There were nods all around as Florin started to usher them back down the passage, to bring them all together. Doust was on his feet again, walking almost normally, and the Swords grinned at each other. Through the open doorway, unheeded, green slime dripped dismally.
“We need shields. Shields that can stop crossbow bolts at close range,” Islif said. “Those strongchests, back in the bunkroom?”
Pennae shook her head. “Far too rotten. Those bolts can go right through good armor—” She waved at Bey, who gave her a rueful grin “—so wood that crumbles when I touch it isn’t going to stop them much more than a tightframe of stretched silk would.”
“Well, that’s cheerful to hear,” Semoor said. “So are we going to crawl out on our bellies after dark and hope they can’t hit what they can’t see?”
Islif gave him a thoughtful look. “Chancy—but our best chance, I think. Sometimes, Stoop, you do seem to have wits. For a few moments, once or twice a tenday.”
“They’re out there, somewhere, braving danger—tasting adventure! While I—whom the king—the king!—wanted to accompany them—sit here, chafing in idleness!”
Narantha slammed down her tallglass with such force that the stem burst right up through the bowl, leaving her holding only shards amid a flood of fine wine.
Tessaril Winter set down her own glass and made a swift gesture—and the shards were gone from Narantha’s bloodied fingertips, whisked away through the air trailed by droplets of blood and wine. “ ’Tis a good thing I put out the second best glasses, I see.”
Narantha Crownsilver glared at her. “You’re enjoying this! You’re chuckling up your sleeve, like all the other wizards in this realm! Delighted to deny nobles their rights, hiding behind royal orders you refuse to share with us—orders that in this instance I know are false! I heard the Dragon’s reply to me! I know what was in his eyes, his voice! He’ll not be pleased when I tell him of this—that his own Lady Lord of Eveningstar defies his royal will to play Vangerdahast’s little games, one more time! I am a Crownsilver, and far from the least regarded of those who bear that proud name—”
“True,” Tessaril agreed, her face unreadable.
Narantha seethed, raising her hands into claws, but swept on. “And as such have every right to ride where I will, do as I will, and consort with whomever I will, so long as I do no treason and break not the decrees of the king! Not of Vangerdahast, not of you or any other jumped-up courtier! You have no right to hold me, you have no right to arrest me if I march right out of here now—as I’ve done no treason and intend none, and His Majesty knows it—and—and—”
“I’m afraid I do have that right,” Tessaril replied, “and that duty. Please calm yourself and hear me, Narantha—”
“Calm myself? Calm myself? Why should I? How can I calm myself when my freedom is snatched from me unlawfully, my rights of birth are denied and dismissed, my—”
“Good manners quite desert you.” Tessaril rose, in a shifting of skirts—and this was the first time Narantha had seen her in anything but breeches and boots topped by more mens’ garb—and crossed the room in two smooth strides.
Face paling with rage, Narantha darted her hand to the tiny dagger at her belt, but Tessaril deftly captured her wrists and stood over her, saying as gently as before, “Lass, lass, don’t you see how much I want to give in to you? I, too, have known love—”
“Love? Think you I’m in love with that forester? That my heart and loins rule me? Wench, you try me sorely!” Narantha spat. “ ’Tis of my needs I speak! My hunger for adventure, my first chance to do anything in my life that strays in the slightest from my father’s firm hand and my mother’s constant spiteful spying! My—my—”
Words failed her, and she burst into tears of rage, struggling against Tessaril’s strength with snarls and sobs and finally wild tugs and kicks.
Tessaril avoided her sallies with deft ease, saying flatly, “Don’t make me spell-sleep you, Narantha. I will if I must. Yet know this: I will not budge. Save your curses and kicks for a time when they’ll achieve something—if ever you find such a time, in all your hopefully long life. I cannot give in to my whims, for I long ago swore an oath to the Dragon, and I will keep it, or my life is nothing. I have specific orders regarding you, from the king’s own lips.”
