“Oh? And how many sneak-thieves have you seen, First Sword Norlen, to suddenly become so expert, hey?”
“Well,” came the prompt reply, “there was ‘Longfingers’ Draeran, and the two sisters—Vaelra and whatever-the-gods-called-her—and Lethran Armantle, and Dharkfox, and Balantros of Westgate, and that young lad with the mask who called himself the Hand of Justice, and—”
“All right, Norlen!”
“—Zarmos of Essembra, and that Sembian with the missing fingers; Glathos? Klathos? Mrathos?”
“It was Drethlen Dlathos,” Telsword Grathus said helpfully.
“Ah, thank you; it just wouldn’t come to mind. Then there was Amglur the Amnian, Duke Hawkler who was no duke at all, and—”
“Enough, Norlen!”
“I—uh, sorry, sir. I … sorry.”
“Forget it. We’ve got this one here, remember?”
“Forgive me, lionar,” Grathus said quickly, “but we don’t know she’s a thief yet, do we?”
“Grathus,” the lionar growled, “when I want your cracked copper’s worth, I’ll ask for it, and I haven’t asked for it now!”
“He is, however, correct,” the cold voice snapped. “Now put the gown on her, and get up out of that chair; I’ll handle this.”
“But—”
“Of the two of us, which is the lionar, and which the ornrion?”
“Yes, Ornrion Synond,” the deep-voiced lionar said wearily, and the chair creaked again.
Rough hands lifted Pennae up to a half-sitting position. She played dead as best she could, head lolling and arms trailing limply, as the thin cloth was dragged over her face, bunching up around her shoulders, and then tugged down her body.
“Oh,” First Sword Norlen said suddenly, in the midst of this process, “how could I have forgotten the one you chased down, lionar? Transtra Longtresses, remember? She was a looker, now—”
“Norlen,” the lionar snarled, “shut up.”
“Save the rest, thank you. Well done, First Sword. If I should need someone to talk this prisoner to death, I’ll know who to call upon.”
Telsword Grathus snickered, and the ornrion let that brief mirth die into silence before adding icily, “And if I should need someone to amuse her by playing the fool, I can lay hands on just the man for that, too.”
Wisely, Grathus kept silent.
“Now, lass,” the ornrion’s voice said, close by her ear, “I’m sure you’re awake after all that. Probably smiling inwardly at the thought of what prize idiots we all are too. I am Ornrion Delk Synond of the Purple Dragons, and I have the full authority to set you free, jail you for the rest of your life, butcher you here and now, or just cut little pieces off you and feed them, one by one, to the nearest hungry hogs—as you lie chained in their mud-wallow. Which I choose will depend upon your cooperation. Now, you can begin by opening your eyes, giving me a polite smile, and telling me your full name. Then spell it, please, so the lionar here can write it down.”
Pennae opened her eyes, thrust out a hand to stab Ornrion Synond in the throat with her rigid fingers—and then sprang up, vaulting over his choking, gagging body by planting a firm hand on his shoulder.
The door was open, all the Dragons were shouting, Grathus was backing away from her in fear and Norlen in frankly smiling admiration—and a pedestal table stood just ahead to her right, with the belt she’d taken from Yassandra displayed atop it.
She landed, ducked her hips aside to elude the lionar’s halfhearted grab, snatched the belt, and whirled to menace them with the wand.
“Want to die, Dragons?” she hissed.
Ornrion Synond was struggling to try to breathe and shout something.
“See to him, Lionar,” she ordered. “I think he may need his teeth knocked down his throat.”
That earned Pennae startled blinks giving way to the beginnings of grins, around the room, and she added, “First Sword Norlen, we didn’t hear all of the sneak-thieves you remember. Oblige us, please.”
“Sorry, las—er, Lady! I—uh—well—uh—”
The lionar suddenly charged at her, so Pennae shoved the pedestal table under his shins and sidestepped to let him greet the wall face-first.
Then she plucked one of her little sand-bombs from her own belt pouches and hurled it in the telsword’s face, its leaf-wrapping bursting satisfyingly. Grathus staggered blindly back from the door—and with Yassandra’s belt flapping in her hand, Pennae plunged out into the passage, running hard.
