The Best of the Realms, Book II

THE PLACE WHERE GUARDS SNORE AT THEIR POSTS

Their jaws were clamped shut, forefin muscles pulsing in the tightening that signified irritation or disapproval. The orders and judgment of Iakhovas evidently weren’t good enough for sahuagin. Bloody-minded idiots.

Sardinakh uncoiled his tentacles from the halberds and harpoons he’d been oh-so-absently caressing since their arrival and settled himself a little closer to the map on the chartroom table. He did this slowly, to show the fish-heads just how little he feared them, and tapped the lord’s seal on the dryland map of Mintarn—the seal of the sahuagin lord Rrakulnar—to remind them that their superiors, at least, respected the authority of a “mere squid.”

“The orders I was personally given by Iakhovas,” he said gently, driving the point home a little deeper,

“were to blockade Mintarn, allowing nothing into, or more importantly, out of, its harbors. Taking the island would be a bold stroke—and I frankly find it an attractive one—but it cannot be our main concern. Before all else, we must prevent ships from leaving Mintarn to go to the aid of Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate, and the other coastal cities.”

“And that isss bessst done,” the larger and burlier of the sahuagin hissed, affecting the invented accent of Crowndeep, the fabled—and perhaps mythical—cradle-city of Sword Coast sahuagin, “by capturing the entire isle.” He spoke as if explaining bald facts to a simple child, not his commanding officer.

Fleetingly, but not for the first time, Sardinakh wondered if Iakhovas derived some dark and private amusement from putting seafolk who hated each other together, one commanding the other. Perhaps it was merely to make treachery unlikely, but it certainly made for some sharp-toothed moments.

The tako slid a lazily dismissive tentacle across the map to let the fish-heads know he was no more frightened now than when they’d begun drifting forward from the other side of the table to loom close in beside him, fingering their spears and daggers, and told them, “We’ll discuss this at greater length as the brightwater unfolds. I see that Mlavverlath approaches.”

The sunken ship that served Sardinakh as a headquarters lay canted at an angle on a reef that had grown over it, claimed it, and now held what was left of it together. Those remains did not include most of the landward side of the hull, which left the hulk open to the scouring currents, and provided a panoramic view of the gulf of dappled blue water across which Mlavverlath was swimming.

Mlav was impetuous and ambitious, more like the sahuagin than his own kind, and so ran straight into the jaws of his own reckless impatience far too often. Yet unlike the fish-heads menacingly crowding Sardinakh’s office, his hide still wore the dappling of raw youth. Their overly bold ways were long years set, and a problem he was going to have to contend with.

Sharkblood, he was contending with it now! Like all tako, Sardinakh could dwell ashore or beneath the waves, though he preferred warmer waters than these. He knew Mintarn’s worth. To drylanders, it was an island strategic to Sword Coast shipping, offering an excellent natural harbor and independence from shore realm laws, feuds, and taxes. Sardinakh also knew he hated these two sahuagin officers even more than he hated all fish-heads, and must contrive to get them killed before they did as much for him. Unfortunately, they commanded a strong and able fighting force of their own kind that outnumbered those at Downfoam six to one, or more. His moment must be chosen with extreme care.

Thankfully, “extreme care” was something most tako could take, and no sahuagin really understood. If only Mlav could be taught to use some measure of it, before it was too—.

“Perhapsss we could now deliver our important reportsss,” the sahuagin Narardiir said in a tone that made it clear he was neither requesting nor waiting for permission to do so.

Sardinakh carefully did not glance at Mlavverlath’s approaching form as he said in a cool, almost flippant tone, “Why don’t you?”

Both sahuagin hissed to show their displeasure, but when he neither looked at them or made any reaction, they were forced to move on. Their black eyes were staring, always staring. Ineffectual gogglers. He turned his back on them to show fish-heads held no fear for this wrinkled and wortsome old tako.

