Swords of Eveningstar

"No,” Horaundoon murmured, “I dare not use a mind-link now. Not when one of these fools is so likely to get slain while our minds are touching.” He sat back with a sigh to watch what unfolded in the scrying orb.

If the gods smiled, he might not lose all of his tools this day.

If.

The orb glowed brighter, rising. In its depths, the Zhentarim saw Florin snap, “Jhess, behind me! Pennae, behind Islif! If they throw those spears-”

A spear sailed through the air, and his sword smashed it up and aside. Another flew, as the Dragons started striding forward.

“The wands!” Jhessail cried, reaching around Florin to aim the one she held. “Use them- now! ”

More spears flew, Swords chanted strange words-and fire, lightning, ice, and dark tentacled shadows exploded outward. The gate’s silent whirling built into a roar that towered over everything.

The air itself seemed to boil, Purple Dragons were flung in all directions like rag dolls, and Semoor screamed as his wand exploded, taking most of his hand with it. Doust’s wand started to spit sparks and glow, and he flung it away and ducked, reaching out an arm to take Semoor to the ground with him.

The wand exploded against the nearest warehouse wall with a fury that sent everyone flying, timbers creaking and groaning, and grain and dust whirling up into a blinding cloud.

Horaundoon peered vainly at the dark roilings for a time, then shrugged. He could, after all, trace Florin at any time through the mindworm.

If, that is, the noble foolhead of a forester was still alive.

In a dark, chill chamber far underground, a lich turned in surprise as its crystal ball glowed into sudden life. How Something that glowed palely darted past its moldering workbench, darting among grimoires that had been old when the lich yet lived, and raced up into the lich’s bony face before it could lift one withered hand.

The lich stood abruptly, overturning its highbacked chair, and flung out its arms wildly, bony limbs flopping and clashing together like the arms of a doll shaken hard by an angry child. It shuddered, bending over sharply and then arching back, and hastened across the chamber, babbling half-words that spilled over each other, sometimes rising into shouts. Parts of its body grew fur, or scales, or bulging muscles, and lost them again just as swiftly.

Then it shook itself all over, as a moose reaching a riverbank shakes off water, and stood still, an almost-skeletal lich once more.

The crystal ball, its aging cloth cover fallen away, showed a tumbling cloud of dust and debris. The lich waved a hand, and the cloud seemed to move, showing dark heaps-bodies-and a brightness with ragged edges. A hole in a wall that folk were stumbling through.

Folk who’d have been strangers to the lich, but whom Old Ghost, now master of what had been the lich, knew. He watched the one called Semoor swig a vial as he ran, fling it away, and hold out a ruined hand to watch it heal.

“Swords of Eveningstar,” he told the darkness, his newly stolen jaw creaking. “You shall prove useful to me. Live a time longer, until I reach for you.”

Then his jaw crumbled-and fell off.

The sound of a woman crying was sufficiently rare in the Royal Palace in Suzail that it made Vangerdahast turn his head from talking to Laspeera outside the tall doors of the Soaring Dragon Room, and look.

Two impassive war wizards were leading a weeping Lady Narantha Crownsilver down Longwatch Hall toward Vangerdahast.

The two highest-ranking Wizards of War watched her pass in silence. In the wake of that passing, Vangerdahast told Laspeera rather grimly, “I wish I had time to attend to this one myself, now, but…”

Laspeera gave him a look. “I’m sure you do,” she murmured teasingly. “I’m sure you do.”

“Down here!” Pennae hissed, pointing-and disappeared.

The Swords ducked after her, around a heap of rotting crates in the reeking alley and down a flight of worn steps that seemed carpeted in shrilly squeaking rats, into-a stone-lined, refuse-strewn room that Pennae had already crossed, to beckon them from a dark doorway beyond.

“Cellars,” she called, low-voiced. “Come on! ”

They sprinted across the room, through another, and were halfway across a third room when a cold light burst in the empty air in front of them. Out of it, almost touching Pennae as she fought to halt without falling, stepped a tall, dead-looking man who seemed to be holding his jaw on as tiny blue bolts of lightning encircled it. He was tall, bald, and strong-featured, and wore dark robes that left his pale, dead-white chest bare. He stank of death and mildew.

“Hold, Swords of Eveningstar!” he said hollowly, his half-healed jaw drooping. “I-”

Pennae launched herself from the floor into him, daggers glinting in both hands.

