Swords of Eveningstar

Chapter 16

This court is like a slaughterhouse when royal tax collectors are seen approaching town: all abrupt arrivals, sudden departures, and a lot of sweating haste and spilled blood.

Arl Thandaster, Sage of Aglarond

Aglarond: A Wiser View published in the Year of the Shrike

T he war wizard spying ended as abruptly as if sliced off by a sharp knife.

Hissing in satisfaction, Horaundoon moved faster than darkness is banished by bright light, teleporting away from his inn room to A cavern he’d used a time or two before, spell-sealed and long forgotten in the Storm Horns. Some dead wizard’s lair that now served Horaundoon of the Zhentarim as a hide-hold and cache of magic.

He stepped forward blindly but confidently in the silent, dank darkness.

Two measured paces. He reached out.

His fingers found the stone coffer just where he’d left it, on the ledge. The glowstones still waited inside it, and as their cold light kindled in his hands, Horaundoon strode along the stone wall to place them on either side of the mirror he’d hung there six-no, seven, now-seasons ago.

Gazing at himself in the mirror, cold-eyed and confident, he opened another box on the ledge and drew out one of the dream-stones, that held images spell-stored in them.

Calling forth a particular image from it, Horaundoon set about shaping the hargaunt covering his face into a likeness he’d never assumed before.

It was the likeness he’d called out of the dreamstone to float in the air, life-sized and frozen.

The head of a man Horaundoon had slain with his own hands-and much satisfaction-years ago.

The real head was now shattered, decaying bone somewhere in the woods of Daggerdale, but when his magic had captured its appearance, it had been very much alive, and belonged to a noble of Cormyr, one Lorneth Crownsilver.

Ah, yes, Lorneth: uncle to Narantha Crownsilver, and ne’er-do-well rake.

“A gambler and a fool, who made himself a fool all over again when he dared to try to swindle this wizard of the Zhentarim,” Horaundoon murmured aloud. The hargaunt wriggled around his mouth to make his own lips more closely resemble the noble’s wider, thinner, perpetually smiling ones.

“Yes, that’s it,” he said, turning his head this way and that. “Lorneth Crownsilver, as ever was.” He gave the mirror a fiendish grin, then said softly to the hargaunt: “Worm time.”

There was a single bell-like tone of acknowledgment-and that part of the hargaunt that was masquerading as the back of his neck started to ripple and darken. He watched in the mirror as it opened a mouth to let something dark and glistening slide out into his raised and waiting hand.

“Yes,” Horaundoon breathed, gazing at the first of his mindworms. It was time, indeed.

He strode across the cavern to its rubble-strewn end and lifted a certain stone among the heaps of rock to reveal a stone bowl holding a spellbook he’d not consulted for years. It pages held a few vital words to add to his teleport incant, to bring him tracelessly through Tessaril’s wards without alerting her or any war wizard-or being tugged astray by the nearby chaos of her Hidden House.

He smiled as he cast the spell that would take him thither.

There were times when war wizard traitors were very useful things.

It was pursuing her, dark, wet, and terrible, wriggling and slithering down the bright white marble passages.

Closer and closer, no matter how fast she fled or how recklessly she hurled herself down staircases and across the dark, bottomless chasms between balconies. It was going to catch her, going to…

She felt icy fear as she fell to her knees, midway down another marble hall. Must get up before it Warm and wet, welling up inside her, red-black and triumphant, choking her…

“No!” Narantha shrieked, falling into ruby-edged darkness, falling…

“Nooooo!”

She was gasping, panting wide-eyed into the moonlit night, hearing the echo of her own scream rebound again and again in her head, blinking at what she could see of the unfamiliar bedchamber in the reaching fingers of moonlight. Where was — oh. Oh yes: Tessaril’s Tower, in Eveningstar, as an unwilling “guest.”

Then something moved, in the darkness beyond the moonlight, and came forward. Smiling.

The mindworm going into her had driven her into nightmare, of course, and an abrupt awakening-but she hadn’t screamed, making his carefully cast cloak of silence unnecessary. Thus far.

Horaundoon smiled and started his walk to the bed, keeping his strides slow, soft, and confident.

And now, we shall see.

Well-regarded mages of the Zhentarim necessarily spent more time working magic than acting.

Yet it was dark, the lass was young and used to paying attention only to herself, and a wayward Crownsilver could be expected to change a bit, over the years.

Putting on his best wry noble’s smile, Horaundoon stopped at the foot of the bed.

It was a smile she knew.

Narantha felt her jaw drop. Could it be? Truly? After all these years?

“Uncle Lorneth?”

His eyebrows rose. “You’re expecting someone? I can depart.”

