The Sword Never Sleeps

Chapter 9

The door closed behind Vangerdahast. Tsantress srared at it, her mind racing. Her entire world whirled away in an insranr… what to do? What should she do?

She looked up and down the passage out of sheer habit, seeing no one, then heard the faintest of sounds in the room behind her-or thought she did-and whirled around.

Nothing. Her antechamber was dark and srill, with no grimly smiling Royal Magician or anyone else standing there. Tsantress closed the door again, strode swiftly across the room to snatch up a wedge of cheese for later consumption and took down her dagger in its thigh-sheath from its usual place on the wall. Drawing in a deep breath, she used her teleport ring again.

It was the only way out, given the wards in place over the vast Royal Court and the Royal Palace beyond that would foil any translocation cast by someone not wearing such a ring-and she had to get out.

To find time to think, if nothing else.

Wherefore she found herself standing on a ledge high on the Thunder Peaks, lashed by rain. She stared bleakly out over fog-shrouded eastern Cormyr for a few moments, called on the ring again, and teleported to where she was really bound for. An exrra "jump" should foil any tracing magic Old Thunderspells used to follow her. She hoped.

The ledge went away in the usual instant of falling endlessly through bright blue mists, and then there was solid stone under her boots again, and familiar dank gloom surrounded her amid smells of earth and old bear dung.

She was home. Or rather, she was back in a side-fissure of a wilderland cave that she'd long ago cast a spell upon to keep a bear or anything else from settling into it and lairing. The cave was nigh the Moonsea Ride near Tilverton, clear out of Cormyr, where she'd spent days and nights practicing her spell-casting when she'd been younger.

"Tluin," she whispered, taking a step to where she could perch one foot on an upthrusting rock and more easily buckle her dagger about her thigh.

She was gone from Cormyr, gone from the life she had known that had made her feel so happy, so important, so… needed.

Now what?

A lantern was unhooded, and the Knights of Myth Drannor found themselves staring down a littered srone cellar at four men. The foremost of whom was Lord Maniol Crownsilver.

Behind the noble lord were three unfamiliar men in robes, arranged in a stony-faced line. All were glaring at the Knights.

One robed man held the lantern high; the other two had their hands outstretched toward each other, and the air was flickering and pulsing between those reaching fingers-little flowerings of blue radiance rhat grew, winked out, then flashed into existence again, more strongly.

Three wizards. By the style of their sashes and rune-adorned jerkins, Sembian wizards-for-hire.

"Jhess," Florin muttered. "What magic's that?"

"A porral, I think," Jhessail murmured back as they saw the lantern set down carefully on the floor-and the flickerings form a pulsing blue-white upright oval of glowing air as tall as a man.

Belatedly, Florin bowed his head and said respectfully, "Well met, Lord Crownsilver."

The noble took a slow step closer to the Knights and swept them with a withering glare. There was no trace about him of the quavering, broken shell of a man they remembered seeing last. Crownsilver seemed alert, purposeful, and even-when one saw the fire in his eyes-frenzied.

"Slayers of my wife and daughter," he said, "taste my revenge! For Narantha! For Jalassa, damn you!"

The three Sembian mages snatched wands out of their rune-adorned jerkins and grinned in cruel triumph as they aimed-and unleashed.

The Knights shouted, sprinting desperately this way or that, but ravening wandfire roared down the cellar in a blinding white flood that drove a million tiny lances into bare skin even as it hurled and tumbled the Knights hard into the unyielding stone wall behind them.

Very hard. Faerun started to go watery and whirl away from more than one Knight, with the searing magic still roaring on and on.

Amid a splintering groan of riven support posts, the ceiling above started to collapse-and Florin, Pennae, and Islif, still struggling to move and to see, beheld the little tracer-gem Pennae had stolen bursting forth from its concealment beneath her tattered leathers. It spun and spat strange purple flames and sparks as the roaring white wandfire tore at it, then it surged down the cellar toward Lord Crownsilver.

Only to explode in its own burst of blinding white light, a blast that-laced with Pennae's shriek and srartled shouts from the Sembians-drove its own burning rays into everyone…

Aumrune Trantor stopped midstep, teetering awkwardly with one foot raised-and then brought it down, lurched against a passage wall, and stayed there, leaning like a drunkard.

Old Ghost had found something.

Something in Aumrune's mind made him seethe with excitement and glee-so bright and fierce that Horaundoon, sharing that mind with him, cowered.

