Who sighed, shrugged, and said, “The king is the king. He does what he believes is best for Cormyr. Would you want adventurers with blades and spells looking for trouble in Espar? In Marsember? Arabel? Suzail? Well, neither does he. I … I hope I’m not going to just scream and run, when the first orc I see is coming at us. Hungrily.” She shivered.
“Dathen Brook,” Islif interrupted, pointing ahead. “Time to stop and water the horses.”
“And that’s what successful adventuring is about,” Semoor said brightly. “Taking the time to stop and water the horses.”
The innkeeper had called this his “neither my best nor yet my worst” room, but it was little better than a closet. No window, two narrow bunk beds—Horaundoon undid his carry-coffer’s shoulder-slicing harness with relief, and tossed the heavy burden onto the lower bunk—and a rickety chair drawn up to a small, scarred table. A shelf with a towel and a cracked water-ewer. A candle-lamp with scrips and a striker. A chamberpot under the bed, with a mouse scurrying past it. Doubtless bugs in the bed.
So this was upcountry luxury.
The Zhentarim closed the door. It fit loosely; the floor was warped. At least there was a wooden toe-wedge to hold it shut. Horaundoon augmented it with three wedges of his own and tacked up the black blanket he’d be sleeping in tonight over the door, to block all curious eyes. Then he cast a scrying-shield that was much better than the ring-stored sort sold to wealthy merchants in Sembia, and waited until it turned the air its ghostly gray.
So he was a merchant with secrets. That shouldn’t be so rare in Waymoot as to upset local war wizards enough to call in superiors. He’d already planned to hide his orb inside the hargaunt, and hide the hargaunt as part of himself, whenever he set boot outside this oh-so-cozy chamber.
Horaundoon unwrapped his smallest scrying orb, set it on the table with the inn towel beneath it, laid his fingertips on it, and murmured the words that brought it to glowing, floating life.
It was time to go hunting foolish new adventurers …
Once dismounted, reins wrapped around her arm, Islif turned to Florin and embraced him. “Thank you,” she said huskily. “I meant to do this earlier, but those war wizards were determined we’d not get any chance to talk together before bedding down, without them eagerly taking in every word. I’m surprised they didn’t bed down with each of us; they did lock us in, you know.”
Florin nodded. “I discovered that.”
Islif kissed him. “Thank you. I don’t know how you did it—you must have had Tymora’s own shining luck, not to get killed!—but you got us our charter, and handed us all our dream!”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t become a nightmare.” Florin sighed. “This may be a huge mistake. I made a terrible blunder a few days back, and if I go on making them, I may well get us all killed.”
“Excuse me,” the Lady Narantha said firmly, putting a hand on Florin’s arm and giving Islif a beseeching look—who nodded and let go, allowing the noblewoman to drag Florin a few strides away.
Keeping her voice low, Narantha bent her head close to his and murmured, “You guided me in the forest; there, I was little better than a child. Please heed me when I say this now: forests may be unknown realms to me, but leading people, winning arguments, and manipulating folk high and low are where I can guide you, a little.”
“Lady,” Florin agreed, “I will. For as they say of the Blue Dragons, I’m all at sea in this. I can bark commands and look imperious—my father did that very successfully, and I can ape him easily enough—but when I ride with my friends, and their lives are at hazard …”
Semoor sidled a few steps closer to them, cocking his head with an exaggerated flourish to eavesdrop.
Narantha gave him a dirty sidelong look and moved around Florin to face him squarely—and be able to look past his arm and watch Semoor.
Putting her arms around Florin’s neck, she drew his head down and murmured, as they stood nose to nose, “I must give you stern warning. Never appear indecisive or less than confident. Even if you quail inside, or feel bewildered, be firm, give orders, and make others think you are in command of what befalls—and you will be. You must do this, Florin!”
Sober blue-gray eyes met hers, and relief was growing in them. Florin let out his breath, smiled, and told her, “Thanks, La—”
“Nantha,” she said firmly, kissed the tip of his nose, and stepped back out of his arms, catching hold of his hand to lead them back to the road.
