by Ed Greenwood
"Come on, "Semoor snarled at them all. "Stone walls are about all I know that can stop arrows!"
Pennae had already dropped from leaning against the tree to crouching in its lee, beckoning them.
The Knights scrambled after her. "I told you not to mention arrows," Doust told Semoor, "and now look-"
"Luckiest of Holynoses," Pennae said over her shoulder, "please accept my thanks for healing me, and forthwith shut up. Are you unaware rhat a bowman can loose at where he hears our voices coming from?"
Doust shut up.
Pennae beckoned them again, crouching low. Bent over and scuttling through the underbrush, she led them up through thickly standing trees, in more branch-snapping hasre rhan stealth, and into the hollow.
The mansion loomed before them, low and dark in the gloomy shade of the trees that had grown up through it and flung out boughs to overhang it. Its scorched and empty doorway yawned like an open, waiting mouth, the air still sharp with the smell of the fire that had recently raged in it, but Pennae hurried past, keeping low. Ducking around a corner, she plunged without pause through a dark, gaping opening that had once held a window.
The other Knights hesitated, listening. All of them half-expected flames to roar up or to be near-deafened by the sudden snarl of some fearsome beast, followed by Pennae's raw scream.
They heard only silence. They had all traded doubrful glances.
Florin shrugged, put his hands in the exact same places on the lip of the window opening that Pennae had touched, and vaulted through it into unknown darkness. They heard the light thumps of his boots landing on what sounded like wood.
A moment later, he reappeared at the window, a warning finger to his lips. He beckoned them, wordlessly gesturing that they should each move to one side once they landed inside the window.
Jhessail stepped forward, waving at Doust to give her a boost, and went over and in-unexpectedly aided by Semoor's uninvited hand under her trim behind.
One by one, the other Knights followed to find themselves standing in near darkness, the only light filtering in through the shadowed window.
They could hear each other breathing but nothing more. Until one of them took a cautious stride forward.
As if that had been a signal, they heard a sudden roar and crackle of flame in the distance, from the far end of the mansion-a toat that was promprly joined by a scream.
An unknown someone had triggered another fire trap.
"Pennae?" Florin whispered. "You're still here, right?"
"Idiot," she teplied, even more quietly. "Now you've done it."
And it seemed he had.
They heard the sound of a rope groaning as it stretched, then a squealing of wood sliding on wood-and the floor fell away under the boots of Doust and Semoor as if it were a door swinging open, pitching them down into unseen depths.
They landed hard on smooth, flat stone, yells dying as they clashed teeth, bit their tongues-and were driven flat and breathless under the sudden weights of their fellow Knights tumbling down on top of them.
Small squeaking things fled in all directions, Florin rolled off a squirming Semoor, and Jhessail muttered, "Well, at least the cellar wasn't too far down."
"Jhess?" Islif called softly from above them. "Is everyone-?"
"We're fine," Semoor said sourly. "Just fine. Flatter than we were a moment ago, mind you, but-hold! Where are you?"
"Up here. I'm holding onto the window, inside the house. My boots dangling into nothing."
"I'm getting out of the way," Semoor told her, rolling and groaning as he did so. "Just give me a moment!"
The hum of something approaching very swifrly filled the air. Before Islif recognized it for what it was, a crossbow quarrel came scudding through the trees straight into her arm, punching through armor and hurling her away from the window to crash down atop someone.
"Sorry," she gasped, and then she sobbed at the sickening pain her movements dealt to her arm.
"Islif?" Florin said nearby, concern in his voice. "Are you hurt?"
"Am I ever anything else?" she asked wearily, rolling off the unseen body and hearing it groan. Her landing bumped the end of the quarrel on the floor, leaving her gasping and shuddering in pain. "Gods!" she hissed. "Where are you, priests?"
"I'm over here," Semoor told her, from her left. "Trying to remember a prayer for calling up some holy light. As for Doust, you're probably sitting on him. Or whatever's left of him."
"Doust?" Islif asked doubtfully, before she lowered her voice and muttered a few more curses to herself..
