by Ed Greenwood
“So that’s what befell Arlathna. Know you a wraith Zhentarim? Or any entity that drifts about wraithlike, possessing living men?”
“I know of many such. Setting aside brief skulkings or fleeing in wraithform, only one Zhent, though: Old Ghost, he calls himself. Acts as a go-between for the lowliest Zhents and those just above them-Maglor and Whisper-yet serves Manshoon personally.”
“Standing-right, drifting-outside the Zhent chain of command. The sort of being you usually strike down.”
“Aye. Mystra has ordered otherwise.”
Astonishment made Dove’s eyes flare bright silver for an instant, and Elminster smiled and topped up her tankard.
Pennae drew back from the fray, winded, to watch these new dooms rise up, and saw something that made her eyes narrow.
Farther down the central passage, right in front of that menacing crossbow, a circle of finger-sized somethings whirled around and around above a particular floor tile: brown, dancing somethings.
She watched those tiny skeletons for a moment-then hefted one of her daggers, ducked a reaching skeletal claw, and threw her steel fang, hard and fast.
Her dagger crashed through the center of the whirling ring, bouncing and hopping with a flash and clang of steel, scattering tiny bones in all directions.
And all around the battling Swords, the remaining skeletons flew apart, shedding bones in all directions.
Pennae never saw them. She was watching her dagger skitter on across the tiles. It struck one of tripod’s feet and bounded into the air, heading for those tall bronzen double doors and the two figures on their pedestals before them. It was going to fall short, strike the stones, and skirl to a stop.
Unless her suspicions about those overly grand statues were correct. This had been an embattled lord’s hold, once, if that garrulous tavernmaster in Dhedluk had spoken truth-and not a man along the aleboard had disputed with him. And what lord spends good coin on such fripperies, unless he’s a madman who thinks himself Lord Emperor of All, or they’re part of a trap Sudden blue-white light cracked, lashing out from the male statue to strike her dagger aside. Tiny crawling lightnings hummed and snarled after it, their roots playing briefly across the breast of the statue.
They were answered from the female statue, deadly pale twisted fingers reaching through the air toward its crackling male counterpart.
Most of the Swords stood gaping at the lightnings, but Pennae took two swift steps sideways, to where she could clearly see her dagger. It had stopped just in front of the northernmost of the bronzen double doors, a tiny wisp of smoke drifting lazily up from its scorched hilt.
The watcher leaned forward to stare hard into the crystal, the fingers of one hand pausing in their usual stroking of the unicorn-headed ring on the other hand. Was this a magic that could in time be used to fell the mighty Vangerdahast?
Or could these adventurers become the weapon that would slay the royal magician, and leave Cormyr unguarded, for the taking?
The last lightning bolts leaped and snapped, and the Swords gave each other grim smiles.
“This will come as a deep surprise, I’m sure,” Islif said gruffly, “but I’m not in favor of proceeding to yon doors.”
The answering chuckles were dry. Amid them, Pennae leaned forward far enough to peer up and down the cross-passage, and Agannor grinned and came over to her with his lantern.
“Doust, Semoor, Bey, Martess,” Florin said gently. “Mount you a rearguard right here, while the rest of us go south down this cross-passage, to see what we may see.”
Agannor gave the forester a challenging glance, just for an instant, then shrugged and started down the cross-passage, Pennae right beside him and Islif trotting to catch up. Jhessail rolled her eyes and followed, Florin with her.
A bare ten paces on, the passage opened out into a room, a dark doorway yawning in its western wall-and another passage branching off through its east wall.
“Halt,” Pennae told everyone, in a voice of iron, before she ducked low and leaned out to shine her beam-lantern down the passage. It ran on a slant, back toward the rooms and passages they’d already been in, to end in a bare, angled wall. Pennae’s eyes narrowed again.
She prowled along the short, doorless passage to its end, where she peered at the stone wall, running her fingers along cracks and tool marks and-aha!
“A secret door,” she called back, her voice shrill with excitement. “And I can open it!”
Her fingers had already found two hollows wherein something clicked under her fingertips-and the door trembled, grating ever-so-slightly.
