Florin tried to move his hands. He couldn’t seem to feel them, but they were there … and whole. When he thrust one up in front of his face and wriggled his fingers, they responded normally enough. He thrust two of them into his nose to quell further sneezes, and he tried to roll over onto his elbow and sit up.
Done, as easily as usual. Aside from aches all over—the back of his head and his left arm and shoulder in particular—it seemed he was unhurt, with his fellow Knights lying sprawled and motionless around him. Or almost motionless. Yonder, someone was moving and groaning. Doust, from the sound.
Florin tried to peer in all directions, seeking Lord Crownsilver, Sembian wizards, slavering monsters, or … well, anyone approaching.
He saw nothing like that. In the darkness, he couldn’t really see much at all. He dug in his pouch for the little glowstone Vangerdahast had given him—had given all the Knights, and weren’t they very likely to bear enchantments that would let the Royal Magician trace their whereabouts at will? He set it down and sent it skittering across the floor.
Well, now. This “elsewhere” they’d all somehow landed in seemed to be a deserted room somewhere very grand. “Very grand” as in very high ceilings and large rooms, with walls covered in unpainted wooden panels with carved frames, borders, fluted half pillars, and heavily ornate scrollwork supporting … well, curlicues. All cut out of the same dark wood.
As grand as some of the rooms he’d seen in the Royal Palace in Suzail. The room might be underground, but it didn’t seem as damp as, say, that cellar. Nor did it smell of earth. Dust lay everywhere, like a thick, furry blanket, but the only bits of rubble he could see were small, fresh chips and flecks of stone around and under the Knights. That looked as if the Knights had brought it along with them.
Someone else groaned loudly. Semoor.
Florin stood up, wincing—one of his shins wasn’t any too happy with its present condition, it seemed—and staggered around the fallen Knights, looking for wounds and anything missing. He winced when he saw the crossbow quarrel through Islif’s arm.
Doust silently joined him. “If you slice it off here,” the priest said, pointing, “and slide it out, I’ll have a healing spell ready before she loses too much blood.”
“How much has she lost already?” Florin asked.
“More than enough,” Islif whispered, startling them both, “but I’ll live. Do it.” Her eyes were still closed, and she lay sprawled as if unconscious.
Florin used his dagger to saw through the shaft of the quarrel, then left Doust to his work. He went around to examine the rest of the Knights.
Everyone was accounted for. It appeared, looking over the litter of weapons lying strewn around them, that everything they’d been wearing or carrying had made the journey with them, too. Plus all the stone shards he’d noticed.
Made the journey, more or less, he amended his judgment. Pennae now seemed to be wearing as much soot as leathers.
Was she—? When he laid a fingertip gingerly on one bared, scraped shoulder, her eyes snapped open, and she uncoiled like a whirlwind to clutch at his hand.
“Easy, lass,” Florin said. “ ’Tis just me.”
She turned her head until she could fix him with one sparkling eye and said, “You’re never just you, big ranger man.”
Semoor started to chuckle—until the dust made him choke. Evidently his eyes had been open, too, and the glowstone he had out had given him light enough to see the expression on Florin’s face.
The ranger cleared his throat loudly and told Pennae, “I, ah, have to check on the others. Ah, right now.” He hastily turned away.
Pennae rolled onto her side, wincing, and then made it up to a sitting position.
“Naed, but I hurt.” Jhessail gasped, flinching, as Florin helped her sit up. “Where by the Nine crackling Hells are we?”
Florin shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Neither do I,” Pennae said, struggling to her feet and clutching at her hip and then at her knee, ere limping a few tentative steps away, “but I know how we got here.”
“Enlighten us,” Doust told her.
“That tracer gem explosion awakened a portal behind us—a portal that must have been there for a long time but was hidden. I saw just a glimpse of it, as I was being flung back at it. It must have snatched all of us—and this litter of stones and suchlike, too—out of the cellar as the place collapsed.”
“So Lord Crownsilver’s pet wizards blew him and themselves up?” Semoor asked. “That’s rich!”
