Caladnei smiled sourly. "As Mage Royal, I've a better idea: You can serve yourself best if you stay alive and serve Cormyr at the same time."
"Serve how?"
"As a paid spy while you thieve—with occasional offers of additional monies for more daring tasks of plundering or 'placing' items to be found ... as Rhauligan, here, does for us."
"So it's agree or you'll kill me?"
"Oh, no," Caladnei said softly. "I need information about Cormyr's foes. It'll be much more useful to simply spread the news around Suzail that you're Elminster's daughter, and watch the wolves come out of hiding to get at you."
"I'll still die!"
The Mage Royal shrugged. "We all do, sooner or later—and you'll be free to die in your own way, just as you believe all of us overbearing sorts are." She waited. "Well?"
Narnra slid down the wall until she was sitting, sighed loudly, then told the carved dragon ceiling, "I'm furious at being at the mercy of any wizard." She turned her head to glare at Caladnei and added, "I think I'll tell you so."
Rhauligan's amused snort was echoed—in far more ladylike manners—by the two Cormyrean women.
"Moreover, before I agree to anything, I need to know not just the 'or else,' but also the 'what else' and the 'what about after,' too."
Caladnei was almost smiling. "And those things would be?"
"The bad things you're not yet telling me about this . . . and what happens to me when the Mage Royal of Cormyr deems me expendable."
Caladnei's smile appeared, wry but full. "Prudence at last. A bit late, but making an appearance nonetheless."
She knelt close to where Narnra was sitting and said, "To save Cormyr, we are all expendable. However, 'tis my hope that you'll become so useful to us all that you serve loyally for years to come—whereupon you might be rewarded with a 'way out.' A title, a nice mansion to live out your wrinkled years ... a better 'after' than many can hope for. As for the 'what else,' I need to know your trustworthiness and so would begin by mind-reaming you directly."
"Turning me into some sort of brainless slug?"
"No. I'll never deal pain, mind-to-mind, as Elminster did. No, if you were found wanting, I'd put you through a portal back to Waterdeep."
Narnra almost sprang up from the wall. "You can do that?"
"Oh, yes. I must warn you that the portal I know will deliver you into a very public room of state in Peirgeiron's Palace. Have you a swift story ready?"
"Being the daughter of Elminster ought to do," Rhauligan murmured—earning him three glares at once.
Narnra bit her lip. "And ... I'd just go back to Trades Ward? No one following me?"
Caladnei shrugged. "Not from Cormyr."
Narnra looked at her. "This mind-ream: What will it do to me?"
"Show me your thoughts and memories as I rummage. If you'd like to reassure yourself as to your fate at my hands, I can easily make the mind-ream a two-way affair so you can judge me while I do the same to you."
Narnra stared at the Mage Royal, awed and strangely excited— and suddenly angry again. She scrambled up, took a few stumbling steps away from Caladnei, waving at the Cormyreans to stay back from her, and leaned her head against the wall. "I ... let me think."
"Of course," Laspeera said softly.
Breathing heavily, Narnra stared at the toes of her boots and thought hard. How did she feel?
Did she trust these folk? Laspeera seemed motherly, Rhauligan was—Rhauligan, dedicated to his task ... and Caladnei had beaten her like a backstreet bully with magic—but not killed her when the slaying would have been easy and Narnra had been stupid enough to goad her. Repeatedly.
So how did she feel? Truth, now . . .
I'm more terrified than eager. And I'm angry. Angry at myself for being afraid, angrier still at Caladnei and Rhauligan for bringing me by force into this choice. I'm burn-the-gods furious with Elminster for siring me, just walking away, and luring me here from the streets I know.
"Truth," Laspeera said gently from behind Narnra. "Every word utter truth."
Gods, yes, she's been reading my every thought. . .
Narnra spun around with a frightened snarl, expecting to find all three Cormyreans closing in around her—but everyone was just where they'd been before, Caladnei still kneeling.
"If I agree to this . . . this madness," Narnra asked in a voice that was far from calm and steady, "when will this mind-ream take place?"
The Mage Royal of Cormyr rose slowly to her feet, smiling a little wryly. "In such matters, there's never any better time for boldly reckless action than . . . right now."
Fifteen
WHEN MARSEMBAN MERCHANTS GO WALKING
My son, it's not the standing merchants you need fear. It's when they get to walking somewhere that you'd best beware. It takes a heap of coming trouble for someone to get a merchant to walk anywhere.
The character Farmer Crommor
in Scene the First
of the play Troubles In The Cellar
by Shanra Mereld of Murann
first performed in the Year of the Griffon
The outermost of the ward-spells that cloaked the far corners of the room in roiling mists flared into coppery flames of warning, and a telltale chimed.
The darkly handsome young man clad all in black—open-fronted, flaring-sleeved shirt, tight leather breeches, and gleaming
black boots—took his crossed feet down from the footstool, laid aside his book and his goblet, and rose from his chair.
He passed his hand over a dark sphere of crystal that shared its own upswept, teardrop-shaped duskwood plinth with an outer ring of smaller spheres. Another ring of roiling mists obediently wavered into emerald radiance and displayed an upright image in the air: a white-faced man in brown robes that matched his thinning hair was standing uncertainly in the midst of the emerald mists.
The man in black smiled and touched two of the smaller spheres. Two rings of mist fell away into nothingness, and the third took on that emerald hue. The Red Wizard then passed his hand over the largest sphere, and the scene of Huldyl Rauthur vanished.
"Enter the archway and proceed," he told the air calmly. "The way before you is quite safe."
The emerald mists at his feet flowed away to one wall in a purposeful flood and climbed it to outline an archway on the unbroken stone—which promptly split to reveal a long, rough tunnel through rock. A hesitant figure was advancing along it.