“There is newsss both good and bad from our ssspiesss assshore,” Narardiir began stiffly. “The dragon Hoondarrh, called ‘the Red Rage of Mintarn,’ has not long ago begun a Long Sssleep in his cave. Ssshould we invade, he won’t intervene.”

“The good news,” Sardinakh agreed calmly, his eyes now on Mlawerlath as the tako passed over the outermost sentries, regarded but unchallenged. “And the bad?”

The other sahuagin spoke this time, and, by the mercy of whatever god governed sea refuse, did so plainly. “Recent dryland pirate smuggling and slaving has driven the human Tarnheel Embuirhan, who styles himself the Tyrant of

Mintarn and is the dryland ruler of the isle, to hire a com-‘ pahy of mercenaries to serve Mintarn as a harbor garrison. A human force, and highly trained, by name the ‘Black Buckler Band.’ It is thought, and we concur, that they won’t hesitate to wake the dragon if beset by foes who seem on the verge of victory.”

“There isss little elssse to report,” Narardiir added, “but—”

“That is a good thing,” Sardinakh interrupted smoothly, “because Mlavverlath is here.”

As he spoke, the younger tako flung out his tentacles in all directions, to serve as a brake to his powerful journeying, and slid into Sardinakh’s office with his tentacles rippling, water swirling around them, and grace hurled to the winds.

Befitting an underling in disgrace, Mlavverlath passed between the hissing sahuagin and Sardinakh’s desk and struck the far wall of the chamber with a solid thump. The old but coral-buttressed bulkhead scarcely quivered.

“Hail Sardinakh, master of all our voyages,” Mlavverlath said hastily, venting many bubbles in his haste and nervousness. “This one salutes you and at the same time humbly beseeches your pardon at his lateness. This one has devised a cunning plan, as promised, and has come to unfold it before you.”

He glanced at the two sahuagin and blushed a little in his nervousness. That purpling promptly deepened when the fish-heads hissed mockingly, “Cunning plan, cunning plan,” and leaned forward to hear with exaggerated scullings of their webbed claws.

“My officers are somewhat excited,” Sardinakh explained in dry tones, ignoring fish-head glares. “Ignore them, and speak freely. Keep me not waiting.”

Mlavverlath jetted forth bubbles in a sigh, slid some tentacles around the nearest mast-pillar more for the reassurance an anchor-point brought than for anything else, and said, “This one’s plan should eliminate both the merfolk who dwell in the harbor and the new dryland garrison of human mercenaries.”

The sahuagin hissed loudly at the thought that their news was obviously old tidings elsewhere in Downfoam, and.Sardinakh took care that the beak-fluttering that signified tako mirth was well hidden from his underling. Mlawerlath’s tone of speech would have better matched the announcement: “This one has devised a plan that this one hopes will win him back a place in good favor with Sardinakh.”

“Please excuse this one’s plain recitation of simple facts,” Mlawerlath began haltingly. “It is intended as no insult, but to anchor the scheme. Thus, then. For some years, the merfolk of Mintarn have praised and hungrily devoured oysters brought from the Shining Sea nigh eastern Calimshan and the Border Kingdoms, where the waters are warmed by the outflow of the Lake of Steam. Suldolphans—the humans of the city whose dwellers harvest most of the oysters—like these oysters, which have somehow acquired the name ‘Mabadann,’ done in lemon. So, too, do the folk of Mintarn.”

The two sahuagin showed their fangs in unison then, in great yawns designed to display their boredom. Sardinakh ignored them, but Mlawerlath, obviously flustered, continued his speech in stammering haste. “I-in the friendship feasts th-they hosted to welcome the new garrison, whom after all they must trust and work with, the merfolk fed the human warriors these oysters.”

In his quickening enthusiasm, the young tako forsook his anchor to flail the canted deck with his tentacles as he moved restlessly across the room, then back again. “The humans so dote on these oysters now that the water-filled barrels of live Mabadann oysters are the most eagerly awaited shipments into Mintarn. The drylanders have even taken to sneaking some shipments past the merfolk to get more for themselves.”