Pennae shook her head. “They’d just spun their own portal, remember? It would do the same thing to them, taking them wherever they’d set the portal to reach.”
The Light of Lathander frowned. “So they could be somewhere nearby.”
“Yes,” she replied. “Glowstones out, everyone. I think we’re in some sort of palace.”
“I think so, too,” Florin murmured from where he’d stooped to recover the glowstone he’d sent journeying across the floor. “And I see an archway yonder and a closed door over that way.”
“Let’s leave closed doors closed, for now,” Jhessail said, wincing and rubbing one of her elbows.
“Agreed,” Florin said, looking around at everyone. “Any grievous wounds? Can everyone walk?”
“Being as we seem to keep losing our horses …” Jhessail replied with a frown, “I seem to be getting steadily better at walking.”
Everyone pulled out their glowstones, and the light in the room grew with them. Semoor got a good look at Pennae, and he leered appreciatively.
“Like ’em?” she asked calmly and without waiting for a reply added, “Can’t have ’em!”
“I’m making like a good Cormyrean, successful and wealthy and settled in Suzail,” the priest replied innocently. “I’m window-shopping.”
Doust and Jhessail snorted in amusement, and even Pennae grinned.
She shook her head and waved a finger in mock warning. “That tongue of yours, lad …”
“Yes?” Semoor asked brightly, hope shining in his eyes.
“Never mind. We’ve a palace to explore, or hadn’t you noticed, lost in your unholy fixation on my charms?”
Semoor looked aggrieved, though his eyes were dancing. “Madam, you wound me! ‘Unholy’ how? Lathander warmly embraces new beginnings, and I perceive an opportunity to warmly embrace—”
“My left hand, crushing your codpiece and all it contains, if you don’t leave off, Bright Morninglord of Lust!” Pennae snapped. “Now belt up! Some of us have work to do that just might keep the rest of us alive. And spare me whatever clever little jest you were trying to think up about how this could be another ‘new beginning,’ too.”
Above them both, Florin was standing by the archway, glowstone raised, peering into the darkness and ignoring their dispute. Without looking back, he waved his hand to get their attention. “Kick some of the stones we brought with us together into a little heap to mark this room for later. We’ll have to start exploring or just die of thirst—and I don’t think we should split up or leave anyone behind. For any reason.”
Semoor obediently applied his boots to sliding most of the stones together, then looked up. “Done. Let’s go exploring. I’m getting hungry.”
“Would that be a holy hunger?” Islif teased.
“One of mine,” the priest replied, drawing smoothly back out of Pennae’s reach. “One of mine.”
He strode to join Florin. “Come. None of us is getting any younger.”
The little, out-of-the-way room in the Royal Palace of Suzail where Vangerdahast was closeted with his most trusted Wizard of War had no name, and the Royal Magician liked it that way. He’d have been even happier if it hadn’t ever appeared on any floor plans of the Palace, even though he’d done his level best for years now to track down and seize every last formal or hand-drawn charting of anything architectural about the most royal of buildings in Suzail.
Vangerdahast enjoyed having and knowing secrets, like
d having hideaways where no one would be able to track him down and disturb him, and especially valued being able to occasionally take off his boots, fart, belch, scratch himself, and genuinely relax in the company of someone who wasn’t offended by such behavior.
That the “someone” was a beautiful woman whom he trusted and regarded as a friend made her company that much more precious. Despite the facts that they were both—aside from his boots—fully clad and likely to remain so, and they were discussing grave business of the realm.
Specifically, the most pressing problems the Wizards of War needed to deal with.
“Then there’s the matter of the Hidden Princess,” he said heavily across the little table where they sat crouching, murmuring almost nose to nose.
“That never seems to go away,” Laspeera said, nodding. “What now, specifically?”
“Some of the elder Illances have gotten it into their heads that I’m up to something.”
Laspeera grinned. “And are you?”
