Swords of Dragonfire

There came a sudden rumbling in the dimness. The rushing Knights slowed, peering this way and that-just as a wall of old, black, and massive iron came crashing down out of the ceiling right in front of Florin’s nose.

Which meant that “Pennae?” he bellowed. “ Pennae? ”

“I’m still alive,” the ranger heard her cry faintly, from the other side of the great barrier.

Florin slammed his fist against the wall. It was solid, all right.

“Lady in your Forest!” Florin implored. “Deliver me from this damned Palace with its damned neverending gods-be-DAMNED passages!”

As if in reply, there came another rumbling boom, this one laced with Islif crying out in sharp warning and Jhessail letting out a little shriek-as another wall slammed down behind him.

Leaving Florin standing alone in utter darkness, with no company but a sudden heavy grating of stone beside him, the cool, gentle caress of moving air, and a rough, very deep voice saying, “In the name of the king, intruder, lay down your arms and surrender. Or, of course, die.”

As he fought his way out of the crowds and past hard-eyed Purple Dragons to hasten through the servants’ door of the Royal Court, Bravran Merendil found himself sweating hard in Dorn Talask’s clothes and trying even harder to forget how Talask had yielded up those clothes. It was still a long walk to the Palace proper, where he was supposed to find some chamber called the Dawnlurdusk Room, and report to Skeldulk Maumurthorn, Master of the Red Passage.

Dodging among throngs of excitedly scurrying servants, he found the right hall and started the trudge to the Palace.

Only to fetch up, almost immediately, against a balding old courtier in all-black finery-ribbon-trimmed hose, a puffed-sleeves doublet, fine gold chains at wrists and throat, a matching black throat ruff-who was regarding him what seemed to be barely leashed fury.

“Talask, I thought you went home to bathe and change into finery!” this unexpected obstacle snapped. “ This is finery? The same clothes, only torn here-look! — and dirtied there?”

Bravran swallowed, catching himself on the very point of snarling, “Well at least Talask didn’t bleed all over it, when they took him down!”

For a moment he almost thought he’d said it aloud, the courtier was giving him such an odd look.

The old man took him by his ruffed collar and shook him. “Dorn, Dorn! Come out of it! ‘Tis me, Rolloral! Don’t look at me like you don’t know me!” He frowned. “ ’Tis a lass, isn’t it? Bathe in her, you meant, you rogue!”

Abruptly, Rolloral broke into a grin and clapped “Talask” on the arm. “Good lad! Hah, to be your age, again! Tell me all about it, mind-on the morrow! Right now, we’ve the gods’ own list of things to do, and precious little time to do them in! Maumurthorn’s been summoned to the Dragondown Chambers for a jawing, and left us with all his inspections to do, before he comes back and does them again and thunders at us for how we did them; you know. Come on! ”

“Dorn Talask” shook himself once more, felt again inside the grand barrel-front of his jacket for the reassuring heft of his dagger, and came on.

When Wizard of War Ellard Duskeld got to where imperious royal lips had ordered him to go, he stopped. And blinked.

The Dragondown Chambers were in an uproar. Senior courtiers, a few hulking Purple Dragons in polished-to-gleaming armor, and robed war wizards snapping orders and, looking grim, were striding purposefully everywhere.

And at the heart of it all, Vangerdahast, Court Wizard of Cormyr and Royal Magician of the Realm, stood conferring with an ever-changing ring of younger war wizards, deploying them hither and thither in the Palace to accomplish the security concerns of the moment.

“Of course we need a man in the Royal Gardens!” Old Thunderspells said gruffly. “ ’Tis the best way to get a large armed force-or a dragon, for that matter! — up to the very windows of the Palace without fighting through guard after guard! You think mere helmheaded Purple Dragons can stop a dragon? Or one wizard riding any sort of winged steed? Do you want this day to turn out to be the grandest disaster of the season?”

Ellard Duskard swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and marched purposefully across the room, almost colliding with no fewer than three hard-striding war wizards moving in other directions, and in the process collecting one glare and two disdainful looks. He had to force his way shoulder-first into the ring, where he bowed deeply in greeting, straightened, and awaited a chance to speak.

“Not now, Khalaeto!” Vangerdahast dismissed a short, bespectacled war wizard who looked like a clerk-of-coins; the man scuttled hastily away with scrolls and quill in hand. The Royal Magician of the Realm turned a little, like a weary Purple Dragon moving a crossbow along to aim at the next target, fixed his eyes on Ellard, and snapped, “Speak, man! And don’t shuffle so.”

