“Oh, naed,” Florin commented with a “what next?” grin, and charged between the busily parrying Islif and Doust to thrust his sword right at the emptiness inside the helm. The silent suit of armor parried with a swift, strong ease that astonished him, as if it had been waiting for just such an attack—but Florin had never expected anything less than a skillful parry, and had his dagger out even as he made that lunge. As his blade was blocked, he half-turned to bring his dagger full to the fore, and thrust it through the open face of the helm, into darkness.
A darkness that numbed his arm and shot sparks in all directions—in the fleeting breath before the armored guardian seemed to burst, armor plates (and Florin) hurtling in all directions.
The ranger screamed as he flew, scarcely aware of Islif and Doust smashed off their feet and tumbling along with him.
The fires of the gods—or so it felt—raced through him, searing his vitals, tongue, fingertips, and very eyeballs …
And then he crashed into something that gasped, gave, and curled herself around him, so they bounced bruisingly together, armor plates clanging and striking spitting sparks all around them, to roll and tumble and roll more slowly, finally to a stop.
Florin coughed. Then he blinked, and felt reassured that he could still do both of those things. He tried to move, to rise, and found that Pennae was wrapped firmly around him, arms and legs cradling him … and that she wasn’t moving.
“Pennae?” he gasped, sudden terror rising in his throat.
“Ohhhh,” she moaned, her mouth somewhere over his right shoulder. Then she moved weakly against him. “Great hero,” she husked, “can we smite our next helmed horror in a different manner, d’you think?”
“I don’t know if I can think, right now. Is it destroyed?”
“If you don’t see armor plates flying back to draw together, yes. Which will doubtless annoy good Vangerdahast no end.”
Florin chuckled, a chortle that built helplessly into a guffaw. Lying on his back on the cold stone floor, he roared with laughter, roars that echoed until he heard Semoor say archly, from somewhere not far off, “Well, someone’s unhurt, I hear. Having a woman wrapped around you is obviously a tactic I must practice for our next fray. Islif? Jhessail?”
“Live in hope,” Islif replied. They heard a clank of armor plate on stone, then a groan, as she rolled over and—unsteadily, swaying and trying to clutch at handholds that did not exist—stood up.
Across a litter of riven armor plate and sprawled Knights, Jhessail gave her a wan smile and used the fallen bulk of a grimacing Doust as a ladder to climb, hand over hand, up to a crouch. Pennae—reluctantly, it seemed, her hands lingering on his shoulders and chin and then hips—drew back from Florin and sat up.
“Is everyone well?” Islif asked.
Semoor gave her a twisted smile. “As the immortal said to the dying man: I’ll live—and you?”
A line of blood trailed down the side of his face and dripped slowly from his chin. Doust, too, bled from somewhere, though he rolled slowly over now, to flex his arms and then twist around to look for his mace. Semoor joined Islif and Jhessail among the standing, to shake their heads and kick at deadly shards of armor plate.
“The gods must have been watching over us, truly,” Jhessail murmured, wincing at the sight of three long, swordlike fangs of riven metal. “We could all have been spitted like boar for a roast …”
The immediate growling from Semoor’s stomach was more like a roar. “You had to mention food, didn’t you?” he said. “Thanks, O most dainty of lady mages.”
“Won’t Lathander provide?” she asked innocently, spreading her hands like a preaching priest.
Semoor used his hands, then, to favor her with another sort of gesture.
Florin and Pennae joined them, reaching down to haul a grunting Doust to his feet. The priest of Tymora limped once, gingerly, then sat down again to adjust his boot, stood up to kick his foot back into its proper place, and pronounced himself fit.
“Unscathed, or nearly,” Semoor murmured, ignoring the blood adorning him. “Truly, a miracle.”
“Yes,” Jhessail agreed, and turned to Florin to say severely, “Don’t ever do that again! We might have been killed!”
He stared at her, struggled not to laugh—and then gave up and roared. One after another, the rest of the Knights joined in.
“Wha-why,” he struggled to ask Jhessail, when his mirth started to abate, “didn’t you blast it with a battlestrike or two?”
