“And I’ll kill you right now if you try to go and get it,” Islif told him pleasantly. “Does that make your choice easier?”
He nodded, clapping a hand to his mouth and staring over it at her with wide, fearful eyes.
Then those eyes rolled up into his head and he fainted in her arms. Disgusted, Islif let him fall to the passage floor in a heap.
Chapter 21
LETTING THE MADWITS OUT
Well may dragon roar
And dying captains shout
For the fields are red with gore
And they’re letting the madwits out.
Tethmurra “Lady Bard” Starmar
from the ballad
Trust Only In Your Sword
published in the Year of the Crown
Florin?” Pennae called softly. “Florin?”
She waited, but he did not shout again. After standing still and silent in the darkness for a long time—in case the iron barrier rose as suddenly as it had descended—Pennae shrugged, turned, and set off alone down the passage.
She could see nothing at all except very faint light a long way ahead, but her fingertips trailed lightly along the stone wall, the passage floor was smooth and level, and there seemed to be nothing standing between her and that distant light.
So Pennae strode on, quickly and confidently, her soft-soled boots making little sound, and was soon approaching that light.
It was leaking around the frame of an ill-fitting door, the first of a row of closed doors; the rest were dark. As she slowed to think about what to do next, the door suddenly opened—giving her a momentary glimpse of an untidy office stacked high with scrolls and coffers—and a tall, black-robed man strode out to face her, pointing at her as he did so.
A war wizard, his eyes unfriendly—tall, thin, and wart-covered, his face was homely and entirely dominated by a great ravenbeak nose. “You,” he snapped imperiously. “Wench! What’re you doing here?”
“Seeking Vangerdahast,” Pennae replied calmly, striding steadily nearer as if she had every right to be walking along this passage, and was mildly surprised at both his presence and his question.
“Why?”
“My business, I believe,” Pennae told him. “As you seem suspicious, perhaps you’ll take me to him.”
He shook his head. “I’m very busy—the revel. No, a cell will keep you just fine until this is all over. Thieves and hired slayers are just what we’re here to thwart. You look the very picture of one, and you might well be wanting to get to Royal Magician Vangerdahast so as to slay him! Or distract and delay him whilst someone you’re working with manages something nefarious! Oh, no, you’ll not be distracting—”
A bare two paces away from him, Pennae quelled her sigh and deftly stripped off her leather jack, baring herself from the waist up with the allure of long practice, leaving her leathers dangling from one wrist.
The war wizard’s eyes bulged, he started to stammer something unintelligible—and she glided forward, gently took his hands, and guided them to her breasts.
“Like them?” she murmured, looking hungrily up into his eyes. “Ahhh, war wizards … I admire you all so much. I wanted Vangerdahast, but … you’re here, and so commanding …”
She let her eyes half-close, and moaned as his cold fingers, trembling with excitement, moved inexpertly over her. He drew in a sharp, ragged breath, and she whispered, “May I … kiss you?”
“Uh, ah, well—” War Wizard Lhonsan Arkstead ran out of things to say, and settled for swallowing. Hard.
Her mouth was parted and reaching for him, so temptingly close below him. Arkstead was not a handsome man, and had never learned the arts of being pleasant. No woman’s mouth had ever been so offered to him.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he muttered, as he bent his head to hers. “This is … less than wise.”
Abruptly leathers whirled over his head, blinding him, then were thrust into his mouth, muffling his cries—and the very hard pommel of a dagger struck Arkstead in the throat, robbing him of breath and voice, and then on the side of the head, robbing him of all Faerûn.
“You were quite correct,” Pennae told his senseless body, as it slid down her legs into a crumpled heap at her feet. “Loins-driven idiot. But then, I seldom do wise things either.”
She reached down to retrieve her jack—and three Purple Dragons came rushing at her out of the darkness, blades stabbing.
Pennae spat out a curse and sprang back, abandoning her leathers. There was no place to flee to. She snatched out her dagger and crouched behind the war wizard’s body, hoping they’d not trample him, and so give her a little room to move.
