Swords of Dragonfire tkomd-2

by Ed Greenwood

  Terentane’s sudden roar of laughter was so strong that it took him some time to master himself enough to pounce on her.

  “Oh, you rogue! ” She laughed, as he caught her and whirled her around and down. “Come here.”

  “Demands, demands, demands,” he growled, in a steadily more muffled manner.

  So skillful was his tongue in the moments that followed that Amarauna finally relaxed, purring, eyes closing as she enjoyed the moment.

  Then she heard a singing in the air that shouldn’t have been there, something quite different from the lapping and creaking of the boathouse, and her eyes snapped open.

  She could not help but gasp. There, hanging in the air above them both like golden icicles, were nine glowing swords, long and keen, their points close enough for her to reach up and touch. “Terent?” she dared, trying to keep her voice from quavering.

  “Nice, aren’t they?”

  She managed not to shiver. “Yes.” When he made no reply, she asked, “You called them here?”

  “Willed them here. Watch, but don’t move a muscle.”

  Whatever reply Amarauna Telfalcon might have thought of making was lost in the hissing of blades as they sliced the air, falling just beside her bared skin, flats rather than edges touching her-two down each side, another two either side of her ankles, and the last “You young bastard! ”

  “You old bitch,” he said affectionately-as the blades all slid silently skyward again, lifting in magnificent unison. “Let’s go kill war wizards.”

  “Halt!” the war wizard ordered, as three Purple Dragons stepped out of darkened doorways to stand in front of him, drawing their swords.

  The Knights kept on running.

  “Get out of the way, in the king’s name!” Islif ordered, her voice firm and deep.

  “ I speak for the king here!” the wizard snapped. “I say again: Halt! Throw down your weapons, and yield yourselves!”

  “We seek the Dragondown Chambers!” Pennae shouted. “Where are they?”

  “I gave you an order!” the war wizard thundered.

  “I ignored it!” Florin roared back, with a violence and volume that startled everyone. “In Azoun’s name, wizard, I order you to stand aside! In Filfaeril’s name, I order you to assist us! Defy these orders at your peril! ”

  “Nice,” Pennae said, as Florin’s bellow echoed away down the passage.

  And then the Knights reached the Purple Dragons, and the wizard barely had time to howl, “We will not!” before swords were ringing off swords. Pennae rolled like a ball under a guard’s boots, and the Dragon fell helplessly on his rear, bouncing hard and sending the wizard staggering back.

  Pennae launched herself into the air with a firm boot planted in the fallen Dragon’s stomach and her arms spread wide.

  As Florin’s mighty swing numbed a desperately parrying Dragon’s sword hand and sent him staggering aside, and Islif did the same to the third Dragon, Pennae struck the wizard’s chest with one knee, driving him over backward. He received her grin and kiss just before he struck the stones hard enough to know no more-which was about the time Doust and Semoor tore off Islif’s Dragon’s helm and together ran him head-first into the passage wall and oblivion, and Florin’s solid punch felled his Dragon into similar unconsciousness.

  “Oh,” Jhessail murmured, standing over the bodies shaking her head, “we are going to be in such trouble.”

  Florin looked up, rubbing his knuckles, and growled, “I am beginning not to care.”

  Seven more swords appeared in a winking whirl of drifting sparks to join the nine already hanging in the air. Terentane struck a triumphant pose that would have looked far grander if he hadn’t been young, pale, on the bony side, and stark naked. “Behold the Dragonfire swords, lost for so many years!”

  Amarauna smiled. “Or rather, your counterfeits, crafted this last tenday.”

  “Indeed.” Terentane dusted his hands briskly. “So. The gods themselves granted that I was in Halfhap. Two dead war wizards I managed to get out of the ruin of that inn with my spells: Yassandra Durstable-that’s you-and Brors Tamleth-that’ll be me. They’re in that family vault you use for smuggling right now, where they should be just fine unless some misfortune strikes that house and they decide to trundle the dear departed all the way over the mountains to the vault-before the revel’s over.”

  “Hardly likely,” Amarauna granted. “Yet something we should remember. Sembians with that much coin have their family vaults spell-shielded, but it is in Cormyr-and war wizards, like brigands, poke their long noses into everything.” She grinned, then, and added, “Hmm. Like some young prodigies-at-Art I could name.”

