Swords of Dragonfire

by Greenwood, Ed

  Starmarlee’s jaw and throat exploded in gore, and the swordcaptain reeled helplessly forward, past Dauntless and under the knees of the Zhent leaping after him. Which left only Starmarlee’s slayer between Dauntless and the way out.

  It was a matter of swift and burning satisfaction to butcher that Zhentilar and charge past him, still hot with rage, back out into—

  Utter darkness. There must be doors in the common room above that could be swung down over the stairs, and that thrice-cursed innkeeper must have closed them!

  Locked them, too, no doubt, dragged a weight atop them, and gone to fetch weapons with which to greet the face of an ornrion straining to heave things aside and gain freedom. Well, his belt axe was a puny thing, meant more for kindling and smashing locks and hasps than for fighting, but if he had to hew through doors—or the cellar ceiling, elsewhere—he would. After killing every last Zhentilar down here, of course.

  Dauntless had already stepped aside along the wall, out of sheer warriors’ instinct, and turned to make ready to deal death to Zhentilar in the dark. Strike the first man down from one side, then get across to the other to await the second.

  There! He thrust hard and low at the faint gleam in the darkness, and was rewarded by a snarl of pain and the heavy thud of a man falling precipitously to his knees. He drove his blade down into an unseen back, twisted it, and vaulted over the now-screaming man to the far side of the unseen door.

  The second Zhentilar came through in a rush, with the third just behind him, both men veering sharply aside, in different directions, as they burst into the darkened room. Which meant one ran right onto the ornrion’s waiting blade, and Dauntless was able to swing the impaled man around as a shield against the other. The man whirled at the sound of his comrade’s sobbing gasp, charged toward the sound, stumbled over the Zhentilar Dauntless had already felled, and came blundering into his impaled fellow, whom he hacked and stabbed enthusiastically from behind. Dauntless waited until a deep slash left the man’s sword stuck deep in the ribs of his dying fellow, and then stepped nimbly around to drive his dagger into the man’s neck.

  The man groaned loudly, as the last Zhentilar—unless there were more beyond those Dauntless had seen in the room—hurled a blazing leather glove through the illusory wall, and followed it with lit lantern in one hand and sword gleaming in the other. This let Dauntless see him well enough to act before the man caught sight of Dauntless behind the dying Zhentilar—or the two Zhentish swords Dauntless had just thrown at him.

  The Zhentilar struck one blade aside with his lantern, but the second one broke it, plunging the cellar into darkness for the space of a breath or two, ere the warrior of the Brotherhood started to burn. Spitting curses, the Zhentilar staggered back, wildly waving one blazing, doused-in-lamp-oil arm in a vain attempt to extinguish the licking flames.

  Dauntless devoted himself to plucking up and throwing every weapon he could find, a storm of tumbling steel that the raging Zhentilar struck aside with his own sword, roaring as the pain went on clawing at him, until he turned to stagger back through the hidden door, clawing at the fastenings of his own leathers.

  Whereupon Dauntless bent, picked up the last sword, and brutally swept the Zhentilar’s ankles out from under him, hurling the man head-first onto the cellar floor. The ornrion pounced and stabbed. He cut away a big piece of leather, laying bare the dying man’s shuddering back and giving himself a torch of burning-edged leather cloaking the tip of his borrowed blade.

  He retrieved his own sword from the Zhentilar he’d left it buried in and strode grimly around the room. Dare he try the stairs? Or should he seek another way out of these cellars? He gave the stairs a teeth-bared glare, then peered around at all the bodies and the—

  There! Hanging from the back of the stairs! A lantern … two lanterns. Well-made, almost new candle-lanterns with sliding shutters and hot-hoods, the candles as thick as his wrists and shielded on three sides with bright-polished steel. Dauntless lit them both from the burning scrap of leather and thankfully let it fall to the stone floor.

  Well, these made him a target, but bought him the chance to explore down here. And he’d best be about it. He hung one lantern from a ceiling-hook to light up the room, adjusted the other to shine a directional beam, and started past all the bodies, shaking his head at all the dead war wizards. Vangerdahast would blast this place clear over the Thunder Peaks when he found out.

