Swords of Eveningstar

Horaundoon of the Zhentarim cursed.

As the Swords entered Blackstaff Tower, his scrying was blocked. Its dark doors seemingly shut out everything.

He plucked a wand from a drawer, leaned over the scrying orb, and whispered the spell that would steal power from it-and fed the surge of magic to his scrying.

Blackstaff Tower remained a dark and solid wall to his scrutiny-but the doorguard’s eyes narrowed.

Frowning, she sketched a circle in the air with her forefinger, raising one of her wands into it.

Hurriedly Horaundoon passed a hand over his orb, and departed the chamber that held it.

The explosion at his heels flung him across a passage, made the very floors and ceilings sway and shudder, and left him coughing in dust and clutching his head, his ears ringing from its roar.

He regained his feet and strode along the hall, hissing curses.

Only to stop, stunned anew. Reeling, he fell to his knees, clawing at his head this time and making the hargaunt chime in furious discordance.

It felt as if someone had just reached a fist into his head and torn something out. The mindworm link was simply-gone.

The Swords blinked again. They could see nothing inside Blackstaff Tower but impenetrable darkness, with a faintly glowing flagstone path running away into it.

Running a longer way, it seemed, than it should have been able to stretch, given the size of the tower… or at least, the size the tower had seemed on the outside.

Pennae held up her glowstone. Its faint radiance was strong enough to show her itself-just-but shone nothing on the gloom all around them.

They stood tense, a darker menace settling on the backs of their necks: a strong, constant feeling of being watched.

“Naed,” Pennae whispered. “Jhess, lead on.”

“Me?”

“ ’Twas your idea, lass, this marching right into the tower of the Blackstaff himself.”

“But-”

“ I’ll lead,” Florin said, stepping around them. “Keep your feet on the path, and don’t reach out into the dark.”

They watched him walk away from them. After only a few strides, he vanished, becoming part of the great darkness. All they could see of him were moving occlusions of the flagstones.

“Come,” Islif ordered the others, setting off after Florin. “Holy men, don’t go casting any spells.”

They all walked the path, and soon enough came to Florin, standing on a small cluster of glowing flagstones. In front of him, the path ended, and steps climbed on, each one floating alone in an apparent void.

Frowning, Pennae climbed the lowest step and cautiously reached out to either side-only to draw back her hands. “Cold, hard stone,” she murmured, “but I can’t see it.” She ran her hand over the hard nothingness to her right, seeing how far it extended-and then jerked her hand back with a hiss. Something small and unseen had bitten her, warningly.

“What is it?” Florin asked.

Pennae shook her head. “Just climb,” she said, “and keep your hands in close.”

They climbed.

The stair ended in darkness: a level, smooth stair stretching away they knew not how far. Cautiously Pennae advanced, tapping with her toes to make sure solid stone awaited her next step. “Keep still,” she snapped over her shoulder. “ Don’t go wandering.”

She took another two cautious steps-and suddenly, silently, without any fuss at all, vivid brightness sprang into being around her knees.

She was standing knee-deep in emerald green, dun brown, dark blue, and white-flecked gray: a glowing, incredibly lifelike map of Faerun floating in the room all around her. It seemed as if she were a striding colossus, standing at the heart of… the High Forest, with Waterdeep just here and Cormyr over there, Suzail a tiny glittering on its coast, and Arabel…

“Gods above us,” Florin murmured in wonder. All of the Swords were gawking at the splendor around them, walking with slow caution yet disturbing nothing with their movements.

“So, you are-?”

The voice was old, dry, calm, and male. It seemed to come from all around them.

They looked about uncertainly, still seeing only darkness where there should be walls and ceiling.

Florin cleared his throat. “I am Florin Falconhand, unseen sir, an-”

“I know who you are, all of you. I should have spoken more precisely; what have you become, you six? A destructive whirlwind that at least knows what it destroys, as it blunders across Faerun? Or-wonder of wonders-a wind of destruction that begins to care about what it shatters?”

The Swords of Eveningstar looked at each other.

The voice spoke again. “Perhaps that’s too much to hope, yet. Well, then: let me at least aim you, if you’re the sort of weapon biddable to being aimed. How would you like to be wealthy lordlets and ladies of a beautiful backwoods dale, with a castle to call your own?”

Pennae drew in a deep breath. Here’s where we get slain. “What’s the catch?”

There was a chuckle, and the map faded around them-light stealing into the room to replace it, showing them no walls nor ceiling, but a faint, featureless glow.

