by Ed Greenwood
Giving the onrushing Swords a malevolent smile, he followed, leaving behind the blue glow.
“Tluin!” Jhessail spat. “Where does this one go?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Pennae flung back at her, racing for the whirling portal with Islif right behind her.
Its glow swallowed them both before any of the other Swords could reply.
Ornrion Barellkor blinked again, his head still swimming. Strong hands were lifting him by his armpits, helping him to sit up.
“All right, are you?” one of his swordcaptains asked.
Barellkor put a hand up to his jaw and tried to shake his head-which proved to be a mistake. His head felt like it was splitting slowly open with someone’s war axe firmly embedded in it. His chin felt even worse.
“I think my jaw is broken,” he moaned.
“Idiot,” the Lady Lord of Arabel said curtly, dragging the wincing man to his feet. “If that’s all the hurt you took, Tymora must smile on you, Barellkor. Now get out of my sight before I decide to reduce you to lionar.”
The ornrion stared at her disbelievingly. “But I-but they… they were the ones as murderered all our lads!”
“Horsedung, Barellkor, as I believe you’re fond of saying,” Myrmeen snapped. “Why don’t you step over there and try throttling yon portal-blasting war wizard, instead of a gallant young forester? Perhaps you two stoneheads will succeed in murdering each other, and I’ll be shut of the pair of you!”
Pennae was a little surprised not to be greeted by sharp steel stabbing at her the moment the blue glow faded before her.
She, and Islif, and a moment later all the rest of the Swords, were even more surprised by what they beheld in the large chamber in front of them.
On its far wall were mounted three huge, glowing and very vivid portraits of menacing, rampant monsters, all of them familiar to the Swords from bestiaries: a chuul, an ettin, and an umber hulk. To the right of them, stone steps led up to a passage stretching away elsewhere, and a coldly smiling, white-haired yet young man in black doublet, hose, and boots-looking for all the world like a minor courtier who might well be seen standing near the Dragon Throne-stood on those steps.
Floating in three green, swirling glows in midair, struggling to win free of them, were Agannor, Bey, and the man in leathers who’d followed them through the portal.
“These are yours, I presume?” the man on the steps asked the Swords. “Kindly slay them.” He pointed at the man in leathers. “Especially that one, who had the effrontery to open one of my private portals and lead, it seems, half the adventurers in Cormyr here.”
“Who are you?” Pennae asked, frowning in bewilderment. “And where’s ‘here’?”
“Ah. Well.” The man waved a hand, and the glow behind the Swords winked out; the portal was gone. “As you’ve no way of ever finding this place again, there’s no harm in your knowing that you stand in Whisper’s Crypt. I am Whisper, one of the mightiest wizards of the Zhentarim.”
“Oh, tluin, ” Jhessail said wearily. “When will all this running and fighting and killing end?”
The Zhentarim smiled at her. “When you die, of course.”
Chapter 25
THE STORM BREAKS
See these hills, lad? So peaceful they seem now-but you’d not want to be standing here when the storm breaks.
The character Oldbones the Shepherd in the first act o To Slay A Wizard, A play by Stelvor Orlkrimm published in the Year of Moonfall
Sarhthor snorted.
“Mightiest wizards” indeed. Whisper intended the intruders to swiftly wind up as food for his trapped beasts, of course, but was it really necessary to gloat like a reckless youth? Or waste the life of the best Zhent agent in Arabel?
Yes, ’twas time-well past it-to end the career of Whisper the mage. There were far more than enough reasons already, and unless Whisper did something truly surprising, he was about to hand Sarhthor a handsome opportunity.
With the thinnest of smiles, Sarhthor leaned over his scrying orb and started to cast a careful spell.
“Well?” Whisper asked the Swords. “What’re you waiting for?” He waved at the writhing, whirling webs of green radiance, or at the cursing, straining men caught in them. “I told you to kill them.”
“I-we-mislike the look of your magic,” Islif told him, pointing with her sword at the racing emerald glows. “If I stick a sword into that, what will befall me?”
