," the younger princess replied. "Or are you still trying to set limits, the way Vangey here is?"
"Highness," the wizard said reprovingly, holding up a hand to signal Tanalasta not to make angry reply, "as I've told you, I am not-"
"Oh, but you are," Alusair retorted. "You control every conversation you ever have, Vangey. Even when answering direct orders or queries from the king and queen. By what you say and don't say-and what you refuse or oh-so-gravely warn musr not be discussed-you set limits. You set limits for nigh everyrhing in the realm. 'Tis one of the things you do. Someone has to do it, I suppose, though why you, I've never found a good answer for. My mother the queen would be far better at it, and even Alaphondar. I-"
"Loos, please, enough," Tanalasta interrupted. "I agree with all you're saying, but I find it beside the point, unless we're somehow going to murder this man sitting facing us. Decrying what he does and is simply wastes all our time. I want to hear rather more blunr truth from him, in case we never have such a chance as this again." She leaned forward in her chair and said to Vangerdahast, "So tell us a story, wizard. About why the Knights of Myth Drannor were sent away and what's been happening with them, and as much as you see fit to reveal about the conspiracy within the Wizards of War-and what you were just up to in the Lost Palace."