Standing in it was a stout, burly shouldered man, muscled and vigorous, whose robes were as black as the staff in his hand. His bristling brows and unruly hair were black, his close-cropped beard was black but with a white tuft down its center, and the face above his raven-dark mustache was craggy and stern.

“Blackstaff am I,” he said. “Welcome to Blackstaff Tower, Swords of Eveningstar. I’ve heard good things of you.”

“Really?” Islif asked, startled into speech. “Who the Nine Hells from?”

Khelben laughed-a dry, rusty sound, as if mirth seldom burst from this particular wizard. “Surprising sources,” was all he said, when his laughter ended.

Florin eyed him, waiting for him to say more.

Khelben merely met the forester’s gaze and smiled.

Silence fell and stretched.

And stretched.

Finally Semoor sighed and said, “So tell us more of this lordlets and ladies offer… and as Pennae asked, the downside to it. We know full well: there always is one.”

Khelben nodded-and there was suddenly a pendant floating in the air in front of Florin’s nose.

An oddly twisted thing, hanging from a chain that floated in the air as if around a phantom neck.

“Behold the Pendant of Ashaba.”

The Swords gazed at it in silence.

“The lordship of Shadowdale,” the Blackstaff added. “Yours, if you’ll take it. Meaningless, if you go not to Shadowdale, to the Twisted Tower of Ashaba that stands empty, and assert it. One of you can be Lord of Shadowdale-before the gods, one of the prettiest places I’ve ever laid eyes on, verdant farms walled in by a great greenwood, on the main trade road between the Moonsea and Cormyr. Your fortunes are made, if you but take it.”

His words ended, and silence returned.

“I mean no disrespect, great Blackstaff, but I’m still waiting to hear the catch,” Pennae said.

Khelben arched an imperious eyebrow. “Life,” he replied, “is the catch. Life unfolding has a way of tangling and tripping up the best schemes… the brightest dreams. The gods play with us all-and I am no god, to have any skill at such games. So expect many catches, but be the bold adventurers you’ve been thus far, and they will fall before you.”

The pendant glittered.

“Yon bauble,” the Blackstaff added, “bears only magics that preserve it from time. It does no ill to him who touches it. Florin, will you take it?”

Florin shook his head. “I am a ranger. I want to walk the forests and be free, not sit on a stone throne. I need to feel the wind, see dawns and dusks standing under an open sky. I’d be happy enough to ride hither and yon, bearing Shadowdale’s banner. Yet, Lord Wizard, my fellow Swords are all worthy folk. All of them would probably make good Lords of Shadowdale.”

“The throne holds only one backside at a time,” Khelben said dryly. “Choose among yourselves, then.” All around him, the light started to fade.

Hesitantly the Swords eyed each other then bent their heads together.

“He can slay us just like that, ” Pennae whispered. “I’m thinking taking this lordship is the only way we’ll leave this place alive.”

“Agreed,” Semoor hissed sourly. “So: who gets to be Lord High And Mighty?”

“Why not Islif?” Jhessail whispered. “Must it be a ‘Lord’?”

“No,” Islif said savagely, “I’ll not take it. I might make a good tyrant, but I’d be a bad lord-and I’d hate myself so fiercely as to welcome death, even as I lorded it. I will not do this.”

“Pennae?” Jhessail asked.

The thief grinned. “I’m too restless, and much too corrupt.” She poked Doust in the chest. “How about you? Feeling lucky?”

Doust groaned, and Florin nodded. “The best lord is a reluctant lord.”

“Yes,” Pennae agreed. “Well?”

“He’s got my vote,” Semoor said.

“And mine,” Jhessail added.

“Hold,” Islif said. “Doust, how do you feel?”

The novice of Tymora shook his head, sighed, and said, “Well, if none of you want it, I’ll do it, but don’t blame me if-”

“We won’t,” Islif said, whirling him around by the shoulders and calling, “Lord Arunsun? We have our lord.”

She shoved Doust a few unwilling steps forward.

The Lord Mage of Waterdeep looked amused. “Eager?”

Doust sighed. “Lord, I am-we are all-less than easy about this. We hold a charter from Cormyr, and some promises yet unfulfilled. We are nothing better than outlaws if we break our word.”

Then he flinched, startled, as the pendant vanished from where it floated in the air-and reappeared, solid and heavy, in his hands.