Agannor and Islif came hurrying along the passage, blades drawn. “Not before we-”
Pennae gave them both an “oh, please ” look, and thrust the door wide. Though it proved to be thicker than her own body, piercing a wall of the same girth, it made no further sound, nor opened with any difficulty. She could push its ponderous weight with a fingertip.
The three Swords peered together into the room of the puddle and the heap of weapons. It was very much as they’d left it, holding no sign of lurking beasts, spies, or anyone but themselves.
Pennae studied the exposed doorframe for a moment, then the balance of the hinges and the frame behind them, too. Then she peered at the door-edge, looking for locks and catches and finding just the one she’d opened. She threw up a hand. “Wait here a moment.”
Then she was through the door and across the room like an arrow in flight, fetching up in front of the far wall with narrowed eyes and searching fingers. After a moment she nodded in satisfaction and thrust her fingers into two widely separated tool gouges.
Another concealed door promptly clicked open in the wall, its outlines appearing out of the weathered stone as if by magic. It was just as thick as the first one, but moved even more quietly. Recently used.
Pennae peered quickly into another slantwise passage, a mirror image of the one she’d just traversed. Seeing nothing but stone walls and an utter lack of marauding beasts, she hooked her fingertips into two other handy hollows to pull the door closed again. Its click was barely audible.
“Another slantwise passage, running so,” she told the others, gesturing to indicate its position, as they hastened to rejoin Florin and Jhessail.
Jhessail greeted them with a frown. “Is it wise to go running off in twos and threes?”
“No,” Islif agreed. “A mistake we’ll not repeat.” She gave Agannor a glance. “I hope.”
“We must never leave some area unexplored, that could conceal a man-or even a biting snake-between us and the way out,” Pennae warned them all, “lest we get trapped in here by a monster-or a band of outlaws.”
Her fellow Swords, up and down the passage, nodded soberly.
“So, shall we continue?” Agannor asked, waving at the empty room before them, where the passage ended and that dark doorway awaited.
“Yes.” Florin turned to look back at the rearguard. “All quiet?”
They both nodded, and the forester added, “Pennae and Islif to the fore. Agannor right behind, ready to charge in. Then you, Jhessail.”
Pennae quickly circled the empty room, peering at the walls and ceiling. When she reached the doorway, she stepped well back to shine her lantern inside.
The Swords saw a table and chairs, some of the latter overturned or hacked apart. Bunk beds around the walls, some hewn and splintered. Strongchests under the lower bunks, their locks and hasps smashed. A door-ajar into darkness-in the middle of the south wall, with something odd huddled on the floor in front of it; something of a stonelike hue.
Pennae moved closer, shining her light everywhere. No other doors, no corpses or brown bones. No tools or weapons lying anywhere. “In,” she told Islif and Agannor, “and watch that door. Don’t push it open. I’m for the chests.”
They proved to be empty, and their damp wood crumbled at a touch like badly made nutbread. By the time Pennae was finished looking at all of them and behind them, at the underside of the table
and all around the bunks, Agannor and Islif had looked long and hard at the stony mass on the floor, prodding it with their swords and shifting it aside to make sure no hole or anything else was concealed beneath it. The rest of the Swords watched from the doorway. Pennae thrust aside chairs and the remnants of chairs to clear a wide path from doorway to where Agannor and Islif stood.
“Look at this,” Agannor told everyone, pointing at the stone heap with his sword.
From the doorway, Jhessail did just that. When she spoke, her voice sounded uneasy, on the edge of disgust. “What is it?”
Even curled up as it was, it was a little thing, all stumpy legs and long, gangly arms, with a malicious face, flat-nosed and fang-mouthed, glaring down at the broken short sword it held. Its ears were pointed like a cat’s, and it wore armor made of random plates of salvaged, battered human armor tied together in an untidy, overlapping array.
“Never seen a goblin before?” Agannor’s voice was bleak. “This is-or was-a goblin. Something’s turned it to stone.”
