Then, joining Florin and a reelingly sleepy Doust and Semoor in a line along the ledge, she wondered if she’d have time to even know what was killing them, before it did.
What must be magical silence was ebbing as the hulking thing clawed its way up the gravel slope. She could hear faint clackings and rattlings as stones tumbled in a constant, growing flood.
Rolling over those sounds, she could hear something else—a deep, wet rumbling, like a dog growling deep in its throat. The thing was large—half again as tall as she was, its shoulders far broader than hers. Hairless and seemingly sexless, it stood upon squat, massive legs and had a stumpy little flap of a tail. There’d be a channel beneath that tail where it relieved itself. That and its pale, wet maw and the eyes—six of them—were the only vulnerable spots she could see.
Shaking her head, Islif wondered if she’d be able to reach any of them and if they really were weaknesses her blade could pierce.
At least she had time to ponder such things, as a little gravel showered and bounced down from above, marking Pennae’s climb. This beast was digging into the loose stones below their ledge more than it was managing to climb them.
Yet there had to be solid rock or sturdy earth under all the rocks, pebbles, and gravel, if one went deep enough. It would only be a matter of time.
“Can we try to blind it, d’you think?” Florin asked. “Before it gets up here with us? Pennae?”
“She’s gone,” Islif said, not knowing if the thing could hear and understand them. “Up. So depend upon no cleverly thrown daggers to help us.”
“Both of you should be able to reach the eyes with your blades, if standing right beside it,” Semoor muttered. “If it doesn’t stand up tall, that is, and all the shifting stone doesn’t just slide you on past.” It was obvious who “both of you” were meant to be.
“If we get down onto that loose stuff,” Florin murmured, “can we get up here again?”
“Can we stand up to fight it at all?” Islif asked. “I’m not welcoming the thought of wallowing, scarce able to land a sword cut, and ending up sprawled flat in the scree, sliding helplessly down to its legs as it digs and churns, so it can reach out and break my back—or claw me up to dine—whenever it pleases.”
“We could try to reach out and haul you back,” Semoor suggested, eyeing those black-fanged jaws. The beast was clearly watching them, turning its head to regard each Knight in turn, and its rumbling was rising in tone and volume. It sounded angry.
Islif and Florin both shook their heads.
“That’ll just mean you get hauled helplessly into the same doom as ours,” Islif said.
Florin sighed and fixed both priests with stern looks. “No holy magic that can help now, at all?”
Doust and Semoor gave each other uneasy looks then shook their heads in unison. The ranger sighed then ducked down until he was half-kneeling—and sprang.
Off the ledge and forward, sword out. Those great, black-taloned arms swung up to claw at him but succeeded only in coming up under one of his boots and lofting him the extra bit he needed, not only to land on the beast’s massive back just behind the eyes, but to turn in midair, so he came down facing the ledge and his fellow Knights.
Florin drove his sword sideways into the angle of the jaws. As he’d expected, the monster bit down hard on it, making it into a rock-solid handle for the next breath or two. Which was quite long enough for the ranger to use his other hand to snatch out a belt dagger and bury it hilt-deep in one of the beast’s eyes.
It stiffened, then roared in pain and threw up its arms, rising out of its crouch. By then, Florin had yanked his dagger messily free of one eyesocket and plunged the steel into the next one.
The monster roared and reached up with one arm to claw him forward over its head and down into its waiting jaws—and Islif’s sword slashed across its talons, severing or blunting them all and causing it to squall in astonished pain. It shook that hand wildly, seeking to banish the pain, which was more than long enough for the ranger riding it to plunge his dagger into the third eye on that side of the monster’s head.
It stiffened again, then spasmed, wriggling wildly and uncontrollably beneath him. Florin clung to blade and dagger, fighting just to stay on its back—as Islif snarled to Semoor, “The big skillet, on edge, between its jaws!”
