by Ed Greenwood
The rest of the Swords watched Pennae step cautiously forward to take a ‘ready to spring’ stance right in front of one of the doors, peering at it as if she expected it to lunge at her. Never taking her eyes off it, she ducked down and bobbed back up again, in a single graceful movement, to pluck something long, dark, and thin from inside her right boot.
“She’s good at this,” Semoor muttered. “I wonder how much practice she’s had?”
The “something” proved to be a long rod with a small hook at one end and an eyelet at the other. Pennae undid a clasp at her belt, hooked that clasp around the eyelet-it fastened there with an audible click-then began to turn herself around and around while standing in the same spot, walking widdershins. Coils of dark cord that had been tight around her waist fell around her ankles, until she reached what looked like a slender, flat, miniature version of a ship’s turnbuckle. This she undid, hooking the end still wrapped around her onto to her belt buckle. Taking up the free end of the cord now separated from her, she knotted it around one end of the sapling and swung open her belt buckle to reveal a palm-sized bundle of heavy thread.
Islif moved forward, watching with narrowed eyes, as Pennae lashed the hook to the other end of sapling with expert speed. Kicking the coils of cord to one side, she stepped back toward the corner, carefully keeping her feet just to the flagstones she’d probed, until she could just reach the pull-ring of the nearest door with it. Ducking down and lifting one hand as a shield in front of her face, she couched her other arm around the sapling as if it were a knight’s lance, and deftly dropped the hook over the ring.
Nothing happened, though Pennae tensed, peering and listening, for two long breaths.
Then, careful to keep tension on the hook so it wouldn’t slip off, she backed away, keeping to the route along the wall she’d probed earlier. When she reached the end of the sapling and had to let go of it, she’d already wound the cord thrice around her arm, so as the wood sagged, the cord stayed as taut as a ready bowstring-and the door started to creak open.
Pennae stopped to frantically wave the Swords away to either side. After a moment, all of them obeyed, moving to right or left of the passage-mouth, and she nodded grimly and resumed her retreat, dragging the door open.
The doors proved not to be latched to each other, or secured in any way. They were old, thick, and heavy, but hung a thumbwidth or so clear of the flagstones, and so didn’t stick against the floor.
Beyond them was dark stillness. With one of the two doors fully open, Pennae crouched, aiming her lantern up high inside. Then, cautiously, she advanced along the wall, retrieving her hook and placing the sapling as a prop to hold the door wide.
She was restoring the cord to around her waist when Agannor stirred, sighed, and growled, “I’m not standing out here all day! Let’s be about this!”
A moment later, he’d drawn his sword and was striding forward, approaching the doors square-on as if traversing a long hallway in purposeful haste.
“Wait-” Pennae blurted, throwing out one hand.
Ignoring her, the fair-haired fighter ducked through the open door, glancing quickly to the right, then up at the ceiling. Then he stepped back. “Dark in here,” he drawled. “Lass, that lantern of yours?”
Pennae sighed in exasperation, took up her sapling, and joined him. He reached for the lantern, but she deftly ducked away behind him, snapping, “No. Bladesmen with lanterns make superb targets. Get yourself killed on your own time.”
Agannor glared at her for a moment, his eyes two hard points-then relaxed, laughed, and waved Pennae forward with a grand flourish.
Uneasily the rest of the Swords moved forward.
Take command, Florin reminded himself, hastening to their forefront. Behind him, Semoor asked the listening world, “So we’ve poked our noses into the Haunted Halls, yes? Fulfilled our promise to the king, and can go elsewhere, right now, heads high and-”
“Stoop,” Islif snapped, elbowing the priestling in the gut as she passed, “belt up. Now.”
Walking in her wake, Jhessail sighed. “I wondered how long it would take before we happy merry adventurers ended up at each other’s throats.”
Behind them, Doust cleared his throat tentatively. “Uh, do you want me to stay here on trollwatch? Or…?”
Islif swung around. “Come on, Clumsum. Stride on up here and get killed with the rest of us.”
Jhessail rolled her eyes.
