Agannor blinked. “Pronounced what?”
“Under Crown law, you must go straight to see her, tarrying not and turning aside nowhere else.”
“Right,” Agannor mimicked him, and rode on, the rest of the Swords following.
Two guards awaited them on the tower porch. They took the saddle-weary Swords’ reins and pointed them inside with the words: “Audience room. Now. Expected.”
Inside, yet another Purple Dragon stood facing them, at the back of the entry hall. There was an open door beside him, and he was pointing at it. The Swords tramped forward.
“I feel like I’m being herded,” Jhessail muttered to Martess, as they went through that door—and found a lone woman sitting behind a desk. She stood up to greet them with a smile, ash-blonde hair falling free over her shoulders, and proved to be as tall as Islif, though more slender of build. She dominated the room just as the king had dominated the inn when they’d dined with him.
“They’re all the same,” Narantha whispered to Florin, as they shuffled in to stand in an uneasy cluster, facing Tessaril. “Eyes like drawn daggers.”
The lady lord folded her arms across her chest, gave the Swords a smile that never quite reached her eyes, and asked pleasantly, “Your charter, please?”
Florin undid his breastplate again to proffer it, and Tessaril took it and read each name aloud in turn, raising her eyes to see who answered. When she was done, she looked to Narantha and said, “You seem unaccounted for.”
“I am the Lady Narantha Crownsilver. I am not a Sword of Eveningstar, but travel with them at the king’s personal suggestion.”
Tessaril smiled. “As I recall, His Majesty’s precise words regarding me were: ‘She can give you directions to the Halls, and be your guide in matters ethical while you are within her writ’ and his precise words regarding you were: ‘I must, by blood and the needs of the realm, forbid the name of Narantha Crownsilver from appearing on this or any adventuring charter’ and ‘in the Cormyr I reign over, friend may freely ride with friend—so keeping this precious lady safe and away from you or safe in your company is entirely your affair.’ Somewhat less strong and firm than suggesting you travel with the Swords. Wherefore, as a noble who might some day lead the Crownsilvers and therefore is of great value to the realm, you must bide with me, in the guest chambers here in my tower, and not stay with the Swords at the inn or for that matter in the open, nor enter the Halls with them.”
Narantha drew herself up, eyes blazing, and Tessaril added in the mildest of voices, “And I am certain that, understanding your duty to the realm as you do, your own reputation, and what it is to be truly noble, you would not dream for an instant of disobeying, rebuking, or even arguing with one of the king’s lords.”
Someone among the assembled Swords snickered—someone who sounded suspiciously like Pennae.
Tessaril gave no signs of having heard that mirth, but looked from a simmering Narantha to the rest of them to say gravely, “As the gauntleted hand of the Dragon Throne here in Eveningstar, I must keep order. This involves being always aware of perils and disputes in my domain that may in time, like fires, flare into something greater. Wherefore it should come as no surprise to you that I’ll have my eye on all of you. Please come to me for advice, aid if you need it, and to report anything you see fit that I should know.” She spread her hands. “Will you share your immediate plans with me, please?”
Narantha looked at Florin, who took a pace forward, met Tessaril’s gaze steadily, and replied, “Lady Lord Winter, we’ve no desire to gain your disfavor. I tell you in truth that we plan to forthwith enter the Haunted Halls north of the village, as I’m sure you’re aware the king requires us to do. If we can, we’ll scour it out, though I fear that may prove more than we can handle. You recommend we take rooms at the inn?”
Tessaril gave him the ghost of a smile. “I do. You are expected.”
She strolled toward the door. “I wish you good fortune. Report to me if you intend to leave the vicinity of Eveningstar, or if you witness anything that might be of great interest to the security of Cormyr.”
“Dragons, massed troops, that sort of thing?” Semoor asked impishly.
“That sort of thing,” Tessaril agreed, with the slightest of smiles, and waved them out the door.
Chapter 13
IN HALLS DARK AND HAUNTED
But deep in halls dark and haunted
Even heroes bold, high-vaunted
Twice and thrice, to end up daunted
Think of loved ones deeply wanted
And much safer places to be.
