Crusade - James Lowder [12]
By now the royal magician had reached the front of the room. A servant quickly brought a chair for the old woman, but she waved it away silently. Her tight-skinned, age-spotted face remained impassive and unreadable, even when Azoun smiled at her in greeting. Looking at the woman, the king realized why she so unsettled Vangerdahast. A prominent, knife-thin nose jutted out from between her close-set violet eyes, and it, like the rest of the woman's thin face, was covered with ash-gray skin pulled taut. In all, it seemed to Azoun that he was gazing at an ancient, but well-preserved corpse.
"Go ahead, Vangy," the king said softly as he pulled his eyes from the old woman's steady gaze.
Vangerdahast patted his beard, and his eyes seemed to lose focus under the bushy covering of his eyebrows. He inhaled deeply once, then again.
Closing his eyes, the mage started to mutter a low, rumbling incantation. The few wizards in the room, members of various delegations, leaned to their companions and whispered that the royal magician was casting a spell to detect scrying. If anyone was attempting to magically eavesdrop on the conference, Vangerdahast would be able to ferret out their spell.
At the front of the room, Vangerdahast's chant grew louder, more frantic.
His hands wove a complex pattern in the air. Without warning, he raised his fingertips to his temples, opened his eyes, and uttered the spell's final word. A brilliant blue-white flash burned through the room.
"By Mystra's wound!" Vangerdahast cried. The wizard covered his eyes and fell backward onto the floor.
The skittering sound of swords leaving their sheaths and daggers sliding from boot tops hissed in the room. A few well-trained soldiers, guards for various dignitaries, crouched next to their lords, ready for battle. A mage cast a spell, and a glowing sphere of protection appeared around one of the dalelords.
The few Cormyrian guards in the room rushed to Azoun's side, but the king paid them no attention. "What's going on, Vangy?" he asked as he helped his mentor from the gray stone floor.
The wizard rubbed his eyes with both hands and muttered curses under his breath. "Someone close by had a very powerful spell locked on this room.
That flash was caused by my incantation uncovering the other mage's scrying spell. Their contact with the room has been severed."
Many of the dignitaries relaxed, but few of the bodyguards put their weapons away. A large, middle-aged man slammed the hilt of his broadsword against the tabletop, breaking the room's uneasy silence. "If we could trace that spell," he growled, "we'd find a Zhentish agent to be the spellcaster."
"How do you know that, Lord Mourngrym?" asked a quivering merchant from Sembia.
All eyes turned to the nobleman who had spoken first: Mourngrym, lord of Shadowdale. The dalelord frowned as he slipped his broadsword into its jeweled sheath, but when he saw that he commanded the room's attention, he straightened his thick-muscled frame to its full height and smoothed his immaculate, stylish surcoat. Almost casually he cast an appraising eye over the crowd and drew his mouth into a hard line in the midst of his neatly trimmed beard and mustache. The politicians in the room who were allied with the dalelord would later call the look on his face as he spoke benign, even paternalistic. Those who thought less of the nobleman labeled the expression condescending.
"Who else but Zhentil Keep would want to spy on this gathering?"
Mourngrym touched the symbol of Shadowdale-a twisted tower in front of an upturned crescent moon-which lay over his heart on his impeccably tailored surcoat. "We from the Dales know of the Keep's evil better than anyone."
Vangerdahast