The stone winked once with its stored fire, reassuringly. Florin took off the chain and handed it to Belkram. “Yours, I think,” the Shield of Shadowdale said quietly. “I think she’s grown tired of Torm’s tricks.”
Belkram’s eyes shone. He was still struggling to speak when the Riders of Mistledale swept past with lowered lances, ruthlessly riding down fleeing Zhents. “For Baergil!” they bellowed as they went. “For Baergil!”
Kuthe was in the foremost saddle, swaying and pale, blood all down his front from a deep wound in his shoulder. “Kuthe!” Jhessail called as he spurred his mount past. “Have done! They’re beaten!”
He rode in a wide circle back to her, face set, and said, “The field may be ours, Lady, but Mistledale is my home. Every Zhent who can still walk by sunset is a sword that can strike from darkness when we sleep! Ill not rest until they’re all dead and done!”
Fflarast Blackriver and the old Harper who’d seen the sky rain wizards for the first time yesterday lay side by side under the very hooves of Kuthe’s mount as he snarled those words, but they did not hear him. Dust lay on their staring eyes and still faces, and the darkening blood spilled under them both was the same hue: one could not tell which was the Harper’s, and which belonged to the Zhentilar.
The leader of the Riders spurred away, the weary hooves of his mount trampling both bodies. Florin watched him go. “Where is the captain of the Riders?” he asked quietly.
“Who?” Rathan asked. “That lady paladin?”
“Aye,” Florin replied, “I’ve known her a long time.”
“Oho,” Torm spoke up, “an old lady friend, eh? May—”
His crowing words ended in a sharp gasp as Illistyl thrust a sharp hand into his gut. “Someday, clever tongue,” she warned him, “you’ll say just one word too many.…”
“Uhhh,” Torm agreed, doubled over.
“Indubitably,” Rathan translated, looking at the breathless thief with interest.
Florin, ignoring them all, was striding across the field and looking for Captain Nelyssa.
He caught sight of her at last, hard by the trees on the southern edge of the dale, well behind the last standard the defenders of the dale had rallied around. A mound of Zhentilar lay heaped about her and the sprawled bulk of her horse. A band of blackhelms had tried to outflank the fray—and paid for their cunning with their lives. There’d been over thirty of them, though, and it seemed the veteran Zhentilar armsmen were the measure of one paladin of Chauntea.
In a small lake of blood at the heart of the heaped dead lay the hacked and twisted form of Nelyssa, captain of the Riders of Mistledale, her armor torn open down the bloody mess of her front, and her notched and broken blade still clutched in her hand. Even as Florin broke into a run and shouted, lifting the heads of Harpers and farmers who knelt by the still form, he knew he was too late.
Nelyssa’s face was unmarked, but bone-white; she looked very like the young lass Florin had known so long ago … but her eyes were dark and sightless. The ranger stared into them as he sank down beside her and let out a long, shuddering sigh of grief. Was this madness of strife going to claim all the best hearts and minds before it was done?
“I need your sword, noble Falconhand,” said a voice as rough and sharp as the skin of its owner. Margrueth of the Harpers laid her hand on Florin’s own. The ranger looked up at her, finding it suddenly hard to drag his eyes away from Nelyssa’s frozen face.
When he did, he was shocked at what he saw. The fire of life had gone out of the Harper sorceress, too. She was gray to the lips, and her skin was sunken and shriveled so that it seemed a skull thinly draped with flesh. Only the eyes told him the feisty Margrueth still lived, eyes dancing like two lively dark flames. “You will aid me in this, Knight. I must have your oath on it.”
“My oath?” Weary and sad as he was, Florin still found that he could be startled. He looked around at the wondering farmers and the grim-faced Harpers, leaving him alone with the living woman and the dead one. They looked back at him. His oath. Whatever for?
And then, because she was old Margrueth and she was a Harper—and because he was Florin Falconhand—he turned to meet those wise old eyes. Holding her gaze, he lifted his voice to say clearly, “In Mielikki’s name and mine own, I, Florin Falconhand, born of Cormyr, Lord of Shadowdale and Knight of Myth Drannor, promise on my honor to aid you, Margrueth, on this day and on this field, as you would command me.”
