The Sword Never Sleeps

by Greenwood, Ed

  It was long past time for stealth. The ettin was cursing loudly and rending trees again—and Dauntless, at least, had decided to cling to tradition enough to snarl a war cry.

  “For the Purple Dragon! Cormyr forever!”

  Swords flashed, and morningstars swung—and struck. Smashed up and off his feet, Dauntless grunted in pain as the armor shielding his ribs crumpled and some of those ribs crumpled with it.

  Dalonder Ree fended off the other morningstar with a precisely angled sword as he raced along under the ettin’s swing. The ettin roared in triumph as he saw the ornrion’s body go flying—and Pennae reached the ettin’s far leg, leaving the nearer one for Islif, sprang as high as she could, and put all the strength in both of her shapely arms behind a keen slash of her dagger.

  The blade bit into stinking flesh a moment before the Harper’s sword sank into the ettin’s crotch.

  The two-headed giant stiffened, drew breath—and proved to every ear between Halfhap and Tilver’s Gap that it really knew how to scream.

  Islif reached its other leg, swinging her long sword as hard as she could.

  The ettin screamed again, reeled, and toppled, felling several trees in its crash.

  Dalonder Ree and Florin swarmed over its faces and necks, stabbing down into eyes and laying open throats.

  The ettin convulsed with a wild, heaving violence that sent the men flying to join Dauntless in groaning, huddled heaps on the gravel slope. It fell silent and still.

  “See?” Semoor observed from the ledge. “Lathander did that! All praise be unto the Morninglord!”

  “Tempus defend me!” Islif snarled in exasperation, glaring up at the ledge.

  “I wonder what the penance is for strangling a priest with his own tongue,” Pennae said beside her. “I believe I’ve stolen just about enough to pay it, by now—and if not, I’d cheerfully enslave myself to the nearest orc-pandering festhall for a month or two to make up the difference!”

  “Festhalls! That’s it! That’s how we’ll make coin enough to do Lathander’s great works for him!” Semoor called delightedly. “Pennae, I could kiss you!”

  “And holynoses can fly, with about as much success,” Pennae said under her breath. Then she brightened. “Unless I take you up atop yon cliff to start learning how, right now.”

  “Come!” Boarblade whispered fiercely, right in Klarn’s face. “Tell all the others! We attack now, before they’ve settled themselves again! Swords out and slay!”

  Klarn gaped at him, then turned and ran—blundering right into Darratur and receiving a firm shove that sent him aside into a tree.

  The moment Boarblade saw Glay’s face, he waved at them all to accompany him, turned back toward the Knights, drew his sword, and ran.

  He could hear the four charging after him.

  Good. Let them burst out to confront the Knights. He’d try to gut the ranger or the fighting lass as he ran past—and then keep right on running, past the fray and into the trees, to plunge back into hiding.

  Where he’d hide and lurk, awaiting his best chance to find that Pendant.

  If the four dolts he’d been saddled with butchered a good share of Knights, well and good. He’d have that much less work left.

  Not that he was counting on it.

  With Pennae and Islif helping him, Dauntless sat up, wincing.

  “Are you sure you didn’t bring this beast with you?” he growled, waving a hand at the sprawled, dead ettin. “Or let it loose from somewhere in your pryings and thievings?”

  “Of course we did,” Pennae snapped. “We have scores of pets like this one—and worse!—and as we cavort across Faerûn, we let them all loose to frolic through the trees and try to kill us! Gods above, how stupid can Purple Dragons be? You do know which end of a sword is which, I hope?”

  “Oh, aye.” Dauntless showed his teeth in a grin that wasn’t pleasant at all. “I do know that—and so will your shapely backside in a breath or two, saucy lass!”

  Pennae sneered. “Lick my sauce? Do my hair? Announce me to the queen?”

  “Identify your head when I place it before her on a platter, more likely,” Dauntless said. “With all the rest.”

  Pennae sighed loudly and gave the ornrion a shove that toppled him over, groaning in pain on his side in the gravel again.

  “Pennae,” Islif said reproachfully.