The sahuagin were drifting a little closer now, their heads turning to hear better; a sure sign of interest. Mlavverlath warmed to his telling. “Now, in coastal caves nigh Suldolphor dwells a malenti, Jilurgala Rluroon by name, who owes this one a debt. Long ago she perfected a magic that puts creatures into stasis—unbreathing, unseeing, as if dead—for short times, with set trigger conditions.”

The tako’s tentacles were almost dancing with excitement now. “If she can be induced to cast her spell on a hundred or ‘aimed bullywugs,” Mlavverlath added, his voice rising, “of those who dwell near at hand, on the Border Kingdoms coast, south of Yallasch—and Jilurgala sets its trigger to awaken them when their barrel is opened, they can be the next shipment of oysters smuggled past the merfolk and into the drylander kitchens of Mintarn!”

It is rare for a tako’s mirth to be loud, but Sardinakh’s quivering and loud venting of raging bubbles was uproarious laughter. It drowned out the amused hooting of the sahuagin and left the commander of Downfoam barely able to signal his approval to his flushed and quivering underling.

“To it, 0 Master of Oysters!” Sardinakh roared, tearing apart a waterlogged bench with a surge of his tentacles. “Go, and come back victorious!”

* * * * *

“Truly,” Brandor muttered, as two of the tallest, most muscular Black Buckler warriors minced out of his way, twirling their hands in mockeries of spellcasting and crying out as if in mortal fear as they rolled their eyes and grinned at him, “this is The Place Where Guards Snore At Their Posts.”

Ignoring their shouts of laughter and the inevitable bruisings of hilt-first daggers bouncing off his slender shoulders—insulting reminders that as a Black Buckler himself, he must be ready to do battle with his fingers and dagger, should his spells prove too pitiful—the apprentice pounded down the slippery steps that led to the kitchens… and his current punishment.

Brandor was forever collecting punishments. Since the arrival of the Bucklers on seawind-swept Mintarn, his daily acquisitions of reprimands and duty tasks had reached a truly impressive rate, even for the youngest weakling ever to wear the Black Buckler badge.

It did not help that he was the sole apprentice of the accomplished but aging Druskin, supreme sorcerer of the Black Buckler Band. That made the other two Band mages see “the little grinning fool Brandor” as a future rival, to be ridiculed and discredited at every opportunity. Most of the strapping Buckler warriors, he knew, saw him as a pitiful excuse for a man, to be made sport of until he fled into the sea and rid them of his face and his pranks.

Ah, yes; his pranks. His only source of fun, and his only weapons. Long ago he’d fallen into the habit of responding to bullying with his quick wits and nimble fingers. Those who pestered Brandor the Fool paid the price, be they ever so mighty—and their colleagues roared with laughter.

Mintarn was small and mostly bleak, its folk suspicious of armed outsiders and guarded in their deeds, slow to welcome curious wanderers, and slower still to welcome one who wore both the Black Buckler badge and the robes of a wizard. Boredom had led Brandor to dub the island “The Place Where Guards Snore At Their Posts,” and that arch observation had earned him no love among the Tyrant of Mintarn’s own warriors.

It had done so just as Brandor’s boredom was chased away forever by the sight of dark-eyed, darker-browed Shalara, her hair the hue of the sun as it kissed her slender shoulders and vanished down her beautiful back. He began to hurry down the steps at the thought of her. She often stopped to talk with Halger; she might be down there right now.

The Tyrant’s daughter slipped around Mintarn’s ramparts and windswept stairs like a shy shadow, free to wander at will. Folk said she was the image of her dead mother, who’d never had any use for brawn and bluster, but had admired a keen mind. Hence her voyage from far Suldolphor to the meager splendors of this lonely isle, despite the coughing chills that had finally claimed her.

