“Strong words, Lord Yellander,” Sardyn Wintersun observed. “As Lord Eldroon intimates, is this slide into untruth not a dark doom decried by every generation of nobles and sages—and Obarskyr kings, for that matter? Does the realm truly totter on the brink of savagery, civil war, and a shattered throne? We may dislike the manner and even particular stratagems of the royal magician, but many a crofter of the realm—and merchant both Cormyrean and outlander—likes well the stability his vigilant war wizards, and the king’s well-trained Purple Dragons, have wrought. The realm prospers, the people multiply and are largely content, the—”
“Cowdung being spewed in this chamber near reaches my eyeballs,” Lord Eldroon growled. “Have you a head of solid stone, Wintersun? Canst think at all? Try looking past the smiles of the fool-headed rabble and underlings beyond counting, to hear and see the ire among those of us who matter: we nobles, who own much land, sponsor many mercantile ventures, pay good coin to all of the rabble of the realm who happen to toil for us—and pay a lot of bad coin, too, taxed from our hands into the court vaults.”
He drained his glass in a single great sip, to snarl, “ ’Tis our contentedness or lack of same as should be measured, not the views of some toothless old retired dragonard who’s happy if his downsun tankard comes to his lips every night, and is served with some juicy gossip to chew over with his goodfellows!”
“Speaking of which,” Lord Yellander told his own fingernails, “I’ve heard some interesting news, my lords. I chanced upon the Lady Jalassa Crownsilver yestermorn, and she seemed anxious to show me her new magecloak earrings.”
Lord Wintersun wrinkled his brow. “Your juicy gossip concerns earrings?”
Prester Yellander sighed and steepled his fingertips, regarding Wintersun pityingly over them. “Your holdings are rural, aren’t they, Sardyn? The term ‘magecloak’ is obviously unfamiliar to you, so my duty is clear. Magecloak items—be they rings, earrings, anklets, or false beards—are works of magic that foil magical scrying. While you wear one, no war wizard can see or hear you from afar. Perhaps not even the oh-so-awesome Vangerdahast.”
“Made—or at least sold—in the cities of Sembia, for far too much,” Eldroon growled.
Lord Yellander shrugged. “The price will fall when someone duplicates their magics and offers them for less than the price of a good keep.” He slid back his sleeve to display a thin gold band. “Rest easy, Wintersun, mine should keep our converse relatively private, so long as you stray not far from me, and say nothing too imprudent.”
Eldroon tapped a large jargoon ring on his fat and hairy left little finger. “I go nowhere without mine, these days.”
“Yet be not led astray, Lord Wintersun, by our little displays,” Prester Yellander said, “for Lady Crownsilver’s baubles were merely her excuse to tarry and converse with me, not the choice gossip that was the weightiest part of her words to me. Nay, Lords, I’d hardly waste your time informing you that this or that high lady now goes about magecloaked.”
“So what juice did she spout?” Eldroon asked, reaching for the decanter of glowfire.
“That the king has just chartered his own adventuring company, the Swords of Eveningstar, and sent them off to Eveningstar for a little training. When they’ve become seasoned killers, he intends to unleash them on nobles he sees as his opponents. So now Azoun Loosecods has his own private little slaying force—and ’tis a blade about to be thrust at us. Beware!”
Wintersun sighed and swirled his glass, to watch the dregs swirl like amber fire as they caught the light. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about.”
“You’re sure?” Eldroon asked. “This isn’t just wildtalk? Jalassa had this from someone reliable? If so, who? And how?”
“She pieced it together, she told me, from three court scribes, an overly talkative war wizard too young to keep in mind that others in the realm besides his kind know how to use spells—and something she heard from the lips of Vangerdahast himself.”
“Then he wanted all of us to know it,” Eldroon said darkly. “That man says nothing unguarded. Nothing at all.”
Lord Yellander shrugged. “He’s just a man. I could hire a mightier mage on the morrow.”
“Oh? Then why don’t you?”
“The war wizards are too splendid a blade to shatter. Better by far to find the way to take hold of their hilt.”
