Then she saw that the old wizard’s hands clutched the balcony rail so hard they were white and shaking.
It seemed Elminster had discovered that he cared very much, too.
“Heartened, saer?”
“Of course,” Marlin replied, smiling a real smile. “Not a man lost, and all the undead who dared stand against us destroyed with admirable ease and swiftness. We’ve time left to try to accomplish something that should prove much easier than facing down hauntings.”
“Oh, aye?” The hiresword’s voice held a subtle note of disbelief. He’d survived being hired by many overconfident patrons before-and hoped to live long enough to be hired by many more again. “So we’re bound deeper into the palace?”
“Of course. I must check the accuracy of these maps and find the way to the legendary Dragonskull Chamber.”
“Where the Royal Magician died?”
“That’s the place,” Marlin said cheerfully, consulting his map again and then waving at the armed men around him to turn down that side passage.
Most of Suzail knew no one dared enter the Dragonskull Chamber.
Most of Cormyr knew that name belonged to a heavily warded spellcasting chamber hidden somewhere deep in the royal palace, that was shunned because the Royal Magician Caladnei, ravaged by the Spellplague, had died inside it one night eighty years before.
Among courtiers and nobles, it was said that not even the most powerful war wizards could penetrate its mighty wards. Dragonskull still stood dark, empty, and shunned, its never-locked doors closed, because of its many warding spells. Those magics had been so twisted in the Spellplague that all spellhurlers avoided them; they still worked and were linked to so many other spells laid on the palace down the centuries that they couldn’t be destroyed without a lot of careful, exacting quelling and dispelling-for who still alive knew or remembered all that those magics were holding up, or binding in check?
The twisted wards still roiled constantly, in a way that unsettled the minds of all mages. Marlin himself had once seen a white-faced war wizard spewing up a good meal before collapsing on his face in his own mess, and had been told the man had ended up that way by merely trying to walk across the infamous chamber-despite giving up and fleeing right back out again after only a few steps.
However, neither he nor any of these hireswords, unless they’d been lying to him-and deserved any doom they tasted, thereby-were spellcasters.
He and all Stormserpents had a very good, longstanding reason for wanting to get past the roiling wards around the Dragonskull Chamber. Unfinished family business that even in his youth had excited him. Something he’d long dreamed of taking care of …
Seizing the Wyverntongue Chalice.
Alone among living men-thanks to the unfortunate demises of certain of his kin, Marlin Stormserpent knew where the chalice was hidden. A secret not even Caladnei and Vangerdahast had known, something hidden, presumably, even from the very ghosts of the palace. Behind a false wall-and those tainted, roiling wards that had so effectively kept nosy war wizards at bay-in a forgotten room behind, but not actually in, the Dragonskull Chamber.
So, thanks to years of energetic and handsomely paid spies and informants, he had maps of the palace, many accounts of where the room he was seeking must be, and a strong band of armed men around him, inside the palace and moving fast.
Oh, yes, Marlin let himself smile more broadly than he’d beamed for many a day. He was trembling so much that Thirsty shifted recklessly inside the breast of his jerkin, his stinger grating along the metal plates he wore across his chest.
Lord Marlin Stormserpent, who might soon be so much more, allowed himself an eager chuckle. He could almost feel the chalice in his hands …
CHAPTER EIGHT
MUCH BRAZEN CREEPING ABOUT
Where are they heading, d’ye think?” Elminster gasped, as he fetched up against a doorframe and clung to it, fighting for breath.
Where the ghostly princess could fly, he had to walk. Even when he sprinted, he couldn’t move nearly as fast as Alusair.
She’d long since taken to repeatedly racing off to check on Stormserpent’s band and then returning to the Old Mage, as he panted his way along dark palace passages, hoping he’d not meet anyone.
If he did, he planned to pose as old Elgorn-with the aid of strips torn from some linens he’d purloined in the undercellars and had just wound around most of his face in a false bandage-and tell some tale or other about discovering how long it had been since certain footings had been checked. “Mustn’t let this grand place fall down about our ears, look ye!” he’d growl.
For years around the palace, he’d been old Elgorn Rhauligan, “repairer and restorer of the ever-crumbling stone, plaster, tapestries, and wood of these great buildings.” Not to mention a descendant of the famous Glarasteer Rhauligan. Who didn’t usually work alone, of course; Elgorn trusted in his scarcely younger sister, Stornara, to remember things and calculate stresses for him. Hardly anyone ever told her she looked like the old portrait of the Lady Bard of Shadowdale anymore, with Elminster’s masking magics to make her appear as old as he.
Not that Elgorn Rhauligan was in any better shape to go rushing around the palace than Storm would be if she wore herself out racing back there from her farm kitchen in distant Shadowdale.
“Dragonskull, for all the gold in the upper treasury,” Alusair answered him disgustedly. “Unless their thoughts are captivated by old and broken furniture.”
Then she stiffened and lifted her head like a hound sniffing the wind. “Ganrahast and Vainrence, coming through the palace by different ways, both in a howling hurry! Both bound for the north turret … and Vainrence will get there first.”
Elminster peered at her. “Ye can track anyone moving about the palace?”
“Of course not. Just these two, usually; I can feel all the magic they load themselves down with,” Alusair snapped. “They often meet in a room right at the top of the north turret, where I can’t go, presumably for discussions they want to keep very private. Want to listen in on this one? I’ve never seen them in such wild haste before!”
Elminster nodded thoughtfully, a fire kindling in his eyes. “I believe I do.”
The eyes of the palace maid, staring ardently into his over their hungrily joined mouths, widened in sudden fear, and Lord Arclath Delcastle felt her stiffen all over.
He listened hard.
A man who was muttering to himself was trudging up the last few turns of the north turret steps before the topmost bedchamber.
Arclath left off kissing and cuddling the lass in his arms long enough to clap a swift hand over her mouth before she could so much as squeak, drag her around behind the wardrobe, and then silently-but fiercely-curse.
Last time, he’d distinctly heard the two wizards growl agreement that they were never going to climb all those stairs again, as they set off back down them.
Yet here they were again.
With furious energy, Arclath indulged himself in snarling the most flowery and fervent oaths he knew, but his profanities were utterly silent, blazing only in his mind.
Over his hand, the maid was staring at Arclath in stark terror as the wizard on the other side of the wardrobe went from murmuring to saying the clear-and distinctly irritated-words, “Come on, Gan. Let the courtiers see to their own tasks for once. We’ve important matters on our platters.”
Arclath tried to give the chambermaid a reassuring look, but it didn’t seem to work. And no wonder; they’d both recognized the voice of the wizard Vainrence, one of the most feared spellhurlers in the kingdom. The enforcer among the war wizards, the mage who could-and had-shattered the walls of a castle keep to get at traitors within.