Pennae crooked an eyebrow. “My, you are desperate, aren’t you?”
Jhessail frowned. “What assistance do you have in mind?”
“And how do we know you are Vangerdahast,” Pennae added, “and not a mad lich playing a little game with us?”
The wizard sighed and waved a hand at Doust and Semoor. “Are there not holy men among you? Simple magics on their part will reveal my undeath—or would, if I happened to be undead. Now, as for aiding me, I need you to do something the spells laid upon me here prevent me from doing myself, of course. It’s called the Unbinding, and—I’ll not lie to you—there is danger in it.”
“As in fatal danger,” Pennae said. “Care to be more specific?”
Vangerdahast gave her a dark look. “If you work arcane spells, they can twist into quite different magics and be unleashed without warning to harm yourself and others. This occurs only in the wake of your working a particular unbinding, in the long sequence that makes up the ritual.”
“So this Unbinding is a series of little steps?” Pennae asked. “Destructive ones, I presume?”
“Yes, and I must warn you that powerful enchanted items on your persons can be affected just as powerful spells can. Minor magics of either sort should do no harm, though their presence may give you something of a headache.”
The Royal Magician pointed along the wall across from the one he was leaning against. “There are many carved panels among the wood sheathing of these walls. Some are actually thin, worked stone, painted and treated to look like wood. At my direction, you Knights must shatter a particular stone panel, and then go and do the same thing to whichever nearby panel winks with sudden light when you shatter the first. The Unbinding is simply a series of such breakings.”
“Which will do what?” Islif and Florin asked, in perfect unison.
“Deliver all of us from this place. The liches will fall apart. The bindings are all that is keeping them from doing so right now. You’ll know the Unbinding has worked because now-sleeping portals hidden all over this palace will awaken and reach out to suck us through, snatching us all to one place: the robing room behind the Throne Chamber in the Royal Palace in Suzail.”
“And then?” Semoor asked. “We’ll be blasted down by some waiting guard of war wizards?”
“No, but I’d take it kindly if you fought at my side as I seek out the false Vangerdahast. We’ll have to move swiftly and—regrettably—deal with any war wizards we meet who try to stop us, because the impostor will undoubtedly seek to reach the royal family, probably to slay one of them and take that shape or to try to hold them hostage in return for his own safe escape.”
Vangerdahast fell silent then and turned his head to give all of them the closest thing to a beseeching look that any of the Knights had ever seen on his usually imperious face.
The Knights stared at him, then eyed each other.
There were several unhappy sighs before Florin said slowly, “We must confer and decide together.”
“Aye,” Pennae agreed. “Let’s talk.”
Targrael sank down onto the stairs, melting against them. She dared not count on these three dolts being such utter fools as never to look back her way.
After all, they might well turn back from the portal right now, and—
“One of you in front of me and one behind,” Lord Crownsilver said. “Come! The longer we give them to get ahead of us …”
Warily, one of the Sembians walked up to and through the portal, vanishing in a silent instant. Breathing something that might have been a prayer or a curse, the nobleman followed. The second Sembian peered for a moment at the rubble behind the portal, where beams and the ceiling had crashed down in a now-frozen torrent of sagging collapse, sighed loudly, and strode after them.
Still flattened on the stairs, Highknight Ismra Targrael waited in cautious silence for some time ere she rose in smooth, catlike silence and stalked to the portal. Turning smoothly in a complete rotation to look everywhere behind her, she stepped into its embrace, drawn sword first.
In silence it swallowed her, and that silence stretched for several long breaths before something else moved in the darkened cellar, rising from behind a particularly large heap of rubble.
It was a man—a man known to a diminishing number of living Cormyreans as Brorn Hallomond, personal bodyguard in the service of the Lord Prester Yellander, and more widely termed a lord’s “bullyblade”—and he hefted his sword in his hand as he stared at the portal he’d just seen four people pass through.
