Part 7 (2/2)
He could almost taste taste the power. the power.
Lothrae had promised. Until together they controlled four or more of the Nine, those they did have would be Marlin's to command as he saw fit-and, by the Dragon Throne, there was a lot he planned to do with them before that fourth ghost was found!
Below, in the deep gloom, Marlin Stormserpent and his band of hirelings advanced cautiously along the great pa.s.sage that ran down the heart of the haunted wing.
Princess Alusair turned from the rail of the balcony where she'd been watching them, as swiftly as if she'd been thrusting a sword.
”I could kill all these fools in less time than it would take you to get down yon stairs to hail them,” she hissed. ”Why shouldn't I? Why Why, Old Mage?
Why?”
The chill emanating from her made Elminster's teeth chatter, but he stood his ground. ”I know how ye feel, la.s.s.”
”Seething,” she snapped. ”That's how I feel, right now. So put an arm around my shoulder and soothe me, wizard. Or by my father's sword, I'll be down from this balcony and killing them all, before you can-”
”Easy, Alusair. Easy,” he murmured, doing just as she'd bade him. His arm encountered nothing solid, only a terrible cold. A flesh-freezing chill that made him stagger, yet he tried to hold her comfortingly. And failed.
Alusair watched him stumble back against the nearest pillar, gray and gasping. Her face was not friendly.
”Not yet, la.s.s,” he muttered at her when he could speak again. ”There'll come a time to smite these worms, to be sure. Probably not long from now.”
She glared at him. ”Not yet, not now, await the right time...how can you be so farruking patient patient, Old Mage?”
Elminster shrugged, looking back at her with eyes that blazed with the same rage that was almost choking her.
”It helps,” he whispered fiercely, ”to be insane.”
”They seem rather disappointed to find only dark emptiness, shrouded furniture, and a distinct lack of chained maidens, imprisoned n.o.bles, and heaps of gold,” Alusair said tartly, a little later. ”Poor little pillagers.”
She peered down from a high balcony in the last room of the haunted wing. Young Lord Stormserpent seemed to be tugging something out of an inner pocket in the breast of his darkly fas.h.i.+onable jerkin. ”What's he up to now now?”
Elminster shrugged. ”That's a map, so I'd say he's now going to tour the palace in search of a magic he thinks is hidden here.”
”One of his precious Nine? Can't I kill him now? Really, El! You You may not care what is stolen or despoiled in these halls, but this is my home- may not care what is stolen or despoiled in these halls, but this is my home-I care very much!” care very much!”
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 that side pa.s.sage. side pa.s.sage.
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 n.o.bles, 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 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? 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 B BRAZEN C CREEPING A 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 pa.s.sages, 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 rus.h.i.+ng around the palace than Storm would be if she wore herself out racing back there from her farm kitchen in distant Shadowdale.
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