Amid shouts of fear and anger, battle broke out on the stairs. Zhentilar frantically hewed fellow Zhentilar, to avoid being penned into the cellars, and Old Ghost and Horaundoon darted into one warrior after another whenever anyone shouted for calm and “down swords!” Three Zhents died before the fray boiled up into the common room and across it, chairs and tables suffering greatly.
In the midst of all the shouting, screaming, and clashings of steel on steel, Ondal Maelrin and one of his maids came dashing down the stairs from the floors above, their arms full of steel vials, and raced across the common room, dodging furiously fighting Zhentilar.
“Our potions!” Pennae hissed, from her cautious vantage point partway up the cellar stair. “That thieving boar-pizzle of an innkeeper is stealing our potions!” She sprang up the stair, drawing her sword to keep company with the dagger in her other hand. Florin frowned, flourished his own sword, and charged up the steps after her.
Pennae went around and—with the aid of a handy table and a deft leap—over the black-armored Zhentilar, but Florin found himself under attack almost immediately. He struck his attacker’s blade aside, kicked an inn chair up into the man’s face, followed it with a hard punch to the cods that drove all the breath out of the man and lifted him back to a hard seat-first arrival on an inn table, and then struck the man’s neck with a deft backslash. Then he was past, outrunning another Zhentilar to follow Pennae through a doorway on the far side of the common room into a room hung with tapestries, that held the shimmering blue fire of a magical portal.
In front of which the hastening innkeeper and maid had just come to an abrupt halt because someone was stepping through it, toward them.
Someone female, wounded, and alone, whose limp was unfamiliar to the Knights, but whose face was not.
Laspeera of the war wizards looked bleakly at Maelrin and the maid, and then past them at Florin and Pennae. Her face was as white as bone.
The coach rattled through the streets of Halfhap like a whirlwind. Its white-faced, shaking coachman whipped his galloping horses to go ever faster, despite merchants and shoppers diving and stumbling back out of the way, and the shouts and screams that soon had Purple Dragon patrols bellowing and waving at the coachman to stop.
The whip came down again, the trembling coachman now weeping in fear, as the coach smashed its way along the front of a fresh greens shop, baskets splintering and produce flying—and its burly proprietor made a furious grab for the hand-bars, to swing himself aboard.
The hard-faced man riding beside the coachman snatched a wand from his belt and coolly blasted the shopkeeper’s red face to flying shards of bloody bone. Then he served two Purple Dragons, who were clawing at the bridles of the horses, the same way.
As their bodies tumbled under the racing hooves of the horses, the hard-faced man stood up, aimed carefully, and immolated the rest of the Purple Dragon patrol, one by one—as the coach raced on, heading for the Oldcoats Inn.
Inside the speeding coach, Zhentarim were being slammed from side to side, crashing into each other bruisingly.
The eldest wizard watched one of his younger fellows bite his own tongue—the third one to do so—and shook his head wearily. He had long since hooked one arm around a wall-rack to keep himself in one place, and was repeatedly using his feet to kick those about to slam into him away. As the curses and moans around him reached deafening heights, he snarled, “Oh, get down on the floor, all of you! Why the Brotherhood tolerates dolts such as you I don’t know!”
The potion had been divided carefully between Doust and Semoor, who had both promptly gone to sleep, but gained color, looking more like living men lying on their backs and less like sprawled corpses. Jhessail had stopped frowning down at them and was now studying the glowing Dragonfire treasure and murmuring tentative incantations.
Islif watched her darkly, sword drawn, and murmured only one thing: “Just don’t set those swords to striking at us.”
Now, as Jhessail sat back with a weary sigh, shaking her head, Islif caught sight of movement on the far side of the glow, and fell into a crouch, sword drawn back to strike.
There came the sound of a lantern being unhooded, and then its light, moving slowly to where they could see it, well back out of sword-reach.
The lantern was lowered until they could see the grim face of Dauntless above it.
“Truce,” he greeted the Knights. “I come in peace.”