“No! I-Uncle, where have you been? We’ve not heard from you in years! ”

“I’ve been rather busy. ’Twas a distinct pleasure for me to discover my business turning at last to kin, and someone I was fond of, at that. Someone young, beautiful, and brimming with promise. Well met, Lady Narantha Crownsilver.”

“Uncle! Call me Nantha, as you always did!”

“Not grown too proud for the names of your youth? Good! Nantha, how would you like to be free of these confinements-and at the same time taste your own adventures and serve the Crown of Cormyr?”

Narantha stared at him. “Yes! Yes! ”

“Then get out of that bed, put on good boots-and useful garb above them, trews or better leather breeches and a tunic, none of these silken gowns-and come with me. Quietly. ”

Her uncle turned his back and strolled away from the bed, making a deft, intricate gesture as he did so.

Narantha froze, her bare feet just about to touch the floor. “You work magic? Uncle, you never said…”

“You never asked. Certain family members are so deathly concerned about the respectability of the Crownsilvers that I kept my increasing mastery hidden. Which is the very thing that made me useful to the king. Don’t sit there all night, lass! Get some proper clothes on!”

Narantha moved hastily. “I-ah-sorry, Uncle. I-you serve the king?”

“Uncle Lorneth can still surprise, hey?”

Narantha was dressing in feverish haste, hopping awkwardly in the moonlight as she shrugged her most rugged tunic over her head and sought to put on breeches at the same time. “Tessaril will be furious! Won’t she come after us?”

“Tessaril is the king’s plaything no more. Even to squawk about your disappearance would harm her standing. I think you’ll find she tries to pretend you were never here at all, and concocts some story about the Swords murdering you on the road to get your jewels, and dressing up some lowcoin lass in your gowns before they got here-only to help her escape, to keep the imposture from being discovered, when she got news that your father was on the way here.”

“So he truly is coming hither,” Narantha breathed, buckling her belt. Her mouth tightened. “Tluining bitch.”

“Ready?” her uncle asked, turning to face her. Narantha tapped her dagger hilts to make sure they were in their sheaths where they should be, and nodded.

Lorneth smiled again, raised a hand-and blue-green fire blossomed in the air, a flickering line that curved purposefully into an upright whorl. With his other hand, in the grandly courteous manner employed by obsequious innkeepers, he waved for her to step into it.

Narantha didn’t hesitate for a moment.

The bed curtains parted, and her Azoun was there.

The Dragon Queen smiled sleepily up at him. “I was beginning to think you’d quite forsaken me.” She threw back the shimmerweave bedcloaks to reach up for him with long and shapely arms.

Azoun smiled. Shrugging his open nightrobe off his shoulders, he let her draw him down to her waiting warmth.

“Ah, Fee… Fee…” he murmured, settling into her familiar curves. “Never will I forget my queen. Passing time, I fear, does slip away from me unnoticed, when Vangerdahast-and Alaphondar, and a dozen scribes after him-come to talk to me, the scribes crowding in urgently when Vangey’s finally done, with their ‘sign this’ and ‘decree that-oh, but not in those words, Your Majesty, lest thus and so, far better to use these words I just happen to have penned for you.’ ”

“And talk to you,” Filfaeril murmured, stretching restlessly under him. “Talk… talk… and more talk.”

“Exactly,” Azoun said, before his mouth claimed hers.

When he surfaced for breath, a long time later, it was to add in satisfaction, “You do understand.”

“Always, my Azoun,” his queen said. “I understand you always.”

A gentle, steady breeze was sweeping down Starwater Gorge out of the Stonelands. In the moonlight, those perilous lands looked like so many frozen rolling waves breaking over jagged giants’ teeth.

Or so Florin fancied as he sat on the grassy height above the rock overhang, high up on the east side of the gorge, where his fellow exhausted Swords were sleeping. Someone had to keep watch, and the cold metal of the sword across his knees at least kept him from falling asleep.

He looked north again. Whoever had attacked them in the Haunted Halls was out here somewhere, and everyone knew outlaws-and crawling beasts, from trolls to dragons that could tear apart castle keeps with their talons-lurked in yon Stonelands. Such fabled perils were why the king had sent them all here: to hack and harry and be seen, to curb boldness and make fell things think Cormyr was alert and well defended against their creepings.

Not that the Swords of Eveningstar had made a glorious start of it.

And Florin Falconhand, the valiant hero of the Battle of Hunter’s Hollow? Even less.

Three of his companions had almost died, and Florin had done nothing to save them-and even less to keep them from blundering into danger in the first place.

He was no brave battle leader. He didn’t know how.

Oh, he could be fearless enough, but fearlessness gets folk killed. He could be decisive and forceful, too-when leading only himself.

