Part 31 (1/2)
When she fetched up against a wall, Amarune got the stopper back in, then took the flask with her as she lurched to her bed and flung herself down on it.
”What by all the h.e.l.ls am I going to do?” do?” she hissed aloud. she hissed aloud.
The walls maintained their usual eloquent silence, and she sighed, let her shoulders sag in the first part of a shrug of helplessness she didn't bother to finish, then in sudden irritation pulled off her boots, one after the other, and flung them hard against the wall.
Wrenching off the cloak was harder, and she was panting by the time she whirled it into the air and watched it swirl down to the floor.
The sweat-soaked robe came off with comparative ease, and she hurled it onto the highest peak of her piled-up dirty laundry.
Whereupon the heap rose up with a grunt, and a bearded old man was smiling at her, her smallclothes still decorating his head.
Amarune stared at him then flung herself up off the bed, opening her mouth to scream-and Elminster hurled himself atop her, moving surprisingly fast for such such seemingly old bones, and thrusting two or three of her underclouts into her mouth to stifle her shrieks.
They bounced on the bed together, the old man on top and Amarune clawing at him and making m.u.f.fled ”mmmphs” as his bony old knees and elbows landed on various soft areas of her anatomy.
Growling, she started to swing and kick at him wildly, and the old man sighed, plucked up her-thankfully empty-copper chamberpot from where he'd found it earlier under the edge of the bed, and brained her with it.
The room spun and swam. G.o.ds and little chanting priests, the minstrels told truth: one does does see stars...sometimes... see stars...sometimes...
Amarune fell back on her pillows, clutching her head and groaning.
Whereupon the old man got off her, caught up her cloak from the floor, and wrapped it firmly around her, pinioning her arms to her sides, and propped her up on her pillows like a firmly efficient nurse.
”I'm very sorry I had to do that to ye, la.s.s,” he announced, trundling back down to the foot of her bed and perching there, ”but we must must talk. I need ye. talk. I need ye. Cormyr Cormyr needs ye. h.e.l.ls, needs ye. h.e.l.ls, the Realms the Realms needs ye.” needs ye.”
Amarune groaned again, trying to peer at the gaunt, white-haired intruder as she struggled free of her cloak. He made no move toward her. The moment she could move her arms freely, she clutched the cloak more tightly around her-though it was more than a little too late to guard any thin wisp of modesty she might still have possessed. He was obviously waiting for her to speak, so she did.
”Who...who are you?”
”Elminster,” came the prompt reply. ”I used to be a wizard. Yes, that that Elminster. Well met, Great-granddaughter.” Elminster. Well met, Great-granddaughter.”
Amarune couldn't help herself. ”Great what?” what?”
She stared at him in the sudden silence, open-mouthed. He filled the pause by smiling and nodding, but by then she was frowning again.
”Elminster? But you can't can't be! Why-” be! Why-”
”'Can't'? Did I hear the word 'can't'? Amarune, do ye know anything anything about wizards, at all?” about wizards, at all?”
”But how-? The G.o.ddess Mystra...”
”Ye will be unsurprised to learn,” the old man told her in very dry tones, ”that 'tis a long story. Right now, I'd rather hear just what ye-and young Lord Delcastle-are up to.” young Lord Delcastle-are up to.”
”Why?”
Elminster regarded his great-granddaughter with something that might have been exasperation, or just might have been new respect.
”This has been a long evening already, aye? Let's go somewhere that has good wine and decent food and talk a bit. I've found dancers like to talk. Anything to keep from doing the other things customers expect them to do, I suppose.”
”So this Amarune is the famous Silent Shadow,” Wizard of War Glathra Barcantle mused, sounding entirely unsurprised. ”You obviously didn't know that until just now, so what made you suspicious of her? Or were you governed by a paramount interest in a mask dancer who might be willing, for coins enough, to do more for you than merely dance?”
Arclath Delcastle stared rather coolly back at his interrogator. ”I've seldom seen a need to pay anyone to fill my bed, Lady Wizard. Handsome, remember? n.o.ble? Das.h.i.+ng, yes?”
