Dauntless frowned. “Lord Vang—”
“Neither of us has time for needless questions, Ornrion,” Vangerdahast snapped. “You are to depart the Palace immediately, speaking to no one but the five men under your command—not even personages of the Blood Royal—about this task. You will find mounts and provisions ready, and these men will be riding with you—”
The tapestries behind the Royal Magician were drawn apart then by unseen hands to reveal five Purple Dragons who were all too familiar to Dauntless: First Sword Aubrus Norlen, Telsword Ebren Grathus, Blade Teln Orbrar, Blade Hanstel Harrow, and Blade Albaert Morkoun. Dauntless managed not to groan, but it was a struggle.
“—to make sure that you don’t try to speak with, say, a princess before you depart.”
“Uh … yes, Lord,” Dauntless said, watching the five veteran Dragons—lazy dolts all and notorious even as far afield as Arabel for being so—march stiffly around the Royal Magician to form a careful row behind him.
“You are all dismissed,” Vangerdahast said. “Get going.”
With a curt bow of his head, the ornrion grimly led the march, following the wizard’s pointing arm. Vangerdahast was indicating the doors he’d come in by; rather sourly Dauntless flung them wide and strode out.
He was unsurprised to find a war wizard waiting in the passage outside. It was Tathanter Doarmund, whom he’d worked alongside a time or two before. Doarmund gave him a careful nod and gestured to Dauntless and the other Dragons that they should all follow him. Dauntless fell into step behind him, his five unwanted dolts at his heels.
His thoughts, as he went, were furious shouts in the burning silence of his mind.
One day, Royal Magician Vangerdahast, you will take a step too far, just one, and someone, someone, will pay you back in full for all your highhandedness, believe you me … and I will give much to be there and watch every bloody, broken moment of your fall. I and the jostling host of thousands who share the same hunger …
In the room behind the furious ornrion, the man he was silently cursing smiled at the marching men dwindling away down the passage.
A tapestry whispered aside, and a women stepped out from behind it, her stride as fluid as any dancer’s. She was all sleek curves covered by supple oiled black leathers and crisscrossing weapon belts. There was a black metal gorget at her throat, and the black hilts of daggers bristled all over her body. Even above that gorget she looked dangerous; menace was awake and hungry in her large and dark eyes. Her sharp-featured face was bone white but framed with helm-bobbed hair of glossy jet black, and her smile was like the tip of a gently brandished sword blade.
Cormyr mustered few Highknights, and only a handful of them were women. The Lady Targrael was by far the most infamous of these, and for good reasons.
Gliding to a stop by Vangerdahast’s shoulder, she said, “Shall I tarry to defend you, when little Princess Alusair hears of this and storms in here to break things over your head?”
“Your offer tempts me,” Vangey said, “but no. I can’t trust yon six departing Dragons to use chamber pots without guidance and instructions. See that the Knights get out of Cormyr—in particular, that none of our over-clever nobles manage to speak with any of them and arrange anything. Once they’re off our soil, I care not what happens to them. So long as I am not implicated.”
Targrael smiled coldly, dark eyes glittering. “I am not that careless. I have my own score to settle.”
Vangerdahast returned her less-than-lovely smile. “Precisely why I need to know your orders, in every detail, have been clearly understood.”
“They are. In every detail.” She strode past him. “I assume some of my garb has been enspelled so you can listen?”
“Of course. Yet it would be unwise to discard it, Ismra.”
“I try to keep my unwise moments to a minimum, and I rarely work bare-skinned. You’ll see that Baerem—?”
“He will be looked after more than properly. Cormyr neither forgets nor abandons those who have served her faithfully.”
“So much, I know well,” the Highknight replied as she went out, very carefully keeping her voice utterly neutral.
There was a hard, cross-ribbed cot under Florin. By the smell around him, he was in a cool, damp room of stone walls. Still in his armor but without the weight of his sword and daggers, he was lying sprawled on his back, as the probing hands of an experienced healer squeezed and gently moved his limbs, seeking breaks.