The Tyrant was said to dote on Shalara, but Brandor was utterly smitten with her. He would wait on bone-chilling ramparts for hours just to catch a glimpse of her, and Halger had finally forbidden him the kitchens—save when he was working therein for punishment—after he’d lurked and loitered for the better part of a tenday, staring intently at Shalara whenever she poked her head in.

She’d obviously been reluctant to enter and speak freely with him swallowing and staring at her, and Halger had said he’d have done anything, —anything, even endured a public beating from the fists of the hairiest, most sneering of the brutish Buckler warriors, or foresworn his paltry magic—to have earned her smile and friendship.

Instead, he’d fallen back on the only way he had to get noticed. Pranks.

Brandor the Fool had staged a series of increasingly spectacular pranks to impress Shalara Embuirhan. He’d begun with stealthily hook-spiking guards’ boots to the flagstones as they dozed at their posts, just to prove the fitness of the catch-phrase he’d coined, then he switched around all the garrison stores orders.

That had been followed by the switching of officers’ undergarments, then the swapping of those same smallclothes with those of the haughtiest ladies of the Tyrant’s castle. Then all of the shields hung on the castle walls had mysteriously begun changing places, and the castle chamberlain’s usual feast welcoming speech had been hilariously rewritten, just on the night when the chamberlain had taken ill and the understeward had been called upon to read out the speech in his place, with the stern admonition to “change not a word.”

Not a night later, the moaning ghost of Mintarn had been heard again, just outside the windows of the shuttered house near the docks where the Buckler warriors were wont to take their coins and their restlessness to the doors where plump and smiling lasses beckoned. Then someone had let out a paddock-full of mules to clotter and kick around the docks, and— the inevitable results had come down upon Brandor’s head. He’d seen kitchen duty and more kitchen duty, washing mountains of dishes, pickling jars upon jars of fish, and staggering down the long, spray-slippery path out of the castle to dump slimy basket after slimy basket of kitchen-scraps into the breeding pools where the tiny silverfin boiled up like fists reaching out of the water, their miniature jaws agape, to greet his every visit.

All of these panting, sweaty tasks had been done under the watchful eye of the old cook of Castle Mintarn, and Halger was not a man to miss noticing or tolerate a single moment of prank-preparation or malingering. A fat-bellfed, greasy ex-pirate whose left arm ended in a stump (which he usually fitted with a blackened, battered cooking pot), Halger stumped and huffed around the lofty, smoke-filled hall that was his domain. Somehow he contrived to keep no less than three cooking hearths alight and a steady stream of food going forth on dome-covered platters to feed the folk of the Castle, the Tyrant’s guards, the Bucklers, and whomever was in port and at the Tyrant’s guest table.

Down the years, Halger had also found the time to be Shalara’s confidante, trusted confessor, and wise old guide to the wider world. He knew her secret thoughts and yearnings and her judgments of the world around her and the people in it—and the amused look in his eyes when they fell upon a mutely staring Brandor made the apprentice squirm and sometimes want to shriek in sheer frustration.

As he ducked through the dogleg of archways designed to keep gusting storm winds from blowing out the kitchen hearths, Druskin’s apprentice let out a sigh of relief. Someone had piled too much wood on the blaze in the corner hearth. The smoke and sparks were roaring up the tallest chimney, the one that soared up through the thick walls of the beacon tower for a long bowshot, into the skies. Halger was shouting and red-faced men were running hither and yon with fire-tongs and soot-blackened aprons, while the women bent grimly over their pots and waited for the tumult to blow over. The lofty, many-balconied kitchen was ruled by swirling smoke and chaos.

There among it all was his waiting pile of potatoes, blessedly bereft of the old pirate cook standing with arms folded across his mighty chest and a soft but razor-edged query as to the tardiness of a certain apprentice. Thankfully Brandor snatched up the peeling knife Halger had left waiting on the stool, eyed the waiting bucket of similar knives that he was supposed to turn to whenever the knife he was using grew dull—and realized he was doomed.