“Nicely done,” Margrueth said with a smile. “Now this is what I’ll have you do—and swiftly, for the spells I wove today burned much life from me … I’d not live to see sunset whatever befell. Know for your own comfort that I act freely in this, and my wits are mine own.”
She laid herself down, wheezing a little, atop Nelyssa’s body, face to face. “Count four breaths, noble Florin, and plunge your blade into my back. Mind that it goes right through me, and into the lass beneath—and that you hold it thus for a breath, no more. Do this.” And with that order, she put her lips to the paladin’s mouth.
Florin stared down at her, swallowed, and then said hurriedly, in the two breaths left to him, “You shall be remembered with honor, Margrueth!”
As he’d been bid, he brought his blade down in a clean thrust, right through the old sorceress, and into Nelyssa beneath, where her armor was all riven away down her front. Margrueth jerked once under his steel, and blue-white light, like many tiny lightnings, crackled and danced around the joined lips of the two women.
Florin drew his blade out carefully. For a moment, the same radiance clung to its suddenly shining length. It looked as bright and sharp as it was when new, the scrapes and nicks of battle gone from it.
Yet more wondrous far was what befell where it had been. Margrueth’s body was twisting and contracting into a thing of curling smoke, to the accompaniment of one last, dry chuckle.
That sound faded, and Nelyssa’s revealed body stirred, color returned to her face, and a light came into her dark eyes. She slowly sat up.
“Florin?” she asked softly as the Harpers and farmers around cried out in wonder, gasped, or wept, “Have I slept? Is the day won—or lost?”
And Florin Falconhand cast aside his blade and knelt to take her in his arms. “Won for some, Captain … won for Mistledale. And yet lost for others, lost forever. Margrueth traded her life for yours.”
The captain of the Riders turned pale. “No!”
“Aye, Nelyssa,” Florin said gently, “you must know this, and hear the truth. She chose freely, and worked a magic I did not know, binding me under oath. Mine was the blade that took her life, and gave it to you. She was at the end of her life, drained by this battle … and brought you back to us.”
The paladin of Chauntea flung her arms around him and wept.
* * * * *
“Hmmph,” Torm said to Rathan as they trudged across the field, taking up the best weapons and tossing them on a farmer’s sledge to bear back to Ashabenford, “women never do that to me. My arms await—see? Here they are, two of them, and fairly well matched to each other, too—and do ladies sob their sorrows away into my breast? No! Is it the cut of his chin, d’you think? The wave in his hair? His strong, manly bearing? Those gleaming teeth?”
“All of those,” his friend agreed. “Now give me a hand with this halberd—three dead ones draped over it, look ye; three—and take comfort in the fact that ye’ve probably been in almost as many strange beds as he has … an’ that ye’re better far at stealing things.”
“Umm,” Torm agreed, looking again at the woman in Florin’s arms. His eyes fell to the dark, sticky puddle of blood they shared, and he swallowed. So much blood.…
“When we get back to the Six Shields,” he told Rathan fiercely, “I’m going to get very drunk!”
“Oh? Don’t forget that ye lost the bet with Syluné! We won the battle, so ye have to wear the scanties ye were putting on her, an’ go sit in the window!”
“But she’s … dead. You won’t hold me to�
��”
“Oh, but I will,” Rathan said softly. “In memory of her, ye will sit in that window this night, if I have to break thy limbs to get the fripperies onto ye.”
Torm tore a gorget free of a Zhentilar who’d not be needing it anymore, and flung it with a clatter onto the sledge. “I’m going to get very very drunk!” he said fiercely, “first.”
“Hmm,” Rathan said, lifting a body into the air with one hand to pluck daggers free with the other, “that’ll make the dressing an amusing affair. May I watch?”
“Hell be too drunk to stop anyone from watching,” one buzzard commented to the other, shifting a little on a low, bare branch as a nearby farmer gave them a dirty look, bent to pick up a fallen bow, and then shrugged and turned away, knowing he couldn’t hit the tree, let alone two watchful carrion birds.
“Faerûn certainly affords more entertainment than Shadowhome,” Bralatar said, remembering the battle as he looked out over the ravaged field.