  Unless he didn’t find out in time, and this end of Cormyr was all Zhentarim territory by then.

  Which, again, meant one Ornrion Taltar Dahauntul had to get out of here and report back to Arabel. “This Ornrion Dahauntul,” he muttered aloud. “There is no other.”

  He stalked past body after body, never noticing the lone eye watching him from under the sprawled and gory Yassandra Durstable, heading for whatever else awaited behind the stairs, besides lanterns.

  There came a sound from overhead, of something heavy being dragged aside, and heavy footfalls. At the top of the cellar stairs.

  Dauntless set down his lantern carefully, turned and raced back to the one he’d hung up, hooded and shuttered it but left it hanging, and raced back to the lantern on the floor. More bumps from overhead, as things were flung aside.

  He shuttered the second lantern and hunkered down just behind it amid the bodies, shielding his face with one forearm and hefting his sword before letting it rest ready in his lap. Hopefully he looked dead.

  If not … well, he’d die fighting a breath or two from now.

  Whatever had covered the stairs was flung back, and light flared, floating down the stair in eerie silence. Dauntless peered over his arm.

  A glowing ball of light—bright-glowing air, not flames—floated down into the cellar as silently as a falling feather, flying off into a far corner of the room, as boots struck the stairs. Lots of boots, belonging to dozens of Zhentilar warriors in full black battle armor, drawn swords and axes gleaming in their hands and one—no, three—Zhentarim wizards striding in their midst.

  Gods bedamned above. Wizards!

  He was going to die here. He was going to die now, or a breath from now. Well then, gods, Dauntless thought, see that you save Cormyr.

  Chapter 14

  DEAD WIZARDS DANCING

  Call up your mightiest spells, archmages,

  For I would see stern high castles riven

  Great dragons fall in flames from the sky

  And dead wizards dancing.

  Tethmurra “Lady Bard” Starmar

  from the ballad

  Raise High My Cup of Dreams

  published in the Year of the Crown

  The cellars end here,” Jhessail said, running one slender hand along a dark, damp stone wall. “So unless you know a way to blast through solid stone …”

  “This is it,” Florin agreed. “We fight and die right here.” Abruptly he put an arm around her, swept her against his chest, and kissed her cheek.

  Startled, Jhessail looked up at him, heart quickening. She lifted her face to offer her lips for a real kiss, but he gave her a fond smile instead, let go of her, and murmured, “Come. Our holynoses need our aid. They’re hurt worse than I’d thought.”

  Frowning, Jhessail did as he bade, silently turning to join Islif in binding torn strips of Doust’s formerly grand tunic around the worst wounds Zhentish blades had dealt Semoor and Doust.

  The two priests lay pale-faced and silent on the floor, staring up at the dark ceiling. Above them, Islif dripped blood on their chests from a wound of her own, but shook Florin’s hand off impatiently when he reached for her. She’d stripped off her armor-coat so as to be able to move quietly, and her under-leathers were dark with welling blood.

  “We,” Doust husked, from beneath their working hands, “are a mess.”

  “A valiant mess,” Semoor corrected him, faintly.

  “Next time,” Islif said grimly, “we go not chasing cellar routes so swiftly as to leave our healing potions up in our rooms.”


  “Next time, she says.” Doust coughed, closing his eyes and shuddering as Islif’s probing fingers found a broken rib in the gore all down his side. “Is Pennae still alive, d’you think?”

  “That lass could steal the gods’ undergarb right off their loins and get away clean,” Islif said. “Worry not a whit about her.”

  Then she lifted her head sharply, listened, and hissed, “Not a sound! Someone’s coming!”

  The Knights were lying or kneeling in the dimness behind and below the golden heap of Dragonfire treasure with its ring of guardian swords, where the cellar floor fell away in two broad, descending steps, to end in a dark and mildew-reeking recess.

  They fell tensely silent, hands stealing to weapons, as a lot of someones stealthily approached the heaped treasure from the other side. Someones that brought their own steady, unwavering light with them.

  There were gasps of wonder, and muttered oaths of awe.

