by Ed Greenwood
Yet it seemed gentle indeed compared to the icily sneering grimace of a grin Lord Maniol Crownsilver gave to the guards he was spattering mud all over as he reined in his mount in front of Tessaril’s Tower.
“Where’s Tessaril?” he barked at them, throwing his reins in the face of the man who stepped to the head of his mount.
“Crave you an audience?” came a level question in answer. Lord Crownsilver swung himself down with a grunt, not deigning to reply. He had swords enough in livery with him to deal with a few tower guards-and if his men had remembered his orders, several hand dartbows would be aimed at each of these helmheads right now.
Lurching from the stiffness of more time spent in the saddle than he was used to these days, he mounted the porch steps. Two Purple Dragons and two knights of the realm barred his way, but he neither slowed nor hesitated-and they drew smoothly aside moments before his striding would have brought him crashing into them.
“You are expected, Lord Crownsilver. Go right up,” one said, as the doors magically opened themselves, taking Maniol’s wordless grunt of reply with him as he stamped to the stairs.
Behind him, he heard his senior guards coldly insisting that they accompanied him everywhere-and gasps as something was revealed that stopped their blustering in mid-word. Not caring whether they slaughtered the tower guards in the street or were all turned to frogs by some war wizard spell or other, he ascended, finding the landing populated with highknights.
“Where’s Tessaril?” he growled at them. They gave him identical looks of disdain and silently lifted their hands to indicate the bower at the far end of the floor.
Maniol passed them without another word or glance, fixing his eyes on the lone woman in high-booted black leathers who sat awaiting him.
“Where’s my daughter?” he barked at her.
“Gone.” Her voice was calm.
“ What? Woman, if you’re lying to me-”
“I can well believe women would oft have cause to lie to you, Lord Crownsilver,” Tessaril Winter said, “if your courtesies are customarily so lacking. The Lady Narantha Crownsilver is no longer within these walls-but the Crown has neither jailed nor hidden her.”
She lifted a hand to point. “She slipped out of a locked and guarded bedchamber-that second door behind you, as it happens-last night. And fled, I know not where. By her own designs.”
“And you let her go? With all your spells and guards and-and-”
“Lord, I am the Lady Lord of Eveningstar, not a jailer. Nor yet a Wizard of War, empowered to use magic at will on a loyal subject of the realm who stands accused of no crime, and is not only noble but enjoys royal favor-”
“ Yes! That’s it! Azoun wants to bed her! You’ve spirited her away-”
“Maniol, guard your tongue. Ranting and raging are one thing; speaking treason quite another.”
“You dare — ?” Maniol strode forward, fists clenched, to loom over Tessaril. “You dare accuse me of treason, and school me what to say and not to say? D’you know who I am, wench?”
Blazing eyes glared down into calm and steady ones.
“Yes, Lord Crownsilver, I do: an unpleasant boor of a man who is at this moment understandably lost in rage-but now demonstrating his lack of nobility. Nobles control themselves, Maniol. Nobles make masks of their faces, and guard their tongues with great care, and do the right thing. For the good of the realm.”
“You jumped-up commoner! You trollop! Preening over an empty title won by letting the man who calls himself ‘king’ plow you thrice a tenday! How dare you lecture me, a Crownsilver born, on what it is, and what it is not, to be ‘noble’! Before all the gods, this bursts all bounds! I-”
“-go on bursting them, Maniol Crownsilver, with every word you spit. Your phrase ‘man who calls himself king’ is clear treason, and I’ll not hear more words like it! Belittle me if it pleases you, berate my guardianship-for you do so justly, and I am ashamed and will answer to the king for it-but spare us all unguarded words that can yet cost you your head!”
She rose to face him, nose to nose, and hissed, “I’m trying to keep you from going too far, idiot! Speak no more treason!”
Maniol sneered, his angry breath hot on her face. “Or you’ll-what?”