“I did,” she replied. “Just once. It sent all of the little bolts right back at me. They hurt.”
“Hurt? I’m surprised you’re still standing!”
“If I hadn’t kept my healing potion in my boot, I wouldn’t be. It’s drunk now. That’s why I demanded you not do that again.”
“Is everyone all right?” Islif asked. “Truly, I mean?”
She gave ever-quiet Doust a hard look, then challenged Florin with her eyes. Both of them nodded, and there were mumbles affirming good health from all around Islif.
“Right,” she said. “Then isn’t it about time we got back to warning and protecting our king and queen and the formidable scoundrel who happens to be both Court Wizard of Cormyr and Royal Magician of the Realm—as well as holding a lot of other lesser or at least less savory offices too?”
“Quite a speech,” Semoor replied. “Islif the courtier … hmm …”
“Semoor the battered corpse,” she responded crisply. The Anointed of Lathander hastily stepped back out of reach behind Jhessail and said brightly, “As ever, your commands are an inspiration to us all, Lady Lurelake! Lead on! If you can find us a way out of these cellars before we’re reduced to starving skeletons, I will obey you, right happily!”
“Then let’s go!” Islif ordered, as loudly and firmly as if she’d been a veteran Purple Dragon lionar, and set off at a trot. When she was clear of the debris of the helmed horror, she started to really hurry.
Pelting along in her wake with the other Knights, Semoor complained to the listening Realms, “Somehow I knew this was going to involve running. Again.”
Lord Maniol Crownsilver gasped for breath. He’d been running through the Palace for a while now, his only falterings being his encounters with guard after wary guard. The last one had insisted on trotting along with him, until they turned a corner and came upon three burly, full-armored Dragons standing in a living wall across the passage. Each was a full two heads taller than the winded lord. They stood sternly gazing at him with their arms folded across their chests, not looking as if they had any intention of ever letting any lord of the realm past them.
There was an open door in the passage wall beside one of the three guards, and out of it stepped a fourth Dragon—this one only a head taller than Crownsilver, and wearing the badge of a constal on his chest. He gave the panting lord a tight, unfriendly smile, and asked breezily, “So, my Lord Crownsilver, what engenders such haste in you, this fine day?”
“I—” Maniol Crownsilver gasped for breath, furious that he once again was unable to seem grand and commanding. He fought for air until he managed to say, “I bear a message for the Royal Magician, of utmost importance for the realm!”
“Another one?” The Purple Dragon rolled his eyes and told the passage ceiling wearily, “Big state revels certainly bring out all the madfolk to join the parade.”
“I’m serious!” Crownsilver sputtered.
“Aye, aye, of course you are. Wherefore we’re going to take you into this handy little room here, where you can drop your hose and cods and fine doublet, and—”
“What?”
“Oh, ’tis the latest fashion at Court, Haven’t you been keeping up, Lord? Aye, ’tis clothes off if you need whisper important things to Old—to Vangey. Orders of the king, of course.”
Lord Maniol Crownsilver opened his mouth to say something, then, but nothing came out. He settled for blinking, once or twice, as firm hands towed him into a chamber lit by three braziers, with a bare table in
it and half a dozen big, burly Purple Dragons who greeted him with welcoming smiles.
“The table warms up once you’re on it, mind,” a large-jawed, burly Dragon leaned over him to advise with fatherly joviality.
Lord Maniol Crownsilver shuddered, muttered, “The things I do for love of Cormyr,” and firmly shut his eyes.
“Tell me when it’s over,” he snarled at the unseen soldiers around him, through clenched teeth.
“Well,” Islif puffed, as they rounded another corner and ran on, “at least we’re seeing passages we haven’t been in before.”
“Progress,” Semoor added cheerfully. “Something every church supports!”
“Aye,” Pennae agreed, “but they mean a little farther down the road to getting their own way in everything!”
Semoor grinned. “But of course! Isn’t that what the word means?”