The Blackstaff smiled. “I begin to think you are that wonder of wonders. Your coming was not unexpected-though you found your own way here and were not herded; I daresay Arabel is being turned upside down for traces of you right now. How’s young Amanthan getting on, anyhail? He was one of my more promising app-but let us speak of him later; suffice it to say that your arrival was anticipated. Wherefore, as Alaise delayed you on my steps, I did what was needful. Step through yon door.”

An archway silently appeared, outlined in soft radiance, beyond Khelben.

Hesitantly, the Swords went to it. The room behind them went dark, Khelben vanishing with it, even as the one ahead began to brighten.

By the kindling light that came from no source they could see, the Swords beheld a throne with a regal-looking crowned woman sitting on it, and a half-moon table beside it where a wise-looking man sat, writing furiously.

He looked up, set down his quill, and stood. “Kneel before your queen. Adventurers, behold Queen Filfaeril of Cormyr.”

The Swords gaped at the smiling woman on the throne, and then hastily went to their knees.

Filfaeril waved her hand. “Rise, and be at ease,” she said. “Enough of that nonsense, Alaphondar. Swords of Eveningstar, I propose a trade. I need a task performed, and in return I believe I can amend your charter. Cormyr would dearly like to have friends we can trust in Shadowdale, as a bright light on the road that brings so much Moonsea metal and coin to us, and sends our food and horseflesh thither. So turn thy back and open thy codpiece, Florin; the charter is needed.”

Smiling at their startled looks, the queen said serenely, “Cormyr has many watchful eyes. Some of them make me quite confident the knighthoods I am now going to bestow are fully deserved. Florin, for example, made such fine work of the Lady Narantha that several scores of nobleborn mothers desire to send her daughters to him, forthwith.”

“My, my,” Islif murmured at the ceiling, “won’t that prove diverting?”

In a room whose midair glowed with a life-sized, moving duplicate of the room where Filfaeril was now busily granting knighthoods, Dove Silverhand threw back her head and laughed aloud. “Ah, Islif,” she murmured, “we might be sisters!”

Then she lost her mirth and murmured, “Not that I’d ever wish such a doom upon you.”

Alaphondar had been busy writing the proclamations, it seemed-for he now spread them out on the table before the dumbfounded Swords.

“Knighthoods always come with a grant of lands,” Queen Filfaeril added, “or a keep, or coins-gems, actually; ’tis hard to carry twenty thousand lions in one’s hands-in lieu. Alaphondar, pay them.”

The sage hesitated. “Your Majesty, one heraldic necessity must be seen to, first.”

“Well?”

“They must be named knights of somewhere.”

“Well, of Shadowdale, man!”

“Nay, good Queen, it must be the name of their granted lands in Cormyr-or, failing that, a legendary place.”

“A legendary place?”

“Aye, such as ‘of the Forest Eternal,’ or ‘of the Castle Unseen.’ A place not of mere invention, but one known to heralds and loremasters, that’s either lost or ruined.”

“Well, pick one!”

“Nay, Highness — they must choose one.”

Filfaeril shrugged and turned to the Swords, spreading her hands in an unspoken question.

The adventurers stared at her and then at each other.

“Uh…” Doust began, then ran out of words and fell silent. Pennae shrugged, and Florin and Islif stared at each other blankly.

High in the tallest tower of his mansion in Arabel, the wizard Amanthan smiled over a tiny crystal ball that held the room in Blackstaff Tower in its glowing depths, and cast a quick, deft spell.

A bell tolled warningly in Blackstaff Tower, the light in the room shivering in its booming echoes.

Khelben appeared behind Filfaeril’s throne, eyes narrowed above a deepening frown… and something made Jhessail and Florin say together, “Let us be Knights of… Myth Drannor.”

“Ah,” Alaphondar said in satisfaction, dipping his quill in the floral-shaped metal inkwell before him. “Perfect.”

The Blackstaff regarded the Swords thoughtfully as Filfaeril fished something on a fine chain out of her cleavage: a signet. Rocking it in an oval ink-dish Alaphondar held out to her, she applied it to all six parchments in turn, scribbled her signature in an oval around each signet-mark, and announced, “Done. The gems, Alaphondar.”

The sage trailing behind her, the queen walked to the Swords, drew her dainty belt dagger, nicked each of them, leaving the tiniest of pricks on the backs of their hands, and said, “I dub thee all Knights of Myth Drannor. And now the task.”

The newly made Knights held their breath, expecting the worst.

Filfaeril smiled.