Aumrune's pet project, kept secret from all except Manshoon and Hesperdan, who seemed to approve of it, was adding magics to an ancient, flying magic sword: Armaukran, the Sword That Never Sleeps. Aumrune had already infused the blade with new powers to make it obey him.

Surging in bright exultation, Old Ghost uncovered the way into the sword from Aumrune's mind.

The body of Aumrune Trantor thrust itself away from the wall so briskly it almost fell. It hurried off down that gloomy, deserted passage in Zhentil Keep, headed for where a certain hidden sword awaited.

This was going to be good. Very good.

Two flights down a deserted staircase in the Royal Court, while passing his forry-third faded tapestry, Vangerdahast stopped and murmured, "Far enough. Best alter things before we run into the real Vangerdahast."

The features more than a thousand courtiers and servants knew and feared rippled and flowed, melting down off a quite different face as the hargaunt sought the chin of Telgarth Boarblade, and points below.

As he held open the front of his doorjack's jerkin to let the hargaunt flow down out of sight, Telgarth Boarblade smiled. Lord Rhallogant Caladanter was a buffoon of the most childish sort, aye, but he must have done well enough in telling War Wizard Ironchylde the tale Boarblade had so carefully concocted. She'd been white with fright and seeing foes in every shadow. Well delivered, indeed.

Still wearing his satisfied smile, the doorjack who was not a doorjack went down the stairs at a more dignified pace, and out through a door three floors down.

Only after he had heard the familiar slight scrape of that door closing did the old doorjack-who'd been watching Boarblade's transformation from behind one of the faded tapestries that lined the staircase walls-dare to breathe again.

Myarlin Handaerback was trembling and purple from lack of air and indignation. As he thrust aside the tapestry and started his own ascent in the gloom, he muttered, "There's more confounded creeping as goes on in this place! Not like in the old days, when it was all pretty lasses seeking their suitors or the suitors chasing after them. First adventurers and now men with oozing things that disguise their faces! Now we're getting the riff raff, to be sure!"

The little tower room was thick with dust from the many yellowing, rolled maps, deeds, and contracts that choked its storage shelves-but not a single speck of it marred the sword that lay gleaming on the trestle table that filled the center of the room.

Aumrune carefully locked, latched, bolted, and then barred the lone door behind him. Old Ghost made him edge past the table and do something he never did: Undog and swing aside the inner shutter that covered the window and its bars, unlatch and take down those bars, and undog the window itself.

Horaundoon paid little attention. Horaundoon, crouched in one corner of Aumrune's mind, had all his attention bent on the magnificent sword that lay on the table.

It was a long blade, nigh as long as some men stood tall, about two thirds of it a slender blade of bright silver and the last third a large hilt neatly wrapped in black silver, with sleekly curved double quillons and a cabochon-cut blue gem for a pommel, smooth and rounded and glowing with a faint light of magic.

Gods, it was beautiful. The Sword That Never Sleeps, crafted by that rarest of creatures, if the tales could be believed: a smith of the elves!

Not that Old Ghost could tell, after all the enchantments that had been cast, recast, broken, and overlaid upon the sharp steel. Certainly its curves suggested elven stylings, and the oldest surviving enchantments felt like elf work.

Armaukran was the name of someone it had slain, whose life-force had been infused into the sword through datk spells. It had been forged for a purpose-but that purpose was lost, at least to Old Ghost and Horaundoon.

What remained clear and delighred Old Ghost very much was that seven enchantments remained rooted in the blade that shared a purpose: binding souls, spirits, or sentiences into the blade.

Horaundoon wallowed in the intricacies and elegances of all the castings upon the blade. Their sweepingly shaped, subtly reinforced incantations, the balanced flows of Weave-work… even the lesser, simpler magics added by Aumrune Trantor, grafted on recently, were but plainer outer garments draped over great beauty beneath. He ached to do such work, to so ride the Weave that he could craft such beauty…

Lost in lust, he never saw his peril.

Old Ghost found the words of magic he needed in those seven binding enchantments, gathered himself-then spoke them, clearly and crisply, plucking the forces they unleashed as deftly as any master hatpist and using them to thrust a helpless Hotaundoon into the Sword That Never Sleeps. Down into the brightness the younger, lesser spirit so hungered for, down into the cold, thrilling embrace of bindings that tightened and anchored themselves upon him in a dozen ways, then a score of ways-bindings that burned when Old Ghost bent his will upon them.

