“So this is our way off the Ride?” Florin asked quietly. At Pennae’s nod he swung down from his saddle, waved to the rest of the Knights to follow, and started to lead his horse into the trees. Everyone followed, Pennae quickly capturing the reins of Doust’s mount with her own.
By the time the Ornament of Tymora reached the hollow, Jhessail and Florin were heading back past him, out to the Ride to watch for Dauntless. At the sight of Pennae and Doust, Semoor beckoned and called, “Help me hobble our—”
Pennae let go of her fistful of reins, sprinted to him almost as fast as a speeding arrow, and caught hold of his chin.
“Idiot of Lathander,” she hissed into his face, “shut up. Shouts and raised voices carry far. We’re none of us deaf. Yet. Dauntless could be just the other side of yon duskwood, hmm? Stop trying to be a grand-voiced priest bellowing to impress folk in the next kingdom, and start being an adventurer. Talk only when you must, say as few words as possible, and say them quietly. Dolt.”
“I love you, too,” Semoor muttered as she let go of his jaw and strode past him. “Hey, don’t you hobble horses?”
“I’ve work yet to do,” she hissed, swiveling at the hips to answer him without slowing, then turning smoothly back to face forward again as she plunged into the deep woods at the back of the clearing. Once more she sank into a crouch and became a silent, flitting shadow, scouting along the overgrown continuation of the trail.
Doust and Semoor exchanged looks and shrugs and then bent in unison to see to hobbling the horses.
Not that there was much to do. Islif had already set to work, clamping her large hands around bits and rings to quell janglings. The two priests joined her. They were just finishing when Florin and Jhessail burst back into the hollow.
“Dauntless!” the lady wizard snapped, “and five Dragons with him! Mounted and heading right here as if they use this camp all the time!”
The two priests stared at her helplessly. “Where’ll we—? The horses!” Doust said. “There’s no place to go!” Semoor added.
“Get into the trees,” Florin and Jhessail commanded in unison.
Jhessail promptly plunged past Doust and Semoor, doing just that, as the ranger snapped, “Leave the horses! We make poorer targets if we spread out. Keep low and work magic from behind trees where the likes of Dauntless can’t get good swings at us! Go!”
The priests went.
Islif beckoned Florin as she headed across the hollow back behind the Knights’ hobbled horses. It was the only way to have any hope of intercepting Pennae when she inevitably tired of poking around in the forest and came back.
“Someone’s been through here,” a man said, his voice coming from the direction of the Ride. “Can’t still be here now, though. There’s not an outlaw or a sneak-thief in the kingdom as can escape my scrutiny, know you.”
The speaker pushed through the tall grass, on foot and leading his horse. Seeing the hobbled horses ahead, he stopped midword, jaw dropping in astonishment.
“Well, Morkoun?” someone jeered from behind him. “I s’pose ye’ll now try to tell us yon horses are neither outlaws nor sneak-thieves and so managed to sneak past thy eagle-keen—”
“Will you dolts shut up?” Ornrion Taltar Dahauntul snarled. “Horses mean either horse thieves have left these nags—and ’tis an addled-fool place to leave them, now, isn’t it?—or more likely, their riders have gone into hiding in the trees all around us here, just a breath or two ago! Why, they could be the Knights themselves! If you shattered-helm-brains hadn’t been so cursed talkative, a-chattering through your unthinking, worthless lives, we might be staring at people now, not just their happily grazing horses!”
He urged his horse forward, pointing impatiently with his sword. “Look! Saddles still on them, and saddlebags, too! Why, I’ll wager the Knights of Myth Drannor are watching and listening to us right now! Not that they’ll dare to show their faces with all of us—”
A man with a sword in his hand and a half-smile on his face stepped into view around one side of the clustered horses, in perfect unison with the appearance of a tall, burly woman in armor around their other side.
“—here,” Dauntless added, voice faltering.
“Falconhand!” one of his men snarled, drawing his sword.
“Aye,” another snapped, amid a chorus of Purple Dragon curses. “The woman’s one of the Knights, too! She was the one who—”
“Scatter!” Dauntless roared from his saddle, waving one arm wildly at his men as he pointed into the trees with the sword in his other hand. “ ’Ware spells, curse you!”