Yet in yon Halls, dark and unfamiliar places where scores of men had died, he’d hemmed and hawed, tramping those rooms and passages unsure of where to go and even how best to array the Swords for battle. If it hadn’t been for Pennae-and how was it that she came to know all she did, about delving into dungeons and being ready for monster attacks and all? He must Florin stiffened. What was that?

Something moved in the night behind him. Something dark and wary, seeking to keep silent. Something creeping He sprang to his feet, took two swift steps to his right where the rock was, and in its lee spun around, sword flashing up, then lunged back around the rock, thrusting There was a little gasp, almost a shriek, and whoever it was fell back, whispering, “Florin?”

He sprang to see, blade held high and aside. A stride ahead, the land fell away into a little dell full of tall grass and bright moonlight, and a woman was lying in it, her boots right in front of him.

A moment later, he was crouched above her, beset with recognition-and astonishment.

“Narantha!”

The Lady Narantha Crownsilver gave him a crooked smile. “My hero,” she whispered, staring up at him with eyes that outshone the moonlight. “You are a great adventurer.”

Florin winced. “Nay, I’m very far from that. I’m-”

“Florin,” Narantha whispered. “Kiss me. Please.”

Florin looked down at her, then back over his shoulder to where the Swords slept unseen-but not unheard, thanks to the breeze that was now carrying faint snores to him. Then he sighed, carefully sheathed his sword, and leaned close to murmur, “Lady, I’m standing watch. I can’t be-”

Narantha smiled catlike, and suddenly thrust her arms wide, taking Florin’s hard-planted arm out from under him.

His face crashed down into rounded softness, smelling faintly of exquisite perfume, and he felt more than heard Narantha’s warm murmur: “Oh, yes, you can, lord of my love.”

Then he felt her hands, stroking his cheek and throat. “Lord Florin,” she whispered, “must I beg you? Please!” Her hands were at his buckles, now, tugging and Florin bent his head and tried to pray to Mielikki. He was still struggling to think of the right words when warm, hungry lips found his. And conquered him.

The man who was not Lorneth Crownsilver sat as still as stone in the shadowed lee of a moonlit pinnacle not all that far up Starwater Gorge from the tender tryst he was spell-seeing. He smiled much as the real Lorneth would have done.

Little Narantha was a natural, not that the ranger lad was all that unwilling-and so smitten with the moment was he, just now, that the second mindworm had flowed off the end of her tongue and into him without him noticing at all.

Horaundoon smiled up at the moon in quiet triumph. Deftly done, and a good night’s work. The first of many such nights to come, as she obeyed his bidding through the first mindworm coiled within her head, and so slipped more and more under his command.

Ah, with the right spells in his hands, a patient man could rule the world… one seduction at a time.

“Right, King Azoun?” he asked the unhearing moon gleefully.

Dawn had been bright, and the morning moreso. Now, within sight of highsun, the sun beat down as mercilessly as a moneylender’s smile.

Yet it seemed gentle indeed compared to the icily sneering grimace of a grin Lord Maniol Crownsilver gave to the guards he was spattering mud all over as he reined in his mount in front of Tessaril’s Tower.

“Where’s Tessaril?” he barked at them, throwing his reins in the face of the man who stepped to the head of his mount.

“Crave you an audience?” came a level question in answer. Lord Crownsilver swung himself down with a grunt, not deigning to reply. He had swords enough in livery with him to deal with a few tower guards-and if his men had remembered his orders, several hand dartbows would be aimed at each of these helmheads right now.

Lurching from the stiffness of more time spent in the saddle than he was used to these days, he mounted the porch steps. Two Purple Dragons and two knights of the realm barred his way, but he neither slowed nor hesitated-and they drew smoothly aside moments before his striding would have brought him crashing into them.

“You are expected, Lord Crownsilver. Go right up,” one said, as the doors magically opened themselves, taking Maniol’s wordless grunt of reply with him as he stamped to the stairs.

Behind him, he heard his senior guards coldly insisting that they accompanied him everywhere-and gasps as something was revealed that stopped their blustering in mid-word. Not caring whether they slaughtered the tower guards in the street or were all turned to frogs by some war wizard spell or other, he ascended, finding the landing populated with highknights.

“Where’s Tessaril?” he growled at them. They gave him identical looks of disdain and silently lifted their hands to indicate the bower at the far end of the floor.

Maniol passed them without another word or glance, fixing his eyes on the lone woman in high-booted black leathers who sat awaiting him.

“Where’s my daughter?” he barked at her.

“Gone.” Her voice was calm.

“ What? Woman, if you’re lying to me-”

“I can well believe women would oft have cause to lie to you, Lord Crownsilver,” Tessaril Winter said, “if your courtesies are customarily so lacking. The Lady Narantha Crownsilver is no longer within these walls-but the Crown has neither jailed nor hidden her.”