“More lies,” Narantha hissed furiously at her, between sobbing breaths. “You’ve had no time to speak with the king! I’ve watched you, every instant since my rising—just as you have watched me! I doubt very much that the Dragon crystal-chats with his lordlings in the heart of the night; I should think the queen would have something to say about that!”
Still holding her wrists, Tessaril said, “Your doubts, I fear, are unfounded. The king himself was here last night.”
“Oh, I suppose he just stepped out of the heart of a spell, sat on the side of your bed, and discussed affairs of state, yes?”
“I don’t recall him sitting,” Tessaril replied, “but we talked, yes. About you, among many, many other things. His Majesty anticipated your displeasure.”
She let go of Narantha, stepped back, and drew something out of her bodice, proferring it between two fingers: a finger of much-folded parchment.
Narantha stared up at the Lady Lord of Eveningstar, then at the parchment—and snatched it, unfolding it with hands that trembled in haste.
Dearest Narantha, Lady Crownsilver:
Life is a series of hardships and hard choices for us all. This is one of yours. Every Cormyrean, noble or common-born, owes absolute loyalty to the Dragon Throne. You are to obey Lord Tessaril Winter as if she were me. Your spirit does you credit, but every noble must learn that obedience is worth far more to the realm and to its people, as well as to its sovereign. I pray you make me proud.
It was signed “Azoun, Fourth of that Name.”
Narantha bit her lip.
“You know what it says?”
Tessaril nodded. “I watched him write it.”
Narantha read it again, holding it almost tenderly in one hand while her other balled into a trembling fist. Then she smote the arm of her chair, again and again, weeping.
This time, when Tessaril’s arms went around her, she buried herself in that warm, soft comfort, and clung to it.
“Not much longer now,” Florin said.
“Good,” Jhessail sighed. “I’m tired, and I’m cold, and sitting here in the dark watching lightning bolts that snap just often enough to keep me from dozing off doesn’t strike me as glorious adventure.”
“You’re not sitting in the dark,” Pennae said. “One lantern’s enough. The gods don’t pour lamp oil down out of the skies, know you.”
“Hrast! There goes my seventeenth scheme for riches,” Semoor said. “Seen any ghosts yet, anyone? They call it ‘the Haunted Halls,’ look you!”
“Cleric-to-be of Lathander,” Martess said, “still your tongue. Or I’ll do so for you.”
“That should be fun.”
“Oho,” Islif told the ceiling, “Semoor Wolftooth is about to have an adventure. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
Narantha read the royal letter for the thirty-sixth time. This time, when she refolded it carefully, slipped it back into her bodice, and raised her eyes to the ever-watchful Tessaril, she found amusement in the Lady Lord of Eveningstar’s gaze.
“There are no hidden words there, I fear,” Tessaril said, “and no lurking spell. It won’t change what it says, no matter how often you read it.”
Narantha sighed, then shook her head as if she could wish away all lords, towers, wizards, and commanding kings. “I … I just want to ride free,” she said mournfully. “To burst out of this kind confinement. To ride with the Swords, and see adventures—”
“From a safe distance?”
“I—yes, from a safe distance, though that’s cowardly of me, I suppose, and unworthy. I—hrast it, Lady Lord Tessaril, I am weary up to here with sitting cooped up in a lord’s tower, surrounded by an everpresent escort of Purple
Dragons and war wizards!”
“Of course. Have some more of this superb cheese—and the zzar?—and look into the fire.”
The flames of the hearthfire danced strangely, shaping themselves into a scene of armed and armored horsemen riding along a road, a purposeful line of men all garbed alike, who rode under banners that swirled and flapped just like the Crownsilver banners did, when her father rode out to—
“Those are your family banners,” Tessaril said.
Narantha’s head jerked up. “You’re reading my mind?”
“I don’t have to, when your face softens so, remembering. No, the cleverness of my spell is confined to shaping flames.”
“So just how is it that you managed to show me my father riding somewhere, if you plucked it not from my mind?”
“I saw it in my scrying crystal, when you last sought yon garderobe,” Tessaril replied. “Your father is a-riding with all his men-at-arms, right now.”
