Swords of Dragonfire

T ouch nothing, ” Laspeera said, “and stay together, here with me.”

Cautiously they peered around Ghoruld Applethorn’s offices.

The man himself was missing. On his desk lay a scroll-tube labelled “Map: Halfhap.” Its end cap was off, and it was-Laspeers bent and peered inside-empty. The entire desk glowed faintly, as if reflecting the flames of a distant fire.

“What spell is that?” Roruld asked from behind her, waving at it.

“No spell,” Laspeera told him. “ ’Tis wildsnarl powder. Very rare, and priced to match. Used to defeat most divination magic.” Her eyes narrowed. This was all just a trifle overdone. “Go get Vangerdahast,” she ordered.

“Well met,” said the Royal Magician of Cormyr dryly, from just behind them.

As they stiffened, blinked, and whirled to face him, he snapped, “Roruld, go now in haste and seek Ghoruld Applethorn in the Garden Wing. Alais, the same search; Palace staterooms. Morlurn, likewise, but ’tis the Royal Court for you-and mind you don’t miss the cellars!”

The three war wizards nodded, still blinking, and hurried out. Leaving Vangerdahast and Laspeera facing each other in the empty office.

“Odd, indeed,” Vangey said. “I’m beginning to think I should collect those unicorn-head rings. Baerauble made them just a bit too useful.”

Laspeera nodded. “Applethorn’s will prevent us magically tracking, farscrying, and detecting him, but what about mind-prying; will it stop your spells?”

“Yes. Everyone’s,” the head of the war wizards said shortly, turning away. “And Ghoruld knows that. The question is: Who else does? Are we chasing Applethorn, or someone working with him-or someone who put a dagger through his ribs and took his likeness?”

He strolled across the room, one hand raised and the rings on it winking restlessly, before shaking his head and adding, “No one’s scrying us right now, at least.”

“I know of a dozen unicorn rings, all worn by alarphons,” Laspeera said quietly. “Are there more I should know about?”

Vangey turned. “In case I go missing on the morrow? No, just twelve. That I know of. And no master ring to control them or overcome their protections, though Baerauble may have enspelled them in a way that let him shut them down by means he kept secret, that died with him. There’d be no point in using them at all, to try to keep their minds hidden and protected from all magic, if a way to defeat them could be seized and worn by just anybody.”

“Of course. I-”

Running feet made a brief thunder in the passage outside, and two war wizards burst breathlessly through the door, gabbling about Emmaera Dragonfire and swords and inns and treasure, long-lost magic and adventurers converging on Halfhap.

Vangerdahast and Laspeera listened until Corlyn and Armandras ran out of excited things to say. They then politely thanked and dismissed the pair, who went out again peering at the two highest-ranked war wizards a little doubtfully, evidently wondering if the Royal Magician of Cormyr and the Court Underwizard of the Realm had heard them correctly.

When they were well out of sight and hearing, Vangerdahast turned to Laspeera. “Just a bit obvious, isn’t it?”

Laspeera nodded.

“Well, take a dozen or more of our best with you-and have them conduct themselves with caution. Even when you know what you’re striding into, a trap’s a trap.”

The rapping on the door was insistent, and Florin came awake reaching for his sword.

When he opened the door, blade at the ready, the man on the other side of it also held a drawn sword. And a worried, wary, but not hostile expression.

“What news?” Florin asked quietly, as Doust and Semoor sleepily joined him.

“Grave news,” the man replied, a distinct whiff of horse coming from him as he grounded his blade. The innkeeper Maelrin and a serving-jack stood behind the stablemaster, facing in either direction down the passage. They, too, had drawn swords in their hands.

“Item the first. There’s a killer on the loose. Here in the Oldcoats Inn.”

“Oh?”

“A trained Zhentarim slayer, a sword and spell man. He’s in his room now, but he killed two of us-of the inn staff-while all of you were sleeping, and neither poison nor being hewn to the bone with a sword seems to have stopped him. He is, in fact, walled in with us.”

