“Jhess,” Pennae said, “doff your belt and try. Perhaps ’tis the metal that keeps it from working; I’ve heard of portals like that.”
Jhessail handed over her belt and stepped through the first gate. Like Florin, she simply ended up on its far side, still in the cellar. She stepped through it again, in the other direction. Still in the cellar. With a shrug, she went to the second gate and tried it. With the same result.
“Could be we’re lacking a password,” Islif suggested. Pennae nodded.
Semoor sighed. “Well, Whisper’s just a little too dead to ask, now, isn’t he? Come on; let’s try them all.”
Much trudging and fruitless stepping through glows ensued, until they were back in the room of now-empty paintings and sprawled, dead monsters. Whisper still lay as he’d fallen, under the ettin. Rats scattered from the carrion as the Swords came down the steps and stopped in front of the glowing oval.
“Think it’ll work for us, back to Arabel?” Semoor asked.
“Or will it take us somewhere else, I wonder?” Doust put in.
“Thank you, cheerful holynoses,” Pennae said with a grin. “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”
Florin hefted his sword and strode forward. “Mine. Again.”
Silently, the glow swallowed him.
“Quick, now,” Islif snapped, trotting forward. “And keep those wands ready!”
The Swords hurried.
A spell cast long ago, that showed the watchful apprentices on duty who stepped through particular portals, flickered once more into life.
The master of those apprentices, crossing the room behind their desks, stopped in mid-stride to see who was departing Whisper’s Crypt for Arabel. He nodded, saying nothing, as a succession of images flowed across that part of the wall.
“The Swords of Eveningstar,” one of the apprentices reported excitedly.
“I am unsurprised, Alaise,” her master replied. “Please take over doorguard from Thander now. You may soon be seeing the Swords in person.”
He walked on, his mind already on scores of larger matters.
Not that the Swords lacked interest. Indeed, to an archmage who talked often with Dove Silverhand and betimes with Hawkstone the ranger, and at other times eavesdropped undetected on the minds of the herald from Espar, Lord Elvarr Spurbright, and Dauntless of the Purple Dragons—to name but three—these fledgling adventurers were interesting indeed.
Not just for who they were and what they were doing, but for who was trying to manipulate them.
The wizard ascended a winding stone stair to a higher level of his tower, passing many storage niches let into the walls. His gaze fell on a curious twisted pendant hanging in one niche, behind the warding that would sear all hands but his to the bone, and the Swords came back into his thoughts.
He had plans for the Swords of Eveningstar. Oh, yes, indeed.
Florin stepped out into—grain shifting underfoot, in a familiar warehouse that was now brightly lit indeed. Forty Purple Dragons, or more, were staring impassively at him over leveled spears, in a wall that extended around him in—yes—a ring.
A ring of Dragons at least two deep, that was broken in only one place: right ahead of him, where an officer stood with a drawn sword in his hand, looking both weary and profoundly unamused.
“Take them,” Lionar Dahauntul ordered flatly, as the Swords emerged to stand with Florin.
“Alive?” a veteran Dragon asked.
“Take them,” Dauntless repeated grimly.
Chapter 26
TRUE TREASURE
In life there are three real treasures: loving partners, true friends, and your brightest dreams. The trick is to avoid losing them along the way.
Elminster of Shadowdale
Runes On A Rock
published in the Year of the Morningstar
No,” Horaundoon murmured, “I dare not use a mind-link now. Not when one of these fools is so likely to get slain while our minds are touching.” He sat back with a sigh to watch what unfolded in the scrying orb.
If the gods smiled, he might not lose all of his tools this day.
If.
The orb glowed brighter, rising. In its depths, the Zhentarim saw Florin snap, “Jhess, behind me! Pennae, behind Islif! If they throw those spears—”
A spear sailed through the air, and his sword smashed it up and aside. Another flew, as the Dragons started striding forward.
“The wands!” Jhessail cried, reaching around Florin to aim the one she held. “Use them—now!”
More spears flew, Swords chanted strange words—and fire, lightning, ice, and dark tentacled shadows exploded outward. The gate’s silent whirling built into a roar that towered over everything.