“Riding under arms? Where?”
“Here. Straight up to Eveningstar—rather angrily, I fear—to bring you home. Though even if he rides right through the night, he won’t be here until well after the sun rises again.”
Narantha stared at the Lady Lord of Eveningstar, aghast—then launched herself out of her chair with a snarl, storming across the room with her hands out like claws.
Tessaril sat unmoved, only the slightest trace of a smile twitching the corner of her lips. She went on smiling as her magic caught her seething captive steps away from her, spanked Narantha Crownsilver soundly with unseen hands, and hurled the sobbingly furious young noblewoman off to bed.
The Lady Lord of Eveningstar went on sitting in her chair, listening to the crashes of things being broken on the far side of that closed and spellbound door, and her smile turned sad.
“Gods above, child,” she murmured. “You are so much as I was, when your age, that I almost want to defy Azoun. Almost.”
As they squeezed through the rusty bars, there was a fair amount of crowding, and Semoor’s boot brushed one edge of the heaped weapons.
Whereupon a mouth appeared on the battered and bare metal shield atop the pile, and said in a flat, deep voice like a Purple Dragon giving stern orders: “Beware! These were carried in by those who will never carry them out again!”
Standing tense in the silence that followed those ringing words, the Swords watched the mouth fade away again. And waited.
And waited.
Nothing else happened, as their held breaths stretched. It was Semoor who first grinned, shrugged, and asked, “So, can I take yon shield now? And go through the weapons for whatever I like the look of?”
“No,” Pennae snapped. “You don’t really need them, and you could be spreading some fell curse or other. If Agannor or Bey—they’ve the best armor—wants to use the shield as we go out, to stand like a wall while the rest of us go past in a crouch, fine, but I’d throw it right back in here after, if ’twere me. I trust none of it.”
The Swords of Eveningstar were giving each other grim looks.
“I might have laughed at that warning, when we came in here,” Agannor said, “but not now.”
They moved on, Pennae tarrying to sprinkle a fingerwidth line of sand across the passage, from the third of four identical sacks tied to her belt.
“I saw you doing that earlier,” Doust said with a frown. “Why?”
The thief finished her pouring. “To show us, on our next visit, if anything has come slithering around these passages since we left. To check on our intrusions, say.”
Doust made a face. “Ah.”
Blowing out the lone lantern, the Swords went out into Starwater Gorge, low and fast and as quietly as possible.
Truly, the gods were smiling this night.
No crossbow bolts greeted them.
There was a time when Alura Durshavin had helped her mother sprinkle precise, slender lines of decorative powders atop cakes, and her hand had grown steadier and more confident since then.
As a result, her thin lines of sand were as straight as a sword blade, every one of them.
Until something large and serpentine, that moved with velvet silence for all its bulk, slithered across one after another of them, as it quested after the intruders who smelled so intriguing. And edible.
Chapter 16
SOME ABRUPT ARRIVALS, SOME SUDDEN DEPARTURES
This court is like a slaughterhouse when royal tax collectors are seen approaching town: all abrupt arrivals, sudden departures, and a lot of sweating haste and spilled blood.
Arl Thandaster, Sage of Aglarond
Aglarond: A Wiser View
published in the Year of the Shrike
The war wizard spying ended as abruptly as if sliced off by a sharp knife.
Hissing in satisfaction, Horaundoon moved faster than darkness is banished by bright light, teleporting away from his inn room to—
A cavern he’d used a time or two before, spell-sealed and long forgotten in the Storm Horns. Some dead wizard’s lair that now served Horaundoon of the Zhentarim as a hide-hold and cache of magic.
He stepped forward blindly but confidently in the silent, dank darkness.
Two measured paces. He reached out.
His fingers found the stone coffer just where he’d left it, on the ledge. The glowstones still waited inside it, and as their cold light kindled in his hands, Horaundoon strode along the stone wall to place them on either side of the mirror he’d hung there six—no, seven, now—seasons ago.