The corner hearth had held leek-and-potato soup, almost certainly scorched down the insides of its cauldrons and ruined. Halger was going to be striding over here all too soon, in his flopping sea boots, expecting to find thrice his own weight in fresh-peeled potatoes waiting. If a certain diligent apprentice worked in frantic, finger-cutting haste, he might—might—have six potatoes ready by then.

Brandor swallowed, sat down on the stool, and closed his eyes. If he changed the incantation of the dancing dagger spell just so, it should serve to cause the blade to cut in a curve. Add four… no, six would be better… such phrases to the casting chant, and the cuts should come around the surface of a single roughly spheroid object. Treble the crushed mosquitoes and the iron filings, and add the trebling phrase to the summation, and he should have four knives whirling in their own dance, peeling his potatoes for him. All he need do is stand back—with stool and bucket—out of harm’s way, and watch for idiots blundering into the field of flight. A simple snap of his fingers would still cause the knives to fall to the floor in an instant… by Azuth, it couldn’t fail!

Casting a quick look around at the subsiding chaos to make sure Halger wasn’t watching, Brandor drew in a deep breath, then performed the spell in mumbling haste. He almost lost a finger when the knife in his hand tugged its way free to plunge into the waiting mound of potatoes, but it worked. By Mystra, it worked!

He was drawing breath for a satisfied laugh when he saw • that the knives were whirling ever faster, and the brown wet shavings they’d been strewing in all directions were now pale white. The air was full of wet slivers of potato! The—oh, gods!

He snapped his fingers, but the cloud of carving before him only whirled faster. Desperately he stammered the chant backward—and with a gasp of relief that was almost a sob, Brandor saw the knives plummet to the floor. Their landings made no clatter, because that floor was now knee-deep in fresh, wet potato hash.

Staring at this latest disaster, Brandor suddenly became aware that he was drenched—covered in slivers of cold, wet potato that were slowly slithering down his face, off the ends of his fingers, and past his ears—and that a vast and sudden silence had fallen in the kitchen.

He hardly dared lift his eyes to meet Halger’s gaze, but there was no ducking away now. Shaking diced potato from his hands, Brandor reluctantly raised his head.

And found himself looking into the eyes of Shalara Embuirhan—eyes in which mirth was swiftly sliding into disgust.

“Uh, well met, Shalara,” he mumbled, hope leaping within him when there should have been no hope. Gods, but his humiliation was complete.

“When are you ever going to grow up and stop wasting your wits?” those sweet lips said cuttingly, anger making them thin. “Pranks are for children—grown men foolish enough to play pranks end up very swiftly dead!”

No, he’d been wrong a moment ago: now his humiliation was complete.

She stood staring at him with contempt for what seemed like an eternity before whirling away in a confusion of fine gown and long, flared sleeves, storming back out of the kitchen.

Brandor hadn’t managed to do anything more than blush as red as a boiled lobster and nod grimly at her words. He was still standing crestfallen, covered in wet slivers of potato, when the entire kitchen heard the dull boom of the door to the beacon tower stairs slamming. A crash that could only have been made by a young lady in the grip of anger.

Brandor looked down at his hands and discovered they were shaking. A pair of all too familiar battered sea boots came into view as they stopped in front of him. He raised his eyes with no greater enthusiasm, this time.

Halger was standing with his hairy arms folded across his chest and a twinkle in his eye. Of course. He met the miserable gaze of the apprentice, chuckled, then grunted, “Want to impress the ladies, do we? Peel yon mountain before we finish, and I’m sure she’ll be impressed.”

A familiar knife flashed out of his fist, spinning down to an easy catch. Brandor fielded it grimly, looked glumly at the mound of untouched potatoes beyond the slippery heap of hash, and made his slippery way across it, to set to work peeling—the old way.

“I’ve nothing of import to pass on to you, goodsirs,” the Tyrant of Mintarn said quietly. “You know as well as I that no ships have called here, or even been sighted from atop the beacons, these six days past. It’s as if the seas have swallowed every last ship, and given us—silence.”

