by Keith Strohm
Then show me your loyalty. Step onto the great way to glory I’ve shown you. Slay these two wenches—who are in truth foul witches seeking to enslave you!
He spun an illusion of leering, fanged fiends, revealed to be dark and gloating behind the slipping masks of Kestra’s and Taeriana’s ardent smiles. He was still strengthening and improving those images when Agannor snarled, snatched his dagger out of its sheath, and drove it hilt-deep under Taeriana’s chin.
Pennae frowned. Until the drunkards were hauled upstairs and tossed into beds to snore the night away, the bedchambers in the Lion stood dark and empty, doors ajar, awaiting brief use by coinlasses and their clients.
From the landing where she stood, the stair continued on up to the roof, and a narrow, gloomy hall stretched before her, a surprisingly long way. Martess was already going from door to door on the left.
Pennae sighed, shrugged, and started down the doors on the right.
In the other bed, Bey backhanded Kestra so viciously across her face that her head boomed against the wall. Dazed, she had time neither to draw breath nor scream before she was choking on her own blood, slumped over the edge of the bed, dripping and dying.
The partition walls between the Lion’s bedchambers were but a single panel thick, and Agannor’s snarl had been unmistakable.
Pressed against the wall in one corner of the dark and vacant adjoining room, Martess listened, shuddering.
Plink. Plosh. Plink. Lifeblood, dripping. They’d just killed the two coinlasses.
Mother Mystra, preserve us all.
Agannor blinked at Bey.
“The master—he’s gone from my mind!” Agannor said.
“Mine too,” Bey muttered, “but I can still feel his regard. He’s watching us. Seeing if we stand strong, I think.”
He rose from the bed and looked down at what he’d done. He cursed, turning to the washstand and plunging his bloody dagger and hand into the full ewer of water. “We can’t let the watch see this.”
Agannor nodded and tugged forth his own fang, looking away as Taeriana’s jaw fell open in its wake, her sliced tongue dangling.
Wincing, he went to wash up, too, glancing at the closed but boltless door. “What’ll we—?”
“The roof,” Bey said grimly. “That stair went on up. Bundle them into the bed linens, get them up there for the crows, and use the wash water to get rid of the blood. We’ll be gone from Arabel long before rats start gnawing off fingers and dropping them around for folks to find.”
Agannor nodded.
“The master should be pleased,” Agannor said. “Gods, such power he has! None of this fighting orcs for a few coppers, winter after winter, while Purple Dragons give us suspicious glares. We’re going to be lords!” He grinned at Bey. “Any regrets?”
“Having to break from the Swords this swift and sharp,” Bey said. “I’d sort of hoped to bed our own Flame-hair, sooner or later.”
“Gods, yes, little Jhessail—though in truth I’d want Pennae. Now, there’s a wench!”
“Aye, if she were safely tied down so you’d live through it,” Bey said wryly. “Perhaps the master …”
Agannor grinned. “If we plead prettily enough?”
Pressed against the cold, hard panel, Martess shuddered. Dared she stay still and silent, to keep safe? Or she should run like nightwind to warn Pennae before they came for her?
If they caught her, it would be her blood dripping onto the floor—and all her friends would be doomed. These two would blame the Swords for any killings they did, falsely reporting to the watch or arranging matters so folk would think the Swords of Eveningstar were guilty.
My head is full of spells, yet I’m so helpless.
“There’s another mind very close to them,” Horaundoon muttered, frowning. Surely a mere coinlass wouldn’t be under magic to bring her back from a slaying?
Unless she’s not a mere coinlass …
A Harper? One of Vangerdahast’s spies?
Ignoring the hargaunt’s curious queries, Horaundoon closed his eyes and felt for that errant mind, putting a hand on the scrying orb to call on its energies, to make his seeking more powerful …
There! In the adjoining chamber there was a mind dark with fear and despair, with the glow of feeble spells riding it. One of the Sword magelings!
Charging into her mind would burn his own; even those feeble spells would burst, blaze, and sear, wrecking her mind but doing him harm he neither wanted nor dared suffer.