Would it be the folly of a reckless fool to go after them? Or his road to riches enough to settle down somewhere safe in the Forest Kingdom and live like a lord the rest of his days?
A short way down the passage, beyond the moot, a door opened, and a lich clad in robes of rich purple strode out, clutching a rod that winked with magical lights up and down its dark length.
“Aha!” it cried. “More thieves! Come to despoil the royal vaults of fair Cormyr! Can’t turn my back and lose myself in a spell for half a candle without another scurrying infestation of you creeping in behind me to—”
Running out of words, it growled in rage and charged forward, waving the staff.
Vangerdahast calmly worked a swift and intricate spell, a casting unlike any Jhessail had ever seen before—and a strange red mist appeared, swept along the passage, snatched the lich off its feet, and bundled it back through the door, rod and all. The mists melted fingerbones, robes, and the feet off the lich as it struggled.
Then the mists slammed the door and roiled in front of it, sealing it off.
“That much,” the Royal Magician turned and told the Knights a little sadly, “I can still do.” He seemed on the verge of saying more, then hesitated before adding, “I quite understand and respect your need to take some time over deciding to aid me or not. I have waited decades for certain things to befall Cormyr, worked for years to bring many of those things about. I have mastered waiting. I shall withdraw yonder”—he pointed down the passage, a little way beyond the door where his spell was raging—“and let you debate without my interference.”
Pennae nodded and held up a hand to silence the rest of the Knights as they watched Vangerdahast walk away. “Doust,” she said softly, “watch him as if you’re a hungry hawk. Speak if you see him do anything that might be spellcasting.”
“Understood,” Doust said.
“We’re lost here, and these liches seem real enough to me,” Islif said without waiting for anyone else to speak. “Which means we’ll die, sooner or later, if one comes blundering up to us like the one we just saw—whether he staged that or not. We may need him as much as he needs us.”
Florin nodded. “Yet before we plunge into talking tactics—”
“Arguing tactics,” Pennae interrupted with a grin, never turning her head from watching Vangerdahast.
“Arguing tactics,” Florin granted, “I think we must decide how far we can trust Vangerdahast. Is he speaking truth to us now?”
Doust shrugged and pointed at Semoor. “If I pray—if either or both of us priests prays properly—we can be granted the power to know falsehoods when uttered. We can do this and put specific questions to Vangey—questions we should frame carefully. The spells have strict limits, but we will know if this tale of Unbinding and an impostor and our ennoblement is truth.”
“Let’s do that,” Islif said.
“Agreed,” Pennae said, “but remember this: Vangey will be standing listening to everything we say. Let’s decide some things, quickly, while we have this much privacy.”
Manshoon had half-turned away from the Knights, feigning what he fancied might be the dignity—or perhaps pomposity would be a better word—of Vangerdahast. They were walking slowly toward him now, all of them, so he turned back to face them.
Florin walked at their fore, face stern. “Very well, Lord Vangerdahast,” he said formally, stopping a few paces away. “We’ll do it. And may the curses of all the gods of Faerûn drown and
dismember you if you’ve deceived us.”
“You probably got it all,” Dauntless said. “One can’t tell from the smoke. That’s apt to go on for some time. Yet I’m not expecting the forest to flare up around us.” He shrugged. “We’ll have Dragon patrols here, regardless. The smoke’ll do that much.”
“I didn’t want to use any magic,” Tsantress said grimly, “but …” She shook her head in exasperation and went back to staring through the thicket in which they were crouching at the roofless ruin that half the population of eastern Cormyr seemed to have vanished inside, now.
Watching Gods Above, it can’t be that big inside. If they weren’t falling down some pit or other, they must be heaped up like … like …
“Oh, gods,” she whispered, “are they all dead, d’you think?”
“Now, lady wizard, thinking always gets us Purple Dragons in trouble—as the Royal Magician is all too fond of reminding us,” Dauntless said. “If you’re asking me if I’m anxious to draw sword and step in there, the answer is no. Not at this time.”