“After being torn so precipitously from my husband’s side, I’d prefer to return to Suzail with rather more dignity-with, in fact, a knightly escort. There’s a royal remount stables on the Way of the Dragon nigh Zundle, and an easy ride home from there. If you’re agreeable, my knights?”

Florin swallowed, seeking words, but Islif’s tongue was swifter. “Command us, Highness.”

As Alaphondar scrambled to pack his things, Filfaeril turned to Khelben. “Blackstaff?”

“Of course,” Khelben replied. “I know the place.” He raised one hand idly-and the Knights of Myth Drannor, the sage Alaphondar, and Queen Filfaeril of Cormyr were suddenly standing in strong-smelling straw, blinking at each other.

“I’ll never get used to that,” Filfaeril sighed. Then she gave the dazed adventurers a little girl’s grin. “Knights, choose your mounts!”

A handful of hairs flared up in sudden flame. Horaundoon looked at them in satisfaction.

His spell had worked. Florin’s hairs, torn from him on that moonlit night above Starwater Gorge by Narantha Crownsilver’s ardent hands, were now giving this particular cunning Zhentarim a way to reach Florin once more.

So the ranger was outside the wards of Blackstaff Tower, and in… Cormyr?

“Azuth mount Mystra,” the Zhentarim cursed disbelievingly. Was the Blackstaff with the forester?

Horaundoon cast a spell over the bowl of water, watched it ripple violently then smooth out-and found himself gazing down at a stables, with three-no, all six surviving Swords leading forth horses… splendid beasts… and two others: a courtier and Queen Filfaeril.

“Mystra return the favor,” he swore in astonishment.

And then clapped his hands, raced across the room for what he’d need, and set to work. Victory comes never to the mage who casts not.

Swinging his fire-tongs with all his strength, Amanthan shattered the crystal ball into a thousand shards. Just to be safe.

In life, Old Ghost had been a mage few could match, but the Blackstaff was one of Mystra’s Chosen.

Poor doomed bastard.

Eyes glowing eerily with Old Ghost’s riding presence, the young mage hurried into the next room, to fetch another crystal ball. ’Twas time to scry Horaundoon-before that Zhent fool got up to any more mischief.

“There!” Horaundoon beamed triumphantly, stepping back from the flying snake. It was frozen in spell-stasis, wings spread and head thrust forward, its body a graceful curve. He’d just placed the last of the eight mindworms around its snout. Six Swords were grand quarry, but a senior courtier of Cormyr now… and its queen!

He snorted in sheer glee, and worked the teleport that would snatch his serpent to the air just behind Florin Falconhand’s head, whence it could easily swoop and strike.

Amanthan was feverishly working a spell of his own, glancing up betimes at one of the two crystal balls flanking him-the one scrying Horaundoon.

Done. Whew. The hairs he’d plucked from the vial that had appeared in front of him melted away, and the mage sat back in satisfaction.

Old Ghost would prevail. As always.

He waved the second crystal into life and looked from the first-Horaundoon-to the second: the newly minted Knights of Myth Drannor, riding along a road with the royal sage and the Dragon Queen of Cormyr in their midst.

To echo Horaundoon, this was shaping up into a superb show.

Radiance blossomed silently in the air behind the knights’ heads, hidden from view in the lee of tree-boughs the knights had just ridden under. Out of that swift-fading light glided a flying snake. A single wingbeat took it over the boughs and into a long glide, its mouth opening, toward the back of Florin’s neck.

Mindworms wriggled down the snake’s pointed head to cluster between its fangs, dark and glistening…

Dove sat bolt upright in sudden alarm, eyes widening. “No!” she cried, silver fire kindling in her eyes as she clenched trembling fists. “Not Florin!”

The Weave howled with the frantic fury of her reaching.

Though he was too far.

And she was too late.

The snake struck, Florin grunting and stiffening-but no fangs sank into his neck, for at their touch the serpent vanished in a sudden burst of spell-light.

Horaundoon hadn’t even time to blink as serpent jaws gaped, right in front of his face.

He did find time to scream as it struck, fangs biting deep-and the mindworms surged forward, to burrow in.

He went on screaming, reeling blindly around the room, clawing at the snake as the mindworms gnawed and devoured, sinking deeper.

He could feel the hargaunt fleeing from him, but was too lost in agony to care, raking at the snake until scales flew-and he finally tore it free, much of his cheeks and brow going with it, to dash it again and again against a wall, clubbing it into soft ruin.

