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.Her towering rage at discovering no danger at all in the royal wing, that she’d been duped, and that she’d awakened Obarskyrs for no good reason had not been improved by angry royal aspersions upon her competence.She was facing a sleepy King Foril right now, and he continued to be none too amused.So an unwelcome voice from behind her was a last slapping insult, by the throne!“Give me one good reason,” she hissed as she addressed a spiderlike intruder that had somehow gotten past several posts of guards and into the outermost anteroom of the king’s own bedchambers, “why I should not blast you to your grave, right now.”“You’ll be dooming the realm, entirely for your own selfish ambition and shortsighted stupidity,” the black, wraithlike head atop spiderlike human fingers replied calmly, lifting one finger to wag it at her disapprovingly.“To put it diplomatically.”The king had caught up a scepter that could do all the blasting that might be necessary to dispose of all of his guests and most of the wall beyond them, too, but was staring past Glathra at the walking head atop the high back of his best guest chair with interest rather than fear.“Are you who I think you are?” Foril asked quietly.“Vangerdahast?”“I am,” the spiderlike thing replied.“And I needed to lure this noisy wizard up here so I could converse with her before a royal audience.Vastly increasing the chances she’ll listen and obey.”Glathra exploded.“What? Don’t presume to give me orders! Your time is past, old man—by the Dragon, your time as a man is past!”“I serve the realm still.And do so far better than you’ve ever done, Barcantle.Bluster, highhanded rudeness, and lashing out before you consider consequences is never superior to subtle manipulations—even if you weren’t now facing a city full of angered nobles just itching to find provocations.So spare me your shouts, and tender me your ears and whatever small part of your brain you still use for thinking.”“How dare—? I’ve never been spoken to—”“Indeed, and what a problem that’s created! Now, will you listen?”Glathra folded her arms across her chest and tossed her head.“I don’t even know you are the infamous royal magician! You look like a construct an ambitious but not accomplished mage might cobble together! The words we’re hearing from you right now could be those of any traitor noble, Sembian, or other foe of the Dragon Throne!”“Or they could be my own.Foril, call to mind the line of verse Queen Filfaeril left to you, written in a locket, but say them not.”The king frowned then nodded.“I remember them.”“ ‘The Crown of the Dragon is a thing so heavy, that I send my love to all who may wear it when I am dust, because only love can hold it high,’ ” the spiderlike thing declaimed, then asked, “Believe I’m Old Vangey now?”“No,” Glathra snapped, before the king could speak.“Scores of courtiers know those words now, because of various royal scribes and palace gossip and the Highknights’ use of parts of it, some time back, as pass phrases.”“Very well,” the wraith-spider replied and murmured something too softly for either the king or the wizard of war to hear.Foril’s scepter suddenly vanished from his hand, two suits of armor in the corners of the anteroom stepped down off their plinths and knelt to the king, and a dusty stone statue at the end of the room shifted its pose to hold forth and open the stone book it was carrying, revealing it to be a pipe coffer holding three pipes and four small and rather moldering lines of pipeweed.“Do you believe me now?” the spiderlike intruder asked rather testily.“I come on a matter of some urgency, as it happens, and would rather not deprive the crowned head of Cormyr of any more royal slumber because I’m being challenged to do tricks.”“I believe you,” King Foril Obarskyr said firmly, “and that should be sufficient.What do you want, Royal Magician Vangerdahast?”“To tell Your Majesty that I’ve found Ganrahast and Vainrence in magical stasis, down in the royal crypt.”“What?!” The king and wizard of war shouted that word together.“Reduced to what I’ve become,” Vangey continued calmly, “I can’t cast the necessary spells if they awaken crazed or hostile or enthralled by a foe of the realm.So, I need Glathra here to gather four or five war wizards of experience and accomplishment, and go down and release them.”“Is this another ploy, old madwits? Another deception?” Glathra spat.“What sort of trap awaits us down there, hey? You just want us all gone, so you can rule again!”“I want nothing of the sort,” Vangerdahast snapped.“Other than to know just why you didn’t search the palace well enough to find them yourself, days ago.I would hate to think you were either that incompetent or that much of a traitor
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