“Uh. Ah. Ahem, yes. The princess begs leave to speak with you.”

“Which one, lad?”

“Uh… oh! Tanalasta, saer.”

“Well, bring her!” Vangey’s growl was impatient.

“She…” Ellard Duskard reddened to the roots of his tangled hair, uncomfortably aware that the Royal Magician’s glare was practically shouting, “What is it with younglings, these days, and their hair? Have they no combs? Nor dressers to draw them water? Or did they all like the feel of lice wriggling around their heads all the time?”

“She-she wants you to come to her, Lord Vangerdahast,” he managed to blurt out. “Says it’s a royal command.” Then, sinking into misery, he shook like a storm-flailed weed, fearing the inevitable.

Astonishingly, Old Thunderspells smiled. “Did she, now?”

He turned away before adding, “Look you, lad! Do I seem to you to have time to spare to kneel before spoiled little girls at time or two, just to indulge their ever-changing whims, right now?”

“Ah… no, saer.’

“Brilliant boy!” Vangerdahast said. “No, saer, indeed. You’ve captured it right off! So go you back to Princess High-And-Mighty Tanalasta, and tell her it took you forever to find me, and when you did I changed into a bat and flapped around you by way of answer, and you don’t speak bat so you don’t know what reply to give her, and so you’ve come back to her to ask her what she wants you to do now. Oh, and tell her you last saw me flapping off across the Royal Gardens with her father’s best state crown hovering above me. That’ll give her something to puzzle over!”

Wincing, Ellard Duskard turned and hurried back the way he’d come, slipping out the door a breath too soon to see two war wizards appear in a doorway clear across the largest Dragondown Chamber, with their arms full of golden-glowing swords and eager smiles on their faces.

Vangerdahast frowned at the sight of them, plucked his staff from the war wizard who’d been patiently holding it for him, and aimed it at them as he snapped, “Yassandra? Brors? You’re dead, so who are you, really? ”

That shout brought down a hush over the Chambers-in which the false Yassandra and Brors flung their swords at the Royal Magician of the Realm, and fled. Sixteen golden blades raced across the room like a volley of speeding arrows.

Vangerdahast roared the command that triggered his staff.

And the air in front of it exploded.

“In the name of the king and the queen,” Florin replied, sword raised against the darkness, “stand aside and let me try to save the realm. I must reach Vangerdahast without delay! I have no desire to fight you or anyone else, believe me.”

“I obey the orders I am given,” the unseen guardian replied. “Cormyr would be a fairer place by far if more folk did. Aramadaera. You, on the other hand, have defied the orders of loyal Purple Dragons, just as you defy mine, now. So you must now yield or die.”

As that deep voice spoke the lone word unfamiliar to Florin, there arose a faint, brief singing sound in the darkness, and the ranger-Knight now perceived a glimmering across the chamber, a glimmering that swiftly kindled into a glow bright enough to show Florin that it emanated from a helm-an open-face helm worn by a mountain of a man.

Well, a mountain at least. This Palace guardian was half again as tall as Florin, who was used to being among the tallest men in any gathering, and his arms and shoulders would have put any two oxen to shame. Grotesquely corded muscles rippled under a web-work of scars that bared throbbing veins here and highlighted knife-sharp tendons there. The guardian did not so much wear armor as have battered fragments of armor strapped to him and bolted to each other, in a great coat muffled from clangor by ragged leather hides affixed between the shifting metal plates. The man’s bracers bristled with outthrust sword blades, one hand ending in a greataxe and the other hefting a short, very broad sword that ended in a trident of horns like those of a bull. As the glow of the helm strengthened, it became apparent that its magics had been crafted to illuminate the air out in front of the man, so that for twice his sword-reach, wherever he was looking, foes were illuminated.

“Mielikki forfend!” Florin gasped.

The man-mountain nodded as if he had heard such reactions far too many times before. “They call me the Dread Doorwarden,” he announced, gloomily rather than triumphantly. “Or sometimes, the Stalking Doom.”