The air itself seemed to boil, Purple Dragons were flung in all directions like rag dolls, and Semoor screamed as his wand exploded, taking most of his hand with it. Doust’s wand started to spit sparks and glow, and he flung it away and ducked, reaching out an arm to take Semoor to the ground with him.
The wand exploded against the nearest warehouse wall with a fury that sent everyone flying, timbers creaking and groaning, and grain and dust whirling up into a blinding cloud.
Horaundoon peered vainly at the dark roilings for a time, then shrugged. He could, after all, trace Florin at any time through the mindworm.
If, that is, the noble foolhead of a forester was still alive.
In a dark, chill chamber far underground, a lich turned in surprise as its crystal ball glowed into sudden life. How—
Something that glowed palely darted past its moldering workbench, darting among grimoires that had been old when the lich yet lived, and raced up into the lich’s bony face before it could lift one withered hand.
The lich stood abruptly, overturning its highbacked chair, and flung out its arms wildly, bony limbs flopping and clashing together like the arms of a doll shaken hard by an angry child. It shuddered, bending over sharply and then arching back, and hastened across the chamber, babbling half-words that spilled over each other, sometimes rising into shouts. Parts of its body grew fur, or scales, or bulging muscles, and lost them again just as swiftly.
Then it shook itself all over, as a moose reaching a riverbank shakes off water, and stood still, an almost-skeletal lich once more.
The crystal ball, its aging cloth cover fallen away, showed a tumbling cloud of dust and debris. The lich waved a hand, and the cloud seemed to move, showing dark heaps—bodies—and a brightness with ragged edges. A hole in a wall that folk were stumbling through.
Folk who’d have been strangers to the lich, but whom Old Ghost, now master of what had been the lich, knew. He watched the one called Semoor swig a vial as he ran, fling it away, and hold out a ruined hand to watch it heal.
“Swords of Eveningstar,” he told the darkness, his newly stolen jaw creaking. “You shall prove useful to me. Live a time longer, until I reach for you.”
Then his jaw crumbled—and fell off.
The sound of a woman crying was sufficiently rare in the Royal Palace in Suzail that it made Vangerdahast turn his head from talking to Laspeera outside the tall doors of the Soaring Dragon Room, and look.
Two impassive war wizards were leading a weeping Lady Narantha Crownsilver down Longwatch Hall toward Vangerdahast.
The two highest-ranking Wizards of War watched her pass in silence. In the wake of that passing, Vangerdahast told Laspeera rather grimly, “I wish I had time to attend to this one myself, now, but …”
Laspeera gave him a look. “I’m sure you do,” she murmured teasingly. “I’m sure you do.”
“Down here!” Pennae hissed, pointing—and disappeared.
The Swords ducked after her, around a heap of rotting crates in the reeking alley and down a flight of worn steps that seemed carpeted in shrilly squeaking rats, into—a stone-lined, refuse-strewn room that Pennae had already crossed, to beckon them from a dark doorway beyond.
“Cellars,” she called, low-voiced. “Come on!”
They sprinted across the room, through another, and were halfway across a third room when a cold light burst in the empty air in front of them. Out of it, almost touching Pennae as she fought to halt without falling, stepped a tall, dead-looking man who seemed to be holding his jaw on as tiny blue bolts of lightning encircled it. He was tall, bald, and strong-featured, and wore dark robes that left his pale, dead-white chest bare. He stank of death and mildew.
“Hold, Swords of Eveningstar!” he said hollowly, his half-healed jaw drooping. “I—”
Pennae launched herself from the floor into him, daggers glinting in both hands.
Before either of those metal fangs could hit home, an unseen magic had hurled her away. Her outflung body smashed Doust and Semoor to the floor.
“Hold, I say!” the lich snapped, raising his hands.
Florin and Islif were already moving. Hurling themselves against unseen magic that made them grimace with the effort of fighting their ways forward, they thrust their swords … right through the lich.
