by Ed Greenwood
“So the Knights go down into the cellar…”
“And we pounce.” Lord Eldroon smiled. “Or rather, our bullyblades do, using all the back passages and curtained-off corners in the cellars; crossbows that fire bolts tipped with our poisons, and that sort of thing. They can bring war wizards down dead just as easily as they can foolhead adventurers.”
“And when it’s all done,” Lord Yellander added, sliding aside the top of the table between them to reveal a velvet-lined storage niche that held a string of cheap-looking beads and a note that read Caution: necklace of fireballs, “this will provide a blast-the-bodies pyre to thwart war wizards spell-prying into dead brains.”
“And how will you get there in time to use it?”
Yellander smiled softly. “By means of the other reason we bought the inn. The portal into its back pantry. Yes, another portal; the realm’s riddled with them.”
Old Ghost drew the last three runes of the spell in his mind, silently and emphatically thinking of the words that ended the incantation as he did so, in deft and exacting sequence.
And the swirling, building spell-glow rose into a bright fist, trailing sparks, that opened to him and flooded over him with a rapture sweeter than he’d ever felt in his long existence before.
He’d now mastered every one of the ancient Netherese spells! At last!
Gleefully he soared up out of the roofless “haunted” ruin in the hills of upcountry Amn he’d been using as a spell chamber and raced through the dark tangled wood like a howling storm, darting through the gaps of a badly boarded-over back window into a tavern storeroom, and thence out into its smoky bustle like a half-seen, streaking arrow-that plunged right into a human host. He had every exultant intention of riding the man mercilessly.
The hitherto fat and lazy master of the Bright Mare Fine Tavern, best (and only) drinking-house in the rural Amnian village of Darthing, suddenly flung himself across a littered card table, viciously punched a warrior twice his size in the throat, snatched out the gargling, strangling man’s short sword and slashed that same throat open, and then bounded up, howling.
The taproom of the Bright Mare was as crowded as usual-and every jack and lass in it stared in open-mouthed, dumbfounded astonishment as Tavernmaster Undigho Belarran waved the short sword around and around his head, laughing and hooting in wild, loud incoherence as the blood flew from it to spatter faces and tables all around-and then lurched forward and butchered a staring cobbler, right in front of the man’s shrieking wife.
Then Belarran became a fat, panting whirlwind, racing here and there across the taproom and back, wildly and recklessly slashing and stabbing. Men swore, fumbled for daggers and belt-knives-and died, hacked and pinioned by a man no one believed could move so fast, even as they gaped at him doing so.
Belarran’s wife and his favorite ale-maid toppled over in their blood. The old miller’s dog was laid open from jaws to haunches. Then the wild-eyed tavernmaster slashed open the throats of two cowering guests in one huge swing of the blood-drenched sword in his fist and made it to the door.
He tarried not to trap and stalk the two wounded but feebly crawling guests still left alive, but burst out onto the main street of Darthing.
Villagers turned to give him greeting, frowned at what they saw, and then died as the tavernmaster rushed at them, hacking and slashing, hurling himself forward recklessly to chop at knees and wrists and ankles.
Folk screamed and shouted in fear, and some men came running with shovels and picks and the rusty swords of old wars, to try to ring the madman and slow his wild butchery. They failed.
Thrice the tavernmaster hewed down armed men who faced him, rushing this way and that at rolling-eyed random, so that none dared strike at him from behind for fear they’d suddenly be kissing his blade as he whirled to face them. Another Darthingar fell, and another, until the village blacksmith shouted at them to all strike at once, rushing in from all sides.
Two more died in that fray of clanging blades as the grunting, flailing-armed tavernmaster lashed out faster than ever-but it ended with Tavernmaster Undigho Belarran spitting blood and sagging to the ground with seven swords thrust through his body, like a large crimson pincushion.
“Well,” the smith said to Darthing’s chandler at his right shoulder and harness-maker to his left, “that’s tha-”
Something like gray-white smoke raced up out of the dying man at their feet and plunged right through them-chandler, smith, and harnessmaker-and the three Darthingar clutched their chests, reeled, and fell on their faces, dead.