“Walled in?”

There was a brief commotion behind Ondal Maelrin as the door across the passage opened and an alert and fully dressed Pennae and Islif peered out.

“Item the second,” the stablemaster began, but Maelrin put a hand on his arm and he fell silent.

“There’s more,” the innkeeper said, looking from the lady Knights to the men. “Your horses have all been taken.”

“Taken?” Jhessail snapped, before anyone else could, as she pushed past Islif, looking almost child-sized beside her tall friend-but far from a child indeed in her clinging shift.

The three Oldcoats men stared at her, and then quickly looked away. Jhessail folded her arms and waited, withering glare at the ready, for them all to surreptitiously glance her way again. “Taken?” she repeated.

“Uh. Ahem, yes,” the innkeeper said, clearing his throat. “Confiscated, I should say, by the local Purple Dragons. Who came here looking for the Knights of Myth Drannor, with intent to take you. ”

“I’d say Laspeera didn’t overlook your little theft,” Jhessail snapped at Pennae. “I’d say she kept it as a reason to go after us, after we were safely out of lands where they have to keep to Azoun’s law. Or is there something else you did, that you perhaps forgot to tell us?”

“ ‘Take’ us?” Pennae asked the master of Oldcoats, ignoring Jhessail.

“Arrest you. ‘Take’ is what they always call it. As you can tell, we thwarted them.”

Islif patiently made a circling gesture with her hand, urging him to say more. Maelrin nodded to her and added, “We lured them back out of the inn by saying you’d all gathered in the stables to do something you wouldn’t tell us about, except that we were to stay away. Of course they couldn’t resist all dashing off to the stables-whereupon we activated the Dragonfire magic to keep them out of Oldcoats proper. Er, that is to say, this building we’re standing in.”

“And what,” Semoor and Jhessail asked, almost as one, “is the ‘Dragonfire magic’?”

“ Later, ” Pennae snapped. “I’m sure all the arcane details are fascinating, but first tell us, Master Maelrin, what’s befalling now. I don’t care so much-yet-what this Dragonfire is, so much as what it does. ”

The innkeeper looked at the stablemaster. “Druskin?”

Stablemaster Druskin looked from the lady Knights to the men and back again, sighed, and said, “I used to keep the Dragons’ stables, here in Halfhap. I know how they work. I can’t see through the magic, but I’m as certain as if I could that Oldcoats is surrounded by Dragons right now, while they wait for the war wizards they’ve called for to get here. The Dragonfire magics are like a huge wall all around this building-and just this building-to keep everyone out.”

Islif frowned. “And us in. ”

“Can we get away over the rooftops?” Pennae asked quickly. “Or the cellars? I suppose you’d better tell us a little more about this Dragonfire magic.”

“The rooftops, no,” Ondal Maelrin replied. “Not unless you can live happily with a dozen-some Purple Dragon war-quarrels through you.” He hesitated. “The cellars, yes, but there’s a little problem.”

He fell silent, looking less than happy. Islif stepped forward until she was towering over him, so close they were almost touching, and said firmly, “That you’re going to tell us all about. All about.”

Maelrin sighed again. “Where to begin? Well… our cellars flood. From the stable side, and not often, but-we need more dry cellar space. So we started digging on the other side, toward the front of the inn, and soon enough we found a cellar wall that was only one stone deep; a false wall thrown up across the end of a larger cellar.”

“Long ago, to hide treasure,” Pennae added. It was not a question.

The innkeeper nodded. “So we believe, though we haven’t dared go near it. We can see it, and an old tunnel that leads into the cellars of other shops along this street is supposed to be just the other side of it, but…”

He waved his hands in exasperation. “There’s this legend, here in Halfhap. Years ago, a famous mage dwelt hereabouts; a lady called Emmaera Dragonfire. After she died, no one ever found her magic. Well, we have-at least, we can see wands and chests and thick books with runes on them, a big heap of it all. The tales all say she guarded herself with flying swords that flew at her command, and that she left them guarding her treasure. A ring of flying swords that strike at all who venture near. Well, the ring of swords are down there right now-and right enough, they strike at anyone who goes too close!”

