Jhessail nodded. “They know all about us. I don’t want that creeping back at me unawares, some night while I sleep! After them!”
The Swords turned as one and started through the grain.
There was an angry shout from behind them. “Hoy! Hold! Stand and down weapons!”
The Esparran spun around, weapons raised, and found themselves looking at Purple Dragons. Lots of Purple Dragons. In full battle armor, these, wearing helms and shields, and hefting spears in their hands.
“Swords of Eveningstar, down weapons and surrender! Now!”
A hard-faced ornrion none of the Swords had ever seen before, who bore a flame-encircled red dragon on his shield, was striding to the fore, wagging a gauntleted forefinger at them. “We’ve heard all about you! I arrest you, all of you, for firesetting and—”
Florin regarded the ornrion incredulously. “What?”
“Down weapons, or we’ll down you. And quick about it! Or I’ll seize the excuse and save Arabel a lot of bother, by just butchering you like the mad dogs you are! Adventurers are always trouble—”
Trailing his sword behind him in his fingertips, Florin trudged to meet the man—who came on at him like an angry storm, wading into the grain and continuing his tirade.
“You’re mistaken,” the forester began, “and the Lady Lord of—”
“Horsedung, lying adventurer! ’Tis from her tongue we all heard of your villainy! Your crossbows have murdered a dozen Dragons this night, and if her orders to try to take you alive weren’t riding me, I’d—”
Florin spread his hands to show his peaceful intent—and the ornrion’s hand came up and took him by the throat.
For a moment the forester stared disbelievingly into the man’s grimly smiling face. Then his fist came in with all the force he could put behind it, smashing up under the Dragon’s jaw.
The click of teeth clashing on teeth was loud, and the ornrion was suddenly staring at the rafters, up on tiptoe and already senseless. His failing hand let go of Florin’s throat, the forester twisted and snatched—and the flaming dragon shield tore free of the man’s toppling body.
“Swords!” Florin roared, spinning around with his sword in one hand and the just-seized shield half-on his other arm. “To me!”
And he charged through the grain until he—wasn’t there.
There was an instant of gently falling through endless rich blue mists ere Florin’s boot came down on hard stone. Stone somewhere underground, by the coolness and the damp, earthen smell. The blue radiance faded—
At about the same instant as something crashed into and through the shield, slamming into him hard enough to shatter its stout metal.
And Florin’s arm beneath it.
Triumphant laughter roared out from ahead as the fletched end of the broken crossbow bolt that had maimed him brushed past Florin’s nose, into dark oblivion.
Stumbling back as pain lanced through him, Florin wondered how likely he was to end up following it …
The Purple Dragons charged, a shouting wave of deadly spear points.
“Get through!” Islif yelled at Jhessail and Pennae, swatting their behinds to urge them to greater haste as they plunged past her. “Stoop! Clumsum! Get in there!”
She waved her sword in defiance as she raced after them, grinning frantically as the foremost spear reached for her, perhaps the length of her own hand away from piercing her.
And then the world blinked, and she was falling through blue mist.
And blinked again, and Islif was standing in a dark stone-lined corridor with the rest of the Swords, who were clustered around … Florin? Hurt?
“Hoy!” she cried, as she spun around to face the blue glow behind her, “weapons out!”
Spears were emerging from it, thrusting out of the swirling blueness with grim-faced Purple Dragons behind them. Three soldiers whose eyes widened at the sight of their surroundings.
They widened still more when Islif struck aside two spearheads with her sword, and ran in past the third to backhand its wielder across the face.
He stumbled into his fellows, there was a moment of startled hopping and cursing—and Pennae came out of the dark with a startling shriek, daggers flashing in both hands, Doust and Semoor trotting behind her.
The Purple Dragons wavered, and Islif drove her knee hard up into a codpiece and then thrust her leg sideways, toppling that soldier into the one next to him. Pennae landed hard on their wavering spears, smashing them to the stone floor and splintering the shaft of one of them as she flung herself forward, her fists hammering down two dagger pommels into two helms.