The reply was some panting, and then the weak words, "Pray to… Tymora for me… someone? No breath to do it… m'self."
"I can still manage a glow," Jhessail said. "I think."
"Don't think," Semoor told her. "We're adventurers. Things always get worse when we think."
Someone snorted, not all that far away.
"Florin?" Jhessail asked. "Is that you?"
"Does anyone know what this place is?" Doust asked, his voice a little stronger.
"Yes," a cold voice answered out of the darkness.
"Hoy," one door guard whispered. "Whirlwind, come a-reaping!"
He and his fellow guard snapped to rigid attention. Old Myarlin Handaerback, the grandly uniformed doorjack standing between them, stepped smartly away from the door and then spun to open it for the swift-striding younger Princess of Cormyr. He stood ready to announce her.
Princess Alusair darted at that doorjack so swiftly that one guard snatched at his sword out of sheer habit. The princess took a firm hold of the elbow of Myarlin's gaudily trimmed jacket and dragged him bodily back from the door to stagger awkwardly to a halt beside her simmering gaze.
"Thank you," she told Myarlin, "but I do not wish to be announced. Bide you here, saer. Close the door behind me, and kindly refrain from trying to listen through the keyhole. For once."
Myarlin blinked and then bowed in acknowledgment. The other door guard snorted, but he was a veteran-as were all the sentinels in the royal wing of the Palace-and managed to keep his face as straight as that of the nearest statue.
The young princess gave him a warning look, opened the door, and slipped inside.
There were fresh furs down on the floor of the Helmed Lady's Room, and someone had cast rose petals into the lamp sconces to pleasantly scent the dimly lit chamber. From around the polished black bulk of the Helmed Lady statue that shielded Alusair's view of much of the chamber came a familiar voice. It made Alusair check her furious stride for a moment-and then shrug and hasten on.
Tana or no haughty Tana, this could not wait.
Chapter 8
Doors, Disputes, and sudden Downfalls
I do my work and preen my pretty head Caring nothing for curses and catcalls But listen right well for, and deeply dread, Doors, disputes, and sudden downfalls.
So you see, Royal Mother," Tanalasta was saying smoothly, "I find the time I spend seeking to master the lute to be largely wasted, and I would prefer to-"
"Sire!" Alusair burst out, rounding the statue and looking to her father. "Pray pardon for the interruption, but I-"
"Luse, darling," Queen Filfaeril said firmly, "you are 'storming angrily' Again. Is the realm being invaded?"
"No, but-" Alusair looked helplessly at her father, but he merely gestured that she should attend her mother. "Is the palace on fire?" "No, Mother, but-"
"If, as I suspect, your concern is primarily with a slight done to you," the Dragon Queen said calmly, "then you need not interrupt our private converse with Tanalasta quite so precipitously."
"Mother, I can speak with you later," Crown Princess Tanalasta put in smoothly, giving her younger sister a look of cold scorn. "I have learned a lirtle patience."
"Stay," the queen said softly, bending her gaze ro meet Alusair's blazing eyes. "Your matter is not trivial. Perhaps what Alusair is bursting to tell us is not, either. Daughter?"
This last word was clearly addressed to Alusair, who bit her lips ro
quell the curse that sprang to mind, and forced herself to ask quietly, "Royal Mother, have I leave to speak?"
Queen Filfaeril nodded. "Please do. Better to spew than explode."
The king smiled slightly.
Alusair sighed, threw back her head, and announced, "I have just learned that Royal Magician Vangerdahast sent my personal champion off to the northeasternmost corner of the realm on a mission that bids fair to get him killed and forbade him to inform me that he was going! I want-"
"Luse," her farher broke in calmly, "hold hard a moment. I didn't know you had a personal champion. Who is this paragon, and how came you to have him?"
Alusair sighed, closed her eyes, opened them again, and said, "Earlier this day, I named Ornrion Taltar Dahaunrul of the Purple Dragons my personal champion. To Vangey's face I proclaimed him thus and told our good Royal Magician that as I now had a champion to protect me, the war wizards he was assigning to spy upon my every last nose-picking and chamber pot-filling moment-"
"Ohh!" Tanalasta exclaimed in disgust. "Must you mention such things? Really!"
