As eerily ghostlike as any of them, Laspeera raised her eyes from some of those spheres to give her superior a rather grim look.
"So passes Lorbryn Deltalon," she said. "We have few enough left who are skilled at both Art and diplomacy and truly havens for our trust."
"Tell me what I don't know, lass," Vangerdahast said. "Reduced to sending Dauntless with a few enspelled trinkets in his pouches. That's us." He crooked an eyebrow at Laspeera's busy hands. "What're you doing?"
"Avenging Deltalon, if I can. It's worth a few scrying spheres to try to harm Onsler Ruldroun. I taught him so much. All wasted…"
"He's probably fled beyond our reach," the Royal Magician said. "Yet it's worth doing anyhail. At the very least, it'll stop him using the glade. Let him try to sleep up a tree."
Watching and listening to Laspeera's casting, Vangerdahast catefully began one of his own, deftly reaching his hands over and among hers with the familiarity of long practice at spell-weaving together.
When it was done, they both stepped back and thrust their wills at the other floating scrying spheres, seeking to force them away from the quartet that were flaring brightly and about to burst. They weren't fast enough to save them all.
In the tinkling, ear-ringing aftermath, both mages rolled over from where they ended up-on the floor and driven against a wall. They looked at each other. Their upflung arms had saved their faces and throats from deadly shards of crystal, but they were bleeding from the usual countless tiny nicks and slices, and their garments now looked as if a dozen assassins had hacked at them with tazot-sharp blades.
"Before you try to think of something clever to say about my new fashion look," Laspeera said, as she struggled to her feet and held out a hand to haul him up, "consider that you look worse. Much worse."
" 'Tis the paunch and the body hair," Vangerdahast said. "So now for the rest of our evening's entertainment: the intrepid Dauntless faring into the forest."
"As all the Nine Hells break loose," Laspeera said. She murmured the cantrip that would rid her hair of a thousand tiny shards of crystal.
Vangerdahast murmured something more substantial, and his hands were suddenly full of stark black robes. With a flourish he held the uppermost garment out to Laspeera.
She took it with a smile and asked, "Aren't you going to turn your back as I slip into this?"
"No," Vangerdahast told her, shrugging off his own tatters. "Why?"
He had always loved Laspeera's laugh.
The glade exploded.
Ruldroun didn't even have time to leap down out of the tree before its great trunks shattered above him, its boughs torn off and swept away in a crashing rain-and he was hurled along after them, his shielding buffeted, struck hard, slammed against other trees, and shattered.
He hit the ground in a tumbling chaos of snapping twigs, sliding wet leaves, mud, and bruised wizard.
"And so I taste the Royal Magician's little slap," he grunted. Pain flared in his left side. Broken ribs, probably. His shielding had done its work, but it was clear that it would be the act of an utter fool to tarry anywhere near the glade.
He'd best get to the Knights and skulk along aftet them. He could still conjure his best shielding and weave a lesser one as well, then combine the two-but he'd best do it only after he'd passed the clearing and gotten well clear of its other side.
Not that there was anything forcing the Knights to stay where they were. Ruldroun sighed, winced again at the pain that brought, turned to face the pattering of falling twigs that matked whete the clearing had just enlarged itself, and started to run.
"I believe that particular tactic would be one I'd deem, in the words of Lord Piergeiron, 'less than wise,' "a warm, lyrical, woman's voice said. That would be Sharanralee.
"I'm not talking wise, look ye," Mirt the Moneylender rumbled. "I'm laying all the tactics I can think of before us, rather than sorting out just those I deem best or preferable beforehand. I've heard too many lords' deliberations-or Harper moots, come to that-to want to do otherwise."
"So," an amused, mature, man's voice asked in quiet amusement, "are we then as bad as Harpers, Mirt-or as good as Harpers?"
That would be the wizard Tarrhus, straying from Piergeiron's shadow for once. The Open Lord of Waterdeep must be very well guarded by someone else just now.
The night was dark, the turret that held those three folk was widely deemed inaccessible to creatures who couldn't fly, and the wards around it would raise instant alarm upon the approach of any flying creatures.
It seemed those wards deemed hovering magical swords to be something other than creatures. Whereupon no alarm had been raised, and it was extremely unlikely that anyone would be out and peering up at the turret just to check up on the efficacy of those wards.
Besides, Old Ghost was making Armaukran float absolutely motionless, vertical, and quite close to the shutters of the window. The little conference was quite interesting.
It was folk such as these three whom he wanted to collect in the Sword That Never Sleeps. To know the workings of the Harpers, or the Lords of Waterdeep, orIt was at that moment that a spell Old Ghost had cast a long time ago suddenly stirred, sending its brief and faint warning across half of Faertin.
Battle spells had erupted in a certain clearing used by Cormyr's Wizards of War, a clearing he'd cast his watch spell upon-and now, scant breaths later, someone had cast a complex, manyspells shielding.
That castet had to be someone powerful, on important business bent.
Business-and a person-he was very much interested in knowing more about.
The long, slender sword silently drew away from the window, turned in the air until its point was aimed east, and raced silently away from the turret, as swiftly as if it had been loosed from the bow of a mighty archer.
Old Ghost had decided to get to that nameless forest clearing just as fast as the Swotd That Never Sleeps could fly.
Tsantress was barefoot and in her nightgown, sitting uptight on the edge of her bed-the bed she'd been tossing and turning in, mere moments ago.
No wonder, that, given the time, but her restless inability to sleep and the energetic propensity of certain unscrupulous merchants of Suzail to get up to things illicit the moment her back was turned had her renouncing all attempts to get back to sleep.
She ran her hands absently through her sleep-tangled hair and stared into her scrying sphere.
It glowed softly as it hung in the air in fronr of her nose, awakening inro a view of Albaertus Tranth's private office, quite a few streets closer to the harbor than where she was sitting.
It seemed the good merchant-if that wasn't using the tetm too loosely-was also afflicted with sleeplessness just now. He was using his wakefulness to meet with someone cowled, masked, and gloved, who appeared to have fallen into the habit of knocking on back doors in Suzail in the dark wee hours with heavy sacks of gold coins in his hand.
The war wizard bent forward and peered closely. Tranth was unlocking a heavy metal coffer with a key that had been hanging around his neck, andAbruptly the scrying sphere flashed bright white, blinding her into a sharp gasp, and flung itself across the room.
Thankfully, it struck her row of cloaks and gowns, rearing them all off their pegs as it raced past to strike a heavy tapestry.
Tsantress rolled on her bed and rhen off its edge to land hard on her spread knees on the carpeted floor. She clawed at her flooding eyes and tried to crawl toward her door on her elbows. An inescapable conclusion reared up like a'dark and inexorable foe in her mind: Vangerdahast was up to his tricks again.
No one else-save Laspeera, and she had more sense-would dare to cast a slaying spell through one of Vangey's precious scrying spheres, causing ir to explode and shattering any other scryings going on at the same time. Certainly not anywhere near the Royal Court. Or the Palace, come to that.