Before either of those metal fangs could hit home, an unseen magic had hurled her away. Her outflung body smashed Doust and Semoor to the floor.

“Hold, I say!” the lich snapped, raising his hands.

Florin and Islif were already moving. Hurling themselves against unseen magic that made them grimace with the effort of fighting their ways forward, they thrust their swords… right through the lich.

Its mouth gaped in pain, but no scream came forth. Instead, a teardrop of fell glow shot out of that withered maw, flying wraith-stuff that swooped, darted, and circled around the Swords-Doust missing it with a twisting swing of his mace from where he lay-as it grew.

The lich stood unmoving until Islif’s mighty slash sent it toppling to the floor, where it lay still. The flying thing, however, ducked under Florin’s fierce attack, shooting under his arms as he swung and swung again, only to soar up above them all long enough for Jhessail to set herself in a stance and raise her hands to lash it with a spell.

They could see through its glow a bearded, severe-browed human male head trailing away into a tail like a falling star. It glared at them, swerved suddenly to avoid Islif’s reaching blade, then plunged down at Jhessail.

Who gabbled her spell desperately, and never knew if she’d cast the magic properly or not as the racing head plunged into her.

She gasped. There was no crashing impact, but merely a chill that stabbed up past her heart into her head, and left her breathlessly staring at inward darkness in something of a daze.

Behind her, Semoor shouted in alarm more than pain, and stiffened. The head tore right through him as it had through Jhessail-and as she watched, it did the same to Doust.

The wizard who answered to the name Amanthan raised his head sharply, as if sniffing the air. He’d been hearing the boots of running Dragons, short horncalls, and shouted orders, this last little while, over the wall that kept all Arabel out of his garden, but this-this was something more.

Strong magic. Strange magic. Mother Mystra, what now?

In this city of folk who could smell as well as see, the lich was best abandoned anyhail. It had served his needs, and a living body would make a better host for several reasons.

Old Ghost soared down the alley, well pleased. He’d passed through all of the Swords, and worked two things on each of them in doing so: left their minds open to his return, no matter what shieldings might then exist, and-until that future visit-enabled them to perceive any nearby portal they gazed upon as a glowing “door.”

A bearded head of translucent radiance, touches of white hair at his temples but with dark and scowling brows above storm-gray eyes, Old Ghost raced on, turning onto one street then another. He turned a corner where Lionar Dauntless was running along, shouting orders to the Dragons trotting behind him-and darted into that shouting mouth.

The lionar’s eyes glowed eerily, just for a moment. Then Dauntless grew a crooked smile and ran on.

“This way!” Pennae panted, sprinting down another street. The far end of the cellars had been full of Purple Dragons searching for wayward Swords of Eveningstar. The Swords had been forced to flee up old and sagging stairs and through a bakeshop full of fat, shrieking cooks, out into streets where more Dragons were closing in from all sides. Arabel was roused against them.

“Shouldn’t we?” Doust gasped, stumbling after her, “Be trying to get to a city gate, to get out?”

“No,” Pennae shouted back. “Those three sharp hornblasts, same note in a row? That was them telling each other, gate by gate, that all was secured. There’ll be no getting out that way!”

“Back to the wizard’s underground lair?” Semoor suggested slyly.

“Go tluin yourself,” Pennae told him crisply. “With a shovel.”

Another horncall rang out, close at hand, and she erupted in swiftly hissed curses as she looked up at the tall, unbroken stone wall of a mansion compound beside her, a flood of invective that ended, “Mercy of Mask, if I but had one of those horns!”

“False calls?” Florin panted.

She nodded as they pelted around a corner-then pointed at a high-heaped cart groaning slowly along the street toward them. “Stop that one for us! Ask the driver if he knows Oddjack and can tell us where to find him!”

Florin frowned at her, but sheathed his sword and flung up his hands, stepping into the path of the slow cart. “Hoy!”

Running the length of the cart, Pennae didn’t wait for the puzzled drover to haul on his reins. “Follow me,” she hissed, and swarmed up the back of the lashed sacks of the cart’s load, where the man couldn’t possibly see her. From the height of that load she sprang over the frowning stone mansion wall-and through a mansion window beyond, with a horrific tinkling crash.

Jhessail stared up at that gaping window, her mouth open-then grinned, clawed her way up the sacks of the slowing, creaking cart beside a puffing Doust and Semoor, and plunged through the window in turn.

