Swords of Dragonfire tkomd-2

by Ed Greenwood

  Then a cold and all too familiar voice spoke in his head, sharp and clear and seething with fury.

  “If you do that,” Lady Imbressa Merendil told her stunned, terrified son, “don’t expect to live for a day longer than it will take me to breed you with some suitable wench. I need Merendil heirs, not spineless worms.”

  Bravran Merendil thought it a very good moment to faint again, and did so. This time, he didn’t even need a vial of deadsleep.

  “Nine Hells afire!” The Purple Dragon bearing the glowstone swore in amazement as much as anger, and broke into a run, his five fellows drawing their swords and hastening after him.

  Two Purple Dragons were sprawled on the passage floor, amid much blood.

  “I thought I heard battle-din!” the Dragon with the glowstone exclaimed, peering all around for any sign of a foe.

  Nothing. Just a swordcaptain lying facedown in a pool of blood, and this-Strelgar moved a little, then, and moaned.

  “Sword!” They snapped at him, seeing his rank but not knowing his name. “Soldier! What happened?”

  The wounded Dragon groaned again, eyes fluttering, and drooled blood as they gently tugged him up to a sitting position, cradling his shoulders to keep him from sagging back. “What’s your name?”

  “Strelgar am I,” Strelgar mumbled slowly, and groaned again, retching blood. “Hurt. Hurt bad.”

  The lionar with the glowstone had seen sorely wounded Dragons a time or two before. He looked up at the five men under his command and shook his head in disagreement. This one just thought he was “hurt bad.”

  “What happened?” he said, more loudly and firmly. this time.

  Strelgar groaned, and then managed to mumble, “Well… uh… there was this lass, see… half-naked she was…”

  There were times when Wizard of War Tathanter Doarmond hated the good looks and superbly impressive voice the gods had gifted him with-and this was one of them. Even the comforting banter of his best friend and fellow war wizard Malvert Lulleer was doing nothing to quell his nervousness. Grand Court events were always headaches, and matters weren’t helped by racing gossip insisting that someone had already managed to butcher dozens of war wizards, leaving the Dragondown Chambers looking like a slaughterhouse, and that someone was probably running around somewhere under Tathanter’s feet right now, hurling spells even Vangerdahast couldn’t quell.

  And none of the bitter “well, well, you haughty-robes finally got yours” chuckles from various Purple Dragons were helping, either. Tathanter was finally starting to understand why the soldiers were all so surly. Once the fighting and running around started, it would be fine-provided he wasn’t blown apart or maimed, right off-but this hrasted waiting…

  He and Malvert stood in the Longstride Hall, with its high, beautifully painted ceiling, just outside the doors of King Duar’s Hall. Until further orders arrived, they were apparently guarding a rather splendid pair of arched, gilded double doors.

  Doors that stood open, with their fellow Purple Dragon guards’ shoulders keeping them that way, to allow seemingly endless droves of glittering-gowned ladies and their splendidly attired escorts to parade grandly in and out of the ballroom, gossiping-and laughing, and occasionally shrieking with malicious mirth-their scented and primped heads off.

  There were more than thousand of these early arrivals in the hall already, and more were arriving in stlarning droves with every passing breath. Some idiot servant had decided to start serving them wine, which meant the hurling and fights and bodices being torn off and all of that would be starting just about the time the newly arrived envoy from Silverymoon was formally received. As the Dragon guards had already sourly noted.

  “Always get someone’s sick all over my best uniform, at one of these,” Telsword Torlgrel Dunmoon growled. “Hope their High-n’-Mightynesses like the smell of it.”

  “These hrasted revels always go wrong, one way or another,” Tathanter said, adjusting his jet-black-with-silver-trim uniform for the thousandth time.

  “Of course,” the oldest Purple Dragon murmured. “So just watch and enjoy and wait for the disaster-and then enjoy that. ”

  “Tath, if you don’t stop fiddling with that codpiece, the hrasted thing’s going to fall off,” Malvert warned.

  “Don’t tempt me,” Tathanter muttered.