Florin shuddered, recalling those names spoken by retired Purple Dragons telling horrific tales on sunny days back in Espar-a place where he’d far rather be, just now, than facing death in the dark passages under the Palace of the Purple Dragon. Those stories had been gory horror-yarns about men, sent on errands, who strayed into the wrong passages in the darkness, and were diced and eaten raw under the Royal Palace in Suzail.

“I was told tales of you as a lad,” he said slowly, staring up at the hulking mountain of flesh, “but I never believed them.”

The Doorwarden grunted wearily as if he’d heard such words a thousand times before, and trudged ponderously forward. Florin moved hastily aside to avoid being trapped in a corner.

One great arm swung, and the ranger flung himself into a roll on the floor to get under those three horns. They sang slashing past overhead. He was barely up again before that axe crashed down, striking sparks on stone just behind his heels.

“You still are a lad,” that deep voice rumbled. “Believe in me now?”

Florin ducked and dodged again. This time those three blades passed so close he could feel them and hear the whistle of air along their blades.

“Yes,” he whispered, “but I don’t want to.” He ran to get behind the guardian and lashed out at one huge elbow with his own sword. If he could get to where he could hamstring No. The backs of the Doorwarden’s knees were protected with overlapping, flared arcs of armor. No wonder the man moved ponderously.

Florin flung himself to the floor again to avoid weapons slicing down at him from two directions-both of those massive arms, coming down from full stretch to converge-and then saw his only chance.

The Doorwarden knew this room well, and had never given him safe room to get past, and out the way the guardian had come in by. So Florin would have to take an unsafe way. He came to his feet running, as if to circle along the walls again, but as the Doorwarden turned and sidestepped to prevent him racing past, Florin changed direction and ran right at the man, hurling himself forward sword-first like a great dart-between those armored legs.

And then up and on, panting in frantic haste, ribs aching from the sideways kick the Doorwarden had managed to land while trying to close that gap. Florin darted through where he knew the opening was, sword up, fleeing blindly into the darkness.

“Fool,” a cold voice said out of the darkness right in front of him, as an unseen blade rang out of a scabbard.

The staff’s blast shattered a few of the blades, shards spinning away amid showering sparks. It flung the others aside, but slowed them not a whit. They swerved to converge once more upon the Royal Magician of Cormyr, who hurled down the staff to cast a swift and desperate magic.

Those racing points almost reached Vangerdahast, three of them looming up right before his eyes, before his spell erupted out from him in all directions, a blast of ravening force that shook him as it sprang from his skin, his mouth, and his very eyeballs, a horrible roaring that-ended as swiftly as it had begun, the Dragondown Chambers falling into a deathly silence broken only by the brief tinklings of broken swordblades finding the floor.

Vangerdahast gazed bleakly all around, turning slowly to view the devastation. He was alive and unscathed, but of the dozens of war wizards who’d been so busily rushing around, nothing was left but bloody smears on the walls and pools of gore on the floor. Whoever his blast hadn’t butchered had been felled by whirling, ricocheting blade-shards.

That was the problem with that spell; to rend enchanted weapons, it must needs destroy wards and shieldings. In saving himself, he’d doomed every other war wizard in the Chambers.

Not for the first time.

Vangerdahast felt sick. “Forgive me, Mystra,” he whispered, watching his ruined staff smouldering at his feet.

An excited voice suddenly blatted at him from the empty air in front of his nose. “Lord Vangerdahast! The guests are pouring into the Palace now, and among them we’ve-Jarlandan, Garen, Costarr, and me, that is-recognized the Calishite mage-for-hire Talan Yarl among the folk pouring into the Palace. He’s disguised as the Turmish envoy who was expected, and so may well have done something to that man. What should we do?”

Durward, of course. The fool couldn’t handle an open-yon-door assignment without asking for assistance.

“Royal Magician? Do you hear? This is Durward, and I ask again: what should we do?”

Vangerdahast threw up his hands in exasperation. “I’m coming! ” he snapped. Looking grimly around at the red slaughter once more, he growled, “No time to try to save any of them. No time! ” Then he marched out, face gray and old.

“I’m getting too old for this,” he muttered, striding hard along passages where Purple Dragons saluted hastily. He swept past, ignoring them.

“Florin!” Islif yelled. “Pennae?”

Her voice echoed back to her off unyielding black iron in front of her nose, and down the long, dark passage behind. If anyone answered, none of the Knights heard it.

After the silence had started to stretch, they all looked at each other and shrugged.

“Right,” Semoor said, “ now what?”

