by Ed Greenwood
“Well met and better parted,” Doust said, bowing his head to them with folded hands. “The Luck of the Lady be upon you, and shine back from you to please the Lord of Battles himself.”
“And the rosy glow of Lathander also, that Holy Tempus be most richly pleased,” Semoor added glibly, turning away before the two Dragons could see him rolling his eyes.
Dodging rumbling carts, they returned to the alley, where Islif greeted them grimly, “Swagger not too proudly, you two. Remember that Dragon we saw hurrying off? He went to report to someone-probably his duty commander. And who stands beside every duty commander?”
“A war wizard to mind him,” Florin said. “So we’re being watched-unless we can ‘disappear’ very quickly.”
“So let’s move!” Agannor growled.
“Wait!” Florin snapped. “Where’s Pennae?”
“Here,” came her voice, from the shadows down the alley. “I like to see where alleys lead to-in case I have to hurry that way. This one takes us past a very well guarded warehouse, into the heart of this block and then out its far side, onto a street that in that direction leads to the local temple of Tymora. Oh, yes: this is Arabel.”
“We know,” Semoor said grandly. “Yon Purple Dragons told us.”
“Well,” Pennae observed in dry tones, “they do have orders to assist simpletons.”
“The Lady’s House,” Florin said. “Let’s get to it! I don’t want to be standing here a few breaths from now trying to bluff my way past a few sternly disapproving war wizards. They may well take the view that we’ve disobeyed the king’s commands just by coming here.”
“Well said,” Bey growled, shoving Semoor forward. “Hasten, hrast it!”
In a few breaths they were all trotting along the alley, heading away from the busy street and the two watching Purple Dragons. The warehouse was a gigantic, very new stone building bristling with hard-eyed armored men with loaded crossbows in their hands-Agannor shuddered involuntarily-and the Swords hurried past it, out onto a street of rich-looking shops. Under ornate awnings, all faced Arabel through fine glass windows, through which could be seen ornate lanterns, glittering wares, and smartly uniformed nightguards standing watchfully within.
Pennae led the Swords north, past shops selling fine silk gowns, masks, and gem-adorned boots, and several dazzling shops that contained only several guards each, standing amid all manner of gemstones that flashed and glimmered back reflections from the rain-soaked streets. The street soon ended in a moot with a wider, busier way, down which could be seen three grand, towering buildings.
The most distant, central one matched the Dragon’s description of the temple to Tymora-and reeling out of its tall, ornate double doors, as the Swords strode purposefully toward it, came a large man in robes and a weathercloak of rich blue: a priest of the luck goddess.
They could tell what he was by what bounced on his ample chest and belly at the end of a heavy neckchain: the largest silver coin they’d ever seen, as wide across as both of Florin’s hands, bearing the face of a smiling yet dignified Tymora, rendered in the old fashion.
The priest wearing it was somewhat younger. He looked to be an energetic forty summers old or so. Beneath unruly brown hair, his nose, jaws, and ears were all as overlarge as the coin; it looked as if the head of a giant rode human-sized shoulders. He also looked (flushed scarlet and drooling slightly), sounded (by his incoherently slurred bellows), and smelled (Jhessail winced at the reek of strong spiced wine, laced around the edges with spew) very drunk.
As tall as Florin, and long-limbed, he covered much of the cobbles as he came staggering, growling half-audible oaths and complaints through his scraggly mustache.
“Wors’ novice ever? Worst novice ever? I doan’ think so! Rabra-Rabbraha-Radrabryn was a killer an’ a thief, an’ I… I never killed anyone yet, a-purpose, at leas’…”
He caught sight of Doust’s homemade Ladycoin and drew himself up to fix the Swords with piercing brown eyes. “Pilgrims, be ye? Hey?”
“Well,” Doust began, “not exactly…”
“ Doan’ go in there! Fellow Ladysworn, stay away from the House this night! They’ve all gone crazed-crazed, I tell thee!”
“Crazed?”
“Crazed, or my name’s not R-Rathan Thentraver.” He hiccuped. “Which ’tis. So, they are. Y’see?”