The smoke-thing raced on down the village street-and it was laughing.
As villagers shrieked and stared, the mirth of what they could now see was a human-shaped wraith, its arms and legs trailing off into ragged wisps, became a howling guffaw.
The folk of Darthing turned and fled, pelting down stairs into their cellars to cower, panting, as Old Ghost veered through a few more of them, stopping their hearts as he plunged through the sobbing, running humans.
He soared on, gloating aloud in triumph, his voice a raw and terrible hissing. “The spells are all mine at last! I can snatch power enough to destroy Hesperdan! To destroy Manshoon! ”
He chortled as he raced on, sweeping east out of Amn faster than any racing hawk.
The old Netherese spells were poorly written. The incantations awakened stresses in the flowing and rebounding energies of the Weave they called on. A wizard could handle two active spells at once, but trying a third one tore that wizard apart every time. So had perished many wizards and sorcerers of Netheril. Yet only corporeal casters stood in peril. Old Ghost could survive having six working at once, perhaps more!
And what spells they were! Slow but titanic, they literally melted away land-rock and soil, energy flows, everything — into energies that Old Ghost-and only he! — could control, by directing their flows into the Shadow Weave rather than the Weave. He was getting good at doing so, now, and the beauty of it was that Mystra attributed the slight weakening of the Weave to Shar, but Shar couldn’t even sense his work.
Or so it seemed. If he was wrong, he might soon face the wrath of two angry goddesses… if he was wrong.
He’d noticed the castings also stole energy from portals, causing a marked increase in what sages of the Art termed “portal drink”-non-living items that vanished from creatures traversing portals. But what of that? Only creatures who lived and breathed and grasped after food and drink and each other had need of coins or clothes and such!
Casting another spell whenever he needed more strength, he would become one of the mighty. Ever-stronger, even able to rise up again like mist if “destroyed,” as long as creatures used portals anywhere in Faerun.
Old Ghost raced toward Cormyr, bellowing triumphant laughter.
As she trotted through the wet Arabellan night, Pennae was breathing hard and starting to limp as her leg stiffened.
Someone’s dagger had sliced her arm, and a Zhentish sword had more than nicked her leg. She’d slain both Zhents who’d wounded her, but that didn’t make their little gifts to her throb any the less, and if she lost her agility, her career-gods, her life — went with it.
Wherefore she’d left that happy little fray of Zhents and Knights of Myth Drannor butchering each other in the stables, and hurried a few streets across sleeping Arabel to here.
Dark, empty, and dripping Crownserpent Towers. The boarded-up mansion of a minor noble family that to her certain knowledge was extinct, unless undead could sire or bear living offspring. It was old and massive, with air-vents large enough for a skilled sneak-thief to crawl through, and doorposts a child could scale. Decaying moldings and crevices everywhere, and the sort of genteel decay that seeping water, rats, and birds caused.
All of which made it the perfect place to hide healing potions until they were needed.
Such as now, for example.
The rain was slackening, and the mansion was boarded up as tightly as ever. Good; she wasn’t in the mood to fight
a street gang-or the servants of a new owner, for that matter.
She climbed up a doorpost, along the ornate stone cornice to a corner, then onto a wide stone windowsill adorned with a fresh duskfeathers nest. The bird sitting on it cheeped once in its sleep as Pennae’s foot came down softly beside it. From there, a long, aching stretch led to the lip of the roof-carving. She dug in fingers like claws, because everything was wet and it could be a killing fall from here.
Up and over, and there was the vent cover.
It slid off as readily as ever, and Pennae lowered herself cautiously down and in. Along the attic air-vent to the moot of six vents, down Hand on a precious vial, she froze. Murmurings. Voices. Mens’ voices. Crownserpent Towers, it seemed, was empty no longer.
Chapter 8
MORE CONFOUNDED SCHEMING
No fight nor foe of Cormyr ever angered me.
I had no wrath to spare, for it was twice or thrice daily provoked by all the confounded scheming.
