“Easily enough done, if ye quit this place and work no magic nor scheme directly against Cormyr, its Royal Magician, its rulers, or its territory. Seek to subvert or bring about the death of an Obarskyr, Manshoon—or do anything more in Halfhap—and I will deal with ye. Permanently.”
He turned to face the Zhentarim once more, smiling, and added softly, “Thy schemes entertain all Chosen, but we can find others to afford us such entertainment. Mystra can show us everything. So think on this calmly, and as the merchants on thy own docks say: ‘consider well, and cut thy losses.’ ”
Manshoon snarled wordless fury, spat in Elminster’s direction, and vanished.
Leaving Vangerdahast and Elminster looking at each other.
“What …” The white-faced Royal Magician of Cormyr swallowed hard, ere he managed to whisper, “What dare I say to you?”
Elminster lifted one bristling eyebrow. “Ye could try the two most appropriate words in all Faerûn, lad: Thank ye.”
“Thank ye—you,” Vangerdahast whispered, so softly that his voice was almost soundless.
Elminster clapped him on the shoulder like a kindly old uncle. “Now, was that so hard? Ye’d best leave this place and get back to work: ye have a worm in thy bosom to find and slay. Ah, before ’tis too late, as the bards say.”
“A—a worm? You know who the traitor is?”
“ ‘Traitors are,’ ” Elminster corrected kindly—and vanished.
Leaving Vangerdahast to stare at where the Old Mage of Mystra had been standing and let loose a string of heartfelt oaths that made the Purple Dragons now hastening up to him grin in admiration—and the wealthiest Halfhap merchant’s wife hurrying up behind them drop her jaw in scandalized outrage.
She was just drawing breath for her first blistering words when the Royal Magician’s gaze fell upon her.
“Later,” he snapped, before she could say a word. Then he, too, was suddenly gone.
A raging Manshoon appeared at the center of the magnificent dark star carpet in his bedchamber, strode across the room like a storm wind, and slammed his fists into the splendid wood panelling beside the door as if trying to batter it right through the stone wall behind it, out into the passage beyond.
“Entertainment?” he roared. “I’ll show him entertainment!”
Whirling around, he stalked back across the room to his spellbooks, viciously backhanding The Shadowsil out of the way as she came hurrying through a side-door, worry on her face and a wand ready in her hand.
Snarling, Manshoon jerked down one heavy tome, and then another. They thundered down onto his polished desk, he flung them open—and stepped back in horror as a body appeared out of nowhere, sprawled faceup atop them.
Though it had the semblance of an intact corpse, The Shadowsil’s gasp told Manshoon he wasn’t imagining what he’d just noticed. The dead man’s head, torso, arms, and legs were all neatly arranged, in their proper places, but were in fact severed, separate pieces, all slowly oozing dark gore all over his most precious grimoires. He’d already recognized the face. Himself.
As Manshoon stared down at his clone, its lips moved and Elminster’s voice issued from them, saying, “Aye. Entertainment.”
The air was thick with dust, and the coughing, choking Knights, Laspeera, and a tattered and dusty Dauntless all lay in a heap, entangled with each other. The ceiling no longer groaned and shivered into shards—but it now hung just above them, nowhere more than waist-high, held up on the points of nine floating, glowing swords.
Pennae eyed the Dragonfire swords longingly. They were so close that she could easily have stroked the golden sheen of three of those blades from where she lay. Yet it was obvious that trying to take even one might well cause a collapse, and death for everyone.
She sighed. “Now what?”
Half-pinned beneath her, Florin lifted a long arm to point down their low-ceilinged prison at one of the doorways that had been outlined in sparks by the awakening of the Dragonfire magic. It was the only portal not now walled away by rubble, and it continued to twinkle, wavering slightly as they stared at it.
“We take the only way out,” the ranger-Knight said, “and hope for the best.”
Jhessail shuddered. “And if it leads into somewhere alive with snarling beasts? Or wizards hurling spells at us?”
Florin shrugged. “I haven’t avenged Narantha yet,” he said softly. “So I cannot die. Wherefore, if you keep behind me, you should be safe.”
Jhessail stared at his eyes and shivered.