“There may come a time when we’ll have the leisure to sit down and discuss such matters,” Pennae replied. “I may even have learned patience enough to discuss them with you, by then. However—”
“However,” Florin said firmly, “we’re passing lots of closed doors, and I’m starting to hear folk talking behind some of them; should we open any, and look? We seem to be just running along bli—”
A door promptly opened, ahead of the running Knights, and a bearded Highknight in leathers peered out, gave the onrushing adventurers a startled look that fell into a glare, and shouted loudly, “ ’Ware! Thieves!”
Doors banged open, up and down the passage. Purple Dragons stepped through them, both before and behind the Knights of Myth Drannor, who came to a swift halt.
In the sudden silence after their boots were stilled, there was a loud hiss as many swords were drawn.
Crownsilver kept his eyes closed as he was disarmed, stripped, and searched most thoroughly. At length, they helped him to dress again, asking him questions throughout, their voices becoming steadily more respectful.
In the end, the constal said gravely, “Lord Crownsilver, I shall be honored to escort you to the Royal Magician of the Realm.”
“Good,” Maniol Crownsilver said, not bothering to hide his sigh of relief. “Then let us go. I cannot help but think that urgency looms larger above us, with every passing breath.”
Soon he was marching along passages with an escort, the constal calling out to guards they approached as to the whereabouts of Vangerdahast.
The lionar of the sixth such guardpost frowned and said, “He passed this way not long ago. By now, he’s personally attending the Silverymoon reception, in Anglond’s Great Hall.”
The constal nodded, turned and opened a particular door, and started to run.
“Stop!” Florin said sternly to the Purple Dragons who were forming a ring around the Knights. “We’ve no desire to spill blood here! We but seek the Dragondown Chambers!”
It seemed he’d said the wrong thing.
The ring of Purple Dragons around the Knights widened as every guard stepped hastily back, their swords rising to readiness.
The ornrions among them and the lone Highknight slapped fingers over rings they were wearing, and hissed into those rings, “War wizard aid! War wizard aid! Armory Shadowpassage! Armory Shadowpassage!”
The two wizards standing in the Longstride Hall were just beginning to hope that their shift might somehow go off without a hitch, as day headed into evening, when the pendants they both wore under their splendid uniforms suddenly murmured, “War wizard aid! War wizard aid! Armory Shadowpassage! Armory Shadowpassage!”
“Oh, tluin,” Tathanter told the world feelingly, as that chanted summons continued. “What now?”
Malvert had already snatched a wand out of its chased silver scabbard on his leg; Tathanter hastily drew his too.
Dodging among curious guests, they ran to a particular panel in a tapestry-hung back corner of the hall, hastily clawed it open, and plunged through it.
“My,” a bright young shopkeeper’s wife, spectacular in a sheath of shimmerweave that covered her from throat to ankles—except where cutouts left both of her rounded hips bare—remarked to her husband, “it’s just like in the tales—wizards running everywhere, doing urgent, secret things! Isn’t it exciting?”
Her husband scowled. “No. Unless you change ‘exciting’ to ‘frightening.’ Then I’d agree with you.”
“ ‘Frightening’? But surely not for you! You did your years in the Dragons!”
He nodded and replied curtly, “That’s why.”
Lord Maniol Crownsilver was staggering and gasping for breath by the time they reached Anglond’s Great Hall. Sweating and nigh-incoherent when he tried to speak, he clutched at a handy servant—who fought successfully to stand both still and expressionless—for support as the guards who’d escorted him laid hands on the magnificent door looming up over them, and hauled it wide open.
Crownsilver hastened inside, wiping persistent sweat from his brow, and stared around. He’d forgotten just how hrasted huge the hall was. It was heavily thronged with guests who were busy staring in all directions and marveling at the size and splendor of the hall and of each other.
Maniol Crownsilver took a few steps this way, and a few more that way, and then stopped, baffled.
He thought of Vangerdahast as a great looming figure, dark-robed and terrible, dominant at Court even when Azoun was on his throne. Yet it seemed that only in his mind was the Royal Magician of the Realms truly tall. Here, especially with all the thick-soled boots and high spiked heels being worn by guests desiring to make an impression, there were many folk who were taller than Royal Magician Vangerdahast. Many, many folk, some so tightly clustered together that movement among them was a matter of many bumped elbows and apologies.