Horaundoon snarled and thrust himself back at the two handy mindworms, bringing Agannor and Bey out of their room in a rush. Sometimes a sharp sword is enough.
Martess heard the thunder of boots through the wall and thrust herself away from it, feeling sick. Against those two she was nothing, less than nothing. She must—
The door behind her burst open. She whirled, gasping in alarm, and managed the beginnings of a shriek before Agannor’s sword, his teeth bared behind it, burst into and through her, plunging like ice and driving her stumbling back.
Bey Freemantle, wearing the same wide and friendly grin she’d seen on his face so many times before, rushed in from the side.
His steel slid into her like fire, so hot against the cold of Agannor’s blade that Martess couldn’t breathe.
The spell she might have lashed them with, so that she would not perish without at least dealing pain to her slayers, faded unleashed as Martess Ilmra sank down into soft and endless darkness, fire and ice fading around her.
Pennae knew what that sliced-off scream meant.
Martess was dead or dying—and if the gods willed it, she’d see that Agannor and Bey followed her!
She came out of the room she’d been peering into like a dark cloak hurled along in a gale, cursing herself for leaving her sleep-dosed daggers back in their rooms. Well, she’d just have to make this a little more personal.
She was still four doors away from the one Agannor and Bey had ducked out of, running hard with her daggers raised, when something like a fog with fists descended on her mind.
Rolling and shaking Pennae like thunder, it struck her head from the inside thrice, a dozen times, and more, until she was sent stumbling.
Agannor grinned from ear to ear with a light like madness in his eyes. He raised his sword.
“Yes, my beauty!” Agannor hissed. “Come and play!”
His blade lashed out, flashing.
Fetched up bruisingly against the wall as the floor seemed to heave, Pennae clenched her teeth and fought for balance. Bey’s sword was coming at her, too.…
“Alura Durshavin, you’re one strong little tigress,” Horaundoon of the Zhentarim murmured, hurling his mind against hers again.
The scrying orb in front of him flickered, enfeebled by his use. Yet even as it drifted lower, he could see in its darkening depths the thief fling herself into a blackflip, as supple as any eel he’d ever watched eluding the nets of cooks back in the keep.
His two warriors thrust and hacked at her again—and both missed. Again.
Dazed, Pennae got herself turned around and fled.
Horaundoon bore down hard. If she got to the taproom, or managed to shout an alarm down the stairwell, he’d likely lose both of his Sword minions. She was worth ten of them, but she was fighting him even now. Taming her would take all his power and attention, day and night.
Hah! Horaundoon thrust into, shook, and tumbled Pennae’s mind, watching her moan and stagger. Bey was right behind her, his blade raised to—
In the orb he watched the thief thrust herself back and down, rolling into an erupting, kicking ball that had Bey toppling over her. Then she spun on one hip to scissor her legs around the ankles of the onrushing Agannor, and sent him helplessly crashing down onto Bey, shouting in fear with his sword stabbing the air.
Pennae sprang over them, or tried to, but the battering, snarling weight of Horaundoon in her mind drove her aside into a wall. She fell hard atop the two tangled, vigorously cursing warriors, rollin
g and kicking.
Agannor grabbed at her, tearing her leathers, and she sliced and stabbed at him viciously, managing to catch his palm briefly with the point of her blade. He shrieked in pain and snatched his hand back just as Bey’s sword thrust across her stomach, slicing leather with swift ease.
Pennae twisted, heaved, and managed to win free, her sprint down the hall now a whimpering crawl that had her clawing her way to her feet and leaning hard on the wall to keep from falling. Staggering, she slid along the wall, trailing smears of blood as Horaundoon hammered in her head and Bey pounded along the hall behind her, Agannor right behind him.
The stair had a rail, and Pennae caught hold of it just in time to swing herself up and aside as a sword bit deep into the floorboards she’d been standing on moments before.
Bey hacked at her again, and again, hewing air hard enough to smash ribs and limbs if were ever to hit the leather-clad thief.