She was wrong. The soldiers charged right over him, maintaining their unbroken line three abreast. Pennae sprang to one side, to try to cut down on the number of blades that could reach her, and parried desperately.
One blade, then two, clanging aside in a skirling of ringing steel—and the third burst past her little steel fang.
Despite her desperate twisting and arching, it darted in, snakelike, and slid like icy fire into her side.
Islif slapped the courtier’s face briskly, then pinched the skin of his throat between her fingernails, and finally rolled back an eyelid and put a fingertip to his staring-at-nothing eyeball. He never flinched in the slightest.
Exasperated, she rose from him and snapped, “Come on! We haven’t time to try to get this fool awake and talking!”
The Knights rushed off, Semoor plucking up the man’s fallen glowstone as he passed.
The moment they were out of sight the courtier sat up.
“What do you know?” Bravran Merendil said aloud in wonder, managing a shaky smile through the drug-sweat that was suddenly drenching him. “Mother’s deadsleep proved useful at last!” His smile of disbelief grew. “Who’d have thought playing dead ever helped anyone?”
He pulled another glowstone from his codpiece, used it to find his fallen dagger, sheathed it back inside the grand barrel-front of his courtier’s jacket—and then smotes himself on the forehead, and gasped, “Talan Yarl!”
He launched himself down the passage, sprinting hard and thanking the gods that woman and her ruffians had gone in the other direction. “Suddenly,” he muttered wryly to himself, “playing dead sounds like a very good idea indeed!”
“A fool? Aye, I’ve never denied that,” Florin replied, rushing forward and waving his sword rapidly back and forth right in front of him. It struck that unseen blade with a glancing clang, and then he was past, and turning in the darkness to face whoever it was, but backing away as he did so.
He was backing into the unknown, and facing a foe with a drawn sword—a woman, unless he was mistaken about that cold, arrogant voice—whom he couldn’t see, but he’d managed to get her between him and the Doorwarden.
He became aware of a faint glow in front of him, a thin line that he was sure hadn’t been there before, a line that was moving, sweeping around—’twas her sword!
Its glow was growing slowly but steadily stronger, now, as it swung at him, Florin steadily backing out of her reach. He had to win time for that glow to grow until he could see it better, and to move away from the Dread Doorwarden, hopefully to and through a place too narrow for him to follow.
He could see a face—female and human, and bone white in hue—behind that blade now, as their swords met again, hard, ringing off each other and striking sparks. It was not a kind face, and it did not wear an expression even a fool would have termed “friendly.”
Not even this fool.
“Who are you?” he asked, giving ground again—as heavy breathing and a ponderous footfall told him that the Doorwarden was striding up behind the woman with the sword.
“One evidently doomed to chase cowards who won’t cross blades with me,” came her terse reply. “Who are you?”
“One who doesn’t want to fight any stranger for a reason he understands not,” Florin replied, “and would much prefer to be allowed to continue th
e king’s business without being attacked in his very Palace!”
“Do you dare to accuse me of disloyalty to Cormyr?” Her voice sharpened into real anger. “Know, man, that I am a Highknight, personally sworn to King Azoun himself, and am accounted one of the deadliest blades in all the realm.”
She lunged, and Florin sidestepped and backed away again, without replying. With a hiss of exasperation she pursued him, adding, “The king creates very few female Highknights. I am one of them.”
Florin bowed his head. “Well met.”
“Do you mock me?” she snarled, gliding forward to launch a flurry of thrusts and slashes. He fell back again, parrying energetically, and as she pressed him, worked his steel faster and faster, until sparks were raining down.
He was stronger, and the weight he was putting behind his sword swings must be numbing her arms. Yes, her attack was lessening. He gave ground more slowly now, and there came a time when her arm grew tired and her attack openly faltered.
He listened to her swift breathing, stepping back again. Her pursuit this time was plodding, no longer a furious whirlwind.