Florin ducked low and sprinted along the step, leaning to snatch up the glowstone and Pennae’s jack.
The crossbow cracked, its quarrel shattering the glowstone into brightly cartwheeling shards, and Florin, staggering back a step with his fingers bleeding, heard the lionar curse and snap at the last Dragon, “Don’t stand gawping! Get the other bow!”
Florin turned and dashed down the steps, as fast as he could. Behind him he heard an alarm gong sound, the lionar curse again, and then the high-pitched whizzing creaks of a windlass being used with frantic speed to recock the fired crossbow.
Florin hurled himself for the same corner he’d so enthusiastically rounded, and was in the air when the second bow fired.
Its quarrel hummed past so close that the tip of his right ear caught sudden fire.
Wincing, Florin ran on, clapping Pennae’s jack to his ear and deciding it was his turn to curse.
Pennae pelted down the passage, buckling Yassandra’s belt around her as she ran. The Dragons were shouting and pounding along after her; not quite on her heels yet, but closing fast. It’d be only a matter of time before she raced right into another guardpost, or ran out of passage.
She passed many dark, closed doors, and the crowd-din grew. She needed a door with that noise just the other side of it …
This one!
Gasping for breath, Pennae yanked down the front of her gown, letting it fall to hang around her waist, snatched open the door, and plunged into the brightly lit hubbub beyond.
The high tower room lacked windows to look out over the roofs and towers of Zhentil Keep, but hardly needed them. The glossy surface of the round table that dominated the dimly lit chamber had been worked into a great map of the lands from Tunland to the Vast, and the Moonsea to Turmish, inlaid in polished stones of many hues.
Behind that table stood a great chair, tall and dark and ornately carved. In it reclined Lord Manshoon, smiling slightly.
The Shadowsil sat beside him, in a lesser chair, arms crossed over her breast, wearing her little “I’ll rend you” smile.
Sarhthor stood facing them, naked. His body was covered with dried blood and crisscrossed with great wounds. Some of his fingers, along most of his hair, were missing. His flesh had sprouted many clusters of little tentacles, but they hung lifelessly, looking very dead.
“You are very tardy in reporting back,” Manshoon observed quietly, those great dark eyes steady upon Sarhthor, “and present a rather different appearance from your usual. So, tell me: What happened at the Oldcoats Inn?”
“Zhentarim fighting Zhentarim,” Sarhthor replied calmly. “Not the usual betrayals, Lord. Something took hold of their minds and made puppets of them, burning the brains of some to ash, and working tyranny on all, forcing them to hurl spells at each other and at our Zhentilar. Eirhaun Sooundaeril was among them, Lord, and as affected as the rest. I saw no way to protect the Brotherhood but to cast them forth from Faerûn, using the mightiest spell I know.”
“You sent them to the Abyss.”
“I did,” Sarhthor confirmed, unsurprised that Manshoon knew what his strongest—and hitherto most secret—spell was. “Eirhaun perceived it as an attack on himself, and worked a magic that dragged me along into the Abyss too. I encountered some difficulties, as my appearance should attest, in returning here.”
“Eirhaun?”
“Also returned, though much weakened, and in the care of the priests right now.”
“The others?”
“I slew
most of them myself, seeking to eliminate the controlling presences I so feared.”
“And did you?”
Sarhthor shrugged. “I believe so—and know I have returned untainted.”
Manshoon raised an eyebrow. “And if I believe you not? And slay you now, in order to … protect the Brotherhood?”
“Do it, Lord, if you deem it needful,” Sarhthor answered, a little wearily. “I cannot resist you, and desire never to defy you. I have served the Brotherhood well.”
“What? No desperate flight? No plea for your life?”
“Lord, I never learned to beg. And if I go to my knees now, I fear I will fall on my face and never rise again.”
“I believe you,” Manshoon said quietly. “You may go, and see what the priests can do for you.”
“Thank you, Lord,” Sarhthor whispered. He bowed his head, turned to depart—and collapsed on his face.