The priest blinked at her, then tore apart his pack and produced the pan. Islif snatched it, drove it in between those black teeth—and then lunged so deeply that her armored shoulder fetched up beside the skillet with a clang. Which meant her sword was arm-deep in the beast’s maw but angled up into its massive shoulders and spine, piercing and now slicing and slashing viciously.
The monster reeled, flung up its arms to tear the swordswoman apart—and Doust and Semoor launched themselves from the ledge, maces smashing down on the monster’s hands with all their weight backing the blows.
The monster staggered back, arms flailing, the rumbling now a bellow of raw agony, and Florin dared to drive his fingers into one gore-weeping eyesocket to gain a handhold to cling to. He let go his sword and used that hand to thrust the dagger into the first of the three eyes on the other side of the head.
The massive shoulders under Florin were shaking and spasming helplessly now, the arms flailing around in a wild thrashing.
“Get clear!” Pennae cried from above. “Flor, get away from it!”
Florin slashed open another eye, even as he kicked hard against the thing’s back, and thrust himself free, toppling back into the night.
The thing tried to turn, to follow him and pounce, but it was lurching, its muscles rippling and shuddering uncontrollably. It had managed only a half-turn by the time Islif and the two priests had clawed themselves well apart from where it thrashed on the scree slope—and a long, wedge-shaped slab of rock came thundering down out of the night to smash the beast flat.
Broken and bewildered, all it could still do was scream. It did that, feebly, then fell silent and leaked gore out from under the now-shattered stone covering it.
“Well, now,” Pennae’s voice floated down to her fellow Knights, surprisingly calm and quiet. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Any other beasts you need taken care of?”
“Whoever sent this one?” Semoor said. “Four coins to get twelve that this hulk was brought or sent here to stand against us.”
No one accepted his wager.
Which one of them had the Pendant? As he’d expected, his spell had found nothing, which meant he had to get closer to either spot it by chance—if one of them was foolish enough to wear it openly—or spell-see it at close range.
Drathar skulked closer, wincing as the render’s rumblings rose into sharp shrieks. The night was dark, the Knights apparently had no lanterns lit.
Well, that just might seal their doom. They couldn’t—
“Haaaa!” That deep, hoarse, triumphant roar out of the night had sounded right behind him!
Drathar hurled himself forward, right through a viciously sharp thornbush that was thankfully half-dead, and so collapsed with a crackle. Who—?
A morningstar crashed down right beside him, flaring momentarily into ruby radiance as it struck his feeble shielding spell.
Drathar rolled, becoming aware of a large, looming figure, a choking stink of unwashed, filthy flesh, and two tusked heads. A second morningstar whistled past his head to thud heavily into a treetrunk and rebound.
Drathar scrambled to his feet then ducked away, seeking to put several trees between himself and this … ettin?
Aye, it was a two-headed giant, and it was striding angrily around the trees, looking nothing like the stumbling dunderheads most bardic tales insisted ettin were. It looked to have just awakened, probably roused by the render’s screams, and its every stride was faster and more purposeful as it rose to full alertness.
Which meant he had to act right now—or never.
Drathar planted his feet despite the wildly rising urge to flee, stared at the ettin lurching me
nacingly nearer, and carefully cast his last coercion spell. Whatever they’d managed to do to the gray render, the Knights of Myth Drannor had to be wounded and weary.
Which meant, against an ettin, they hadn’t a chance.
“What was that magic?”
Boarblade was in no mood for Klarn’s truculent questions just now. “Something the same man who contacted each of you gave me, to use once we were together, riding on an open road. I don’t know its name. You saw what it did to the horses, and it’s done now. So leave them—they’re too exhausted to stray, and the hargaunt can smell them well enough to guide us back to them, after. Come!”
“Come where?”
“Into the woods, toward all that shrieking. Before we’re too late. You to the fore with me. Glays, rearguard. All the shrieking may bring other things hunting. Thorm and Darratur, keep blades sheathed for now. I want none of us running onto each other’s steel in the dark. Quick and quiet, quick and quiet.”
“To do what, exactly?”
Glays was always calm and the only one Boarblade judged competent to obey orders and avoid utter dunderheadedness. So he answered the man.
