The Sword Never Sleeps tkomd-3

by Ed Greenwood

  The massive shoulders under Florin were shaking and spasming helplessly now, the arms flailing around in a wild thrashing.

  "Get clear!" Pennae cried from above. "Flor, get away from it!"

  Florin slashed open another eye, even as he kicked hard against the thing's back, and thrust himself free, toppling back into the night.

  The thing tried to turn, to follow him and pounce, but it was lurching, its muscles rippling and shuddering uncontrollably. It had managed only a half-turn by the time Islif and the two priests had clawed themselves well apart from where it thrashed on the scree slope-and a long, wedge-shaped slab of rock came thundering down out of the night to smash the beast flat.

  Broken and bewildered, all it could still do was scream. It did that, feebly, then fell silent and leaked gore out from under the now-shattered stone covering it.

  "Well, now," Pennae's voice floated down to her fellow Knights, surprisingly calm and quiet. "That wasn't so hard, was it? Any other beasts you need taken care of?"

  "Whoever sent this one?" Semoor said. "Four coins to get twelve that this hulk was brought or sent here to stand against us."

  No one accepted his wager.

  Which one of them had the Pendant? As he'd expected, his spell had found nothing, which meant he had to get closer to either spot it by chance-if one of them was foolish enough to wear it openly-or spell-see it at close range.

  Drathar skulked closer, wincing as the render's rumblings rose into sharp shrieks. The night was dark, the Knights apparently had no lanterns lit.

  Well, that just might seal their doom. They couldn't" Haaaa!" That deep, hoarse, triumphant roar out of the night had sounded right behind him!

  Drathar hurled himself forward, right through a viciously sharp thornbush that was thankfully half-dead, and so collapsed with a crackle. Who-?

  A morningstar crashed down right beside him, flaring momentarily into ruby radiance as it struck his feeble shielding spell.

  Drathar rolled, becoming aware of a large, looming figure, a choking stink of unwashed, filthy flesh, and two tusked heads. A second morningstar whistled past his head to thud heavily into a treetrunk and rebound.

  Drathar scrambled to his feet then ducked away, seeking to put several trees between himself and this… ettin?

  Aye, it was a two-headed giant, and it was striding angrily around the trees, looking nothing like the stumbling dunderheads most bardic tales insisted ettin were. It looked to have just awakened, probably roused by the render's screams, and its every stride was faster and more purposeful as it rose to full alertness.

  Which meant he had to act right now-or never.

  Drathar planted his feet despite the wildly rising urge to flee, stared at the ettin lurching menacingly nearer, and carefully cast his last coercion spell. Whatever they'd managed to do to the gray render, the Knights of Myth Drannor had to be wounded and weary.

  Which meant, against an ettin, they hadn't a chance. ***** "What was that magic?"

  Boarblade was in no mood for Klarn's truculent questions just now. "Something the same man who contacted each of you gave me, to use once we were together, riding on an open road. I don't know its name. You saw what it did to the horses, and it's done now. So leave them-they're too exhausted to stray, and the hargaunt can smell them well enough to guide us back to them, aftet. Come!"

  "Come where?"

  "Into the woods, toward all that shrieking. Before we're too late. You to the fore with me. Glays, rearguard. All the shrieking may bring other things hunting. Thorm and Darratur, keep blades sheathed for now. I want none of us running onto each other's steel in the dark. Quick and quier, quick and quiet."

  "To do what, exactly?"

  Glays was always calm and the only one Boarblade judged competent to obey orders and avoid utter dundetheadedness. So he answered the man.

  "To go and see if this racket is linked to the Knights we're looking for. It sounds like a forest beast might just have done our work for us-and if it has we need to get to the bodies before it mauls their faces too badly and to find that Pendant before it's down some monster's gullet. If it hasn't, but the Knights are sore wounded or worn out, we watch and choose our best moment to rush them. They've got a wizard and some priests, remember? No better time and place to face down spells than the dark, in a thick forest, where they can't see who they're hurling magic at. If, that is, they've got any magic left!"

  That set Klarn, Thorm, and Darratur all to nodding and chuckling. Boarblade used his drawn sword to wave Klarn forward, gave them all a gtin, then turned away before they could see it fall right off his chin. Idiots.

