Swords of Dragonfire

Keep moving,” Florin murmured, as Dauntless strode out of the blue fire, found himself in a dank, utterly dark stone passage somewhere underground, and faltered. “Two paces. That should give Lady Laspeera room enough not to run into you.”

Dauntless growled agreement and took his two paces. He could tell by the warm ghost of breath that someone was standing near him. He wrinkled his nose, breathing in leather and a faint whiff of sweat. She-sweat, coming from someone as tall as him. Islif. “So, where are we?”

Islif said not a word, but Semoor offered brightly, “Somewhere underground and dark.” His voice sounded as if he was slumped against the wall a few paces on. Or lying on the stone floor.

Dauntless growled again, letting a little of his anger into it.

“Somewhere utterly unfamiliar to us,” Jhessail said quickly, from beyond Semoor. “I can give us light, but Lady Laspeera’s magic may be far better than-”

The cold blue fire flickered again. Laspeera stepped out of it, stopped, and asked calmly, “Where are we?”

“I was hoping you might be able to help us with that,” Florin said, from beside her. “Jhessail can give us light to see by, but if you’ve a spell that would serve better…”

“No. Jhessail, please do.”

The casting was simple, and when it was done two spheres of flickering light appeared above Jhessail’s palms. She willed them to the ceiling-damp, of large fitted stone blocks, and low overhead-and sent them past herself a little way, showing them all a long, straight passage lined with well-dressed stone. Then she sent them bobbing past the Knights in the other direction, veering around either side of the portal and on, to illuminate more of the same.

“Very exciting,” Semoor commented. “Not quite the thrill the inn became, but-”

Laspeera handed him a potion, and another to Doust. “Your healing potions,” she murmured. “Drink, everyone who stands in need.”

When Islif shook her head, the war wizard’s voice sharpened. “In the name of the Crown of Cormyr, Islif Lurelake, I order you to drink one of these. Stubborn heroes are usually soon too dead to accomplish anything.”

Islif nodded, took the proffered potion, and drank.

“Still dark, dank, and utterly unfamiliar,” Doust commented, looking down the passage. “So, where are we?”

An instant later, Florin snapped, “Pennae, get back here! ”

Behind their backs, beyond the portal, the thief-Knight had been softly walking away down the passage, but at Florin’s command-and the approach of Jhessail’s dancing lights that followed-she stopped, turned, put one hand on her hip, and gave Florin a look that wasn’t quite expressionless. “And you became my keeper when? ”

“Pennae,” Islif said, “we’ve talked about this. When we know not where we stand, we stay together until we’re agreed on what we’ll do.”

Dauntless chuckled, and Pennae favored him with a withering look.

Laspeera smiled. “Pennae-no, all of you Knights of Myth Drannor; I’m well aware of your charter and your oaths that accompanied it. Yet I must hear truth from you, here and now: Are you loyal to the Crown of Cormyr?”

“Lady,” Florin replied, “we are.”

“I know your loyalty well, ranger,” Laspeera replied, “but I have yet to be convinced as to that of some of your fellows. You, thief-lass?” Her eyes were steady upon Pennae. When Pennae’s gaze became a challenge, Laspeera let her eyes drop meaningfully to the things that had been Yassandra’s, now hanging from Pennae’s belt, and then stared up into Pennae’s eyes again.

“I have sworn an oath,” Pennae said stiffly, “and I stand by it.”

“Good. Priests?”

“Forgive me, Lady Laspeera, but my first loyalty is to the divine,” Doust said, “and my second to my fellow Knights. My third is to the Crown of Cormyr.”

Semoor added, “Those words are mine, too.”

Laspeera nodded. “Honestly said. Wherefore I’ll not try to arrest or thwart you, Knights, and instead tell you we are standing in what’s called the Long Passage, a way that runs under the courtyard between the Royal Court and the Palace, linking secret passages within the walls of both buildings. It is guarded at both ends, at all times, so you’d best stay with me-and Ornrion Dahauntul.”

“You step into a bare stone passage, and know where it is?” Semoor demanded suspiciously. “Or did you know all about the portal we just came through?”

“I did not. I can, however, feel the wards all around us, and they are as familiar to me as your childhood homes undoubtedly are, to you. The portal is part of them, so long unawakened that I was not aware of its existence. It is fading back into invisibility already. See?”

