Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [128]
"What if a dragon gets those spells and builds himself into a new Dragon King?" a shortish man with a wildly bristling mustache responded. "That's what I want to know!"
Narnra listened to this and similar loudly enthusiastic speculations as she drifted through the club, playing the old game of feigning looking for someone she knew.
When she recognized two of the Harpers who'd been part of that grim line down in the cellars when Mystra herself had been awing the squitters out of everyone, she sidled in their direction. They headed grimly up a flight of stairs, listening to the chatter and exchanging sour glances about it as they went.
Narnra walked away from the stair, around a corner, and raced up another staircase she'd spotted earlier. The floor above would have a linking passage, she was sure, and if not…
The creature at the top of the stair was the largest, ugliest half-ore she'd ever seen-all pimples and open, weeping sores and yellow, roughly broken-off tusks. Steady eyes that held promises of both humor and casually swift death peered down at her as one claw-like hand drew aside a fold of cloak to reveal the first six-bolt-at-once handbow Narnra had ever gazed upon.
The glittering-headed bolts looked very sharp, and they were all trained on her. Lips drew back from the great reeking mouth above them to mutter, "And on your deathbed, little rat, you will-?"
Narnra swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and managed to say the word "Harp" confidently enough that it didn't-quite-seem like a guess.
The cloak drew back over the bow, the head nodded grudgingly, and with astonishing speed that mountain of flesh drew aside to let her reach the head of the stair and pass.
She gave the-the thing -an expressionless nod as she did so and strode down the passage confronting her as if she knew quite well where she was going.
A door was open halfway along it, and a voice from just inside was saying, "I care not. Let every sneak-thief and fat merchant in all Suzail hear us debate, Sareene! I want them all aware and alert and mindful of the danger we all face-because we all face it, no matter who or where we are!"
"Naetheless, Brammagar, you're proposing a very dangerous double game!"
"What choice have we?"
The backs of the two men standing just inside the door looked very familiar, so Narnra dared not ask what Brammagar's proposal had been. Thankfully, someone else did it for her.
"I dare not leave Dragondusk right at this moment," said a strangely remote, echoing voice, "and my magic was not working in time to hear Brammagar speak. What proposal, please?"
"That We Who Harp protect Vangerdahast by lying in wait for all mages, so as to have a chance at taking them down as they arrive to attack Vangey… then, when the time's just right, we turn around and ruin the old wizard's spell-work, to make sure he never manages to bind a dragon by any new, more powerful magical means."
"And who among us gets to decide which mages we slay and which we let live? You're tossing maggots into all our soup, I say!"
"Kill as many as we can, regardless, and give some shred of power in Faerun back to all of us who aren't spellslingers!" someone else grunted, and a burst of argumentative voices began.
Narnra went on down the passage to the other stair as swiftly as she quietly could. Traitor-wizards would have to wait. She had to get to Caladnei in all haste. This must be reported to the Mage Royal without delay!
Harnrim Starangh smiled down at the lithe figure in leathers as his careful casting came to