Swords of Dragonfire

The blast plucked up Florin Falconhand in mid-dive and hurled him over the stableyard and the grand wall beyond. He tumbled helplessly through an endless instant of whistling wind-to a bouncing, bruisingly hard landing on the roof of the Delzuld gatehouse.

Skidding to a halt, he rolled over, fighting for breath. It was not a place he recognized, but seemed much safer than the stable roof and its plentiful supply of murderous swordsmen. He came weaving to his feet, still a little dazed and winded-only to stare down into the terrified, wide-eyed face of a young girl clawing her way up the gate with an alley skulker just below her.

She took his proffered hand, and Florin hauled her bodily up onto the roof, out of the way, and drew his dagger. His sword was deep in a Zhent’s gut, back on the stable roof-if there was a roof anymore.

As Florin brought his dagger up, her would-be slayer was already up the gate and-smashing the ranger off his feet, driving Florin down hard on his backside. As they skidded back along the roof, a needle-sharp dagger stabbed like an icicle into Florin’s shoulder.

He grunted in startled pain. The slayer clawed his way over Florin reaching his dagger for the girl’s throat, but she struck his blade aside with a knife of her own. Florin’s stabbed arm was useless, but he twisted under the man and slammed his other hand into the man’s throat. The slayer stiffened. Florin closed his fingers around that throat and squeezed, as hard as he could.

The deadly dagger came at him again, and Florin rolled desperately away, taking them both across the roof as the slayer’s knife waved wildly, the strangling man fighting for balance.

The knife swept down, and Florin shoved hard, flinging the man into a last roll over and then half-under him. The slayer ran out of rooftop, ending up scrabbling right on the edge, still clutching Florin.

Florin pulled his feet up to his chest and kicked out, thrusting the slayer upright, arms windmilling, and away.

The man’s foot came down awkwardly on the roof-edge, and he fell over backward, toppling right onto the gate-spikes, where he slumped, hanging helpless and dying, spikes thrusting up through his chest like red fangs.

Florin could see the man’s fate, illuminated in the light of lanterns bobbing nearer, below. Wincing, he rolled over, breathing hard, and made for the back of the roof, as far as he could get from the Purple Dragon patrol now stalking along the alley. His shoulder felt like his arm was dangling by shreds, about to fall off.

The lass shrank back a little as he crawled up to her, and no wonder; he must look fearsome, drenched in blood and dragging one arm, his face twisted in pain.

“Are you all right?” the ranger gasped, shifting so the shadow of his body shielded her face from the lanternlight. Behind and below, the gate rattled and Purple Dragons snapped terse words back and forth.

“I am, goodsir,” she murmured, frowning, “but you’re hurt.”

“Sorely, as they say,” Florin hissed, managing a crooked grin, “but I mustn’t be found here. I must get away somehow.”

The lass plucked a long pendant from around her neck, put it into his good hand, and whispered, “Break it with your fingers! Now!”

Florin looked at her wonderingly, and did so. A pale, tingling radiance washed over his fingers and ran up his arm, and he found himself gasping and shuddering in a rapture that washed all his pain away. He could feel his wound closing, the sliced muscles knitting together again…

When he could see again, Florin blinked, swallowed, and said, “Lady, you have my deepest thanks.” He was completely unhurt, healed as if he’d never been wounded. “Who are you?”

The lass gave him a rather superior smile-gods, she could not be more than thirteen or so! — drew herself up, and announced, “I am Alusair Nacacia Obarskyr, Princess of Cormyr.”

From behind them both came curses of amazement, and then a more startled oath as the Purple Dragon at the top of the gate lost his footing in his astonishment and fell back among, or onto, his fellows.

“Princess-Highness-I am honored,” Florin stammered, “but I must go.”

He knelt to her, on the roof, and Alusair put her hand on his, so light and swift a caress that it seemed almost as if a breeze had touched him, and said quickly, “Of course. Pray begone, and may the gods guard you.”