Florin felt no wrenching pain, just the many strong, surging aches of remembered agony. Echoes of pain, rippling through him. So he’d been healed already.
Florin kept his eyes closed, feigning senselessness. The voices above him had been saying something interesting—and folk who spoke so had a habit of abruptly ending such converse when an interested audience became evident.
“… no longer our problem. Once they depart here, Dauntless will be waiting in the eastern gate towers to take over their shadowing and see them clear of the realm.”
The other, higher-voiced man chuckled. “Dauntless who loves them so. Heh, they’ve probably seen more of scenic Halfhap, these Knights, to suit them all their lives!”
“Which may soon be ended, if they keep on like this,” the first and deeper voice responded. “We can’t go galloping along behind them, healing them wherever they wander in Faerûn. Priest, are you about done? I’ll lay odds this one lying here is awake and listening to us, right now.”
A gentle boot kicked one leg of Florin’s cot, and he judged it the right time to groan and stir and seem to slowly come awake.
“You’re fooling no one,” the deep-voiced man said from somewhere close above him.
Florin opened one bleary eye and mumbled, “Wha—?” with a clumsiness he did not have to feign. His mouth and throat felt like someone had stuffed a dusty rag down them and left it there, and his aches were growing stronger. His fingertips ached.
A lantern was moved closer, to shed light on his face. The ranger Knight blinked, his eyes suddenly watering, and tried to stare past its glare at the dark stone vault of the ceiling. He could see at least four faces looking down at him, all belonging to men who looked like soldiers. “What,” he asked them slowly, “is this place?”
“One of the two western gate towers of Halfhap, gateway to everywhere,” the deep-voiced man said, a distinct touch of cynical amusement in his voice. Florin’s answering groan required no acting, either. “We Purple Dragons are trying to make sure you manage to travel on east from here, this time, and actually reach Shadowdale.”
“On the road,” Florin mumbled, trying to sound more dazed than he really was. “Outlaws. Lots of them. Took an arrow. The others, my companions. How fared they?”
“They’ll all live, thanks to our priests—and the queen’s commands. Try not to play arrow-catchers, next time. It is fortunate that you entertained unfriendly archers right on the royal high road just as our largest patrol of the day came riding along. We routed those darkswords and brought you all back here.”
“All? We numbered—”
“All. Or so your sharp-tongued little flamehair affirms. She doesn’t much like being questioned.”
“Aye,” Florin agreed. “That’s … her.”
Above him, Purple Dragon officers chuckled in unison.
“Fortunate we were,” he added slowly, try to play innocent but fishing for a truth he already suspected, “that you happened along then. ’Twas almost as if you were sent to follow the Knights of Myth Drannor and see them safely through your patrol area.”
The Dragons didn’t disappoint him. “We were assigned just that task,” the deep-voiced commander told him. “If you know the truth, perhaps you’ll succeed in swaying your companions—the ones called Pennae and Semoor in particular—to behave themselves.”
“Your candor,” Florin told the officer—an ornrion, balding and with what little hair he had left gray-white at his temples—“is appreciated.”
“I’ll bet.” The ornrio
n did not quite smile. “The Royal Magician ordered us to send out patrols and shepherd you out of Cormyr, trailing behind you unseen until needed. We were to make very sure you didn’t turn aside into hiding to try to stay in Cormyr or get caught up in troubles along the way.”
“As we did,” Florin said, a little wearily. “We seem to be good at getting caught up in trouble.”
“A judgment I share,” the ornrion agreed, wearing a smile at last. “You owe your lives to the diligence of Lionar Threave, as it happens. It was he who insisted on doubling up two of our usual patrols and bringing along Wizard of War Rathanna”—a homely, unsmiling woman in dark robes stepped into view from behind the ornrion’s shoulder and gave Florin a nod—“and our priest, Maereld, Able Hand of Torm. With their aid, you Knights were healed and brought here to Halfhap. You’ll night over here in the gate-tower, and we’ll see you all fed in the morning, given what remounts you need, and attended by holycoats to lead you in prayers. Then we’ll let you forth—to go around Halfhap, mind, and ride on.”