Glathra's expression remained coldly unimpressed.
He sighed, waved dismissively, and added, ”Ne'er mind. I was interested in her for a reason you already know; I wanted to learn why she'd been listening to what Halance, Belnar, and I were discussing about the council. Particularly now that Halance and Belnar are so suddenly and violently dead. Though I grant that it's both unusual and unfas.h.i.+onable for n.o.bles to be so, in this day and age, Lady Glathra, I do do happen to be loyal to the Crown.” happen to be loyal to the Crown.”
”We know that,” she replied quietly, ”and that's why I've brought you here. We have a proposition for you, Lord Delcastle.”
”'We'?” Arclath asked pointedly, staring around the room. The two of them were sitting facing each other across a s.h.i.+ning expanse of table, and the palace chamber around them was bare of all guards, war wizards, scribes, or anyone else. Just a few portraits, a tapestry or two, and a lone closed door. ”Have you a twin? Or are you using the royal 'we,' and there's been a royal marriage I'm not privy to that I should be congratulating you about, Lady?”
As if his questions had been a signal, one of those tapestries was thrust aside by a firm hand, and Delcastle found himself staring into the wise old eyes and familiar face of King Foril Obarskyr of Cormyr.
The High Dragon of the Forest Kingdom was wearing a simple circlet on his brow and hunter's garb of jerkin, belt, breeches, and boots of plain leather. Of the finest make and tailored to fit his lean, trim body. A simple belt knife rode his hip, and discreet rows of plain rings-most of them enchanted, no doubt-adorned his fingers. He was smiling.
”Nothing so dramatic, Lord Delcastle,” the king said dryly.” The Lady Glathra was speaking on my behalf and was aware of my presence-as, now, are you.”
By then, Delcastle was out of his chair and down on one knee. Foril looked pained and waved at him to rise.
”Up, up, lad; I've servants enough to do that far too often for me as it is. I need your loyalty and your friends.h.i.+p, not your knees ruined on my behalf. n.o.bles who can be eyes and ears for me are rare and precious things in this kingdom, now as ever; we need to talk.”
”Majesty,” Arclath replied with a smile, rising, ”it so happens that talking is one of my strengths.”
”I find myself strangely unsurprised,” the king told him dryly, taking up his chair and coming forward to the table.
Amarune knew The Willing Smile only by its reputation. A rundown, seedy, low-coin brothel on a formerly fas.h.i.+onable street in Suzail, where wrinkled old harridans and a few wide-eyed younglings desperate for quick coin entertained toothless old men desiring to deceive themselves that they were still bold lions of youth and vigor whose very names left Cormyr in awe.
She was surprised to find it a clean, quiet, and dimly lit grand house that seemed to stretch on forever, run by a matron more motherly than alluring, who obviously regarded Elminster as an old and trusted friend.
”Mother” Maraedra patted the limping graybeard on the arm when he greeted her, nodded after he murmured in her ear for a moment, and then led them through lushly carpeted halls adorned with many full-length portraits that were probably doors into the rooms of the women depicted in them, to a back room decorated like a successful but careful-with-coin family's private parlor, where a table was set for four.
Humming to herself, she shuffled through a door and returned almost immediately to set before them bowls of cubed redruth goat cheese, biscuits, and an herbed paste of oil and crushed and roasted vegetables.
Then she slipped out again, holding up a finger as if in warning to them to say nothing until her return-and again, came back into the room swiftly, this time with tallgla.s.ses, which would have done any n.o.ble House proud, and a large decanter.
Then she bowed, smiled, and backed out of the room, waving in silent farewell, and in the same gesture, as she pulled the door closed on herself, bade them converse.
Elminster gave her a low bow, waved Amarune to a chair, and poured her wine. She peered at it critically, suddenly realizing she was ravenous and thirsty, and sipped. It was very very good wine, perhaps the nicest she'd ever tasted. good wine, perhaps the nicest she'd ever tasted.
Elminster spread paste on a biscuit with a small, almost circular paddle-a knife of sorts, but it could never be used to stab anyone-and handed it to her. When she took it, he thrust a cube of cheese her way.