Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [66]
“Tarandar,” Mallowfaer bellowed from down the hall. “The new chairs and stools are being unloaded at Zorsin’s dock right now! I’ve sent Emmur and Darlakan for wagons, but get yourself down there to see they don’t break or mar every last piece in their loading!”
Right on cue. As anticipated and planned.
“Saer!” Halance shouted back. “I hear! And I’m on my way!”
Hurry, chamberjack. Hasten; mustn’t be late. Neither Mallowfaer nor my agent who waits for you should be kept waiting.
He dashed to the door, then spun around, strode back to his desk to snatch up the still-wet note, and ran.
For a wagon, it was a long way to Zorsin’s dock, but not such a long route for one hurrying man. Which meant …
He had a fair idea of where Arclath would be. The Eel or the Dragonriders’ Club or possibly Saklarra’s Wonderful Willing Wenches if our young Lord Delcastle was feeling particularly frisky.
If the Fragrant Flower of House Delcastle happened to be elsewhere … well, there were half-a-dozen inspections and negotiations regarding the upcoming council that a senior chamberjack could parlay into depart-the-court forays. Yet telling Arclath soonest would be best and would get it off his desk and out of the way, the better to devote all his attention to all the council details …
Into his head, then, came a brief, bewildering vision. It seemed as if a beholder was staring at him fixedly, through an eerie glow, with a dark cavern all around it. A beholder?
Gods, he was having waking nightmares! This farruking council!
Shaking his head, Halance Tarandar hastened down one last hall, ducked past the guards with a smile and nod, and hurried into the streets, crossing the promenade and turning immediately into his favorite alley.
He never even saw the hand that struck him down.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
ENTER A LORD, LAUGHING
In the sumptuous heart of pink-walled Delcastle Manor, there were rooms most visitors never saw. Rooms whose pink-plastered walls were sculpted into semblances of thickly clustered roses climbing the paneling and entwining above doors.
Lord Arclath Argustagus Delcastle would have shuddered to see such decor in someone else’s home, but in his mother’s rooms, he was used to it.
Or so he repeatedly told himself.
It was a long-standing family rule that blood members of House Delcastle arriving home should present themselves to his mother—or to her personal maid on the rare occasions when Darantha had been ordered to intercept him—so, as he had done so many times before, Arclath took his dashing self up the soaring stairs from the entry hall and through several ornate chambers into the land of sickly roses. Sweeping past the usual impassive guards, he glided into his mother’s receiving room.
Where the Lady Marantine Delcastle gave him her best well-fed-cat smile. She was sprawled on a daybed whose blood red silks complemented the roses beautifully—but clashed horribly with the flame orange sleeping silks she wore, open to somewhere well below her waist. Not to mention shriekingly discordant with the emerald-dyed fur wrap she’d thrown oh-so-elegantly around her shoulders.
The hour had crept from very late to very early, but Lady Delcastle was wide awake and practically purring as she languidly ate scorched-orange-peel chocolates and sipped from a tallglass of amberglath “sweetwine” liqueur. Unless she’d found some unusual new diversion to leave her in such a mood, it meant she was very much enjoying the afterglow of being pleasured by three of her strapping “chamberjacks.”
“Well met, Mother,” Arclath gave her his cheerful, smoothly sardonic greeting. “Are your oiled ones gone?”
She gave him one of her best sneers. “Don’t belittle my playthings, Arkle dear. They’re more men than you’ll ever be.”
“How so?” he asked, strolling to her decanter-covered sideboard and regarding her in the mirror above it.
“Don’t you prefer boys?”
Arclath shrugged. “No, as it happens. Aren’t those your tastes, Mother?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “No, unobservant fool, I want men. Men who fight and kill and come to me reeking