In all of this, Vangerdahast glanced back at the liches he’d first scorched with wandfire and through their thinned ranks caught sight of the Knights of Myth Drannor—and in their midst, another Royal Magician of Cormyr. A perfect likeness of himself, who smiled at him in cold triumph through the chaos of magic now storming around the passage.
Staring into the eyes of his impostor, Vangerdahast snarled in wordless rage. Rage that was all too likely to be futile.
“I wasn’t much liking the look of this,” Semoor said, waving at the tall door at the end of the passage. It was graven with a glowing blue badge of Esparin, “But for the love of Lathander, let’s get to it and through it! Now!”
A long, slender sword streaked out of the spell battle, flying by itself with its point first. It glistened with fresh, wet blood, raced as fast as any arrow—and was headed right for Vangerdahast!
The Royal Magician’s hands were already moving, shaping intricate gestures in feverish haste. A bare instant before the sword would have thrust into him, he vanished, reappearing well down the passage amid all the milling liches and swirling spells.
The sword plunged through the spot where the wizard had been standing, then soared up and around in a loop to come racing at Florin’s face.
The ranger set his teeth and struck it aside with his own blade, striking as hard as he could and sending the flying sword singing and clanging along the floor until it bounded up at Doust.
The priest ducked away from it, cursing, and all the Knights pounced on the sword, hacking at it furiously until it sprang up out of their midst, struck the ceiling with a clang, and—
Arrowed right back down again, plunging into—and through—Semoor’s armored breast.
Vangerdahast saw the sword streak down the passage at the impostor, but he then lost all sight of that end of the passage. Knights, flying blade, his false double, and all disappeared in a huge explosion as a lich snatched the fell magic out of several other liches, destroying them in an instant, and twisted that freed, writhing magic into a withering wall of harrowfire.
Vangerdahast had seen such a doom only once before in his life, but he knew what had to be done. He hurled the wand in his left hand into the heart of that advancing wall of flames, then unleashed the full fury of the wand in his right hand at the tumbling wood he’d thrown, murmuring an incantation that would dissolve the controlling magics of that wand.
The wand flared, turning the harrowfire into flames of a different sort. They blazed up into a blinding white wall of flame that sucked half a dozen screaming liches into it. Vangerdahast sealed off the rest of the passage for the few breaths the fire would last before it burnt itself out.
Grimly, hoping he wasn’t dooming loyal war wizards he could no longer see, Vangerdahast thrust at those flames with his mind, forcing them back and through as many liches as he could get, before the fire faded away.
White fire blazed briefly around the wound in Semoor’s chest as the minor spells on his armor failed. Screaming, the Light of Lathander arched over backward, writhing in agony.
From down the passage, the fierce-eyed Vangerdahast shouted a spell. Jhessail understood enough of the incantation to know the wizard sought to disintegrate the sword.
Caught in the sudden eerie glow of that magic, the sword standing up out of Semoor’s breast rang like a bell, then shivered—and spat out something dark and smokelike. It billowed up into a huge, evil face with white flames for eyes, a face that jeered at the Knights as it grew a hand to clutch at the sword.
Vangerdahast’s spell faded from around the sword, and the towering, leering thing plucked the blade out of Semoor.
The stricken priest crashed to the passage floor. White fire leaked from his chest, and blood spewed from his mouth. His fellow Knights, shouting in fear and rage, all hacked and hewed at the flying sword, the sheer fury of their blows striking sparks from it as the smokelike wraith looming over them tugged at it, fighting to hold and wield the blade even as they tried to strike it down and shatter it.
They prevailed, dashing it out of the great wraith’s grasp. The smokelike thing drew back, freeing the flying sword to stab and dart at the Knights assailing it.
The adventurers sprang and ducked and hammered at the sword in a frantic, gasping dance that kept them all alive until Vangerdahast shouted another spell. From down the passage the spell came, gathering wardings from the passage walls all around.
