The Sword Never Sleeps tkomd-3

by Ed Greenwood

  Dauntless promptly strode to where he could watch them go. Laspeera grinned and shook her head at that, then turned and carefully conjured a portal in the center of the clearing.

  When the glow of that magical doot was bright and steady, she ushered the Harper and her fellow war wizards toward it. They obeyed, filing through the glow and journeying back to Suzail in a single step.

  "Ornrion," she called.

  Dauntless turned his head, saw the portal and her beckoning gesture, gave the dwindling figures of the Knights one last, long look, then obediently started toward the waiting glow.

  He was still a pace away from it when something slid silently out of the trees ar the far end of rhe clearing.

  The flying sword, point-first, gliding low beneath the leaves.

  "Get through!" Laspeera snapped at the ornrion. "No, don't stoo and turn-go!"

  Dauntless ran, and Laspeera ducked aside from the portal and hastily started to close it.

  The flying sword streaked at the portal's waning glow.

  Laspeera frowned as a sudden rhought struck her. She whipped two wands from her belt and unleashed them with cafe at the flickering, shrinking edges of the portal.

  It guttered, rippled wildly, and suddenly shot up into the air, the sword slicing air just beneath it, then arcing around to speed at it again.

  The rippling glow dodged again, the sword almost plunging through it. The radiance seemed for just a moment to collapse into a wildly agitated helix… then became bright and hard again, but smaller and humming loudly. The sword shot toward it again.

  Laspeera willed the doorway onto its edge and to rise, and again the sword just missed it. By then, her former portal had raced to hover before her like a shield.

  The sword was getting faster. It darted at the shield, plunged into it as silently as if the shield were mere empty air… and slowed to a snail's pace in midair, hanging almost motionless as it worked its way through the glowing barrier.

  Its point was glittering a mere arm's length from Laspeera's breast.

  She stepped aside leisurely, resheathed her wands, and got the strongest spell she knew ready, mouth going dry.

  Either she had just made the biggest-and quite likely the last- mistake of her life, or…

  The sword emerged from the shield, still gliding so slowly it seemed almost frozen. It had acquired a strange glow of its own, a pulsing purple-white sheen that raced up its length to its elegantly curled quillons, then back down.

  "Yes!" an exulting voice erupted from it. "Yessss!"

  The Sword That Never Sleeps turned and streaked off northeast, faster than it had ever sped before.

  Chapter 18

  No realm can confine me Sick of working? Want to be free? Of lack of coins, of the drudge's load? I'm an adventurer a-wandering New forays ever pondering No realm can confine me; I'm for the open road.

  So we almost got killed-again-and lost all our horses and gear. Is this the sort of adventure we can look forward to?" Semoor said. He winced as his feet pained him more and more with each step. The blisters weren't something he was looking forward to lancing. "How long before we're walking along naked and starving, waiting for the first hungry beast or knife-waving outlaw to happen along and put us out of our misery?"

  "Think of it as an unending sequence of new beginnings, Wolftooth dearest," Pennae said, "and the Morninglord will provide. Or is your faith as weak as your backbone?"

  "Hey hoy!" Semoor snapped, giving her a glare. "Do I question your profession, thief?"

  Pennae shrugged. "I care not if you do, Saer Yapping Tongue. Some folk open their mouths and spew out mere noise that the rest of us soon cease heeding-and I fear you're one of rhose folk. I expect that at your funeral, your complaints and whinings and not-so-clever remarks are going to rise from your grave without pause until the gravediggers shovel enough earth on top of you that we finally won't have to hear it all any longer."

  "Here, now," Jhessail said. "Enough. Some band of adventurers we'll be, if we start clawing at each other like brawling tavern drunkards!" on offer in Espar," Pennae said, "and while I agree with you to a point, Jhess, I think 'tis time and past time we aired some things. Before I strangle Saer Semoor with his own sharp, forked tongue."

  Doust reached a quelling hand to his longtime friend's arm at about the time Islif clapped a hand over the crimson, fiery-eyed Lathanderite's mouth.

  "Before you respond to Pennae, Stoop," she said in his ear gently, "I'd like you to do one thing for me. Pretend that several senior priests of the Morninglord are standing right here listening to all you say. Please?"