Chapter 14
DARK DAYS FOR THE REALM
Find your swords, ye who still have eyes to see them, hands to wield them, and wits enough left to search for them. Polish them if it heartens ye, and drink a last goblet to those who have already fallen. Then gather ye with sword and shield by the old oak, and await my coming.
We are fated to die, and may as well do it together, achieving some small vengement upon our foes, as do it apart, falling alone beneath the blades of laughing foes.
So strike as one, for Cormyr, and go down into darkness with savage smiles, and the blood of dying foes on your blades. Seek not to flee or hold aloof from the fray; ’tis too late for that.
The dark days are come at last.
Andrath Dragonarl,
Knight of Cormyr
A Call to Arms pinned to trees throughout the realm in the Year of the Floating Rock
D ark days for the realm, indeed,” Blundebel Eldroon growled, setting down his gigantic tallglass. It was now half-full, but had been sparkling to the rim with the very finest of glowfire a moment ago. “I know old nobles always say something of the sort, but this time, as the gods bear witness, Cormyr truly-”
“Ah, Lord Eldroon,” Prester Yellander said, his interruption as firm as the snap of a lash, “but that’s just where your words fall into misadventure. Cormyr does not ‘truly’ anything. That is our problem, lords: we are so fallen into deceit and deception, with a royal magician insanely unable to tell the truth about the weather, the color of his own robes, and even his own name, let alone affairs of state, leading us daily farther and farther astray!”
“Strong words, Lord Yellander,” Sardyn Wintersun observed. “As Lord Eldroon intimates, is this slide into untruth not a dark doom decried by every generation of nobles and sages-and Obarskyr kings, for that matter? Does the realm truly totter on the brink of savagery, civil war, and a shattered throne? We may dislike the manner and even particular stratagems of the royal magician, but many a crofter of the realm-and merchant both Cormyrean and outlander-likes well the stability his vigilant war wizards, and the king’s well-trained Purple Dragons, have wrought. The realm prospers, the people multiply and are largely content, the-”
“Cowdung being spewed in this chamber near reaches my eyeballs,” Lord Eldroon growled. “Have you a head of solid stone, Wintersun? Canst think at all? Try looking past the smiles of the fool-headed rabble and underlings beyond counting, to hear and see the ire among those of us who matter: we nobles, who own much land, sponsor many mercantile ventures, pay good coin to all of the rabble of the realm who happen to toil for us-and pay a lot of bad coin, too, taxed from our hands into the court vaults.”
He drained his glass in a single great sip, to snarl, “ ’Tis our contentedness or lack of same as should be measured, not the views of some toothless old retired dragonard who’s happy if his downsun tankard comes to his lips every night, and is served with some juicy gossip to chew over with his goodfellows!”
“Speaking of which,” Lord Yellander told his own fingernails, “I’ve heard some interesting news, my lords. I chanced upon the Lady Jalassa Crownsilver yestermorn, and she seemed anxious to show me her new magecloak earrings.”
Lord Wintersun wrinkled his brow. “Your juicy gossip concerns earrings? ”
Prester Yellander sighed and steepled his fingertips, regarding Wintersun pityingly over them. “Your holdings are rural, aren’t they, Sardyn? The term ‘magecloak’ is obviously unfamiliar to you, so my duty is clear. Magecloak items-be they rings, earrings, anklets, or false beards-are works of magic that foil magical scrying. While you wear one, no war wizard can see or hear you from afar. Perhaps not even the oh-so-awesome Vangerdahast.”
“Made-or at least sold-in the cities of Sembia, for far too much,” Eldroon growled.
Lord Yellander shrugged. “The price will fall when someone duplicates their magics and offers them for less than the price of a good keep.” He slid back his sleeve to display a thin gold band. “Rest easy, Wintersun, mine should keep our converse relatively private, so long as you stray not far from me, and say nothing too imprudent.”
Eldroon tapped a large jargoon ring on his fat and hairy left little finger. “I go nowhere without mine, these days.”
“Yet be not led astray, Lord Wintersun, by our little displays,” Prester Yellander said, “for Lady Crownsilver’s baubles were merely her excuse to tarry and converse with me, not the choice gossip that was the weightiest part of her words to me. Nay, Lords, I’d hardly waste your time informing you that this or that high lady now goes about magecloaked.”