Tsantress grinned at his mimicry of one of Alaphondar’s favorite Court phrases. She stiffened and tapped a warning finger across her lips. When Dauntless stared a silent question at her, she used that same finger to point through the brush in another direction. She crouched down even lower.
Another man had come into view, walking warily and holding a wand out before him as if it were a sword. He seemed unfamiliar with the terrain and almost to be feeling—no, sensing—his way forward.
“What’s Lorbryn doing here?” Tsantress breathed, more to herself than Dauntless. “What’s going on? Is Vangerdahast sending watchers to watch his watchers?”
Chapter 14
INTO OUR LAPS
Forward, my bold, brave Dragons
Swords out, all, and check the maps
A plentitude of beauties and flagons
Seek, all to end up in our laps!
The character Great King of Cormyr
In the play Riding the Purple Dragon
by Alimontur of Westgate
First performed (and banned in Cormyr)
in the Year of the Wandering Wyrm
Growling to himself, the Royal Magician of Cormyr cast the scrying spell a second time, then sat back to gaze upon the glossy black marble tabletop and wait.
Again, nothing.
He shook his head. With all of these augmentations and a perfect casting, the magic should have yielded some indications. Even if Deltalon was on another plane or dead, the Weave echo should have come back to Vangerdahast to tell him the magic had sought but failed.
Yet it became clear that no echo was coming. Nothing. As if the spell were racing away across infinite distances, seeking, forever seeking, and not finding.…
Vangerdahast grunted. This looked darker and darker.
He heaved himself to his feet and started to stride from the room, then stopped, settled down in his chair again, and cast a much simpler magic.
Not seeking Deltalon, this time, but on impulse, checking on Taltar Dahauntul through the ornrion’s belt and boots. He murmured the added incantation that would also let him see through the Dragon’s eyes. That would give Dauntless a raging headache, but, hah, to quote words he’d used far too often down the years, we must all make these little sacrifices in the service of Cormyr.
The air over the table whirled silently, then coalesced into a scene. He was now seeing what Dauntless was gazing at … and he was peering through a thick tangle of saplings, clinging vines, and forest brush at—Lorbryn Deltalon!
Vangerdahast blinked, drew breath to swear, and abruptly the view over the table changed as the distant Dauntless turned his head. He was now looking at Wizard of War Tsantress Ironchylde, who was evidently crouching in a forest thicket somewhere, right beside the ornrion.
Dauntless turned his head again to watch Deltalon stalk cautiously across a clearing of sorts, wand in hand, up to the missing door of—
Vangerdahast stood bolt upright, upending his stool with a clatter, and roared the most furious curses he knew at the ceiling.
The scene above the table calmly continued to unfold, no matter how hard and often the Royal Magician glared at it.
“All gods stlarn it all!”
He ran out of verbal filth to spew and shook his head, aghast at where the two war wizards and that pain-in-the-sitter ornrion were: the only open way into the Lost Palace.
Vangerdahast called on the power of his rings and bellowed, “Laspeera!”
Through a surging red mist of pain and a gasp, both supplied by his most trusted Wizard of War half the Palace away, he saw the astonished faces of the novice war wizards she’d been instructing.
She was wincing and clutching at her head, but Vangey wasted no time on apologies or niceties. Brutally ramming what he was seeing over the table into her mind, he snarled, “Do you know anything about this?”
“No, Van—Lord Vangerdahast,” Laspeera groaned, fingers clawing at her temples and face pinched in pain. “I don’t. At all.”
The students staring at her clearly heard the Royal Magician’s answering roar, spilling out of her ears. “To me! Right now! Hurry! The safety of the realm hangs on this!”
Laspeera slumped over with a gasp as the raging wizard left her mind, then she straighted and gave her young war wizards a lopsided smile.