Pennae’s eyes gleamed. “Which way to the cellars?”

Jhessail rolled her eyes. “Can I put some clothes on and eat, first?”

Yassandra Durstable was by far the best-looking war wizard ever to wear the unicorn-headed ring of the alarphons. Tall, shapely, and possessed of a tumbling fall of glossy black hair and eyes that were both large and dark, she had devastated many with her frowns-and many more with her crooked, catlike smiles. She was frowning now, but Laspeera Naerinth was unimpressed.

“No,” the alarphon answered, “I know nothing at all of where Melandar, Orzil, Voril, and Ghoruld Applethorn are, or what they’re up to.”

“Really?” Laspeera’s tone of voice and raised eyebrow made her disbelief clear.

Yassandra’s frown deepened, and she deliberately slid off her unicorn ring before replying, “Really.” Receiving only Laspeera’s reluctant nod by way of reply, she asked, “Why? What’s this all about?”

“All four men are missing,” Laspeera told her, “and now you know as much as I do. You have your battlebook with you? And spells at the ready?”

Yassandra’s frown abated not a whit. “Yes, and yes.”

“Good. Come.” Laspeera strode right at the solid wall beside her, and vanished through it without disturbing it in the slightest.

The alarphon followed unhesitatingly, and found herself in a spell chamber she’d visited only once before-a dark, bare, dirty chamber with a lofty ceiling lost in cobwebs, several thick candles burning, each on its own head-high wooden stand, a large circle chalked on the flagstone floor, and more than a dozen war wizards standing and shuffling tensely from boot to boot. Yassandra knew all of them: Brors, Taeroch, and old Larlammitur well; Alsketh from Marsember and Cordorve of High Horn slightly, from working with them twice or thrice; and the rest merely as veteran war wizards, faces and names no alarphon had yet seen need to know better.

“I’ve chosen you all for a little task that is very likely to involve both danger and spell-battle, I’m afraid,” Laspeera said, without greeting or delay. “Please enter the circle.”

Everyone stepped inside the chalk, Laspeera included, and three more war wizards promptly appeared, stepping through another stretch of apparently solid wall. This elderly, white-whiskered trio received Laspeera’s nod, nodded back to her expressionlessly, and began casting a mass teleport in perfect unison.

The spell was crafted without incident, everyone in the circle vanished, and the oldest war wizard gave a satisfied grunt, turned on his heel, and trudged back through the illusory wall he’d come in by.

The other two lingered. They were both very familiar with the kept-empty-for-this-very-purpose room, in the southwesternmost of the two gate-keeps of Halfhap, that they’d just sent all their colleagues to, but the youngest of the three elderly war wizards was very curious as to why Halfhap, just now. “What’s the grave emergency threatening the very survival of the realm this time?”

The other war wizard shrugged. “Laspeera’s getting like Vangey. ‘You’ve no need to know, so I’m not telling you.’ Something about exalted rank always takes their wits that way.”

“Hmm, yes,” the younger one agreed. “Yet, somehow… I’ve a grave feeling about this.”

“And so you should,” his fellow war wizard replied approvingly.

And blasted him to ashes before turning away.

Standing in the common room of the Oldcoats Inn, at the head of the cellar stairs, the Knights of Myth Drannor traded glances with each other.

“Ready?” Florin asked quietly, and started collecting nods. They were all rested, fed, watered, armed, and in armor. Everyone nodded.

“Right,” he said, and he started to head down into the cellars. Pennae sprang past him, turned on the stairs to give him a reproving look, and then led the way, lit lantern in hand.

The innkeeper watched them go. When they’d all descended and were clear of the cellar steps, Ondal Maelrin made a hand-signal to a maid upstairs, who darted to the door of a guestroom next to the one rented to the lady Knights, opened it, and repeated that signal.