Its mouth gaped in pain, but no scream came forth. Instead, a teardrop of fell glow shot out of that withered maw, flying wraith-stuff that swooped, darted, and circled around the Swords—Doust missing it with a twisting swing of his mace from where he lay—as it grew.
The lich stood unmoving until Islif’s mighty slash sent it toppling to the floor, where it lay still. The flying thing, however, ducked under Florin’s fierce attack, shooting under his arms as he swung and swung again, only to soar up above them all long enough for Jhessail to set herself in a stance and raise her hands to lash it with a spell.
They could see through its glow a bearded, severe-browed human male head trailing away into a tail like a falling star. It glared at them, swerved suddenly to avoid Islif’s reaching blade, then plunged down at Jhessail.
Who gabbled her spell desperately, and never knew if she’d cast the magic properly or not as the racing head plunged into her.
She gasped. There was no crashing impact, but merely a chill that stabbed up past her heart into her head, and left her breathlessly staring at inward darkness in something of a daze.
Behind her, Semoor shouted in alarm more than pain, and stiffened. The head tore right through him as it had through Jhessail—and as she watched, it did the same to Doust.
The wizard who answered to the name Amanthan raised his head sharply, as if sniffing the air. He’d been hearing the boots of running Dragons, short horncalls, and shouted orders, this last little while, over the wall that kept all Arabel out of his garden, but this—this was something more.
Strong magic. Strange magic. Mother Mystra, what now?
In this city of folk who could smell as well as see, the lich was best abandoned anyhail. It had served his needs, and a living body would make a better host for several reasons.
Old Ghost soared down the alley, well pleased. He’d passed through all of the Swords, and worked two things on each of them in doing so: left their minds open to his return, no matter what shieldings might then exist, and—until that future visit—enabled them to perceive any nearby portal they gazed upon as a glowing “door.”
A bearded head of translucent radiance, touches of white hair at his temples but with dark and scowling brows above storm-gray eyes, Old Ghost raced on, turning onto one street then another. He turned a corner where Lionar Dauntless was running along, shouting orders to the Dragons trotting behind him—and darted into that shouting mouth.
The lionar’s eyes glowed eerily, just for a moment. Then Dauntless grew a crooked smile and ran on.
“This way!” Pennae panted, sprinting down another street. The far end of the cellars had been full of Purple Dragons searching for wayward Swords of Eveningstar. The Swords had been forced to flee up old and sagging stairs and through a bakeshop full of fat, shrieking cooks, out into streets where more Dragons were closing in from all sides. Arabel was roused against them.
“Shouldn’t we?” Doust gasped, stumbling after her, “Be trying to get to a city gate, to get out?”
“No,” Pennae shouted back. “Those three sharp hornblasts, same note in a row? That was them telling each other, gate by gate, that all was secured. There’ll be no getting out that way!”
“Back to the wizard’s underground lair?” Semoor suggested slyly.
“Go tluin yourself,” Pennae told him crisply. “With a shovel.”
Another horncall rang out, close at hand, and she erupted in swiftly hissed curses as she looked up at the tall, unbroken stone wall of a mansion compound beside her, a flood of invective that ended, “Mercy of Mask, if I but had one of those horns!”
“False calls?” Florin panted.
She nodded as they pelted around a corner—then pointed at a high-heaped cart groaning slowly along the street toward them. “Stop that one for us! Ask the driver if he knows Oddjack and can tell us where to find him!”
Florin frowned at her, but sheathed his sword and flung up his hands, stepping into the path of the slow cart. “Hoy!”
Running the length of the cart, Pennae didn’t wait for the puzzled drover to haul on his reins. “Follow me,” she hissed, and swarmed up the back of the lashed sacks of the cart’s load, where the man couldn’t possibly see her. From the height of that load she sprang over the frowning stone mansion wall—and through a mansion window beyond, with a horrific tinkling crash.
Jhessail stared up at that gaping window, her mouth open—then grinned, clawed her way up the sacks of the slowing, creaking cart beside a puffing Doust and Semoor, and plunged through the window in turn.