His sword point indicated two small, faint glows that were growing stronger by the moment, outlining the slender hands in their midst. Above those glows, Jhessail Silvertree smiled coldly.
“There’ll be priests somewhere around here, too!” Dauntless shouted, backing his mount away. “Best we get clear of this, and—”
A scream that was as shrill as it was high drowned him out and sent most of the Dragons wincing and stumbling backward.
It rose higher and turned raw as it came, approaching swiftly out of the forest behind the camp glade, becoming a series of pain-wracked shrieks rather than sounds of terror.
The Purple Dragons started to obey Dauntless, scattering in grunting haste and waving their swords. The horses under them snorted and stumbled as their riders lurched in their saddles, trying to watch not where they were going but the trees where those screams were coming from.
Trees that promptly vomited forth a screaming, sprinting woman in leathers, whose racing limbs were rippling with fire!
“That’ll be them,” Highknight Targrael said, an unlovely smile rising to her lips as they listened to the screams. “You know what to do.”
Telsword Bareskar of the Palace Guard nodded, fitted his windlass to his crossbow, and set it to whirring.
A certain laundry chute had left him with a score he dearly wanted to settle. Even his growing fear of the dark Highknight hadn’t made him regret the eagerness with which he’d obeyed her command to depart his post and accompany her in a little Knight hunting.
The head of a chartered adventurer or two wasn’t the sort of trophy he’d expected to mount on the wall of the guard room, but he was warming to the notion.
Especially if it was the head of a certain half-naked lass he’d chased through half his floor of the Palace cellars …
Crossbow ready, he took a quarrel into his hand and dared to give Highknight Targrael a grin.
The cold grin she gave him back as she beckoned him on through the treegloom sent a chill through him, even before he heard her soft whisper.
“As do I.”
The castle had seen better days. Roofless and forgotten, with old and towering trees thrusting up through its stones like so many dark spears and shrouding its crumbling walls beneath heavy boughs full of leaves, it stood in deep wilderlands, far from roads now in use and folk who might be ruled by a lord who dwelt in such a stronghold. Its dungeons and lower floors were prowled by dark, tentacled things, which had kept smaller, furrier forest creatures from lairing overmuch in its riven upper rooms. Birds, though, hadn’t the wits to care about tentacled things, dark or otherwise. Their nests and voidings covered the floors thickly.
Except in one corner of a small, high room that retained not only its roof but a stone table flanked by two stone benches. A large arched window overlooked the table. The window lacked all trace of shutters, framing, or anything that might have filled that frame.
Through that spacious hole flew a large, untidy black bird that might have been a hawk—if hawks grew as large as horses.
The hawk landed heavily and awkwardly, glared around at the gloomy emptiness of the deserted room with its fierce gold-rimmed eyes, and then shook itself—and in a moment of unpleasant shiftings became a broad-shouldered man in black robes with a pepper-and-salt beard and tufted eyebrows to match. His eyes were every bit as fierce as the hawk’s.
Massive gold ri
ngs on his fingers winked and glowed briefly, then went dark. “Good,” the man announced, seeming to relax. He strode to the nearest bench and sat, slamming his forearms down on the table. “I’ve arrived first. For once.”
“If it pleases ye to think so,” part of the roof replied as it leisurely peeled away from the rest and dropped down into the room, leaving a gaping hole behind. What landed feather-light on the floor was a white-bearded man in torn and patched gray robes and battered brown boots. He looked older than the hawk-mage and held a curved pipe in his hand. His blue-gray eyes were fierce and bright. “Myself, I can’t think why it matters. D’ye still measure thyself against others? Truly?”
Khelben Arunsun was too disgusted—and astonished—to rise to this bait. “But the rings showed no—”
“Haven’t ye learned how to defeat such detections yet? Bend the Weave around them, man! Bend the Weave around them!”
As he delivered this vigorous advice, Elminster sat down across from Khelben and puffed his hitherto dark and empty pipe into spark-swirling life. “Yet before ye master such trifles, suppose ye tell me what’s struck ye as so important that ye needed to mindcall me hither—without telling me why. What’s afoot?”