The splendid sword rose into the air to float silently above the table.

"Yes," Old Ghost murmured through Aumrune Trantor's lips, his thoughts blazing loudly into Horaundoon through the sword's bindings, "you are mine now. Mine to bid, to command as surely as if my hands were firm around this hilt. Yet chafe not, Horaundoon. This is a task you'll thoroughly enjoy."

Aumrune Trantor opened the window and the outer shutters beyond, letting in the sun and a cool breeze that was scudding past all the towers of Zhentil Keep.

"Go," Old Ghost commanded. "Go and kill Zhentarim. I shall be with you, watching. Try to take them alone, where others will not see you. Go and seek Zhents to slay. Not Manshoon, mind. Not yet. And not Hesperdan, for both of them can probably destroy Armaukran with ease. Which leaves you, O Hungry Slayer of Zhentarim, just about every other member of the Brotherhood you care to fell."

The Sword That Never Sleeps rose from the table and slid forward through the air, point first, as sleek as any arrow.

Out the window it went, banking and plunging hastily down out of sight, seeking concealing shadows.

A path of his awareness plunging down with it, Old Ghost smiled inside Aumrune Trantor and made the Zhent mage reach out and close the shutters and then the window.

It was time and past time to begin remaking the Zhentarim into something worthy in fair Faerun.

Florin blinked. Aye. He was Florin.

Florin Falconhand… and he lay on his back on cool, hard stone.

It was too smooth to be anything but a floor, and there was nothing but darkness above him.

Or so it seemed. Things were coming back gradually. They'd been in that cellar, facing Lord Crownsilver. Then the blast…

Wherever he now was, it wasn't the cellar. This place was larger and a lot less dank. Dusty, evenFlorin sneezed. Hard and uncontrollably and several times, bouncing his shoulders off the unyielding stone beneath him.

Someone groaned from floor level nearby. Off to his left.

Florin tried to move his hands. He couldn't seem to feel them, but they were there… and whole. When he thrust one up in front of his face and wriggled his fingers, they responded normally enough. He thrust two of them into his nose to quell further sneezes, and he tried to roll over onto his elbow and sit up.

Done, as easily as usual. Aside from aches all over-the back of his head and his left arm and shoulder in particular-it seemed he was unhurt, with his fellow Knights lying sptawled and motionless around him. Or almost motionless. Yonder, someone was moving and groaning. Doust, from the sound.

Florin tried to peer in all directions, seeking Lord Crownsilver, Sembian wizards, slavering monsrers, or… well, anyone approaching.

He saw nothing like that. In the darkness, he couldn't really see much at all. He dug in his pouch for the little glowstone Vangerdahast had given him-had given all the Knights, and weren't they very likely to bear enchantments that would let the Royal Magician trace their whereabouts at will? He set it down and sent it skittering across the floor.

Well, now. This "elsewhere" they'd all somehow landed in seemed to be a deserred room somewhere very grand. "Very grand" as in very high ceilings and large rooms, with walls covered in unpainted wooden panels with carved frames, borders, fluted half pillars, and heavily ornate scrollwork supporting… well, curlicues. All cut out of the same dark wood.

As grand as some of the rooms he'd seen in the Royal Palace in Suzail. The room mighr be underground, but it didn't seem as damp as, say, that cellar. Nor did it smell of earth. Dust lay everywhere, like a thick, furry blanket, but the only bits of rubble he could see were small, fresh chips and flecks of stone around and under the Knights. That looked as if the Knights had brought it along with them.

Someone else groaned loudly. Semoor.

Florin stood up, wincing-one of his shins wasn't any too happy with its present condition, it seemed-and staggered around the fallen Knights, looking for wounds and anyrhing missing. He winced when he saw the crossbow quarrel through Islif's arm.

Doust silently joined him. "If you slice it off here," the priest said, pointing, "and slide it out, I'll have a healing spell ready before she loses roo much blood."

"How much has she losr already?" Florin asked. tui yrcmwooa "More than enough," Islif whispered, startling them both, "but I'll live. Do it." Her eyes were still closed, and she lay sprawled as if unconscious.

Florin used his dagger to saw through the shaft of the quarrel, then left Doust to his work. He went around to examine the rest of the Knights.

Everyone was accounted for. It appeared, looking over the litter of weapons lying strewn around them, that everything they'd been wearing or carrying had made the journey with them, too. Plus all the stone shards he'd noticed.

