by Ed Greenwood
Right now, in a bare room very similar to the one he was trapped in, on the far side of what until a short time ago he’d thought was a solid wall, a chicken was roaming freely. Pecking, strutting, even fluttering … as his will-driven edge of force pursued it, seeking to decapitate it.
It had seemed such a simple command: “Behead yon fowl.”
His view of the room wavered again, and with a curse he fought to focus the air once more into a sharp, clear edge. And … succeeded. He was drenched in sweat, tiring fast, and this hrasted chicken seemed to want to fly!
It fluttered its wings again, bounding into the air and squawking loudly. Across the room it scurried, flapping this way and that as it went, and bobbing up and down, too. Almost as if it were taunting him, just like the watching eyeball.
Die, you stupid bird, die!
Savagely Mreldrake bore down with his will, sweeping his invisible blade of force up and after the chicken.
Which obligingly landed, folded its wings, blinked, and started to peck.
It bobbed up, took a few steps, looked around—and bobbed again, a scant instant before Mreldrake’s blade swept through the spot where its neck had been.
“Nooo, you tluining little harrucker!” he spat, his mind-view of the room next door wavering again as his blade started to thicken, wobble, and slide toward collapse.
“No! Not this time!”
In a sharp surge of rage he narrowed the blade again and turned it, not caring if he crushed the fowl or starved it of breath by sucking every last whit of air in that room into his killing blade. This chicken was doomed!
Thinner and sharper than ever, the blade swept down. The chicken bobbed down to peck, took two slow steps forward without straightening up, then suddenly reared up to blink, look around, blink again, and look satisfied.
Which was when he finally reached it—and took off its head with the ease of a rushing wind, without it so much as uttering a peep. The bloody head landed with a wet plop behind him as his sharp awareness rushed on, and the room around him turned over and over, wavering … and was gone.
Exhausted, Mreldrake sagged down, stinging sweat running into his eyes, seeing his own prison chamber once more. The secret door he’d not known about before today, the one that connected his room to the one he’d just beheaded the chicken in, swung slowly open by itself to reveal the tiny, headless feathered bundle swaying amid much blood.
“Well, now,” came the voice of one of his captors out of the empty air above him. “Progress we can all be proud of.”
Yes, those words held distinct mockery.
“Rorskryn Mreldrake, you’ve earned your supper. Well done.”
Too breathless to answer, Mreldrake lay with his eyes closed, already knowing what the voice would say next.
“And it’s very fresh. Killed moments ago, in fact. Chicken!”
“Did you see the way Lady Glathra was looking at us?” Amarune murmured. “I was hard put not to shiver. She doesn’t want us working for throne and king, to be sure. I think she’d be happiest if neither of us lived through this night.”
Arclath smiled. “You think it was an accident Ganrahast told her he needed to meet with her urgently and immediately, as they left? Or that the king seems to have left more than a dozen guards behind, to spend the night standing around outside our walls?”
Rune frowned. “You think she’d dare—?”
The heir of House Delcastle shrugged. “ ’Twouldn’t be the first time a wizard of war—or a high-ranking courtier—decided to ‘help’ the hand of Tymora. Or even the most likely unfolding of events, either. I doubt Glathra’s that bold, myself, but the prepared warrior is the less dismayed warrior, as they say.”
He paused at a particular door and knocked softly at it. It promptly opened, and an elderly servant stepped out of the room beyond it to bow deeply to Amarune and hand her a lit lantern.
“All ready, lord,” he murmured to Arclath, and he hastened off down the passage without another word.
Lord Delcastle ushered his lady love through the open door. “My mother chose this room for you because the door has stout bolts, here and here, so you can keep all Cormyr at bay, the night through. The window’s too small for most men to get through, and overlooks a long fall into the courtyard—where some of our men are always standing guard. Oh, and there’s no secret passage.”
They traded grins, ere Arclath added, “Above you is only roof, and beneath you the ceiling of the back feasting hall—a good twelve man-heights above its floor. We’ve only two ladders tall enough to reach it, and we could scarcely fail to notice anyone trying to sneak in here with a ladder that long …”
“But if she tries anything at all,” Amarune murmured, “she’ll use magic, not the swords of Purple Dragons storming your house, surely?”
Arclath shrugged. “We have wards. If they aren’t strong enough, well, I guess that’ll be that.” He grinned. “You really think one angry Crown mage will go to all that trouble to punish the notorious Silent Shadow?”
Rune did not smile back at him. “Arclath,” she whispered, “I wasn’t thinking about me. My worry is for you.”
The lord constable of Irlingstar stared down the passage, over the body of the fallen seneschal, at all the Purple Dragons he’d summoned. Every waking guard in the castle was here except for the on-duty door guards, the stair wardens, and of course the mages. They were all his to command.
The faces staring back at him were grim. The guards of Castle Irlingstar were upset, of course. They’d been more angry than fearful at first, but that had changed when they’d discovered the kitchen staff slaughtered, and much of the food in the castle pantries taken or deliberately tainted. They had been less than gentle while shoving the prisoners back into their cells and locking them in—and the lord constable had agreed wholeheartedly with that rough treatment. Sneering murderers.