“And because the peril to and consequences for us are the less, one can really enjoy it,” Lorgyn replied, watching Merith and Jhessail embrace, and Illistyl, after a moment, turn and look around the battlefield for Torm.
“I cannot understand the thinking of Yinthrim, to throw life and all the unfolding chances of this world away just to try to avenge kin who may well have plotted his own death, had they lived.”
“Atari, yes,” Lorgyn agreed, “would always plunge into battle, given the slightest of excuses, but such folly is unusual for Yinthrim.” He looked at the site of the tent where the two Malaugrym had perished the night before—now a trampled sward strewn with sprawled bodies. He shrugged. “I guess battle hunger overtook them.”
“Battle hunger? Attacking three sleeping humans is something done out of ‘battle hunger’?” Bralatar had a fine, showy grasp of sarcastic incredulity when something aroused him to it. He shifted on the branch, fluttering his feathers in irritation. “Admit they liked to slay folk, and fatally misjudged the fervor of these mortals, and have done with it. Two fewer fools to breed will make our house that much the stronger.”
“A phrase fit for a speech of any Shadowmaster High,” Lorgyn acknowledged, bowing his head. “So when, in your judgment, would it be best that we make our strike against the three who dared to intrude into Shadowhome, and slay so many Malaugrym?”
“When those three rangers are much older, and we’ve seen far more of this world—or at least, not now,” Bralatar replied with his usual sharp humor. “Those two maids over there—Jhessail and Illistyl, if I heard aright—still have spells left. And who knows how many of those Harpers are mages? I’m not descending into the midst of a battlefield where one old man called down a god not long ago!”
“And the Lord of Battles at that,” Lorgyn agreed. “Now is not a good time.”
“ ‘Now’ is never a good time,” Bralatar said dryly.
* * * * *
“At first light,” Florin ordered, looking around the map-strewn room, “we ride north to Shadowdale, where our swords are sorely needed.”
Kuthe nodded grimly. “Haste must be our course, yes.” He looked at the cot where Nelyssa lay, nodding weakly.
“I shall ride to Shadowdale on the morrow,” she said firmly, “and any man who shouts at me not to go will serve me as a replacement mount!”
Kuthe closed his open mouth stiffly, and turned his head away, then swung it around again, opened his mouth to speak, caught her eye—and closed his jaws once more.
Torm and Rathan, scratching at their rough, stiff bandages, sputtered with mirth and went out hastily.
“Ah, ‘twas worth all that jabber to see Lord High-and-Mighty’s face!” Torm chuckled. “Now, let’s be finding that drink I was talking of …”
“I’ll go with ye,” Rathan said grimly. “Too many friends fell this day. I want to feel a small fire in my belly this night.”
Torm raised his eyebrows. “And why not? You do that every other night; why change things now?”
Rathan favored him with both a weary look and an unpriestly gesture.
* * * * *
Just after the two Knights had wearily passed around a corner of the street, a door swung open, and Illistyl hurried, white-faced, out into the waiting night. Her mind yet burned with the sight of a Rider’s crushed leg being amputated, the grim faces of sawing surgeon and patient, the Rider’s rolling eyes. Illistyl shook her head as she stumbled along in the darkness, but could not shake the images away.…
Suddenly something was rising within her. She fell heavily to her knees and vomited into the dark grass.
A weary Rider turned his head at the sound, watched her sobbing out the contents of her stomach, and turned back to sewing up a comrade’s slashed arm.
“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully, “it seems great adventurers are human after all.”
His older companion winced as the needle went in again. “Oh, they’re human, lad … all too human. That’s where most of the trouble begins.”
9
Even Wizards Must Die
The Castle of Shadows, Shadowhome, Flamerule 18
The mists of morning were still drifting off the river as the Knights of Myth Drannor and the Riders of Mistledale rode north together, leather creaking loudly among the riverbank trees. They pressed on, stiff and sore from yesterday’s fighting, but more than one Rider wore a wondering smile as he looked around at the awakening forest on this bright morning he’d not expected to see.
“Such a victory,” one man muttered to his companion. “Thousands we sent to their graves. ‘Twas the favor of the gods, to be sure, that we weren’t all sent to the Deathrealms in their first charge, and Mistledale laid waste before highsun!”