“Or I’ll tear off your codpiece with all that’s in it, and jam it into your yapping mouth,” Tessaril told him, letting him see the utter lack of fear in her eyes, “before breaking all of your fingers, dressing you in women’s weeds, and sending you back home to your wife tied to a succession of peddlers’ mules, with a banner knotted to you that tells the world: ‘This fool spoke treason in the hearing of Tessaril Winter.’ ”
She shrugged. “Or I could just let slip my leash on yon highknights and let them cut out your tongue, flog you from here clear across the realm to your keep, and behead you there before all your household, as the good old law still holds that nobles deemed traitors be treated.”
His eyes burned into hers. He was breathing heavily, eyes bright with rage and desperation: the dawning fear that he had said too much and would soon face such fates.
“Or I could regard you as an angry father, driven to imprudent speech by love and care for his daughter, who has served the realm well for years, and just needs rest, a good feast, and time to find some calm,” Tessaril added. “So as to consider what we can best do for Lady Narantha Crownsilver. Wherever she may be.”
Maniol Crownsilver’s gusty sigh became a growl, his eyes glittering. “It’s those cursed Swords, blast and hrast them!” he burst out.
Tessaril shook her head. “No. We’re keeping them under quite close watch.”
“ ‘We’?”
Tessaril pointed, and Lord Crownsilver swung around. No less a war wizard than Laspeera Naerinth stood behind him, in a corner he was certain had been empty a few moments before. She gave him an expressionless nod-over the two wands in her hands that were aimed right at him.
“We,” Tessaril repeated. “Both of us were concerned that Lord Maniol Crownsilver, so valuable and respected a lord of the realm, might in a moment of raging do something foolish, like speak treason or attack a king’s lord.”
Maniol felt her hand-cool and smooth-clasp his. He turned back to her, tugging free of her grasp. She was standing just as close to him as before, their chests almost touching.
“Hear me now, Lord Crownsilver,” Tessaril said. “Narantha’s not with those adventurers-for which you should be very thankful-and they’ve made no attempt to contact her or come here.”
“ I’ll contact them! Where are they?”
“No, Lord Crownsilver,” Tessaril told him, “you’ll not. You’ll take your house blades — all of them, leaving not a one behind ‘by mistake’-and turn around and go home. If your daughter’s not found by highsun on the morrow, the war wizards will start searching for her, all across the realm. I’ll not have armed bands roving Eveningstar, looking for trouble.”
“I’ll not be looking for trouble,” Maniol Crownsilver snarled, “I’ll be looking for adventurers!”
She gave him a bright smile. “Oh? Are they not the same thing?”
His eyes changed, and his dark face of fury slipped. It twisted momentarily into a grudging grin, ere he whirled, spitting oaths, and stormed out.
Chapter 17
WHISPERINGS AND PONDERINGS
There’s not a scheme that’s been schemed that won’t afford some entertainment to its conspirators, when they gather to whisper and ponder strategies and second guesses. However, when the scheme nears its end, for good or for ill-ah, that’s when the real entertainment begins.
Ortharryn Khantlow, Scribe Royal
Thirty Years Behind The Dragon Throne published in the Year of the Stag
I t was hot and airless under the trees along the sides of Starwater Gorge, after highsun on the fifth day since the Swords had first set boot in the Haunted Halls.
The morning had been spent trading many of their fast-dwindling handfuls of coins to Evenor shopkee
pers and farmers for food and lamp oil. Prayers added to such chores took Doust and Semoor longer than some of their fellows, so they were the last to arrive at the moot.
And knew it. They were sweating hard by the time they dumped their heavy packs under the broad leaves of a clump of starrach larger than some cottages in Eveningstar, and hastened through the thicket beyond.
Praise Tymora and Lathander, the path was right where they’d expected it to be, and they swiftly-if precariously-ascended the side of the gorge to the huge, lichen-speckled jutting rock they’d dubbed “the Snout.”
Islif Lurelake was standing sentinel atop it, in her homemade armor, looking as alert as ever.
Semoor squinted up at her. “Anyone watching? Following?”
She shook her head, murmuring unnecessarily, “And you’re the last.”
The two friends nodded and ducked down into a small, dark hole under the Snout. Overhead, they knew, Islif would be taking a few steps back to stand over the crack that would carry their voices up to her, so she could listen in without leaving off her scrutiny of the gorge. Those mysterious bowmen-and, folk in Eveningstar insisted, outlaws by the score, trolls beyond numbering, and modest armies of orcs and goblins, to say nothing of fell hooded wizards, wyverns, and worse beasties-were still out here, somewhere. Somewhere near.