“Dumped chamber pots into the open ale keg, they did,” one Dragon snapped indignantly, “and emptied their bladders all over the puddings.”
“The spitted birds? The sausages?”
“Gone,” was the bleak reply.
Lord Constable Farland wasted no effort on curses. He merely pointed at two men and commanded, “Stand guard over the kitchens. They’re not to be left unattended for as long as it takes you to blink, from now on. Choose two more to relieve you when you grow tired.”
Then he pointed at four more Dragons. “Search everything. The flues of every last chimney, all the spices in the pantry; the lot. Set aside everything that’s been spoiled or even possibly poisoned, and make very sure the chimneys haven’t been blocked and no little traps left waiting for anyone trying to use kitchens or larders. When done, one of you—you, Illowhond—report to me. In my office, where I’ll be conferring with both senior constables.”
Farland looked slowly around at all of the gathered guards, his face as calm and expressionless as he knew how to make it, and said curtly, “There will be goading. Pay careful attention to anything any prisoner might let slip, but keep a close rein over yourselves. I expect you to remain the professional veterans you all are. Return to your stations and duties.”
Collecting Traelshun and Delloak with stares and a jerk of his head, he turned on his heel and started the long trudge back to his office, not bothering to look down again at what was left of Seneschal Avathnar.
This was one more headache he didn’t need, but there was something fitting, even satisfying, when the gods saw to it that vain, thickheaded men reaped the rewards of their own stupidity. Now, if the gods could just see to it that Cormyr held a few more Traelshuns and Delloaks, and a lot less of the likes of Avathnars …
Not that he expected them to. The gods had a long, long list of things to see to, and some of them had been waiting for centuries.
Sixteen left.
Elminster nodded; she was panting too hard to answer Symrustar aloud. This new body was as agile and deft as it was lovely, and she’d managed to find a small stretc
h of level, smooth rock underfoot, hard against of the tunnel walls, but sorely outnumbered was … sorely outnumbered.
It had grown to more than thirty against one when the fray had begun, and at least one of those outcast drow males was a wizard who’d been casting spellstop after spellstop at El, while taking care to keep well out of reach behind the rest as they’d closed in, stabbing and hacking.
The ironguard was all that had kept her alive in those first frantic moments. The profanely shouted desire of some of El’s attackers to “Leave enough of her to enjoy!” had helped her kill a few as they’d hesitated to be really brutal to her torso, though most of her armor had been so viciously and repeatedly hacked that it flapped and dangled, protecting her against nothing.
Just once, they’d gained sense enough to all rush her together, trying not to slay but rather to catch hold of her arms and legs and bear her down onto the rocks, to hold her helpless by sheer weight of numbers and cruel strength. So someone could stab her or slice open her throat, and make an end of her. At last they’d taken her down. Spread-eagled and struggling vainly, El had seared those holding her closest with the tiniest outrush of silver fire, a deadly momentary spitting she hoped no one would recognize for what it was.
In an instant, those who’d tasted it most deeply were far too dead to bear witness to anything. Giving off wisps of smoke and the hearty smell of cooked flesh, they sagged and fell away, leaving the less injured to hiss curses and scramble clear as fast as they knew how. Leaving their lone quarry to struggle to her feet and face them, breathless and bleeding freely from the bites of enspelled blades the ironguard could only lessen. El stood alone, the cooked dead slumped around her in a blackened and smoking ring, watching the surviving drow draw back to mutter together.
Their mage was hissing something at them, probably about how he could work a spell to see that most of their bolts got through whatever defenses a lone spider priestess could manage, if they held back and all fired their handbows at her at once. El didn’t wait for them to ready such a volley, but ran at the nearest drow, swinging her hooked sword in a vicious slash. The dark elf parried it easily, deflecting her blade aside with a triumphant sneer—whereupon she brought it swinging around to bite into the handbow hooked to his belt, ruining it, before she sprang back and ran on.
The next drow had seen what she’d done, and turned to shield his bow from her with his body. She took advantage of that to rush past and around him in a tight circle, until in his turning to keep facing her he overbalanced. She promptly made the same slashing attack, but this time the parry sent her blade up through his throat.
By then, all the drow were converging on El. She fled back to her open fighting ground with the blades of the fastest outcasts slicing at her backside. More of her leathers fell away as she sprang across a drift of tangled and blackened drow bodies, spun around, and ducked low in a lunge that spitted one pursuing dark elf who was too close and moving too fast to stop himself in time.
He went down noisily and messily, taking El’s sword with him, and she sprang back again to give herself space and time enough to snatch up some swords from the fallen before the sixteen surviving outcasts reached her.
She had a scepter that could blast down one drow at a time, if it behaved like all the other scepters of the same design she’d seen in the past, but she needed time enough to use it on one obliging target after another. The bite of just one sword would make it explode—and her ironguard would help this shapely body not at all against that.
Gnaw-worms as long as a drow arm wriggled down the tunnel walls, drawn by the smell of spilled blood and cooked death. The wizard’s spellstops hung in the air around El like unpleasant smells, clinging to her. They would hamper rather than truly stop spells, but just one of them would slow magics too much to keep her alive in a sword fight—and the dung pile had cast six of them, hrast him.
