“If you’ll protect me against your good wife,” Vangerdahast said gravely, “I’ll have the chance I need to talk to you both-for the good of the realm.”
“Trying to convince us you’ll make a good regent?” Giogi asked grimly, but he did not slow their climb up the steps together.
Vangerdahast shook his head. “You have made your choice, while most of your fellow nobles of Cormyr are still sizing up the contenders. You have queried, while others have gladly grasped. We must talk, young Wyvernspur.”
“You’re not going to try to keep me out of this?” Cat asked in a dangerously soft voice.
“Lady,” the Royal Magician replied in solemn tones as the three retired to the halls of Redstone Castle, “I’d not dare to.”
Elsewhere, a man fidgeted nervously in a hidden room, waiting for his assignation, rubbing his hands nervously as he paced. He couldn’t spend all afternoon in some broom closet! Where was she?
The broom closet in question was a small secret chamber, unused for years. The dust lay heavy on the low stone bench and polished duskwood table that were its only ornament. A pair of narrow passages, so narrow that only a child could move easily through them, led off to either side.
The man’s candle flickered, and he was aware she was coming. The air over the table thickened and curdled, turning into a ball of serpentine smoke. At the center of the ball lay a pair of eyes, the color of flaming jets-black with red pips dancing at their centers.
“Hail, Cormyrean,” said the eyes in a soft, purring voice.
“Brantarra,” snapped the man in response. He was sure that name was no more her true appellation than the writhing mass was her true form.
“I trust that everything has gone smoothly.”
“Not smoothly enough,” said the man, “The king still lives, and one of his damnable cousins as well. Your clockwork toy did not work as well as hoped.”
“Not my toy,” said the swirling mist calmly. “Only my venom, carrying its deadly disease. The golden creature is known to Cormyr, if not to its current rulers. I think that an extremely amusing jest. How fares the king?”
“Badly,” said the man. “There is little hope for him, though for now there is no way to get near him. He is surrounded by guards and priests and other nobles at all times.”
“If you are to kill a king, you must strike surely with the first blow,” said the soft feminine voice.
“Your venom was supposed do the job at once,” hissed the man.
“A poor workman blames his tools,” said the voice, and the man was sure there was a smile on the lips that spoke those words.
“Regardless,” said the man, “Azoun lingering on his deathbed does not help our cause. The king’s wizard is already meddling and dabbling. Can you not do something?”
Now the voice laughed. “Do something? Like magically teleport myself into that sickroom, flinging fireballs and loosing lightning bolts? If I had the power to destroy Vangerdahast and his war wizards, do you not think I would use it? Nay. Patience is the better course here.”
“Brantarra-” began the man, but the voice made an urgent, shushing noise.
“Patience,” it said. “We will both get what we wish. In the meantime, I have another toy for you.” A tendril of mist extruded from the smokey mass and touched the table. When it withdrew, there was a large ruby glittering on the duskwood surface.
“When you first activated the abraxus, you sacrificed one of your own servants to bring it life,” said the voice. “This ruby will allow you sacrifice another at a distance.”
“But the abraxus has been dismantled,” said the man. “The remaining pieces have been locked away.”
“Hush,” said the voice. “Give the stone to another. Not a royal, and not a wizard. Someone who will be near you when the final confrontation comes with that overweight slug of a Royal Magician. When the time is at hand, you will know how to use it.”
The man picked up the stone, turning it over in his black-gloved fingers gingerly, as if it would explode at any moment.
“I do not trust you fully,” he said at last.
“Nor I you. Fully,” said the mist. “Yet we trust each other enough to join together for a common goal. Maintain your act, your lordship, and all will come to you!”
With that, the fiery lights within the smoke dimmed, indicating the audience was over. The man looked again at the blood-colored gem, then placed it in his pocket. Then carefully, using his candle to guide his path, he slid back along the narrow passage, heading for more populated parts of the castle. After he left, the smokey lights flared briefly, and the flame-jet eyes opened once more.
“That one has spine,” said the glowing eyes softly to the darkness, “and magical protection of his own now.. Perhaps it is time to pull the strings of other puppets, if the throne of Cormyr is truly to be mine.”
Chapter 18: Cats and Wizards
Year of the Empty Hearth (629 DR)
Thanderahast, newest member of the Brotherhood of the Wizards of War, eased himself carefully along the ledge. He could have used a simple spell to allow him to climb the side of the building, but he trusted Luthax to have wards against spells and those who used them. So it was back to the old ways of his childhood.
The chill autumn wind whipped around and through him, and he wished he were wearing something heavier than his dark shirt and leather leggings. A cloak would flap with an incessant thunder in this thin, stiff breeze, and a full set of wizard’s robes would catch in the wind and send him spiraling head over heels over the slate roofs of Suzail like an errant kite.
Luthax would be amused by that, but then Luthax would be amused by anything that involved maiming his junior officer.
“Listen, orc spawn,” Luthax had said on Thanderahast’s very first day, “the only reason you’re here is that your Auntie Amedahast is the High Magess. But that doesn’t cut clean with me, and I’m going to be on your back like a tick on a bullock until you decide to take up another line of work.”
His relationship to Amedahast was distant but distinct, though there were few wizards in the line. Indeed, Thanderahast would rather be picking through the ruins of ancient Asram and Hiondath or studying in the elven libraries of Myth Drannor than playing spy on the lonely roofs of Suzail.
At first Thanderahast thought Luthax believed that his junior mage was competition. Baerauble the Venerable had chosen one of his bloodline as his successor, and possibly Luthax worried that Thanderahast would be a similar replacement to the aging High Magess. But it went deeper than that. Luthax was mean clear through to the bone, and he obviously enjoyed assigning the younger mage the most unpleasant and difficult of tasks and telling others, including Amedahast, of his failures. Most of the court already thought Thanderahast was a fool, thanks to Luthax’s slander.
There were footsteps on the cobbles below, and Thanderabast froze, holding his breath. A pair of Purple Dragons, the king’s own elite, were on patrol through the district. Their deep violet capes were bunched tightly around them, and they looked neither right nor left as they passed along the row of stone townhouses.
Looking up the hill at the castle, Thanderahast waited until the armsmen had rounded the corner. Rebuilt, along with most of the rest of Suzail after the Pirate Years, Castle Obarskyr sprawled over the low hillocks, surrounded by broad lawns and concealed redoubts. No one would sneak up on the Obarskyrs again.
Thanderahast considered returning to the castle and waiting for Amedahast’s return. She was away on court business, as she was so often these days. Thanks to Luthax’s malicious gossip, Thanderahast’s stock at court was none too high, so he had to play spy on his own.
Luthax was up to something, of that Thanderahast had no doubt. The burly wizard, senior mage in the kingdom behind Amedahast, was the Castellan of Magic and the effective leader of the brotherhood. Yet he was a nasty customer, unctuous and fawning to his betters, boisterous and bragging to his equals, and Gehenna-on-a-plate to those he thought his inferiors. Like junior officers. Like Thanderahast.