They all looked, and saw.

“So we’re in Suzail,” Doust mused, “somewhere between the Palace and that huge stone pile of offices and audience chambers and more offices that stands in front of it. And presumably we’re in trouble for not staying out of the realm.” He looked up the passage, and down it again. “So which way is the Palace, and which way is the Court?”

Laspeera pointed in the direction Pennae had been heading. “Palace.”

Jhessail’s dancing lights moved smoothly a little way past the thief-Knight, farther down the passage Laspeera had pointed along than they’d been before, revealing to the Knights that there was a bend in the passage… and something written low down on the wall there.

Something fresh.

Pennae hastened to it, peered hard at it and then at the wall across from it, and said, “Oho.” Then she turned and started trotting back to rejoin the Knights.

Laspeera smiled. “ ‘Oho,’ indeed. Yes, Pennae, the treasury vaults are somewhere behind us. Before you race off in search of them, know this: the guardians of those vaults were old and wise a thousand years ago, and they can destroy any of us with casual ease.”

Semoor looked interested. “Even the Royal Magician?”

“If he’s not careful. Just now he’s being very careful: he’s hunting you. Now, have I your word that you’ll peacefully accompany me to where I can translocate all of you safely to Shadowdale, right now, or am I going to have to-”

Pennae launched herself into the air, hurling herself right at the war wizard. Dauntless stepped forward to clutch at her, but she kicked his hands aside-and slapped Laspeera’s face as she hurtled past.

The war wizard reeled, threw up her hand to the spot of blood now welling up on her cheek, and murmured a little sadly, “Poison?”

“Sleep venom,” Pennae said tenderly, lifting her hand to display a fanged ring on the inside of one finger.

Laspeera nodded-and toppled over. Florin caught her, even as Dauntless cursed and clawed out his sword.

Pennae sprang back at the ornrion, and did a handstand right in front of his reaching blade to arch over in the wake of his swinging steel and kick him in the face.

Shaking his head and growling, Dauntless grabbed at her knee to haul her down.

Pennae slapped twice at his hand as he hauled at her, but he twisted away to protect his face and managed to kick her arm aside, winning himself room enough to pluck her up by breast and back of knee-and charge her hard into the passage wall, putting his shoulder into her.

Pennae gasped as something snapped wetly-Jhessail shuddered-and the ornrion ground her against the unyielding stones. Half-hidden behind his bulk, the thief-Knight sobbed.

“You little bitch,” Dauntless growled, waving his sword wildly to keep the other Knights at bay. “If you’ve harmed Lasleeeraaahhh…”

As his voice trailed off into gurgles, he sagged down the length of Pennae’s body to the floor. By the time he reached her boots, he was snoring.

Pennae kicked herself free of him and went to Laspeera in Florin’s arms, wincing as she bent over to snatch the last few potions from the war wizard’s belt. Drinking one, she thrust the others through her belt.

“Pennae,” Florin snapped, into her sweating face, “ what have you done? ”

“Won us a little time to rescue the princesses!” Pennae blazed back at him. Then she looked from Knight to Knight, and raised her voice. “Listen! There’s a conspiracy to kill Lord High-and-Mighty Vangerdahast and the king, and the queen-and I’m beginning to think all the war wizards except Vangey are in on it! See that?”

She pointed down the passage, at where the words were written on the wall.

“ ‘Leak here,’ ” Semoor said slowly. “Doesn’t look as if anyone’s obeyed it yet…”

“Ha-ha. Look yon, across from it. Any writing there?”

“No.”

“Good. This side is one wizard saying he’s ready. If there were another ‘Leak here’ yonder, it would mean the other wizard was ready, too, and to start it all by grabbing the princesses. Well, we’ve got to stop it! You heard Laspeera: Vangey’s hunting us. Well, the Royal hrasting Magician doesn’t hunt with dogs or riders in the forest: he hunts with spells. I want him off my well-rounded rump now — and henceforth. You saved the princess! That ought to be worth some thing! If we can get to the queen and get her to order Vangey off our trail and work with us, mayhap we can stop this treason.”

“It’ll be one more order he disobeys,” Semoor said sourly. “That man is a law unto himself.”

“Well, then,” Pennae said angrily, “isn’t it time we were too?”

Faerun holds many deep, dank stone chambers.

