Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [55]
Three failures, only. Three who’ve resisted me. The intruders from Shadowdale, the wizard Elminster and the wench Storm … Bah. It is to sneer.
Her one attempt to destroy them should have been ease itself but had not gone well. Alusair had suddenly been there, all fierce menace, barring her way with the announcement that the two were under her protection and Targrael would harm them at her own peril.
She’d rightfully sneered at that, of course, but Alusair had taken her by the throat and had done something that had seared her very undeath.
Targrael’s throat pained her still, months later. Her voice had become a hoarse, hissing whisper, and she burst anew into ghostly flames about her throat whenever upset.
So she took bitter care indeed when in the palace, avoiding the ghost of the princess and those two thieves from Shadowdale as much as possible, and doing more watching than slaying.
Cold flames were licking about her throat now, though, as excitement rose icy and fierce within her.
Cormyr must be defended.
Targrael thrust up the lid of the stone coffin she’d been lying in, stretched stiff arms, and drew her sword.
The room around her was dark, empty, and unguarded—nigh forgotten, even at times when the royal court offices all around were bustling. Dusty and little regarded, like too many reminders of the kingdom’s past.
She climbed out of the raised coffin and put its lid back into place.
There. The Tomb of the Loyal Dragon looked as good as new.
She’d long ago tossed out the crumbling bones of the long-dead soldier interred there, and had made it her favorite hiding place. The idiot weaklings who called themselves Purple Dragons and senior courtiers and wizards of war these days hadn’t noticed, of course.
Targrael felt her lip curling. The darkness in her head was giving her orders without speaking, sending her marching off through the darkened passages of the royal court’s upper floors. Stalking slowly at first, blade held close to her chest as she stumbled into walls and closed doors.
She was no clumsy, lurching zombie, but she was seeing much more than dark, empty passages. In her mind were unfolding scenes of a band of hireswords, plundering the royal palace!
A band she was to aid and guard, or at least the man who led it: the young noble Marlin Stormserpent.
He had seized two precious things, and she was to see he kept them and his life. So he could wreak great change upon Cormyr.
She would be part of it. She would have a hand in the destiny of Cormyr.
At last.
She’d not miss her chance again …
“The way ahead is barred, saer,” one of his two surviving hirelings muttered warningly, shifting the gore-dripping sack that rode on his shoulder.
“I am aware of that,” Marlin replied firmly. “Matters have been arranged.”
It had been a long, boring trudge through cold darkness toward a faint glimmer of light.
They were almost at that light, a lantern hanging from an overhead hook in the Old Dwarf’s deepest winecellar. On the other side of the old and massive steel gate that walled off the end of the passage, where the lantern was, stood a row of massive oak casks, each in its own cradle.
His trusted, long-serving “dirty work” accomplice, Verrin, was waiting under that lantern, smirking at him. Just where Verrin was supposed to be.
Marlin stiffened. Not enough for anyone to see, but enough that Thirsty stirred restlessly inside his jerkin. Something was very wrong.
For one thing, the spell-warded steel gate was still down and locked in place. The Spellplague had twisted its wards like so many others, and wisps of wild magic were eddying around its wide-spaced bars as they had done for years, casting eerie glows on everyone’s face.
For another thing, Verrin wasn’t alone.
That “everyone” included a tall man who was standing