“No,” Florin replied, his voice low and respectful. “I do not desire to mock you or give offense. I, too, have been honored by the Purple Dragon. King Azoun himself sponsored our adventuring charter, after I saved his life in the forest.”
“Ah. Then you would be … Florin Falconhand. Ranger of Espar. So why this treason, Florin?”
“No traitor am I,” Florin told her, “nor are any of us Knights. We’re here to protect the king and queen—and the Royal Magician, too—from a plot to slay them all, this day!”
“Ah, no, that’s our task and duty,” she replied, the sneer loud and clear in her voice. “Anyone running around down here with weapons, who I don’t know about, is a traitor.”
She lunged at him again and, when he parried, mounted another furious whirlwind of cuts and thrusts, pressing him back once more, the glow of her blade mounting to a white brightness. Their blades rang numbingly as the Highknight threw all of her strength behind her blade, starting to trust in his defensive bladework that never thrust back at her, nor offered her the slightest menace of steel.
Florin stood his ground, this time, and after a while the fury of her attack faded again, and he found himself listening once more to her swift breathing. The Doorwarden loomed right behind her, now, like a patient mountain.
When she spoke this time, her words came in rushes, between gasps. “However, just for purposes of entertainment, why don’t you tell me a little more about this plot?”
“No, Lady Highknight, I fear not,” Florin told her. “Treason among war wizards is involved, and I know not how far it spreads. I will speak with Vangerdahast and no other—or if I reach the king or queen, I will defend them with my body.”
The Highknight sighed then, and murmured, “I weary of this.”
As Florin backed away from her again, she undid a pouch at her belt, plucked out a large chestnut, and threw it at him.
The previously cracked-open nutshell fell apart in flight, to let a delicate glass vial tumble out. Florin sprang at it desperately, caught it a fist-width above the stone passage floor that would have shattered it, and hurled it back in her face.
She closed her eyes as it shattered across her nose, and then chuckled as its tiny shards fell away. “It doesn’t affect we Highknights, fool, but it will affect you, if I—”
She struck his blade aside with a deft strike of her own and leaned close to him, grinning mirthlessly.
Trying not to breathe, Florin punched her as hard as he dared, spinning her head around and hurling her limply back into the armored shins of the Doorwarden. Then he turned and ran.
He didn’t risk a look back until his outstretched blade found a doorframe too narrow for the Doorwarden to pass through. Her blade was still bright, but Lady Highknight was sprawled senseless on the passage floor, with the man-mountain of a guardian frowningly poking her with his fingers and growling at her to “Wake! The man flees! Wake, stlarn ye!”
Florin shook his head, stepped through the doorframe—there seemed to be no door, any more, just the marks of abandoned hinges—and cautiously went on into ever-deeper darkness, feeling along the stone passage wall to his left with his fingertips, and keeping his sword raised and thrust out before him in his other hand.
His fingers found a door, and it proved to be unlocked. He opened it and felt cautiously into the utter darkness it opened into. Nothing met his timidly reaching fingertips, but when he used his sword more boldly, it immediately struck smooth metal. Florin tapped and probed cautiously forward and then up and down, and discovered that the door seemed to open into a laundry shaft. There was no floor and no ceiling, but merely smooth metal walls with holes in them that seemed to be grab-holds. They had metal a little way within them, and more than one had what felt and smelled like sweat-reeking underthings—dethmas and clouts—caught on its lip.
Eventually he dared to sheathe his sword and reach out a hand to one of these unseen openings. He took hold of it—a rolled lip, seemingly meant for human hands to grasp—felt for another, and then bent down and felt for lower openings to thrust his boots into.
He found them, and a breath later was climbing the chute, going up in the darkness and feeling warm air coming down into his face from above. After only a little climbing the chute started to bend, becoming a nigh-horizontal slope that ended suddenly in a room where three descending chutes met, and there was an access door with handholds beside it—and a spyhole in it!