Chambers beyond counting, most built by hands now forgotten and crumbled to dust, many for purposes now unregarded. A man may spend a lifetime just visiting the rooms that are safe to enter, free of hauntings and monsters, and those not guarded by the jealous vengeance of kings and rich merchants, who regard every visitor as a thief bent on stealing what they have hidden down there.

Even an elder elf or a tireless dwarf may exhaust their days before seeing and counting all such chambers, even if they limit themselves to those no more deeply buried than the buildings most men dwell in rise above that ground.

Yet Faerun is large enough to hold them all, without complaint and with very few murmurs.

Consider just one such chamber. This one had a war wizard in it, rushing around alone. He is working, placing crystal balls on black stone waist-high plinths and chalking circles around them, which he then links back, with carefully chalked lines, to a central circle. And as he works, in the way of many wizards who trust no one but themselves-and perhaps not even that-he is talking to himself.

“First Vangerdahast must fall,” Ghoruld Applethorn murmured aloud, carefully touching up a ragged edge of his latest chalked line. “And then the Obarskyrs.”

“Alaphondar and half a dozen Highknights have come to consult with me,” a sharp, exasperated male voice announced suddenly from the empty air above his head, “and I can’t get away to write ‘Leak here’ on anything. So take it as written. Do it now!”

“I hear!” Ghoruld replied loudly, and he glanced over at the one crystal that was awake.

A bright scene was shifting in its depths. He strode over to it, folded his arms, and watched.

“Yes,” he said, murmuring to himself again, the smile that was growing across his face repeatedly threatening to twist into a sneer. “Vangey’s closing his net around them now.”

He turned away and went to the door, letting the sneer take hold. “Gloat over them long enough, Old Goat,” he told the door as he swung it open, “and my spell will be ready. And every scrying crystal in all Suzail will explode, and behead anyone looking into it, upon my signal. It’s a pity your self-importance demands you surround yourself with eight or nine crystals. There won’t be enough left of you for them to find and bury.”

Pennae raced down the Long Passage like a storm wind in a hurry to catch up with its gale. The rest of the Knights pounded after her.

“So just where are we heading?” Islif demanded, putting her shoulders down and really starting to move.

“Well, if Laspeera was honest with us and the Palace is this way,” Pennae panted, racing along just ahead of her, “we have to get past the guards and up out of its cellars into the Palace proper. The royal wing is at the back and on the east side, overlooking the gardens.”

“I was, ah, talking with one of the maids, once,” Semoor gasped, “and-well-aren’t all the secret passages inside the Palace guarded too?”

“Yes,” Pennae said sweetly.

“We’ll have to change everything, ” Lord Yellander muttered, a step ahead of Lord Eldroon as they hurried along the hallways of the Royal Court. “There’s no way we can take shipments through Halfhap with every jack and brat in the town crawling all over the inn ruins, gawking.”

“True, true,” Eldroon agreed, nodding and wagging his forefinger as if it were a sword. “The heart of it for us right now, though, is how much do the war wizards know about us? That’s what Ruldroun’ll know-but we’ve got to get in and out fast, in case old Thunderspells already has them all looking for us!”

Yellander nodded grimly. They ducked through a door, stopped in the side passage beyond immediately and faced another door on their right, opened it, and stepped into the usual gloom.

“Ruldroun?” Yellander said into the darkness. “The raven hunts at twilight.”

All around them, darkness fell away in a sudden blossoming of bright white, magical light, showing them a large, thronelike chair with a matching footstool. Rising from it was a bearded and all-too-familiar man in robes, who offered the two noble lords a wintry smile.

Vangerdahast’s teeth positively gleamed. “I’m sure Ruldroun will be fascinated to learn the habits of ravens-in a decade or so, when I let him out of the deep cells. Old Thunderspells, traitors, at your service!”

“ Naed, ” Lord Yellander spat, and whirled to run.

There was no door behind them any longer-only a thing like a fleshy wall, of many staring eyes and silently screaming mouths and clawlike fingers, looming up over them like a great, crawling darkness.

Vangerdahast smiled gently and said in a voice as soft as silk, “Do try to run. Please. We haven’t fed the gravewall for days.”

“You promised, ” Lord Maniol Crownsilver hissed.