  She withdrew her hand. Semoor shot her a simmering look and the words, "Thank you, Islif."

  Then he turned to tegard Pennae and said, "I am what I am. If there's something about me you think teally must be changed, you'll have to convince me. Not that I think insults will move me much. Would they change you?"

  "Oh, shrewdly said," Doust murmured.

  Florin nodded. "Your words, Semoor, ring true enough in my ears. Pennae?"

  The thief regarded Florin thoughtfully, then nodded, turned, and went to Semoor-and kissed him.

  He tried to lean and turn his face away from her, stiffly, but she was far more agile than he and could caress and kiss very skillfully when she wanted to. In mere moments he was groaning under her tongue and embracing her fiercely.

  Jhessail rolled her eyes skyward. "And of course there's always that way to solve every little dispute, too. Not being a jack, I haven't what fills a codpiece to be led around by, but it seems to wotk for them. Every time."

  "Lead me around by my codpiece, lass?" Doust asked her hopefully, waving a hand. " 'Tis just down here!"

  Islif decided it was her turn to indulge in some eye-rolling. "How far is it to Shadowdale?" she asked Florin, in world-weary tones.

  "Don't ask me!" he jested. "I'm but a simple backwoods tanger!"

  "Who walks with kings and beds noble lasses as calmly as some Ed greenwood of us change our jerkins," Pennae teased him, coming up for air.

  "If I pick another fight with you," Semoor asked her hopefully, nor releasing her from his embrace, "will you make peace wirh me like this again? About the time we make camp and decide on sleeping arrangements for the night, say?"

  "Speaking of which," Islif said, "we're walking rhrough wild country, and we'd better decide how to camp and keep ourselves alive before we fall asleep and anything small with jaws has its way with us. Even a weasel or a groundcat can take your throat out with ease if you're just lying on the ground snoring."

  "So we'll be standing watch every night? Oh, gods," Semoor snarled, "why is the world so stlarning unfair?"

  It was Florin who stopped walking this time, to spin around and fix Semoor with a stern look. "I don't know why. Perhaps the gods do. What I do know is that we're adventurers and that, yes, the world isn't fah. Making it fair is our job. Yours, mine, all of us."

  Silence fell after he finished speaking those words, and in its cloak the Knights walked on, one by one nodding and murmuring agreement in their various ways.

  Lost in thought, the wizard Targon turned from a high balcony in Zhentil Keep and strolled across the gloomy and deserted chamber into which the balcony opened. He had no particular quarrel with most of the Zhentarim wizards of lesser rank-they were ruthless graspers-after-power, to be sure, but who of the Brotherhood was not? — bur the five or six mages he did want brought down were difficult targets. To avoid being exposed to the entire Brotherhood as a peril to all, he would have to move very carefully against whichever one of them he chose to slay first.

  That meant he still had to learn a lot more abour their alliances with beholders and Bane priests and the gods alone knew who else, so as toHe staggered, arched over backward, and stood trembling, suddenly transfixed by the sword Armaukran.

  It had come racing out of the sky and swooping through the archway from the balcony so swiftly that the light ward spell he was using hadn't even had time to
chime. Now the agony was so white-hot, he could barely frame coherent thoughts.

  He should have been able to sense the sword approaching.

  What had happened to it?

  Grimly, Old Ghost felt for the sword's enchantments with his will, red mists of pain rising to flood his mind with the looming threat of oblivion…

  "Die!" Horaundoon snarled, his hatred a deafening bellow crashing through Old Ghost's thoughts. "I've been changed and need never fear you again, cruel schemer!"

  The Zhentarim staggered blindly across the room with the blade through him, as two minds wrestled amid gathering darkness inside his head-a darkness that smiled and drew in around Horaundoon with tightening talons.

  From somewhere near at hand, he heard Old Ghost ask silkily, "Oh? Need you not?"

  Then the darkness struck, bursting into ctimson fury as sentience flooded into and overwhelmed sentience.

  This time, Old Ghost made sure of his foe, rending a howling Horaundoon ruthlessly and utterly.