“Ahh,” Semoor ventured, “you’re saying this isn’t the best time for us to visit the temple?”
“S’right. Not.” Rathan waggled a finger. “Go ’way. Come back ’morrow. Better then. Trus’ me.” Drawing his cloak around him, he lurched away.
Semoor smirked at Doust. “Well, if they all drink like that, you chose the right faith, of us two.”
Doust reddened. “I did not ‘choose’ the Lady,” he said. “She chose me. Appearing to me in my dreams, so strongly that… well…”
He waved his hand, as if to hurl away Semoor’s suggestion, and stared after the reeling priest. Beyond Rathan, he saw a Purple Dragon patrol approaching briskly out of the night, a robed and hooded man marching grimly in their midst. “ Look you,” he said warningly.
“Another patrol yonder,” Pennae added, nodding down a different street. She peered in all directions, then pointed. “An inn! Hurry! ”
“ ‘The Weary Knight’?” Agannor read aloud. “Lass, ’tis right across the street from the citadel-which is also the city jail! Are you trying to save the Dragons trouble?”
“In the back door, fast,” she snapped, “and straight through, out the front. The moment I open that door and start talking to guards, no one act anxious or in a hurry. I’ll be haughty, and will likely tell some very large lies, hear you?”
Semoor rolled his eyes. “Now why does that not surprise me?”
“Purple Dragons everywhere,” Jhessail murmured as they ran. “Doesn’t this city have a watch?”
Bey laughed. “Lass, Arabel’s rebelled so often that the Dragons are the watch, these days! Just as the Blue Dragons serve in Marsember, the other city that’s none too happy to be ruled by the Dragon Throne!”
Then they were at the inn’s back door. Pennae whirled, snatched Florin’s sword out of its sheath, and held it up solemnly before her, blade vertical. Assuming a stern look, she opened the door.
Two startled nightguards shoved themselves away from where they’d been lounging against the walls, grabbing for their weapons.
Pennae ignored them, both hands holding the sword out before her as she strode between them with slow, stately tread.
“Hoy!” one guard told her, skipping sideways to get in front of her so he could bar her way with his arm. “Hold!”
“Hold what?” Semoor inquired innocently.
“Sirrah, make way,” Pennae told the man. “We are pilgrims of Tempus, the Drawn Sword.”
“You’re what? ” the other guard asked. “Well, you can’t all just come charging in here, after dark! This is-”
“One of Arabel’s best inns, I’ve heard,” Pennae said, “which is why we chose it. Make way, lest holy displeasure fall upon the Weary Knight! Make way! ”
Uncertainly, the two guards did so. “Uh, the steward of the house can be found straight down this hall, in the front-”
“Thank you,” Pennae called back in firm dismissal, pacing on in a stately manner, her sword held high.
Florin matched her gait, and so did Islif; the other Swords saw and did likewise.
Behind them all, the two nightguards traded looks, shrugged, and rolled their eyes. Truly, the strange-in-the-head guests came thick and fast, this time of year…
At the sound of the chime, Narantha Crownsilver put down her goblet of warmed zzar, rose, retied the sash of her gown, and went to the door.
It opened onto a smiling face.
“Uncle Lorneth,” she said in genuine pleasure, stepping back to let him in. “Zzar?”
“My thanks for your thoughtfulness, Ladylass, but I fear not. I’ve much clear-headed work still ahead of me this night.
”
“Work I can help with?” Narantha asked wistfully.
Her uncle hugged her. “Ahh, would that Cormyr had a dozen like you! You’re doing the Crown great service!”
Narantha grinned at him. “If I go on doing it well enough, will there come a time when I’ll truly be told what I’m doing? How it fits in with greater plans to confound the foes of Cormyr? Learn some deep secrets?”
Uncle Lorneth’s face grew solemn, and he laid a warning finger across her lips. “Little one,” he murmured, “you already know several deep secrets. That I’m alive, for one thing.”
“Wha-do Mother and Father not know? ”
“No, and they must not, yet, for fear they’ll tell ‘just a few close friends,’ and so warn certain folk who should not yet be warned. As for secrets, your mother and father have never known what you already know: that I’m among the most secret and highly placed agents of the Purple Dragon himself.”