Dropping it dazedly, he felt for the potions he knew were there. Six healing quaffs, and the others that were useless to him now…

Horaundoon gulped them frantically, feeling the hot wetness deeper and deeper in his brain as the mindworms gnawed on. Mystra have mercy, eight of them…

He was still blind, could in fact feel one of them gnawing behind his eyes, and vainly tried-with hands that trembled treacherously-to work spells on himself.

No. No.

“Not the doom I’m… looking for,” he gasped aloud, clawing his clattering way across the table again, sending useless potions flying. Ha! He had it!

Snatching up the scepter he’d been seeking, Horaundoon turned it on himself and gasped out the word that awakened it.

A glow he could no longer see warmed his face. He writhed, shuddering helplessly, but locked his fingers in his lap, cradling the scepter, and nursed the beam that ravaged him, even as he curled up around it in pain.

He was, he knew, glowing and pulsing…

Between each pulse of his scepter, Horaundoon of the Zhentarim looked increasingly wraithlike. He was translucent now… Looking down into the crystal ball that held the Zhent’s image, Amanthan cursed softly, fists clenched. “ Die, hrast you,” he whispered. “As I did.”

The husk of a body fell in on itself. With a ragged cry of despair and revulsion, a roiling glow burst up out of it.

Weeping and wailing, Horaundoon swirled around his rooms-then out of them, howling.

A fat, unshaven carter was tying up horses in the street below. Horaundoon plunged down through the man, savagely trying to slay.

The carter staggered, wheezed, stared at the street with wild, bewildered eyes-and fell on his face and lay still, his horses snorting and trying to back away.

It was that easy. That hideously easy.

And what comfort was that to him?

Howling anew, Horaundoon raced down the street, a pale and shapeless arrow, to slay again. And again. Purple Dragons, shopkeepers, alley drunks…

A lush-bodied woman in an upper window, preening before a mirror. He soared into the room and spiraled around her, not wanting to slay so much as touch… touch what he could no longer touch!

She screamed once then trembled, too fearful to breathe, tottering… He tried to hold her as she fell, but managed only to sink into her, passing not through her body but into her mind.

Which was both darker and more shallow than he’d expected, and faintly disgusted him, but which he found he could coerce… thus… and shape the thoughts of… thus. So he had no body, but could-yes! — live in the bodies of others.

Her mind was a small and cringing thing, flinching from him. Horaundoon lashed it scornfully even as he forced it to do this, then that.

She clawed her way stiffly back up from the floor, the gown she’d been trying on hanging half-off her, and went to the stairs, lurching and stumbling.

By the time she reached the street, she was walking more or less upright-stiffly, foaming at the mouth as her eyes rolled wildly. Horaundoon was still learning control.

“Ever the unsubtle, bumbling idiot,” Old Ghost sneered through Amanthan’s lips, as he scried the clumsy progress of the woman Horaundoon was mind-riding. “And as you stumble about, your schemes do the same-as clumsily as you do.”

Yet they were now two of a kind, he and the Zhent. Possessing, mind-riding spirits.

Horaundoon just didn’t realize, yet, what a great victory he’d achieved.

“Bitter laughter and applause,” Old Ghost murmured. “For us both, I suppose.”

The hargaunt was wriggling as fast as it could, flowing along the cold stone floor of a dark passage.

The flying gauntlets that pounced upon it, lifted it into the air, and expanded around it into a spherical prison were quite a surprise-but ignored its most belligerent chimings.

“You, little flowing menace, are going to come in quite useful to this war wizard traitor,” the wielder of the gauntlets purred gloatingly, toying with a ring that bore a handsome, oversized carved unicorn head. “Yes, quite useful. When my time comes.”

The war wizards had been gentle, even respectful in their questionings, and had left her some privacy to recover herself while they fetched her a meal.

That was why Narantha Crownsilver was sitting alone in a pleasantly furnished chamber somewhere in the palace in Suzail when horror burst open in her mind, unfolding with such awfulness that she could only whimper.

There was something called a mindworm in her head, linking her to this wizard-a Zhentarim! — the murderer of her Uncle Lorneth!

Who’d cold-bloodedly taken her uncle’s face and voice to deceive her, using her to spread mindworms to Florin and others… so many others… nobles all across the realm!

“Gods deliver me,” she gasped, when she could find words. “What have I done? ”

This revelation was due to this Horaundoon’s own misfortune. She watched the monster suffer under his own snake and mindworms, and she felt his sick pain-a dull echo of it, at least, as her own mind staggered…

And even as he shuddered and shrieked and wallowed in agony, her dazed mind stumbled through his dark plans, laid bare to her at last.