Horvarr Hardcastle, Never A Highknight: The Life of a Dragon Guard published in the Year of the Bow
Thrusting the precious vial she’d come for into her seldom-used throat pouch, Pennae crept along the vent-passage as stealthily as she knew how, until she was peering down through a grating at a sudden glow in a bedchamber that should have held only darkness, cobwebs, and mold.
It was a cold radiance, bright blue and glimmering. Magic.
A glow that came from an orb on a neck-chain, held on high by the robed and hooded figure that was wearing it.
A second, similarly garbed man held up a second orb, clearly in response to the first. “With both of these at work,” he said, his voice sounding male, Cormyrean, and old, “not even Vangey’s magic can see or hear us. Well met.”
A man who also sounded like a native of Cormyr, but slightly younger, echoed that dry greeting even more sarcastically, and then asked, “Is the time to strike come at last?”
“Not yet. Soon.”
“When?”
“When all the alarphons are dead-that is, they believe you to be dead-and Laspeera’s dust, and Vangerdahast is weakened or preoccupied, or both. I’ll write ‘Leak here’ on the wall at the bend in the Long Passage, to let you know when the time is right. If anyone sees it, they’ll dismiss it as a steward’s message to the Palace masons.”
Pennae frowned. The alarphons were the internal investigators among the war wizards, the watchers who kept all war wizards honest. Or supposedly upheld honesty, by the sounds of this.
In the bedchamber below, the first man lowered his orb. “And then?”
“Set the traps on the crystals. When ready, you write the same phrase on the opposite wall of the passage, facing mine, and I’ll know to send word to Vangey that the princesses are imperiled.”
“And he’ll come running, and-blam! What then?”
“The same lure should work just as well on Azoun. Mind you rig something physical-stone, falling from above, perhaps-to disable him in case his shields are strong enough to defeat your spells.”
“Yes. I’d not want to end up facing him blade to blade.”
“Indeed. Kill him, but keep the head. We may need it.”
“We must all get a head in this world.”
“Ha. Ha. We’ll arrest Filfaeril for treason, accusing her of Azoun’s murder-we can say we found the head wedged down the shaft of her private garderobe. Tana we marry off to our puppet, Alusair we keep in hiding as our backblade, in spell-thrall-and then, regrettably, the traitor Filfaeril is killed by our spells while trying to escape.”
“Not smooth, but-”
“It doesn’t have to be. Many grumble about us, day in and day out, but how many dare to denounce or even challenge their war wizards? Remember: ‘Leak here.’ ”
“ ‘Leak here.’ And if someone tries to check on the princesses before we’re ready?”
“Leave that to me.”
The two men exchanged deep, dry chuckles, and then parted. As one-the one who sounded a little younger-turned away, Pennae caught sight of his face in the light of his orb.
It was not one she’d seen before, but she’d know it again. White hair at the temples, framing a handsome, commanding face. Imperious nose, hard eyes.
Pennae remained absolutely still until the other man, his hood still hiding his face, was quite gone. And then she crawled back the way she’d come, not even daring to whisper a curse.
“You’d think all this rain would’ve washed enough of the smell of blood off us,” Semoor complained, tugging on the reins that his snorting, head-tossing horse was threatening to drag right out of his hands.
The other three Knights of Myth Drannor were all too busy to reply. The rest of the horses were just as agitated. It had been some time since the four had seen a living Zhent, but Florin had been missing just as long, though Pennae-who kept vanishing and reappearing, a flitting shadow in the night-insisted his body was nowhere to be found in or near the stables.
She was gone right now, leaving just four Knights struggling in the deepening, still-raining night with horses enough for everyone, plus two remounts Pennae had insisted in taking from the stables “because the queen would want to see us properly equipped.”
The four were bruised, soaked, and cold. They were too tired to be scared any longer, but they were very nervous, and growing ever more so-expecting more misfortune at any moment. Either another Zhent attack, or the arrival of Dauntless and dozens of grim, armed-to-the-teeth Purple Dragons, to arrest them.
It was Doust who sighed and said, “I remember a day rather less damp than this one, and a herald proclaiming our names and the thanks of King Azoun, as the crowds cheered and-”
“Sounds nice. Wish I’d been there,” Pennae said laconically, from just behind him. She grinned as a startled “Eeep!” burst out of the priest of Tymora, as he jumped a little, hands shaking, and then whirled around.