The magic howled down the passage and closed in around the sword in a tightening, crackling fist that crushed the wraith-thing back down into smoke that streamed back into the blade.
The flying sword sprang high and went streaking back down the passage, with the wardings clawing at it angrily.
The Knights found themselves staring over Semoor’s body and the scattered bones of liches at the distant Vangerdahast, who was standing down the passage with the wardings now streaming back to him and building up in a crackling cloak. Beyond him, the sword vanished through a bright wall of flame that hadn’t been there before, that now hid the rest of the passage behind its bright raging.
“Get through that door!” the Royal Magician shouted to the Knights. “Stop to defend yourself against liches when you must, but get through that door!”
“But—Semoor!” Jhessail wept.
“Leave him!” Vangerdahast roared.
“No!” Doust, Islif, and Florin shouted, all reaching for their lifeless friend.
“I’ll take him,” Doust told the other two. “You do the fighting!”
He lifted Semoor in his arms, staggered, and promptly fell under the weight.
Islif reached out an arm and said, “We’ll take him, we two!”
“Do it,” Florin snarled, springing past them to meet oncoming liches with furious swings of his sword.
Pennae led the rush in the other direction. The blue glows in the graven badge of Esparin were flaring and flickering wildly now, and the air seemed to thicken and thin in successive waves, shoving them back when it was thick but letting them struggle forward between its moments of thickness.
“Hurry!” Florin called from behind his companions. “Can’t … hold them!”
Jhessail shrieked as a lich’s bony fingertips tore across her ribs and breast, trailing magical flames. She kicked it frantically, sending it staggering back—and hurled herself forward into it in a wild dive, punching with her fists. Fell flames roared up all around her, bathing her, clawing at her face, and setting her hair to sizzling … then she hit the floor hard, amid breaking, scattering bones, and the flames were gone. A lich cackled from somewhere above her, and suddenly a strong hand took her by the ankle and pulled.
“Sorry,” she heard Florin gasp. “ ’Ware your eyes, Jhess!”
She was being dragged swiftly over bony shards, back toward the door.
“Won’t open!” she heard Pennae shout. “No lock, but I can’t get this tluining thing open!”
Then Pennae sobbed as if in sudden pain, and Doust cried, “What?”
“Burned my fingers,” the thief gasped, sounding much closer now, as Florin’s dragging went on. “This door is … is …”
“Magical, yes,” Islif panted. “Doust, leave Semoor. We need you to fight these liches!”
Florin let go; Jhessail opened her eyes, tried to struggle to her knees—and screamed at what she saw. A dozen liches or more had gathered in a sort of wall across the passage. They advanced on the Knights. The glowing, pulsing door was only a pace or two away behind their backs, and the liches were thrusting forward, seeking to overwhelm the swinging swords of Florin and Islif, bear them down under weight and numbers, and tear them apart. Spells seemed to have become useless in the waves rushing out from the door, spell after spell fading vainly from the fingertips of the liches casting them. But liches were working magics on themselves, too, making their fingerbones into long, raking claws, and those spells seemed to be holding.
“Endless!” Doust panted, joining Islif and Florin with his mace.
Pennae mewed in pain and flung herself at the door again, braving its magical fires to feel for any catch or lock or opening her eyes might have missed. “These stlarning liches are endless!”
“Pretend you’re hewing firewood back in Espar!” Islif gasped. “Take it all down, and we can go in and lounge by the fire!”
“Oh, gods, I wish you hadn’t said that!” Pennae snarled from right behind them.
The door exploded.
Chapter 16
ORDERS, STRICT AND OTHERWISE
Much of the troubles, in my or any ordered life come about as the sometimes-deadly results of orders, strict and otherwise, that are flagrantly disobeyed or that never should have been given in the first place.