The Dragons reeled, and Pennae jerked on their helms, tilting the metal down half-over their faces. They struggled under her, punching and kicking and trying to rise—and as Islif wrenched spears out of the hands of two of them, Semoor leaned in, plucked a mace from the belt of one Dragon, and crowned the man solidly with it, leaving him reeling.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he remarked happily. “Are you going to start cutting pieces off them now?”
The Dragons were already trying to shove themselves back and away, and his words goaded them into frantic flight. Back into the blue glow, with Islif’s and Pennae’s chuckles trailing them.
“Now get away,” Islif ordered, waving her fellow Swords to the sides of the passage. “Against the walls and away. I’d not put it past them to find some bows and start volleying right down this—”
A spear burst out of the mist and sailed down the passage, to bounce and skitter to a harmless stop beside Jhessail, who was helping a sweating Florin up, and easing the bent and ruined shield off his arm.
“Move!” Islif roared, as a second spear followed the first. The Swords moved, in haste, as a third spear rattled past them.
“Florin says there’s a crossbowman somewhere ahead of us,” Jhessail warned, as they hastened on together.
“Broke my arm,” Florin grunted. “Never saw him.”
“When do we start having fun?” Semoor complained. “Pools of coins and gems, dancing girls, our own castles … when does that side of adventure kiss and cuddle us?”
Behind them, the blue glow burst into a wild, blinding-bright explosion that spat lightning bolts down the passage at them, crackling and ricocheting in a chaos that sounded like hundreds of harps being smashed all at once, metal strings jangling and shrieking. In its wake, all light faded; the blue glow was gone.
“A war wizard making sure we won’t return,” Jhessail said as darkness descended, leaving them all blind.
Doust groaned. “Now what?”
“Well,” Semoor said, “we can sit down right here and pray, the two of us—and in the fullness of time be granted the power to make light to see by.”
A dim glow occurred not far from his elbow, and brightened, as it was uncovered and held up, to about the same strength as a mica-shuttered lantern. “Or,” Pennae told them all, holding what they could now see was a hand-sized glowstone, “we can use this.” Its radiance showed them her sweet smile.
It was Jhessail’s turn to groan. “Do I want to know where you ‘found’ that?”
Pennae shrugged. “I imagine the lady lord, or one of her staff, will eventually miss it. Yet I doubt, somehow, she’ll now be able to chase after us to reclaim it.”
“What happens if you drop it?” Doust asked. “Is it likely to break and go dark?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on finding out.”
“So where are we?” Florin gasped, his voice tight with pain. “And which way shall we go?”
“The Haunted Halls, of course. In the long passage just north of the room where we found the boots, pack, and pole. See yon cracks in the wall?” The thief gestured with the glowstone. “So the fastest way out is that way—and Bey might remember the route; I doubt Agannor ever paid that much attention to the maps—but the three we’re chasing went that way.”
“After them,” Florin growled. Pennae nodded.
Islif took h
old of her elbow, and steered her hand to hold the glowstone close to Florin, so she could peer at him. “Healing, holy men?”
“Not until after we pray for a good long time,” Semoor told her. “We spent our divine favor helping Pennae.”
“I’ll live,” Florin told them tersely. “Let’s get after them.”
The Swords exchanged nods, hefted their weapons, and set off into the chill darkness.
They’d gone only a few paces when they came upon a discarded crossbow on the floor. Pennae peered at it. “Not broken,” she murmured, “so he was out of bolts to fire.”
“Bright news,” Semoor grunted. They hastened on to a wider chamber that offered them a door and three passages onward. Islif went to the door, made a pocketing gesture to tell Pennae to hide the light, and opened it.
Still darkness greeted her—then Pennae patted her shoulder, leaned past her, and pulled the glowstone out of its pouch again. Nothing. The room was empty—and across the door in its far wall was a fresh cobweb. Pennae shook her head and stepped back out of the room. “They probably went that way,” she said, pointing down the passage that led to the feast hall, “but we’d best check this end way, just to be sure. I don’t fancy them leaping out behind us and slicing Doust or Semoor into platter-slabs.”