She found herself in a grand room of tapestries and pleated, neatly arranged draperies, its floor covered with fur rugs and a litter of broken glass.

Pennae stood in the doorway, listening to distant, fading shrieks. “The wealthy widow and all her maids, fleeing to the other side of doors they can slam and lock,” she said with a wry smile. “Are the others coming?”

Doust came through the window, caught his heels on a rug, and sat down with a crash, skidding halfway across the chamber-which was fortunate, given that Semoor then landed like a full grainsack on the floor where Doust had just been.

“Gods above, our very own jesters,” Islif observed, her boots slamming down on either side of Wolftooth’s cringing body. She bent, plucked him up-more like a grainsack than ever-and sprang out of the way.

It was, however, a few breaths more before Florin came in over the sill to trample the same spot of floor. “Gods above, can yon drover curse!” he said admiringly. “So, whose grand house is this? Not a Dragon commander’s, I hope?”

“Your sense of humor is even more twisted than mine,” Pennae told him. “No, this belongs to a merchant’s widow I robbed a tenday back. No place to hide here, even if they weren’t all shrieking like banshees. I’m heading for the next mansion over; a reclusive wizard lives there.”

“A wizard. Splendid, ” Islif said cuttingly. “Oh, joy, even!”

“Your better alternative?” Pennae snapped. “No? Then come!”

And she led them on another run, this one down sweeping staircases and through grand rooms dripping with opulence, heading west. Dragon horncalls sounded again outside, close by, and Pennae answered them with curses as she plunged through a door, out into a garden of little fishponds, moss-covered modest mermaid statues, and artfully pruned shrubberies.

The Swords pelted after her, out of the gardens, past a stables where a startled horse awakened and tossed its head, and up an ivy-cloaked wall that had trees beyond it. As the last Sword-Semoor-scaled it, armored men burst around the corner of the mansion they’d just left, shouted, and started sprinting through the garden. There were splashes as the foremost runners precipitously explored the fishponds. Twisting silverfin flew into the air.

Grinning, Semoor turned away, clawed his way up the last torn ivy, and crested the wall, slipping once-which turned out to be a good thing.

The lightning bolt that greeted him raced past his shoulder, lifting every hair on that side of his body, and clawed harmlessly at the sky.

In the light of the scrying orb Horaundoon smiled and sat back, ignoring the hargaunt’s squirmings. This was becoming a superb show. Amanthan had once been an apprentice of the Blackstaff, hadn’t he?

“Get out of here!” The tall young mage was so angry he was trembling. “I’m not afraid of kidnappers and thieves! I’ll-”

“Live longer if you calm down and hold your tongue,” Pennae said, drawing a wand from her belt and aiming it at him.

Behind her, the rest of the Swords all plucked out various rods, wands, and scepters they’d plundered from Whisper’s hoard, and leveled them at the wizard. He need not know they hadn’t the faintest wisp of a notion what the items did, or even if they dared to find out.

Their eyes were all fixed on his-except for the young lass with flame-red hair, who seemed to be peering with great interest across his gardens.

Amanthan swallowed, looking again along the line of wands. The lass in leathers, at the fore, was now hefting something more than the wand she’d trained on him: she’d produced a small metal sphere from somewhere, and was juggling it in the palm of her other hand. Her eyes were cool and uncaring.

Amanthan swallowed again. “W-what do you want?” he stammered.

“To pass into your house in peace,” the tall ranger said, “and hide there. We-”

Jhessail put a quelling hand on Florin’s arm and pointed across the garden, to where she could see a blue glow between two trees. “Where does yon portal go?”

The wizard blinked. “Waterdeep.”

“Good. Let us pass unhindered through it, and say nothing of where we went. Do this, and I’ll toss this — ” She shook the scepter in her hand. “-to your feet as we depart. To be yours.”

Amanthan blinked at her again, then shrugged. “Accepted.”

The adventurers flowed past him like a hurrying wave, wands pointing at him all the time. The flame-haired lass lingered to do as she’d promised, bending to send her scepter skittering to Amanthan’s feet.

He stared at it, then darted swiftly to one side, eyeing the portal warily.

Nothing came through it at him, as he drew three long, deep breaths in succession. Finally he sighed, took up the scepter gingerly-and whirled around as he heard the rustling of ivy tearing free of stone.