“Kill Vangerdahast, you mean.”
“Replace Vangerdahast, by something that looks just like him. And obeys me.”
“And is there such a ‘something,’ in all the world?”.
“Oh, yes. I found it long ago.”
“And yet we kneel not to King Prester the First.” As if by magic, Eldroon’s tallglass was empty again.
“Not yet. Certain matters stand unfinished.”
“ ‘Certain matters’?”
“Yes. Regarding the ‘obeys me’ part. I may finish them in a tenday. Or never.”
“Ah. Like the rest of us.”
“ ‘The rest of us’?”
“The rest of us, Yellander. All the other nobles besides yourself who’ve glanced at the Dragon Throne and thought: That could be mine, and I’d ride it better than Azoun Obarskyr. Some of us set aside such thoughts and learn contentment. Others achieve little, and chafe and snarl the seasons away. A few dare ventures not shrewd enough, and lose their heads or the right to set boot in Cormyr. And more than a handful nurse schemes, working slowly toward a savage moment that may never come. In short: you’re not the only one.”
“Are you such a one, Lord Eldroon?”
“Once I was. Now I think the prize not worth the hazard. Let Azoun worry and work, while we watch and sip wine and cavil at the quality of entertainment he provides us. Speaking of which, more glowfire, Wintersun?”
“I believe I will. Lords, you’ve both given me much to think about.”
“Think silently. The war wizards do one thing very well: listen to folk who think their talk is private. Get yourself one of these magecloak things. More wine, Yellander?”
“Forget not yon stone goblin,” Pennae snapped, “and watch that door. If it moves, even a little, shout and then get out!”
“Shout and then get out,” Jhessail echoed. “Not much of a war cry …”
“No,” Florin agreed. “Pennae, what have you found?”
Pennae had been swarming all over the ransacked room, peering under things and over things, and running her hands over the walls. She’d frozen at a spot on the wall by the head of one of the lower bunks, and was now frowning at it, and drawing her dagger.
“What is it?” Agannor asked.
She furiously waved for silence then probed with her dagger at a spot on the wall. Nothing happened. She probed again, a fingerwidth above—and a hand-sized panel in the wall appeared, pivoting open. As she pushed her dagger deeper, it swung open more. She stepped well back, keeping behind the door, until she could pluck up her lantern again and shine it into—a niche hollowed out of the rock about as deep as her forearm, which was empty except for a small, mildewed piece of folded parchment. Pennae drew it out balanced on the blade of her dagger, set it on the table, and opened it, reading its simple message aloud: “The rest are hidden in the door.”
“The rest of what?” Jhessail asked.
Pennae shrugged. “Who knows? Yon door looks like solid stone to me. Anyhail, there’s nothing else here. Do we go on through it, given that?” She nodded her head at the petrified goblin.
Florin shrugged. “There’s mold on it—see?—so it’s been here some time. If a wizard or cleric turned it to stone, I can’t believe they’re still standing guard somewhere beyond the door. If ’twas a curse magic left waiting here—on the doorway, say—then did it exhaust itself doing that to the goblin … or does it lie in wait still?”
“One way to find out,” Agannor drawled, stepping over the goblin, shoving the door wide, and striding through it. Pennae’s snarl of helpless anger followed him, as she started around the tabl
e like a storm wind—then stopped, shaking her fists in futility.
Agannor stuck his head back in the door and grinned at her. “ ’S’all quiet here, little battlemaster. No beasties, just a jakes.”
Pennae shook her head, still seething. “One day your luck will run out, Agannor! Tymora will shake her head and let Beshaba have you!”
“One day soon,” Islif echoed, also shaking her head.
Agannor shrugged and waved his hand airily behind him. “Call of nature, anyone?”
Pennae strode to the door and examined it and its frame very closely, ignoring Agannor.
Then she stepped into the passage beyond, Islif right behind her. They pushed past a grinning Agannor, and peered along the passage. It ran a few paces and then turned sharp west, to end at a wooden-seat-over-pit privy, that smelled very faintly of—
“Wait,” Pennae said flatly. “It doesn’t end there. Look, off to the left: there’s been a roof-fall, or they stopped digging. ’Tis all tumbled stones.”