“No,” she whispered. “Oh no.”

He would survive this.

He would control her again, through the mindworm in her head-and through her, all she’d subverted.

“Gods!” she whispered, “so many! ”

She must do something. Right now…

So this is what real fear tastes like. Fear for all Cormyr.

Weeping and trembling, she left the room and hurried through the palace.

“Failure, Lady Lord,” Dauntless said bitterly. “Complete failure. The fugitives got clean away. I stand deserving of any punishment you see fit.”

Myrmeen Lhal’s eyes bored into his as if she were reading something written small on the inside back of his skull, but she said nothing.

And went on saying nothing as a curtain parted behind her, and the Warden of the Eastern Marches came into the room, stepped aside, and handed in an unfamiliar woman as if she outranked him. She was tall and muscular, her hair a long fall of silver-not silver as old folk go silver, but the shining silver of polished metal-and she wore green leathers, with the crescent moon badge of the Harpers at belt buckle and throat.

Baron Thomdor gave Dauntless a smile. “Well met this day, Ornrion Dahauntul. Be also well met with Dove Silverhand, of the Harpers.”

Dove inclined her head in greeting. “Myrmeen, Dauntless: you share no failure. The fugitives you’ve been chasing have just been knighted by Queen Filfaeril, and are riding in triumph into Suzail right now.”

Two jaws dropped in unison. Almost tenderly, Dove added, “When they pass through Arabel again, in a tenday or so, ’twould be best if they were made welcome, not hounded or imprisoned.”

Stunned disbelief was clear on the newly restored ornrion’s face. “And-and how can you know this?” he sputtered. “Forgive me, Lady, but words are easily said-yet more slowly trusted. Why, I’ve never even seen you before!”

“Ah, but you have, gallant Dauntless. That night at the Leaping Hart, when you danced on the tables, remember? And loudly admired the behind of a certain lass?” Dove turned and struck a pose. “Have your fingers forgotten this backside so swiftly?”

Dauntless reddened as words failed him again, and Myrmeen and Thomdor exploded into laughter.

Dove grinned and patted the ornrion’s arm. “Ne’er mind. ‘Bold to face the foe,’ remember?”

The Horngate loomed high and impressive overhead. “Lady Queen,” Florin murmured over his shoulder, “you should ride at the fore, and we behind you. ’Tis not right that-”

“Ride on,” Filfaeril commanded, in a voice of sudden iron that sounded muffled. “Just as we are.”

Florin turned his head and discovered that the Dragon Queen had cast a mantle over her head, and ducked low in her saddle.

He exchanged looks with Islif, they both shrugged-and an ornrion was stepping into their path, his hand raised imperiously.

“Hold hard, there!” he said sternly. “So large a company, and under arms? Who are you, who seek to ride right into Suzail?”

“We are knights of Cormyr, and chartered adventurers besides, and so are doubly allowed to bear war-steel into this fair city,” Florin replied, as they reined in their mounts.

“Knights and chartered adventurers? On mounts bearing the royal crest on their harness?” The officer’s voice was hard and incredulous. “Down from your saddle, sir, and furnish me with your charter-if you have one.”

Purple Dragons behind him, in the arch of the Horngate, had already taken up cocked and loaded crossbows and were aiming them, their faces suspicious.

“I think not, ” Queen Filfaeril’s voice rang out. “Stand aside, loyal Dragons!” She urged her horse past Florin, mantle thrown back, and raised her hand in a wave that set folk to astonished chatter-and sent the gate guards to their knees, their bows hurriedly pointed elsewhere.

“Diligently done, ornrion. Thy vigilance has our royal favor,” the Dragon Queen said crisply as she spurred past the officer, leading the knights forward onto the Promenade.

Word seemed to spread like fire racing in a gale, and folk streamed out of shops and sidestreets to gawk at the passing riders.

“I wonder how many enemies she’s making us?” Pennae whispered uneasily, as ragged cheers arose, the queen waved, and folk-so many folk-stared, faces upon hundreds of faces. “I mislike being seen so prominently in public.”

“Get used to it,” Alaphondar murmured. “And keep smiling. Every hamlet and realm, and all the folk in it, need their goats and heroes.”

“Ah,” Semoor asked wryly, as the tall iron gates of the Royal Court opened before them, “and which are we, I wonder?”

Alaphondar’s smile was thin. “Learning how to find a way out of goatskins is the true mark of a hero.”

As they rode across the broad and muddy courtyard, bright horns began to sound.