  Terentane rolled his eyes. “So let them poke. They can hardly do so in time. My spells will make us look like Durstable and Tamleth, and we rush to the Palace to triumphantly show them to Vangey. We only now won free of the Oldcoats wreckage, but look what we have!”

  “And our act should get us through the war wizards on guard duty?”

  “Yes, because all the important and powerful ones will be in the hall that’s hosting the revel; by the time we get to them, we’ll be close enough that I can let the swords ‘go wild.’ I’ll drop our disguises when we’re out of sight somewhere, and start killing war wizards-just striking at anyone who launches a spell. I can do that by feel, sitting in some back room far from all the screaming and Purple Dragons running around shouting and waving their swords at nothing, trying to protect the royal family. I only want to kill war wizards-Vangerdahast, of course, and as many more as possible-and should soon be able to win a position in the war wizards, what with scores of them dead and because I’ll then stand forth dramatically and hurl a spell before all the gawping Court that will dramatically destroy these deadly blades, saving the realm for everyone to see!”

  Amarauna Telfalcon reached out her arms. “Whereupon you’ll help me make Marsember slowly and softly more and more independent, and Cormyr’s rule there weaker and weaker, as the years pass?”

  Terentane strode over into her arms and kissed her with a fierce, impatient tenderness. “Of course,” he said. “You have my word on it!”

  Bravran Merendil snarled and waved his hand again, “Phaugh! That wizard’s well gone, but his stink remains! Why do Calish-”

  “Bravran, that will do! His scent may not be all he left behind.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “Not a word!”

  “But-”

  “Not a word, Bravran!”

  Lady Imbressa Merendil had indeed seen fivescore summers, but magical potions had held back much of the ravages of age. She looked like many a wealthy matron of sixty summers, painted here and there to cover the worst of the wrinkles that could no longer be held entirely at bay. Her eyes flashed dark fire, her wide mouth looked always eager to laugh, and even an observer seeing her but fleetingly and for the first time knew at a glance she was no fool. She cast a strong shielding spell with the same swift expertise that had so impressed the departed Calishite in working the magefire blood-bond. Elegantly frail she might be, but her Art was as strong as many a veteran war wizard’s.

  Her fretting son tried to speak again when the shielding was done and singing in the air around them, but she put a sternly reproving finger to her lips and worked another spell, this one a scrying-ward that rose within the shielding to wall out the world in steel gray mists.

  “ Now you can speak freely, my son. In the brief time left to you before you must cease to be Ostagus Haerrendar for a time, become Dorn Talask, and get yourself to the revel.”

  Dorn Talask was a Palace courtier whom Bravran Merendil happened to closely resemble. He would, if Lady Merendil’s agents failed her not, very soon be taken and slain.

  Bravran nodded impatiently, and then burst out, “Mother, what if Blacksilver stabs Azoun but doesn’t manage to kill him? The king’s known to be a great warrior!”

  “A mere scratch will do. The dagger blade is poisoned.”

  Her son did not
look reassured. “But Azoun is protected against so many venoms, by spell and antidote and deliberate dosing exposures!”

  Lady Merendil smiled. “Not this one. It’s a Chultan distillate my best poisoner devised for me before he died.” Her voice turned wistful. “Ah, Laerakkan.”

  Bravran Merendil waved away those last words he didn’t want to hear, an expression of distaste on his face, and snapped, “What? But you didn’t tell me this!”

  “Of course not. The Calishite would have read it in your mind. He was reading you like a bright unrolled scroll, all the time he was here. It was all I could do to deflect his probes away from what you know about me-see the sweat on my brow? We can’t let him know about the poison.”

  “Why not?”

  “For two reasons. First, he’ll want it enough to slay us both and take it, rather than taking part in our risky venture at all. He needs no revenge on the Obarskyrs, remember. To him, all of this seems ill-planned madness.”

  “And the second reason?”

  “The very same poison is going to be on your blade, and you are going to stab him with it. Calishites are blackmailing serpents, given a chance, and I’m not about to give this one anything.”

  Chapter 20

  THE GRANDEST DISASTER OF THE SEASON

  In any land crammed with coin-hungry merchants

  Wizards, and young fools seeking more power

  Or social glory, there will be many

  Only too eager to do Grand Things

  To get noticed. And from Grand Things,

  Every season, there springs with utter inevitability

  The Grandest Disaster of the Season.