“Ah. Well.” Whisper’s smile was colder this time. “You ask the wrong question, wench. Your words should be: If I fail to stick my sword into that, what will befall me?” He gestured.
The air in front of Whisper suddenly sang and shimmered. Though the Swords could still see him clearly, he now stood behind a wall of awakened magic.
“Know that I am less than pleased with you,” he announced, and calmly cast another spell. The three green glows brightened.
Agannor was pleading now, crying to the Swords for help. Bey and the Zhent in leathers were saving breath for their doomed struggles to win free of the magic that held them.
And was now drifting across the room, carrying them toward… the three paintings.
Tiny green lightning bolts crackled a greeting to the portraits, stabbing forth as each mantrapping radiance floated up to a painting… and into it.
The emerald webs melted away, and the painted monsters started moving, reaching forth hungrily for… Agannor, Bey, and the Zhent, who tumbled across the paintings as if rolling and running across a room, silently shouting in fear as they desperately swung swords and daggers.
The Swords watched them die bloodily, ravaged and battered. It took but a breath or two, as Whisper watched with his smile widening. “Eat, my guardians,” he murmured. “Eat, and be content. I promise you-”
At the sound of his voice, the three beasts turned, glared at him-and boiled forth from the paintings, emerging into the room.
Whisper’s jaw dropped, but he stammered out a swift incantation, his voice sharp with alarm.
The umber hulk, foremost of the three monsters heading for him, shook itself as his spell washed over it, and turned toward the Swords of Eveningstar.
And charged, the club-waving ettin and the chuul following it.
“Naed,” Islif whispered, hefting her sword. “We’re going to die.”
Jaw tightening, she raised her blade to launch a charge of her own-and the umber hulk stiffened, came to such an abrupt halt it tottered, and whirled around to face Whisper once more. And charged again.
Peering down at his scrying orb, Sarhthor of the Zhentarim smiled, and cast another spell.
Whisper the mage drew a wand from his belt and stood warily behind his shield, watching the monsters come for him.
As the umber hulk rushed closer, Whisper’s shield grew brighter, until it looked like a solid wall of spitting, snarling sparks. The umber hulk shuddered and slowed, as if wading on into the magic was both painful and took great effort. Whisper started to smile.
Then the shield abruptly vanished, and the umber hulk was reaching triumphantly for the horrified mage, who gaped at it in disbelief. Its claws had almost closed on his face when he scrambled back and triggered his wand.
Fire splashed over the monster, leaving it staggering and darkening. As it shuddered and slowed, the chuul opened its huge claws and rushed at Whisper from his other side.
He whirled and fed it a burst of flame, retreating quickly as the umber hulk pressed forward. The chuul shuddered but kept coming; only the ettin hung back with growls of malevolent fear.
Pennae watched the Zhent with narrowed eyes, hefting a dagger in her hand-and when Whisper turned once more to bathe the umber hulk in fire, she threw her knife hard and fast.
It flashed back firelight as it spun, and Whisper saw it and shied back. The umber hulk lunged forward, its great forearms reaching; Pennae’s dagger struck one of them and spun harmlessly away.
Whisper blasted the umber hulk again, a great burst of flame envelopi
ng the beast-but even as he aimed his wand to unleash that fire, Pennae threw a second blade.
This one struck home, slicing Whisper’s hand and sending the wand tumbling away. Which was when the chuul’s claw caught at the mage’s other shoulder, plucking him into an awkward, hopping turn.
Its other claw thrust forward, but Whisper hissed a frantic incantation and flung himself back up the steps.
In his wake, bolts of chain lightning arced and played the length of the chuul’s body. It lurched sideways, wisps of smoke curling from its joints, its claws spasming with an eerie clattering. The umber hulk shouldered it aside-but Whisper was already fleeing.
He raced for three strides before the ettin’s hurled club took his feet out from under him, and he slammed hard into the wall.
The umber hulk reached for him again, roaring-and Whisper plucked something dark and tiny from his belt and threw it down the monster’s open mouth, throwing himself to one side.