  Florin had tried three of the faint, dim glowstones before he found one he could wrench out of its iron cage, high up on the passage wall. Its glow was feeble indeed, but it was all he wanted. He sought light enough to see by, not the making of himself into a bright beacon.

  He hurried along passages, glowstone in one hand and drawn sword in the other, seeking stairs up, or some sign of the other Knights.

  Instead, he found the passage he’d been traversing for a long time suddenly ended in a short flight of steps going down.

  For a moment he hesitated, thinking he should turn back, but there was light ahead, down there, and that probably meant a better chance of finding stairs and servants-and a way to reach Vangerdahast. As well as returning him to the same level of cellars where he’d been separated from Pennae and the others.

  So he hurried down the steps. The light proved to come from oil lamps burning in a servants’ room that looked recently vacated-by many folk, no doubt bearing things the room had held up to rooms of state somewhere overhead-but not far beyond it Florin found other things.

  First he came upon many bootprints, stark on the stone floor. Prints that had been made with fresh blood, and trailed back to a large pool of gore. Right beside it was…

  Florin rushed forward and plucked it up, hoping he was wrong.

  He wasn’t. He held Pennae’s leather jack-yes, there was the hooked slice in it that some foe’s dagger had made, long ago. This was hers-and it was soaked with blood.

  Blood that still dripped from it in streams. No woman could lose that much blood and yet live.

  “Oh, no,” Florin sobbed, there on his knees staring at what he was holding up-and watching Pennae’s blood drip to the floor. “No.”

  “Pennae,” he whispered, as tears flooded up to choke and overwhelm him. “Pennae!”

  He was dimly aware of shaking his head as he bowed it, trying to deny all of this. “Pennae… Narantha…”

  He’d been holding black misery at bay for so long, and now was suddenly swallowed up, in the midst of it. Falling, falling with no hand to steady him, to comfort. “Martess… even Agannor and Bey, damn them!” The faces of the dead were swimming up to loom over him-laughing obliviously at least, not staring at him accusingly. He couldn’t have borne it if they’d been doing that.

  It wasn’t glory and laughter and parading grandly across the lands, being bowed to by farmers and Purple Dragons alike. It wasn’t gold coins in heaps in one’s hands, or high titles. He’d known that, back in Espar, known that death lurked impatiently always, waiting…

  Yet there was knowing and… knowing. By the gods, he hadn’t even the words to grieve properly!

  “Mielikki,” he cried. “Lady, aid me!” For if ever I’ve needed my goddess, I need her now…”

  He seemed to smell wet forest moss, then, and hear the rustle of leaves in a green, growing forest, see dark trunks and a glow of power behind them, a glow he was rushing toward… just around this tree… just…

  Then he was around the tree, and the light was full and gloriously bright before him, and he stared at Islif, with her arm around Jhessail’s shoulders. Doust smiling at him in greeting, and Semoor giving him that familiar wry, sly grin too. His fellow Knights of Myth Drannor.

  His Knights. Still alive, still his family, still needing him.

  Always and ever worth fighting for.

  Just like Cormyr.

  Both needed his sword, and the little he could do to aid and save them. The fallen were the fallen, but the living…

  “Are still mine,” he managed to croak. “My problem, my burden.”

  He sprang to his feet, then bent down again to pluck u
p Pennae’s bloody jack from where it had fallen from his hands.

  Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, he threw back his head and whispered, “ Thank you, my lady.”

  He shifted the dripping garment into the hand that held the glowstone, hefted his sword, and went on.

  “Lady of the Forest,” he murmured as he walked, “aid me ever.”

  Once there was a kingdom, and it needed saving…

  The moment of chill blue sparks faded and fell from them, leaving Terentane and Telfalcon standing together blinking at the familiar decay of the boathouse around them.

  Amarauna drew in a deep breath. “Well. Safe back in Marsember, at least.”

  “There’ll be another day, and another way,” Terentane told her. “Patience will keep both our heads on their shoulders.”

  Then he turned, grabbed at her clothing, and started to tug it off.

  “What’re you-?” she asked, laughing. “ Now? ”

  “Well,” he replied calmly, his fingers busy on her laces, “we could both be dead tomorrow.”