  Heldurr Blackoun, Sage of Neverwinter Blackoun’s Book Of Tired Wit published in the Year of Flamedance

  There came a sudden rumbling in the dimness. The rushing Knights slowed, peering this way and that-just as a wall of old, black, and massive iron came crashing down out of the ceiling right in front of Florin’s nose.

  Which meant that “Pennae?” he bellowed. “ Pennae? ”

  “I’m still alive,” the ranger heard her cry faintly, from the other side of the great barrier.

  Florin slammed his fist against the wall. It was solid, all right.

  “Lady in your Forest!” Florin implored. “Deliver me from this damned Palace with its damned neverending gods-be-DAMNED passages!”

  As if in reply, there came another rumbling boom, this one laced with Islif crying out in sharp warning and Jhessail letting out a little shriek-as another wall slammed down behind him.

  Leaving Florin standing alone in utter darkness, with no company but a sudden heavy grating of stone beside him, the cool, gentle caress of moving air, and a rough, very deep voice saying, “In the name of the king, intruder, lay down your arms and surrender. Or, of course, die.”

  As he fought his way out of the crowds and past hard-eyed Purple Dragons to hasten through the servants’ door of the Royal Court, Bravran Merendil found himself sweating hard in Dorn Talask’s clothes and trying even harder to forget how Talask had yielded up those clothes. It was still a long walk to the Palace proper, where he was supposed to find some chamber called the Dawnlurdusk Room, and report to Skeldulk Maumurthorn, Master of the Red Passage.

  Dodging among throngs of excitedly scurrying servants, he found the right hall and started the trudge to the Palace.

  Only to fetch up, almost immediately, against a balding old courtier in all-black finery-ribbon-trimmed hose, a puffed-sleeves doublet, fine gold chains at wrists and throat, a matching black throat ruff-who was regarding him what seemed to be barely leashed fury.

  “Talask, I thought you went home to bathe and change into finery!” this unexpected obstacle snapped. “ This is finery? The same clothes, only torn here-look! — and dirtied there?”

  Bravran swallowed, catching himself on the very point of snarling, “Well at least Talask didn’t bleed all over it, when they took him down!”

  For a moment he almost thought he’d said it aloud, the courtier was giving him such an odd look.

  The old man took him by his ruffed collar and shook him. “Dorn, Dorn! Come out of it! ‘Tis me, Rolloral! Don’t look at me like you don’t know me!” He frowned. “ ’Tis a lass, isn’t it? Bathe in her, you meant, you rogue!”

  Abruptly, Rolloral broke into a grin and clapped “Talask” on the arm. “Good lad! Hah, to be your age, again! Tell me all about it, mind-on the morrow! Right now, we’ve the gods’ own list of things to do, and precious little time to do them in! Maumurthorn’s been summoned to the Dragondown Chambers for a jawing, and left us with all his inspections to do, before he comes back and does them again and thunders at us for how we did them; you know. Come on! ”

  “Dorn Talask” shook himself once more, felt again inside the grand barrel-front of his jacket for the reassuring heft of his dagger, and came on.

  When Wizard of War Ellard Duskeld got to where imperious royal lips had ordered him to go, he stopped. And blinked.

  The Dragondown Chambers were in an uproar. Senior courtiers, a few hulking Purple Dragons in polished-to-gleaming armor, and robed war wizards snapping orders and, looking grim, were striding purposefully everywhere.

  And at the heart of it all, Vangerdahast, Court Wizard of Cormyr and Royal Magician of the Realm, stood conferring with an ever-changing ring of younger war wizards, deploying them hither and thither in the Palace to accomplish the security concerns of the moment.

  “Of course we need a man in the Royal Gardens!” Old Thunderspells said gruffly. “ ’Tis the best way to get a large armed force-or a dragon, for that matter! — up to the very windows of the Palace without fighting through guard after guard! You think mere helmheaded Purple Dragons can stop a dragon? Or one wizard riding any sort of winged steed? Do you want this day to turn out to be the grandest disaster of the season?”

  Ellard Duskard swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and marched purposefully across the room, almost colliding with no fewer than three hard-striding war wizards moving in other directions, and in the process collecting one glare and two disdainful looks. He had to force his way shoulder-first into the ring, where he bowed deeply in greeting, straightened, and awaited a chance to speak.

