"Yes?" Broglan and Ergluth prompted, in unison.
"He fell on his face, onto something shaped and metal. The less likely cause is that his cheek was struck by the quillons of his own sword or the blade of another, as Athlan's uplifted weapon was driven into it by a hard parry or by the force of a meeting with a wall or attack."
She looked up. "Broglan? What did your spells tell you when you tried to touch the mind of your slain mageling?"
"Nothing," the war wizard told her bleakly. "To magic-all the magics we could think of, that any of us can cast-he was 'not there.' Unreachable, absent. . blindbarred."
Storm nodded, and whispered something over the silent shape. A pulse of light raced away from her lips, passing swiftly through the thing of ash. When it was gone, though, the ash-corpse looked just as it had before.
Her eyes flickered. The boldshield took a cautious step forward. "Can you bring the dead back to walk among us, Lady of Mystra? Then Athlan could lead the House of Summerstar once more, and we could banish all this strife and upset."
Storm laughed shortly as she circled the shape, looking at the soles of its feet. "For all the tales of the dead rising at a wave of a priest's hand," she said slowly, not looking up, "death is still the final and inescapable fate of all-or at least, one very few find a reprieve from. Not this one, I'm afraid-something bars my every spell."
As the last words left her lips, the ashes gave forth a queer little sigh and collapsed.
She looked up. The wizard Broglan was shaking with weariness. Feeling her scrutiny, he looked up and managed a smile.
"That's-not an easy spell to hold," he said.
There was a stir outside the crypt, and they all looked up as the Purple Dragons standing wary guard stepped back to allow the entry of more of their fellows. They bore something in a covered strong chest, and were preceded by the grim and white-lipped old steward of the feast hall.
"My thanks for guiding my men hence," Ergluth Rowanmantle told the old man gravely.
Ilgreth Drimmer nodded wearily and leaned back against the wall, silently waving away the thanks.
Broglan had already swept Athlan's ashes carefully back into their coffin, leaving the stone table clear. He joined the steward against the wall, too tired to do more than watch.
Storm pointed. The armsmen lifted the sheet out of the strong chest and swung the shrouded bundle onto the funerary table.
"Renglar?" Ergluth asked quietly.
Storm nodded. "I hope he'll do Athlan one last service," she said.
"But none of the spells you tried back in your bedchamber could reach him," the Purple Dragon commander said.
Storm gestured to the armsmen to draw back the edges of the sheet. "There is one spell left."
"A wizard's wish?" Ergluth ventured. "Can your will overcome the burning he suffered?"
Storm shook her head and took the seneschal's blackened skull into her hand. "No," she whispered. "Hush, now."
Then, looking into the two shrunken and dusty eyeballs, she breathed some phrases, put her finger to her own eyes, and touched the fingertips to Renglar's sorry, staring orbs. She turned, still holding the skull, and waved at the war wizards and armsmen to stand clear. The skull stared endlessly across the crypt. Something in the air where it was looking stirred, danced into life, and flickered.
A dozen men held their breaths as one and stared intently.
"Storm-?" Ergluth asked quietly, his hand on his sword.
"Nothing to do us harm," she replied, eyes never leaving the stirring air. "We'll be seeing the last thing the seneschal saw before he died."
As if obeying her, the flickering disturbance suddenly coalesced into a sharp, stationary image: a darkly handsome man with a crooked-bladed dagger in one hand. He reached it forward with a cruel, maniacal grin.
There was a murmur. "So that's our slayer," Ergluth said sharply. "Take a good look, men."
Storm moved and made a slight sound beside him. He glanced at her. The Bard of Shadowdale had started back. One of her hands had gone to her lips-lips that were suddenly chalk-white, and trembling.
Broglan saw her face too. "What's wrong, lady?"
"None of you recognize him?" Storm asked, almost whispering.
There was a general shaking of heads. "Nay, lady" Ergluth spoke for them all.
Storm let out a long, shuddering breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them to stare one last time at the grinning image as it started to fade. "That's Maxan Maxer, once my consort."
" 'Once'? He left you?" Ergluth asked, raising an eyebrow.
Storm gave him a wan smile. "In a manner of speaking." The image faded into a ghostly shadow. When it was quite gone, the bard turned away and added, her whisper loud in the silent tomb, "He's been dead for years."
The sound that she made next was very much like a sob.
SIX
A table stood in the center of the finely panelled study shared by the Sevensash war wizards. The table was fashioned of shadowtop wood, its curving legs sculpted into stylized tree roots and its oval top inlaid with plain, smooth-polished duskwood.
Far too plain, Hundarr had judged it with a sniff. Broglan disagreed. The small globe of winking lights he had placed to rotate lazily in the air above the table wasn't meant to be an ornament. Rather, the globe was there as a warning. It was linked to an invisible web of enchantment that spanned the floor, ceiling, and walls of the room. If any active spell effect moved into the study or was unleashed there, the globe would fall and shatter in a shower of harmless but dramatic sparks, telling everyone that magic was on the loose.
The leader of the war wizards ducked his head out of his bedchamber door and glanced at his spell globe.
It still spun above the table, patient and undisturbed-a scant few feet from an elbow propped on the polished duskwood.
The elbow belonged to Murndal Claeron, who sat at ease in an old, overstuffed chair, his feet up on a footstool. The young wizard was frowning over a spellbook, but Broglan could tell by the way he hummed and absently tapped his fingers that he was ruminating, not intently studying the magic.
Broglan strode across the fur rugs to sit on the adjacent lounge. Murndal raised his eyes and nodded in greeting, but said nothing.
Broglan was not so reticent. "I've been thinking about the lady-and the spellblade."
Murndal sighed and laid aside his book. Broglan raised an eyebrow. The young man's nonchalance was a mask; his hands were trembling. "She'll have her revenge on me," he said, voice low and urgent. "I know she will."
"Perhaps," Broglan said. "Almost any mage would, true-but she seems … different. She was more angry at me than you. And her ire seemed to come because we'd broken the rules of courtesy, rather than from surprise or outrage. Moreover, if I saw what I thought I did, she's healed already, long since. Folk released from pain can forget its cause more easily."
"Who's to say what she thinks?" Murndal said, almost bitterly. "She doesn't strike me as particularly sane."
"If you'll forgive the intrusion-and further, some blunt speech," a deeper voice put in from behind them, "you are judging her so because she doesn't act or speak as you expect her to." Insprin Turnstone took his own seat beside Broglan, steel-gray eyes glinting. He added, "Ambitious mages are the only folk of power you've taken measure of, Murndal. She's not ambitious … and, I suppose, not much of a mage."
"Murndal's point is a fair one, though," Broglan said. "Being alive for so long and serving our Divine Lady of Mysteries directly all that time-what would that do to one's mind?"
"Are we in a position to judge her?" Insprin asked mildly.
Broglan frowned. "Another good point," he admitted.