Made the journey, more or less, he amended his judgment. Pennae now seemed to be wearing as much soot as leathers.

Was she-? When he laid a fingertip gingerly on one bared, scraped shoulder, her eyes snapped open, and she uncoiled like a whirlwind to clutch at his hand.

"Easy, lass," Florin said. " "Tis just me."

She turned her head until she could fix him with one sparkling eye and said, "You're never just you, big ranger man."

Semoor started to chuckle-until the dust made him choke. Evidently his eyes had been open, too, and the glowstone he had out had given him light enough to see the expression on Florin's face.

The ranger cleared his throar loudly and told Pennae, "I, ah, have to check on the others. Ah, right now." He hastily turned away.

Pennae rolled onto her side, wincing, and then made it up to a sitting position.

"Naed, but I hurt." Jhessail gasped, flinching, as Florin helped her sit up. "Where by the Nine crackling Hells are we?" Florin shrugged. "I have no idea."

"Neither do I," Pennae said, struggling to her feet and clutching at her hip and then at her knee, ere limping a few tentative steps away, "but I know how we got here."

"Enlighten us," Doust told her.

"That tracer gem explosion awakened a portal behind us-a portal that must have been there for a long time but was hidden. I saw just a glimpse of it, as I was being flung back at it. It must have snatched all of us-and this litter of stones and suchlike, too-out of the cellar as rhe place collapsed."

"So Lord Crownsilver's pet wizards blew him and themselves up?" Semoor asked. "That's rich!"

Pennae shook her head. "They'd just spun their own portal, remember? It would do the same thing to them, taking them wherever they'd set the portal to reach."

The Light of Lathander frowned. "So they could be somewhere nearby."

"Yes," she replied. "Glowstones out, everyone. I think we're in some sort of palace."

"I think so, too," Florin murmured from where he'd stooped to recover the glowstone he'd sent journeying across the floor. "And I see an archway yonder and a closed door over that way."

"Let's leave closed doors closed, for now," Jhessail said, wincing and rubbing one of her elbows.

"Agreed," Florin said, looking around at everyone. "Any grievous wounds? Can everyone walk?"

"Being as we seem to keep losing our horses…" Jhessail replied with a frown, "I seem to be getting steadily better at walking."

Everyone pulled out their glowstones, and the light in the room grew with them. Semoor got a good look at Pennae, and he leered appreciatively.

"Like em?" she asked calmly and without waiting for a reply added, "Can't have em!"

"I'm making like a good Cormyrean, successful and wealthy and settled in Suzail," the priest replied innocently. "I'm window-shopping."

Doust and Jhessail snorted in amusement, and even Pennae grinned.

She shook her head and waved a finger in mock warning. "That tongue of yours, lad…"

"Yes?" Semoor asked brightly, hope shining in his eyes.

"Never mind. We've a palace to explore, or hadn't you noticed, lost in your unholy fixation on my charms?"

Semoor looked aggrieved, though his eyes were dancing. "Madam, you wound me! 'Unholy' how? Lathander warmly embraces new beginnings, and I perceive an opportunity to warmly embrace-"

"My left hand, crushing your codpiece and all it contains, if you don't leave off, Bright Morninglord of Lust!" Pennae snapped. "Now belt up! Some of us have work to do that just might keep the rest of us alive. And spare me whatever clever little jest you were trying to think up about how this could be another 'new beginning,' too."

Above them both, Florin was standing by the archway, glowstone raised, peering into the darkness arid ignoring their dispute. Without looking back, he waved his hand to get their attention. "Kick some of the stones we brought with us together into a little heap to mark this room for later. We'll have to start exploring or just die of thirst-and I don't think we should split up or leave anyone behind. For any reason."

Semoor obediently applied his boots to sliding most of the stones together, then looked up. "Done. Let's go exploring. I'm getting hungry."

"Would that be a holy hunger?" Islif teased.

"One of mine," the priest replied, drawing smoothly back out of Pennae's reach. "One of mine."

He strode to join Florin. "Come. None of us is getting any younger."

The little, out-of-the-way room in the Royal Palace of Suzail where Vangerdahast was closeted with his most trusted Wizard of War had no name, and the Royal Magician liked it that way. He'd have been even happier if it hadn't ever appeared on any floor plans of the Palace, even though he'd done his level best for years now to track down and seize every last formal or hand-drawn charting of anything architectural about the most royal of buildings in Suzail.