At the open window of that room, a serving-jack nodded, waited for her to close the door again, and then leaned out the window and blew a hunting-horn.

A serving-jack walked softly across the common room to join Maelrin in peering down the cellar stairs. “Well?”

“Well, it’s worked thus far,” the innkeeper murmured, “and we herded them down into the cellars like starving men eager to swarm a feast. We’ll just have to see how long we can keep them believing in their horses gone, Purple Dragons surrounding the place, and all this Dragonfire nonsense.”

“Your acting was peerless,” said the serving-jack. “And they were trusting enough to not even try to go and check on their horses. They mustn’t have been adventurers for long.”

“Nor will they for much longer,” Ondal Maelrin said with a soft smile. “Gullible fools.”

“That’s more or less what Lord Yellander called them. Lord Eldroon just laughed.”

“It will be as well for us,” the innkeeper muttered, “if he goes on laughing.”

Folk all across Halfhap lifted their heads and frowned as a hornblast that was quite different from the war-horns used by the Purple Dragons rang out across the town.

“Who’s that, d’ye think?” a cooper asked the vintner across the yard-fence, as they both tossed out discarded casks to be chopped up into kindling.

The vintner straightened up. By the look on his face, he was thinking hard. “Someone with a hunting-horn, down center way. Oldcoats, or near there.”

“Someone in a hurry to signal something.”

They nodded, stared at each other, and then shrugged in unison. Either they’d never know, or the taverns would ring with various wild tales about who’d winded that horn, and why.

Not far from the cooper and the vintner, two local “oddwares” traders who bought and sold goods for costers and factors in distant cities-but whom no one in town had the slightest idea were agents of two nobles of Cormyr, the Lords Yellander and Eldroon-smiled knowingly at the sound of that horn-call, and turned in their strolling toward the door of a particular shop.

Baraskor’s Brightwares wasn’t an establishment either Horl Bryntwynter or Jarandorn Vantur visited often, but it was one they wandered through from time to time, looking for items to interest their far-off contacts. It would not have flattered Ordaurl Baraskor to know that they were choosing to tour his shop, at this particular time, because he was widely considered to be Halfhap’s worst gossip. But then, neither of them intended to tell him that.

The two traders began to chat as they drifted through Baraskor’s doors.

“Aye, the Dragonfire magic’s been found at last!”

“No! Horl, are you sure this isn’t just another of Traulaunna’s wildtongue tales?”

“Well if it is, lots of folk were a-telling it before Traulaunna ever heard it. Though she’ll burnish and adorn it, right enough! So hear truth from me now, before she gets the chance: Emmaera Dragonfire’s leavings are a heap of magic. Rings, wands, rods-the lot! And her spellbooks too!”

“Ho!” Jarandorn exclaimed, raising both his eyebrows as he peered at some tall, fluted glass bottles from Turmish. “That’d make it everything legends have glowingly described, all these years!”

“It is!” Bryntwynter ran a critical finger over the inlaid flank of an ornamented jewel-coffer, ignoring the hovering, watchful presence of Ordaurl Baraskor at his elbow, and added, “Yet I doubt any of us will get to see any of it! Adventurers just arrived from Arabel have camped in Oldcoats and are keeping everyone away with their swords-and spells too!”

“Everyone? Purple Dragons of the grasping Crown, too?” Jarandorn stopped in front of a display of belts and pouches, to peer and stroke his chin and consider.

“Well, not yet,” Horl told him through the shelves, “but they’re probably plodding over there right now! You know how word gets around in this town!”

“So who are these lucky swordswingers of Arabel? Rebels who’ll use the Dragonfire treasure to challenge the king? Or outlanders who’ll rush off to Westgate or Waterdeep or Amn to sell it all, as fast as they can fall over each other?”

“The Knights of Myth Drannor, they call themselves! There’s talk of them all over Suzail. They must be the ones Queen Filfaeril bedded-with them in full armor all stained with monster-blood too!”