Narantha smiled. “In a handful of days I’ve learned my own worth, found something useful to do-and drunk deep of adventure! ” She raised her goblet in salute.
“Actually,” Lorneth Crownsilver said brightly, “I think you’ll find that’s zzar…”
Then he turned his back in a flash, in case her snort of laughter heralded the goblet being flung at him.
It did not. When he turned around again, the glass was empty and Narantha was poised over it, chin on hands, regarding him with bright and eager eyes. “So, my highly secret uncle, what’s my next task?”
“There are always guards at the citadel gates, and around the palace,” Pennae snapped. “Just match my pace, keep walking, and don’t look guilty. Ignore the Dragons; to you, they’re… furniture.”
“Really?” Semoor murmured. “Remind me not to sit down on anything in your home.”
“If I had a home, Holy Wolftooth, you’d be the sort of man I’d turn away from my door,” Pennae hissed. “Now stop playing the fool! There are Dragons and war wizards all around us!”
“Strangely enough, I’d noticed as much,” he muttered as the Swords passed between the palace and the gaudy windows of Dulbiir’s Finery and Finer Promises, still bright at this late hour. The rain was no more than a light, clinging mist now, but the Swords were growing more worried about the clinging tendencies of the lawkeepers of Cormyr, patiently closing in around them.
“Pennae,” Florin murmured, “I hope you know where you’re-”
“I’m looking for an inn I know only by name,” she muttered over her shoulder. “It should be right along here… and if we’ve coins enough, or give good weapons in lieu, they’ll both give us rooms and help hide us.”
They walked in slow, steady procession the length of a long block ere Pennae relaxed with a sigh, and turned in at the door of the nearest corner building of the next block.
“The Falcon’s Rest,” Islif and Agannor murmured in rough unison, looking up to read the sign.
Pennae tapped at a small sliding panel in the door. When it slid aside, revealing only darkness, she announced, “We must go to ground, for the Dragons hunt.”
The door clicked open and a dry, elderly male voice said, “Then hurry in, turn to the right, and walk far enough to let all your fellows in behind you. Be welcome in the Rest.”
The Swords hastened inside, the door was closed, bolted, and barred, and lamps were unhooded to reveal a common room with a huge oaken stair rising up to unseen levels above. As they blinked at the staff of the Rest, who nodded welcome to them over loaded and ready handbows, the owner of a rather sly smile stepped back from a lofty landing on the stair, nodded, and stole away into deeper darkness.
The Swords of Eveningstar were in Arabel, and in the Rest. Which meant a certain someone, whose orders had been explicit and forceful, must be informed without delay.
Green adventurers are so easily baited and blamed. This was going to be fun.
Chapter 19
DARKSOME CESSPITS, AND MORE
Married thrice, and a lover of many men more, I have seen into the minds of many men with my spells. ’Tis astonishing, even after all this time, what darksome cesspits most men’s minds are.
Murathauna Darmeir
Forty Years Loose-Gowned: Memoirs of a Noble Lowcoin Lass published in the Year of the Wanderer
Narantha knew by now what she carried. The small coffer in her chatelaine held something Uncle Lorneth had told her to describe to the disloyal young lordlings as “my gift to you: a thing of pleasure magic deemed suitable only for those of noble blood by its makers, a priestess of Sharess and her lover, a priest of Siamorphe.”
Like all of her earlier offerings, it was a gem enspelled to display softly shifting scenes of beautiful unclad women in its depths, that she could handle safely but that would magically sink into the skin of the men she met with, and melt away.
Uncle Lorneth claimed not to know the precise details of what it did to those lordlings, but Narantha suspected it laid a magic upon them that allowed the war wizards to eavesdrop on their thoughts for signs of treason-and perhaps even trace their whereabouts.
She was well content to broaden the reach of the Crown against those who plotted against it, though she found most of the young, perfumed, arrogant lordlings she encountered even more stomach-turning than she’d thought them before coming to know Florin Falconhand.