Florin, Agannor, and Islif walked with her, Jhessail staying behind in the doorway of the bunkroom.
In the beam of Pennae’s lantern, the place where tool-marks ended in the solid stone overhead could clearly be seen. No collapse, then, but an end to delving through solid stone.
Pennae turned back to the privy, aiming her lantern upward. “A shaft—up as well as down. Islif, I need your blade here.” She pointed. “Thrust it up, hard, as I duck in here under you and look down. I’d prefer not to have some biting beastie pounce on my head.”
Islif nodded, and as soon as Pennae had slid in front of her, hunched low, the warrior woman brought her blade up, from knees to straight out over her head, in a hard, fast upward lunge.
The steel struck something solid, and Islif cried a warning as she felt her sword bite deep into it—as it moved.
She hadn’t even formed the first word when a flood of iridescent gold and purple liquid showered down on Pennae’s head.
The thief ducked blindly back, spitting, as something that squalled and scrabbled against the shaft walls in a frenzy descended, black fangs—if that’s what they were—chattering in agony. Florin hurled himself over a rolling, snarling Pennae to add his steel to Islif’s, driving his sword hilt deep into—
A spider the size of a Purple Dragon’s shield, sagging into view with faltering legs, purple gold shimmering fluids streaming out of it as it died.
The thing was surprisingly heavy, and slammed into the privy-seat with force enough to break that lone board. Dying spider and splintered wood fell together into the privy-pit with a wet, solid crash.
Pennae had plucked her waterskin from her belt, and was sluicing spider juices out of her hair and off her face. “It stings,” she gasped. “Make sure there’re no little spiders higher up the shaft.”
She thrust her lantern in Florin’s direction. Agannor slid past the forester, hip to hip, to put his own blade up the shaft beside Islif’s sticky, empurpled steel, and grunted, “Florin, shine the light along my arm—this shaft might be a way up to somewhere …”
It proved not to be, rough natural stone drawing together a tall man’s height overhead, and the Swords retreated to the bunkroom to get a good look at Pennae. Her skin was bright red in two places, but the fluids seemed not to have harmed her otherwise. She pronounced herself, “Just fine.”
“Back the other way,” Florin said, relief bright in his voice, “to rejoin our rearguard, and go on north together. I’m thinking now that splitting up was more foolish than guarding our way out. If either group meets a strong foe, ’tis darker days than if we’d stood together.”
They hastened, shining their lanterns on themselves and waving. The four Swords at the passage-moot waved back.
“What happened to you?” Semoor asked as the Swords drew together. He was peering curiously at Pennae’s gold and purple hair.
“A tale for later,” she said tersely, just as fresh lightnings hummed and crackled between the two bronzen statues. Pennae gave the crawling, stabbing bolts a disbelieving look. “Still?”
“Oh, yes,” Doust told her. “They’ve been doing that, betimes, ever since you left us.”
“Myself,” Martess put in, “I wonder why they never veer to the doors. Everywhere else, yes, but all that metal standing there so broad and high, and the lightnings never go that way.”
“I know,” Pennae said sarcastically, holding up a finger in a mockery of delighted discovery. “ ’Tis magic!”
“Gods,” Jhessail muttered under her breath, just loud enough for everyone to hear, “another Semoor Wolftooth! Truly, the gods weave in mysterious ways!”
Islif chuckled, tapping Florin’s arm to warn him to say nothing, and waved them on. Rolling her eyes, Pennae led the way.
The north end of the passage was a room with a westward archway and a slantwise passage back to the room of the barred gates that was a mirror image of the south end—except that the inner, westerly room lacked all furniture, damaged or otherwise, and had two doors in its walls, both firmly closed.
Pennae played her lantern-beam around the room and down at its floor, then up at its ceiling—which glistened.
Her eyes barely had time to narrow before something very small fell from that ceiling, to star across the floor with a wet splat.
