Cormyr_ a novel - Ed Greenwood [126]
"So who will win?" Huldyl asked quietly, and before Kurthryn could even lift his shoulders to shrug, added, "Nay, forget I asked that, instead, tell me: Who do you think offers the better road ahead for the realm?"
"I've thought about that a lot," Kurthryn admitted. He grinned weakly when his colleague made a silently sarcastic so-who-hasn't? gesture. "Both sides have their merits. I think Vangerdahast has the wisdom and experience to be much the better ruler, and without courtiers and senior nobles and royal cousins and what-all between him and us, he can use us of the war wizards far more swiftly than Azoun could move us to his will. Cormyr will be less corrupt and faster to respond to crises."
"Yes, but will the people believe that?"
Kurthryn frowned and shook his head slowly. "No, they won't. They never do. They'll never trust magic, because they think of it as something their nasty neighbor would use against them if he could, and they're always afraid the lot of us are as bad as their nasty neighbor. And with respected bards reminding them from time to time of how High Magess Amedahast died all those years ago battling the first war wizards, who can blame them?" Moodily he moved his king again.
Huldyl was nodding in somber agreement. "There's another thing, too," he added. "With a clear, unbroken Obarskyr line, everyone knows who has the right to sit on the throne. The moment a regency muddies the waters and someone marries one of the princesses, a rival noble will think he's better suited to rule than the one who snared the princess-and once that starts, we won't have a Cormyr unless the land can somehow endure every last noble family in it killing off all their rivals, until there's no great house left. Then one of us will have to choose a commoner to wear the crown."
"Ah, yes," Kurthryn agreed grimly, "choosing the right commoner. The fun never ends, does it?"
"We probably won't have to worry about having to make any such choice," Huldyl said. "Remember, this whole thing has been forced upon us by a treasonous murderer, or perhaps a band of murderers. You really think they don't have something of their own in mind for Cormyr? We'll be lucky if we even find out who they are before they have our heads bouncing and rolling down the banks of Lake Azoun!"
"I think it's Sembians-perhaps with help from Westgate, or even Amn. Merchants, anyway, who look upon Cormyr as a rich little breadbasket that they can empty faster if they don't have a king in the way of their grasping hands," Kurthryn said. "They may have bought or duped a few Cormyreans, and they'll probably put a puppet noble house on and around the throne, but it's outlanders doing this to Cormyr. I'm sure of it."
"I'm not," Huldyl replied in a voice of doom. "This has all the feel of a home-brewed plot."
"How so?" Kurthryn asked dubiously. "You think some old noble with a grudge or ambitious young one can get his hands on a dead-magic toxin? Someone who's very powerful in magic must be involved, someone better than even our Lord High Wizard, or he'd have cured the king by now."
"Unless he's behind it all," Huldyl returned. "Who better placed to lead priests astray? And those of us who tried to help, too? All your point about the means of slaying really tells us is that the traitor or traitors have money enough to buy powerful magic. The deadly means might have come from anywhere in Faerun… perhaps the far Tuigan Wastes, or the lands of the far south, or across the seas to the west. What better place to find something that'll baffle our best healers?"
Kurthryn nodded. "That feels right, that argument-but nothing in your words really proves it's traitors here at home. Cormyr has no shortage of foes who'd like