They reached for their goblets in grim unison: the white-bearded ruler of Mintarn; the robed, white-haired sorcerer Druskin; and the handsome, saturnine leader of the Black Bucklers, Oldivar Maerlin, who looked every inch an alert, dangerous battle commander.

It was Maerlin who lifted his eyebrow then, in a clear signal to the mage. Druskin cleared his throat, sipped his wine, and cleared it again before saying, “Spells give us some feeble means of piercing such silences, lord. Last night I worked an experimental magic, seeking to touch the mind of a night-flying seabird, and see through its eyes. The experiment was largely a failure. My probing confused the birds and they tended to tumble out of the air and strike the waves. But it did allow me to snatch a temporary seat, undetected, in the aft cabin of a caravel running swiftly north out of Amn, bound for Neverwinter or, failing that, a safe harbor anywhere.”

The Tyrant raised his head to fix the wizard with a hard stare. Those last words were clear talk of war.

“A seat at a table where sailors were discussing—?” he prompted. His voice was as quiet as before, and yet the room seemed suddenly as tense as the waiting moments before foes who are glaring at each other charge forward, and a fray begins.

“Dark tidings, but heard secondhand,” Druskin replied. “There was an attack on the harbor at Waterdeep—an attack in force, by all manner of marine creatures. Ships were sunk, crews slaughtered fighting to defend their own decks; that sort of thing. Something similar befell at Baldur’s Gate—the sailors spoke of ships putting out from there being ‘sunk by the score,’ in some cases being ‘dragged down from below’— and one of them had heard talk of merfolk communities along the coast being overwhelmed by sahuagin, with bodies drifting in the depths so thick that engorged sharks were dying of sheer weariness, sinking to rest on the bottom.”

The wizard regarded the empty bottom of his goblet in mild surprise and added, “How much of this is fancy remains to be seen, but it seems clear that forces from beneath the waves have struck at ships and settlements ashore up and down the Sword Coast and perhaps elsewhere, too, as if all that live in the sea have risen up at once to slaughter those who breathe air and dwell up in the dry realms.”

A little silence fell after those words as the three men traded glances. The Tyrant looked longest at Maerlin, who stirred and said grimly, “My duty to you and your people, lord, is to see to the best defense of Mintarn. We can no longer trust in the merfolk, it seems. Simple prudence demands we shift our garrison duties so as to keep watch for forces from the depths coming ashore unseen elsewhere in Mintarn, and attacking us here from unforeseen places and ways.”

The Tyrant nodded. “So much I was thinking. Watches, ready arms, and guarded foodstores and water I know well…what of magic?”

The ruler and the commander both looked at Druskin, who smiled faintly and replied, “Warning spells may well be needed, to watch where even trained warriors grow weary. I shall establish a web of such magics by next nightfall, and a duty watch rotation among all Buckler mages—myself and my, ah, wayward apprentice included.”

The Tyrant reached to refill their goblets and said in dry tones, “Ah, yes: the valiant Brandor. My daughter has told me of some quite clever but dangerous pranks he’s pulled. Daring, for so young an apprentice.”

“Foolish, rather, lord,” Druskin said, his voice sharp with anger. His hand came down on the table in a loud slap. “We dare not let him continue with such foolishness, when all our lives may be at stake! I should have curbed him, I own, long ago, but I must break him of the habit now. Right now.”

He rose in a swirling of robes, refusing another goblet with an imperiously raised hand—only to turn in surprise, a

stride short of the door, at the unmistakable sound of boots striding along firmly behind him. Two pairs of boots.

“My lords,” Druskin protested, “it’s customary for disciplinary dealings between master and ‘prentice to be conducted in private.”

The Tyrant smiled. “Nay, Sir Mage, I want to watch this little confrontation. After all, we starve for excitement… in this place where guards snore at their posts.”

The senior mage of the Bucklers reddened. “You may be assured, lord, that I shall make Brandor apologize to you, on bended knee and as prettily as he knows how, for that little remark.”