“Trouble.” Khelben glowered.
The pipe floated out of Elminster’s mouth to hang hovering beside his lips. “Trouble is always afoot,” he said. “Could ye be a bit more specific?”
“These Knights of Myth Drannor,” the Blackstaff said. “Or to be more specific, the two self-made Zhentarim ghosts clinging to them.”
“Horaundoon and the one who calls himself Old Ghost,” Elminster said. “The elements that—aside from your connection to these adventurers and therefore Vangerdahast’s desire to be rid of them in somewhat indecent haste—make the Knights of more interest to the Realms than any other band of bumbling novice adventurers.”
“Ah … precisely.”
Elminster smiled, nodded, and acquainted himself with his pipe again. Waiting patiently.
Khelben glared across the old stone table into those mocking blue-gray eyes, started to speak—and paused to tap the table with a forefinger. He looked up from that finger like a lion lunging forward with a roar and said, “What do you know of these two Zhents?”
“They are, or were, Zhentarim mages of some accomplishment. Now able to pass into and possess the living, otherwise very much like wraiths, they’re in hiding, pursuing unknown aims. Formerly at odds, they now seem to be working together. They’ve established links of some sort with the Knights and seem able to appear at will wherever those adventurers may be. Ye know more?”
“No,” Khelben admitted, still glowering.
“So are we met, here and now, so ye can argue with me how to handle the Knights and these two Zhent wraiths?”
“Well, no, no … Yes.”
Elminster sat back and sighed. “Progress,” he told his pipe as it floated out of his mouth once more. Then he locked gazes with Khelben again and said, “Suppose ye say what it is ye want to do—and want me to do and not to do—so we can get on to the shouting and blustering without further delay, hmm?”
“Elminster Aumar,” Khelben asked, “can’t you take one Lady-damned thing seriously?”
The Old Mage acquired a look of amazed horror. “What? After all these years? With all the sanity that would require?”
“Indeed,” Khelben agreed heavily. “And as I know you’re the sanest of us all and that there are just the two of us here, can you please drop the capering clowning long enough to discuss this properly? For once?”
“Well,” Elminster said quietly, “so long as ’tis just this once …”
“Thank you.” The Blackstaff seemed to gather both breath and thoughts for a moment, then said, “I believe these two Zhents are far more than just mere nuisance wizards. Each of them—Old Ghost in particular—poses a great and steadily growing threat. They must be destroyed, whatever the cost.” The Blackstaff cleared his throat. “I can see to that, but I need something from you: Your commitment to stand back from the Knights, whatever happens, so I can have a free hand in dealing with Horaundoon and Old Ghost. If it costs the lives of these young adventurers, then so be it. I need you out of Shadowdale and not meddling in the doings of the Knights until those two wraiths—and I believe they’re far more than that, now—are dealt with. Then, if some Knights have survived, by all means rush in and seek to salvage them.”
Khelben stopped talking, and silence fell.
“So,” he asked, after staring across the table at his fellow Chosen for some time, “have we agreement on this?”
“No,” Elminster said cheerfully.
Silence fell again.
The Blackstaff sighed. “Care to be, in your words, more specific?”
The Old Mage nodded and said quietly, “Thy first two sentences regarding the nature and potential of the two Zhents—or former Zhents—I agree with. As usual, however, we disagree entirely on what to do and how to proceed.”
“So your preference in this matter would be …?”
Elminster’s smoking pipe drifted to his mouth, but he waved it away. “I prefer to continue as I have been: I will watch over the Knights myself and as much as possible leave Horaundoon and Old Ghost alone for now, to see what they do. For one thing, after a brief disappearance during which I could find no trace of them, they seem to be slaughtering Zhentarim as fast as they can, without resorting to an open assault on the entire Brotherhood, or darting about hunting down lesser, far-flung Zhent agents. And anything that reaps Zhents so energetically is something I don’t want to hamper. Nor have I any desire to stand back from the Knights.”