The umber hulk exploded, spraying the reeling chuul with razor-sharp shards of brown body plates that tore it open in a dozen places, and snatching the ettin off its feet with the force of the explosion.
The ettin slammed into the floor, slid along stone twisting and roaring in pain, and when it skidded to a stop, staggered to its feet again and lurched forward.
By then the Swords were past it, trotting up the stairs with their weapons ready.
Whisper was on his feet, leaning on the wall and glaring at them.
Islif ran right at him, Pennae and a pale-faced Florin not far behind. The Zhentarim raised a bleeding hand to work a spell.
Snarling, Islif flung herself at him, waving her sword wildly, hoping to ruin his casting.
She landed just out of sword-reach, and threw herself forward again, her blade slashing viciously. Whisper’s body flickered, vanished-and even as she cursed and hacked the empty air where he’d been, reappeared just a stride away.
He saw her and started to scream. Her first slash was at his mouth, to spoil any spell.
Then Pennae arrived, driving home a dagger hilt-deep under the mage’s ribs, and following it with another into his throat.
Jhessail joined in the butchering, and the wizard reeled and slumped, fountaining blood in many places, to bounce once and lie still, his blood a pool of swift-spreading crimson around him.
Islif promptly sprang back across it to greet the ettin, Doust and Semoor whirling around with curses and ready maces to stand with her.
Frantic in their fear, the Swords swarmed the foul-smelling beast, thrusting, hacking, and clubbing it from all sides. It soon toppled like a felled tree, crashing down atop Whisper.
Who, forever staring, moved not a finger.
In Maglor’s dusty back room, far away in Eveningstar, a gasping, bleeding man staggered to a bench, clung to it long enough to catch his breath, snatched a dusty cloth off Maglor’s scrying orb, and passed his hand over it.
It awakened with a soft and silent glow, warming his face even as a scene from afar spun into sharp coherence in its depths.
Still breathing raggedly, Whisper the mage watched Maglor reel as blades struck ruthlessly home. He saw the screaming apothecary die in his place-and whispered fervent thanks to Bane and Mystra both for the long-prepared spell that switched his body with that of Maglor, and the even older spell that gave Maglor the face and appearance of Whisper.
As the Swords killed the ettin in the depths of the orb, Whisper turned his back on it and stumbled away, feeling sick and afraid. It was the first time he’d been truly frightened in… yes, years.
Pale, eerie radiance flared, banishing the gloom of the cold, dark tomb, as Old Ghost reared up, his eyes blazing in fury.
“ Now you go too far,” it whispered to the silence. “Maglor was a worm, yes, but he was my worm, his life mine to spend at a time and place of my choosing. Whisper, your life is forfeit.”
The wraith stormed out of the tomb, chill fire moving with swift purpose.
The war wizard finished casting, let his hands fall to his sides, and sighed.
With a much softer sigh, a glowing doorway appeared in the empty air before him.
“That’s where they went,” he said. “Now I really must get back to the lady lord’s side. By now, she could be halfway across-”
“Hold!” Dauntless was every whit as furious as he looked. His words snapped as fiercely as crossbow. “Is it safe to pass through?”
The mage shrugged. “Anything could await on t’other side-a dozen blades ready to stab, for instance. Yet unless the one who crafted yon portal commands magic so strong that the portal-enchantments can subvert my probing spells-unlikely, but by no means impossible-the portal itself is safe to traverse, yes.”
Dauntless snapped names and orders over his shoulder, mustering particular Dragons by name to step through the waiting door, and ended rather ungraciously, “And Swordcaptain Draeth, I suppose.”
Draeth swallowed. “Uh… hadn’t we best clear this with Lady Lord Myrmeen Lhal?”
Dauntless spun around, his roar almost blasting the swordcaptain off his boots as he said “ Hang Myrmeen, and her orders, too!”
“Ho, now! I think not, Lionar Dahauntul,” a crisp voice said out of the darkness along the warehouse wall.
Dauntless peered, not seeing who’d spoken. “Who speaks? And I’m an ornrion, not a lionar.”
