The gates proved to be fused solid, the Swords heard no alarm raised, the crossbow didn’t fire—and the assault on the gates began.
Rust fell in flakes, specks, and a fine dust that had Islif, Agannor, and Bey swearing, ducking away, and shaking their heads to try to get it out of their eyes. Finally, a snarling, sweating Islif, tendons standing out on her neck like the edges of daggers, managed to force her shoulder between two bars. She pulled with all her gasping, growling might.
When she fell back, panting and shuddering, two of the bars were bowed visibly apart—and the rest of the Swords were regarding her with new respect, Agannor and Bey gaping in disbelief. They looked at each other, nodded, and strode forward to the two bent bars, hauling and tugging on them with growls of effort and hissed oaths.
Agannor’s bar bent visibly, but Bey’s suddenly broke free of its frame at the top, and leaned out a handwidth. He threw himself shoulder-first against it, groaning at the bone-numbing impact, but managed to shift it only a fingerwidth or so more.
“Break off,” Florin told the three, “and catch your wind.” When they did, gasping and shaking their numbed hands, Florin waved Doust and Semoor forward.
Their struggles made no appreciable difference to the positions of the bars, but when they retreated, wincing and wringing their hands, they took most of the rest of the scaly rust with them, and the Swords could clearly see there was now an oval opening in the gates that someone tall, or someone who hopped in just the right manner, could traverse sideways.
“Behold,” Semoor gasped, waving his hand at it. “Valiant victory.”
“Our first,” Jhessail agreed wryly. “Indeed, yon gates fought hard.”
“I’m growing older,” Agannor complained, striding to the bent bars with Doust’s lantern in his hand.
“Wait,” Pennae snapped, but he waved dismissively and shouldered his way through the gap in the barrier, into the passage beyond.
Going straight to its south wall, Agannor strode briskly along it to where he could shine lanternlight along the cross-passage to the north. Then he played his light for some time on the crossbow. It stood dust-covered and slightly askew atop its dark wooden tripod, with a widening room behind it that seemed to end in two temple-tall, bronzen double doors, with two statues of the same hue flanking them. The southern statue was of an armored warrior woman, staring endlessly at the Swords with one hand on scabbarded sword hilt and her other arm indicating the doors behind her. The northern statue was a similarly armed and armored man who was looking at the doors he was pointing at, his other hand also on sword hilt.
Agannor peered more closely at the sagging crossbow—then chuckled, strolled unconcernedly into its line of fire, and looked the other way along the cross-passage. Nothing erupted at him.
“Nothing to see but some old bones strewn all over the place,” he said back over his shoulder. “So old they’ve gone brown.”
He waved his hand back and forth, to indicate the cross-passage. “Both ways look the same: they run ten paces or so and open out into rooms that look the same size, and stretch on to the west beyond where I can see. I’m going to—”
“ ’Ware!” Pennae shouted, pointing.
Agannor whirled to regard her, then back along the line of her pointing arm, in time to see brown bones rising into the air beyond the tripod.
The bones drew together into two eerily silent whirlwinds that built with frightening speed into two human skeletons, brown and tottering.
He took a step back, cursing and reaching for his blade. They danced forward, their finger bones lengthening into long claws and cold lights whirling into being in the dark depths of their eye sockets.
Pennae was through the bars like a racing eel, with Islif right behind her.
“Stoop! Clumsum!” Florin snapped, following her. “Can’t priests drive undeath down?”
Doust and Semoor looked at each other, swallowed in unison, and reluctantly started toward the bars.
“I don’t know how ’tis done, exactly. Don’t we need—”
“We’re not real priests, yet—”
Bones were slithering along the passages, gathering into untidy brown heaps, and whirling up into more skeletons, swaying and dancing. Florin blinked. Dancing?
The bones weren’t quite touching each other, and none of the skeletal feet were touching the stone tiles. The bones were all floating in the air, like biting flies swarming in clouds above ponds, rather than joined together.