“Symgharyl,” Manshoon murmured, “use your magic to convey him, with all the haste that gentle handling allows, to healing. I would rather not lose him.”
The Shadowsil crooked an eyebrow. “And may I … reward him?”
“Suitably? By all means. I want to know every last little thing in his mind.”
“Yes. He said nothing at all about the swords of Dragonfire.”
“Indeed. As it happens, I have that matter in hand. Yet it will be interesting to know his desires regarding them.”
“You soon shall. So, what shall we do about what unfolds in Cormyr?”
Manshoon smiled, waved a hand—and above many places on the tabletop, sudden blue lights in the air announced the arrival from otherwhere of as many floating, glowing scrying spheres. “We watch—only that—and enjoy the entertainment, as mayhem unfolds at the revel in the Palace of the Purple Dragon, and war wizard slaughters war wizard. I expect much armed dispute, and many frantic runnings-about.”
The Shadowsil smiled her catlike smile, and went out.
Manshoon stared silently after her lithe swayings, until the tapestry of many magics swirled closed behind her. Only then did he add calmly, “And while you pleasure loyal Sarhthor, I’ll ride your mind and know all you learn from him. Just as I know all of your little treacheries. And the punishments they deserve, that you enjoy so much. Such a twisted little mind.”
He shivered, just for a moment, and added in a whisper, “ ‘Tis why I love you so.”
Chapter 26
WHO RISES AGAINST THEM?
The last Dragon dead, the campfire gone out,
Hungry goblins down from mountains do pour.
Who rises against them, to make ghostly rout?
It’s the host of the fallen, again riding to war.
Tarandar Tendagger, Bard
from the ballad
Bleed For Cormyr
published in the Year of the Howling
They were crowded elbow to elbow in Baerauble’s Back Bower—which despite its name, was a lofty-vaulted chamber of state whose soaring dark-paneled walls were crowded with old pikes, outthrust banners, and painted portraits of hunting and warring kings taller than most commoners’ cottages. Hot, no longer desperately hungry or thirsty, for deft legions of platter-bearing servants had seen to that, they were not yet revelers, and increasingly unhappy about it.
“Well, I’ve heard that Anglond’s Great Hall is clear across the Palace from here,” a glass merchant brayed. “When are they going to let us in, I want to know?”
“And if they say there’s too many of us,” a sea captain splendid in swashbuckling green shimmerwave grunted, “and turn us away without so much as a look at the Silvaeren, who rises against them, hey? Will you be with me, then?”
The well-dressed horse-trader tossed her glossy fall of hair and snorted, “Outlanders! This always happens with outlanders! They take so long to bathe and dress, I doubt we’ll be in there before nightfall!”
“I care not, so long as they keep these cheeses coming. And the cakes too! Huh; almost makes up for this cellar-swill they’re serving us! Do they think shopkeepers of Suzail know nothing about wine?”
Some guests had discovered the sculpted delights of Blackhakret’s Chamber, next door, and accordingly a little space opened up on the Bower’s magnificent carpet, allowing guests to mill about.
That milling happened to bring a young and excitedly breathless jeweler’s model—spectacular in a night blue gown that both supported and displayed the two magnificent reasons old Raskro the Jeweler employed her to display his best pectorals—face to face with a grandly monacled and bewhiskered man whose sash of intricately scrolled badges, each denoting a hamlet or farm annually taxed for a thousand golden lions or more, proclaimed him some sort of noble.
“Well met, Lord!” she said with shining eyes.
“Well met, lass,” the grand personage replied kindly. “Enjoying the evening, thus far?”
“Oh, yes! I’ve met so many exciting people, and learned so much about the kingdom! Folk are so interesting, so knowledgeable!”
“Folk here? In this room? Child, if this is what passes for informed converse, the realm totters,” the crusty old noble growled, glaring momentarily at a merchant in a fur-trimmed greatcloak before turning his fond smile once more upon the shop-lass. “What I hear around me, to my great chagrin, is but an admixture of floridly vapid discourse, mere furbelows—or, dare I jest, ‘fur-bellows,’ ah ha ha—uttered by fools so charmed by the unaccustomed sound of their own wits working that they—”
The deafening chatter all around them fell into a hush in an instant, the old lord among the silenced, as a young woman in a bloodied gown burst into the room, running like a hurrying wind across its carpet with Purple Dragons in hot pursuit.