Two tunics tied around his shoulders and his old and patched weathercloak shrugged on over them, plus the hargaunt arranged just so, made Horaundoon seem a huge-headed, bulbous-nosed giant of a man. As he lurched down from the wagon to have his things carried into the Tankard, feigning being far stouter and shorter of breath than he truly was, his gaze fell upon a slender, black-haired man striding along the road toward him with a satchel on his shoulder. The satchel was probably full of vials, being as its bottom was something rare in satchels: a wooden box.
So this would be Maglor the apothecary, Whisper’s spy and obedient fingers-in-the-dark in Eveningstar.
Their eyes met, and Horaundoon gave Maglor the disinterested stare of a total stranger and turned away. If he needed this darkjack in times ahead, he’d doubtless be wearing a different guise when they met.
The apothecary made a wide birth around the caravan wagons, and Horaundoon trudged up onto the inn porch. It looked a nice enough place.
’Twas almost a pity he was going to have to kill or mindmaim most of the folk here, before he was done.
“Scream if you must,” Florin told his fellow Swords, as they peered around the room, “but no yelling or making loud noises. I’d rather we surprise whatever lurks here, rather than the other way around.”
“Yes, O King,” Agannor muttered.
“None of that,” Islif told him sharply. “Florin’s valor won us this charter, and he bears the favor of the goddess Mielikki. If he desires to lead us, he leads us.”
“ I have no problem with that,” Pennae said, looking at Florin in clear invitation. “So whither now, Falconhand?”
The room they stood in held only a puddle of water and a heap of weapons, surmounted by a shield. Pennae had already warned everyone fiercely not to so much as approach the pile, let alone touch it. The passage that had brought them to the room continued out its other side, west into the solid rock underlying the high sheep pasture-the southern edge of the wild, dreaded Stonelands-that was somewhere above their heads.
The air was cool, and gently moving. It smelled of damp stone and earth. When Florin waved his hands for silence, the Swords could hear nothing but their own breathing.
A pair of rust-orange metal gates, firmly chained together, barred the way on, where the passage opened out of the center of the innermost wall. Through those close-spaced vertical bars, their lanterns showed that the passage ran straight on into the rock, intersecting with a cross-passage and continuing, to open out into a larger chamber or cavern. Partway down the farther run stood a wooden tripod surmounted with a crossbow too large for most men to lift.
It was loaded and ready-and pointed along the passage right at the Swords.
Florin borrowed Pennae’s lantern (the only one they had that shone a beam, rather than illuminating blindingly in all directions) to peer at the crossbow. “It doesn’t look in good shape,” he murmured.
“Neither do these gates,” Islif put in. “Why don’t Agannor, Bey, and I try to break or bend just one bar, off to the side here, while everyone else clears right over to that side wall? Then, if it fires…”
“ ’Tis only us who’ll embrace sudden ventilation,” Agannor growled-then grinned. “Let’s do it.”
“Should I hook at it, first?” Pennae offered. “It looks solid, but that mass of chain might collapse into dust. I doubt it, but ’tis worth a try-and if the crossbow fires, we’ll learn how it’s aimed, and if its firing brings someone to reload it.”
“Or something to reload it,” Semoor remarked.
�
��Yes,” Florin said firmly. “Pennae’s hook-and-pole first, then work on the bars.”
Semoor sighed loudly. “I feel swindled by the gods! Thus far, ‘adventure’ seems to be almost all ‘work.’ When does the fun start?”
Islif hefted her sword. “When the first monsters find us.”
“They’re inside the Haunted Halls,” Laspeera said, pointing at the scrying crystal.
Vangerdahast clapped her on the shoulder. “Thanks. Watch them closely until I return. It shouldn’t take me all that long to have a mere merchants’ delegation wetting themsel-”
A deep chime sounded in the next room.
Laspeera looked at the royal magician, and the royal magician looked back at Laspeera and told her, “Stay right here and keep scrying. The merchants will wait; I’ll see what His Majesty wants first.”
He strode out and down the passage, taking the swiftest route to the Chamber of Charts. For anything less than royalty, Gordrar would have sent a junior war wizard to fetch him; the chime meant the presence of Azoun himself, in anger or at least impatience-or Azoun was dead and another Obarskyr was standing there very upset about it.