The end passage ran northwest, not far, ere turning west to a chamber that still held, along one wall, the collapsed and sagging remnants of ancient barrels and carry-chests. In the center of the facing wall was a door—a stone affair that lacked lock or bolt, and led to a room that had been empty when they’d explored it, days back.
As Pennae neared it, she tensed, stepped back, and whispered, “A man’s voice—unfamiliar—declaiming some grand phrases that mean nothing to me. I’d say he’s working magic.”
“Let’s move!” Islif hissed. “In, before he finishes!” And she launched herself at the door with Pennae right behind her.
The Swords burst through the door and down the short passage beyond, startling a man who stood there into looking over his shoulder at them.
It was Bey, his drawn sword in his hands, and he shouted, “Get gone!” to someone around the corner, and ran that way.
The Swords raced after him, rounding the corner fast and ducking low, swords up in front of them.
They were in time to see Agannor’s boot vanishing through an upright, swirling oval of blue radiance of the same hue as the glow that had brought them back here. An unfamiliar man in battle-leathers was keeping Bey from following with one outflung arm, but snatched it out of the way the moment Agannor had vanished, to let Bey plunge through.
Giving the onrushing Swords a malevolent smile, he followed, leaving behind the blue glow.
“Tluin!” Jhessail spat. “Where does this one go?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Pennae flung back at her, racing for the whirling portal with Islif right behind her.
Its glow swallowed them both before any of the other Swords could reply.
Ornrion Barellkor blinked again, his head still swimming. Strong hands were lifting him by his armpits, helping him to sit up.
“All right, are you?” one of his swordcaptains asked.
Barellkor put a hand up to his jaw and tried to shake his head—which proved to be a mistake. His head felt like it was splitting slowly open with someone’s war axe firmly embedded in it. His chin felt even worse.
“I think my jaw is broken,” he moaned.
“Idiot,” the Lady Lord of Arabel said curtly, dragging the wincing man to his feet. “If that’s all the hurt you took, Tymora must smile on you, Barellkor. Now get out of my sight before I decide to reduce you to lionar.”
The ornrion stared at her disbelievingly. “But I—but they … they were the ones as murderered all our lads!”
“Horsedung, Barellkor, as I believe you’re fond of saying,” Myrmeen snapped. “Why don’t you step over there and try throttling yon portal-blasting war wizard, instead of a gallant young forester? Perhaps you two stoneheads will succeed in murdering each other, and I’ll be shut of the pair of you!”
Pennae was a little surprised not to be greeted by sharp steel stabbing at her the moment the blue glow faded before her.
She, and Islif, and a moment later all the rest of the Swords, were even more surprised by what they beheld in the large chamber in front of them.
On its far wall were mounted three huge, glowing and very vivid portraits of menacing, rampant monsters, all of them familiar to the Swords from bestiaries: a chuul, an ettin, and an umber hulk. To the right of them, stone steps led up to a passage stretching away elsewhere, and a coldly smiling, white-haired yet young man in black doublet, hose, and boots—looking for all the world like a minor courtier who might well be seen standing near the Dragon Throne—stood on those steps.
Floating in three green, swirling glows in midair, struggling to win free of them, were Agannor, Bey, and the man in leathers who’d followed them through the portal.
“These are yours, I presume?” the man on the steps asked the Swords. “Kindly slay them.” He pointed at the man in leathers. “Especially that one, who had the effrontery to open one of my private portals and lead, it seems, half the adventurers in Cormyr here.”
“Who are you?” Pennae asked, frowning in bewilderment. “And where’s ‘here’?”
“Ah. Well.” The man waved a hand, and the glow behind the Swords winked out; the portal was gone. “As you’ve no way of ever finding this place again, there’s no harm in your knowing that you stand in Whisper’s Crypt. I am Whisper, one of the mightiest wizards of the Zhentarim.”