  The thief shrugged. “My hand slipped,” she said. “It does that. A lot.”

  “I’ve noticed,” the ornrion said. “Lucky you are that my orders have changed.”

  “Oh?” Pennae said. “They’ve commanded you to be fair and reasonable, now? Is this is some special occasion?”

  “When I can get up again,” Dauntless said, “it certainly will be.”

  Boarblade raced along, heart pounding. It really didn’t matter whether he had false Knights beside him—Ruldroun’s four, or some of them, with their hargaunt disguises—or the real ones. Neither could be trusted, but perhaps the real ones would be the better companions in a fight.

  Well, he was about to see, wasn’t he?

  The stump was more or less as he remembered it. A little damp, with wet dead leaves plastered to it because rain had fallen in this stretch of the forest several times over the last few days, but he cared nothing for the fate of this tattered, dirty crone’s dress anyhail.

  He settled himself on the stump, facing down the familiar little clearing so he’d see in an instant if any war wizard arrived. Nigh every last Wizard of War knew this lush little glade. It was one of the preferred “waystops” or “jump spots” for jaunts to Tilverton or the northeastern border wilds of the realm.

  Hopefully, if one appeared, he’d not readily recognize Onsler Ruldroun behind the pocked and wrinkled crone’s face the hargaunt had spun.

  The scrying spell would be a little harder to explain away, but if he was given a chance to speak, Ruldroun knew enough of the catchphrases to seem to be one of Those Who Harp for a few breaths.

  And a few breaths would be all he would need to triumph, teleport away, or die.

  So he sat on his stump, looking down the glade—which coincidentally was also facing in the direction of the battling Knights, who were not all that far off through the forest—and watched the battle through his scrying eye.

  All he needed was a little more patience against the surging excitement that rose again and again within him. It was the roiling energy of the three men he’d slain that was making him so restless, he knew, but he could master this now. Enough of the wild, feverish exhilaration was over and past. He was now always aware of what was really happening to him. When he kept away from exciting tastes and smells—good food—he could thrust aside the floods of emotion and tell himself calmly: You are awaiting the best time to step forward and seize the Pendant of Ashaba. Yes. The best time.

  If Glays and the rest were dead by then … well, there were other men who could impersonate Knights and who would welcome the backlands life of Shadowdale.

  Deltalon arrived a little farther from the glowstones than the Harper.

  If you appeared right beside the Knights, you found yourself in the same peril that was afflicting them—and could well taste their own blades and spells before you had time to name yourself.

  Which was the very reason he was bound for his favorite waystop glade in the heart of that part of the forest just north off the Moonsea Ride known as Hawkvale. No one dwelt there, and no eye that he knew had ever managed to discern a “vale” among all those tangled trees.

  The clearing, not far from Tilverton, served the same purpose as his chosen destination. Appearing in the blink of an eye in the midst of a tavern or even just outside the walls of Tilverton warned everyone of your mastery of Art, no matter how skilled your acting to the contrary might be.

  And despite what everyone remembered about the bad war wizards, good Wizards of War always tried to be deft and subtle.

  “If you skulk out in the trees this night,” the wizard Ruldroun half-murmured
and half-sang. He stared at the glowing images of his conjured scrying dancing silently in midair before him. Boarblade was just beginning his charge.

  Then he blinked. A man had appeared at the far end of the glade. A war wizard he knew! Lorbryn Deltalon, one of Vangerdahast’s most trusted—

  Onsler Ruldroun stood, his scrying forgotten, and whispered the strongest spell he knew.

  He’d been saving that fire-gem for a long time, and it had cost him dearly, but what was that price against his very life?

  The gem flashed and was gone—and the huge gout of flame blossomed from it and roared away down the clearing, fire that should sear flesh and bone alike, feeding on Art as well as mundane fuel.

  Which should mean that if Deltalon was shielded in the usual ways against fire, he was doomed.