Now there was a man…
Narantha purred at the memories that rose at the very thought of him, and almost bit her lip as she smiled. Then she remembered she was alighting from her carriage at the very gates of Erdusking House, and hastily schooled her face and mind to cool attention to the task at hand.
So far as the finer folk of the Forest Kingdom knew, the Lady Narantha Crownsilver was seeking suitable mates among the eligible male nobility of Cormyr. Her quest had commenced with this tour of brief courtesy visits, that favored no particular young lord, but allowed her to meet them all-alone and face to face-without the many distractions of revels and court balls.
Her gown was demure yet spectacular in its elegantly shaped and luxurious way, the spires of its high collar rising on either side of her elegantly piled and styled hair. Her earrings dangled a-sparkle with gems of the most exquisite gaudiness, and her eyes glowed as large and mysteriously dark as her maids could make them.
One of the Erdusking gateguards swallowed visibly as he handed her down; the other, kneeling before Narantha with his greeting-cloak flourished just so for her to tread upon, was devouring her hungrily with his eyes.
She gave him the briefest of winks, and made sure to advance her left foot first so her slit gown swirled to show him a daringly high glimpse of her upper thigh, but kept her face expressionless.
Having a servant in charge of a gate smitten with you might well come in useful in time to come.
Narantha carefully kept her face blank as she passed through the gate and felt the strange fluttering in her mind that meant a wizard’s probe was biting deep, battering against whatever it was that Uncle Lorneth had put in there to defend her.
She was annoyed at the invasion-but, uncomfortably, something inside her head was even more angry than she was.
“I’m beginning to truly like the lass,” Horaundoon said, in answer to the hargaunt’s inquisitive chime. “ ’Tis almost a pity she’ll be dead soon.”
The hargaunt gave forth a melodious rising burst of chimes.
“No,” the Zhentarim told it, “they’re not really gems at all. They look and feel like gems when my spells are complete, yes. That’s to stop anyone from destroying a mindworm before it goes into them.”
Horaundoon strode across the chamber to the articulated claws set atop a spell-scorched pedestal, and the faintly glowing not-gem in their grasp. He plucked it forth and turned it in his hand, watching tiny sparkling motes of unbound magic play along its facets.
“A beautiful stone, or so it appears, with a sequence of spell-images in its depths, of languid unclad maids that fade in and out of view in an endless cycl
e. They make the males Narantha’s subverting for us pick up the stone, to gaze in at the beauties more closely.”
The hargaunt chimed again. Horaundoon put the stone back into the claws, and smiled a slow wolf’s smile. “The moment they touch this mindworm of mine, a spell floods into them, imparting such intense pleasure-the greatest rapture most of them will ever know-that they clutch and hold it, enthralled by the sensations, as it melts into them. Conquering another mind in this ripe-for-plucking kingdom.”
The Erduskings were a suspicious house, it seemed. Two hulking guards-in full plate armor, all black enameled and teased into spike points in many impractical places, and worn with skirling, clashing scabbard chains-met her at the grand entry doors with their visors down and pointed the way she was to proceed with the spikes on the heads of their battle-axes. Then they escorted her, their boots making ominous thunder on the thick owlbear rugs.
Up a grand and seemingly endless stair with steps broad enough to be landings, then down a passage past the stuffed and mounted heads of many beasts who looked quite annoyed to have been slain by an Erdusking, to the double doors that led to an audience room furnished in old Erdusking armor and yellowing marble heads of Erdusking ancestors.
Narantha’s quarry stood alone in the center of the room, smiling ever so slightly. The eldest son and heir of House Erdusking had to dismiss the guards no less than three times before they reluctantly stepped out of the room, closed its doors-and undoubtedly took up swords-drawn positions on the other side of them.
The treasure they were guarding seemed hardly worth the trouble.
Malasko Erdusking was tall, hook-nosed, and cruel of face and manner, supercilious when he wasn’t being openly lustful. The reek of his oiled, dyed, jet-black hair made her nostrils flare and her throat tighten, and Narantha had to fight for the control of her face and eyes she’d need to fulfill her latest delivery for Uncle Lorneth.