  “Not now, Khalaeto!” Vangerdahast dismissed a short, bespectacled war wizard who looked like a clerk-of-coins; the man scuttled hastily away with scrolls and quill in hand. The Royal Magician of the Realm turned a little, like a weary Purple Dragon moving a crossbow along to aim at the next target, fixed his eyes on Ellard, and snapped, “Speak, man! And don’t shuffle so.”

  “Uh. Ah. Ahem, yes. The princess begs leave to speak with you.”

  “Which one, lad?”

  “Uh… oh! Tanalasta, saer.”

  “Well, bring her!” Vangey’s growl was impatient.

  “She…” Ellard Duskard reddened to the roots of his tangled hair, uncomfortably aware that the Royal Magician’s glare was practically shouting, “What is it with younglings, these days, and their hair? Have they no combs? Nor dressers to draw them water? Or did they all like the feel of lice wriggling around their heads all the time?”

  “She-she wants you to come to her, Lord Vangerdahast,” he managed to blurt out. “Says it’s a royal command.” Then, sinking into misery, he shook like a storm-flailed weed, fearing the inevitable.

  Astonishingly, Old Thunderspells smiled. “Did she, now?”

  He turned away before adding, “Look you, lad! Do I seem to you to have time to spare to kneel before spoiled little girls at time or two, just to indulge their ever-changing whims, right now?”

  “Ah… no, saer.’

  “Brilliant boy!” Vangerdahast said. “No, saer, indeed. You’ve captured it right off! So go you back to Princess High-And-Mighty Tanalasta, and tell her it took you forever to find me, and when you did I changed into a bat and flapped around you by way of answer, and you don’t speak bat so you don’t know what reply to give her, and so you’ve come back to her to ask her what she wants
you to do now. Oh, and tell her you last saw me flapping off across the Royal Gardens with her father’s best state crown hovering above me. That’ll give her something to puzzle over!”

  Wincing, Ellard Duskard turned and hurried back the way he’d come, slipping out the door a breath too soon to see two war wizards appear in a doorway clear across the largest Dragondown Chamber, with their arms full of golden-glowing swords and eager smiles on their faces.

  Vangerdahast frowned at the sight of them, plucked his staff from the war wizard who’d been patiently holding it for him, and aimed it at them as he snapped, “Yassandra? Brors? You’re dead, so who are you, really? ”

  That shout brought down a hush over the Chambers-in which the false Yassandra and Brors flung their swords at the Royal Magician of the Realm, and fled. Sixteen golden blades raced across the room like a volley of speeding arrows.

  Vangerdahast roared the command that triggered his staff.

  And the air in front of it exploded.

  “In the name of the king and the queen,” Florin replied, sword raised against the darkness, “stand aside and let me try to save the realm. I must reach Vangerdahast without delay! I have no desire to fight you or anyone else, believe me.”

  “I obey the orders I am given,” the unseen guardian replied. “Cormyr would be a fairer place by far if more folk did. Aramadaera. You, on the other hand, have defied the orders of loyal Purple Dragons, just as you defy mine, now. So you must now yield or die.”

  As that deep voice spoke the lone word unfamiliar to Florin, there arose a faint, brief singing sound in the darkness, and the ranger-Knight now perceived a glimmering across the chamber, a glimmering that swiftly kindled into a glow bright enough to show Florin that it emanated from a helm-an open-face helm worn by a mountain of a man.

  Well, a mountain at least. This Palace guardian was half again as tall as Florin, who was used to being among the tallest men in any gathering, and his arms and shoulders would have put any two oxen to shame. Grotesquely corded muscles rippled under a web-work of scars that bared throbbing veins here and highlighted knife-sharp tendons there. The guardian did not so much wear armor as have battered fragments of armor strapped to him and bolted to each other, in a great coat muffled from clangor by ragged leather hides affixed between the shifting metal plates. The man’s bracers bristled with outthrust sword blades, one hand ending in a greataxe and the other hefting a short, very broad sword that ended in a trident of horns like those of a bull. As the glow of the helm strengthened, it became apparent that its magics had been crafted to illuminate the air out in front of the man, so that for twice his sword-reach, wherever he was looking, foes were illuminated.