Pennae ducked, kicked his knee hard to send him staggering back into Agannor, and raced up the stairs, hoping the trapdoor at its top wasn’t locked.
The gods were with her. A simple, through-two-straps bar kept anyone from opening it from above. Pennae plucked out the metal bar and smashed aside Bey’s seeking blade with it, leaving the sword ringing like a bell and him shouting at the eerie pain of a numbed sword hand.
Pennae was already across the roof, the slammed trapdoor bouncing in her wake, running hard for the next roof. It was the first of seven in the block, if she remembered rightly, and at least two of those shops had wooden stairs descending from their rooftops to balconies.
She jumped, landed awry as the foe in her mind slammed into her wits just as she was launching herself, and staggered sidewise until she fetched up against a crumbling fieldstone chimney, brittle old bird nests crunching underfoot. Pennae winced. If these head-splitting, nigh-blinding attacks continued, she’d best get down to street level, where at least she couldn’t die just from falling over!
Agannor shouted behind her, and Pennae hissed a curse and ran on, heading for the next roof—and the next stab inside her head.
Horaundoon frowned. Out in the open, the wench would swiftly best his two lumbering minions. He ached to finish her, to burst her mind like a egg flung against a wall … but—whiteblood—he’d been trying to do that for how long now? And still she fought him.
No, it was time to leave off trying to fry her wits to cast a spell that would send his orders thundering into the minds of a score of Zhent agents all over Arabel. Orders telling them it was high time they loaded their crossbows and went Pennae-hunting.
In the wake of the shrieks, shouts, and the ringing clang of swords, boots thundered on the stairs, followed by the booming of something heavy falling, twice.
“I’m going up there!” Florin snarled, struggling in the grip of the four grim, plainly clad Purple Dragons who’d risen from a nearby table to drag him down when he’d first drawn his sword.
“No, outlander,” one of them growled into his face as they twisted and strained together in a sweating, grunting heap on the floor, “you’ll not. Our orders—”
“Unhand Florin Falconhand, and get back, all of you!” Jhessail shouted, her high, usually gentle voice ringing out across the taproom of the Lion and bringing down a hush of tensely staring drinkers. She held a dagger in her hand, and bright flames raced up and down its blade. “Or I’ll cast the strongest spell I know, and bring down this tavern on us all!”
The attacks—thank Mask!—had ceased, but her head still throbbed as though she’d taken a solid mace-blow. Worse than that, other men seemed to have joined the chase: men with swords and daggers and no hesitation in using them. So where was the Lady Lord’s oh-so-efficient, thrice-accursed watch now?
Agannor stumbled along well in her wake, obviously winded, and Bey was even further back, but—naed!
An unwashed, stubble-faced man stepped out of an alley right in front of Pennae with a cocked and loaded crossbow in his hands. It cracked even as she flung herself aside and brought her daggers up.
A moment later, she was wringing a numbed and bleeding hand, the dagger that had been in it gone. She heard the crossbow bolt bounce and splinter on cobbles far behind her left shoulder.
“Naed! Hrasting bitch,” the man cursed, staring at her over his fired crossbow. “How in the tluin did you step aside from that?”
Pennae wasted no breath in a reply, but hurried toward him, hefting the dagger in her right hand. The man cursed again and flung the crossbow full in her face to buy himself time to drag out a rather rusty short sword.
Pennae launched herself at the wall, caught hold of a stone windowsill under a crudely boarded-over back window, and swung herself back hard, boots first, catching the man in the throat at about the same time he got his sword free.
He went over in a heap, his arms twitching in spasms, and Pennae landed hard, heels first, on his ribs.
Just who was chasing her now, was—
A crossbow bolt sang past her ear with the high, thrumming whine that meant it had only just missed her. Pennae snarled and darted into the alley.
A moment later, she came out of it again, sobbing as she flew helplessly back through the air, snatched off her feet and spinning in midair with a crossbow bolt right through her shattered shoulder.
Myrmeen Lhal looked up from the stack of decrees and dispensations she was rather wearily signing. That was the third alarm gong.