An armored flood of Purple Dragons poured over his wall.

Amanthan strode forward, finding he did not have to feign anger. “And just what,” he snapped, “is the meaning of this?”

The Dragons landed with heavy thuds, panting and staggering. One of them, a lionar by his badge, dodged through the dozen or so who were busy drawing their swords, and growled, “Fugitives from justice-six of them-came over this wall moments ago. Where did they go?”

Amanthan smiled thinly. “Fugitives? Really? What sort of fugitives?”

“Lord sir,” the Purple Dragon said icily, “three women and three men, attired for battle. You can hardly have failed to see them. ’Tis some good way from your house to where you stand, here, and we were right on their heels.”

“Lionar,” the wizard replied, in a voice every whit as cold, “I suffer no uninvited guests to trample my flowers-and live.” He waved the scepter meaningfully. “Do I make myself quite clear?”

Some of the Dragons went pale. Behind them, the tops of ladders and many helmed heads appeared all along the wall, ropes were flung down, and a stouter lionar came puffing down one of them.

“Ah,” Amanthan said pleasantly, “more for my scepter. Well, it has been some time since it was fed properly…”

A few soldiers ducked away, heading for the wall or at least a place behind their fellows, but Lionar Dauntless, hastening from the bottom of his rope, doffed his gauntlets and strode forward, extending his hand to the mage.

“Pray accept my apologies, lord sir. Amanthan of Waterdeep, is it not? I tender the apologies and beseechments of Lord Thomdor, Warden of the Eastern Marches, and Myrmeen Lhal, Lady Lord of Arabel. We hound six miscreants upon their orders, and they will stand coin for any damage we’ve done. I was about to ask if we might search your grounds, here, but if you’ve seen these six…?”

Amanthan reached for the proffered hand. “I fear your time would be wasted: the six you seek are… no more. I was under attack-they thrust weapons at me-and defended myself with my scepter, blasting them utterly to dust, as you can see. Or rather, not see.”

Their hands met, and the wizard stiffened as if someone had struck him.

“Ah,” Dauntless replied, turning his head to look all around. “Well. Ah, I suppose… that’s that.”

Swordcaptain Nelvorr, standing near, noticed a wisp of something like mist drift from the lionar’s mouth to Amanthan’s.

The wizard turned his head to look at Nelvorr, and the swordcaptain quickly looked away. And shivered.

“So, my king, this is about much more than tax-cheating and slavery.”

Vangerdahast whirled around dramatically, robes swirling. “It concerns, once again, an eventual attack on your person; yet another attempt to seize the Dragon Throne.”

Six faces gazed at him. Unhappily.

Azoun sat with his queen beside him, the sage Alaphondar in a lower seat nearby. A highknight stood guard behind each of them.

There was no one else in the Soaring Dragon Room but Lord Vangerdahast-until he turned and made the gesture that caused the life-sized images of two additional men to appear in the air beside him.

“It grieves me to report this, Majesty,” the royal magician said, waving his hand at the image, “but here’s the proof: Lord Gallusk meeting with the exiled ‘Lord’ Sorn Merendil. Note the room around them.”

“The Swandolphin, in Marsember,” Queen Filfaeril murmured, causing Azoun to blink at her in surprise. “Minus its usual dancing whores.”

The king blinked again, as Alaphondar and Vangerdahast both glanced away to avoid showing their amusement. Safely behind the royals, two of the highknights grinned broadly.

“So the House of Gallusk,” Azoun said, “are providing slaves to be trained into a rebel army?”

“No, Majesty. Lord Anamander Gallusk-we don’t believe his kin know about any of this-has gangs who snatch peddlers, pilgrims, shepherds and hands from upcountry steadings, caravan-folk, and sailors they overcome with free drink in dockside taverns, and supply them as slaves to Rorth Torlgarth.”

“Who is-?”

“A Sembian shipper who owns a sizable-and fast-growing-fleet of fast caravels. Torlgarth sells the slaves elsewhere about the Inner Sea, and in return recruits mercenaries and sends them to the Gallusk lands near the Sembian border, nigh Daerlun. Torlgarth’s coins pay them for the season; in this manner, Gallusk’s building a private army. We believe Merendil, here, is giving him both gold and orders, and is the brain and war-gauntlet behind this.”