Semoor was holding their horses for them, and at their approach he observed loudly, “So you are a couple. Sidling off by yourselves for kiss-and-cuddle moments, embracing whenever you get the chance—”
“Master Wolftooth,” Narantha said crisply, “I’ll tolerate much from the friends of the man who saved my life. Yet a woman’s reputation is her all—for the nobly born, at least—and if you cast many more unfounded aspersions my way, be aware that you’ll soon be doing so without teeth! Or what are vulgarly referred to as your ‘family jewels,’ or both teeth and jewels, as my outrage moves me. Hear me, upstanding servant of Lathander, and guide thyself accordingly.”
“Oh, well said,” Islif applauded. “Semoor, spare us any attempt at a clever rejoinder. Tell the lady: ‘Yes, Lady Narantha. Thank you, Lady Narantha. Sorry, Lady Narantha, and it won’t happen again, Lady Nar—’ ”
“Hey, now!” Semoor protested. “I can manage all of those courtesies but the last. Lathander looks not favorably on falsehoods.”
Narantha wrinkled her forehead in the deepest of puzzled frowns. “And so you chose to serve him why, exactly—you being what you are?”
The Waymoot roadguard gave them a smile and a wave; evidently their fame had preceded them. The Swords took rooms at The Old Man after Narantha told them it was the quietest inn in town, ate a good meal, then strolled down the street.
Doust was bound for evening prayers at the local temple of Tymora, but the others sought the doors beneath the hanging signboard of The Moon and Stars.
Flanking the entrance, four watchful rangers with swords at their sides stood waiting, leaning against the jambs and side-panels with crossed arms and carefully expressionless faces.
“Down blades,” one of them ordered.
“Goodman,” the Lady Narantha replied politely, “you may guard my dagger.” As she calmly hiked the skirts of her glittering flame-hued evening gown to unsheath it, raising all the eyebrows the four doorwardens possessed, she added, “These my companions have a charter, newly given them by the king himself, that permits—”
“Oh, you’re the bright heroes from Espar! Be welcome!” The man glanced back over his shoulder, to where a sudden swell of noise had marked the appearance of a jowly man with a mustache through an inner door. The new arrival looked at the Swords, then nodded to the senior doorwarden—just as Narantha laid her dagger across the man’s palm and said to the jowly man, “Fair even, War Wizard!”
The mage blinked at her, stepped back to survey her from head to foot, then said hastily, “And good even to you, Lady—?”
“Crownsilver,” she answered, sweeping past him. “War wizard training is slipping, I fear; Vangey should have thoroughly acquainted you with all of us, from our faces to our indiscretions.”
Still blinking, the surprised war wizard gave ground as the Swords followed her, emerging into a huge, many-pillared taproom whose dark wooden tables were crowded with cheerfully noisy drinkers. It was a splendid, warmly lit room, awash in the smells of fried cheeses and more exotic platters, and it stretched from the gleaming bar before them to the booths along the far wall of the room, a long spearcast away.
Out of long habit Narantha paused just inside the door way to make a grand entrance—and Islif, who’d taken shrewd measure of Florin’s new friend, threw out her arm like a door-bar to keep the rest of the Swords from walking right into Narantha’s shapely back.
The noisy room hushed for a moment as the noblewoman clad in eye-catching flame was noticed, then talk returned all
the louder. Through it, Narantha called to the tavernmaster, “A booth or table for six, if you have one!”
“Six?” Semoor asked, from behind her.
“Doust will no doubt be thirsty when he gets up off his knees,” she replied, without turning. “In the meantime, it might keep the war wizard—who’ll see it as his duty to eavesdrop on us—from hovering; he can just sit down with us, and join in.”
At the rear of the Swords, Florin and Jhessail looked with some amusement at the jowly mage beside them, who harrumphed and blushed.
The duty tavernmaster looked Narantha up and down just as the war wizard had done, then hastened out from behind the bar to lead them down the room, beckoning them with a flourish.