She trained her lantern on it, seeing a leaf green color that darkened to bright emerald where her beam of light was. Deliberately, she sprang into the air and came down hard, stamping with both feet.
Splat, splat.
“Nobody get any closer to this,” Pennae warned the Swords behind her, her voice like iron—even as she disobeyed herself, sidling sideways from the doorway as she stepped cautiously closer to it. “That means you, too, Agannor, unless you want to die right here and now.”
“What is it?” Florin asked, as more drips fell from the ceiling to spatter the floor. Their lanterns were all trained on that floor, now—until Florin told Bey to swing around, and Jhessail with him, to watch their rear—and they could see the green, glistening wetness moving across the floor, creeping slowly but tirelessly toward the walls.
“Green slime is its name, bless all bards,” Pennae told him, without taking her gaze from it for an instant. “Its touch dooms you. It turns you into itself, and eats through … many things. Our lights and our footfalls are making it fall.”
She stepped back. “We dare not enter yon room, unless we can build a fire out here large enough to scorch the ceiling, and push it in there, and keep on moving it carefully around, so as to get it all—and I don’t want to be trying to breathe in here while a fire of that size is raging. See it moving? Every droplet that falls will spend almost a day—or more—oozing to the walls and up them, to rejoin the rest of the slime it fell from.”
“Charming,” Martess commented.
“I don’t like the look of this,” Doust said.
Just then Agannor pushed past him, gave Pennae a disdainful glare, and told the halls around him, “I don’t heed warnings and I don’t cringe and creep through life like an old farmwife a-quiver over ghosts. And I’m not going to start now!”
His first stride into the room brought a small rain of falling slime. His second caused fist- and head-sized pieces to plummet, spraying the room.
“You fool!” Pennae snarled. “Get out of there!”
Agannor whirled and leaped back through the door.
“Grab him!” Pennae snapped, snatching a candle out of a belt pouch and thrusting it into her lantern. “Hold him—he’s got some of it on him!”
The Swords tussled with a cursing Agannor. The moment her candle was properly alight, Pennae thrust it at the warrior’s arm then low on his breeches, holding the flame to the glistening spots there until the leathers started to smoke.
The reek was unbelievable—and very different from burning leather. It smelled of swamps and earthy decay and … eels. Martess and Jhessail gagged in unison.
Slime was falling like slapping rain beyond th
e doorway now. In unspoken accord the Swords drew away from it, gathering at the east wall of the passage room, at the mouth of the slantwise passage.
“So one way ends,” Semoor began. “The grand ‘way onward’ bids fair to fry us with lightning bolts, and this route looks to be a deathtrap, too. The only road that seems relatively safe is the way we came in. Any opinions? Have we done enough brave foraying to satisfy the king? Or Lord Winter, anyhail?”
“Hah!” Bey’s laugh was more of a bark than anything else. “My bet is he’s looking for us to scour out these halls completely, so he can use them for a Stonelands stronghold. He’ll be satisfied if we do that—or die trying!”
“And holy Tymora would want us to take chances,” Doust put in, spreading his hands.
“By doctrine, yes,” Martess said, “but have you prayed to her for a sign?”
There sounded the tiniest of distant gratings from behind them, then a sharp crack that Florin knew all too well.
And Doust received his sign.
The crossbow bolt that hummed through the Swords caught him solidly in the shoulder, spinning him around like a child’s whirl-top as he gasped in astonished pain.
Agannor was the first to move, and Bey was but a half-step behind him.
“There!” the most impetuous of the Swords roared, charging down the slantwise passage. The door at its end was ajar, and someone was standing in it. Someone helmed, armored, and holding a fired crossbow.
As the two men raced along, their swords flashing in their fists, that distant someone stepped aside—and someone else whose face was hidden behind a helm and whose body was battle-armored took a stance in the doorway, hefting a loaded crossbow.
Agannor and Bey pelted on, bellowing war cries.
The crossbow cracked.
There was a solid, meaty thunk, Bey grunted, and Agannor was suddenly running alone.
“The Crowned One’s getting anxious. Scrying them yet?”
Swords of Eveningstar Page 20