Florin sighed. “You’ll not be escorting us, just to be sure?”
The ornrion half-smiled. “Oh, someone will. If Tymora smiles, you’ll not meet with them. They’re led by someone who’s fast becoming an old friend of yours.”
Florin sighed again. Dauntless, for all the coins in his purse.
He politely didn’t ask the ornrion for confirmation. He was beginning to be able to read the manner shared by many Purple Dragon officers, and that particular half-smile meant “expect to receive no answers.”
“Thanks for my life,” he said instead. It seemed the polite thing to do.
Chapter 4
JUST SUCH A TASK
The realm needs saving again?
No need have ye to even ask
Every Purple Dragon we train
Works daily at just such a task
(Anonymous)
from the ballad “Dragon High, Forever”
first heard circa the Year of the Adder
The tapestry had barely fallen back into place behind the departing Lady Targrael when Laspeera slipped into the room from behind another one. “That one is on the proverbial sword edge,” she said.
Vangerdahast shrugged. “Send one problem after another. If they destroy each other, that’s two fewer we must deal with.”
“If,” Laspeera said doubtfully. “No Wizard of War riding with Dauntless, hey? So is it to be the belt-buckle method?”
The Royal Magician shook his head. “Rumors about that are finally beginning to drift from Dragon to Dragon. No, I want the spells cast on items no Purple Dragon will leave behind: his codpiece and boots. Belts they can—and will—contrive to change, so cast something swift and worthless over those, to fool them. Their cods, and both boots, mind, are to be enchanted so that I—and you and Tathanter—can listen through them at will. See to it.”
Laspeera nodded. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just—?”
“Send a Wizard of War riding along with them? And have Dauntless blind and foil us at a time of his choosing by arranging matters so ‘something happens’ to our mage? I think not. Our loyal ornrion is proving to have … surprising depths.”
Laspeera nodded again and smiled. “I’ll see to it.” Bowing her head, she turned and departed the way she’d come, the tapestry swirling gently in her wake.
She was careful not to sigh until she was no less than three closed panels away from her irascible superior.
Like almost every mage of the Brotherhood, Mauliykhus of the Zhentarim was ambitious. Wherefore he was going to dare this casting, risky though it was.
He had locked and barred two sets of iron-bound doors between himself and the common passage in Zhentil Keep, and there was nothing suspicious in that.
He had his orders from Lord Manshoon, spell-workings that were both dangerous and would yield results that should be kept secret from stray eyes. Wherefore the shielding scepter was resting in its holder, in the heart of the flickering yellow-green flame of the brazier to which he’d so carefully added powders, and no one but the most powerful archmage should be able to spy on what he did next.
Which was a good thing, because he intended to disobey both the leader of the Zhentarim and one of its most powerful and mysterious mages.
Manshoon had given him a working to perform—just such a task as he needed for an excuse to raise a shielding—and Mauliykhus was going to do something else instead.
And that “something else” was a casting that Hesperdan had just specifically ordered him not, under any circumstances, to attempt.
No fell creature of the Abyss was to be contacted, for any reason, until he received explicit orders otherwise from either Hesperdan or Manshoon himself.
Mauliykhus had no idea if Hesperdan suspected what he planned and was trying to prevent him—or goad him into doing it in all haste, for that matter—by forbidding him to seek out a demon … or if all Zhentarim were forbidden from demonic contact, forthwith. It sounded like the latter, but Hesperdan was very good at imparting impressions without actually saying what you thought he’d said. Hrast him.
Mauliykhus smiled, shrugged, raised both hands dramatically above the black table upon which he’d arranged everything he would need—and began the incantation. Sealing One’s Own Doom, some of the older grimoires tauntingly entitled the words he was now reading.