“Pennae, if you ever do that again-”
“You’ll make that same charming sound? I await it with fond anticipation,” the thief said smoothly, patting his arm. She set down a sack almost as large as she was, with the clangor of many things made of metal shifting inside it. “Daggers,” she explained. “I’ve been plundering Zhents too dead to resist me.”
“A habit learned in festhalls?” Semoor asked; the darkness hid the rude gesture she made in reply, but he saw enough of the shift of her shoulders to know she was making it. “You wound me,” he said.
“Not yet, Light of Lathander,” she murmured, her voice heavy with promise. “Not yet.”
Then she spun around, hand streaking to a sheathed dagger. A sword glimmered suddenly, its flat coming down on that hand in a gentle slap.
“Please don’t,” Florin said wearily, from the other end of that sword. “I’m growing a little tired of facing sharp war-steel this night.”
Pennae nodded. “ That’s not your sword. What befell you, and where have you been?”
“Aye, I wish I still had my own blade. This one’s old, good steel-and so it should be; I had it from a princess! — but badly balanced, too small for me, and heavier than it should be.”
“Oho! A princess, hey?” Semoor asked. “What else ‘had you’ from this fair royal flower? Or are we speaking of a festhall ‘princess’?”
“We are not,” Florin said. “We are speaking of the Princess Alusair Nacacia, whom I met with on the roof of yon temple, by merest chance. A Zhent almost slew her, but I was able to defend her-until too many Purple Dragons appeared for me to dare tarry. Unfortunately, neither did the princess, who used some sort of magic to vanish rather abruptly. I doubt those Dragons are all that pleased with me, just now.”
“I’m not surprised,” Jhessail said. “This being Arabel, they probably have their hands full of truculent madmen already. An Obarskyr princess, standing around on a rooftop, in this? ”
“Belike you met someone who told you she was Alusair the princess,” Doust said, wrestling with two less than happy horses, “to avoi
d getting in trouble for being on that rooftop. She was probably a temple-thief, or hoping to be, until the gods sent you into her lap.”
“Friends,” Florin said, “I’ve seen both princesses a time or three while we were at the Palace, and this was the Princess Alusair.”
“Ah,” Semoor said, “you had time to examine her properly, checking all the birthmarks, did you? My, but the Obarskyrs will be glad to see us go! Right into fresh-dug graves, if you start dallying with royal daughters!” He tossed the reins of the largest horse to Florin, and added sharply, “Nice to know you keep your brains in your codpiece. Pity it isn’t larger, so you’d have a hope of carting a little more of them around with you!”
“Semoor,” Florin said heavily, “our meeting was not like that, and was none of my doing-”
“So,” an all too familiar voice came out of the night behind them, “do I add molestation of a personage royal to horse-theft, in my reasons for having all of you flogged to death? Or have you some crimes more inventive yet to add to your confessions? Take your time, and leave nothing out of your reply. We Purple Dragons tend to be all too starved for entertainment.”
Half a dozen lanterns were unhooded in unison, and the Knights of Myth Drannor found themselves staring into the mirthless smile of Ornrion Dauntless-at the head of dozens of grim, armed-to-the-teeth Purple Dragons. Most of whom held loaded hand-bows, aimed at the faces of the Knights.
“Falconhand speaks truth,” said someone grimly, from just behind the ornrion’s shoulder. It was Laspeera of the war wizards. “I very much hope he continues to do so, as I ask this of him: what’s become of my fellow war wizard, Melandar Raentree, who was assisting you at the stables?”
Florin shrugged. “He bade us farewell there, departed-and we were promptly attacked. By many Zhentarim. Swordsmen, led by a wizard. Who was torn apart in a spell-blast… or so I believe.”
“So he’s gone, all his Zhent blades lie dead, and the Princess Alusair is gone too!” His tone of voice made it abundantly clear that Dauntless believed not a word. “Well, now, isn’t that all just so convenient?”
