* * * * *
Rhauligan followed the stair down as quietly as he could, which was quiet indeed. This was old, solid stonework and thick boards pegged into place, none of your slapdash modern gaudy work.
As he went down, the noises of work-servants, of course- began to be audible: people chattering, laughing, hurrying back and forth laden with things, someone chopping food on a wooden board or table, someone else making banging and scraping sounds.
"Where're them brooms, then?" The rough male voice was accompanied by a striding entry too sudden for Rhauligan to draw back. He froze on the stairs as sudden light spilled across a landing below, as a man with a long-ago broken nose and wheezing lungs snatched up a long-handled pushbroom from where it leaned against a wall, spun around without sparing a glance up the dark and dusty stairs where the Harper stood, and banged his door closed behind him again.
Rhauligan hurried, in case the habit was to return the broom the moment its job was done. He was past that door and on down the next flight ere the door opened again, but by then the growing hubbub and light around him, through various ill-fitting hatches in the stairwell walls-it seemed he was passing a large, multilevel kitchen where a small legion of servants were keeping quite busy-was considerable.
One hatch afforded him a gap large enough to peer through, and he put his eye to it. Shiny copper vats or tanks greeted his view, with men in aprons squatting at the taps filling great tankards as large as their torsos. Below them, several steps down on another level in the same vast room, stood a great table covered with flour and dough, with women swarming busily around it. Steam from cauldrons was rising from a lower level yet, down out of sight to his left. Rhauligan cast a glance right across the chamber and froze again.
There, just visible through a forest of hanging pans and pots and ladles, was another, open stair-and peering through that kitch-enmongery was Narnra Shalace, just for a moment ere she melted back and away and went on down those dark steps.
She must have passed through the rooms of the floor above and found that matching servants' stair. So she was below him, now, and he'd have to move like a man trying to catch the morrow.
Rhauligan raced down steps with more haste than quiet. Given all the racket in the kitchen, he'd probably have to shout or bang one of those pans with a sword-hilt to be noticed, anyway, and-
There was a door at the next landing, facing neither into the kitchen nor away from it but north into the "blind end" of the landing turn, and he plucked it open cautiously-in time to see the heel of Narnra's boot flick past. He was out into the cross-passage she'd been traversing as fast as he could move, but she'd already stepped into a great room or gallery beyond and darted to the right.
Rhauligan ran after her and froze, just before the archway where the passage opened out into this larger chamber ahead.
It was a very large room, and lofty. This was almost certainly the central hall of Haelithtorntowers, and he'd probably be stepping out onto a promenade balcony part way up its walls.
Torchlight flickered below, all along the front of the balcony. Across a vast ring of empty space he could see the far sweep of them, beneath an archway that matched the one he was standing in. They gave light enough to show the Harper the walls of this huge room rising up out of sight and curving inward, probably to a vaulted spire far overhead.
Painted coats of arms-wooden plaques as large as a stable door, each of them, and these were the old, fully-gilded sort with real helms and crossed spears affixed to them, not the simply carved false adornments more in favor, for some inexplicable reason, these days-adorned the walls above the balcony, and there were many tall, dark, closed doors between them. If Narnra didn't want to stay on display in this hall, she'd probably creep to one of them and try to open it.
For his part-he ducked low again, so as to be close to the floor when he thrust his head out to peer along the balcony in both directions, seeking guards-Rhauligan hoped she'd find them all locked. All but one that opened into a dead-end chamber where he could pounce on her, truss her up, and go and announce himself to the Lady Ambrur and request that he be allowed to remove his captive into the keeping of the Mage Royal. Enough of this chasing about through laundries and cookshops.
Even before the Harper had finished making sure there were no guards or servants within sight on this balcony, nor any signs that anyone often came up here, he caught sight of Narnra. Keeping low and out of sight below the balcony rail, she'd worked her way around the balcony to the far side, obviously intending to depart through that matching archway-but had now stopped to listen to the voices floating up from below.
And leaned daringly forward to hear everything.
Rhauligan frowned. He could hear only a few people engaged in private converse-with no link of cutlery nor bustle of servants. Out of long habit he cocked his head to listen, too.
A sentence or two later, he'd put aside all thoughts of trying to capture Narnra Shalace.
"You're in no pressing hurry, my Lord Starangh?" "Not as yet, though I reserve the full disclosure of my desired pace through the rest of this unfolding day until I learn the reason you ask such a thing," the Red Wizard replied calmly, inspecting the fingers of his own right hand as if he'd never quite noticed them before.
"Well, if we've the time and you've no objections on the grounds of, say, prudence considering our present company," the Lady Am -brur responded, "I'd prefer to unfold the information you seek in an ordered, chronological fashion-to tell it as a story, to use plain words. A brief tale, not deep history."
The Thayan raised his eyes to hers. "Why don't you begin that way? If things become overlong or drift far from what most interests us all, we can always cry warning and agree upon another manner of discourse, can we not?"
"Indeed, sir," his hostess agreed smoothly. "Let us begin, then, with the recent retirement of the Royal Magician."
Malakar Surth had been displaying some signs of irritation throughout the preceding discussion-his mouth drawing into a thin, disgusted line, his gaze beginning to wander around the hall, beginning with a glance at what her gown displayed to the watching world of the Lady Noumea Cardellith's bosom-and so had his partner Bezrar, who'd slumped in his chair into a more sullen pose of boredom. Both leaned forward with renewed interest when the Lady Ambrur looked down into her empty tallglass for a moment then spoke to it gently.
"Vangerdahast ruled this kingdom for years. Azoun reigned, yes, dispensed justice, and rode to war when the need arose .. . but by his control of the Court, through manipulations of almost all of its officials, the Obarskyrs themselves, and many of the nobles who had dealings at Court, the Mage Royal held the day-to-day rule of this realm. Cormyr was ordered very much as he wanted it to be- until the coming of what most folk call 'the Devil Dragon.' We all know what befell Azoun and Tanalasta, but I also happen to know that Vangerdahast had some very trying adventures-alone-and almost met his death, too."
The Lady of Haelithtorntowers looked up from the depths of her tallglass to find the eyes of Harnrim Starangh dark and intent upon her. She looked into them and added, "Not a few folk at Court remarked that the Royal Magician looked more old and exhausted at Azoun's funeral than they'd ever seen him before. Most put it down to grief-for the friendship between the Mage Royal and the Purple Dragon was legendary-and the stresses of battle, but among the most senior Wizards of War there were murmurs of … deeper failings."