Now, that would be dark disaster indeed for the Forest Kingdom. And he’d had quite enough dark disas Passing through a curtain, Vangerdahast opened a door into a tiny cubicle where the air sang with mighty magic. There he pulled the door firmly closed before he opened the door on its far side, bustled through that door and down a thickly carpeted ramp into the back of a wardrobe, thrust its well-oiled doors open, slipped out, and closed it again. He peered quickly around the deserted Chamber of Treaties to make sure it truly was deserted, crossed to its far wall, and went through a concealed door there into the servants’ passage that ran behind the Chamber of Charts.
A bare breath later, he was smiling at Azoun and making the deft little gesture that told Gordrar he was to withdraw. “Yes, my king?”
“Vangey! My new adventurers-how fare they? Where are they, and what are they up to?”
The royal magician put on his best mildly puzzled face. “Adven-ah, yes, I recall. The ‘Swords of Eveningstar.’ I must confess I’ve spent neither spell nor time watching them, thus far. Yet if you deem it needful-”
“Nay, nay. When you’ve time will do. I was merely… curious.”
“Ah.” Vangerdahast looked up at the king in the manner of a kindly but disapproving tutor. “You were merely… curious. A flaw, I fear; rulers should-”
“Leave such character failings to their wizards?” Azoun’s voice was dry. “Pray tell me, Vangey, which particular flaws do you think I should cultivate?”
Oh, naed.
Naed, naed, naed, naed, naed.
“Your Majesty,” Vangerdahast began, in his most cajolingly hurt voice, “I hope you believe not for a moment that…”
The gates proved to be fused solid, the Swords heard no alarm raised, the crossbow didn’t fire-and the assault on the gates began.
Rust fell in flakes, specks, and a fine dust that had Islif, Agannor, and Bey swearing, ducking away, and shaking their heads to try to get it out of their eyes. Finally, a snarling, sweating Islif, tendons standing out on her neck like the edges of daggers, managed to force her shoulder between two bars. She pulled with all her gasping, growling might.
When she fell back, panting and shuddering, two of the bars were bowed visibly apart-and the rest of the Swords were regarding her with new respect, Agannor and Bey gaping in disbelief. They looked at each other, nodded, and strode forward to the two bent bars, hauling and tugging on them with growls of effort and hissed oaths.
Agannor’s bar bent visibly, but Bey’s suddenly broke free of its frame at the top, and leaned out a handwidth. He threw himself shoulder-first against it, groaning at the bone-numbing impact, but managed to shift it only a fingerwidth or so more.
“Break off,” Florin told the three, “and catch your wind.” When they did, gasping and shaking their numbed hands, Florin waved Doust and Semoor forward.
Their struggles made no appreciable difference to the positions of the bars, but when they retreated, wincing and wringing their hands, they took most of the rest of the scaly rust with them, and the Swords could clearly see there was now an oval opening in the gates that someone tall, or someone who hopped in just the right manner, could traverse sideways.
“Behold,” Semoor gasped, waving his hand at it. “Valiant victory.”
“Our first,” Jhessail agreed wryly. “Indeed, yon gates fought hard.”
“I’m growing older, ” Agannor complained, striding to the bent bars with Doust’s lantern in his hand.
“Wait,” Pennae snapped, but he waved dismissively and shouldered his way through the gap in the barrier, into the passage beyond.
Going straight to its south wall, Agannor strode briskly along it to where he could shine lanternlight along the cross-passage to the north. Then he played his light for some time on the crossbow. It stood dust-covered and slightly askew atop its dark wooden tripod, with a widening room behind it that seemed to end in two temple-tall, bronzen double doors, with two statues of the same hue flanking them. The southern statue was of an armored warrior woman, staring endlessly at the Swords with one hand on scabbarded sword hilt and her other arm indicating the doors behind her. The northern statue was a similarly armed and armored man who was looking at the doors he was pointing at, his other hand also on sword hilt.
Agannor peered more closely at the sagging crossbow-then chuckled, strolled unconcernedly into its line of fire, and looked the other way along the cross-passage. Nothing erupted at him.