“Well,” Islif replied warily, lowering her sword a trifle, “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”
Laspeera took two slow steps forward—and toppled like a felled tree, falling right on her face.
The innkeeper juggled vials for a moment so as to draw his dagger, hefted it flashing in his hand to turn it for stabbing, and bent down to slay this unexpected guest.
Then Ondal Maelrin made a wet, surprised sound as Pennae’s dagger opened his throat from behind. He kept right on bending, down into his own face-first meeting with the floor.
Vials bounced and rolled as the maid threw up her hands and started to scream. Florin snatched one up and forced it into Laspeera with brutal haste, rolling her over and away from the innkeeper’s spreading blood.
Pennae backhanded the maid across the face, ending her screams but sending her running wildly and clumsily to a tapestry, and through it and a banging door beyond. As the thief-Knight started scooping up potions, Laspeera started to cough and shudder under Florin’s hands—and the pulsing blue portal flared brightly as more men in leathers, with swords and daggers in their hands, stepped through it.
“Gods, guts, and garters,” Pennae cursed, “is there no end to them?”
Florin lowered Laspeera’s head gently to the floor and sprang to meet these new foes—who were already trotting forward with unpleasant grins on their faces and swords reaching for the Knights. Six—no, seven … eight of them.
Pennae kicked the empty potion vial under the boots of the foremost bullyblade, who started to slip and flail his arms—and weapons—wildly, almost striking the man right behind him, who arched back and away with a curse. So when Pennae sprang at them both and then ducked down to strike their ankles in a swift and hard roll, they both toppled helplessly, entangling a third bullyblade and causing him to fall too. The fourth and fifth onrushing men crashed right into their fellows, with loud and startled curses, as Florin stabbed downed men as swiftly as he knew how, slashing those trying to scramble away across the foreheads to try to blind them with their own blood.
A breath later he was forced to leave off killing to deal with the sixth and seventh bullyblades, who’d rushed around the tangle to come charging at him from either side. The ranger ran at the one on his left, using his longer reach in a vicious slash that struck the man’s parrying blade and spun him half-around—to where he tripped over a crawling Laspeera, and toppled helplessly into bouncing and rolling potion vials, as Florin launched himself back at the seventh man.
The man knew how to use his blades, and almost slew Florin thrice in the first few frantic instants of sword-strife. The ranger was only dimly aware of Pennae stabbing the eighth bullyblade in the stomach and then turning to slice open the throat of the only entangled man Florin hadn’t dealt with, who’d struggled half-upright from under the bodies of his fellows. Then Pennae hurled her dagger at Florin’s foe. It struck the man’s neck hilt-first and bounced away without doing damage, but startled the man into an awkward sidestep. He turned his ankle, staggered—and ended that stagger staring and spitting blood, impaled on the point of Florin’s sword.
Laspeera finished downing her second potion. Wiping her mouth, she looked up at the two Knights and murmured, “The queen chose well. You Knights are capable indeed. In a sword-brawl, at least.”
The portal flared again, and Pennae groaned, “Oh, no!”
Laspeera lifted her hands to cast a spell—and then let them fall again as more men came crowding through the portal. More bullyblades—foes beyond counting!
La
speera hastily started snatching up potions, and Florin sprang to join her.
“To the cellars!” he gasped, waving at the common room. “Stairs down—behind desk!”
Laspeera nodded and sprang up, moving as if completely healed and re-invigorated. She proved able to run almost as swiftly as Pennae, and so was in the lead as the three burst back out into the Oldcoats common room, with bullyblades hard on their heels, shouting for their blood and waving swords and daggers galore.
Wisps of smoke sped to meet those bullyblades, and two in the lead suddenly spun around and stabbed those just behind them. Amid screams and startled shouts, the running men stumbled over the falling bodies and crashed to the floor.
The few black-armored Zhentilar still alive in the common room turned to gape at these new foes and then moved grimly to engage them—as Laspeera and the Knights plunged down the cellar stairs.