Florin looked up and down the tangle of Knights and Crown folk, and pointed again at the portal. “I say again: we chance the portal. Now.”
“And we don’t even touch any of those swords,” Islif added, looking at Pennae. “Not one, and not even for an instant. So shift your selves carefully. Let’s move.”
“Our holynoses?”
“Drag them. Gently.”
Semoor groaned theatrically. “Oh, yes. ‘Drag me. Gently.’ Wonderful.”
“Upon second thinking,” Islif said, “bring Doust and leave the noisy one behind to guard these valuable magic swords. We should be able to return in a year or so. He won’t lack for entertainment, nor starve; he can chew on his own words.”
“Drag me please,” Semoor pleaded, quickly.
“Aye, I’ll drag you,” Dauntless growled. “Lady Mage?”
Laspeera had seemed senseless, but her eyelids fluttered as he shook her gently. “Lady Laspeera? Lady of the war wizards?”
She gasped, opened one eye, winced and gasped again, and finally murmured, “I-I’ll be all right. My head … someone just cast spells, up above us, that smote my head like a hammer.”
“Oh?” Semoor asked brightly. “You’ve been smitten with hammers before?”
“Yes, Holy Wolftooth,” Laspeera replied, “I have. If it’s a sensation you’re seeking to know firsthand, I’m sure Ornrion Dahauntul can oblige you, when we reach a place that has a hammer.”
“And room enough to swing it,” Dauntless grunted, as they crawled down the chamber, clambering through the rubble until they could pass—one by flaring one—through the waiting portal.
Dauntless found himself at the rear of this undignified journey, with his leathers in tatters and all trace of anything that might have been deemed a Purple Dragon uniform all but gone. Though he was behind everyone, Laspeera turned in front of the portal, frowning, and waved him through.
He hesitated. “Lady? Is this wise?”
“Disobeying my orders?” she muttered, eyes catching fire. “No, not wise at all, Ornrion Dahauntul!”
He nodded, bowed his head wordlessly, and crawled past her into the waiting, silent fire.
Laspeera sighed and shook her head. It was by merest chance she’d happened to remember the potions. Gods above, was this the beginning of getting old?
No matter. That could be worried about later. Right now, she had to crawl back, paw around in the rubble to find them, and bring them along.
“Doing what is needful and best for the realm,” she murmured, smiling wryly. “Just as I do every day.” She winced her way over some knee-jabbing fragments of stone. “Well, ’tis a life.”
With one arm cradling potions, she turned once more to face the waiting portal, crawled a little way, and then stopped and looked longingly up at the nearest Dragonfire sword, floating so near, its glowing point so close overhead.
Upon a whim she silently reached for one. Its glow blazed up as if in welcome as her long fingers got close …
Then Laspeera of the Wizards of War shrugged, smiled, shook her head, drew her arm firmly back, and used it to crawl steadily through the portal.
Lord Prester Yellander stood at the back door of his hunting lodge, and stared out into the depths of the Hullack Forest, at a wild and familiar beauty that didn’t seem to hold any answers.
Ignoring the questioning looks the swordjacks guarding the door were giving him, Lord Yellander hauled the door shut, dropped its bar into place f
or good measure, and turned back to face Lord Blundebel Eldroon.
“I still don’t know what to do now,” he snapped, waving an angry hand. “So speak. ‘Confer with me worriedly,’ as the writers-of-plays say. Everything seems to be going wrong.”
Lord Eldroon said, “I have little comfort to give. You saw what I saw.”
The two nobles exchanged grim looks. Both of their Halfhap portals now opened into sagging, splintered-wood ruin. It seemed the Oldcoats Inn had been destroyed. Purple Dragons wading in that rubble had seen and shouted at the bullyblades Yellander and Eldroon sent through the portals to learn more. Those blades had hastily returned, but there was no telling how soon Purple Dragons might—would—come flooding into the hunting lodge through those portals.
“We must put this all behind us, or our heads and shoulders will soon want for each other’s company,” Yellander muttered. Then he clapped his hands, drew himself up briskly, and went back to the door.
