SO HIGH A PRICE
So high a price
So willingly paid
Hot blood flows
And a ruler is made.
Mintiper Moonsilver
Ballad of a Tyrant
Year of the Turret
Sunlight flashed on the pinnacles of the highest towers in Zhentil Keep and flung dazzling reflections through windows nearby. It was a hot day in Mirtul, in the Year of the Blazing Brand.
A small, brown ledgebird darted past one window, wheeled in the air on nimble wings, and merrily gave out its tiny call, like a carefree bugle. But then, it did not know how little time it had left to live.
A man looked out of the window, smiled slightly, and crooked a finger. The bird exploded in a puff of vivid green flames.
Manshoon watched the scorched feathers drift away and went on idly humming the latest popular minstrels’ tune. Trust a bird of Zhentil Keep to be out of time, and off-key. Well, no longer.
Manshoon looked down on the city below. He’d soon be looking down from a far loftier tower, if all worked out as he’d planned. His robes were of the finest purple silk, worked with rearing behirs in cloth-of-gold; his sleeves were the latest flaring fashion and his upswept high collar was of the sort only lords should wear. His jet-black hair gleamed in the sunlight as he leaned forward out of the window to better see the streets below. A slight shimmer in the air marked the closing of the invisible curtain of protective magics that surrounded him, in the wake of the scorcher spell he’d used on the bird.
A soft, deep chime sounded in the depths of the tower. It was followed by the faintest of stirrings as Taersel drew a hanging aside and murmured, “Fzoul Chembryl, my lord.”
Manshoon nodded and signed that Taersel should withdraw and return by one of the side passages to stand unseen behind a tapestry nearby. Taersel touched the hilt of the concealed throwing knife built into the ornate buckle of his belt to show he’d understood.
The man who was shown through the hanging a breath or so later looked like a well fed, self-important merchant, grand cap set on the side of his head with arrogant self-assurance— no doubt to cover a balding spot—rings agleam on his fingers, and robes of the latest slashed and counter-folded Calishite finery. He bowed and husked, “We are alone, great lord?”
Manshoon nodded. “We are.” The figure facing him flickered, seemed to melt and run riotous colors for a moment, and then spun into sharp focus once more, revealing the lionine mane, somber robes, and familiar features of Fzoul, High Priest of The Black Altar.
“The time is at hand?”
Manshoon nodded. “I grow weary of the sniping, petty threats, and backstreet whispers of these haughty nobles, and haven’t the time or interest to spare for hunting them down one by one, in their lairs.” He smiled. “Let it be done all at once. Dramatic, bloody, impressing those who watch, and goading the High Imperceptor into even more reckless bids to regain the temple from you.”
Fzoul showed his teeth in a smile of more cruelty than mirth, and said, “Savaging the hands he sends to smite us will be pleasure indeed, but be warned: If my priests are to remain useful, we of the Altar must be seen to take no part in your bid for power. None of my faithful will stand against you, but neither dare we work openly for you.”
Manshoon inclined his head. “It is enough.” He indicated a nearby decanter of black wine with a slow wave of his hand, but Fzoul shook his head, shivered, and the fat merchant faced Manshoon once more.
“There’ll be time enough for drinking when this is done, and your title is more than empty words, First Lord,” came the husky, false voice of the merchant.
Slowly, very slowly, Manshoon nodded again.
The decanter’s level had fallen by half when the hangings parted again, and another man came through them to see Manshoon. He moved with a strange gliding motion, this one, as if his soundless feet didn’t quite touch the floor. Taersel treated him with careful, silent respect.
The First Lord of Zhentil Keep, whose mind had been far away, going over every detail and dovetailing manipulation of his plans, opened eyes that were very dark and said coldly, “Yes?”
His guest straightened, flinging off the worn and stained gray weathercloak, and answered as coldly, “I presume you’re finally ready to move?”
“I believe so.”
The long-haired man facing him might have been a barbarian, but for the soft, unfinished look of his features. At a second glance, most Zhent folk would have guessed him a mongrelman, not quite human at all, and drawn back with mutters and wary touches of whatever weapons they bore.
They’d have been right. The hair melted and fell away as the features swam, grew white and glistening, and parted in the center to reveal a green and liquid eye. It grew and grew, until Manshoon was looking into the gaze of a single giant eye in a spherical head that bobbed at the end of a long, stalklike neck, swaying as it regarded him. The body beneath hung shrunken and empty, like discarded clothes drooping from a wall-peg.
“Speak, then,” the cold voice came again, a hissing, rumbling edge now audible within it. “I’ve little patience for humans who enjoy being mysterious.”
Manshoon gave the thing a wintry smile, and said, “It is to be open slaughter, as you wished, at the coming Council meeting. Those who oppose me—you know them—are to be slain. When effective rule of Zhentil Keep is in my hands, your own plans and wants will be addressed. So long as our ways lie together, your kind will have what they most desire: rule of a powerful city of men, full of hands to do your bidding, fresh meat to feed you, and strong men who will fear you and kneel before you.”
“Do not presume,” the cold voice responded, as the human body dwindled almost to nothing and the spherical head grew larger, drifting slightly closer, “to understand my kind so well. Most of all, Manshoon, do not presume to understand—or order about— me.”
Fleshy, writhing protuberances sprouted from the spherical body like giant worms, and a soft gasp and a clatter came from behind the tapestry where Taersel was hiding. A moment later, a crossbow bolt whipped across the floor of the chamber with a loud and vicious crack.
Eyes opened in the ends of the still-growing stalks. The tapestry was drawn aside by an invisible hand to reveal the dark mouth of a passage beyond, and lying sprawled on its stones, the motionless, facedown form of Taersel, a crossbow still clutched in his nerveless hands. Thin wisps of smoke rose from what remained of the protective amulets he’d worn about his wrists.
“It is not wise,” the cold voice of the eye tyrant said silkily, “to threaten ‘our kind.’”
Manshoon stared into its many clustered eyes and replied steadily, “I am too useful to expend, and too wise to mean by this what you accuse me of. The man is as useful to me as I am to you. I trust he has not been harmed.”
“He has not been harmed … yet.” The beholder grew larger, its eyes flashing yellow in displeasure. “Unless he takes great care, however, that day will soon come.”
* * * * *
“Unless you take great care,” Lord Chess said, leaning forward in his chair in an inner room of another tower, not far away, “that day will soon come.”
The other nobles at the table shifted in their own chairs. Some hid their nervousness by flamboyant sips of the potent golden lion-wine of Mulhorand in their goblets. Others smiled in a superior manner and settled themselves into even more indolent poses in the great, fine-carved chairs in which they lounged.
“We have no fear of upstart priests, nor of ambitious merchants elsewhere in the Realms,” one said with a practiced sneer. “Our fathers smashed such foes in their day—and their fathers, too, before that. Why should we quake at such news? The least of our guards will destroy them.”