Agannor snarled and slashed crosswise with his blade, shearing claws into bony shards. He ducked away wildly as that skeleton raked at him with its other hand—and Pennae crashed into it, hacking furiously with her daggers.
Islif smashed aside one claw with her own arm and swung her blade like a woodsman’s axe, hewing through ribs and spine. Her skeleton tottered but did not fall, its severed upper part bobbing in midair, apparently unaffected.
Doust swallowed, facing a skeleton, and in a trembling voice said, “By the luck of the Lady, I abjure thee! Go down! Go—”
Claws raked the air in front of his nose, and he stumbled back, something that was almost a shriek rising in his throat.
“They’ve triggered my spell.” The words were as cold and as calm as a crofter agreeing that the next village indeed lay in that direction. “You’re ready?”
“Aye: bows, windlasses, one quiver each.”
“Good. Maglor says there are nine of them. Two she-mages and two he-priests, both novices, Lathander and Tymora. Strike hard and then get out. Get clear before they can hit back, don’t tarry to do battle so they get good looks at you. Any of you who get wounded or worse must be brought out with you. Meet back here, this side of the stone. Understood?”
“Yes, Master Whisper.”
“Good. Go.”
The skeleton reached for him again, and Doust almost fell, wind-milling his arms to keep his feet.
Bey Freemantle lurched in front of him, snarling, “Don’t talk at it, priest! Hack it to shards!” The warrior proceeded to do just that, plying steel vigorously in both hands as bone shards tumbled in the air, forming a cloud around him.
Florin, Islif, and Agannor hacked separate paths through it, cleaving skulls and shattering shoulder blades—and still the bones came slithering, hissing along the floor in their scores and dozens, ere rising up in whirling spirals to form new skeletal foes.
Semoor stammered a long and impressive prayer against “walking undeath” as he waved his hands at the skeletons.
Without effect. Bones rose up before him, eyeless skulls grinning behind long fingerbones that came reaching …
Dove sipped. “Ahhh, nice broth. Thanks, Old Mage.”
“My pleasure, lass. Now ask thy questions.”
“Questions?” Dove gave the Mage of Shadowdale her most innocent look.
“Lass, that hasn’t fooled me since ye could toddle. Ask.”
“Right, then. The Zhents, in and about Eveningstar. Maglor’s just eyes and ears, yes?”
“Aye. Reports through intermediaries to Whisper, who reports to Sarhthor—when he must.”
Dove nodded. “Those two I know. I’ve been sensing others this last month, scrying and prying.”
Elminster shrugged. “Zhents crawl out from under stones by the score when they sniff opportunity. One—I know not who, yet—just found a way to strike at mantled elf mages.”
“So that’s what befell Arlathna. Know you a wraith Zhentarim? Or any entity that drifts about wraithlike, possessing living men?”
“I know of many such. Setting aside brief skulkings or fleeing in wraithform, only one Zhent, though: Old Ghost, he calls himself. Acts as a go-between for the lowliest Zhents and those just above them—Maglor and Whisper—yet serves Manshoon personally.”
“Standing—right, drifting—outside the Zhent chain of command. The sort of being you usually strike down.”
“Aye. Mystra has ordered otherwise.”
Astonishment made Dove’s eyes fla
re bright silver for an instant, and Elminster smiled and topped up her tankard.
Pennae drew back from the fray, winded, to watch these new dooms rise up, and saw something that made her eyes narrow.
Farther down the central passage, right in front of that menacing crossbow, a circle of finger-sized somethings whirled around and around above a particular floor tile: brown, dancing somethings.
She watched those tiny skeletons for a moment—then hefted one of her daggers, ducked a reaching skeletal claw, and threw her steel fang, hard and fast.
Her dagger crashed through the center of the whirling ring, bouncing and hopping with a flash and clang of steel, scattering tiny bones in all directions.
And all around the battling Swords, the remaining skeletons flew apart, shedding bones in all directions.
Pennae never saw them. She was watching her dagger skitter on across the tiles. It struck one of tripod’s feet and bounded into the air, heading for those tall bronzen double doors and the two figures on their pedestals before them. It was going to fall short, strike the stones, and skirl to a stop.
