Then she returned to her own quarters and pulled down the ancient texts and spell grimoires she had brought with her from Myth Drannor.
On the next afternoon, Azoun was late and looked more than a bit bedraggled, but he did show up, dressed as always for riding. He hurtled up the stairs two at a time.
Amedahast looked up from the tome she was reading and regarded him unemotionally. “You are later than usual.”
“Kings set their own hourglasses,” he said cheerily, adding, “That was a wondrous dance last night. I missed you at the end.”
“Indeed,” she said calmly, “Lord Baerauble needed my assistance, and some of us still have duties, even in the midst of the season. I want to talk to you about the possible resettlement of Marsember.”
“Oh-ho! Crownsilver got to you,” said the young prince, giving her a smile that she now thought of as annoying. “He’d get the bulk of the farmland if it were truly reestablished. And his cousins in the Truesilver clan would benefit if we ever finally got rid of the pirates and smugglers once and for all.”
He went on about the ins and outs of the Marsember question, but Amedahast was only half listening. She scanned the surrounding garden. The flower beds, now in full bloom, seemed to hold menace, and every statue was a perch for a possible assassin.
Suddenly she saw it, a mere rippling of light along the side of the garden maze. Just the slightest shimmer, as if the holly leaves were caught in a breeze that existed nowhere else. The movement would be unnoticed by anyone not looking for it specifically.
But Amedahast was looking for it and knew what it meant. Elven cloaks, smuggled out from Cormanthor. They would bend the light about them, such that the wearer would be well-nigh invisible against an immediate background. With those cloaks, the kidnappers could come right up to their prey.
No, not kidnappers. There was the tiniest flash of silver blades and steel-tipped crossbow bolts. They were intent on sending a message, but the message was to be a stronger one than she had been told.
Azoun was going on about the various factions lined up for and against the Marsember question. “So the Silver families are straight-ahead on this, but need the support of the Dracohorns, Bleths, and Turcassans, who don’t want to see them get any stronger. And then the newer houses, like the Cormaerils, are in the-Hey!”
Amedahast leapt at the first sight of a weapon being raised, springing forward with frantic haste.
She was much lighter than Azoun, but the prince wasn’t expecting an attack, and the pair of them went sprawling off the bench. A crossbow quarrel buried itself in the wood where Azoun’s head had been a moment before. Another marked Amedahast’s last position.
The young mage came up shouting, bellowing the incantation she had searched for the previous evening. Her fingers lit with eldritch fire at the tips, and then the dancing flames arched forward into ravening streams that roared through the quiet garden air as they transversed the grounds. Each found the face of a different target. They did not even have time to scream.
As they fell, the assassins’ cloaks peeled away, drifting from the bodies, to reveal prostrate forms on the flower beds.
She had not felled them all, her first warning of that was when the last two assassins tore away their cloaks and charged the stairs of the gazebo. She readied another spell, but by this time, Azoun was on his feet, with his short blade drawn.
He ducked under the first assassin’s vicious slash and planted his sword deep in the attacker’s chest. The man gasped out blood and fell backward, taking the blade with him.
The other assassin tried to take advantage while the prince was engaged with his fellow attacker. His cutting blade was swung too fast, too short, and missed. He snarled-and caught an oversized riding boot in the face. The man’s head jerked back, and he crumpled like a sack of potatoes.
Amedahast looked around for other targets. Nothing else moved. Then the far gates of the garden and the doors of the castle flew open, and two units of the king’s guards poured into the tranquil space. The flames on her fingertips ebbed, flickered, and died.
Azoun was shouting orders to the men, gathering up the dead and healing the wounded to be questioned later. Baerauble appeared, moving slowly and leaning heavily on his staff.
“My lord,” began Amedahast firmly, “Lady Merendil…”
“… is probably halfway to the Chondathan colonies of Sembia by now to rejoin her daughters,” the mage said smoothly, old and knowing eyes on hers, “but we’ll send a message ahead on the off chance we can snare her. That was foolish, trusting that you could take them on by yourself, but I suppose you wanted to prove you could do it.”
Amedahast started to explain, then shut her mouth. “Yes, sir,” she said at last. “I will be more cautious in the future.”
Azoun came up to the two wizards and threw an arm around Amedahast’s shoulder. “They would have gotten us both if not for your student, Lord Baerauble. She’s going to be a great High Mage!”
Amedahast delicately grasped Azoun’s wrist with her still-tingling fingertips and gently removed it from her shoulder. She looked at the young prince stonily and spat, “Remember this, Sire. If I become High Mage, I will pledge to serve the crown. Not you, but the crown itself, regardless of whether the head beneath it is hollow as a gourd or not!”
Amedahast wheeled and stomped back to the royal court. Azoun watched her slim form diminish in the distance for a time, then turned to the High Mage, his face a question.
Baerauble merely shrugged.
Chapter 15: The Common Room
Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR)
“It’s best not to ask what’s in the sausage rolls, lad, but by the gods, they’re good!”
“Oh?” Dauneth tried to sound unconcerned and cosmopolitan, as befitted a nobleman and a warrior. It didn’t work.
“First time in Suzail, lad?” the merchant asked heartily. “Well, I’ll grant you’re as hungry as a war-horse after the ride from High Horn, but let me warn you away from the sweet-spiced fish rolls they seem to like in this town. Sickening things! And I suppose while I’m about it, I’d best give you a warning. If you bite straight into a sausage roll like those you’re drooling at, while it’s steaming like that, it’s your own burnt mouth and tongue you’ll be tasting-for the better part of a tenday!”
“My thanks to you, goodman…?” Dauneth said, more to slow the flood of advice than to learn the man’s name.
“Rhauligan. Glarasteer Rhauligan, sir, dealer in turret tops and spires, stone and wood both-you order ‘em, and we’ll build ‘em-fast and cheap, and they won’t fall down!” There was a cadence to his words, and they sounded like an oft-repeated slogan. Dauneth wondered just how much trade the man actually did. But the neatly bearded trader was raising a wintry brow and saying, “Say… does your castle need a bit of spire work, now?”
“Ah, no, actually,” Dauneth said. “It’s not my castle to expand or alter, at any rate.”
“And you are…?”
The tall, gawky man sighed inwardly as he heard himself saying, “Dauneth Marliir.” If this garrulous merchant really did go around the realm fixing towers, Dauneth was probably earning himself a wagonload of questions.
“Of the Marliirs of Arabel?”
Sigh. Here it came. “Yes,” Dauneth said firmly. “Ah-is this our hostess?”
Rhauligan cast a look over his shoulder. “Yes, that’s Braundlae, right enough, but if that’s what you want, lad, you’ve come to the wrong place! The red lantern est-“
“I came in here for some food,” Dauneth said rather desperately. “Standing in line after line up at the court for hours is hungry work, and hard on the feet, too!”
The merchant whistled sympathetically. “Been up at court, have you? Gods, but the place must be buzzing like a ruptured wasps’ nest right now!”