Three patrols called in as reinforcements? What the Hells was going on?
Boots thundered in the passage.
“Asgarth?” Myrmeen called out. “What’s all the tumult?”
“Those damn—ahem, those Swords adventurers! Men’re firing crossbows all over Palaceside!” the lionar shouted. “Beg pardon, Lady Lord!” he added in his next breath.
“Granted,” Myrmeen called, deep and loud, shaking her head in wry amusement. She’d expected the Swords of Eveningstar to get up to something after the day’s gentle tongue-lashing, but so quickly? And three patrols-worth of trouble?
“Gods above, Azoun,” she muttered, “you certainly can pick them.”
Myrmeen turned back to the piles of papers. Her war was here, on her desk. As usual. Now where—? Oh, yes, the third request for an escort to Candlekeep.…
Yet if that gong rang again, the Dragons would discover the Lady Lord of Arabel charging out there at the head of the answering patrol. Oh, yes.
Myrmeen glanced down the desk at her helm, currently serving paperweight duty on the ‘not yet seen’ pile.
The look she gave it was a longing look.
Weeping freely—gods, it hurt! She felt weak and sick inside, and kept falling. Oblivion lurked like eager dark shadows to claim her, but Pennae stumbled on.
Perhaps her foe had given up on cudgeling her brains and now rode the minds of this small army of men with crossbows who kept walking damn near into her, acquiring looks of recognition on their faces though she knew she’d never seen them before, and firing at her.
If they’d been better shots, she’d have a belly bristling with bolts by now, or a hole through her middle large enough even for clumsy Purple Dragons to thrust their helmed heads through.
Instead, Pennae just felt like she had a hole that size in her, at about shoulder level. She’d spewed her guts out all over the cobbles twice now, and had nothing left inside her to heave.
Another stride … another …
Pennae wanted so much to lie down on her face on the cobbles and just rest—but that would mean swift death for her, with Agannor, Bey, and at least two mysterious men in leathers following her.
She was leaving a bloody trail as she trudged, and probably a solid line of tears, too. She gave up clinging spiderlike to walls, because she’d kept falling from her perches to tumble helplessly back to the cobbles.
Yes, she was beginning to hate cobbles. Very solid things, cobbles … keep walking, Pennae.
“Hoy!” The face belonged to a bristle-mustached Purple Dr
agon, with a watch badge pinned to the baldric across his breast. Others, similarly garbed, were gaping at her from behind him.
“Evening, lads,” Pennae gasped. “Never seen a lass with a crossbow bolt through her before?”
Strong hands caught her as she stumbled, and the Dragon attached to them growled.
“So, maid, what befell ye, exactly?” he asked. “How came you to have a—”
“Florin!” someone distant called. It sounded like Islif.
“Hey, Florin!” someone—Semoor, for a handful of gold—even more distant chimed in.
“Pennae!” That nearby shout rang out like a war horn, cutting through the sudden hubbub of Purple Dragons calling “Ho!” to each other.
As she sank into the darkness that had been clawing at her for so long—the warm, welcoming darkness—Pennae smiled.
Florin Falconhand had come for her at last.
Horaundoon shook his head in weary exasperation. So many minds, fighting his.
He wiped his sweat-slick brow with a trembling hand, sighed, and sat back. He dared not stay linked—not with the very real risk that someone whose mind he was in would die, violently.
No, he’d dismiss the two Swords warriors as lost, and just watch things unfold through the orb. At the very least, it should be a good show.
“Lathander loves thee,” Semoor’s voice intoned through the gurgling waterfall of cool, blessed release that was sweeping through her.
Pennae blinked and tried to cough. Gentle fingers stroked her throat as tenderly as any lover, quelling her gagging.
“Tymora loves you, too,” Doust added from above those fingers. “And—hrast it—I do too.”
“And Florin really does,” Semoor said slyly.
“Thank you, Stoop,” Florin said firmly from somewhere above them. “That’s two potions, now?”
“We holy prefer to call them ‘healing quaffs,’ forester,” Semoor said, then grunted in startled pain.