Vangerdahast enjoyed having and knowing secrets, liked having hideaways where no one would be able to track him down and disturb him, and especially valued being able to occasionally take off his boots, fart, belch, scratch himself, and genuinely relax in the company of someone who wasn't offended by such behavior.

That the "someone" was a beautiful woman whom he trusted and regarded as a friend made her company that much more precious. Despite the facts that they were both-aside from his boots-fully clad and likely to remain so, and they were discussing grave business of the realm.

Specifically, the most pressing problems the Wizards of War needed to deal with.

"Then there's the matter of the Hidden Princess," he said heavily across the little table where they sat crouching, murmuring almost nose to nose.

"That never seems to go away," Laspeera said, nodding. "What now, specifically?"

"Some of the elder Illances have gotten it into their heads that I'm up to something."

Laspeera grinned. "And are you?"

"Hardly, Lasp," he growled. "They think I've got her spellbound and stashed in a bedchamber somewhere and visit her every tenday or so for a night of wildly trying to sire a secret branch of the Obarskyrs to hold in reserve in case-"

He stiffened suddenly, lifted his head so abruptly they almost bumped noses together, and started cursing softly.

Laspeera raised an eyebrow in silent query.

"The Lost Palace," the Royal Magician said. "Someone's triggered one of my alarm spells. They're inside, somehow."

Laspeera stood, went to a wall carving, did something to it with her fingers, and swung it forward from the wall as if it were a door. Its hollowed-out back sported a rack of sheathed wands. Deftly she started taking down sheaths and hooking them onto her belt.

"Nay, Lasp," Vangerdahast said. "This is my folly and my battle."

"Lord Vangerdahast," she replied, "you can't be everywhere, and if the realm loses you on this sort of backchambet-"

"No! Take off those wands and sit down!" Vangerdahast roared, slamming down a fist on the table and startling her with his sudden fury. "There are good reasons I alone should go there! Not the least of which being that all the defenses are keyed to me, and anyone else will have to battle them every few steps, not just our unknown intruder!"

Laspeera nodded and handed him wands.

Vangerdahast took them, crooked a finger to whisk another two particular wands across empty air from the panel into his hands, whirled away to the door, and hurried out.

He was out and down the passage beyond like a storm wind, his robes billowing out behind him, and didn't notice Wizard of War Lorbryn Deltalon step out of a doorway in his wake. Deltalon grimly watched him go.

The Knights found themselves cautiously exploring room after dark, thick-with-dust room. A seemingly endless labyrinth of deserted, interlinked chambers, all of them ornately paneled with soaring ceilings losrin the darkness beyond the reach of theit glowstones. A palace.

Perhaps an underground palace. They could find no sign of a window or sunlight or any way out-nor any sign of other life. The air smelled stale and long unmoving, the dust lay like an undisturbed blanket everywhere, and the only light, aside from rheir glowstones, came from the faint glows of old, decaying preservative magics on the magnificent wood paneling all around them.

A hallway larger and longer rhan most brought them to a cross-way of similar grandeur-and across it, only a few strides along a stub end of passage, a huge wooden door. As wide as Florin's shoulders three times over and more than twice as tall, it was carved with an oval badge of a unicorn's head thrusting forth to the dexter from between two curving trees: an oak and a maple.

"Esparin," Jhessail said. "This was a palace of Esparin-probably the palace of Esparin."

Semoor, who was staring hard at the carved device, frowned without looking away from it. "I didn't know you knew olden-days heraldry."

"You've never asked me what I know," Jhessail replied softly. Something in her voice made him look at her sharply.

"The Lost Palace of Esparin," Doust murmured from behind them. "There was something about this place. Something I read… that I should remember. Some interesting peril or other…"

Something half-skeletal shuffled into view around the corner where the crossway met the stub end of the passage.

It peered at them with eyes that were twin points of cold light in a face that was half falling off the skull beneath. It looked like what was left of a man, in what was left of once-grand robes.

"Oh, Tymora. Liches," Doust whispered, as cold fear fell on all of the Knights like a heavy cloak, washing over them and leaving them trembling uncontrollably. "I remember now! Th-th-this is where Vangerdahast's predecessors b-b-bound all the wizards who went mad!"

The lich took a slow step forward, raising its hands. As the Knights of Myth Drannor tried to curse and scatter, magic rings on those bony fingers winked into life.