In short, Vangey could be anywhere. And Anglond’s Great Hall was big enough to hold a lot of anywheres.
Lord Crownsilver sighed and threw his head back to gaze slowly around at the heights of the long, rounded, high-ceilinged chamber. Not so much at that magnificent painted ceiling, with its gilded, relief-carved dragons, but at the tiers and tiers of balconies below it, that circled the hall in unbroken rings, four high.
Aye, a lot of anywheres. Crownsilver shrugged, let his gaze drift down again to the floor of the hall where he was standing, and starting hunting Vangerdahast.
“The wizards are coming,” the Highknight announced, his voice startlingly loud in the tense silence that had fallen over the passage. “Maintain the ring of swords. Draw it closer. Two paces, no more.”
Slowly and with care, the Purple Dragons closed in around the Knights, swords raised.
“Keep to the ring, even if they start hurling spells?” an ornrion asked.
The Highknight shrugged. “Kill them all if we must. The war wizards can always question their corpses.”
Chapter 28
TO MAKE WELCOME FAIR SILVERYMOON
Unbar and throw open your gate, burn off its bright rune
For the time is now come to make welcome fair Silverymoon.
Orammus “the Black Bard” of Waterdeep
from Alustriel Comes Calling
a ballad contained in Old Or’s Black Book
published in the Year of the Scourge
I‘ve had about enough of this,” Jhessail snapped, and raised her hands to cast a spell.
Pennae whirled around and caught hold of her arm. “No. Try this, first. The firing-word’s on the butt.”
She snatched a wand from Yassandra’s belt and slapped it into Jhessail’s palm.
The red-haired mage looked at it, and then back up at Pennae. “Just which wizard is missing this?”
“One who’s also missing her life—not my doing—and so won’t be showing up to complain. I hope. Yet tarry a moment, before you start blasting.” She lifted her head and snapped, “Knights, a ring around us both, please.”
“Done,” Florin and Islif said in perfect unison, steering the two priests by their elbows to form as much of a ring as four people could manage.
>
“Steady,” the Highknight ordered the Purple Dragons all around them, from only a few strides away. “Continue to advance slowly and in formation. The man who charges will face my wrath.”
“And my blade,” Islif added mildly, earning herself a glare from the bearded Cormyrean.
Pennae had plucked something small from one of the pouches on Yassandra’s belt, and hefted it in her hand. Now she held it up between thumb and forefinger—and threw it, hard.
It was a small black bead, and when it struck the Highknight’s nose, there was a flash of blue light—and the passage was suddenly blocked off, blotted out by a black sphere of shimmering force that filled it, flickering wildly as it tried to expand farther than the distance between the passage floor and ceiling would allow. Purple Dragons cried out and struggled in its thrall, many of them fighting to back away—and were suddenly swallowed up in or behind the blackness, as the magic gave up trying to expand as a sphere, and flooded in both directions to seal off the passage entirely.
Pennae took Jhessail by the arm again, turned her around to face the other way, and gestured as grandly as any servant. “Now you may blast, please.”
The Purple Dragons who’d crowded in behind the Knights were relatively few, perhaps two dozen in all. They backed warily away now, frowning, into a three-rank-deep living barrier across the passage, and more than one man turned to the ornrion among them and asked, “Permission to go and fetch our shields, sir?”
Whatever the ornrion might have decided was left unsaid, as Jhessail gave the massed Dragons a sweet smile and announced clearly, “Clarrdathenta.”
The wand in her hand quivered—and then spat bright blue-white bolts of magic like four battlestrikes all being cast at once.
The magical missiles sped home, just as she’d wanted them to, striking at every Dragon. Twice.
The Dragons reeled, and Jhessail fed them from the wand again.
Men went from staggering to falling, this time, and there were only a few weakly sliding down the walls when Florin said, “Come. Back through them, then start opening doors. Before all the gods, we are going to find those hrasted stairs up!”
Swords of Dragonfire Page 30