  In the dootway the Royal Magician of Cormyr came to an abrupt halt and blinked.

  Sage Royal Alaphondar looked up from his uncomfortable, high-backed chair and sighed. There were more subtle ways of making it clear you were surprised-and disapprovingly so-to see someone in attendance at a secret meeting in the Queen's Retiring Room, but then Vangerdahast seldom saw any need to be all that subtle.

  King Azoun and Queen Filfaeril were there, of course, crowns off on the table before them and arms around each other like lovers, as a clear signal that royal protocol was suspended for the nonce. Laspeera of the Wizards of War sat near them on a maid's ready chair.

  The two whose presence seemed to discomfit Vangey were the War Wizard Lorbryn Deltalon and the man sitting quietly next to him in drab and well-worn trail leathers on the couch. It was the Harper. Dalonder Ree, and he was giving the simmering wizard in the doorway a knowing smile and the words, "I'm sorry to announce that Dove can't be with us. She's off on one of her jaunts. Harper work."

  "What Harper work?" Vangerdahast almost snarled, striding into the room and making for the comfortable armchair that had been left for him.

  Ree shrugged. "What I know not, I cannot be made to say." "Hah! You expect me to believe that?"

  "Yes, "King Azoun said from where he sat, the word so sudden and steely that Vangerdahast blinked again, halted, and waited for more. Anticipated words that did not come.

  After a breath or two, the Royal Magician continued to his seat and told the ceiling as he turned to sit, "Word came to me that the Dragon Queen had need of my presence at a moot, wherefore I am here. Do we await later arrivals, or-?"

  "We do not, Vangey. Your grand entrance is unmarred." Filfaeril's tone was as dry as the sands of a deserr. "If you're sitting comfortably enough, we can begin."

  "I am. The purpose of this little conclave?"

  "Thrust to the heart, thrust to the heart," Dalonder Ree murmured. The Royal Magician did not deign to look in his direction, but Laspeera and Filfaeril both gave him sly little smiles.

  "It appears," the King of Cormyr said calmly, "that the Knights of Myth Drannor continue to be embroiled in some manner of violence in the wilderlands along the Moonsea Ride, beyond our present borders but in territory we customarily patrol and secure so that no menace may gather there for forays into our fair realm. The identities of their foes are a matter of some conjecture and dispute. I would hear your honest and informal counsel, everyone, on what we should now do about this."

  "Nothing," Vangerdahast said, as Deltalon and the Harper started to speak. "They are adventurers, and they have departed the realm. Let them adventure and taste whatever fates the gods see fit to hand them. We cannot be forever reaching out our hands across Faerun to meddle in the affairs of others."

  "No, of course not," Dalonder Ree told the ceiling. "Only twice or thrice a day, when we want to-if we happen to be, say, a Royal Magician."

  Two royal snorts of mirth quelled the icy rejoinder Vangerdahast had turned his head to deliver. He satisfied himself by ignoring the Harper's comment and said, "In this room we can only concern ourselves with Cormyrean interests and policies. As this is an informal discussion, let me express myself bluntly: I am very strongly of the opinion that no further aid of any sort should be rendered to the chartered adventurers known as the Knights of Myth Drannor. If they establish themselves
in Shadowdale, as certain parties obviously intend that they do, we shall then extend the hand of diplomacy-"

  "Envoys in the front door, spies through the back," Ree murmured.

  "— as usual," Vangerdahast said, giving the Harper a glare. "For one thing, I want to keep Wizards of War clear of that atea just now for quite another reason."

  Into the little silence that followed, Queen Filfaeril asked quietly, "And that reason would be?"

  Vangerdahast looked at her a little beseechingly and murmured, "It touches on the royal family, and I would prefer not to speak openly in present company."

  "That's difficult, Vangey," King Azoun said, "because I would very much prefer that you do."

  The Royal Magician did not trouble to- hide his shrug or his sigh. "Very well. There is peril to the Princess Tanalasta, owing to a magical link between her mind and a Wizard of War who has now become a renegade and a fugitive, whom I believe to currently be in the same area as the Knights."

  "Ruldroun," Laspeera murmured.