  When the mind thunder had fallen quiet again, and he stood alone in the dripping ruins of Targon's mind and dying body, he knew only the sword was vessel enough to trust in and inhabit.

  He looked and felt, coiling through threads of enchantment and long-disused powets… finding excitement again, after so long…

  There is much room in this blade. Room for a dozen minds or more, if I can command that many at once. Company for centuries, to warm me with their fancies and memories and hatreds-until I tire of them and subsume or destroy them.

  The dying Targon slumped down, and the sword drew back out of him and flew away, out from the balcony in a great soaring arc, heading for Shadowdale.

  One less fool to trammel me. On to find others.

  As the humming, blue-silver blade flashed through the air, Old Ghost wondered idly if it was smiling as smugly as he was inside it.

  Not that there was any hurry. There would be plenty of time to subvert adventurers when the Knights of Myth Drannor finally arrived in Shadowdale.

  Brorn Hallomond found the old casket he was looking for. It would take the strength of an owlbear to drag aside the stone lid and maul him. Here he could sleep and heal.

  Gods, he wished he'd been able to steal another healing vial.

  Huh. As to that, he wished he'd been able to steal himself a castle full of servants and fine food and a title to go with it, too.

  Perhaps next time.

  He hammered the sliding stone catch with the pommel of his dagger, gasping with the pain each blow brought him. He hauled up the hinged lid with a howl of pain and more or less fell in on top of the btittle, shrouded corpse inside.

  It crackled into riven boneshards and dust under him, and he clutched himself to lessen the inevitable agony of coughing and sneezing that followed. When at last that was done, Brorn clawed the lid back down, rolled to the crack in the stone so he could breathe, and lay still, waiting for weariness to overcome pain and let him sleep.

  Thank whatever gods had smiled upon him. When that war wizard lass-Santress, or whatever her name was-discovered her little token missing, it would probably be about then that she'd remember that a certain bullyblade had vanished from the hollow where all the healing was going on, too.

  Hopefully she wouldn't be mule-headed enough to come back here looking for him.

  Though most war wizards were just that, stlarn it.

  He felt for the dagger at his belt, so he could be ready if she did haul back the lid. Hah. A dagger against her wands. And probably those of half-a-dozen more oh-so-brave Wizards of War.

  Still, 'twas the best he could do. He was only Lord Yellander's bullyblade, not Lord Yellander. Yet.

  "Night fog, and we're getting into rising rocks," Florin muttered. "I don't like the looks of this."

  "Rocks at least ate a solid shield at our backs," Islif said. "I've yet to find a tree, however large, that I dared trust as much."

  "We must stand watch," Pennae said from ahead of them all, "and find some shelter we can defend. Even if we have to butcher some bear or other and take his cave."

  "Adventure," Jhessail said in an acidic voice that struggled along the edge of a yawn.

  "Up there," Doust said, pointing a little way up a slope of loose stones on their left that turned into a cliff face farther up. "That overhang. If we sleep up there, nothing that doesn't have wings can get to us without making a lot of noise."

  "Rolling rocks aplenty down to the Ride under their feet, or claws, or slithery belly," Pennae agreed. "Well spotted,' Luck of Tymora."

  "Lathander smiles upon us too!" Semoor said.

  "I've heard far better bed-me lines," the thief told him almost kindly. "Now, the swifter you get yourself up there and bedded down, the sooner you can be praying to the Morninglord to keep us alive to see his next glorious morning-and the faster we'll all get some sleep."

  Semoor sighed, beckoned Doust, and started climbing.

  "Sleep fully clad, boots and all," Islif put in, watching Semoor leading Doust gingerly up the slippery slope of sliding, tumbling stones. Then she looked at Florin and grinned. "Guess camp's been decided, valiant leader."

  "I'm not our leader," Florin said wearily.

  "Oh, yes, you are," Jhessail told him quietly. "You just happen to lead some adventurers afflicted with the minds of jesters that succeed in bursting out and conquering their wirs from time to time." She started up the slope, unbound red hair swirling around her shoulders.

  A little way up she stopped, looked back at him over one shoulder, and asked, "Tuck me in, valiant leader?" Florin hoped she was teasing.

