Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [78]
Tress stared at him for a while longer before turning her gaze to Amarune.
“Is … is this true, Rune?” she asked in obvious disbelief, but seeing the offered road out of this for them all.
Struggling not to cry, bewildered and seeing nothing but traps yawning on all roads she might choose ahead, Amarune managed to lift her chin and say, “Y-yes.”
Tress sighed a long sigh, closing her eyes for a moment, then gave a polite nod to the torn and bleeding noble in the chair.
“Please accept my apologies for the interruption, Lord Delcastle. Pray proceed.”
Without another word she ushered the half-grinning bouncers out, not seeing Amarune open her mouth and raise a hand to protest—only to freeze and stay silent.
When the door had closed again, Amarune glared at the man still beneath her and hissed bitterly, “So now you have a hold over me, just as you sought! What’s this all about, anyhail? What foolish game are you playing?”
“No game,” Arclath murmured, rising from the chair but with gentle courtesy holding out a hand to assist her in standing rather than being dumped on the floor as he did so, as if she were his equal.
When he faced her, however, standing very close to her so that their noses almost touched, his smile was gone.
“You were listening to us while we talked, my friends and I,” he murmured, his voice low and his eyes boring into hers. “Why? Whom did you tell what we said about the council—or will you tell?”
“No one,” Amarune hissed back scornfully. “Who would care?”
He regarded her thoughtfully. “I can call to mind a score of nobles who will be hungry indeed for every detail,” he said slowly. “How much will it cost for your silence?”
“Why do you ask?” she whispered bitterly. “Whatever answer I give, having me killed will be cheaper, won’t it? For a silence you can truly trust in?”
Arclath stared at her expressionlessly, then bent, plucked up his knife from the floor where Tress had flung it down, and handed it to Amarune, hilt first.
“I trust you right now,” he told her quietly, pointing at the dagger and then at his throat, before leaning forward to offer it, undefended. “Completely.”
They stared at each other, Amarune trembling—until she slapped his dagger back into his hand and snarled, “I need a drink.”
The door behind them promptly opened, and Tress stepped in with a tray that held a decanter and three metal goblets.
“Thought you’d say that,” she told them with a nonchalant smile, obviously not caring that they’d know she’d been listening at the door. “Compliments of the house.”
Arclath and Amarune exchanged glances. Then, slowly, they both started to chuckle.
The passage was a long one, and the moment the laughter died away, the furious swordcaptain set a brisk pace along it, forcing his prisoners almost into a trot. He speeded up still more as they approached a darkened stretch, where by some servant’s oversight no lamps glimmered in the sconces that in an earlier age had held torches.
Into the gloom they plunged, Vandurn snarling orders, and his men beginning to pant, the prisoners stumbling as they were prodded into greater haste.
“Get going!” the swordcaptain barked at everyone. “I’ve half a mind—”
“Well, that’s true,” Vainrence agreed loudly, drawing snorts of mirth from several of the nearest Dragons.
Then it happened.
There was a sudden burst of light around the Royal Magician’s head, and a smaller one abruptly flamed into being around the brow of Lord Vainrence, wildly whirling and crackling bolts of light out of nowhere that stabbed from one man to the other, brightening into a shared nimbus.
“Stop that!” the swordcaptain roared. “Stop it at once!”
Then he saw his prisoners were staggering and clutching their heads as they sagged, clearly as taken aback by the sudden magic as he and all his men were.
The eerie light snarled louder than Vandurn could,