“Hardly, Lasp,” he growled. “They think I’ve got her spellbound and stashed in a bedchamber somewhere and visit her every tenday or so for a night of wildly trying to sire a secret branch of the Obarskyrs to hold in reserve in case—”
He stiffened suddenly, lifted his head so abruptly they almost bumped noses together, and started cursing softly.
Laspeera raised an eyebrow in silent query.
“The Lost Palace,” the Royal Magician said. “Someone’s triggered one of my alarm spells. They’re inside, somehow.”
Laspeera stood, went to a wall carving, did something to it with her fingers, and swung it forward from the wall as if it were a door. Its hollowed-out back sported a rack of sheathed wands. Deftly she started taking down sheaths and hooking them onto her belt.
“Nay, Lasp,” Vangerdahast said. “This is my folly and my battle.”
“Lord Vangerdahast,” she replied, “you can’t be everywhere, and if the realm loses you on this sort of backchamber—”
“No! Take off those wands and sit down!” Vangerdahast roared, slamming down a fist on the table and startling her with his sudden fury. “There are good reasons I alone should go there! Not the least of which being that all the defenses are keyed to me, and anyone else will have to battle them every few steps, not just our unknown intruder!”
Laspeera nodded and handed him wands.
Vangerdahast took them, crooked a finger to whisk another two particular wands across empty air from the panel into his hands, whirled away to the door, and hurried out.
He was out and down the passage beyond like a storm wind, his robes billowing out behind him, and didn’t notice Wizard of War Lorbryn Deltalon step out of a doorway in his wake. Deltalon grimly watched him go.
The Knights found themselves cautiously exploring room after dark, thick-with-dust room. A seemingly endless labyrinth of deserted, interlinked chambers, all of them ornately paneled with soaring ceilings lost in the darkness beyond the reach of their glowstones. A palace.
Perhaps an underground palace. They could find no sign of a window or sunlight or any way out—nor any sign of other life. The air smelled stale and long unmoving, the dust lay like an undisturbed blanket everywhere, and the only light, aside from their glowstones, came from the faint glows of old, decaying preservative magics on the magnificent wood paneling all around them.
A hallway larger and longer than most brought them to a crossway of similar grandeur—and across it, only a few strides along a stub end of passage, a huge wooden door. As wide as Florin’s shoulders three times over and more than twice as tall, it was carved with an oval badge of a unicorn’s head thrusting forth to the dexter from between two curving trees: an oak and a maple.
“Esparin,” Jhessail said. “This was a palace of Esparin—probably the palace of Esparin.”
Semoor, who was staring hard at the carved device, frowned without looking away from it. “I didn’t know you knew olden-days heraldry.”
“You’ve never asked me what I know,” Jhessail replied softly. Something in her voice made him look at her sharply.
“The Lost Palace of Esparin,” Doust murmured from behind them. “There was something about this place. Something I read … that I should remember. Some interesting peril or other …”
Something half-skeletal shuffled into view around the corner where the crossway met the stub end of the passage.
It peered at them with eyes that were twin points of cold light in a face that was half falling off the skull beneath. It looked like what was left of a man, in what was left of once-grand robes.
“Oh, Tymora. Liches,” Doust whispered, as cold fear fell on all of the Knights like a heavy cloak, washing over them and leaving them trembling uncontrollably. “I remember now! Th-th-this is where Vangerdahast’s predecessors b-b-bound all the wizards who went mad!”
The lich took a slow step forward, raising its hands. As the Knights of Myth Drannor tried to curse and scatter, magic rings on those bony fingers winked into life.
Chapter 10
TASKS, TRAVELS, AND LIFE-ALTERING CHOICES
Tasks are given to us all
Travels embraced or forced upon us
All our daily choices alter our lives
And shape also those of others
So we must master tasks, travels, and choices
Or lack precious time enough
For love, friendship, and laughter
Saying of the Church of Lliira
The duskwood tree was old, large, and had been lightning-scarred long ago, leaving its loftier reaches with a sort of natural seat where its trunk split into three. Anyone sitting in that juncture could readily lean his back against the eastward trunk, prop one booted foot against the rising northwestern trunk, and stare between it and the southern trunk to enjoy a good view southwest over Cormyr. Even as the thick canopy of leaves above gave him full shelter from the wind, weather, and all but the closest prying eyes.
