Эд Гринвуд: Crown of Fire

His horse rolled its eyes in fear; the Zhent pulled back sharply on the reins to prevent it from bolting and swung his new weapon in arcs of flame. “Come out!” he snarled, “or taste fire!”

Silence fell … and lengthened, hanging heavy on the smoky air. Villagers murmured in fear as the wait continued, and the swordmaster’s face grew stony. He raised the torch and sat his saddle like a statue of impending doom. The silence stretched. The fire he held on high spat and crackled.

The dwarf stood watching it, eyes narrow and shield raised over the kneeling form of Narm, who had grown pale and seemed to be having trouble swallowing.

And then a slim girl in dusty travel leathers stood in the doorway. Yellow-white fire seemed to dance around her eyes and hands, blazing like the torch in the swordmaster’s hand.

“You called for me, Zhentilar?” The words were calm and cool, but flames flickered from her lips as she spoke. At the sight, Zhents and villagers alike murmured and fell back.

Then the girl shuddered, and her face creased in pain. It cleared again. She straightened almost defiantly, looking up at the Zhent swordmaster, her hands going to her hips.

An arrow sang toward her. The swordmaster’s furious order was too late to halt its flight—but Shandril looked at it calmly, not moving. Under her gaze it caught fire, blazed like a tiny, leaping star, and was gone in drifting sparks and smoke.

The moan of awe and fear from the watching villagers was louder than the startled oaths some of the Zhentilar uttered.

“You called me out,” Shandril said in a terrible, hoarse whisper. Her eyes, blazing with fire, fixed on the Zhentilar swordmaster. As she glared, flames roiled around her face—and then lanced out.

The Zhentilar’s face paled as hissing flames leapt at him. He flung up an armored arm to shield his face. The flames swelled to a sudden, savage roar.

Then the swordmaster cried out in sudden pain, twisting in his saddle. Smoke rose from the half-cloak about his shoulders. His mount reared under him, neighing, and the torch fell from his smoldering hands.

Shandril raised one blazing hand, and in her eyes he saw his death. “By all the gods,” she said in fury, flames rising around her hair in a leaping crown of fire, “you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Most of the long, high hall lay in chill darkness. Here and there, lamps shed eerie, feeble glows into the cold vastness. Menacing shadows swirled where this lamplight was blocked—by a long stone table, the many high-backed seats drawn up around it, and the robed men who sat in them.

“So you have all come,” came a calm, purring voice from one end of the table. “Good. The Lord Manshoon will be pleased at your loyalty—and eager ambition. We are looking for those who in days to come will lead this fellowship in our places. It is our hope that some among you will show themselves suited to do so. Others here, I fear, will reveal just as surely that they are not.” Sarhthor fell silent. The men around the table knew his slim, graceful form would remain as still and as patient as stone until he wished to move a finger or change his expression. Right now, as the silence stretched, his calm, keen-eyed face was—as usual—expressionless. It might have been carved from the same gray stone as the pillar behind his seat.

Sarhthor’s dark eyes, however, glittered with cruel amusement, a look familiar to many seated there. They were the most ambitious and daring of the apprentice magelings of the Zhentarim, and had all been trained or inspected by this man.

Many long, tense breaths were drawn as quietly as possible in the dimly lit cold as the wizards sat and waited, trying not to show their fear, their personal hatreds of each other—and their mounting impatience.

At length, one of the seated men spoke. “Teacher Sarhthor, we have come to hear High Lord Manshoon’s will of us, and to serve. May we know his plans?”

Sarhthor smiled. “But of course, Fimril. Lord Manshoon will tell you what you are so eager to hear.” He added a little smile, and then let it slide slowly and coldly into calm inscrutability. In the mounting silence, the men around the table regarded his face for a long time, trying to match the calm, unreadable expression Sarhthor wore. Some came close to succeeding.

Someone coughed, and heads turned, glaring. The heavy silence returned and slowly grew old. Sarhthor sat at the end of the table as though he was the tomb statue of some dead king and watched them all with cold patience.

Finally one of the magelings stirred in his seat. He was a handsome, fine-featured man whose upswept beard was scented and adorned with small, highly polished moonstone teardrops. They glistened here and there among his beard’s curled hairs as he spoke. “I am patient, Teacher—but also curious. Where is the high lord?”

“Why, here, as it happens,” said a new voice, full and rich and only gently menacing. Heads turned all down the table.

At the far end of the table from Sarhthor sat a regal, dusky man robed in black and dark blue. A moment before, there had been no man and no chair in that spot. The High Lord of Zhentil Keep smiled at all the turning heads. Before him on the table sat a serving platter covered with a silver dome, steam rising gently from around its edges.

“I’ve only now escaped from the pressing business of governing this great city”—the voice dipped only slightly in silken irony—“to meet with you all. Well met. I trust the patience taught by Sarhthor and wise others among us has kept you all occupied, and I beg you to excuse my not offering you any of my evenfeast. I am”—his voice dipped in soft menace—“ hungry this night.”

Then the Lord Manshoon flashed his teeth at them all in a smile that shone very white, and he uncovered the platter before him. Wisps of richly scented steam rose from the deep red ring of firewine sauce. It lay in a channel in the platter, surrounding the lord’s evening meal: a dark, slithering heap of live, glistening black eels from the Moonsea, lying on a bed of spiced rice. A slim, jewel-topped silver skewer appeared in the lord’s hand from the empty air before him. Smoothly, he stabbed the first coiling, twisting eel, and dipped it delicately in the hot sauce.

“Despite my apparent ease,” Manshoon said, waving his laden skewer as he looked down the table, “our Brotherhood—nay, the world entire—remains in peril. You have all heard of the recent commotion among our fellows of the Black Altar, and of the matter of spellfire.”

He paused for a moment. The silence of the listening Zhentarim wizards had changed subtly, and Manshoon knew he had their keen interest now. He smelled the sharp edge of their fear as they faced him and tried to look unmoved and peerless and dangerous. He almost chuckled.

“That matter remains unresolved. A young lady by the name of Shandril walks Faerûn somewhere south and west of us, guarded only by a dwarf and her mate—a knave by the name of Narm, who is weaker in Art than the least among you has been in some years. This Shandril alone commands spellfire, imperfectly as yet. She seeks training from Harpers and can expect some Harper aid along her way.”

The quality of the listeners’ silence changed again at the mention of the Harpers. Manshoon smiled and, with slow bites, emptied his cooling skewer.

“Sarhthor will tell those of you who are professionally interested all about the known strengths and subtleties of spellfire. Such professional interest will be exhibited only by those who have volunteered for the dangerous but fairly simple task of seizing or destroying this Shandril, and bringing what remains of her in either case here to this hall.