Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [37]
Elminster peered at her. “Ye can track anyone moving about the palace?”
“Of course not. Just these two, usually; I can feel all the magic they load themselves down with,” Alusair snapped. “They often meet in a room right at the top of the north turret, where I can’t go, presumably for discussions they want to keep very private. Want to listen in on this one? I’ve never seen them in such wild haste before!”
Elminster nodded thoughtfully, a fire kindling in his eyes. “I believe I do.”
The eyes of the palace maid, staring ardently into his over their hungrily joined mouths, widened in sudden fear, and Lord Arclath Delcastle felt her stiffen all over.
He listened hard.
A man who was muttering to himself was trudging up the last few turns of the north turret steps before the topmost bedchamber.
Arclath left off kissing and cuddling the lass in his arms long enough to clap a swift hand over her mouth before she could so much as squeak, drag her around behind the wardrobe, and then silently—but fiercely—curse.
Last time, he’d distinctly heard the two wizards growl agreement that they were never going to climb all those stairs again, as they set off back down them.
Yet here they were again.
With furious energy, Arclath indulged himself in snarling the most flowery and fervent oaths he knew, but his profanities were utterly silent, blazing only in his mind.
Over his hand, the maid was staring at Arclath in stark terror as the wizard on the other side of the wardrobe went from murmuring to saying the clear—and distinctly irritated—words, “Come on, Gan. Let the courtiers see to their own tasks for once. We’ve important matters on our platters.”
Arclath tried to give the chambermaid a reassuring look, but it didn’t seem to work. And no wonder; they’d both recognized the voice of the wizard Vainrence, one of the most feared spellhurlers in the kingdom. The enforcer among the war wizards, the mage who could—and had—shattered the walls of a castle keep to get at traitors within.
“I heard you,” another voice replied sourly from farther down the steps. The maid recognized it as well as Arclath; her eyes promptly rolled up in her head as she fell into a dead faint, sagging heavily in Arclath’s arms.
On the other side of the wardrobe, the Royal Magician Ganrahast came into the bedchamber, breathing hard. The top of the north turret was a long climb.
“Yes?” he gasped.
“ ’Tis urgent,” Vainrence replied flatly, wasting no time on greetings.
“Always is.” Gasp. “Urgent what?” Gasp.
“One of our informants just told me the nobles Rothglar Illance, Harmond Hawklin, and Seszgar Huntcrown are plotting treason. They plan to unleash what they refer to as a ‘ball of spellplague’ that they have locked in a small coffer, to flood the room with harmful wild magic at the Council of the Dragon.”
Ganrahast didn’t spend breath on a curse or a sigh. “Presumably the three are immune to its effects,” he gasped, “and believe it will do harm—instantly debilitating harm—to their fellow nobles and the royal family, we mages, and courtiers.”
“We war wizards, at the least,” Vainrence agreed. “I can’t see them as self-sacrifices to any cause. They intend to survive this unleashing.”
Finding that that particular noble trio harbored treason was no news at all, but it was the first Delcastle had heard of a flying ball of spellplague. Was such a thing even possible?
“If this information is anywhere near truth,” Ganrahast pointed out.
Vainrence shrugged. “Like you, I suspect the veracity of anything I’m freely told. Yet can we dare not take this seriously?”
“When we could be dooming the king? And most of the senior nobles of the realm with him? Hardly.”
Vainrence spared himself enough time to curse. After a moment, Ganrahast joined him.
“I’ll put the hilt in my mouth,” Elminster whispered, settling himself on his side on the cold stone floor, “and