“To go and see if this racket is linked to the Knights we’re looking for. It sounds like a forest beast might just have done our work for us—and if it has we need to get to the bodies before it mauls their faces too badly and to find that Pendant before it’s down some monster’s gullet. If it hasn’t, but the Knights are sore wounded or worn out, we watch and choose our best moment to rush them. They’ve got a wizard and some priests, remember? No better time and place to face down spells than the dark, in a thick forest, where they can’t see who they’re hurling magic at. If, that is, they’ve got any magic left!”
That set Klarn, Thorm, and Darratur all to nodding and chuckling. Boarblade used his drawn sword to wave Klarn forward, gave them all a grin, then turned away before they could see it fall right off his chin. Idiots.
In the doorway the Royal Magician of Cormyr came to an abrupt halt and blinked.
Sage Royal Alaphondar looked up from his uncomfortable, high-backed chair and sighed. There were more subtle ways of making it clear you were surprised—and disapprovingly so—to see someone in attendance at a secret meeting in the Queen’s Retiring Room, but then Vangerdahast seldom saw any need to be all that subtle.
King Azoun and Queen Filfaeril were there, of course, crowns off on the table before them and arms around each other like lovers, as a clear signal that royal protocol was suspended for the nonce. Laspeera of the Wizards of War sat near them on a maid’s ready chair.
The two whose presence seemed to discomfit Vangey were the War Wizard Lorbryn Deltalon and the man sitting quietly next to him in drab and well-worn trail leathers on the couch. It was the Harper Dalonder Ree, and he was giving the simmering wizard in the doorway a knowing smile and the words, “I’m sorry to announce that Dove can’t be with us. She’s off on one of her jaunts. Harper work.”
“What Harper work?” Vangerdahast almost snarled, striding into the room and making for the comfortable armchair that had been left for him.
Ree shrugged. “What I know not, I cannot be made to say.”
“Hah! You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes,” King Azoun said from where he sat, the word so sudden and steely that Vangerdahast blinked again, halted, and waited for more. Anticipated words that did not come.
After a breath or two, the Royal Magician continued to his seat and told the ceiling as he turned to sit, “Word came to me that the Dragon Queen had need of my presence at a moot, wherefore I am here. Do we await later arrivals, or—?”
“We do not, Vangey. Your grand entrance is unmarred.” Filfaeril’s tone was as dry as the sands of a desert. “If you’re sitting comfortably enough, we can begin.”
“I am. The purpose of this little conclave?”
“Thrust to the heart, thrust to the heart,” Dalonder Ree murmured. The Royal Magician did not deign to look in his direction, but Laspeera and Filfaeril both gave him sly little smiles.
“It appears,” the King of Cormyr said calmly, “that the Knights of Myth Drannor continue to be embroiled in some manner of violence in the wilderlands along the Moonsea Ride, beyond our present borders but in territory we customarily patrol and secure so that no menace may gather there for forays into our fair realm. The identities of their foes are a matter of some conjecture and dispute. I would hear your honest and informal counsel, everyone, on what we should now do about this.”
“Nothing,” Vangerdahast said, as Deltalon and the Harper started to speak. “They are adventurers, and they have departed the realm. Let them adventure and taste whatever fates the gods see fit to hand them. We cannot be forever reaching out our hands across Faerûn to meddle in the affairs of others.”
“No, of course not,” Dalonder Ree told the ceiling. “Only twice or thrice a day, when we want to—if we happen to be, say, a Royal Magician.”
Two royal snorts of mirth quelled the icy rejoinder Vangerdahast had turned his head to deliver. He satisfied himself by ignoring the Harper’s comment and said, “In this room we can only concern ourselves with Cormyrean interests and policies. As this is an informal discussion, let me express myself bluntly: I am very strongly of the opinion that no further aid of any sort should be rendered to the chartered adventurers known as the Knights of Myth Drannor. If they establish themselves in Shadowdale, as certain parties obviously intend that they do, we shall then extend the hand of diplomacy—”
“Envoys in the front door, spies through the back,” Ree murmured.