  Yes, this was the place. Lush and damp and familiar. Dark now, in the depths of night, of course, but there was a spell-glow coming from the far end of the glade, and—

  Lorbryn Deltalon had just time for one final thought as Faerûn exploded in blinding, white flame all around him:

  So this is what it feels like to die.

  Chapter 23

  ALL THE NINE HELLS BREAK LOOSE

  Oh, aye, I tell you I’ll be there

  When all the Nine Hells break loose

  Wizards burn, heroes fall,

  And the gods come tumbling after.

  The character Ornbriar the Old Merchant

  In the play Karnoth’s Homecoming

  by Chanathra Jestryl, Lady Bard of Yhaunn

  First performed in the Year of the Bloodbird

  The flames howled on, toppling trees and setting them aflame. Silhouetted against that bright raging stood all that was left of Lorbryn Deltalon.

  A column of gray ash shaped like a wizard who’d turned his head in astonishment faced Ruldroun with one hand half-raised.

  Then it slumped down and swirled away, gone forever.

  Beyond it, the fire snarled.

  Ruldroun hastened out of the glade on the far side from the fire, seeking—and finding—a tree with two trunks and a saddle between them large enough for him to stand in.

  Leaning back against one trunk, eyes on the dying flames in the distance, he swiftly cast a spell many a Wizard of War had found useful when away from the cities of the realm.

  The magic made his fingertips and ears tingle briefly as it took hold. Now, and for most of the time until dawn, he would be made aware of all minds approaching him, and their direction and distance.

  It might well be imperative for the continued life of Onsler Ruldroun to see who—and what—the blaze lured near.

  Fire roared into being off to his left, too suddenly and violently to be anything but a spell.

  Brorn Hallomond smiled, held up his bone-coated hands to more clearly see how skeletal they looked, admired them in the dancing firelight for a moment, then turned off the road into the trees, heading for the blaze.

  “From beyond the grave, I come for thee,” he murmured the old saying and flexed his hands again.

  Even if the fire-makers didn’t happen to be the Knights of Myth Drannor, he certainly felt like killing someone.

  “A gray render, too? You have been busy!”

  The only answer Florin gave to Dalonder Ree was a shrug, but the Harper didn’t have to look at the ranger’s face to know his words had left Falconhand rather pleased.

  He was just turning to begin a look all around, seeking any signs of other predators watching from the trees, when a great gout of flame blossomed out of nowhere with a roar, some way off in the forest, but racing toward them with frightening speed.

  Off to Ree’s left, Dauntless cursed at the sight, but even as he did the Harper could see the conflagration was small. It would die down long before getting anywhere near them.

  Still, burning trees were toppling, sparks were wafting up into the night, and—what was that?

  Dalonder whirled to his left, sword flashing up, and saw Florin and Dauntless doing the same.

  Dark figures were racing at them, bursting out of the darkness, plunging out from between trees with swords and daggers flashing in their hands.

  “ ’Ware all!” Dauntless roared. “We’re under attack!”

  By then, swords were clanging against swords in hasty parries, men were grunting as they tried to slash right through the swords and strength of foes, and someone was screaming as the tip of Dalonder Ree’s sword slid through his hand, sending the dagger in it spinning away.

  “Klarn!” the wounded man called desperately. “Klarn, aid!”

  Steel clanged on steel. Dalonder Ree ducked one way and then hurled himself in another direction. The wounded man cried out in fear as his sword missed the dodging Harper entirely. Klarn didn’t come—and the wounded man was falling, life-blood gurgling out of his opened throat.

  Florin and Dauntless were hacking at three men, Klarn presumably one of them, and another had burst past the fray to come racing along the base of the gravel slope.

  Pennae ran after him, dagger in hand. The last thing the Knights of Myth Drannor needed just now was a foe lurking in the night to fell them from behind, one by one.

  It was a man, a little taller and stronger than she was but agile rather than hulking. There was something … not right about his head, as if something had shifted there, moving somehow since her first glimpse of him. A disguise slipping, perhaps.

  The man came to a boulder among the scree. He dodged out and around it, which meant she had just enough time to—

  Pennae threw the dagger in her hand, straight and hard. The man stiffened, arching back and grabbing at his shoulder; reflected firelight glinted off her little jutting fang there, just for a moment.