He gave her a smile, nodded, and thankfully raced away along the broad top of the ornate mansion wall.

Behind him, he heard a Purple Dragon gasp, “It is her, hrast all the gods! Princess, how came you to be here? ”

Florin caught hold of the top of some sort of carved stone ornament adorning the wall and turned to swing himself around and down-but paused for a moment to watch what befell the princess.

“I am unaccustomed to giving any account of myself to passing Purple Dragons,” she snapped, her voice rising in anger as she saw the soldiers hastening to encircle her.

Various Purple Dragons converged on her on the gatehouse roof, holding up their lanterns. Florin was in time to see the Princess Alusair smile triumphantly and vanish, winking out of their clutches.

The Purple Dragons swore in hearty and collective earnest.

Ghoruld Applethorn, Master of Alarphons of the Wizards of War, chuckled in glee at what was unfolding in his scrying crystal. This particular wet night in Arabel offered superb entertainment.

The crystal winked as lightning split the sky somewhere between Arabel and Suzail, and the unicorn ring on his finger winked back at it. The surging energies made the hargaunt restless; it slithered across the floor, a mottled rippling curtain with a tail and ever-shifting tentacle-arms, and started to climb Applethorn’s leg.

The battle in the stables was over, Purple Dragons converging on the place and rushing around with shouts and brandished swords. Idiots.

“Better and better,” Applethorn purred. “These Knights are going to prove so useful. How many war wizards and overambitious nobles can I manage to get them to kill before they’re out of the realm?”

He ran a toying finger over the warm, yielding skin of the hargaunt, now slithering up his thigh, and murmured, “Out of the realm for now, that is. Until I need them to deal death again.”

Stepping through the blue mists that took Laspeera at a single stride from Arabel to the Palace seemed a mere moment ago; a moment that had been spent hastening to a robing room to exchange her wet, clinging garments for dry robes, and then hurrying on, by secret ways, to the queen’s apartments, where the hurrying would end. The regular duty of guarding the queen overnight thankfully involved very little haste and tumult.

Yet no sooner had the Wizard of War Laspeera settled into this night’s attendance on Queen Filfaeril than a seldom-heard chime sounded.

Laspeera looked up, frowning sharply. The triggering of that warning-spell meant that someone had just traversed a nearby portal. Specifically “the Back Way,” a wardrobe that stood in one of the few rooms of this wing of the Palace that wasn’t heavily warded against translocation magics, and had probably been created in the days of the Royal Magician Amedahast. Kept for emergencies, it was known only to Azoun and his queen, a handful of Highknights, and a few senior war wizards. Or so she’d thought.

“Something’s wrong,” Filfaeril murmured. Laspeera pulled a wand from her belt, and a secret panel slid open with the faintest of whisperings to admit Margaster, who stepped into the room with a heavy black rod in his hand that crackled with blue glows and arcings of awakened power. Filfaeril took up a dagger and a magic orb from a sidetable. “If my Az-”

Tapestries billowed aside as Dove of the Harpers shouldered through them and strode into the room, carrying an unconscious Princess Alusair in her arms.

The queen went white, but Dove gave her a smile and said firmly, “She’s alive and unharmed. Her slumber’s due to a spell of mine.”

The slack mouth and lolling head of the princess made her look a lot worse than asleep, and Filfaeril looked less than reassured as the tall, burly woman in worn leathers stalked across the room to arrange her royal burden gently upon a cushion-strewn lounge. “Where-?” Filfaeril began.

“A hilltop near Jester’s Green,” Dove said over her shoulder, “where I happened to be meeting privately with a fellow Harper. Your daughter appeared rather abruptly between us-thanks to magic, obviously-soaked through as you see her, and seemed profanely disinclined to follow my suggestion to accompany me back here.”