Thalloviir Vaundruth,
Bard of Beregost
Ever A Hero Be (ballad)
composed in the Year of Moonfall
I mislike the look of yon doors,” Bey Freemantle said, breaking his habitual silence.
A few paces to his left, Martess wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”
“Troll,” Islif said shortly. “Mate-rut: the stink they make to tell other trolls they’re ready to breed.” She tramped back and forth. “ ’Tis stronger in that direction.”
“So,” Semoor said brightly, “we’ll go the other way!”
Around him, several Swords looked uneasily about.
“I’d not want to come stumbling out of the Halls, weary and perhaps hurt—only to find half a dozen trolls waiting for me,” Doust said grimly.
Islif shrugged. “Then get you to yon temple and embrace new prayers as the ‘adventure’ in your life.”
“Our lanterns won’t burn forever,” Agannor snapped. “Let’s get going.”
Pennae looked to Florin, who nodded. Then she strolled forward, keeping close to the left wall of the square opening in the rockface. In one hand she held her own small lantern; in the other, a long, thin sapling she’d had Florin cut for her.
The Swords watched. Starwater Gorge seemed to have fallen very silent around them.
Holding her lantern high, Pennae peered at the stone wall, the ceiling, and the floor. She prodded all of them with her wooden pole, stepped forward, and repeated the probings. The Swords drifted forward a pace or two.
Pennae probed on, reaching a back corner beside the doors. She played her lantern back across the passage, peering at the far side, then turned her attention to the doors. Pressing herself right into the corner, she reached out to touch the nearest door with the sapling, letting its blunt end trail along the panels. Then she probed the floor in front of it and the ceiling above it. Nothing happened.
“Gods,” Semoor muttered. “I’m going to die of old age just standing here watching.”
“You could be praying,” Martess told him tartly.
Pennae paid them no attention at all, other than to look up at Doust and firmly point out at the gorge, to remind him he was supposed to be watching for approaching beasts or outlaws, not staring at her. Guiltily, the priestling of Tymora swung around.
The rest of the Swords watched Pennae step cautiously forward to take a ‘ready to spring’ stance right in front of one of the doors, peering at it as if she expected it to lunge at her. Never taking her eyes off it, she ducked down and bobbed back up again, in a single graceful movement, to pluck something long, dark, and thin from inside her right boot.
“She’s good at this,” Semoor muttered. “I wonder how much practice she’s had?”
The “something” proved to be a long rod with a small hook at one end and an eyelet at the other. Pennae undid a clasp at her belt, hooked that clasp around the eyelet—it fastened there with an audible click—then began to turn herself around and around while standing in the same spot, walking widdershins. Coils of dark cord that had been tight around her waist fell around her ankles, until she reached what looked like a slender, flat, miniature version of a ship’s turnbuckle. This she undid, hooking the end still wrapped around her onto to her belt buckle. Taking up the free end of the cord now separated from her, she knotted it around one end of the sapling and swung open her belt buckle to
reveal a palm-sized bundle of heavy thread.
Islif moved forward, watching with narrowed eyes, as Pennae lashed the hook to the other end of sapling with expert speed. Kicking the coils of cord to one side, she stepped back toward the corner, carefully keeping her feet just to the flagstones she’d probed, until she could just reach the pull-ring of the nearest door with it. Ducking down and lifting one hand as a shield in front of her face, she couched her other arm around the sapling as if it were a knight’s lance, and deftly dropped the hook over the ring.
Nothing happened, though Pennae tensed, peering and listening, for two long breaths.
Then, careful to keep tension on the hook so it wouldn’t slip off, she backed away, keeping to the route along the wall she’d probed earlier. When she reached the end of the sapling and had to let go of it, she’d already wound the cord thrice around her arm, so as the wood sagged, the cord stayed as taut as a ready bowstring—and the door started to creak open.