“Brorn, Steldurth: Bring all the lads in here! At once!” he barked. To Eldroon’s silent, questioning look, he murmured, “Later.”
When his four-and-ten surviving bullyblades were assembled, Lord Yellander crisply directed them to heap the furniture in the room into two long barricades well out from the walls, facing the two portals both before and behind.
“Poisoned bolts,” he commanded. “You are to await and fell anyone coming through these magical ways except Lord Eldroon or myself—or anyone with us, if we tell you to refrain from slaying them. Keep at this duty in shifts, until I order you to cease, even if that’s a tenday or more hence. Use the other rooms to sleep, eat, and cook. Keep hidden behind the barricades when in this one, and keep all doors closed. If Purple Dragons come to the outer doors, you know not where I am, and are guarding these portals—which just appeared, startling myself and the Lord Eldroon very much—for the safety of the realm, awaiting our return with war wizards to deal with them. You’ve never been through them, you don’t even want to go near them, and you don’t know where they lead.”
Collecting their nods of obedience, Yellander nodded curtly back at his men and turned away, tapping Eldroon’s forearm in a silent direction to walk with him.
Together they strode through the door that led into a retiring room, and thence to Yellander’s bedchamber. As the door swung shut behind them, Yellander silently directed Eldroon to help him lift and set into place its inner door-bar, as soundlessly as possible.
Then he hurried into the bedchamber, turned immediately through a door to enter the adjoining jakes, and turned again to pass through a small door into a wardrobe. Eldroon followed silently, following Yellander down a dark row of hanging cloaks, breeches, doublets, and boots, to a sliding panel at its end that flooded the wardrobe with cold blue light. There was just room in the cubicle beyond for them both to stand, breast to breast, without touching the portal itself. Yellander slid the panel closed again.
“Where?” Eldroon whispered, jerking his head at the cold blue fire so close to them.
“Suzail. Where we’ve been these last two days, engaged in the longest and most fascinating game of castleboard either of us has ever played.”
“Ah. Are we off to slay Crownsilver?”
Yellander lifted an incredulous eyebrow. “While he can still play the guilty traitor responsible for all? Far from it!” He inclined his head toward the panel they’d just come through and murmured merrily, “Truly, ’tis amazing, in a realm so well governed and so strongly held, the sort of thieves, ravagers, and blackguards that so swiftly infest the private hunting-lodge of even the most upstanding noble in their absence, and work lawless deeds so evil as to verge on treason!”
Eldroon smirked.
Yellander’s reply was a shrug and the words, “Or so my tale runs, as I stand staunchly behind it!”
The portal swallowed him, then did the same to Eldroon an instant later.
Wherefore neither lord heard the door of Yellander’s bathing chamber open in the next moment, and a fully restored Ghoruld Applethorn step out of it, wearing a crooked smile.
“Yes, you oh-so-clever conspirators,” he murmured. “Run to your spies at court, to see how many war wizards have fallen. And so present yourself to Vangerdahast as the traitors he’s looking for. And while he’s gloating over you …”
He grinned broadly, strode across the bedchamber until he was as far as he could get from Yellander’s private portal, and teleported away.
Chapter 17
THE KNIGHTS GO TO WAR
Oh, but the realm should tremble
If ever the Knights go to war.
Ilmdrar of Zazesspur
Dreams of a Dark Future:
A Sage’s Visions Regarding Fair Tethyr
published in the Year of Shadowed Blades
Keep moving,” Florin murmured, as Dauntless strode out of the blue fire, found himself in a dank, utterly dark stone passage somewhere underground, and faltered. “Two paces. That should give Lady Laspeera room enough not to run into you.”
Dauntless growled agreement and took his two paces. He could tell by the warm ghost of breath that someone was standing near him. He wrinkled his nose, breathing in leather and a faint whiff of sweat. She-sweat, coming from someone as tall as him. Islif. “So, where are we?”
Islif said not a word, but Semoor offered brightly, “Somewhere underground and dark.” His voice sounded as if he was slumped against the wall a few paces on. Or lying on the stone floor.
Dauntless growled again, letting a little of his anger into it.
