Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [54]
The grip became a tightening cage.
“Rorskryn Mreldrake, you are mine now.”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
DARKER AND DARKER
The darkly handsome man made his latest acquisition abruptly turn and slam himself face-first against the wall.
Wizard of War Rorskryn Mreldrake groaned dazedly, staggered back from the wall, and reeled a little as he resumed his swift, gasping trot along the passage.
Manshoon arched a critical eyebrow. His control over this wormling was complete, but weak tools do poor work. This coward Mreldrake was a wizard of war, yes, and a pair of somewhat useful hands, too, but no great prize. Certainly not up to the task he needed done.
Mreldrake, Rendarth, and Nalander must all vanish or be silenced, soon, to send the right message to the Royal Magician and his trusted second that doing anything at all to the palace wards was a very bad idea. Then it would be time to put Ganrahast and Vainrence to sleep before they got any other clever ideas. Moreover, removing them without causing their deaths would leave the wizards of war in headless confusion for some time—time he intended to stretch for as long as possible—ere a new chain of command was settled and accepted.
First, however, the more pressing task.
The energetic young Stormserpent was about to fall afoul of the usual treachery, and must be rescued from it.
It wouldn’t do to have the items he bore that were linked to the Nine fall into the wrong hands and plunge all Suzail into a tiresome battle as the war wizards and various ambitious nobles and mages—including both shadow-commanded and independent Sembians, to say nothing of all the wolves-for-hire in Westgate—got wind of something worth seizing and tried to take it for themselves.
No, the overbold young fool of a noble needed rescuing. A swift and forceful saving that would require someone far more competent than Mreldrake. Someone who knew the palace well and served Cormyr—or at least her vision of it—with fierce loyalty. Someone undead, whom he commanded.
The death knight who was called “Lady Dark Armor” in the dark tales whispered in back palace rooms. Targrael, whose twisted mind was already his.
Smiling, Manshoon murmured a spell and bent his will down into chill, dusty darkness.
Down, down into a certain old, seldom-visited tomb deep in the palace.
Down to where someone smiled in her endless unbreathing, unthinking oblivion, and stirred …
Targrael smiled in the darkness.
Awake again, after too long asleep. She was aware of another mind, folded around her own and watching her. Strong and dark and terrible, a mind that had mastered her before …
Abruptly her attention was forced away from that lurking presence to the point of her own nose. To the slab of smooth, unbroken stone just beyond it.
“I am the last lady highknight, and the best,” she whispered fiercely to the lid of the closed coffin above her.
There had been a time when, yes, she’d been as insane as your average gibbering wizard, but that was past; Targrael knew quite well she was beyond death, and what she’d become.
And she’d found it quite suited her coldly ruthless self.
Death was a curious thing. Neither precious Caladnei nor shiningly heroic Alusair had perished in the ways everyone thought they had—not that she’d found any trace of Caladnei, yet, around the palace. Alusair was a different matter …
Targrael found herself quivering with rage at the mere memory and forced herself once more down into cold calm.
Patience. Stately patience.
I am, after all, Cormyr. Its sole true guardian; the Forest Kingdom and everyone in it depends on me, though they know it not.
Wherefore I tirelessly—her lips curled in scornful amusement at that, for she was either lost in oblivion or awake and unsleeping—lurk in and around Suzail, slaying all who displease me. I decide who shall flourish and rule or fall in the Forest Kingdom. As the years pass and the vigilance of the realm fades and its foes grow darker and darker, I play no small part in hurling back Sembian and Shadovar interests seeking