Miyurs Carthult, Merchant of Calaunt
The Coins I Made: A Merchant’s Tale
Published in the Year of the Smoky Moon
The world was all bright flame and silence—the brief and troubled silence of the temporarily deafened. The passage spun around Jhessail as she was hurled far down it, tumbling helplessly through the air with her fellow Knights around her. Vangerdahast and many liches were swept along as helplessly as storm-whipped autumn leaves in front of her.
Bones bounced and broke apart, skeletons scattering as they struck the unyielding passage floor, and Jhessail just had time to realize that she was racing to experience the very same bone-shattering fate before she slammed hard into something very solid that wore armor. Something that groaned at her arrival, even as it wrapped arms around her and skidded along the passage floor under the force of her landing, leaving a silently sprawled bullyblade in its wake.
It was Dauntless. She’d landed in the arms of the ornrion who’d murderously stalked the Knights for so long—and what was he doing here, anyhail?—and he was now staring at her in openmouthed startlement, as sounds slowly came back to her. Jhessail dazedly started to think she was still alive, after all.
Someone else, huddled on the floor right by her outflung left foot, moved, heaving himself upright. It was Vangerdahast. Magic swirled around him as he staggered, and he seemed for a moment to be someone taller, leaner, and darker of garb.
Then he was the familiar paunchy, glowering Royal Magician of Cormyr again, muttering out a spell entirely unfamiliar to her as he shot suspicious glances all around—in particular at the bright wall of flames that cloaked one side of the passage, well beyond him.
Liches watched Vangerdahast from the distance, down the passage beyond those flames, but no one struck at him or hurled magic his way.
Vangey finished growling out his spell and stepped back, spreading his hands in a sort of grim triumph.
Whereupon the empty air right in front of him split apart in a dark, roiling rift, as if slashed open by an unseen giant’s blade. The rift was taller than a man and rapidly drew wider, roiling darkness churning half-seen within it.
As it grew, Jhessail, Dauntless, and everyone else felt a sudden, terrible tugging, a plucking at their flesh and clothing and even the breath in their lungs that sought to drag them to the rift. As they stared at this new danger, Vangerdahast calmly stepped into it.
At his heels there was a flash of light—and the rift and its inexorable pull were gone, as abruptly as they had come into being. Jhessail blinked. Now that the passage was empty of Royal Magicians of Cormyr, she noticed something that had been hidden from her behind his arm-waving bulk.
The flying sword was back.
It arrowed toward the rift, racing fast to try to reach it.
With the rift gone, the sword—Gods Above, but it was a splendid thing, large and long and sleek!—flashed vainly through the empty air where the rift had been and sped on, not slowing in the slightest.
Jhessail found she could turn her head in the ornrion’s cradling grasp to follow its speeding flight. That magnificent sword went right on down the rest of the passage to plunge through the dark opening where the door that had blown her away had been.
Or try to, that is. As it entered the empty doorway, the darkness there vanished in a burst of light as another glowing, upright oval—tluin, was there no end to portals lurking everywhere?—flashed into being.
Jhessail clearly saw the portal swallow the scudding sword. The blade winked out rather than piercing through the glow.
The glow that now hung, silent and bright, waiting in the air.
Laspeera, Lorbryn, and the Harper were aiming their failing wands with care and precision. They had their backs to the wall of flame as they took down lich after lich. Vangerdahast trusted their skill enough to risk leaving off blasting for a moment to snatch a look or two behind him.
The harrowfire he’d twisted into lich-melting flames was fading and dying, just as he’d expected. Yet for no reason he could fathom, those flames were melting away from the far side of the passage toward the near wall, revealing more and more of the bone-filled passage as they did so.
“A graveyard of liches,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else, looking at all the strewn, crumbling bones.
The sword had gone streaking down the passage to its end, and he could see no sign of it now. Nor the false Vangerdahast, either.
He suspected the terrific blast had been the enchantments on the door at the end of the passage exploding. And he’d been right. Yonder was the gaping doorway where the door had been, and here, strewn before him, were the bodies of the Knights, fallen where they’d been flung. Some were moaning. Falconhand and the farm lass, Lurelake, were even moving, struggling to rise.