“And thus far, you’ve failed to arrange an ‘accident’ to befall Merendil-even when he leaves Sembia or Westgate to defy his exile, and slips back onto our soil?”

“Merendil has his own backers: three Red Wizards, led by one known as Klaelan, whose Art, I must confess, outstrips my own.” Vangerdahast lifted a hand to indicate the floating semblance of Lord Gallusk.

“Anamander Gallusk, however, lies within our grasp even now. He’s here in the city, and I can have him seized forthwith. I fear I must recommend his arrest and execution. Better one man’s neck than an army on the march and hundreds-perhaps thousands-slain. More, if others in Sembia and elsewhere see a chance to strike at us.”

The king sighed reluctantly. “Every killing makes the people hate me more, and robs the realm of some measure-however fell-of drive, wits, and backbone.” He turned to look at the highknights behind him. “Do it.”

“Laspeera will meet with you,” Vangerdahast added, “for you to choose which Wizards of War accompany you.”

The highknights nodded curtly. “This will be no pleasure,” the eldest one said. “Lord Gallusk trained and sponsored me.”

“I know,” Vangerdahast replied. “I have always known.”

“What of the Arcrown?” Alapahondar asked. “I’ve heard folk in Daerlun are trading rumors that Gallusk has it, has discovered how to use it to pry into any man’s thoughts and even, some say, has begun to winnow out all in the land who dislike him or bear him grudges. If he defends himself with it-”

“He’ll be wielding a fantasy.” Vangerdahast’s smile was a wry, twisted thing. “There is no Arcrown, any more. The Blackstaff, Khelben Arunsun, came to hold it, and some years ago offered it up to Divine Mystra. She Herself destroyed it, as he watched, as an affront to magecraft everywhere.”

Alaphondar’s mouth dropped open. “But-but-all the rumors, your wizards scouring the realm…”

Vangerdahast studied his fingernails. “Falsehoods. Uttered by me, to shake the Wizards of War out of the complacency they are all too wont to sink into, and make them-to say nothing of the general populace-alert for treachery and unusual doings from end to end of the realm. I’ll let them search for some time yet.”

Filfaeril was smiling, but her husband seemed less than amused.

“Folk have died over this, Vangey! Confidence in the safety of the realm and the competence of the Dragon Throne has been assailed. And won’t Holy Mystra have something pointed to say to you?”

“Words and deeds that enhance the real or apparent power of magic, and the regard all have for it, are encouraged by the Lady of Mysteries,” Vangerdahast replied smoothly. “Their accuracy is beside the point. As for matters strictly Cormyrean, dangers to the realm are increasing. Wherefore I have made its citizens more wary and so stronger in their readiness to deal with any foe.” And with those words, he bowed, turned, and departed, striding out of the Soaring Dragon Room in a swirling of robes.

“I noticed,” Filfaeril observed, “our good Royal Magician failed to precisely answer your question, but rather offered Mystran doctrine.”

“I noticed that too,” Azoun agreed. “How many other direct questions does he evade these days, I wonder?”

The Swords of Eveningstar looked around-and blinked.

They stood in the midst of a noisy, crowded city, assailed by many stinks, with a mountain rising like a great wall ahead-and a scarcely less impressive fortress right in front of them, the cobbles under their boots less than a stride away from the stone steps that ascended to its closed front doors.

The curving stone wall of the tower looming above the Swords overhung the landing at the top of the steps, forming a porch of sorts-wherein a young woman in robes was rising from a chair and frowning down at them. She wore leather bracers, from each of which wands projected past her palms, held ready to be grasped in an instant.

“You stand before Blackstaff Tower,” she announced formally, then added curiously, “I don’t recall seeing any of you before. Were you apprentices of the master?”

“Yes,” Jhessail lied boldly. “Please take us to him.”

The young woman looked them over slowly, a slight frown on her face, and nodded. “Ascend and enter-but be aware that whoever’s scrying you will see nothing once you pass these doors. If you desire to communicate anything to them, do so now.”

“Scrying? We’re being watched?” Semoor snapped.

As the woman started to nod, Jhessail spread her hands with a flourish. “ ’Tis worse than I’d thought,” she whispered melodramatically. “Hurry!”

The Swords hastened up the steps. As the doorguard-apprentice stepped smoothly back out of reach, wands ready in both hands, the doors opened by themselves.

Boldly, Jhessail and Pennae together stepped into waiting darkness.