  “Hreldur, you’re so full of naed ’tis coming out of your mouth now, not just your ears!”

  “No, I’m not lying, Drel! I swear! ”

  “I swear, too, and my teeth gleam when I do! Now just away with it! There’re sneak-thieves and cutpurses by the hundreds all over the Palace right now, and half a hundred women I’d like to get a better look or three at, too, and most of ’em are wearing things that’ll let me get those looks I want, and more.” Drellusk waved an exasperated hand. “So my head’s full of all this, and you are spewing wild and wilder tales of some stlarning nude sorceress and expecting me to believe- ”

  “Ho, Drellusk! Ho, Hreldur!”

  “Ho, Lhaerak!” the two Purple Dragon telswords replied in chorus. Lhaerak was their lionar, and had come out of a side passage striding along even faster than they were. They started half-trotting to keep up.

  “So, what’s all this I’m hearing about this sorceress?” he growled.

  Drellusk waved a dismissive hand. “Just another of Hrel’s fancy-tales, mi-”

  “Well if it is, Hrel’s managed to get himself clear out to the front gates of the Royal Court to tell the lads there all about it. Which is passing odd, because as I recall, the two of you were just now stationed at either end of the north Palace guardstands, yes?”

  “Yes,” Hreldur replied. “See, Drel?”

  Drellusk nodded. “I yield me, and offer sorrows.”

  “Taken,” his friend replied with dignity, and then turned his head excitedly and told the lionar, “A nude sorceress, they’re saying! All alone, but her spells animate a dozen swords to fight for her! She’s butchered dozens of war wizards and a few of us soldier-lads, too, and is still on the loose in the cellars!”

  His words had brought the hastened trio of Purple Dragons to the room they’d been seeking in such haste: Hawkinshield Hall. One of the older, shabbier rooms of state at the north end of the Palace, it was where Vangerdahast was now trying to rally the war wizards he had left, and re-establish some security, with thousands of guests already flooding into the Palace.

  Hreldur fell abruptly silent as he became aware his words fell loudly into a tense silence, and men were glaring at him.

  Many men, all of them war wizards and high-ranking Dragons, and all of them clustered in a great ring around the Royal Magician of Cormyr.

  Who now turned his head to give them a severe look and confirmed, “There’re reports-as you’ve just heard from Telsword Hreldur Imglurward, here-of an unclad sorceress running around the Palace cellars. If you should happen to see this almost-certainly fanciful lass, take her alive and bring her to me. There’ll be a reward.”

  He waited for the predictable chuckles to arise from the male war wizards in the room, and didn’t bother looking to see how the handful of females reacted. Paying overmuch heed to the feelings of others was a luxury neither the Court Wizard of Cormyr nor the Royal Magician of the Realm had much time for-and being both, Vangerdahast had even less.

  “One thing more,” the wizard growled. “The revel also seems to have attracted thieves, hired slayers, and adventurers here to the Palace this night. If you should happen to meet with anyone desiring urgently to reach the king, the queen, or even me, treat them with great suspicion. Even weapons-out hostility would not be seen amiss. Better far to safeguard the living, than guard corpses at a royal funeral, hmm?”

  Chapter 23

  WHEN COMMANDS CLASH

  For good men go down in smoke and ash

  When tempers fail and commands clash

  Dathglur “ the Roaring Bard ” from the ballad Swords And War And Sorrows published in the Year of Embers

  Waving his gigantic, roiling-with-fat forearms about as wildly as any juggler, his face growing redder and redder, Master of the Kitchens Braerast Sklaenton looked more than ever like a gigantic, angry flameshell crab standing on its hind legs.

  “No! Not a goblet goes out of this room that I don’t see put on a tray! And not a tray gets out that door without its carrier submitting to the spells of our war wizards! Can’t you dolts remember simple orders for longer than it takes you to say your own names? Darthin! Harlaw! Get back here! ”

  Jowls quivering, the head cook pointed the two serving-jacks across the busy kitchen to its far doors, where already-exhausted war wizards were slumped in chairs, their pale faces showing the sweating strain of mind-probing every passing servant to seek out would-be poisoners and assassins. “March your lasses yonder! And mind they stop in front of the spellhurlers and get themselves checked, good and proper!”