Bullyblades roared defiance and sprang to meet the Zhentilar, who sneered and hacked at them, in a great crashing and clanging of war-steel.
A clangor that was echoed by a larger, louder crash that made the combatants blink and turn in suddenly bright, flooding daylight.
The front doors of the inn had just been blasted off their hinges and were tumbling across the room, shattering tables and then running bullyblades alike.
Outside, the astonished Zhentilar could see a wrecked coach on its side, with wheels still spinning and struggling horses shrieking.
Striding past it and up the inn steps into the room, through the huge hole where the doors had been, were nine Zhentarim mages. They were smiling cruelly, their hands already shaping spells.
Chapter 15
SARHTHOR’S MIGHTIEST SPELL
No mage should hesitate to use the right spell
No matter if it slay or diminisheth him.
Neither did Sarhthor, on that day
When wizards converged on Halfhap,
And a realm needed saving.
Baraskul of Saerloon
One Sage’s History
published in the Year of the Tankard
The glow of the scrying crystal cast pale shadows around the dark room, and across Ghoruld Applethorn’s watching face.
A face that was slowly acquiring a look of profound disgust.
“Just kill Laspeera,” he murmured. “Is it really all that difficult?”
“These thicknecks serve a few scheming Cormyrean nobles,” the oldest Zhentarim wizard sneered, his left hand raised so as to keep all nine mages safe from hurled weapons behind his greatshield. He waved contemptuously at the bullyblades with his other hand. “Eliminate them.”
He watched castings unfold around him, and at the right moment dropped his shielding. Spells lashed out from all eight of his fellow mages, howling across the common room in a bright, fell flood to rend men limb from limb, melt their flesh away from their spasming bones, hurl them into tables and pillars with shattering force, and cause their brains to explode bloodily out of their heads.
A few rushed desperately back toward the portal, only to stiffen and fall as they were struck by more than a dozen pursuing bright bolts each. A handful ran the other way and made it down the cellar stairs before they could be slain.
Up out of the foremost of those, arcing back up into the common room as two large, bright streamers of eerily glowing smoke, came Old Ghost and Horaundoon.
“What by the Nine Hells—?” one Zhentarim cursed, the rings on his fingers winking into life as he called up hasty wardings.
“Stop those—” the oldest wizard snapped, but that was as far as he got ere Old Ghost plunged into his chest and Horaundoon slid into the ear of the Zhent mage beside him.
Both men stiffened, rearing back—and then spun around and hurled the swiftest slaying spells they had at their fellow wizards.
Ghoruld leaned forward to peer intently into the crystal, anger and alarm flaring into warfare with each other across his face. “There it is again! What’s happening? Someone’s controlling those fools, yes, but who? And how?”
Hanging lanterns danced and swung wildly in their chains, and chairs and tables tumbled in slow circles in midair as spells lanced and sizzled, stabbing and flickering across the common room of the Oldcoats Inn.
Zhentarim wizards hurled spells not in power-duels or wary attempts to cow foes with a minimum of destructive Art. Rather, they struck to slay. Two of them did so uncaring of their own safety.
Wherefore Harlammus of Zhentil Keep, heart-high with the excitement of his first real Brotherhood foray, found himself lying dazed and blinking against a wall, with the splintered ruins of the table he’d just been hurled through on top of him, and a welter of broken legs and riven wood that had been its chairs tangled on top of that.
Trapped, barely able to breathe, and just beginning to be aware, through crawling numbness, of agonizing pains in his legs and gut, Harlammus frantically cast the new spell Eirhaun had taught him, the one that would alert his teacher that something had gone badly wrong in Halfhap, and the Zhentarim he’d sent there needed aid. Urgently.