She lifted a hand to point. “She slipped out of a locked and guarded bedchamber-that second door behind you, as it happens-last night. And fled, I know not where. By her own designs.”

“And you let her go? With all your spells and guards and-and-”

“Lord, I am the Lady Lord of Eveningstar, not a jailer. Nor yet a Wizard of War, empowered to use magic at will on a loyal subject of the realm who stands accused of no crime, and is not only noble but enjoys royal favor-”

“ Yes! That’s it! Azoun wants to bed her! You’ve spirited her away-”

“Maniol, guard your tongue. Ranting and raging are one thing; speaking treason quite another.”

“You dare — ?” Maniol strode forward, fists clenched, to loom over Tessaril. “You dare accuse me of treason, and school me what to say and not to say? D’you know who I am, wench?”

Blazing eyes glared down into calm and steady ones.

“Yes, Lord Crownsilver, I do: an unpleasant boor of a man who is at this moment understandably lost in rage-but now demonstrating his lack of nobility. Nobles control themselves, Maniol. Nobles make masks of their faces, and guard their tongues with great care, and do the right thing. For the good of the realm.”

“You jumped-up commoner! You trollop! Preening over an empty title won by letting the man who calls himself ‘king’ plow you thrice a tenday! How dare you lecture me, a Crownsilver born, on what it is, and what it is not, to be ‘noble’! Before all the gods, this bursts all bounds! I-”

“-go on bursting them, Maniol Crownsilver, with every word you spit. Your phrase ‘man who calls himself king’ is clear treason, and I’ll not hear more words like it! Belittle me if it pleases you, berate my guardianship-for you do so justly, and I am ashamed and will answer to the king for it-but spare us all unguarded words that can yet cost you your head!”

She rose to face him, nose to nose, and hissed, “I’m trying to keep you from going too far, idiot! Speak no more treason!”

Maniol sneered, his angry breath hot on her face. “Or you’ll-what?”

“Or I’ll tear off your codpiece with all that’s in it, and jam it into your yapping mouth,” Tessaril told him, letting him see the utter lack of fear in her eyes, “before breaking all of your fingers, dressing you in women’s weeds, and sending you back home to your wife tied to a succession of peddlers’ mules, with a banner knotted to you that tells the world: ‘This fool spoke treason in the hearing of Tessaril Winter.’ ”

She shrugged. “Or I could just let slip my leash on yon highknights and let them cut out your tongue, flog you from here clear across the realm to your keep, and behead you there before all your household, as the good old law still holds that nobles deemed traitors be treated.”

His eyes burned into hers. He was breathing heavily, eyes bright with rage and desperation: the dawning fear that he had said too much and would soon face such fates.

“Or I could regard you as an angry father, driven to imprudent speech by love and care for his daughter, who has served the realm well for years, and just needs rest, a good feast, and time to find some calm,” Tessaril added. “So as to consider what we can best do for Lady Narantha Crownsilver. Wherever she may be.”

Maniol Crownsilver’s gusty sigh became a growl, his eyes glittering. “It’s those cursed Swords, blast and hrast them!” he burst out.

Tessaril shook her head. “No. We’re keeping them under quite close watch.”

“ ‘We’?”

Tessaril pointed, and Lord Crownsilver swung around. No less a war wizard than Laspeera Naerinth stood behind him, in a corner he was certain had been empty a few moments before. She gave him an expressionless nod-over the two wands in her hands that were aimed right at him.

“We,” Tessaril repeated. “Both of us were concerned that Lord Maniol Crownsilver, so valuable and respected a lord of the realm, might in a moment of raging do something foolish, like speak treason or attack a king’s lord.”

Maniol felt her hand-cool and smooth-clasp his. He turned back to her, tugging free of her grasp. She was standing just as close to him as before, their chests almost touching.

“Hear me now, Lord Crownsilver,” Tessaril said. “Narantha’s not with those adventurers-for which you should be very thankful-and they’ve made no attempt to contact her or come here.”

“ I’ll contact them! Where are they?”

“No, Lord Crownsilver,” Tessaril told him, “you’ll not. You’ll take your house blades — all of them, leaving not a one behind ‘by mistake’-and turn around and go home. If your daughter’s not found by highsun on the morrow, the war wizards will start searching for her, all across the realm. I’ll not have armed bands roving Eveningstar, looking for trouble.”

“I’ll not be looking for trouble,” Maniol Crownsilver snarled, “I’ll be looking for adventurers!”

She gave him a bright smile. “Oh? Are they not the same thing?”

His eyes changed, and his dark face of fury slipped. It twisted momentarily into a grudging grin, ere he whirled, spitting oaths, and stormed out.