Pennae stopped to frantically wave the Swords away to either side. After a moment, all of them obeyed, moving to right or left of the passage-mouth, and she nodded grimly and resumed her retreat, dragging the door open.
The doors proved not to be latched to each other, or secured in any way. They were old, thick, and heavy, but hung a thumbwidth or so clear of the flagstones, and so didn’t stick against the floor.
Beyond them was dark stillness. With one of the two doors fully open, Pennae crouched, aiming her lantern up high inside. Then, cautiously, she advanced along the wall, retrieving her hook and placing the sapling as a prop to hold the door wide.
She was restoring the cord to around her waist when Agannor stirred, sighed, and growled, “I’m not standing out here all day! Let’s be about this!”
A moment later, he’d drawn his sword and was striding forward, approaching the doors square-on as if traversing a long hallway in purposeful haste.
“Wait—” Pennae blurted, throwing out one hand.
Ignoring her, the fair-haired fighter ducked through the open door, glancing quickly to the right, then up at the ceiling. Then he stepped back. “Dark in here,” he drawled. “Lass, that lantern of yours?”
Pennae sighed in exasperation, took up her sapling, and joined him. He reached for the lantern, but she deftly ducked away behind him, snapping, “No. Bladesmen with lanterns make superb targets. Get yourself killed on your own time.”
Agannor glared at her for a moment, his eyes two hard points—then relaxed, laughed, and waved Pennae forward with a grand flourish.
Uneasily the rest of the Swords moved forward.
Take command, Florin reminded himself, hastening to their forefront. Behind him, Semoor asked the listening world, “So we’ve poked our noses into the Haunted Halls, yes? Fulfilled our promise to the king, and can go elsewhere, right now, heads high and—”
“Stoop,” Islif snapped, elbowing the priestling in the gut as she passed, “belt up. Now.”
Walking in her wake, Jhessail sighed. “I wondered how long it would take before we happy merry adventurers ended up at each other’s throats.”
Behind them, Doust cleared his throat tentatively. “Uh, do you want me to stay here on trollwatch? Or …?”
Islif swung around. “Come on, Clumsum. Stride on up here and get killed with the rest of us.”
Jhessail rolled her eyes.
Two tunics tied around his shoulders and his old and patched weathercloak shrugged on over them, plus the hargaunt arranged just so, made Horaundoon seem a huge-headed, bulbous-nosed giant of a man. As he lurched down from the wagon to have his things carried into the Tankard, feigning being far stouter and shorter of breath than he truly was, his gaze fell upon a slender, black-haired man striding along the road toward him with a satchel on his shoulder. The satchel was probably full of vials, being as its bottom was something rare in satchels: a wooden box.
So this would be Maglor the apothecary, Whisper’s spy and obedient fingers-in-the-dark in Eveningstar.
Their eyes met, and Horaundoon gave Maglor the disinterested stare of a total stranger and turned away. If he needed this darkjack in times ahead, he’d doubtless be wearing a different guise when they met.
The apothecary made a wide birth around the caravan wagons, and Horaundoon trudged up onto the inn porch. It looked a nice enough place.
’Twas almost a pity he was going to have to kill or mindmaim most of the folk here, before he was done.
“Scream if you must,” Florin told his fellow Swords, as they peered around the room, “but no yelling or making loud noises. I’d rather we surprise whatever lurks here, rather than the other way around.”
“Yes, O King,” Agannor muttered.
“None of that,” Islif told him sharply. “Florin’s valor won us this charter, and he bears the favor of the goddess Mielikki. If he desires to lead us, he leads us.”
“I have no problem with that,” Pennae said, looking at Florin in clear invitation. “So whither now, Falconhand?”
The room they stood in held only a puddle of water and a heap of weapons, surmounted by a shield. Pennae had already warned everyone fiercely not to so much as approach the pile, let alone touch it. The passage that had brought them to the room continued out its other side, west into the solid rock underlying the high sheep pasture—the southern edge of the wild, dreaded Stonelands—that was somewhere above their heads.