“Disobeying superior officers, and speaking of bringing about their deaths, are offenses that may yet earn you more than a simple demotion, Lionar Dahauntul,” the voice replied coldly.
Its owner strode forward into the lanternlight, and there were hoarse gasps and muttered oaths as the gathered Dragons recognized the king’s cousin, Baron Thomdor, Warden of the Eastern Marches.
All of the watch went to their knees, Dauntless among them, sputtering, “Pray pardon, Lord! I must confess I-”
“Save it,” Thomdor told him, “and tell me this: who went through that, and why d’you want to follow them?”
“Adventurers,” Dauntless explained. “Chartered, but well on the way to becoming wildsword nuisances. Some here are saying they set this warehouse afire-but ’tis certain they fled through this magical way, to some unknown Zhent stronghold, in the company of known Zhentarim agents who’ve murdered more than a few Dragons this night. I’ll be aft-that is, I want to pursue them with all the force I can muster, war wizards and all, and scour out the Zhents on the far end of yon portal, once and for all.”
“No,” Baron Thomdor said. “We’ll let these Swords of Eveningstar handle things. That’s what Crown adventurers’ charters are for. ”
“If he were trying to trick us,” Pennae replied, “d’you think he’d try to do it with potions he’d so cleverly hidden away?”
“Keen thought,” Doust said, taking one of the vials she was passing out.
Jhessail peered at hers. “What’s this shining-sun mark?”
“A symbol for healing,” the thief replied, watching Florin flick away the cork she’d loosened for him, and proceed to swallow the contents of his vial.
“It’s working,” he husked, holding out his hand for another.
Pennae grinned and slapped another vial into the forester’s palm. “Good. Drink deep. Whisper seems to have stored his spellbooks and suchlike somewhere else-and the prospect of stumbling through his vile traps trying to find all of his other hidden magic is not one that leaves me especially eager.”
Florin swallowed, sighed gustily, and leaned back against the wall, looking much better as pain drained from his face. He held up his no-longer-broken arm, wiggling his fingers gingerly.
The Swords were cautiously plundering Whisper’s lair of what scant riches they could find and magic they dared touch. A room away, two glowing portals waited.
Not knowing where either led had touched off a halting debate regarding what they should do next.
Penny grinned. “I walked around rather more streets in Arabel than the rest of you-”
“Yes,” Se
moor interrupted, “and bedchambers, shop stockrooms, and back pantries, too, I daresay!”
There was a ripple of laughter, in which Pennae joined, ere she gave him a rude gesture and continued, “-and saw the same royal proclamation posted in five places: a screed promising the title of ‘Baron of the Stonelands,’ with a fortune and an army to go with it, to anyone who builds a castle in the Stonelands and holds it for two straight years, cleansing it of a certain count of brigands and beasts-the beasts’ heads to be proofs of this.”
Islif snorted. “Godhood, too?”
Everyone laughed.
“ Next month, hey?” Semoor commented. “After we’re whole and hearty again, and the priests back at the House of the Morning have granted me my god-name and told me what a great champion of the faith I am.”
Giving Semoor a hard look, Pennae waved at the single small coffer of Whisper’s coins they’d found. “And just how much coin out of this are you going to have to give them to get them to do that?”
More laughter ensued; mirth that was punctuated by Doust’s loud throat-clearing reminder that other gods needed to be properly thanked, too.
“Sark them all,” Whisper hissed, searching through paltry magics cached here so long ago that he’d half-forgotten what they were. “In fact, tluin all hrasted adventurers!”
What would he need to blast those darkblades? They’d butchered his three guardians, and Maglor too, and were doubtless plundering his magics right now. At least his hacked hand was whole once more, though it had taken two potions. Motherless bastards.
“May Mystra wither them and Bane maim them,” he snarled, rummaging and peering. These were all baubles and battle-useless things-he needed the means to blast, melt, and humble!
Lost in his fury, Whisper never noticed the pale glow blossoming behind him, or gliding forward to plunge silently into him.