"I can well believe that you no longer use chamber pots," Alusair snapped at her sister. "In fact, that explains some things."
She turned her glare back to her parents before anyone could admonish her and added crisply, "Yet I digress. As I was saying, I informed him that his spies were no longer needed to be nannies and sneaks and jailers upon me-all three at once and every moment of my life, waking and otherwise. The Royal Magician openly sneered at me and said he took no orders from me, so I set him straight on that-and departed his company. Only to learn that the moment he'd seen my back, he summoned the ornrion and sent him off to be killed, doing this wholly to flout my will and hurl his disobedience into my very teeth!"
"And so?" the king asked gently.
"And so I want him disciplined-for once! — and Dauntless brought back to me."
"Disciplined?" the queen asked. "Disciplined how, exactly?"
Tanalasta rolled her eyes. "She's going to say 'horsewhipped,' Mother!"
Alusair gave her sister a look that had drawn daggers in it, and then turned back to the Queen of Cormyr and snapped defiantly, "Publicly horsewhipped. For a start."
Her father made a sound that might have been a suppressed snort of amusement-but when all three Obarskyr females looked sharply at him, they found his face stern and wearing the beginnings of a real frown.
"Alusair Nacacia Obarskyr," Queen Filfaeril began, almost sweetly, and both of her daughters stiffened. The use of a full formal name meant trouble.
"I should leave," Tanalasta announced quickly, ducking her head and starting for the nearest door. Only to discover a slender arm had somehow become hooked around hers and had become as unmoving as an iron window bar. The Queen of Cormyr was stronger than she looked.
"Stay and attend, Crown Princess," her mother said softly in an order as absolute as if she'd thundered it. "You are to heed and remember our words now, just as surely as your sister must."
Azoun cleared his throat. Again all three of his kin shot looks his way, but he merely held out his hand toward his wife, indicating that she was to proceed.
The Queen of Cormyr lifted her jaw just as Alusair had done earlier, drew in an unhurried breath, and said, "A time will come when you two princesses may freely give royal commands to the wizard Vangerdahast and will see good need to do so. That time may well, however, be years hence. For now, you are to obey him utterly, unless his orders contradict those of myself or your father-and even then, hear and consider his will."
The king nodded.
Filfaeril raised one finger to indicate him and slowed her speech to give each of her words weight, to impress their gravity on the two listening princesses.
"Your sire sits upon the Dragon Throne, but Vangerdahast is the Dragon Throne. We cannot rule the nearest chamber pot, full or empty, without him, and if he should fall dead in our moment of need, so too will Cormyr fall. Whereas if I fall, or your father does, Vangerdahast will see to it that the realm survives. If he demands you appear before him naked, thrice a day and before all the Court, you will do it. Or that horsewhip shall see use-and not upon him."
Both of her daughters stared at her, suddenly needing to swallow and barely remembering how to do it.
Their mother leaned forward a little. "As one who has gone before you, and as a woman, I quite understand the irritation and embarrassment-nay, shame is not too strong a word-that the ever-present spying of our Wizards of War visits upon you. As one who has been the age you are now, daughter Alusair, I know how much this must chafe and set you afire, when you see your every whim prevented, your wanderings curtailed, the adventures we all must have alone ended abruptly or soured, time and again. Believe me, I know how you feel." She raised an admonishing finger. "Yet you are not any young backcountry farm lass. You are the future of the realm, an Obarskyr. You cannot have a carefree youth, and Vangerdahast's high-handed meddlings have ensured-thus far-that you have lived to enjoy a youth at all. He has personally prevented at least thirty-four attempts on your life that he has told me about-"
"Sixty-three," Azoun interrupted. "As of yestereve."
Filfaeril turned to give her husband a long look, then returned her attention to Alusair. "And as you see, the Royal Magician chooses to keep secrets from me, just as he does from you. I hate it, make no mistake-and yet, exasperaring as he can be, I trust him."