“Aye, we place much store in the favor of the gods,” his comrade replied, “or we’d not be riding straight into another battle!” He pointed ahead. Plumes of smoke rose into the sky to the north.
Shadowdale was burning.
The Knights and Riders pressed on up the Mistle Trail, urging their mounts to greater haste.
Torm waved a hand at the smoke and said loudly and bitterly, “Look! We’ll get there in time to join the Zhents at their fires, with the dale pillaged and burned and not a man or maid left to fight for!”
“Say not so!” Merith told him, but Kuthe and Nelyssa nodded slowly.
“We’ve taken this way in haste before,” the captain of the Riders said, her eyes very dark, “and spent more than a day in the forest … and that was a few riders on fresh, swift mounts—not a force this large that fought yesterday.”
Belkram was frowning and holding his head to one side, as if listening to something. He straightened in his saddle and said, “There is a way to take us there more swiftly.”
Florin Falconhand, who rode at the head of the column, turned his head. “You mean magic,” he said grimly. “Is that wise, given the chaos ruling sorcery?”
Belkram listened for a breath longer, and then shrugged. “Syluné says teleportation seems unaffected—it served her even on the battlefield yester-morn, passing wild magic shields to do so.”
“Without a body, she can’t cast any spells,” Kuthe pointed out. “What good is it if the Lady Jhessail here hurls one of us on ahead? A lone rider makes a better target than a relief force!”
“There is a way to take us all,” Belkram replied slowly, passing on the words from the stone that held the Witch of Shadowdale. “Elminster taught it to m—her.”
The ranger nodded. “There is a risk,” Florin said; it was a statement, not a query. He looked around at the others, holding up his hand for a halt. “Are you willing to take on that danger? All of you?”
The Knights nodded without hesitation. Among the Riders were some swift glances back and forth, and shrugs. One leaned forward and asked Florin, “Are you?”
The Shield of Shadowdale shrugged. “Of course.”
“He’s a Knight of Myth Drannor,” Rathan explained as if to a child.
“Which is to say, he�
��s a reckless idiot,” Torm elaborated in a stage whisper.
The men of Mistledale were still chuckling when Captain Nelyssa said crisply, “I will undergo this magic. Let us be about it.”
“We’ll need some space,” Belkram said, and pointed into the trees. “That glade there.”
Nelyssa nodded. “Let all who are unwilling to chance this spell stay here on the trail.” She turned her horse’s head and guided it into the trees.
As they followed, Belkram looked at Jhessail. “You must do the casting.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “So I’d gathered.”
No one stayed on the road. When everyone was arrayed around Belkram, he took off the chain and gave it to Jhessail. She held up the stone, and grew still for a moment as she listened. Merith, who’d been in such castings before, slid deftly from his saddle and lay on the ground, taking hold of one hoof of his horse and one of his lady’s ankles. Florin edged his mount over to take a firm hold on Merith’s horse, and Sharantyr, Itharr, Belkram, Captain Nelyssa, and Kuthe followed, creating a human chain.
Jhessail smiled her thanks, and said, “Draw in close, everyone—to touch at least one other person or their mount. Remain that way, and don’t pull free until we’re elsewhere.”
She drew a deep breath and put the stone into her mouth. Closing her eyes in concentration, Jhessail followed Syluné’s guidance in the casting. The loop of chain dangling from her chin rattled as she moved. After a brief series of gestures, she threw both hands high into the air and froze.
A blue mist raced out from her body to swirl around them all. It rose, growing thicker and winking with small flashes of blue light … light that was suddenly blinding, blotting the world out in an shifting, drifting swirl … that faded away to show Faerûn again.
They were in a different clearing—a larger space littered with felled trees and stacked firewood. To the north was daylight, where the woods gave way to the first fields of Shadowdale. Through the cloaking trees, they saw the stone bridge over the Ashaba, where a watchful guard always stood.
A guard of three frightened old men, whose spears trembled in their hands as they shouted in alarm at the sudden appearance of so many horsemen. Florin took his hand from Merith’s horse to raise it in a reassuring salute.
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