The Lady Narantha glanced neither to right nor left as they threaded through the tables, but the Swords behind her were acutely aware of interested stares from dwarves, tattooed dusky-skinned traders from the South, dozens of merchants, and almost as many fighting men—probably guards, though they wore little or no armor, and not one of them bore scabbarded blades or any other sort of weapon. The Swords’ sheathed weapons drew some curious looks.
The tavernmaster bowed and swept out his hand at a table almost at the end of the room. “Will this do, fairest Lady?”
“Admirably,” Narantha replied. “We thirst.”
The tavernmaster smiled. “As it happens, we solve such problems here. Ale, mead, zzar? Or shall I call the cellarer to acquaint you with our wines?”
“But of course,” the Lady Crownsilver replied, seating herself.
Islif rolled her eyes and cast a glance back at Florin. He was smiling, and mouthed one silent word to her: Adventure.
“No. Not to my liking, I’m afraid,” the tall trader said politely, setting down the boot. “Those I sell to rarely prefer anything practical—or used.”
He strolled out of the shop and across the road to the Moon, where the doorwardens accepted his belt knife and admitted him. Striding to the bar for a tankard, the trader carefully neglected to glance down the room. The polished brass and finemetals on the wall behind the bar would afford him reflections enough to know where the Swords of Eveningstar were seated.
He had plenty of time. The evening was yet young.
As usual, the hargaunt itched.
Semoor peered mournfully at the empty bottom of his tankard, and Islif sighed and lifted her arm to signal for more ale.
As he turned to grin at her, the large-nosed priest of Lathander asked, “Why’d they take away the salted nuts? And then bring them right back again?”
“To give the war wizard a chance to enspell the bowl,” Narantha told him, “so he can listen from afar rather than standing over us.”
“Ah,” Semoor replied. Scooping up the nut bowl, he put it to his lips and made a loud and rude sound. “I wonder what he’ll make of that?”
“That Master Semoor Wolftooth is with us,” Jhessail told him, “and being his usual self. Stoop, how are you ever going to keep your standing as a priest? If you behave like this inside a temple …”
“Dusking,” Semoor cursed. “Am I going to go on being reprimanded even now? When I’ve escaped from Espar, charter-anointed, into a life of fabled adventure?”
Islif snorted. “The ‘fabled adventure’ part, good Stoop, may well be what swiftly befalls you if you ignore such reprimands. Ah, here’s more ale.”
As two smiling serving wenches in gowns with very low-laced corsets brought platters of drinkables, the talk at the table behind them—merchants from Sembia, if the shimmerweave and cloth-of-gold were anything to go by—rose in volume excitedly, so the Swords couldn’t help but overhear:
“Ah, but every last war wizard in the realm’ll be searching for it afore they’re done, mark you! The thing can slay them—and has! I’ve heard six have been fried alive already! Heads blown off and innards sizzled like spitted boar!”
“Six? I heard eleven, and more who’ll join them in graves right soon, if all the hired healing fails. Whoever wears this Iron War Crown can see active magics from afar—and from the thing hurl deadly bolts at anyone who has that magic!”
“ ‘Iron War’? What war’s that? Something dwarves got mixed up in?”
“I know not. All these magic things have overblown and oh-so-mysterious names; didn’t ye know?”
“Well, I know that magic in Cormyr means war wizards, and that they’re all frantically searching for this thing!”
“Well, I haven’t got it—and if I did, I’d sell it right quick to someone who wants to fry mages and is willing to pay handsomely for the power to do so!”
“The Witch Queen? So she can snuff out Red Wizards even faster?”
There followed a chorus of raucous laughter, then a sudden hush as several burly men rose from divers tables and went over to the Sembians.
“So, what’s all this about wanting to fry war wizards?” one of them asked, a shade too casually, and the richly garbed merchants looked up at him suspiciously.
“You look like a Purple Dragon who’s left his armor at home to me,” one Sembian replied, cleaning out one ear with a ring-adorned little finger. “So why don’t you sit down here and tell us about war wizards? We only know what we hear.”
“And what might that be?”
Another Sembian shrugged. “What all Cormyr is talking about—in the taverns, leastways: that something called the Arcrown’s been stolen, and your Wizards of War want it back.”
“Desperately,” a third Sembian added.