  Pennae smiled a tight little smile and hurled her second dagger.

  The man cried out as her dagger wobbled in the back of his upper left arm. Again he clutched at it. This time, her weapon fell out just before his clawing fingers got to it.

  He ran on, stumbling, and Pennae bent at the full run and plucked up that second dagger, dark and wet with his blood.

  By then, he was desperately climbing the cliff, stones bouncing down into her face with the clumsy haste of his climb.

  Pennae’s smile widened.

  Drathar peered out through the trees at the battle and shook his head. Dark figures seemed to be leaping on all sides, firelight flashing back reflections on swords and daggers here, there, and fleetingly everywhere. He couldn’t tell one combatant from another, stlarn it!

  No—wait—there! That was Florin Falconhand, and the man beside him must be an ally, being as they’d both had chances to thrust steel into each other and hadn’t. It was someone he’d seen before, someone—

  “Sark it!” he said. “Blast them both!”

  Invisibility be hrasted, he was going to hurl at least one foeblast!

  There! He did the swift casting and flung out his arms in the usual triumphant flourish—and watched the night erupt in sudden green-gold flame, a burst embroidered by screaming bodies being flung into the air and away.

  Heh-hah!

  Right. Enough glee. Drathar crouched and went back to peering hard through the tangle of trees. In the eyeblinking aftermath of his spell, with the fire in the distant trees dying down, it was getting harder and harder to see. He doubted he’d slain Florin or the other man. His spell had struck just short, hurling them away rather than shattering them. Unless a helpful tree had done those shatterings for him when they’d been flung against it …

  Not something he could trust in. He crouched, sinking into uncertainty again. Should he just blast away and so fell Boarblade and his men along with the Knights? Or save his spells to defend himself and leave Boarblade’s men be, to help him do his work for him?

  Would they help him? Or was he watching himself trade the Knights for new and stronger foes, who’d have the Pendant of Ashaba and be just as determined to defend it?

  Drathar shook his head again. And some folk thou
ght Zhentarim spent all their days preening and flogging slaves and spellhurling …

  Holy Fist, when was the last time he’d flogged a slave?

  In his fearful determination to get out of her reach, the man she’d wounded hadn’t chosen an easy way up the cliff. Pennae knew the face she’d just climbed, and she was unhurt to boot. She swarmed up the weathered stones, tasting the iron tang of her foe’s blood in her mouth as she bore the dagger between her clenched teeth. She was certain she’d passed him during her ascent, with quite some time to spare.

  More than time enough to plant that dagger in the turf, pluck up two rocks of the right size from among the many strewn about atop the cliff, move to just the right spot, and wait.

  Still and silent in the night, she hid in the darkness beyond the fading firelight splashing leaping reflections off the cliff face. The man never saw her until the first stone, flung full in his face, broke his jaw and left him stunned, just clinging to the weathered stone and fighting to try to think.

  “B-Boarblade,” he mumbled, after a moment, remembering his own name with some difficulty as he stared up into the merciless smile of the beautiful woman who’d crouched down to face him.

  Then her second stone slammed into his nose, shattering it; the ruptured hargaunt hissed wildly in pain and erupted in oily, foul-smelling liquid all over his face—and Telgarth Boarblade lost his hold.

  His despairing cry was very short. It wasn’t a particularly tall cliff. But with nothing but very hard rocks awaiting him at the bottom, and his head reaching them first, it didn’t have to be.

  That cry ended abruptly. Pennae looked down at the sprawled, broken figure in smiling satisfaction.

  Apprehension rose in her a moment later when she saw something dark and amorphous and leathery slither away from the man’s face and flow away across the rocks, rippling and creeping.

  Doust Sulwood darted into view, slithering down the scree slope from the ledge in some haste. He caught up to the eerie thing and battered it enthusiastically with his mace until it flapped wildly and stopped moving. Then he emptied an unlit lantern over it—and lit the dripping mess on fire.