  Vangerdahast gave her a glare. "If we're laying bare every last secret of the realm for no good reason, aye. Ruldroun is the mage I speak of. I don't know of any connection at all between him and the Knights, but if we flood that stretch of forest with war wizards and spells get hurled… well, what happens to his mind could harm the princess, no matter what safeguards I weave around her here."

  "I have no magic to speak of," the Harper said, "so I see no reason I shouldn't go to the aid of the Knights. I would even be so bold as to request war wizard aid in translocating me across the vastness of fair Cormyr so I can reach them in good time."

  "I will furnish that," Deltalon spoke up, "and accompany you to assist and to bring back reliable report of what befalls."

  "You will not." Vangerdahast could put a ring of steel into his voice that echoed louder and more forcefully than even the "hear now my royal will" tone of King Azoun.

  "He will," Queen Filfaeril said so softly and calmly that she seemed almost to be whispering. "Vangey, in this you are overruled."

  The Royal Magician reeled in his chair as if he'd been slapped across the face. "You-you-"

  "Dare?" the Dragon Queen inquired sweetly. "Of course. And please try my royal husband before you deem me foolish or standing alone in this."

  With slow and obvious reluctance, Vangerdahast turned his head to look at the king, who smiled, nodded, and said, "The Harper is to be given all the assistance he deems necessary-including the service of Wizard of War Deltalon."

  "I shall see to that," Laspeera said softly.

  Vangerdahast's gaze snapped around to her-but he gave her no glare, only silence and several blinks of his eyes, as if some sort of facial tic were afflicting him.

  "Very well," he said at last. "But hear me!" He gave the Harper a glare that might have melted a shield. "You're not taking an army of Purple Dragons!"

  "Why would I," the Harper's face was all innocence, "when all I need is one Dragon? The man called Dauntless."

  Slowly at first, then uproariously until his mirth expired in a fit of choking, the Royal Magician of Cormyr laughed.

  Chapter 22

  If you skuld out in the trees this nigh The moon is down, not shining bright So lovers stay in, the beasts do ptowl If you skulk out in the trees this night Be the one to pounce-not death-howl.

  Brorn had grown tired of looking down at himself. He was entirely skeletal now, coated in bone that made his movements slower, his limbs heavy. Yet his joints were still supple enough, and thankfully he still had eyes and a tongue, his own insides-and what made him a man, too. And he felt… normal. Hah. Normal.

  He shook his head and plucked again at the tangle of belts, baldrics, and sheaths that were all he now wore. He'd long ago grown weary of his clothes falling off him with every step, breeches collapsing again and again around his ankles, and suddenly huge boots wobbling and even turning loosely on his bony feet, and he had finally abandoned them. He was thinner, everywhere, as if his flesh had melted away under the coating of bone.

  So now Brorn Hallomond was, in truth, the Striding Skeleton. Whether this was really bone coating him or not-and it certainly looked like bone-it seemed something of a shield against the cold. He could no longer feel the gentle touch of the night breeze.

  So was he dead? Did it matter?

  The night was dark, with drifting clouds cloaking most of the stars and no Selune riding high, so he'd left the thick, tiring, confusing tangles of the fotest to stalk along the Moonsea Ride.

  Thus far alone and unmolested.

  No honest traveler would still be out faring on a moonless night, outlaws would probably shrink back from a walking skeleton, and he could always duck into the trees if he saw anyone approaching.

  So he strode along, trying to cover as much ground as he could without getting really tired. The Knights should be somewhere near, by now.

  "Should I-"

  "Remain still and silent? Yes. All else: No."

  Laspeera's voice was brisker than shed meant it to be, so she gave the ornrion a smile and added gently, "Keep your eyes open as the spell ends. You'll be plunged into a well-lit void, rich blue emptiness that it seems you'te falling through, and then yout feet will be on solid ground, somewhere at night in the forest-that 'somewhere' being wherever the Knights of Myth Drannor are. Speak and move and draw sword then, if you deem it needful, but not before. Please."