The door had no lock that he could see. It was held shut by a small metal drop-bar latch, on his side. The bar dropped into an angled metal iron against the wall. He must be a floor higher in the Palace.
Florin peered through the spyhole, and found himself looking into a little room crammed with a table piled with linens, and two men. One held a glowstone and wore the barrel-chested jacket and livery of a Palace courtier, an anxious expression, and copious sweat. The other wore the grand robes and sashes of a Turmish envoy, and looked furious.
“You weren’t supposed to get anywhere near me!” the Turmishman was snarling. “What’re you doing, fool?”
“Well, you weren’t supposed to follow Blacksilver around like a dog, always six paces right behind him. If all of the courtiers in my passage noticed—and they did!—the war wizards certainly noticed.”
“Listen,” the Turmishman hissed, and then uttered words that made cold black rage blossom in Florin, so suddenly and strongly that he almost whimpered. “The mindworm has eaten a lot of his brain. There’s not much left to control him with. I have to stay close, or he becomes little better than a striding zombie. They’ll notice that, to be sure.”
The courtier was trembling violently now. “I—uh—ah—yes,” he stammered. “Of course.”
“Good,” the Turmishman snarled. “Now get back to your post or to doing whatever it is that you’re supposed to do, and leave me be. As it is, I’ll have to chase down Blacksilver and not be seen doing it! Go!”
The courtier bolted out of the room, and the seething Turmishman pounded his fist into his palm and growled, “Hrast that Merendil bitch and her blood-bond! Without that, I’d slip away now and let that idiot puppy rush to his doom all by himself! This is going to be messy! So messy!”
“You bet it is,” Florin whispered to himself, face white and eyes blazing, as he flipped up the drop-bar, wrenched the door open, and flung himself through it, sword and dagger singing out.
Striding out of the linen room, the Turmishman reached a dimly lit passage beyond, and spun around.
Florin charged, roaring, “For Narantha! You bloody murderer! For Narantha Crownsilver!”
The man paled and stepped back, raising one hand like a claw. From his fingers streaked the bright magical missiles of a battlestrike, lancing into Florin almost before they had time to fly.
Florin groaned at their searing pain, staggered, and struggled on despite rising agony. Rea
ching the Turmishman, he started hacking.
The man struggled to draw a dagger and to spit out an incantation, but Florin cared not. He sliced and chopped and hewed ruthlessly until fountaining blood stung his eyes and blinded him. Then he went on hacking until there was nothing still standing in the slippery passage but himself.
Panting above a heap of what looked like clumsily butchered meat, in a passage now awash with blood, Florin burst into tears.
“Narantha!” he wept. “This won’t bring you back, but I avenged you! I avenged you!”
The ready-room had been crowded not so long ago, but all the guards were out at their posts now, leaving behind two bored Purple Dragon lionars.
They were bent over their littered desks, rather wearily writing out duty rosters for when this cursed-by-all-the-gods revel was over, when Florin’s distant shouts arose. The older one looked up and frowned at the din. “Are they letting the madwits out to join the revel too?”
The other lionar shook his head, flung down his quill, and drew his sword. Together they hastened out into the passage.
Amarauna Telfalcon knew two things: she was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life before, and she couldn’t run much farther. She suspected one thing more: that her magical Yassandra the war wizard guise must have melted away. Surely there was no way Terentane could maintain the spell, gasping as they both were, pounding along Palace passages and hallways, running hard past the occasional startled servant.
They’d begun by racing up a long staircase. It alone had left Amarauna’s chest burning, and that had been a long time ago.
Or so it seemed. “Just a little farther, ‘Rauna!” Terentane gasped, from close behind her. “Keep going!”
They were heading for a room he knew, where he could cast a teleportation unobserved, and whisk them back to Marsember. Yet every corner could bring them face to face with Purple Dragons, or a real war wizard, and—
“Turn here! ’Tis just ahead!”
Swords of Dragonfire Page 23