“And I’ll do it,” Wizard of War Ghoruld Applethorn said, holding the trembling lord by the shoulders. “Your Jalassa will live again. This very night. There’s just one thing you have to do for me first.”

“What?”

“Run to Vangerdahast-right now, and getting past anyone who tries to stop you. Tell them you bear an urgent, private message to him from the king, that’s for Vangey’s ears only. If he happens to be with the king, then say the message is from me. Anyroad, the moment you’re alone with him, tell the Royal Magician I’ve captured the princesses! You heard me gloating, but then I vanished right in front of your eyes, and you don’t know where I’ve gone!”

“ What? ”

“That’s all you have to say-just that! Go! And Jalassa will be in your arms again tonight, alive and loving!”

Lord Crownsilver blinked, shook his head as if to clear it, and rushed away, sideswiping a table in the process.

The war wizard watched him go, and grew a slow smile that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a wolf.

Hearing that news, Vangerdahast could hardly help but look into a crystal ball-or teleport into the Dragondown Chambers.

And either way, headless Royal Magicians make poor powers-behind-thrones.

“ Hold! Who are you?”

The end of the Long Passage was indeed guarded, and the Purple Dragon hailing the hurrying Knights sounded angry. His spear flashed as he turned to menace them. It bore a collar that supported a ring of eight more spear tips, all pointing at the Knights, and seeming to fill the passage, all by themselves.

Beyond him, in a little ring of glowing light, another six-or more-Dragons readied their own weapons, one of them turning toward an alarm gong, and fumbling for his dagger to strike it with.

As Pennae skidded to a halt, panting hard and clawing at the wall to slow herself before she came within reach of all those sharp points, Florin snapped, “Stop the one at the gong!”

Doust and Semoor nodded and stepped grandly past him in almost perfect unison, raising their holy symbols. Waving their free arms in flourishes, they fixed the rearmost guards with flashing eyes, calling upon divine power, and commanded: “ Fall! ”

And those two guards crumpled, the gong unstruck.

“Eight in all!” Pennae cried. “Two down!”

“For Cormyr!” Florin roared as he charged. “That the king may live!”

“Forget not the queen!” Islif shouted, springing to join him as he struck aside the unwieldy Crown-spear and kept running, hurling its wielder back into the Dragons behind. Islif did the same, ducking and parrying so the spear menacing her went past her shoulder and she could simply run in along it, drive her sword between her Dragon’s legs, and bring the flat of it up as she kept running, thrusting him off his feet and back into more Dragons, behind. They in turn stumbled over their two fallen comrades, just behind them, and went over on their backs in a confusion of wildly kicking boots.

The Dragons were all shouting now, as they fell into a confused tangle. Pennae sprang forward and swarmed into it, slapping faces with her ring as she danced, ducked, ran up arms, and vaulted sagging bodies.

She slapped the last guard standing three times, leaving him shaking his head, glaring at her-and then bringing up his spear in slow menace.

Pennae danced back, waved the hand with the ring at her fellow Knights, and sighed, “Out of venom, I guess.”

“Ah,” Semoor responded, wading through the heaped bodies. “Well, then.”

The spear swung around at him, but he clawed up the shaft of a fallen spear from the tangled fallen to block its point, and then thrust it aside. “I do most humbly beg your apology for this indignity,” he said to the startled Dragon, as he pulled his way down the spear-shaft to reach the man, “but the needs of bright Cormyr compel us all, and in this particular case, that means-”

He tugged with all his strength on the spear, the snarling Purple Dragon kept hold of it but overbalanced and came staggering forward-and Semoor lifted his knee to take the man under the chin with devastating force.

As the man crumpled, Doust picked his way past all the fallen Dragons.

Islif gave him a look. “What’re you doing, holynose?”

“Seeing if I can take this gong down — without sounding it-so we can take it with us. They’ll find it a little hard to ring it if it’s missing, no?”

“Yes. Or no. Just be careful.”

“I don’t like this,” Jhessail hissed. “Fighting loyal Dragons of the realm, courting banishment or worse at our every step!” Her voice rose, trembling-as her light spell wavered and then failed. “What’re we doing? ”

“There, there, Jhess. Greet a little calm,” Semoor told her. “We’re the heroes, remember? This will all end happily.”

Jhessail glared at him. “But what if it doesn’t? ”

Florin put an arm around her shoulders. “Ah. Then, lass, it’s not really the end.”