Enough. They had to be stopped. Now.
“Dauntless!” he snapped at the ornrion sitting dazedly on the floor with one of the adventurers—the little lass, of course; soldiers never miss a chance, do they?—in his lap. “Stop the Knights! Stop them smashing wall panels, if you have to kill every last one of them!”
He saw Dauntless turn his head and look at the Knight in his arms—Jhessail, that was her name—and saw her look right back at him, their noses almost touching. Their faces wore looks that were more bewildered than anything else.
Together the mage and the ornrion looked at the Knights around them. Doust was sprawled senseless, Pennae a ragged and broken thing, Semoor sprawled and looking just as dead as the thief, and Florin and Islif were wincing in pain as they fought to rise.
Jhessail turned her eyes to Vangerdahast. “Consider us stopped,” she said to him, her voice a hoarse, husky ruin—and she slumped unconscious in the ornrion’s arms.
“Listen to me,” Rhallogant Caladanter told the Royal Palace door guard. “I’m noble, damn it.”
He waved a reproving hand at the man and discovered it was trembling. In fact, he was shaking all over. Shaking with fear.
Boarblade, however, seemed as calm as ever as he leaned close to the guard’s mustache and said, “You’ll understand that my lord is quite upset. Over a magical matter, if you take my meaning. A matter that might be very important to the safety of all Cormyr. Which is why we need to speak to a senior war wizard. Urgently. We may well be mistaken—I very much hope we are—but as loyal Cormyreans, we dare not take that chance. If you are one, you dare not take that chance.”
The guard stared at them, as expressionless as ever, then said, “Wait here.” Stepping away from his closed door, he went a little way along the wall to where a faint magical glow shone, like the light of an invisible lantern, and said into it, “Young nobleman and his manservant, upset and wanting to see a senior Wizard of War. Both armed, but I see no ready magic.”
Rhallogant couldn’t hear any reply, but the guard nodded, muttered, “Hear and obey,” came back to the door, and rapped on it sharply in a particular rhythm with the hilt of his dagger.
“I’ll take your stand,” said a voice from the gloom within, as the guard led Rhallogant and Boarblade inside. The guard nodded, not slowing, and marched to a passage crossing. He turned and snapped, “This way, please.”
They followed the guard down a passage, then around a corner and along a
nother passage, ere the impassive Purple Dragon stopped at a plain, closed door and flung it open, waving at his two guests to pass him and enter.
They did so, finding themselves in a large room whose walls were hidden behind tapestries. A great, six-candle lantern was hanging from a chain above a large and littered-with-parchments desk, behind which a rather weary-looking war wizard in dusty red robes sat alone, making notes with a bedraggled quill pen.
“I’d view that as a tactic rather than an irenicon,” he was murmuring to a book he was consulting, paying no attention at all to the door opening and the two visitors entering the room.
As the guard drew the door closed again, staying on the far side of it and leaving the two visitors alone in the room with the mage, the wizard made a last note, unhurriedly set aside his book, and looked up at them, his expression neutral but somehow unimpressed.
“Tathanter Doarmund’s my name,” he said rather grimly. “Yours? And your business?”
“Lord,” Boarblade asked respectfully, leaning forward, “are you a senior war wizard?”
“I believe I have two questions outstanding,” Doarmund replied.
“Of course,” Boarblade said with a smile—plucking a dagger from its sheath behind his back and hurling it at the seated mage as he straightened up.
It struck an unseen ward and clanged aside, harmlessly. Boarblade muttered a swift spell as he turned back to the door, but halfway through the incantation he fell silent and motionless, still as a statue.
Something small bulged under his jerkin as it drew together, then struggled out of the garment under Boarblade’s chin, thrusting out into midair in a strange, amorphous blob that lacked eyes, mouth, and even limbs, yet was obviously alive. In the act of sprouting protrusions, it stopped to hang frozen in midair.
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