  “Touch nothing,” a man snapped, speaking with absolute authority, his cold voice startlingly loud and near. “This treasure’s mere illusion—all of it—but the swords are real enough, and they fly and slay more surely than our best spells.”

  Jhessail was on her knees crouched over Doust, right at one end of the heap, and now risked silently moving her head to the side just far enough to let one eye peer past the glowing riches.

  She found herself staring at a sphere of light, hovering above Zhentilar warriors in gleaming black plate armor with swords and axes in their hands. There were too many of them for her to count, crowded together gaping at the Dragonfire treasure, and three robed men stood among them. Wizards. Zhentarim wizards.

  “Just illusion,” the oldest mage agreed. “We’ve searched and scoured this place a dozen times since I was posted here. There’s nothing—”

  The young wizard beside him stiffened, something like a wisp of smoke encircling his head. Then the smoke was gone—into him—and he calmly drew his dagger, turned, and drove it hilt-deep into the oldest wizard’s nearest eye.

  Everyone shouted, the murderous young mage crumpled as that smoke arrowed out of his eyes—leaving them dark and staring pits—and the old wizard shrieked as he started to topple.

  Three blades thrust deep into the young mage before he hit the floor. The smoke raced right at the last mage, who batted at it vainly, shouting out words of warding that seemed to echo and roll away across vast distances, despite the stone walls and dark ceiling of the cellar. Zhentilar lifted their blades in a ring to menace him—and Jhessail bit her lip to keep from gasping aloud as she saw a lone warrior appear in the doorway behind the Zhents, lurching forward like some sort of monster.

  He was purple-skinned, bloated, and wept spumes of dripping foam from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. He had a wand in his hand.

  It flashed, blasting Zhents into tumbling ruin before they could even shout. The warrior aimed the wand and triggered it again, smiling crookedly beneath unseeing, foaming eyes as more Zhents died.

  Duthgurl Lathalance hated to miss a good fray.

  Pennae rolled the body of the war wizard off her as she tugged the end of Yassandra’s belt free. It was hung so heavily with interesting and useful-looking pouches, keys, and magical-looking tools suspended on thongs that she’d have no way of carrying all this plunder if she didn’t bring along the belt that held them too.

  It took but a moment to buckle that slender leather loosely around her hips, turn to give the ornrion a warning glare across the heaped bodies—he lay motionless, still feigning death—and then creep across the chamber, to see where all the Zhents had gone.

  Her fellow Knights were somewhere beyond that doorway, and they’d need the help of all the Watching Gods to handle three Zhentarim, to say nothing of a small army of Zhentilar warriors—

  From the other side of the doorway, men shouted in sudden, angry alarm, swords clanged, and there was a loud whoosh that sounded like magic. Someone screamed.

  Pennae snatched up a fallen dagger from the floor and started to run. If she could hurl it at a Zhentarim wizard from behind, and mayhap stop him from crisping Florin with a spell—

  She stopped in the doorway, stared open-mouthed in astonishment at what she saw, and then hurled herself back and aside, out of the way.

  It was too late for a hurled dagger to save anyone.

  The ring of Zhentilar staggered back from the last wizard standing as a battlestrike blossomed from his fingers, its many glowing missiles leaping like darts to plunge sickeningly into their vitals.

  Several of them turned to join the rush at the purple-skinned man with the wand, but others struggled forward again, determined to hack down the mage who’d commanded them mere moments ago.

  He fed them another battlestrike, the searing magic missiles sending them reeling helplessly once more—but a hurled axe bit deep into the wizard’s head and sent him staggering.

  The Zhentilar who’d flung it sprang after it, pouncing viciously on the mage and bearing him to the floor, where the Zhentilar slit his commander’s throat ere sawing at his neck. He didn’t stop until the mage’s head rolled free.

  Over that Zhentilar’s head the purple-skinned man’s wand flashed repeatedly, spitting death at Zhent after Zhent as they charged desperately at it, the Dragonfire glow flaring to gloriously blinding brightness whenever wandfire touched it.

  Zhent after Zhent toppled, but the wand-blasts suddenly waned into more feeble strikes, and a Zhentilar sword managed to reach and bite into the wand.