Laspeera started to smile. “So you…”

“So I cast a little spell on her, which sent her off to visit her dreams for a bit, while she was still threatening both of us with her little dagger. Fee, your little one is growing teeth, and starting to use them.”

The Dragon Queen almost smiled. “Did she say where she’d been, and what she had been doing?”

“No,” Dove said calmly, “so I then used a little more magic on our sleeper here to learn what she’d been up to. I could scarce resist. How often these days do minstrels have a chance to cast spells on sleeping princesses?”

Laspeera’s smile vanished. “You dared use magic on an Obarskyr? Do we not have an agreement, between Harpers and Crown?”

“We do,” Dove said firmly, drawing herself up to give Laspeera a steady look. “Yet we Chosen agreed with Baerauble and Amedahast and Thanderahast and Jorunhast and now Vangerdahast, as to exactly what we can and can’t do regarding the Dragon Throne. An understanding quite separate from what the Harpers have agreed to. Moreover, Lasp, I’m unlikely to accept any rebuke on using magic on anyone from a war wizard. You do the same, and more, daily. Yet worry not. Before Mystra I swear that all my magic did was compel Alusair to sleep, and then peer at her most recent memories-and only her newest memories.”

She turned to the queen and added, “Learning something of her… activities, I relieved her of this ring”-Dove turned back to Laspeera, and handed her a ring that certainly hadn’t been in her fingers a moment earlier-“that this night took her to Arabel before she dropped in on us, and then I brought her home to you.”

She spun around again to face Filfaeril, and murmured, “Fee, you must promise me you won’t cage your younger daughter-or let your war wizards do so. They’ll only make matters worse if they try. Instead they’re going to have to shadow her — unseen by her-as she spreads her wings into womanhood. Ready to rush in and rescue her if needful, of course, but taking care not to rush in too soon, and in doing so rob her of making her own mistakes and darings.”

The Dragon Queen lifted her chin. “You certainly have my promise on that, Dove. Yet you speak as if you suspect otherwise. What dark things did you learn from my Alusair’s mind?”

“That she feels caged right now. She bitterly hates being shut into the Palace and hounded by ever-watchful servants and courtiers and war wizards. She hungers for adventure-so strongly that just going into a tavern alone, to eat stew and some buns, delights her as adventure.”

Laspeera sighed. “I know you’re right, Dove. I’ve been watching her. Yet eating in a tavern isn’t all she did, is it?”

“No,” Dove said, putting a comforting arm around the Dragon Queen before she added, “She went for a walk along an alley or two, and met some drunks and a Zhentarim.”

Filfaeril started to shake, silently, and Dove spun her gently around into a full embrace, folding her arms around the queen. For all her iron will and sharp tongue, Fee had never gotten over the murder of her infant son Foril, and what this particular Chosen of Mystra was going to have to say to her next certainly wasn’t going to help her do so.

“A Zhentarim,” Dove repeated softly. “Not a wizard, but a spy with a knife. The Princess Alusair came very close to being slain, as unpleasantly as possible-and knows it, thank the gods. Her life was saved by a young man known to you, the chartered adventurer Florin Falconhand.”

She felt Filfaeril stiffen, and saw Laspeera stiffen too.

“He took the knife-thrust meant for her,” she added, “on a rooftop, in the rain, though he knew not who she was until after. Or so, at least, she believes and remembers it.”

Queen Filfaeril tugged free of Dove’s embrace, and turned to look at her almost helplessly, and then at Laspeera. Tears streamed down her face as she murmured, “And I sent him away-I sent them all away. To the Nine Hells with Khelben’s schemes, and Vangerdahast’s too! Can’t we call them back?”

Far indeed from the castle in Cormyr where a queen known to the citizenry of Suzail for her icy manner sobbed helplessly, a man who was no longer a man pondered life as it now was.

Horaundoon might have lacked a body of his own, but he had all the bodies of living folk of Faerun to choose from. King or commoner, mighty-thewed bodyguard or curvaceous veiled dancer, human or snake-man or tentacled, slithering thing-he could “ride” them all.