“We decide what to do,” Jhessail told him, “and do it.”

“Well, that’s simple enough,” Doust agreed sarcastically. “Glad you came along, Jhess. Without you, we’d have been lost!”

“We are lost, holynoses,” Islif snapped. “Try to think of useful things to say, while we-as Jhessail said-try to decide what to do.”

Doust shook his head. “All we really know is that Pennae told us there’s a war wizard conspiracy to slay Vangerdahast and the king and queen, and that we have to get to the Dragondown Chambers as quickly as we can. She didn’t even tell us why, though I’m guessing it was to find and tell Vangey. Only guess, mind. And now our way there is blocked, we’re lost under the Palace-and we’ve lost Florin and Pennae.” He looked up, spreading exasperated hands. “Have I missed anything?”

“Plenty,” Semoor told him, “but your aim is getting better.”

“Belt up!” Jhessail snapped. “Just… be still! You’re not funny, you’re not helping, and-and I’m trying to think. ”

“Yes, of course,” Semoor murmured. “I can see how hard that must be for you.”

Islif cuffed the Anointed Light of Lathander across the back of the head even before Jhessail snarled and kicked him in the shins. Semoor hastily withdrew into a protective ball, holding forth his holy symbol in front of him-and beside him, Doust threw up his hands in an “I’m innocent, pray strike me not!” gesture.

The two lady Knights disgustedly turned their backs on the priests, put their heads together, and after a few swift murmurings Islif turned and said briskly, “Right, we’ve decided. Doust, you’ll lead, with the glowstone out. I’ll be just behind you, sword at the ready, then Jhessail, then Semoor. Your job, Semoor, is to look behind us-all the time, mind, not once or twice and then forget about it. We’ll turn back from this barrier to the first cross-passage, take it, and at our first chance we turn back in the direction we were heading in this passage. Once we think we’ve gone far enough to outflank this barrier, we try to head back this way until we find the other side of this barrier, and search for Florin or Pennae.”

“Still with you,” Semoor murmured, his voice quiet and serious.

“Good. Now, if we don’t find them soon, we turn instead to seeking a way up, into the rooms of state, and try to find a high-ranking Purple Dragon who might believe us about the conspiracy. We can trust no war wizard except Vangey. Any questions? No? Right, let’s move!”

With Doust walking in the forefront with the glowstone, they turned their backs on the iron barrier, retraced their steps down the passage to the first cross-passage, finding it closer than they remembered, and turned along it.

Almost immediately, they saw a radiance in the distance, growing to sudden splendor as it rounded a corner and came out into the passage, then bobbing as it came rapidly toward them.

“Hide your glow,” Islif murmured in Doust’s ear, and then turned and hissed, “Over to the side, everyone, and right in behind me.”

The light came closer-a glowstone held by someone in a hurry. Hastening toward them came a frightened courtier, in a grand barrel-fronted jacket that looked a little torn and dusty. He saw them and hesitated in his anxious trot, stiffening for a moment, but then looked away and started to rush past.

Which was when Islif stepped away from the wall and took his arm, just above the elbow, in a grip of iron.

He let out a little squeak of fear, and thrust his free hand wildly into the front of his jacket. Islif let him draw the dagger she’d expected clear of the garment-and then deftly punched the point of his elbow with her free hand, and sent the dagger clanging away along the passage.

“Well met, courtier,” she said heartily. “Have you by chance seen a ranger named Florin? Or a lady in leathers, who goes by the name of Pennae? Or anyone at all down here, who shouldn’t be here?”

“Y-you,” the man stammered.

Islif shook him. The Knights heard his teeth rattle. “Anyone else? ”

“N-no.”

“Where’s the nearest way up into the Palace floor above us?” she said.

He gestured mutely, pointing with fervor somewhere diagonally through stone walls. Suspecting this meant along the passage and then turning the right corner to find stairs, Islif kept hold of the courtier’s arm and told him flatly, “Take us there. Now.”

“My… my dagger… my mother’ll kill me if I don’t come home with it…”

“And I’ll kill you right now if you try to go and get it,” Islif told him pleasantly. “Does that make your choice easier?”

He nodded, clapping a hand to his mouth and staring over it at her with wide, fearful eyes.

Then those eyes rolled up into his head and he fainted in her arms. Disgusted, Islif let him fall to the passage floor in a heap.