He turned again to the door, and in a swirling of robes and fine tunics and ornate sleeves, they hastened out together.

* * * * *

The little green door in the darkest alcove of the kitchen opened, as he’d known it would, and Shalara came out, eyes bright and cheeks flushed. Her talks with Halger (and the wine that accompanied them) always left her emboldened. Brandor loved to talk with her then, when her mood made her tongue outrun her reserve and let her swift wit shine. They’d laughed together many a time, with Halger smiling his slow smile nearby.

He’d been awaiting this moment, knowing that Shalara would stop to look in on the potato-peeling miscreant on her way back to her own rooms. With the cook striding along in her wake, the Tyrant’s daughter swept imperiously past the feasting-spits and the cutting tables to where Brandor should have been hard at his peeling—and came to an astonished halt. Her lips twisted.

The pile of potatoes stood almost untouched, very much as she remembered it. Brandor Pupil-of-Druskin was standing in front of that earth-caked mound wearing a satisfied smile, his arms folded across his chest in the manner of a conqueror.

Shalara put her hands on her slender hips, her eyes snapping on the amused edge of anger. “And what by all the good gods, Sir Prentice, have you been up to?”

Brandor flung out a proud hand toward a long row of large barrels on the roll-rails behind him. “Lady fair, the latest shipment of the oysters we all love so much has just been delivered—and in the brief time ‘twixt then and now, I’ve devised a spell to cook all of them inside the barrels.”

Despite herself, Shalara was interested. She was always interested in new ways and ideas. “Oh? How so?”

Brandor caught up Halger’s long tongs—heavy, man-length metal pincers used for raking coals and setting wood into the large hearth fires—and gestured at the stop-log that held the barrels in place. “With yon spar removed, these barrels will roll, prodded along with these tongs. My spell creates an enchanted space or field of intense heat, but no flame to scorch the wood. We wait, the oysters cook, with luck the barrels don’t burn, and—there we have it! I’m just about to try it on the first barrel now. Would you care to watch?”

The Tyrant’s daughter shrugged and smiled. “I’ve no doubt you’re going to pay dearly for this, Brandor,” she said, as Halger looked at the apprentice over her shoulder, amusement warring with interest on his weathered face, “but the fiasco should be interesting to see.”

“One barrel only, mind!” Halger growled. “Ruin an entire shipment, lad, and they’ll have me cooking you for evenfeast! And what good are barrels turned to ash? We reuse them, you idiot!”

The cook’s words rose like angry arrows to the ears of the Tyrant, the wizard Druskin, and the Buckler commander as they came out onto a balcony overlooking the mound of potatoes. The mage stiffened, but the Tyrant put a firm hand on his arm and murmured, “Hold peace and silence for now. Let us watch and learn for a bit.”

Druskin gave him a glare of mingled astonishment and embarrassment, but clamped his lips together and turned his burning gaze to the scene below.

Brandor saw that movement and glanced up. At the sight of the three most powerful men in all Mintarn looking back down at him, two faces coolly calm but his master quivering with suppressed rage, the apprentice went pale.

The Buckler commander—his commander—leaned forward and said calmly, “Pray proceed, Brandor. One last prank? Or a clever stratagem that can benefit us all? For your future, I hope ‘tis the latter. The true value of a warrior is less often bold innovation than minstrels would have us believe. More often, ‘tis in carrying out the drudge duties of potato-peeling—or, yes, of watching at our posts without snoring—than in all the glorious charges and bloodily victorious attacks that all too many bards sing about. But I’m sure your master will have more pointed words to address to you in the near future. Cast your spell, and redeem yourself if you can.”

Brandor trembled, managed a sickly smile, and stared down at his hands. What else could he do but cast the spell?

He drew in a deep breath, turned his back on them all, and worked his latest magic.

The barrel rolled with only a slight creaking when he prodded it with the long tongs, but the heat—which instantly sent the reek of swamp water throughout the kitchens—soon popped one of its ends slightly askew.