The drow were wary of her now, and moving slowly to ring her, keeping their blades ready and their eyes on her.
“I don’t like fighting,” Elminster murmured aloud, to no one in particular. “I’d rather be left alone, to spend my days messing around with the Art. Trying new things, creating, feeling the flows …”
Inside his head, Symrustar nodded wordless agreement and approval, as together they recalled magic unleashed, beautiful glows rushing out into the night …
The drow were coming.
El backed to the wall before the sixteen could encircle her, yielding most of the flat stone floor so as to have solid rock at her back. All they had to do was come at her four at once, one to each side and two in front of her, and not let her draw one of them into another’s way … and she couldn’t hope to parry them all.
Of the spells she’d just burned into her mind, she was using the ironguard, and could see an immediate use for the guardian blades, the timetheft, and the—oh, but hey, now! If she … aye …
Yes, Symrustar agreed.
She mustn’t forewarn them. Cast the whirlblade storm in careful silence and then hold it in abeyance, waiting until they were all emboldened enough to draw near. Aye, go down fighting, and let them think they’d slain her. There, ’twas done …
And here they came.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
ROUSING THE DRAGON
The drow advanced on El from all sides, their eyes baleful. They moved in slowly, readying their handbows.
Hrast. She crouched, the swords she’d snatched from their fallen fellows held ready, the blades turned sideways to serve as tiny shields. Yet she’d have to be falcon-fast, and have the very luck of all the gods, to deflect a fired dart before it struck her.
The silver fire could burn away poison, but oh, did it hurt. Her eyes and throat, she must protect above all else—
They all loosed at once, many darts singing in at her.
El flung herself aside, along the rock wall, slashing the air in front of her face with both blades in a wild crisscross flurry that sent three darts or more clanging aside.
A dart smote her forearm hard and stuck there, where her armor had been hacked away. Another ripped into her left breast, and a third hit hard high on the inside of her right thigh.
The drow charged, flinging their handbows down and running hard. Most of the darts had missed her, but a warm burning spreading swiftly through her told El the three that had struck her bore poison of some sort, probably spider venom. If it was handspider or stinglash, it would slow her and eat away at her, numbing and eventually paralyzing her. She had to end this swiftly.
El rushed to meet the closest drow, cut at his face, then ducked aside to slash at the next nearest. Then she spun and raced for the wall, trying to get back to the spot she’d chosen to make her stand. They came after her like wolves.
When she pretended to stumble, then fall, they pounced. Only to watch her roll, spin around on her shoulders, and kick up at them. She boosted one rushing drow over her and sent another staggering aside, then rolled after him and viciously sliced his ankles out from under him.
He toppled, shrieking, and El sprang up, slashed out his throat, and danced forward to meet the next wave of charging drow: four dark elves in motley armor, one lurching along on a leg that had been wounded long ago. Beyond his bobbing shoulder she briefly caught sight of gnaw-worms wriggling among the rocks, seeking the dead, and the drow wizard spending a spell on another arrival: a roaming wild spider he might think she’d summoned. Eerie fire burst into being around the arachnid, making it convulse—and then El was too busy fighting four drow at once to see more.
Two used small knives to stab at her, wielding their swords only to fend her off. Those knives glowed, which meant they knew she was protected against unenchanted steel. The other two drow bore no glowing weapons, so El paid attention only to their arms and movements, to keep them from knocking her down, ignoring the blades that passed through her like smoke. That let her slip behind one, so a knife meant to gut her slammed hilt-deep into his belly instead.
> El elbowed that groaningly wounded drow into the warrior behind him, and sprinted away from them all to fence for a moment with yet another outcast, who gave ground, his face tight in alarm as he defended himself, seeking only to parry.
She spun away from him and ran, heading again for the spot she’d chosen for her stand, the smooth rock that was lower than its surroundings. This time she made it.
Spinning around again to face her foes and gulping in deep breaths, fighting to get her wind back, she watched them come for her again.
In a tight pack this time, angry and wary at how many of their fellows had fallen, the wizard crouching low behind them.
“That won’t save him,” El murmured aloud, slow anger beginning to stir in her. She had her breath back now; let them come …
Sound the warhorns, Symrustar murmured in her head, sounding amused. The real bloodletting begins.
There were fourteen coming for her now. The fifteenth was down among the rocks behind them, rocking and groaning as he clutched his deeply stabbed belly. The boldest gnaw-worms were already converging on him.
Time for a little goading. El gave the advancing drow a sneer, waved the three darts still hanging from her where she’d left them—to let her blood spill more slowly than if she’d plucked them out—like a grand hostess showing off treasures, then struck a hand-on-hip pose and beckoned her foes mockingly.
One drow promptly shouted a war cry. He and four others rushed El, the rest following more slowly.
Good. Now for the ruse. She met them with both blades, seeking to slay rather than defend herself, feigning agony when two drow swords slashed through her. One blade left behind the fresh fire of more spider venom, but neither did her any other harm—as she spitted one warrior hilt-deep on her sword ere letting go of it, and slashed open the face of another.