“He’s always like this,” she explained. “One gets used to it.”
She turned and dashed out the door.
“What is this place?” one of the Sembians asked, peering at the dark passages ahead.
“I was hoping you could tell me that,” Lord Maniol Crownsilver snapped. “You’re the wizards here.”
“Hold!” The other Sembian’s voice was tight with fear. “What’s that?”
He was pointing ahead into the dark mouth of a side passage, where something half-seen was moving.
Out into their passage it came, walking as slowly as an elderly, unsteady noble, and wearing the ragged remnants of what had once been splendid garments of shimmerweave and musterdelvys. Its head was half flesh and lank hair and half bare bone, and its eyes were two glittering motes of light. It was smiling.
“A lich, I’m thinking,” the first Sembian said quietly, his hands already busy at his belt.
“So, my tutor,” the undead asked them, “what is it to be this time? Are we calling up fiends? Or hurling fire into flagons?”
The Sembians looked sidelong at each other. “Neither,” the second Sembian said. “No magic this day.”
“No? But I’ve practiced so long! Watch!” Bony fingers sketched briefly in empty air, rose-hued motes of light started to trail from fingertips, and a sudden flare of rose-purple light snarled out in Lord Crownsilver’s direction.
“Do something!” the noble shouted, cowering back. “I’m paying you to do something!”
Even as his voice rose in wild fear, the crawling, stabbing rose-purple radiance struck something half-seen and emerald-hued that seemed to be emanating from the first Sembian’s belt. The purple light was deflected to strike at the passage wall, where rainbow-hued radiances flared into being and wrestled with it.
“Oooh!” The lich clapped its hands together, staring at where its magic was striking the emerald-hued warding. “Pretty! Very pretty! And have you more delights to share with me, dusky sorceress?”
Lord Crownsilver and the two Sembians exchanged glances then looked back at the lich. It had turned its back on them and was strolling away down the passage now, flouncing along as if dancing or skipping, and crooning, “Pretty … oh, so pretty …”
“Look,” the second Sembian said, pointing past the wandering lich at something leaning out to look at them from another passage mouth. “There’s another one.”
“Azuth’s flaming spittle,” the first mage cursed.
The two Sembians looked at each other, nodded in accord, and turned away from the liches.
“Here, now!” Lord Crownsilver snapped, plucking
at the sleeve of the first Sembian. “What’re you playing at? I’m paying you to—”
The Sembian thrust his face forward at his patron so aggressively that the shorter noble flinched back, and the wizard snapped, “Lord, those are liches. Mad liches. Not all the gold and gems in Cormyr will keep me here now.”
“Aye,” the other Sembian said. “Dead men spend no riches. And we’ll all be dead men—or worse—very swiftly if we tarry here longer. Why, I—”
His fellow mage-for-hire gurgled loudly.
The Sembian had torn his sleeve from Crownsilver’s grasp, taken two swift strides back down the passage—and run right onto the sword that a grimly smiling woman in black leathers was holding ready, right at the level of his throat.
Her free hand snatched the warding token from the wizard’s belt and held it up to ward off any magic the other Sembian might hurl.
Thus defended, Highknight Lady Ismra Targrael watched the man choke and strangle on her steel. Her smile never changed as he sagged, gurgling his way down to the passage floor with his staring eyes fixed on her.
Letting go of her sword as the dying Sembian took it to the floor and as Lord Crownsilver stared at her, aghast and paling, she plucked a dagger from her belt, danced sideways, and threw it deftly.
The noble couldn’t turn his head fast enough to follow its flashing flight, but he saw well enough where that journey ended.
Wearing the dagger hilt-deep in his left eye, the second Sembian mage toppled, tiny lightnings spitting and swirling vainly around the blade as feeble defensive magics sought to deal with it … and failed.
Targrael didn’t even bother to watch him fall. She was busy tugging her sword free.
The Sword Never Sleeps Page 19