“Oh, tluin,” Jhessail said wearily. “When will all this running and fighting and killing end?”
The Zhentarim smiled at her. “When you die, of course.”
Chapter 25
THE STORM BREAKS
See these hills, lad? So peaceful they seem now—but you’d not want to be standing here when the storm breaks.
The character Oldbones
the Shepherd in the first act of
To Slay A Wizard
A play by Stelvor Orlkrimm
published in the Year of Moonfall
Sarhthor snorted.
“Mightiest wizards” indeed. Whisper intended the intruders to swiftly wind up as food for his trapped beasts, of course, but was it really necessary to gloat like a reckless youth? Or waste the life of the best Zhent agent in Arabel?
Yes, ’twas time—well past it—to end the career of Whisper the mage. There were far more than enough reasons already, and unless Whisper did something truly surprising, he was about to hand Sarhthor a handsome opportunity.
With the thinnest of smiles, Sarhthor leaned over his scrying orb and started to cast a careful spell.
“Well?” Whisper asked the Swords. “What’re you waiting for?” He waved at the writhing, whirling webs of green radiance, or at the cursing, straining men caught in them. “I told you to kill them.”
“I—we—mislike the look of your magic,” Islif told him, pointing with her sword at the racing emerald glows. “If I stick a sword into that, what will befall me?”
“Ah. Well.” Whisper’s smile was colder this time. “You ask the wrong question, wench. Your words should be: If I fail to stick my sword into that, what will befall me?” He gestured.
The air in front of Whisper suddenly sang and shimmered. Though the Swords could still see him clearly, he now stood behind a wall of awakened magic.
“Know that I am less than pleased with you,” he announced, and calmly cast another spell. The three green glows brightened.
Agannor was pleading now, crying to the Swords for help. Bey and the Zhent in leathers were saving breath for their doomed struggles to win free of the magic that held them.
And was now drifting across the room, carrying them toward … the three paintings.
Tiny green lightning bolts crackled a greeting to the portraits, stabbing forth as each mantrapping radiance floated up to a painting … and in
to it.
The emerald webs melted away, and the painted monsters started moving, reaching forth hungrily for … Agannor, Bey, and the Zhent, who tumbled across the paintings as if rolling and running across a room, silently shouting in fear as they desperately swung swords and daggers.
The Swords watched them die bloodily, ravaged and battered. It took but a breath or two, as Whisper watched with his smile widening. “Eat, my guardians,” he murmured. “Eat, and be content. I promise you—”
At the sound of his voice, the three beasts turned, glared at him—and boiled forth from the paintings, emerging into the room.
Whisper’s jaw dropped, but he stammered out a swift incantation, his voice sharp with alarm.
The umber hulk, foremost of the three monsters heading for him, shook itself as his spell washed over it, and turned toward the Swords of Eveningstar.
And charged, the club-waving ettin and the chuul following it.
“Naed,” Islif whispered, hefting her sword. “We’re going to die.”
Jaw tightening, she raised her blade to launch a charge of her own—and the umber hulk stiffened, came to such an abrupt halt it tottered, and whirled around to face Whisper once more. And charged again.
Peering down at his scrying orb, Sarhthor of the Zhentarim smiled, and cast another spell.
Whisper the mage drew a wand from his belt and stood warily behind his shield, watching the monsters come for him.
As the umber hulk rushed closer, Whisper’s shield grew brighter, until it looked like a solid wall of spitting, snarling sparks. The umber hulk shuddered and slowed, as if wading on into the magic was both painful and took great effort. Whisper started to smile.
Then the shield abruptly vanished, and the umber hulk was reaching triumphantly for the horrified mage, who gaped at it in disbelief. Its claws had almost closed on his face when he scrambled back and triggered his wand.
Fire splashed over the monster, leaving it staggering and darkening. As it shuddered and slowed, the chuul opened its huge claws and rushed at Whisper from his other side.
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