  It burst in a small star of brief sparks, and the singing shriek of that sword exploding into shards.

  Shards that butchered the Zhentilar who’d wielded it, the lacerated body tumbling apart in bloody cantels, and diced Lathalance’s arm to the elbow.

  Zhentilar roared in triumph and leaped forward, slashing and thrusting at the undefended purple warrior.

  Seemingly heedless of pain, as blade after blade sliced into him, that lone warrior doggedly drew his sword and started to stab and hack them right back.

  Jhessail winced more than once as the ruthless butchery unfolded. The purple-skinned warrior seemed heedless of his own doom, and dealt much death before he was overwhelmed, and swarming Zhentilar hewed his rotting body apart.

  A wisp of smoke curled up from it like a rearing serpent, and out of long habit the Zhentilar drew back, for in the Black Brotherhood magic was not to be trifled with.

  A second wisp arose from the remains of the beheaded Zhentarim commander, rearing up in like manner.

  The two serpentine plumes of smoke seem to regard each other for a long moment, as if in converse—and then, as one, they turned and raced through the doorway, to arrow up the cellar stairs together.

  With a ragged roar, the surviving Zhentilar charged after them.

  As the last Zhentilar warrior—there were a dozen left, no more—pounded back up the cellar stairs, Pennae rose from among the old barrels and crates, darted along the wall, and slipped through the doorway, keeping low and moving fast.

  Despite knowing what she’d find, the Zhent bodies were piled and strewn in such profusion that she almost overbalanced skidding to an abrupt halt. Beyond the heaped corpses the Dragonfire treasure glowed in unaltered splendor.

  Pennae gave it a wry smile. Deceptive and deadly, like so much else in Faerûn.

  Then she picked her way carefully past all the dead men, keeping to the walls and wending her way as quietly as possible, until she could round the far end of the treasure and see—

  A sword, leaping at her face!

  “Hold hard, there!” she hissed, springing back.

  Islif gave her a level look from the other end of the sword. “Next time, warn me. We still have ears, you know.”

  “Yes,” Pennae hissed, “but we’re not the only ones still alive down here, even now! That cursed ornrion from Arabel is here! Alone, I think.”

  “Spew of the gods!” Florin growled. “He does love us, doesn’t he?”

  Pennae nodded sourly, and
then peered more closely at all of the Knights. “Will our holynoses live, d’you think?”

  Islif shrugged. “If we could reach our healing potions, I’d feel a lot happier answering that.”

  Pennae regarded her fellow Knight expressionlessly for a moment, and then tugged open her leathers to reveal her dethma of soft, well-worn leather. Her fingers sought something beneath the swell of her breasts, and tugged it forth: a gleaming steel vial, cork-stoppered and wax-sealed, with the shining sun symbol graven on it. One of the healing potions they’d gained from Whisper’s hoard. She held it out to Islif.

  Who frowned. “Where did you …?”

  “I don’t go into battle without essentials,” Pennae murmured.

  Islif regarded her for a moment in silence, and then said, “Thank you.”

  Pennae shrugged. Then she looked along at the Knights again, nodded slowly, and asked, “Florin? If Jhess and Islif are enough to tend and guard the stricken, care to join me in trying to find a way up out of these cellars?”

  Florin looked at Jhessail, and then at Islif, collected two slow nods, and said, “Yes.” He hefted his sword. “I take it things have quieted down out there, in the rest of the cellars?”

  Pennae grinned mirthlessly. “You could say that.”

  In the seemingly deserted common room of the Oldcoats Inn, Old Ghost and Horaundoon floated lazily in the shadows of the rail at the top of the cellar stairs, waiting for their next prey.

  Not that they had long to tarry idle. Eleven wild-eyed Zhentilar warriors charged up the stairs, waving swords and axes and thinking of nothing more than getting away from whatever strangeness had just slain so many of their fellows—and three rather capable Zhentarim wizards to boot.

  Old Ghost and Horaundoon slid into the foremost pair of Zhents as they gained the top step, made them smile at each other in grim satisfaction, and then compelled them to turn and strike at their fellows.