“Before ’tis too late for them all,” a fourth merchant put in, setting his tankard down hard.
The man who’d been bidden to sit down did so, fixed the loudest Sembian with a cool eye, and said, “Why don’t you tell me more about what you’ve heard of this crown?”
“Oh? Such as?”
“What it does … that sort of thing.”
The Sembian shrugged. “Arcrown or Iron War Crown, some are calling it, though most say it’s a plain circlet. Wear it and you can see magic at work—and you can choose to send slaying bolts out of it, at whoever has those magics … that sort of thing.”
“And then what?”
“And then they’re dead, that’s what, unless they throw away their magic or end their spell or whatever, right quick.”
The Purple Dragon, if that’s what he was, glanced up at some of the other burly men, and shrugs were exchanged.
Another of the Sembians looked down the table at the Cormyreans and added, “The rest is all rumors about how many war wizards have been slain already, by whom, and what it’s all going to lead to—and being as you’re all not-very-well-hidden agents of the Dragon Throne, suppose you tell us the truth about all of those things, hey?”
By way of reply, the man sitting at the end of the table favored him with a very cold stare, and without a word got up and went back to his own table, the other burly men drifting away as the Sembians chuckled.
When they spoke again, however, their voices were lower, and they seemed to be discussing prices and shortages and “how many barrels.”
The Swords traded looks with each other.
Semoor, of course, spoke up first. “So would this make our reputations, if we found this crown and presented it to His Majesty?”
“That’s a very large ‘if,’ ” Florin commented. “First, we have to have the faintest idea of where to go looking.”
Jhessail nodded. “And unless the spells the Morninglord grants you are more powerful than the spells of the war wizards—and remember, Stoop, some of them can split a castle keep in twain from top to bottom, with but a word!—we’ve not much chance of finding anything they can’t. Certainly not with my paltry castings!”
Semoor plucked up the nut bowl again, and asked it brightly, “Any advice? Places you might like some enthusiastic, newly chartered adventurers to go look? Some noble’s winecellar, perhaps? Or—ahem—pleasure chambers, where huffing and puffing monacled lords of the realm hide their hired harems?”
�
�Semoor,” Jhessail said reprovingly. “I deeply doubt the royal magician will find you either clever or funny.”
“Oh? Why would he find me at all? And for that matter, how would he find me?”
The Lady Narantha leaned forward to look down the table at Semoor. “Well, by the choruses of exasperation, for one,” she said, eyes twinkling. “And by the charter itself, for two: there’re spells buried in all of those fancy inks, you know, and Vangerdahast can find out exactly where our charter is, whenever he wants to. Any war wizard can—and they can also, just by touching it and uttering the right word, know right away if it’s a real charter or a forgery.”
“Darkrose!” Semoor cursed. “Well, there goes my scheme for a wealthy retirement: go to Sembia, make dozens of charters that look very much like this one, and sell them to anyone who wants to traipse around Cormyr waving a sword!”
Jhessail sighed, turned in her chair, snatched the nut bowl out of Semoor’s grasp, and told it fiercely, “He’s jesting—jesting! Believe not a word!”
“Pray pardon,” a voice purred by her ear. “I couldn’t help but overhear mention of a charter. Am I correct in assuming you’re lawful adventurers? And if so, are you looking for new members?”
The Swords of Eveningstar blinked at each other—then at the sleek young woman in dark leather who was leaning over Jhessail. Short and slender, with glossy black hair cut short in the same sort of “helm-bob” cut many warriors favored, she fixed them with large, liquid dark eyes.
“My name is Pennae,” she added, “and this is Martess.” She shifted a lithe shoulder aside to let the Swords see another slender, dark-clad and dark-haired lass standing behind her. “She casts spells out of books. I procure specifics when needs arise.”
Florin stared at them, then around the table, not missing Narantha’s look of encouragement.
Take command, it said, as clearly as if she’d shouted.
Clearing his throat, the man who’d rescued the king remembered one of Azoun’s last bits of royal advice.
“Well, now,” he began. “Well, now …”
Swords of Eveningstar Page 14