Unless her suspicions about those overly grand statues were correct. This had been an embattled lord’s hold, once, if that garrulous tavernmaster in Dhedluk had spoken truth—and not a man along the aleboard had disputed with him. And what lord spends good coin on such fripperies, unless he’s a madman who thinks himself Lord Emperor of All, or they’re part of a trap—
Sudden blue-white light cracked, lashing out from the male statue to strike her dagger aside. Tiny crawling lightnings hummed and snarled after it, their roots playing briefly across the breast of the statue.
They were answered from the female statue, deadly pale twisted fingers reaching through the air toward its crackling male counterpart.
Most of the Swords stood gaping at the lightnings, but Pennae took two swift steps sideways, to where she could clearly see her dagger. It had stopped just in front of the northernmost of the bronzen double doors, a tiny wisp of smoke drifting lazily up from its scorched hilt.
The watcher leaned forward to stare hard into the crystal, the fingers of one hand pausing in their usual stroking of the unicorn-headed ring on the other hand. Was this a magic that could in time be used to fell the mighty Vangerdahast?
Or could these adventurers become the weapon that would slay the royal magician, and leave Cormyr unguarded, for the taking?
The last lightning bolts leaped and snapped, and the Swords gave each other grim smiles.
“This will come as a deep surprise, I’m sure,” Islif said gruffly, “but I’m not in favor of proceeding to yon doors.”
The answering chuckles were dry. Amid them, Pennae leaned forward far enough to peer up and down the cross-passage, and Agannor grinned and came over to her with his lantern.
“Doust, Semoor, Bey, Martess,” Florin said gently. “Mount you a rearguard right here, while the rest of us go south down this cross-passage, to see what we may see.”
Agannor gave the forester a challenging glance, just for an instant, then shrugged and started down the cross-passage, Pennae right beside him and Islif trotting to catch up. Jhessail rolled her eyes and followed, Florin with her.
A bare ten paces on, the passage opened out into a room, a dark doorway yawning in its western wall—and another passage branching off through its east wall.
“Halt,” Pennae told everyone, in a voice of iron, before she ducked low and leaned out to shine her beam-lantern down the passage. It ran on a slant, back toward the rooms and passages they’d already been in, to end in a bare, angled wall. Pennae’s eyes narrowed again.
She prowled along the short, doorless passage to its end, where she peered at the stone wall, running her fingers along cracks and tool marks and—aha!
“A secret door,” she called back, her voice shrill with excitement. “And I can open it!”
Her fingers had already found two hollows wherein something clicked under her fingertips—and the door trembled, grating ever-so-slightly.
Agannor and Islif came hurrying along the passage, blades drawn. “Not before we—”
Pennae gave them both an “oh, please” look, and thrust the door wide. Though it proved to be thicker than her own body, piercing a wall of the same girth, it made no further sound, nor opened with any difficulty. She could push its ponderous weight with a fingertip.
The three Swords peered together into the room of the puddle and the heap of weapons. It was very much as they’d left it, holding no sign of lurking beasts, spies, or anyone but themselves.
Pennae studied the exposed doorframe for a moment, then the balance of the hinges and the frame behind them, too. Then she peered at the door-edge, looking for locks and catches and finding just the one she’d opened. She threw up a hand. “Wait here a moment.”
Then she was through the door and across the room like an arrow in flight, fetching up in front of the far wall with narrowed eyes and searching fingers. After a moment she nodded in satisfaction and thrust her fingers into two widely separated tool gouges.
Another concealed door promptly clicked open in the wall, its outlines appearing out of the weathered stone as if by magic. It was just as thick as the first one, but moved even more quietly. Recently used.
Pennae peered quickly into another slantwise passage, a mirror image of the one she’d just traversed. Seeing nothing but stone walls and an utter lack of marauding beasts, she hooked her fingertips into two other handy hollows to pull the door closed again. Its click was barely audible.
“Another slantwise passage, running so,” she told the others, gesturing to indicate its position, as they hastened to rejoin Florin and Jhessail.