  The way to those mages was an everchanging tangle of rushing, shouting scullery maids, cellarers, and carvers rushing this way and that with steaming dishes and various sharp forks, cleavers, and knives in their hands, too busy to even notice that the highfront black gowns of the serving-lasses proceeding so deftly among them went clear down to halfway along the upper curves of what Master Sklaenton would have called their “carvable rumps.”

  The war wizards noticed, though, and managed faint smiles of appreciation that made the young lass of a mage who was Vangerdahast’s designate as their superior for this task frown disapprovingly, and tap the wand in her hand into her palm in irritation. A moment later, she flinched so wildly, it could almost have been termed a jump.

  The cause was a sudden bellow from Master Sklaenton, almost in her ear. “Lankel! Where are the cakes?”

  “Here, Master!” The faint shout came from an adjoining kitchen.

  “Well, what good are they in there? They need to be here, right now, in the hands of these wenches!”

  Undercook Lankel was seven summers beyond learning better than to argue or explain. “Yes, Master!” he cried, sounding eager.

  The Master of the Kitchens nodded in broadly smiling satisfaction-ah, but they still jumped when he ordered them to-and turned away, ignoring War Wizard Varrauna Tarlyon’s glare. Sixteen thousand tarts awaited his attention, and he wasn’t moving as fast as he once did…

  There was a brief commotion, then, as one of the servers stiffened and reared back from War Wizard Markel Dauren in his chair, hurling her tray of drinks into his face and spinning around to flee.

  Only to halt in an instant as the wand in Varrauna’s hand clapped across her throat and paralyzed her. Markel shook his head to rid himself of some of the wine streaming down his face, but old Brasker in the chair beside him went right on probing serving-wenches as if trays of wine goblets were often hurled around.

  Standing beside the quivering, wild-eyed lass in the backless gown, Varrauna touched the buckle of her belt and murmured, “We’ve found one, Lord Vangerdahast. Markel hasn’t had a chance to say much, through the wine she threw over him, but he said something like ‘Urlusk.’ ”

  “The Merlusks,” the grim voice arising from her belt replied. “Never numerous, exiled by King Duar, quiet for years-and since the ascension of King Azoun, they’ve become nigh the most
energetic patrons of slayers-for-hire east of Amn. They send someone to almost every large Court event. I’m amazed they haven’t run out of suicidal fools by now.”

  The blood was still welling out of her. More slowly, now, but that was probably because she’d lost so much already.

  Grimly Pennae jerked open her thirty-fourth door, wondering how long she’d still have strength enough to open anything.

  It swung open to reveal heat, the crackling of a fire-and two startled, sweating young men clad only in sweat, boots, and clouts.

  They had long, heavy iron tongs and pokers as long as spears in their hands, as they straightened up to gape at her from busily rolling logs into place. They’d been feeding fires under the blackened flanks of what looked like huge water boilers. Now, however, they were staring in utter astonishment at Pennae, wavering weakly against the doorframe. A lass bare above the belt of her breeches, who held a bloody sword in her hand as if she knew how to use it.

  Smiles of delighted disbelief broke across their faces, and they turned to look at each other, as if to seek reassurance that they were indeed both seeing the same thing.

  Which was when Pennae exploded forward, her sword ready to ward away the nearest lad’s poker-and slammed the hilt of her dagger against the side of his head with all the force she could still manage.

  He fell, slack-jawed, but the pain of that jarring blow made her sob and stagger, blood pouring out of her sliced side with renewed vigor.

  “What’re you-?” The second lad was still so startled by her revealed upperworks that he could barely do more than stare.

  “Like them?” Pennae gasped, to set him nodding.

  He did, obligingly, and she struck him senseless the same way she’d served his fellow, falling atop him and riding his sweaty bulk down to the floor.

  Well, not every Cormyrean is bred for his brains.

  Their clouts were none too clean, but knotted together they were just long enough to go around her ribs, to try to hold her wound closed.