An immediate squalling arose from inside the barrel, and the endpiece was sent flying amid a stinking green torrent of water. Brandor saw a glistening wet hide, staring froglike eyes, and a curve-bladed cutlass vying with a short spear for the pleasure of enthusiastically ending a certain apprentice’s life.

“A-a bullywug?” he asked Faerun around him in utter astonishment, as he thrust desperately at it with the long tongs, trying to keep it in the spell-field where it would be cooked alive.

He was almost shoved off his feet by the bully wug’s writhing and head-down charging. As he clenched his teeth and fought back, Brandor became suddenly and acutely aware that the only thing keeping the swamp monster from leaping around the kitchen to slay at will were his own hands on the long tongs and whatever skills he might acquire in its use in, say, his next five panting breaths or so.

The hearthgirls chose that moment to scream. The

kitchen promptly erupted into a loud chaos of surprise and alarm that almost drowned out the hisses of the bully wug and the bright songs of alarm gongs being struck all at once by Halger and the men on the balcony.

It seemed an eternity of sweaty, desperate struggling before the Tyrant, Commander Maerlin, and a small, hurrying army of men-at-arms arrived at Brandor’s side. By then, the bullywug was on the floor, clawing feebly at the air and darkening rapidly, as steam gouted from its gaping mouth. The smell made Brandor gag.

The armsmen swarmed up around the barrels, rolling them into Brandor’s field under barked orders and breaking them open with axes. Squalling bullwugs were pierced with spears and pinned in place to cook with brutal speed and efficiency. Brandor rolled barrels into the heat with the heavy, unwieldy long tongs like a madman until someone— the Tyrant of Mintarn himself—took him by the shoulder and shouted at him to stop and stand easy.

When he let the long tongs fall, Brandor found that he was shaking with weariness. He looked across a kitchen that stank with carnage, where Shalara, Druskin, and the other two Buckler mages were on their knees, white-faced and retching, and grim armsmen were clambering about knee-deep in wet, bloody bullywugs. Oh, he was going to catch it now…

Commander Maerlin was wading grimly through the remains toward him. Brandor closed his eyes and waited for the cold words that would end his Buckler career and direct him to a cell.

The hand that came down on his shoulder gripped warmly, and out of a dizzy fog Brandor heard Oldivar Maerlin say, “Well and bravely done, lad. Thanks.”

From his other side came the sound of Druskin clearing his throat. The wizard sounded a little breathless as he said, “You’ll teach us all that spell, I hope. I’ll exchange four of comparable force for it, of course.”

“Moreover, you’ve saved Mintarn,” the Tyrant said from nearby, his voice rolling out to carry to every corner of the lofty room, “and Mintarn is in your debt. I see no reason that Mintarn cannot reward you fittingly in the days ahead.”

Brandor lifted his head, then, to stare at the ruler of Mintarn in astonishment, but somehow his gaze was caught and held by the shining eyes of Shalara. They stared at each other for a long, wordless time, until Brandor became aware that the movement he’d been noticing out of the corner of his eye was a broad and knowing smile growing across the Tyrant’s face.

Brandor’s face flamed and he looked down quickly. Then he bent, fished around in the gore at his feet, and came up with something that was small and bloody, but unmistakably a weapon.

“Hold hard!” said the Tyrant in alarm, stepping back. “What’s that for?”

“The drudge duty of potato peeling,” Brandor replied in a voice that quavered only a little. He waved with his knife at the mound of potatoes. “The true value of a warrior, sir.”

A slow smile grew on the Tyrant’s face. “Really?” he replied, “and here I thought it was doing guard duty snoring at posts.”

Shalara’s high, tinkling laughter rose over the chorus of deep warriors’ chuckles at that. Brandor, who was busily turning all shades of red as the Tyrant dealt him a friendly slap on the back, thought it was the most glorious sound he’d ever heard.