She found herself in a grand room of tapestries and pleated, neatly arranged draperies, its floor covered with fur rugs and a litter of broken glass.
Pennae stood in the doorway, listening to distant, fading shrieks. “The wealthy widow and all her maids, fleeing to the other side of doors they can slam and lock,” she said with a wry smile. “Are the others coming?”
Doust came through the window, caught his heels on a rug, and sat down with a crash, skidding halfway across the chamber—which was fortunate, given that Semoor then landed like a full grainsack on the floor where Doust had just been.
“Gods above, our very own jesters,” Islif observed, her boots slamming down on either side of Wolftooth’s cringing body. She bent, plucked him up—more like a grainsack than ever—and sprang out of the way.
It was, however, a few breaths more before Florin came in over the sill to trample the same spot of floor. “Gods above, can yon drover curse!” he said admiringly. “So, whose grand house is this? Not a Dragon commander’s, I hope?”
“Your sense of humor is even more twisted than mine,” Pennae told him. “No, this belongs to a merchant’s widow I robbed a tenday back. No place to hide here, even if they weren’t all shrieking like banshees. I’m heading for the next mansion over; a reclusive wizard lives there.”
“A wizard. Splendid,” Islif said cuttingly. “Oh, joy, even!”
“Your better alternative?” Pennae snapped. “No? Then come!”
And she led them on another run, this one down sweeping staircases and through grand rooms dripping with opulence, heading west. Dragon horncalls sounded again outside, close by, and Pennae answered them with curses as she plunged through a door, out into a garden of little fishponds, moss-covered modest mermaid statues, and artfully pruned shrubberies.
The Swords pelted after her, out of the gardens, past a stables where a startled horse awakened and tossed its head, and up an ivy-cloaked wall that had trees beyond it. As the last Sword—Semoor—scaled it, armored men burst around the corner of the mansion they’d just left, shouted, and started sprinting through the garden. There were splashes as the foremost runners precipitously explored the fishponds. Twisting silverfin flew into the air.
Grinning, Semoor turned away, clawed his way up the last torn ivy, and crested the wall, slipping once—which turned out to be a good thing.
The lightning bolt that greeted him raced p
ast his shoulder, lifting every hair on that side of his body, and clawed harmlessly at the sky.
In the light of the scrying orb Horaundoon smiled and sat back, ignoring the hargaunt’s squirmings. This was becoming a superb show. Amanthan had once been an apprentice of the Blackstaff, hadn’t he?
“Get out of here!” The tall young mage was so angry he was trembling. “I’m not afraid of kidnappers and thieves! I’ll—”
“Live longer if you calm down and hold your tongue,” Pennae said, drawing a wand from her belt and aiming it at him.
Behind her, the rest of the Swords all plucked out various rods, wands, and scepters they’d plundered from Whisper’s hoard, and leveled them at the wizard. He need not know they hadn’t the faintest wisp of a notion what the items did, or even if they dared to find out.
Their eyes were all fixed on his—except for the young lass with flame-red hair, who seemed to be peering with great interest across his gardens.
Amanthan swallowed, looking again along the line of wands. The lass in leathers, at the fore, was now hefting something more than the wand she’d trained on him: she’d produced a small metal sphere from somewhere, and was juggling it in the palm of her other hand. Her eyes were cool and uncaring.
Amanthan swallowed again. “W-what do you want?” he stammered.
“To pass into your house in peace,” the tall ranger said, “and hide there. We—”
Jhessail put a quelling hand on Florin’s arm and pointed across the garden, to where she could see a blue glow between two trees. “Where does yon portal go?”
The wizard blinked. “Waterdeep.”
“Good. Let us pass unhindered through it, and say nothing of where we went. Do this, and I’ll toss this—” She shook the scepter in her hand. “—to your feet as we depart. To be yours.”
Amanthan blinked at her again, then shrugged. “Accepted.”
The adventurers flowed past him like a hurrying wave, wands pointing at him all the time. The flame-haired lass lingered to do as she’d promised, bending to send her scepter skittering to Amanthan’s feet.
Swords of Eveningstar Page 37
