She knelt close to where Narnra was sitting and said, "To save Cormyr, we are all expendable. However, 'tis my hope that you'll become so useful to us all that you serve loyally for years to come-whereupon you might be rewarded with a 'way out.' A title, a nice mansion to live out your wrinkled years … a better 'after' than many can hope for. As for the 'what else,' I need to know your trustworthiness and so would begin by mind-reaming you directly."
"Turning me into some sort of brainless slug?"
"No. I'll never deal pain, mind-to-mind, as Elminster did. No, if you were found wanting, I'd put you through a portal back to Waterdeep."
Narnra almost sprang up from the wall. "You can do that?"
"Oh, yes. I must warn you that the portal I know will deliver you into a very public room of state in Peirgeiron's Palace. Have you a swift story ready?"
"Being the daughter of Elminster ought to do," Rhauligan murmured-earning him three glares at once.
Narnra bit her lip. "And … I'd just go back to Trades Ward? No one following me?"
Caladnei shrugged. "Not from Cormyr."
Narnra looked at her. "This mind-ream: What will it do to me?"
"Show me your thoughts and memories as I rummage. If you'd like to reassure yourself as to your fate at my hands, I can easily make the mind-ream a two-way affair so you can judge me while I do the same to you."
Narnra stared at the Mage Royal, awed and strangely excited- and suddenly angry again. She scrambled up, took a few stumbling steps away from Caladnei, waving at the Cormyreans to stay back from her, and leaned her head against the wall. "I … let me think."
"Of course," Laspeera said softly.
Breathing heavily, Narnra stared at the toes of her boots and thought hard. How did she feel?
Did she trust these folk? Laspeera seemed motherly, Rhauligan was-Rhauligan, dedicated to his task … and Caladnei had beaten her like a backstreet bully with magic-but not killed her when the slaying would have been easy and Narnra had been stupid enough to goad her. Repeatedly.
So how did she feel? Truth, now . . .
I'm more terrified than eager. And I'm angry. Angry at myself for being afraid, angrier still at Caladnei and Rhauligan for bringing me by force into this choice. I'm burn-the-gods furious with Elminster for siring me, just walking away, and luring me here from the streets I know.
"Truth," Laspeera said gently from behind Narnra. "Every word utter truth."
Gods, yes, she's been reading my every thought. . .
Narnra spun around with a frightened snarl, expecting to find all three Cormyreans closing in around her-but everyone was just where they'd been before, Caladnei still kneeling.
"If I agree to this . . . this madness," Narnra asked in a voice that was far from calm and steady, "when will this mind-ream take place?"
The Mage Royal of Cormyr rose slowly to her feet, smiling a little wryly. "In such matters, there's never any better time for boldly reckless action than . . . right now."
Fifteen
My son, it's not the standing merchants you need fear. It's when they get to walking somewhere that you'd best beware. It takes a heap of coming trouble for someone to get a merchant to walk anywhere.
The outermost of the ward-spells that cloaked the far corners of the room in roiling mists flared into coppery flames of warning, and a telltale chimed.
The darkly handsome young man clad all in black-open-fronted, flaring-sleeved shirt, tight leather breeches, and gleaming
black boots-took his crossed feet down from the footstool, laid aside his book and his goblet, and rose from his chair.
He passed his hand over a dark sphere of crystal that shared its own upswept, teardrop-shaped duskwood plinth with an outer ring of smaller spheres. Another ring of roiling mists obediently wavered into emerald radiance and displayed an upright image in the air: a white-faced man in brown robes that matched his thinning hair was standing uncertainly in the midst of the emerald mists.
The man in black smiled and touched two of the smaller spheres. Two rings of mist fell away into nothingness, and the third took on that emerald hue. The Red Wizard then passed his hand over the largest sphere, and the scene of Huldyl Rauthur vanished.
"Enter the archway and proceed," he told the air calmly. "The way before you is quite safe."
The emerald mists at his feet flowed away to one wall in a purposeful flood and climbed it to outline an archway on the unbroken stone-which promptly split to reveal a long, rough tunnel through rock. A hesitant figure was advancing along it.
"Be welcome," the Red Wizard said quietly. "Importance brings you, I trust?"
"Y-yes," Huldyl Rauthur made reply, as he entered the chamber. "I believe 'tis time." The War Wizard was chalk-white with worry, and his face glistened with so much sweat that it dripped from his chin.
A weak reed, Master Rauthur, Darkspells thought. And weak reeds break.
"Good," Harnrim Starangh told the man he'd bought. "Return to the chamber you came from, and I'll follow in a matter of moments."
As soon as the fearful Rauthur started back down the passage, Starangh passed a hand over a crystal and sent mists billowing up between them once more. He drained his goblet in a long, unhurried quaff, plucked one of the crystals from the plinth and slipped it into his codpiece, and said words to the empty air.
Two men were promptly standing before him, blinking in startlement and alarm. They went pale when they saw who was standing facing them.
Starangh gave the merchants Bezrar and Surth a sharklike smile. "I hope you've eaten well. You're going on a journey."
"Eh? What j-" Bezrar began, but fell silent as Surth kicked his ankle savagely.
Starangh let them both see his smile turn soft and menacing and commanded, "Stand still and silent. Please."
They did so, and he cast an intricate spell that laid a fog of for-getfulness on them. Until it expired, they'd be compelled to seek the retired Mage Royal, being drawn always in his direction-but stripped from them was all remembrance of why they were seeking Vangerdahast or who'd enspelled and sent them. Anyone trying to break the spell before it ran out would reduce the two Marsembans to quivering mindlessness.
They stood like two gaping statues, no longer seeing the man who worked a second, minor spell to place images of the animated suits of armor known as helmed horrors in their minds. "When you see such a one," Harnrim Starangh told his two minions gently, "one of you will throw one of these at it, so as to strike it."
The black-clad wizard took the limp hands of the two oblivious men, and posed them so those of each man were cupped together. From a basket beneath his reclining chair, Starangh scooped many small, shiny, identical objects into those waiting palms: rune-graven ovals of metal that bulged plumply at their centers but thinned to the breadth of armor plate nigh all their edges.
He smiled at his two enchanted idiots, stepped around them to lay a hand on the backs of both of their necks at once, and pronounced another word that made them both vanish.
Humming a jaunty song, Harnrim Starangh made a last adjustment of his crystals and rode a plume of mist down the passage to join Rauthur. It was time to go hunting-for Vangerdahasts were suddenly very much in season.
* * * * *
Aumun Tholant Bezrar blinked, wiped his sweating face, and looked wildly in all directions with every evidence of utter bewilderment. Trees, aye, definitely trees.