The crawl hole opened out into a dank little bowl of a cave that had been choked with windblown leaves, old dung, and older bones when the Swords had first found it. Now it held only them, standing all crowded together around a rough table of four felled saplings lashed together like a raft, wedged across the cave, and anointed with a lit lantern.
Its flickering glow fell on no less than six crudely drawn maps of the Haunted Halls. Semoor’s faith let him buy parchment from the House of the Morning at a few copper thumbs less than the ruinous prices they charged everyone else, and he’d made good use of that favor.
“We got it all,” Pennae was reassuring the other Swords. “At least, all the green slime in that room, and there was none in the privy here or the passage here that has the ambush elbow. Its smoke cleared fast enough that we know plenty of air gets down into the western halls somewhere-probably several somewheres-from above. This must be so, because with the front doors as open as they are now, everything blows out into the gorge.”
“I care not a whit where the breezes blow,” Agannor grunted, “so long as some gold coins flow into my hands from somewhere. Soon.”
“All the tales say the Haunted Halls stretch on for room after room after passage-dozens at least, with feast halls and big chambers with pillars, too. I don’t think we’ve found a twentieth of it, yet,” Martess said firmly. “There must be some hidden ways on that we’ve missed thus far. Look you at this doubling-back hall, here: surely there’s a room in this angle that we can’t get to yet. Unless we break through the wall.”
Bey gave her a look. “You want us to start digging in there? Mining? Lass, have you ever tried to break apart stones? We’d be dead-dragon-tired in a trice, and making noise and shudderings enough to draw every monster that’s anywhere in the place! So there we’d be, choking on rock dust and knee-deep in stumble-making rubble, too weary to lift weapons-and finding ourselves facing down a slug the size of two warhorses, or something that’s all tentacles with fangs on the ends of them! Can your spells save us then? Hey?”
Martess reddened, her lips going thin.
Florin hastened to draw the converse elsewhere. “I think Martess is right about that room-there might well be one just here, too-but I don’t think we’ve come to digging, yet. After all, we have this grand way on, that has doors as tall as two of us, and two statues pointing it out to us!”
“Aye, and it also features a death trap, unless you know some way to outrun lightning!” Agannor was frowning. “Or do our spell-hurling lasses know a way to undo that magic?”
Jhessail and Martess both shook their heads.
Agannor looked at Doust and Semoor. “Holy men? Anyone?”
More heads were shaken. Agannor sighed and sat back, growling, “Well, someone had better think of some thing, or ’tis going to be a long and hungry winter for us, and off to Sembia in spring to sell our charter, split up, and look for drudge-toil under the tongues of grasping merchants, for all of us.”
Pennae sighed. “Such bright cheer you proffer, Agannor. Myself, I think there’s much treasure to be found in the Haunted Halls- if we don’t run afoul of whoever set up this guardroom, here.”
“ ’Twas empty when we came along,” Bey growled. “Why worry you?”
“The new strike-gong on the wall, and the just-as-new wire running from behind it through a hole in the north wall to we-know-not-where. I’ll wager all the gold in Sembia that wire runs to another gong, so striking one causes the other to echo. Who dwells where that other gong is? And when will they notice us? The place doesn’t feel deserted, nor yet abandoned and roamed by beasts: it feels like someone lives there.”
Agannor and Florin both nodded, and Jhessail murmured, “I have that feeling, too.”
“I begin to see,” Doust said, “why so many folk fell in yon Halls-and the rest fled to spread tales of it.”
“Agannor’s right,” Semoor said sourly. “We’d better find something worth good coin to sell soon. We two holynoses resold that peddler’s horse just now, to the next caravan through Eveningstar-”
Pennae looked up. “A caravan came through Eveningstar? And we missed it? I can scarce begin to believe-”
“Oh, all right: a merchant with five wagons, look you? Anyhail, he bought the pack-nag, and we made-hear this-all of three thumbs on the deal. That’s not going to see us through winter, unless…”
Semoor looked meaningfully at Pennae, who gave him a flat stare and the flatter reply: “This is far too small a place to steal things, Wolftooth. You expect our necks to last long if I vanish one man’s best shovel and try to sell it to his neighbor?”