Her gown was down around her waist, leaving her bare above; she wore no dethma. As she ran she cried, “Take your hands off me, you beasts! I don’t care how heroic you’ve been, battling for the realm! Nor how magnificent and rampant Purple Dragons are, either! Nothing gives you the right to—”
All over the room, nobles flung down goblets and started striding forward, growling.
The shop-lass stared open-mouthed as the man she’d been speaking with stepped right into the path of the foremost Purple Dragons.
And drew his ornamented sword.
“I am Lord Cormelryn,” he announced, in a deep roar that rang off the vaulting overhead, “and for fifty-two summers I rode with the Purple Dragons. No man under my command would ever treat a lady so—or even a lass who is decidely not a lady. Stand and explain yourselves!”
The soldiers skidded to a stop to avoid being spitted on that needlelike blade, and sought to duck around its wielder, for their hard-breathing quarry was clear across the room by now and fast on her way to disappearing.
Only to find their way barred by a taller, thinner, and slightly younger, but just as furious noble, who snapped, “Lord Rustryn Staglance am I, Dragons, and I stand champion for the fair damsel. You would despoil her before our very eyes, sirrahs? What have Purple Dragons come to, these days?”
Then half a dozen nobles were coldly barring the Dragons’ way and disputing passage with them. At the far wall of the chamber, Pennae put her hand on the pull-ring of the door she most liked the look of; narrow and unmarked, it probably gave onto a servants’ passage. The wrinkled old noble who’d been leaning against it to give his arms a rest from taking all his weight on two canes gave her a grin and shuffled aside, winking.
Pennae winked back, paused for a moment with hand on hip to give him a good look—and slipped through the door.
Good, she’d judged a-right, and was back in passages that might just lead her closer to the royal family or Vangerdahast.
She pulled her gown back up into place—it looked a ruin, and no wonder, but there was no helping it now—and then started to hurry.
On an impulse, she tapped the little inlaid eye in Yassandra’s belt buckle, and whistled softly in appreciation when it shed a glow in front of her, like a glowstone. She tapped it again, a
nd the glow went away.
By the noise, grand chambers of state full of guests were all around her, now. The center of this floor of the Palace should be this way, and surely she should soon find stairs up, to take her closer to the royal apartments, or at least meet with someone she might be able to trust. Perhaps this way, where the doors were most numerous.
She rounded a corner and found herself looking into a decidedly wolfish smile.
It was adorning the face she’d seen in Arabel, of the man talking treason, the man who had the “crystals trap.” The man who now stood barring her way with arms folded across his confident chest.
“Who are you?” she asked, in the manner of a dazzled young lass.
“I am War Wizard Ghoruld Applethorn,” he replied politely. “And you?”
“They call me Pennae.”
“Well met,” he said pleasantly, “you little scampering bitch. Prepare—as they say—to die.”
Pennae rolled her eyes. “I always am,” she told him, snatching open a door and plunging into another ballroom full of guests. “Can you say the same?”
“I am getting so sick of these endless passages,” Islif muttered. “How big is this Palace, hey?”
“I heard some of the servants talking,” Semoor offered, “and they said these cellars run for miles—out under the gardens, and in that direction under the courtyard, to link up with the cellars of the Royal Court across the way, and then even out across the Promenade!”
“Thank you, Anointed of Lathander. Such cheery aid you render.”
“Always happy to be of assistance,” Semoor responded.
Jhessail was wrinkling her nose. “If it goes out under the city, how do they keep everyone who’s digging out a bigger cellar from accidentally or deliberately breaking into it, and then wandering around looting the Palace?”
“Guardians,” Semoor said. “Lots of them. Magic guardians; striding suits of armor with swords, statues of stone, skeletons with weapons … that sort of thing.”
“Thanks,” Doust muttered, peering around a little nervously. “You lift my spirits so, that you do.”
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