Gazing at himself in the mirror, cold-eyed and confident, he opened another box on the ledge and drew out one of the dream-stones, that held images spell-stored in them.
Calling forth a particular image from it, Horaundoon set about shaping the hargaunt covering his face into a likeness he’d never assumed before.
It was the likeness he’d called out of the dreamstone to float in the air, life-sized and frozen.
The head of a man Horaundoon had slain with his own hands—and much satisfaction—years ago.
The real head was now shattered, decaying bone somewhere in the woods of Daggerdale, but when his magic had captured its appearance, it had been very much alive, and belonged to a noble of Cormyr, one Lorneth Crownsilver.
Ah, yes, Lorneth: uncle to Narantha Crownsilver, and ne’er-do-well rake.
“A gambler and a fool, who made himself a fool all over again when he dared to try to swindle this wizard of the Zhentarim,” Horaundoon murmured aloud. The hargaunt wriggled around his mouth to make his own lips more closely resemble the noble’s wider, thinner, perpetually smiling ones.
“Yes, that’s it,” he said, turning his head this way and that. “Lorneth Crownsilver, as ever was.” He gave the mirror a fiendish grin, then said softly to the hargaunt: “Worm time.”
There was a single bell-like tone of acknowledgment—and that part of the hargaunt that was masquerading as the back of his neck started to ripple and darken. He watched in the mirror as it opened a mouth to let something dark and glistening slide out into his raised and waiting hand.
“Yes,” Horaundoon breathed, gazing at the first of his mindworms. It was time, indeed.
He strode across the cavern to its rubble-strewn end and lifted a certain stone among the heaps of rock to reveal a stone bowl holding a spellbook he’d not consulted for years. It pages held a few vital words to add to his teleport incant, to bring him tracelessly through Tessaril’s wards without alerting her or any war wizard—or being tugged astray by the nearby chaos of her Hidden House.
He smiled as he cast the spell that would take him thither.
There were times when war wizard traitors were very useful things.
It was pursuing her, dark, wet, and terrible, wriggling and slithering down the bright white marble passages.
Closer and closer, no matter how fast she fled or how recklessly she hurled herself down staircases and across the dark, bottomless chasms between balconies. It was going to catch her, going to …
She felt icy fear as she fell to her knees, midway down another marble hall. Must get up before it—
Warm and wet, welling up inside her, red-black and triumphant, choking her …
“No!” Narantha shrieked, falling into ruby-edged darkness, falling …
“Nooooo!”
She was gasping, panting wide-eyed into the moonlit night, hearing the echo of her own scream rebound again and again in her head, blinking at what she could see of the unfamiliar bedchamber in the reaching fingers of moonlight. Where was—oh. Oh yes: Tessaril’s Tower, in Eveningstar, as an unwilling “guest.”
Then something moved, in the darkness beyond the moonlight, and came forward. Smiling.
The mindworm going into her had driven her into nightmare, of course, and an abrupt awakening—but she hadn’t screamed, making his carefully cast cloak of silence unnecessary. Thus far.
Horaundoon smiled and started his walk to the bed, keeping his strides slow, soft, and confident.
And now, we shall see.
Well-regarded mages of the Zhentarim necessarily spent more time working magic than acting.
Yet it was dark, the lass was young and used to paying attention only to herself, and a wayward Crownsilver could be expected to change a bit, over the years.
Putting on his best wry noble’s smile, Horaundoon stopped at the foot of the bed.
It was a smile she knew.
Narantha felt her jaw drop. Could it be? Truly? After all these years?
“Uncle Lorneth?”
His eyebrows rose. “You’re expecting someone? I can depart.”
“No! I—Uncle, where have you been? We’ve not heard from you in years!”
“I’ve been rather busy. ’Twas a distinct pleasure for me to discover my business turning at last to kin, and someone I was fond of, at that. Someone young, beautiful, and brimming with promise. Well met, Lady Narantha Crownsilver.”
“Uncle! Call me Nantha, as you always did!”
Swords of Eveningstar Page 22
