The door slammed behind Elminster. He spun around, managing to quell Rune’s instinctive urge to leap back and away. He might need to be close.

As he’d expected, he faced a half-dressed Lord Arclath Delcastle, who waved his sword threateningly. Behind its bright edge-and above the burning brazier-the young nobleman held the coffer in which Storm had been carrying Elminster’s ashes.

Arclath’s eyes, as he glared at El, were like two dagger points.

“Luckily for my Amarune’s sake,” he snapped, “you seem unaware that even fine, upstanding nobles of Cormyr learn a few tawdry secrets of the realm-and lack scruples in exploiting them. The uses of darfly-sting essence, for instance. It brings on instant, topple-on-your-face sleep at the slightest scratch and can be found on the heads of the takedown arrows that Highknights of Cormyr hide in the same spot in every royal hunting lodge across the realm. Sleep that takes even legendary silver-haired bards blessed by the gods, it seems.”

Elminster sighed and shook his head, and then he lunged back as the bright tip of Arclath’s sword hissed past his throat.

Inside the mind they shared, El threw all his exasperation at Amarune, who spasmed like a speared fish, sent fury back at him, and stared at Arclath.

“Your ashes!” the nobleman hissed, shaking the coffer. “I’ll destroy them if you don’t surrender Amarune to me.”

He bent into a lunge that kept his sword up and menacing Elminster as he lowered the box into the flames of the brazier. They flared up and crackled, right on cue.

“Wizard, get out of her right now! Or you die!”

He flicked his blade so its tip pointed at Storm’s throat, where she lay with her head on the floor, silver hair fallen across her face.

“And so does she!”

CHAPTER TWO

THE WORD OF A NOBLEMAN

A marune found to her astonishment that Elminster sat silently idle in her mind, all of his control over her body gone. She was free to speak and act just as she pleased.