It took only half a dozen of the deep, harsh-sounding words for the room to darken, all of the braziers flickering at once, and chill shadows to start to glide and swoop out of the darkness.
He spoke on. The dark, cruising wisps seemed sentient, yet he’d been told many a time they weren’t. They merely sought life and light and warmth, stuff of what made up worlds and that which lay between worlds.
A way started to open between his locked and barred stone chamber in Zhentil Keep and somewhere in the Abyss.
Mauliykhus brought his hands down, watched fire that was not fire form between them and circle from thumb to thumb and smallest finger to smallest finger to shape a silent hole in the air …
The way began to open, and he was through and doomed.
Darker shadows of malicious—and gleeful—awareness streaked into him out of the yawning, howling darkness. Into his ears they plunged, before he could say a word to stop them, lashing into his mind like burning ice.
Fury drove them, fury and exultation. Harsh, ruthless, and insane they were, and they knew themselves as Old Ghost and Horaundoon as they reveled in ravaging his mind.
What had been Mauliykhus quailed and cowered, unable to even mew in his terror; one of the terrible spirits in his head had already slashed control of his mouth and hands. They leered into his silently shrieking self, leaned in, and took big, greedy bites … and Mauliykhus knew no more.
The body of the ambitious Zhentarim wizard stumbled around the locked room, toppling a brazier onto the stones, its coals spilling harmlessly amid hissing smoke. His head sank in slightly, literally beginning to melt from within as both angry wraiths, snarling their Abyssal madness at each other, roiled around behind his eyes.
Mauliykhus lurched upright and staggered to tug at the bars of the innermost iron-bound doors. Mad Old Ghost and Horaundoon might be, but their cunning was stronger than their raving, and they knew very well what they both most wanted.
Mauliykhus of the Zhentarim clawed the doors open and hastened to the next set of doors.
Vangerdahast favored the tapestry that had fallen back into place behind his loyal Laspeera with a faint smile. He knew very well she’d be sighing and rolling her eyes about now.
“Such a task will nettle you as it always does,” he said, “but you’ll do it, darling Lasp, as you always do.” Then the Royal Magician sighed and turned away. “If you knew just a little less about what I’ve had to do … and I were a whole lot younger …”
He sighed again, went to one of the magnificently paneled walls of the ready chamber—the only one where tapestries and broad doors were both lacking�
��and put a finger onto a particular piece of carved trim on the glossy dark phandar wood. It obediently swiveled into the wall, undoing an unseen catch, and the ornate panel just below it smoothly folded down from the wall to become a seat, revealing a shallow drawer set into the wall behind it.
Vangerdahast sat on the seat and pulled open the drawer to reveal a dressed leather desk surface complete with quills, an inkwell, and a small heap of parchments. He plucked up the topmost, set it aside with a snort, took up the one that had been beneath it, nodded, stroked his chin, and settled down to read and hopefully—if the scribes hadn’t been too creative—sign this heap of decrees he’d ordered drafted earlier.
There was always much to be done and never enough time to do it.
When, some six parchments later, the faint but approaching din of a raging princess fell upon his ears, echoing down passages and rooms and through several closed doors, he allowed himself the faintest of smiles.
Royal Magician of Suzail was an office that afforded him so little real entertainment, but he was going to enjoy some now.
“Farewell, Halfhap,” Semoor said mockingly. “Deathtrap inns, dragonfire swords, and all. I wonder where our faithful Purple Dragon shadows are, this time.”
Florin shrugged. “Using a war wizard to scry us so they can stay out of sight, but I’ll wager Dauntless is leading them and that they came from yon gate towers on this side of Halfhap. So they got a good look at us when we rode around Halfhap and past them. They’ll be somewhere behind us all the way to wherever along the Ride they usually turn back.”
“I’m not complaining,” Pennae said. “I can still feel that arrow.” She shuddered, shook her head, and then asked, “They’re still out there, aren’t they? The ones who attacked us, I mean.”
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