“—as usual,” Vangerdahast said, giving the Harper a glare. “For one thing, I want to keep Wizards of War clear of that area just now for quite another reason.”
Into the little silence that followed, Queen Filfaeril asked quietly, “And that reason would be?”
Vangerdahast looked at her a little beseechingly and murmured, “It touches on the royal family, and I would prefer not to speak openly in present company.”
“That’s difficult, Vangey,” King Azoun said, “because I would very much prefer that you do.”
The Royal Magician did not trouble to hide his shrug or his sigh. “Very well. There is peril to the Princess Tanalasta, owing to a magical link between her mind and a Wizard of War who has now become a renegade and a fugitive, whom I believe to currently be in the same area as the Knights.”
“Ruldroun,” Laspeera murmured.
Vangerdahast gave her a glare. “If we’re laying bare every last secret of the realm for no good reason, aye. Ruldroun is the mage I speak of. I don’t know of any connection at all between him and the Knights, but if we flood that stretch of forest with war wizards and spells get hurled … well, what happens to his mind could harm the princess, no matter what safeguards I weave around her here.”
“I have no magic to speak of,” the Harper said, “so I see no reason I shouldn’t go to the aid of the Knights. I would even be so bold as to request war wizard aid in translocating me across the vastness of fair Cormyr so I can reach them in good time.”
“I will furnish that,” Deltalon spoke up, “and accompany you to assist and to bring back reliable report of what befalls.”
“You will not.” Vangerdahast could put a ring of steel into his voice that echoed louder and more forcefully than even the “hear now my royal will” tone of King Azoun.
“He will,” Queen Filfaeril said so softly and calmly that she seemed almost to be whispering. “Vangey, in this you are overruled.”
The Royal Magician reeled in his chair as if he’d been slapped across the face. “You—you—”
“Dare?” the Dragon Queen inquired sweetly. “Of course. And please try my royal husband before you deem me foolish or standing alone in this.”
With slow and obvious reluctance, Vangerdahast turned his head to look at the king, who smiled, nodded, and said, “The Harper is to be given all the assistance he deems necessary—including the service of
Wizard of War Deltalon.”
“I shall see to that,” Laspeera said softly.
Vangerdahast’s gaze snapped around to her—but he gave her no glare, only silence and several blinks of his eyes, as if some sort of facial tic were afflicting him.
“Very well,” he said at last. “But hear me!” He gave the Harper a glare that might have melted a shield. “You’re not taking an army of Purple Dragons!”
“Why would I,” the Harper’s face was all innocence, “when all I need is one Dragon? The man called Dauntless.”
Slowly at first, then uproariously until his mirth expired in a fit of choking, the Royal Magician of Cormyr laughed.
Chapter 22
IF YOU SKULK OUT IN THE TREES THIS NIGHT
The moon is down, not shining bright
So lovers stay in, the beasts do prowl
If you skulk out in the trees this night
Be the one to pounce—not death-howl.
Fhannath Laree,
Lady Bard of Elturel
from the ballad “The Moon Is Down”
first performed circa the Year of the Shadowtop
Brorn had grown tired of looking down at himself.
He was entirely skeletal now, coated in bone that made his movements slower, his limbs heavy. Yet his joints were still supple enough, and thankfully he still had eyes and a tongue, his own insides—and what made him a man, too. And he felt … normal.
Hah. Normal.
He shook his head and plucked again at the tangle of belts, baldrics, and sheaths that were all he now wore. He’d long ago grown weary of his clothes falling off him with every step, breeches collapsing again and again around his ankles, and suddenly huge boots wobbling and even turning loosely on his bony feet, and he had finally abandoned them. He was thinner, everywhere, as if his flesh had melted away under the coating of bone.
So now Brorn Hallomond was, in truth, the Striding Skeleton. Whether this was really bone coating him or not—and it certainly looked like bone—it seemed something of a shield against the cold. He could no longer feel the gentle touch of the night breeze.
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