She spread her hands in a gesture of helpless resignation. "I must trust him. We all must. For he could betray and destroy us all with the snap of a finger, but he does not. Time and again he has proven deeply worthy of our trust. No, he is not the most polite man in Faerun, nor yet Cormyr, but never forget he is a wizard." She sat back again and sighed. "Strange folk, wizards. All that magic does things to their minds and tempers. The temptation must gnaw at them their every waking moment; they have such power and could just lash out at anything that angers them. Yet if they had-just a few of them, a time or two too often in the past-wizards would now be hidden, hunted things, with all the rest of us so fearful of magic that we'd bury our blades in anyone we merely suspected of being able to murmur a spell. And is that the way of the world? No. Wherefore, look you, even mages who are evil tyrants tend to hurl spells only when they deem it needful. And our Vangerdahast is not an evil tyrant. He's a tyrant, I'll grant, but Cormyr needs its tyrant. I dtead the day when he is no longer with us. Who will keep us safe- if irritated-then?"
She stopped speaking and let silence fall. It was a long time before Alusair dared to stir and look to her father.
"Sire," she whispered, "is this also your view?"
Her father nodded. "Every word of it. Daughter Alusair, Vangerdahast is too useful-too vital-to the realm for you to defy or annoy. So you will cease doing both of those things, right now. And show him how polite and respectful and genuinely thankful a true Obarskyr princess can be. Or I may go looking for a horsewhip myself. Or tell Vangey to wield it for me."
Tanalasta's mouth dropped open, but her father merely turned to her and reminded her gravely, "Control."
Both princesses nodded soberly. The need for them to control their faces, words, and voices at all times had been seared into them so often in their lives thus far that they had long since lost track of how many times they had been lectured on the matter. They had even lost count of all the folk who had delivered those stern teachings.
"Sire, Royal Mother," Alusair whispered then, head bowed, "I heat and heed. Have I your leave to withdraw?" "You do," King Azoun said gravely.
The princess bowed as deeply as any courtier who wasn't going to his knees, turned, and said to Tanalasta in an almost inaudible voice, "Pray forgiveness, Royal Sister, for my interruption."
Before Tanalasta could reply, Alusair glided away, back around the Helmed Lady, and was gone.
Seething, she traversed the rest of the chamber like a storm wind and thtust the door open, uncaring of whether or not the doorjack might be standing in its way.
The door swung open freely, rhough she barely noticed, and the younger Princess of Cormyr bent one shoulder low like a running warrior so as ro turn the corner faster, clenched her hands into claws, andSlammed right into a man who'd stepped from behind the door and must have been standing right outside it, listening!
A more-than-familiar man. The Royal Magician of Cormyr staggered back a step or two from their bruising meeting to regard her with a raised eyebrow and eyes that held… sardonic amusement?
In wordless rage Alusair launched herself at him, punching and kicking with a vicious disregard for his gender. She promptly and painfully discovered that he wore an armored codpiece under his robes-and that even Royal Magicians can be toppled by an angry youngling.
As they rolled together on the passage floor, Alusair was only barely aware that in the dimness around her there was no sign of the door guards or doorjacks who were supposed to be guarding the door.
She clawed, punched, and drove in her knees, spitting out curses in a raging stream that sounded incoherent even to her. The Royal Magician did not even try to defend himself beyond throwing his arms up to shield his face and throat. He grunted with pain, again and again, and tried to twist out from under her. When he thrust up his legs to try to spill her off, Alusair snatched out her little belt dagger.
"Too far," she heard him grunt, then murmur something so brief that she couldn't catch it. A moment later, magic burned her fingers and hurled her dagger away. She heard it sing off the wall some distance behind her.
"Not so easily done, sirrah." She brought one leg around until she could reach her boot and thrust her fingers into it to snatch out a little knife.
Her ankle-fang flashed out, she growled in triumph and found that the wrist of that hand had been caught in an iron-firm grip.
A face was looking down at her from beyond that grip-an all-too-familiat face that was icily beautiful and calm, yet whose eyes held a scowl to match Alusair's own fury.
"Royal command time," Queen Filfaeril said in a calm, level voice. "Remove yourself from the personage beneath you, and come with me."