No longer a cringing, middling mage of the Zhentarim, he could now wield the Brotherhood like a weapon, manipulating it or possessing those who gave orders within its ranks… or he could destroy it, butchering his way through those same ranks until none remained to menace the Realms.

Yet increasingly he found such struggles and schemes beneath him, or no longer mattering all that much. Being a wraithlike spirit was changing him, and the changes excited him, scared him, and thrust him ever onward into… an unknown life.

He still often plunged murderously into people, burning them out from within in the space of a few breaths as he drank their life-energies. Sometimes he did so just to lash out, dealing death as much out of furious frustration as out of his need for life-force to empower him.

Yet Horaundoon was learning to enjoy the rides, and to cherish his steeds as well as destroying them.

Just now, he was riding a hapless wealthy merchant of Amn, one Unstraburl Hordree.

Cloak swirling out behind him, Hordree was striding home through the glittering streets of Athkatla, rubbing his hands in satisfaction. His trotting bodyguards formed a grim ring all around him as he hastened along, teeth bared in a wider sharklike smile than was usual.

Horaundoon was broadening that smile with his own pleasure, having just ridden voyeur on Hordree’s lovemaking, at his secret loveden of enslaved-with-drugs mistresses.

Hordree was the third man Horaundoon had ridden for days on end without harming him all that much. He was learning.

Mastering his rage at what had been stolen from him, and learning to control humans rather than just drain them. Growing comfortable with being a wraithlike spirit, and starting to see the possibilities of his new existence.

Mindworms and stolen elven spells were behind him.

Nobles, adventurers, and royalty in Cormyr were just playthings, and he was past all that now.

No fearful, skulking retirement in hiding awaited him. No hargaunt and no fear of being hunted at Manshoon’s orders.

Why, if he went about things deftly and patiently, he could well slay all of his former rivals in the Zhentarim, by drinking their very lives. Lathalance and Sarhthor, Eirhaun Sooundaeril… and Manshoon himself.

Yes.

After all these years, if he kept well hidden-and who would be looking for “dead by his own hand” Horaundoon? — he could finally dare to strike at Manshoon.

Destroying Manshoon… now that would be true power.

“Well met, Dragon,” Dove said, as King Azoun strode back into the room. “You’ve been told all?”

Azoun nodded. “I have, and I thank you. We still have two daughters this night because of you.”

“Because of Florin Falconhand,” Dove corrected him. She looked at Queen Filfaeril. “I must leave you now, I’m afraid. Other business”-one of her fingers brushed her harp-shaped belt buckle for an instant, a momentary gesture unseen by Laspeera or Margaster through the intervening royal bodies-“presses me sorely. So you must guard your own princesses.”

Azoun gave her another grim nod. As he stepped forward to clasp her hand, he asked, “Margaster?”

The old war wizard bowed. “My king?”

Azoun waved at the sleeping Alusair. “The Dragondown Chambers?”

The war wizard nodded.

“Both Tana and Luse,” Azoun added. “Stay with them as much as you can. And you can put my lasses into spell-sleep for a year if you deem it needful-just don’t let them run off!”

The war wizard bowed again, looking grave.

Though it was dark enough in the shadow of the Hullack Forest to foil the eyes of most humans, it seemed that there were more trees around Lord Prester Yellander’s hunting lodge this night than usual-and that some of those trees were moving.

A patient eye would have eventually identified those extra dark trunks as the torsos of bodyguards. Many, many bodyguards, standing staring out into the night and listening intently for sounds of anyone approaching.

Those veteran swordjacks could hear nothing from inside the thick log walls of the hunting lodge, despite the relative quiet of small night sounds in the forest and their own breathing, because the three men inside all wore multiple magecloak magics on their persons. Enough to foil even the most intent war wizard scrying.

Which was a good thing, because every word of their converse was dark treason.