Without lifting his gaze for a moment from the shelves of glittering coffers in front of him, Horl Bryntwynter became aware that the shopkeeper had stopped oh-so-patiently awaiting a moment to break into their chatter with an offer to assist him in selecting this coffer or that, and receded smoothly from anywhere Bryntwynter might happen to notice him. He was listening avidly to the converse between the two traders.

“What?” Jarandorn chuckled. “Do you believe that sort of gossip? I mean, how now? The Ice Queen, bedding anything? ”

“Ah, but who called her the Ice Queen before the rest of us? Suzailans, that’s who. Who sees more of her than all the rest of us unwashed upcountry louts? Suzailans. So if they can believe such talk, I can believe it, too!”

Vantur chuckled. “You mean you want to believe it, for the sheer fun of picturing such sport.”

Bryntwynter moved on from the coffers, passing over a selection of hats and bound presses of parchments to a squared, rough-hewn pillar decorated in a selection of ornate hasps and latches. “Well, yes,” he laughed. “You have me there!”

“Well, folk seem fair crazed up in Suzail,” Jarandorn said dismissively. “It’s we of Halfhap, good and bad, as I have to live with, every morn to every dusking. So how’re they taking all of this down at Oldcoats? Or have these adventurers turned them out, slit their throats, or locked them all in the wellhouse?”

Bryntwynter snorted. “Vantur, you spend entirely too much time listening to minstrels’ fancies. Nothing so wild-bold, to be sure! Maelrin’s fair gnawed away all his mustache already, for fear they’ll sword him and all his staff, and blast the Oldcoats to dust around his dying ears-but they’ve not done any of that, yet, and they’d be fools to do so, with the Purple Dragons marching down to see what they are up to.” He sighed. “Well, I see nothing here to impress Suzailans. Fine wares, but nothing… you know; gleaming. ”

“I know, and am finding much the same. Good wares, but Suzail’s awash in good wares and bad, and so’s Athkatla. We’ll have to check again in good time, of course. Have you heard from Turrityn yet?”

“No,” Bryntwynter said mournfully, sighing an even bigger sigh, “and that’s beginning to concern me. What’s Faerun coming to, that a…”

He nodded to the shopkeeper with the vacant smile of a polite man whose mind is now on financially graver things, and strolled back out of Baraskor’s Brightwares, Jarandorn Vantur drifting along in his wake.

As if as an afterthought, and with an apologetic smile for not buying anything, Vantur turned briefly upon the threshold to give the proprietor a farewell nod of his own, and then turned again and was gone.

Ordaurl Baraskor calmly returned that nod, but after the weighted front door of Brightwares glided gently shut again, he hurried into the back to snap excitedly at his wife, bidding her leave her cooking upon the instant to take over the shop.

Before she could reply, he was out the back door and hastening down the alley. Certain local ears must hear of the Dragonfire treasure and of these Knights of Myth Drannor.

Zhentarim ears.

“What’s that?” Jhessail asked sharply.

Pennae flung back a scornful reply without turning her head. “Rats. Quiet. ”

The thief raised her lantern, waiting until Florin had come up on her left and Islif on her right, and then advanced, slowly and cautiously.

More rats scurried; Pennae saw Islif’s frown, and nodded. Yes, she agreed silently, it was unusual for an inn to let quite so many rats run hither and yon in the cellars where they presumably stored their foodstuffs.

Unless something was there to draw them. Something like…

The light of the lantern fell on an unmoving human hand. A man’s hand, fingers spread on the uneven stone floor.

Fingers that had been nibbled.

Grimly Pennae took another step, lifting the lantern higher.

There were two dead men on the cellar floor of the Oldcoats Inn, one draped over the other. Their slack faces would have been staring at her if the rats had left them any eyes to stare with, but the Knights of Myth Drannor knew their faces and their uniforms.

They were staring at the corpses of the serving-jacks who’d brought soup and cider to their rooms, upon their arrival at the inn this morning.