“So what juice did she spout?” Eldroon asked, reaching for the decanter of glowfire.
“That the king has just chartered his own adventuring company, the Swords of Eveningstar, and sent them off to Eveningstar for a little training. When they’ve become seasoned killers, he intends to unleash them on nobles he sees as his opponents. So now Azoun Loosecods has his own private little slaying force-and ’tis a blade about to be thrust at us. Beware!”
Wintersun sighed and swirled his glass, to watch the dregs swirl like amber fire as they caught the light. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about.”
“You’re sure?” Eldroon asked. “This isn’t just wildtalk? Jalassa had this from someone reliable? If so, who? And how?”
“She pieced it together, she told me, from three court scribes, an overly talkative war wizard too young to keep in mind that others in the realm besides his kind know how to use spells-and something she heard from the lips of Vangerdahast himself.”
“Then he wanted all of us to know it,” Eldroon said darkly. “That man says nothing unguarded. Nothing at all.”
Lord Yellander shrugged. “He’s just a man. I could hire a mightier mage on the morrow.”
“Oh? Then why don’t you?”
“The war wizards are too splendid a blade to shatter. Better by far to find the way to take hold of their hilt.”
“Kill Vangerdahast, you mean.”
“ Replace Vangerdahast, by something that looks just like him. And obeys me.”
“And is there such a ‘something,’ in all the world?”.
“Oh, yes. I found it long ago.”
“And yet we kneel not to King Prester the First.” As if by magic, Eldroon’s tallglass was empty again.
“Not yet. Certain matters stand unfinished.”
“ ‘Certain matters’?”
“Yes. Regarding the ‘obeys me’ part. I may finish them in a tenday. Or never.”
“Ah. Like the rest of us.”
“ ‘The rest of us’?”
“The rest of us, Yellander. All the other nobles besides yourself who’ve glanced at the Dragon Throne and thought: That could be mine, and I’d ride it better than Azoun Obarskyr. Some of us set aside such thoughts and learn contentment. Others achieve little, and chafe and snarl the seasons away. A few dare ventures not shrewd enough, and lose their heads or the
right to set boot in Cormyr. And more than a handful nurse schemes, working slowly toward a savage moment that may never come. In short: you’re not the only one.”
“Are you such a one, Lord Eldroon?”
“Once I was. Now I think the prize not worth the hazard. Let Azoun worry and work, while we watch and sip wine and cavil at the quality of entertainment he provides us. Speaking of which, more glowfire, Wintersun?”
“I believe I will. Lords, you’ve both given me much to think about.”
“Think silently. The war wizards do one thing very well: listen to folk who think their talk is private. Get yourself one of these magecloak things. More wine, Yellander?”
“Forget not yon stone goblin,” Pennae snapped, “and watch that door. If it moves, even a little, shout and then get out!”
“Shout and then get out,” Jhessail echoed. “Not much of a war cry…”
“No,” Florin agreed. “Pennae, what have you found?”
Pennae had been swarming all over the ransacked room, peering under things and over things, and running her hands over the walls. She’d frozen at a spot on the wall by the head of one of the lower bunks, and was now frowning at it, and drawing her dagger.
“What is it?” Agannor asked.
She furiously waved for silence then probed with her dagger at a spot on the wall. Nothing happened. She probed again, a fingerwidth above-and a hand-sized panel in the wall appeared, pivoting open. As she pushed her dagger deeper, it swung open more. She stepped well back, keeping behind the door, until she could pluck up her lantern again and shine it into-a niche hollowed out of the rock about as deep as her forearm, which was empty except for a small, mildewed piece of folded parchment. Pennae drew it out balanced on the blade of her dagger, set it on the table, and opened it, reading its simple message aloud: “The rest are hidden in the door.”
“The rest of what?” Jhessail asked.
Pennae shrugged. “Who knows? Yon door looks like solid stone to me. Anyhail, there’s nothing else here. Do we go on through it, given that?” She nodded her head at the petrified goblin.
