Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [80]
“If we aren’t allowed to go a few more places in the palace, the king’ll find nothing but well water in the glasses set out at this council—and nothing for him and his oh-so-exalted peacocks of guests to nibble on but boiled potatoes with a side of horse mash!”
As the specifics of just what parts of the palace had been made off-limits were excitedly discussed, Marlin had to hide a smile behind his ornate goblet of best Berduskan dark.
Everyone was being kept away from the palace-end of the passage he’d recently used, and the vicinity of the Dragonskull and the Wyrms Ascending.
Which meant that the stalwart wizards of war didn’t know what to do. They’d searched that part of the palace from top to bottom, found nothing useful, and had decided to hide their futility behind the usual cloak of mystery.
So sea and sky were clear, as the sailors liked to say; a certain heir of House Stormserpent could freely use that passage to get back into the palace, take his two items of the Nine to the Dragonskull Chamber, and see if he could summon two flaming ghosts out of them to obey him.
Marlin got rid of his smile, drained his goblet and set it down, and rose, tossing just enough coins onto the table. It was time to fetch a certain sword and a particular chalice and do a little testing. And then …
Well, then it would be high time to set about transforming Cormyr to his liking.
Manshoon turned away from casting careful spells on a thing of tentacles and strolled across the cavern to another of his glowing scenes.
For some months, through a variety of minds he could eavesdrop upon, he’d taken to lurking around Stormserpent Towers.
There were larger and grander noble mansions in Suzail where louder preening peacocks dwelt, and there had never been any particular shortage of idiot nobles desiring to overthrow the Obarskyrs or work smaller treasons … but there was something interesting about the Stormserpents. Young and ambitious Marlin Stormserpent in particular.
Perhaps it was the feeling that something long-brewing and uncontrollable was soon going to break forth, regardless of what befell Cormyr in the process. Marlin was heir of his House and one of an all-too-common sort of noble heir. Purringly handsome and bright-witted—but only about a tenth as brilliant as he considered himself to be. All such tended to be more rash than wise and more ambitious than competent … but that was part of what made spying on them entertaining.
So Manshoon wormed his way into the mind of servant after servant at the Towers until he could skulk, listen, and watch at will—riding the unwitting mount of his choice as just one more black shadow in a mansion that had become largely unlit, sheet-shrouded, and neglected. Oh, yes; long before he’d taken any interest in it, House Stormserpent had become a mere shadow of its former self.
Marlin’s father was long dead, leaving real power in the hands of his widow Narmitra. Who hated everything about Suzailan high society and court intrigue and was letting her brother-in-law Mhedarlakh play patriarch because she knew Marlin hated it all, too, and would prefer the freedom to pursue his own interests as long as Mhedarlakh could totter along.
It amused her vastly—just as it did Manshoon—that Mhedarlakh’s feeble wits and his being neither the head of his House nor its heir frustrated other nobles no end. The Stormserpents couldn’t be bound by any agreements old Mhedarlakh made, and fellow nobles couldn’t use him as a reliable source of information about the family nor as a bearer of proposals, agreements, or opinions to any Stormserpent.
There was nothing foolish nor slow-witted about the Lady Narmitra. No peacock, she.
It had been almost immediately clear to Manshoon that Marlin, whether he admitted it to himself or not, was more than a little afraid of her.
Even before Manshoon had stolen into his mind, the young lord’s occasional murmurings to himself revealed all too clearly