A lone man sat in that lookout seat now, a heavy sack beside him, enjoying the view.
The Immerflow was just visible far off to the left, a glimmering silver ribbon in the sunlight with the unbroken dark green horizon of the Hullack Forest beyond. Rolling emerald hills rose to a few gentle peaks in the distance ahead, and the higher, broken Stonelands—all torturous cliffs and crags cloaked with scrub woods—thrust up to the right, with the Moonsea Ride arising over a succession of hillcrests between the peaks and the Stonelands to run right past the tree. Two distant dust clouds were moving along the road, but otherwise it seemed deserted.
That suited Torm fine, just now. He needed time to sit and think, and the bulging sack of stolen coins, gems, and small valuables sharing his perch was a large part of why he was pondering where to go and what to do next.
Things were getting rather hot for him in the Forest Kingdom, but he’d found he vastly preferred it, for all its laws and ever-nosy war wizards, to noisy, crowded Sembia, where hired spying and alarm and warding spells were becoming all too common, and rivals and foes both too numerous to count.
Abruptly he became aware that something was floating in midair right in front of him. Something that certainly hadn’t been there—two arms-lengths away from his nose, blocking his view of the gentle peaks—a moment ago.
It was a curved pipe of a style favored by older and whiskered men or backcountry farmers. A thin wisp of smoke was arising from its bowl, as if someone invisible, who could somehow recline leisurely on empty air about sixty feet off the ground, was enjoying a relaxed smoke.
Torm was so astonished by this sudden apparition that he almost fell out of the tree, but he knew full well that he was staring at magic, and that magic in Cormyr meant war wizards, and—
He snatched out a dagger.
Only to find his hand pinned against the tree trunk by a stone-strong force.
“Oh, stop that,” a man’s voice drawled at him, apparently issuing from the pipe. “As I see it, ye now have a choice, young Torm. One of thos
e life-altering ones. Ye can accept the task I’m about to offer ye, or I’ll dump ye into the hands of the war wizards—specifically, into a cell in the little prison they maintain in the Royal Court in Suzail. I’m feeling rather patient at the moment, so I’ll give ye the space of six full breaths to decide which fate ye wish to embrace.”
“What sort of task?” Torm asked suspiciously.
“Stealing something.”
Torm brightened.
“Traitors, you cannot escape the vengeance of Cormyr!” The lich’s voice seemed hollow and distant. Tiny blue bolts of lightning leaped and spat from its rings, arcing back and forth—and suddenly twisted up into a writhing, crackling lance that stabbed at the Knights … only to become a flood of white blossoms that showered petals in all directions as they tumbled to the floor.
“No Witch Lord shall depart this place alive!” the lich said. “You have wrought your last craven foulness and foolishly strayed within my reach at last! Die! Die!”
The magic that roared forth at the Knights this time was a rose red flame that made hitherto-invisible preservative enchantments on the great carved door flare up a vivid blue—a spitting tongue of fire that became a hissing rain of—
“Cider?” Islif exclaimed. “That’s cider I smell!”
The lich flung out a hand to point at Islif’s nose and stalked forward, right at her. “You, Pretender Prince, are the very root and branch of evil that we have for so long striven to winnow out of fair Cormyr! I know you and decry you, false knight! You no more have Obarskyr blood than I do! Why, I’d not be surprised if you were even a woman, behind your posturings and oversized codpieces!”
“Strangely enough,” Islif said wryly, as the lich-fear faded suddenly from all the Knights, “neither would I.”
That pointing fingertip was only inches from her nose. She resisted the impulse to chop it with her sword and instead ducked away.
“Come!” Islif urged her fellow Knights—as the fear surged back over her in a wave that made her heart lurch, and the need to run rose in her mindlessly. She sprinted along the wall and took the cross passage. “Let’s get away from this thing. We don’t have the spells to stand and fight it if its charms suddenly turn effective!”
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