“Master,” he mumbled, when the spell was done, eyes refusing to focus on the splintered table leg standing up out of the bloody ruin of his gut, that rose and fell with his every gasp amid bloody bubblings, “Come swiftly, or …”
Then numbness claimed him. He never finished that thought, as he sank slowly into a nightmare world of racing wraiths and Zhentarim wizards turning on their fellows, of sinister cowled figures turning suddenly to grin at him with cold, ruthlessly gleeful faces out of nightmare, of beholders floating in the distance watching over everything and laughing … always laughing.…
The chamber was dark. It was always dark, save for temporary radiances of awakened magic. Magic was awake there now, a robed wizard lounging back in his chair studying spells in a tome.
Glowing runes floated in the air above the open pages of that book, runes that turned slowly and changed hue as he stared at them and murmured, seeking to understand them and shift them to his will. Their power aroused little crackling radiances, that danced and played along the edges of other tomes stacked nearby.
Sarhthor of the Zhentarim slowly rose from his lounging, leaning forward more and more intently as he started to understand this magic at last. Three seasons he’d struggled to master it, understanding four constructions of the Weave at once so they could be shifted and fitted together in combination—thus—and—
There came a chiming behind him that broke his unfolding glee and collapsed the spell in bright chaos above its pages. Sarhthor murmured a curse—just which one, he never knew—and leaned forward again, fighting to regain that fourfold understanding, that visualization that was just so, with every—
The chiming came again, shattering all and leaving Sarhthor blinking at the stack of tomes as the one he’d been perusing started to sink down, its floating runes fading. He cursed again, loudly and fervently, and spun his chair around to see what neglected duty of the absent Eirhaun had disturbed him now.
The teacher-wizard’s desk bore a row of crystal balls, each resting on its own black cushion.
Except for one, that had winked into life and risen off its cushion, glowing and pulsing as it spun slowly. As he beheld it, it chimed again.
Sarhthor glared at it. Then his eyes narrowed and he rose suddenly up out of his chair like a storm wind to snatch up his untidy belt of wands. Buckling it briskly around his waist, he strode across the room to firmly shove the errant crystal back down into place—it chimed again, and then went dark—turn, and wink out, leaving the room entirely empty of wizards.
Thus abandoned, the books all went to sleep again.
The floor of the cavern glowed with runes Eirhaun would never have been able to conceive of. He stared at them hungrily as the beholders—tiny monsters, none of them larger than his own head—rose from crafting them to hang in the air and gabble and hiss among themselves, glaring at him from time to time.
He knew how contemptuously the eye tyrants
regarded humans in the Brotherhood—all humans, probably even Lord Manshoon himself. These “little manyeyes” were doubtless little different than dogs. The small, yapping sort were always the most aggressive. And the most insecure.
Yet Eirhaun hurried not at all. He’d been invited to work this magic with them so that he could learn, and he had no intention of their rushing things to a conclusion so they could later dismiss him as “deficient of wits” when he couldn’t work this spell himself under their coldly sneering scrutiny.
Ah, so that was how such power was leashed, and then twisted to achieve this rather than that. He nodded, trying to sear the runes into his memory, seeking that mental stillness inside himself wherein he could be certain of remembering all, and—
A chiming sounded within his head, startling him out of all concentration. No! Not now! Not when he was so close to—
The chiming rang again, loud and cheerful and insistent. Eirhaun clenched his teeth and growled out wordless anger, trying once more to frame the spell.
Abruptly he became aware that a beholder was hanging in the air right in front of him, glaring at him with its central body-eye. “Go,” it hissed coldly at him. “You are summoned. Shirk not your tasks: Go.”
Eirhaun opened his mouth to protest that another Zhentarim had been left on duty to respond to such a summons—and another chiming sound rolled out of it, loud and bright.
All twelve of the human-head-sized beholders were staring at him now. “Go,” they hissed in unison. “If you are loyal to the Brotherhood, go.”
Eirhaun sighed, nodded, and murmured the word that would whisk him away.
Lord Eldroon set down his goblet. “Something’s awry,” he said firmly. “They were to report right back. We’ve been waiting now far too long.”
Lord Yellander glared across the table. “You think I’ve not noticed? What’s taking those dolts?”
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