  Dauntless nodded, a trifle unhappily and showing it on his face. He stood on a worn diamond mark painted on the floor at one end of the dark and cavernous undercellar of the Royal Court-deep under the flagstone garden yard that let into the Royal Gardens proper, if he'd correctly judged how far they'd walked-and there was another war wizard and another man standing on a diamond waiting to be transported across Cormyr in a winking instant, at the other end.

  He knew them both. Lorbryn Deltalon and the Harper Dalonder Ree. They were watching him, the calm murmurs of relaxed converse passing between them, as they obviously waited for Laspeera to enspell him first.

  Dauntless imagined Deltalon becoming just a trifle impatient and starting his spell as Laspeera was finishing hers-and the one teleport spell clawing at the other, flaring in an explosion that spattered all four of them in a thin drenching of gore over the walls of this spellcasting chamber, in the brief instant before those stones themselves shattered and heaved… and one end of the sprawling Court erupted into the night sky, towers toppling and scores of courtiers shrieking as they died.

  Wincing, he shook his head, blinked, and found himself staring into the sympathetic face of the wizatd Laspeera again. He felt shame, but it was swept away in a rush of gratitude at the caring he saw in her eyes. Small wonder that many Wizards of War called her Mother and revered her.

  "Sorry," he muttered. "Pray pardon, Lady Laspeera. Silence, aye."

  The smile she gave him lit up her face like a leaping brazier-flame, and Dauntless felt as if he were falling in love.

  "Aye," she said and lifted her hands like a master server about to signal the servants under his command at a Palace feast.

  She was going to cast the spell. The magic that would hurl him across the Forest Kingdom and beyond, out along the Ride into the wilderlands somewhere near Tilver's Gap, lands where Purple Dragons rode hard and often to keep outlaws and monsters and worse out of Cormyr proper. To see the Knights of Myth Drannor not dead, now, but safely past Tilverton and into the Dales.

  Orders, as they said gravely in the service of the Purple Dragon, have changed.

  Just where along the Ride he'd be in a breath or two, he didn't know, but there were a cluster of little glowing lights hanging in the air in the center of the room, a little higher than Laspeera's head, that told her where the Knights were. Each of those floating, subtly shifting glows represented one of the tracer-enchanted glowstones the Royal Magician Vangerdahast had given to the Knights of Myth Drannor.

  Aye, orders might change, but some things never did. Rise up sun and go do
wn moon, every last jack and lass in Cormyr danced to a tune, whether they knew it or not, and the piper was the wizard Vangerdahast.

  Laspeera's hands finished tracing elaborate gestures in the air, her smile grew wider, andSmiling war wizard, chamber, and all were gone, and this par-ticular Purple Dragon ornrion was falling endlessly through a deep blue void.

  "Florin!" Pennae snapped, leaping down the last little stretch of cliff to land heels-first in the loose scree beside him, with a crash of shifting stones.

  "I hear it," the ranger said. "Back up onto the ledge, everyone! Stoop, Clumsum, is there anythingyoxi can do for Jhess?" "Pray?" Semoor said.

  "Tluin!" Florin barked in amused exasperation. "Just tluin off!"

  "Oh, bright Morninglord, aid me as I obey the esteemed and manly Florin Falconhand!" Semoor cried as he scrambled up onto the ledge. "Let the rosy hue of your approval bathe-"

  "Semoor!" Islif and Florin roared in unison. "Shut up!"

  "— even my decidedly less than devout, silence-loving companions-"

  Doust reached the ledge, planted his mace on its stone with one hand, and swung his other arm up and around in a wild bid for balance.

  Out of sheer luck, the hand on the end of that arm made abrupt contact with Semoor's mouth, and whatever else he'd been going to say was abruptly silenced.

  Leaving everyone ample opportunity to hear the eager roar that was rising from two throats, as something twice as tall as Florin burst around and over the last few trees, branches splintering, and charged at the Knights.

  It was a two-headed giant, all massive, corded muscles and hungry fury. Drool sluiced past the jutting tusks of its shovel mouths in a rain as it broke off its roaring run forward to bellow something.

  "That's an ettin!" Semoor shouted. "Saw it in one of the Palace bestiaries!"

  The ettin bellowed and flung wide its arms, both of them as long as Islif's body. Gigantic iron morningstars in its fists rattled out at full swing to crash against tree trunks.