The air was cool, and gently moving. It smelled of damp stone and earth. When Florin waved his hands for silence, the Swords could hear nothing but their own breathing.
A pair of rust-orange metal gates, firmly chained together, barred the way on, where the passage opened out of the center of the innermost wall. Through those close-spaced vertical bars, their lanterns showed that the passage ran straight on into the rock, intersecting with a cross-passage and continuing, to open out into a larger chamber or cavern. Partway down the farther run stood a wooden tripod surmounted with a crossbow too large for most men to lift.
It was loaded and ready—and pointed along the passage right at the Swords.
Florin borrowed Pennae’s lantern (the only one they had that shone a beam, rather than illuminating blindingly in all directions) to peer at the crossbow. “It doesn’t look in good shape,” he murmured.
“Neither do these gates,” Islif put in. “Why don’t Agannor, Bey, and I try to break or bend just one bar, off to the side here, while everyone else clears right over to that side wall? Then, if it fires …”
“ ’Tis only us who’ll embrace sudden ventilation,” Agannor growled—then grinned. “Let’s do it.”
“Should I hook at it, first?” Pennae offered. “It looks solid, but that mass of chain might collapse into dust. I doubt it, but ’tis worth a try—and if the crossbow fires, we’ll learn how it’s aimed, and if its firing brings someone to reload it.”
“Or something to reload it,” Semoor remarked.
“Yes,” Florin said firmly. “Pennae’s hook-and-pole first, then work on the bars.”
Semoor sighed loudly. “I feel swindled by the gods! Thus far, ‘adventure’ seems to be almost all ‘work.’ When does the fun start?”
Islif hefted her sword. “When the first monsters find us.”
“They’re inside the Haunted Halls,” Laspeera said, pointing at the scrying crystal.
Vangerdahast clapped her on the shoulder. “Thanks. Watch them closely until I return. It shouldn’t take me all that long to have a mere merchants’ delegation wetting themsel—”
A deep chime sounded in the next room.
Laspeera looked at the royal magician, and the royal magician looked back at Laspeera and told her, “Stay right here and keep scrying. The merchants will wait; I’ll see what His Majesty wants first.”
He strode out and down the passage, taking the swiftest route to the Chamber of Charts. For anything less than royalty, Gordrar would have sent a junior war wizard to fetch him; the chime meant the presence of Azoun himself, in anger or at least
impatience—or Azoun was dead and another Obarskyr was standing there very upset about it.
Now, that would be dark disaster indeed for the Forest Kingdom. And he’d had quite enough dark disas—
Passing through a curtain, Vangerdahast opened a door into a tiny cubicle where the air sang with mighty magic. There he pulled the door firmly closed before he opened the door on its far side, bustled through that door and down a thickly carpeted ramp into the back of a wardrobe, thrust its well-oiled doors open, slipped out, and closed it again. He peered quickly around the deserted Chamber of Treaties to make sure it truly was deserted, crossed to its far wall, and went through a concealed door there into the servants’ passage that ran behind the Chamber of Charts.
A bare breath later, he was smiling at Azoun and making the deft little gesture that told Gordrar he was to withdraw. “Yes, my king?”
“Vangey! My new adventurers—how fare they? Where are they, and what are they up to?”
The royal magician put on his best mildly puzzled face. “Adven—ah, yes, I recall. The ‘Swords of Eveningstar.’ I must confess I’ve spent neither spell nor time watching them, thus far. Yet if you deem it needful—”
“Nay, nay. When you’ve time will do. I was merely … curious.”
“Ah.” Vangerdahast looked up at the king in the manner of a kindly but disapproving tutor. “You were merely … curious. A flaw, I fear; rulers should—”
“Leave such character failings to their wizards?” Azoun’s voice was dry. “Pray tell me, Vangey, which particular flaws do you think I should cultivate?”
Oh, naed.
Naed, naed, naed, naed, naed.
“Your Majesty,” Vangerdahast began, in his most cajolingly hurt voice, “I hope you believe not for a moment that …”
Swords of Eveningstar Page 18