Jhessail greeted them with a frown. “Is it wise to go running off in twos and threes?”
“No,” Islif agreed. “A mistake we’ll not repeat.” She gave Agannor a glance. “I hope.”
“We must never leave some area unexplored, that could conceal a man—or even a biting snake—between us and the way out,” Pennae warned them all, “lest we get trapped in here by a monster—or a band of outlaws.”
Her fellow Swords, up and down the passage, nodded soberly.
“So, shall we continue?” Agannor asked, waving at the empty room before them, where the passage ended and that dark doorway awaited.
“Yes.” Florin turned to look back at the rearguard. “All quiet?”
They both nodded, and the forester added, “Pennae and Islif to the fore. Agannor right behind, ready to charge in. Then you, Jhessail.”
Pennae quickly circled the empty room, peering at the walls and ceiling. When she reached the doorway, she stepped well back to shine her lantern inside.
The Swords saw a table and chairs, some of the latter overturned or hacked apart. Bunk beds around the walls, some hewn and splintered. Strongchests under the lower bunks, their locks and hasps smashed. A door—ajar into darkness—in the middle of the south wall, with something odd huddled on the floor in front of it; something of a stonelike hue.
Pennae moved closer, shining her light everywhere. No other doors, no corpses or brown bones. No tools or weapons lying anywhere. “In,” she told Islif and Agannor, “and watch that door. Don’t push it open. I’m for the chests.”
They proved to be empty, and their damp wood crumbled at a touch like badly made nutbread. By the time Pennae was finished looking at all of them and behind them, at the underside of the table and all around the bunks, Agannor and Islif had looked long and hard at the stony mass on the floor, prodding it with their swords and shifting it aside to make sure no hole or anything else was concealed beneath it. The rest of the Swords watched from the doorway. Pennae thrust aside chairs and the remnants of chairs to clear a wide path from doorway to where Agannor and Islif stood.
“Look at this,” Agannor told everyone, pointing at the stone heap with his sword.
From the doorway, Jhessail did just that. When she spoke, her voice sounded uneasy, on the edge of disgust. “What is i
t?”
Even curled up as it was, it was a little thing, all stumpy legs and long, gangly arms, with a malicious face, flat-nosed and fang-mouthed, glaring down at the broken short sword it held. Its ears were pointed like a cat’s, and it wore armor made of random plates of salvaged, battered human armor tied together in an untidy, overlapping array.
“Never seen a goblin before?” Agannor’s voice was bleak. “This is—or was—a goblin. Something’s turned it to stone.”
Chapter 14
DARK DAYS FOR THE REALM
Find your swords, ye who still have eyes to see them, hands to wield them, and wits enough left to search for them. Polish them if it heartens ye, and drink a last goblet to those who have already fallen. Then gather ye with sword and shield by the old oak, and await my coming.
We are fated to die, and may as well do it together, achieving some small vengement upon our foes, as do it apart, falling alone beneath the blades of laughing foes.
So strike as one, for Cormyr, and go down into darkness with savage smiles, and the blood of dying foes on your blades. Seek not to flee or hold aloof from the fray; ’tis too late for that.
The dark days are come at last.
Andrath Dragonarl,
Knight of Cormyr
A Call to Arms
pinned to trees throughout the realm
in the Year of the Floating Rock
Dark days for the realm, indeed,” Blundebel Eldroon growled, setting down his gigantic tallglass. It was now half-full, but had been sparkling to the rim with the very finest of glowfire a moment ago. “I know old nobles always say something of the sort, but this time, as the gods bear witness, Cormyr truly—”
“Ah, Lord Eldroon,” Prester Yellander said, his interruption as firm as the snap of a lash, “but that’s just where your words fall into misadventure. Cormyr does not ‘truly’ anything. That is our problem, lords: we are so fallen into deceit and deception, with a royal magician insanely unable to tell the truth about the weather, the color of his own robes, and even his own name, let alone affairs of state, leading us daily farther and farther astray!”
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