“Nothing to see but some old bones strewn all over the place,” he said back over his shoulder. “So old they’ve gone brown.”
He waved his hand back and forth, to indicate the cross-passage. “Both ways look the same: they run ten paces or so and open out into rooms that look the same size, and stretch on to the west beyond where I can see. I’m going to-”
“ ’Ware!” Pennae shouted, pointing.
Agannor whirled to regard her, then back along the line of her pointing arm, in time to see brown bones rising into the air beyond the tripod.
The bones drew together into two eerily silent whirlwinds that built with frightening speed into two human skeletons, brown and tottering.
He took a step back, cursing and reaching for his blade. They danced forward, their finger bones lengthening into long claws and cold lights whirling into being in the dark depths of their eye sockets.
Pennae was through the bars like a racing eel, with Islif right behind her.
“Stoop! Clumsum!” Florin snapped, following her. “Can’t priests drive undeath down?”
Doust and Semoor looked at each other, swallowed in unison, and reluctantly started toward the bars.
“I don’t know how ’tis done, exactly. Don’t we need-”
“We’re not real priests, yet-”
Bones were slithering along the passages, gathering into untidy brown heaps, and whirling up into more skeletons, swaying and dancing. Florin blinked. Dancing?
The bones weren’t quite touching each other, and none of the skeletal feet were touching the stone tiles. The bones were all floating in the air, like biting flies swarming in clouds above ponds, rather than joined together.
Agannor snarled and slashed crosswise with his blade, shearing claws into bony shards. He ducked away wildly as that skeleton raked at him with its other hand-and Pennae crashed into it, hacking furiously with her daggers.
Islif smashed aside one claw with her own arm and swung her blade like a woodsman’s axe, hewing through ribs and spine. Her skeleton tottered but did not fall, its severed upper part bobbing in midair, apparently unaffected.
Doust swallowed, facing a skeleton, and in a trembling voice said, “By the luck of the Lady, I abjure thee! Go down! Go-”
Claws raked the air in front of his nose, and he stumbled back, something that was almost a shriek rising in his throat.
“They’ve tr
iggered my spell.” The words were as cold and as calm as a crofter agreeing that the next village indeed lay in that direction. “You’re ready?”
“Aye: bows, windlasses, one quiver each.”
“Good. Maglor says there are nine of them. Two she-mages and two he-priests, both novices, Lathander and Tymora. Strike hard and then get out. Get clear before they can hit back, don’t tarry to do battle so they get good looks at you. Any of you who get wounded or worse must be brought out with you. Meet back here, this side of the stone. Understood?”
“Yes, Master Whisper.”
“Good. Go.”
The skeleton reached for him again, and Doust almost fell, wind-milling his arms to keep his feet.
Bey Freemantle lurched in front of him, snarling, “Don’t talk at it, priest! Hack it to shards!” The warrior proceeded to do just that, plying steel vigorously in both hands as bone shards tumbled in the air, forming a cloud around him.
Florin, Islif, and Agannor hacked separate paths through it, cleaving skulls and shattering shoulder blades-and still the bones came slithering, hissing along the floor in their scores and dozens, ere rising up in whirling spirals to form new skeletal foes.
Semoor stammered a long and impressive prayer against “walking undeath” as he waved his hands at the skeletons.
Without effect. Bones rose up before him, eyeless skulls grinning behind long fingerbones that came reaching…
Dove sipped. “Ahhh, nice broth. Thanks, Old Mage.”
“My pleasure, lass. Now ask thy questions.”
“Questions?” Dove gave the Mage of Shadowdale her most innocent look.
“Lass, that hasn’t fooled me since ye could toddle. Ask.”
“Right, then. The Zhents, in and about Eveningstar. Maglor’s just eyes and ears, yes?”
“Aye. Reports through intermediaries to Whisper, who reports to Sarhthor-when he must.”
Dove nodded. “Those two I know. I’ve been sensing others this last month, scrying and prying.”
Elminster shrugged. “Zhents crawl out from under stones by the score when they sniff opportunity. One-I know not who, yet-just found a way to strike at mantled elf mages.”