“So you cleave to your whimsical meddling,” the Blackstaff snapped, “because it’s the style you prefer. Leaving threats that could and should be dealt with now, before they can do more damage to the reputation of all who work with the Art—and before they can claim more lives of mages, however evil and selfish the motives and aims of such victims. In other words, you stray from the very tasks Our Lady has set for us and defy Her will.”
“I do nothing of the sort,” Elminster replied mildly. “Ye prefer one style, and I another. Ye seek to cloak thy preferred style in the mantle of ‘right’ and ‘holy to Mystra,’ and deem mine to be disobedient straying. I reject thy judgment—and have my own good reasons for doing so.” A faint smile rose to his lips. “Ye’ll have to do better, Lord Mage of Waterdeep. Try again.”
Khelben rose, tall and black and terrible, and stood glowering across the table. “This is not a game, Elminster. This is the future of the very world around us. I believe these two wraith-spirits to be that powerful or that they’ll soon become so. I did not come here to fence clever words with you. That game you can always best me at, as I seek to cling to truths and consequences, and you ever seek to redefine and mock and introduce irrelevancies.” The Blackstaff leaned forward. “So let us do this differently. For once. If I agree to let Horaundoon and Old Ghost continue to exist for now, so we can witness more of their villainies and hopefully learn something, you depart from Shadowdale and your oversight of the Knights. Leaving them to flourish or perish on their own, without meddling from any of us. And if needs be they serve as lures for the two wraith-spirits and suffer the consequences, so be it.” He let silence return and after it had deepened asked, “So, can we find agreement on that?”
“No,” Elminster said quietly, “I’m afraid not.”
“Afraid? Afraid of what?”
“Afraid my refusal to agree to thy terms will widen the rift between us and weaken our shared service to Mystra. I feel no animosity toward ye, Arunsun. I hope ye can hold none for me, despite the irritation my manner awakens in ye, and thy great flaw.”
“My great flaw,” Khelben repeated flatly.
“Indeed. Thy habit of mistaking thy decisions and preferences for the ‘right’ ones, and anyone who disagrees with ye as a foe.”
Khelben regarded his fellow Chosen in expressionless silence for a moment
and then said heavily, “So when these Knights reach Shadowdale—and they will reach Shadowdale, under your vigilant guardianship—they’ll find you there waiting for them.”
“I fear so, though I promise ye I’ll do my level best to hide from them.”
“Why? What is so important about staying in that small, dust-filled dump of a tower in Shadowdale?”
“Mystra’s will,” Elminster said. “It brought me there, and it compels me to remain.”
“Why?”
“Ask Her, son of Arielimnda. On this matter, I will say no more.”
“Oh?” Khelben’s eyes flashed fire, and he turned and strode across the chamber, black robes swirling. “So now you presume to decide what I am to be told and not told? As if I am your lackey?”
“It is the same presumption you make, Blackstaff,” Elminster said, “when dealing with your fellow Harpers.”
“But they are lackeys,” Khelben told the wall, then turned back to meet Elminster’s gaze and added gruffly, “That was a jest, mind. I—”
“We all presume to share and withhold news and lore, as we see fit,” the Old Mage interrupted. “ ’Tis something Chosen do. Yet misunderstand me not, Khel. Mystra hath ordered my silence on this. If it gnaws at ye not to know, yet ye prefer not to ask her, then take solace in the lesser reasons: I, Syluné, and Storm are a small cluster of rocks ’gainst the waves of Zhent expansion, and my tower is where it is to be adjacent to a divine breach in the Weave that can be hedged about with items of power I store and guard there. Moreover, it stands close to a way through which the dark elves can at any time surge up into the surface lands.”
“Aye, aye, aye,” Khelben replied testily, waving Elminster’s words away. “Yet I wasn’t speaking of you abandoning your tower! I seek your absence from the lives and doings of the Knights, so they can stand or fall on their own—and the two wraiths won’t conceal or lessen their deeds and schemings for fear of you. So I can seize the best opportunity to destroy them both at once and not manage to fell only one and leave the other, warned but fled, to lurk and become twice or thrice the nuisance to hunt down.”
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