Semoor nodded, shrugged, smiled, and turned his knowing look on Martess, who leaned past the lantern and said icily, “Not-so-holy-man, hear this well: I’m not going to dance in taverns or suffer the gropings of a lot of hard-breathing, gnarly handed farmers again… nor train Jhess here to do so, either!”
“ ’Tis not such a bad fate as all that,” Pennae told her map, as Semoor rolled his eyes up to regard the ceiling with an air of holy innocence.
“Semoor,” Florin said, “such suggestions are more harmful than useful-and unworthy of a man of Lathander, to my way of thinking. Where’s the bright new beginning in asking fellow Swords to fall back on shady work they’ve done before?”
“I was but trying to be helpful,” Semoor replied, with an edge to his voice none of them had heard before. “If we’re talking about coins enough to live, we should talk freely, raising all matters, yes?”
“Yes,” Bey agreed, at the same time as Martess and Jhessail both said, “No.”
A moment of uncomfortable silence followed, until Doust said, “Well, then, we’d best manage a right swift success of this getting rich, hey?”
Pennae waved her hands as if to banish all discord, then put a finger on a certain chamber drawn on the most extensive and detailed of the maps; her own. “ ’Tis my belief,” she said, “there’s another level of rooms hidden below this, here, that we’ve already scoured… probably here, beneath the undercrypt, and heading back this way…”
Semoor waved his hand. “So we go looking there next. Yes?”
He lifted his gaze to look at the lamplit faces all around. They were nodding.
Florin reached out to touch another place on the map. “And if we find no way down, let’s try here. I’ve a hunch there are more rooms this way. The rock is softer, for one thing.” More nods.
“Then let’s go,” Agannor said briskly. “Holy men, lead us out of this hole, into a brighter future.”
“Do this, and I’ll be well pleased with you,” Lorneth Crownsilver said with a smile, turning back to his eager niece with a
small, rather plain coffer in his hands. “This service to the Crown can only bring you the high regard of the king.”
“Rellond Blacksilver is expecting me?”
Her uncle nodded. “For the usual reasons.” He laid the coffer in Narantha’s hands. “Put this in your chatelaine, and let no one take it from you until you are alone with the young gallant. Put it-or what it holds-directly into his bare hands.”
Once she’d slipped the coffer into her girdle-purse, he clasped her shoulders.
Narantha had seen noble fathers hold their sons thus, when pleased and uttering orders that could only bring glory upon their houses.
“Don’t drop the coffer,” her uncle told her, “and don’t open it until you’re alone with him. Alone, mind: no trusted servants, no war wizards. Act like you want to flirt with him, and get him to send them all away.”
Narantha’s lip curled. “Dally with Rellond the Roughshod? ”
“Come, now. You’ve feigned much you did not feel, and put on many a false face, down the years; ’tis what we nobles do. Shame all bards with your subtle, artfully done hints and sidelong glances. I called Rellond a ‘gallant’ now so sneeringly because in his case it means ‘handsome, arrogant lady-chaser.’ Think of this as a first step in teaching Rellond Blacksilver a lesson he should have learned long ago.”
Narantha smiled, nodding slowly. “Put that way, Uncle, ’twill be a pleasure. In this Year of the Spur, Cormyr holds far too many nobles who are very far indeed from being truly ‘noble.’ I fear that I was very recently one of them. But now…”
She lifted her hands to clasp his, still at her shoulders, and gave them a firm squeeze. Then Narantha bowed her head to him as if she were his respectful son leaving for battle, stepped back and away, and hurried from the room.
Behind the hargaunt mask that gave him the likeness of Lorneth Crownsilver, Horaundoon of the Zhentarim smiled as he watched her go.
Afire with enthusiasm, that one. If ever she balked or disobeyed, he could of course use the mindworm within her to compel her-but right now, at least, such ruthlessnesses were very far from being necessary.