“Somewhere utterly unfamiliar to us,” Jhessail said quickly, from beyond Semoor. “I can give us light, but Lady Laspeera’s magic may be far better than—”
The cold blue fire flickered again. Laspeera stepped out of it, stopped, and asked calmly, “Where are we?”
“I was hoping you might be able to help us with that,” Florin said, from beside her. “Jhessail can give us light to see by, but if you’ve a spell that would serve better …”
“No. Jhessail, please do.”
The casting was simple, and when it was done two spheres of flickering light appeared above Jhessail’s palms. She willed them to the ceiling—damp, of large fitted stone blocks, and low overhead—and sent them past herself a little way, showing them all a long, straight passage lined with well-dressed stone. Then she sent them bobbing past the Knights in the other direction, veering around either side of the portal and on, to illuminate more of the same.
“Very exciting,” Semoor commented. “Not quite the thrill the inn became, but—”
Laspeera handed him a potion, and another to Doust. “Your healing potions,” she murmured. “Drink, everyone who stands in need.”
When Islif shook her head, the war wizard’s voice sharpened. “In the name of the Crown of Cormyr, Islif Lurelake, I order you to drink one of these. Stubborn heroes are usually soon too dead to accomplish anything.”
Islif nodded, took the proffered potion, and drank.
“Still dark, dank, and utterly unfamiliar,” Doust commented, looking down the passage. “So, where are we?”
An instant later, Florin snapped, “Pennae, get back here!”
Behind their backs, beyond the portal, the thief-Knight had been softly walking away down the passage, but at Florin’s command—and the approach of Jhessail’s dancing lights that followed—she stopped, turned, put one hand on her hip, and gave Florin a look that wasn’t quite expressionless. “And you became my keeper when?”
“Pennae,” Islif said, “we’ve talked about this. When we know not where we stand, we stay together until we’re agreed on what we’ll do.”
Dauntless chuckled, and Pennae favored him with a withering look.
Laspeera smiled. “Pennae—no, all of you Knights of Myth Drannor; I’m well aware of your charter and your oaths that accompanied it. Yet I must hear truth from you, here and now: Are you loyal to the Crown of Cormyr?”
“Lady,” Florin replied, “we are.”
“I know your loyalty well, ranger,” Laspeera replied, “but I have yet to be convinced as to that of some of your fellows. You, thief-lass?” Her eyes were steady upon Pennae. When Pennae’s gaze became a challenge, Laspeera let her eyes drop meaningfully to the things that had been Yassandra’s, now hanging from Pennae’s belt, and then stared up into Pennae’s eyes again.
“I have sworn an oath,” Pennae said stiffly, “and I stand by it.”
“Good. Priests?”
“Forgive me, Lady Laspeera, but my first loyalty is to the divine,” Doust said, “and my second to my fellow Knights. My third is to the Crown of Cormyr.”
Semoor added, “Those words are mine, too.”
Laspeera nodded. “Honestly said. Wherefore I’ll not try to arrest or thwart you, Knights, and instead tell you we are standing in what’s called the Long Passage, a way that runs under the courtyard between the Royal Court and the Palace, linking secret passages within the walls of both buildings. It is guarded at both ends, at all times, so you’d best stay with me—and Ornrion Dahauntul.”
“You step into a bare stone passage, and know where it is?” Semoor demanded suspiciously. “Or did you know all about the portal we just came through?”
“I did not. I can, however, feel the wards all around us, and they are as familiar to me as your childhood homes undoubtedly are, to you. The portal is part of them, so long unawakened that I was not aware of its existence. It is fading back into invisibility already. See?”
They all looked, and saw.
“So we’re in Suzail,” Doust mused, “somewhere between the Palace and that huge stone pile of offices and audience chambers and more offices that stands in front of it. And presumably we’re in trouble for not staying out of the realm.” He looked up the passage, and down it again. “So which way is the Palace, and which way is the Court?”
Laspeera pointed in the direction Pennae had been heading. “Palace.”
Jhessail’s dancing lights moved smoothly a little way past the thief-Knight, farther down the passage Laspeera had pointed along than they’d been before, revealing to the Knights that there was a bend in the passage … and something written low down on the wall there.
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