  "Their names were Harreth and Yorlin," the young Wizard of War said to Vangerdahasr as they stood gazing at the two corpses in rhe dungeon cell. "We've learned that much. Worked for the ttaitor Lord Yellander. I know not how Harreth got down here or how he thought he'd free Yorlin, but whatever he did failed and killed them both."

  The Royal Magician sighed. "A reasonable enough conclusion, lad-but wrong. Yorlin may be hanging in yon spell chains now, but he wasn't the prisoner I put in here nor the prisoner who was in here yestereve, when last I scryed the deep cells. There's a man missing from this cell, a war wizard trairor, and Wouldn't be a daring wager to say he was freed through the actions of these two and rewarded them for it by slaying them." His mouth crooked into a smile of sorts. "Come to think of it, 'twas a reward, indeed."

  The young war wizard blinked. "Ir was?"

  "However he killed them, they enjoyed swifter and less painful deaths than I'd have given them for loosing Onsler Ruldroun upon the realm again."

  "Father!" Torsard Spurbright's shout was shrill with genuine excitement. His sire hastened to hide the little note from Silverymoon he'd been re-reading, by using it to mark his place in the thick tome-a history of the life of Baerauble of Cormyr-he was currently leading. He closed the book just in time, as the younger Lord Spurbright burst into the room.

  "Have vou heard rhe news? A war wi7.ard traitor's esraned from the dungeons under the Royal Court-the deep cells!"

  Lord Elvarr Spurbright lifted both of his bushy eyebrows. "The deep cells?"

  "Yes! Rude Rune or suchlike, he's called! He's been hanging down there in spell chains because there's something precious in his mind, so Old Thunderspells can't just kill him. Have you ever heard the like?"

  The elder Lord Spurbright nodded slowly. "I have, as it happens. Whence came this news? And had it any warning attached to it?"

  Torsard waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, the usual, 'Mind under your beds-he's everywhere! Everywhere!' clap-cackle!"

  "Cackle that was first uttered by whom?" Elvarr asked again patiently.

  His son blinked. "Oh. Ah, the Princess Alusair, they're saying." Lord Elvarr Spurbright winced, then chuckled. "Oho. Dearest Vangerdahast isn't going to be pleased by that."

  "My old friend Yellander repaid me well. Those dolts didn't know who I was, but they certainly knew where I was and what they had to bring to me. They even brought alo
ng his written instructions, to make certain they did everythingy «rf right."

  "And?"

  "And I killed them, of course. Using the spell I'd been thirsting so long to use again-the spell, by the way, that means you dare not try to betray me-I drank their lives. Which is why I'm grinning like this. The life-energy of three men is raging in me like a flame!"

  Telgarth Boarblade kept his face carefully expressionless. He had wondered why a man he remembered as a cold-eyed, veteran war wizard was babbling like a gloating maniac. So he hadn't been rescued by a complete madwits, after all-just someone mostly mad-witted.

  So, does taking a threefold life need three fatal blade thrusts? Something to ponder…

  Onsler Ruldroun babbled on. "The beauty of it is, Vangerdahast can't lay the smallest spell on me! No realm can confine me, and no-"

  "What's that? "Boarblade snapped to shut off this flow of insanity. He cocked his head and turned as if he'd heard something.

  The war wizard or, Boarblade supposed, ex-war wizard-what did they officially do to war wizard traitors, anyhail, besides execute them? — fell blessedly silent. His eyes narrowed, and he thrust his head forward to listen intently.

  Then he waved his hand in a swift spell.

  After a moment, he nodded, scooped something from a belt pouch, and handed it to Boarblade. It was a small, ordinary-looking stone.

  "Well done, Boarblade. You repay my freeing of you already. Throw that at the man you'll find skulking outside. Hit him with it, but throw it slowly, mind. Underhanded, like a little girl swinging her arm back and forth to throw something as high as she can."

  Boarblade nodded, not asking for an explanation, but the bright-eyed wizard gave him one anyway.

  "I need time to speak the awakening word, whilst the stone is in the air-to turn it deadly to the next living thing it touches."

  "There's only the one person outside?" Boarblade asked quietly, wondering what innocent he'd doomed by his ruse-but not caring much-as he hefted the stone in his hand. "I can't mistake my target?"