The Sword Never Sleeps

Two priests of Bane conversed in the temple courtyard in Zhentil Keep.

"Done so soon? They haven't much backbone, these priestesses of Sune! All that warm and all-conquering love a poor shield against true pain, eh?"

"Done, hah! The whip broke!" The Tyrant-har of Bane held up his ruined lash for inspection. What should have been its upper third dangled uselessly, hanging by the merest thread. "A bare backside did that! Someone's been selling us shoddy work, to be sure!"

His superior frowned. "You only brought one lash?"

"Far from it. I broke the other three earlier, one by one-and I'm not the strongest arm among us, by a long bowshor! These new 'holier lashes' are naed, utter naed, I tell you!"

The Watchful Hand of Bane nodded. "We'll have to find out who made them, track them down, and exalt them with a fittingly slow and painful death for the greater glory of Bane." He shook his head. "Work, work… never ends, does it? Why, just last-"

No one customarily crossed that temple courtyard in Zhentil Keep except clergy of Bane, so neither of the priests was in the habit of paying much attention to movements around them there.

They never saw the long, gleaming blade racing through the air, all by itself and point-first like an arrow. Speeding out of the shadows, it sliced open their throats so deeply that their heads wobbled on their shoulders before their bodies toppled.

By then, the flying sword Armaukran was far across the square and climbing, trailing a thin ribbon of blood through the twilight, as Horaundoon hurried to find more Zhentarim ro slaughter.

Arrogant priests were easy prey. What was puzzling him was how he was going to manage the slaying of an eye tyrant. Or thirty.

The wall was cold, hard, and smooth behind her shoulder blades. Jhessail drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes, then cast one of the few spells she had left, carefully saying the Weave-words-gibberish, they would seem to most hearers-then the rhyme: "So now let all beholding gazes upon me see, not one Jhessail, but rather three!"

She passed her hands, held vertically, back and forth in front of her so the forming mirror images would appear to shift through each other, and which Jhessail was the real one wouldn't be glaringly obvious to the lich.

Sidestepping back and forth to enhance the confusion, she willed the two false images to move to her righr, then raised her hands to sketch out the elaborate gestures of… a counterfeit, no spell at all. A false magic she hoped might give the lich pause for a moment, as three identical Jhessails worked an impressive-looking magic it couldn't recognize.

Instead, it grinned, brown-gray flesh crumbling away from its skull and falling past its jaws as it did so. "Ah, up to your old tricks! How I love being overwhelmed byyour caresses! Come to me, Mara! Come to your Elmariel now!"

Not waiting for her to obey, it shuffled forward, right past Doust and Semoor. On either side of it but a few paces away, the two priests stood frowning at each other, at a loss as to what to do.

The lich steadily closed the gap between itself and the three anxiously spellweaving Jhessails.

Doust shrugged and soundlessly mouthed the word "Breakbone!"

Semoor shrugged back "why not?" agreement, and they both worked breakbone spells; magics probably far too feeble to affect a lich whose bones were animated and prorected by its own magic, but what else was left to them?

Doust gave the lich a hard-eyed glare and sent his spell at its head, while Semoor aimed for irs raised hand, aglow with all those rings.

They saw the brief, silent radiances of their spells striking those targets, glows that flared and died away again, having done nothing at all. The lich went right on ignoring them.

It also went right on shuffling forward and was now barely more than an arm's length from Jhessail. Her nonsense-chanting mouth was trembling on the verge of a scream.

Semoor took two swift steps and snatched up the snoring, hairy thing Florin had become, taking hold of it high on the legs, where they joined the body.

It was heavy-Watching Gods Above, it was heavy! — but he could… could…

Semoor staggered for a moment under the boar's weight, saw Doust staring at him with mouth agape, and started to run.

Semoor was bent over backward under the weight of the boar, making of his arms and chest a sloping shelf on which the snoring beast bounced as the priest rushed forward. Semoor prayed its hairy bulk would serve as a shield against any spells the lich might cast.

He was almost at the wall-where Jhessail was staring in horror at the lich, as its arms reached hungrily for her-when he caught up to the lich, planted his right foot, and used the staggering momentum he'd built up to swing around to face the lich and heave the hairy, snoring bulk in his arms right at the lich's hands.

The boar fell through them to the floor, crashing solidly down and awakening with an aggrieved and startled snort. In his wake he left tumbling pieces of bone. Magic rings bounced in all directions. Two splintered, broken-off pairs of forearm bones clattered to the floor.

The glittering points of light that served the lich for eyes blazed up into flames of fury. It roared in anger and turned to confront Semoor.

The Light of Lathander shrank back, just as terrified as Jhessail.

Doust's piglet, the sleeping Islif, hurled with all the grunting might the Jewel of Tymora could muster, smashed right into-and through-what was left of the lich's face. The falling boar took the head off the lich's shoulders. The skull struck the floor and exploded into bony, spraying shards. The reeling body was now topped by cracked, chipped shoulderblades and collar bones. As the two priests stared, one arm fell off.

Doust and Semoor looked at each other, shrugged a little more happily this time, and sprinted past what was left of the lich to pluck up the last piglet.

"Up, Pennae," Semoor said, as they clawed the piglet up to their collective knees, staggered, and hefted it higher. "You make a most fetching boarlet-or whatever these beasts are properly called!"

Trotting together this time, the two priests took careful aim at the lurching remnants of the lich, got the boar to almost the height of the skeleton's ribcage-and gave a little heave before letting go.

The third piglet crashed right through the lich, smashing the corpse's pelvis and legs to ruin.

With triumphant yells the two priests sprang in, beating at those bony shards with their maces, pulverizing bones down to grit and dust.

"Holy water!" Semoor snapped, plucking at one of the precious belt vials he and Doust had been given by the Royal Court in the wake of the now-infamous reception for the lady envoy of Silverymoon.

He and Doust kicked what was left of the bones together, mashing the few larger pieces down to grit with a few last mace-blows, then sprinkled their mace-heads and the heap of riven shards with holy water.

Smoke gouted up with loud hissings, as if they were dashing water on a fire. In the wake of those sounds, the heaped bone remnants glowed momentarily. A faint, eerie half-moan and half-sigh… and the bone grit melted away to nothing but a dark patch on the stone floor.

Doust knelt and plucked up the cobweblike, collapsing rag that had been the lich's robes. Crouching together, he and Semoor peered at it, watching its row of buttons slowly fall through the disintegrating fabric, one by one, to shatter as they struck the floor. The dyed bone domes bore alternating engravings: rhe dragon encircled by nine stars and then a circle of chain, which was the old sigil of the Wizards of War, and the old crossed hunting horns badge of a noble family Doust couldn't quite recall.

"Emmarask," Jhessail said over their shoulders, her voice still thin and panting. "That was once an Emmarask."

"And a war wizard," Semoor said grimly. "Good to know what fate they can look forward to, eh?"

"I wasn't thinking of becoming a war wizard," Jhessail said.

"I wasn't thinking they'd accept you," he rerorted. "Now, O great mage, about all these other liches and our friends the snorting boars-"

"Yes?" Islif asked from above them. "I've been called worse, mind, yet even a farm lass prefers not to be mistaken for-"

Jhessail and the two priests looked up, as the last of the cloth crumbled away from between Doust's fingers. Florin, Islif, and Pennae smiled down at them, back in their proper shapes.

"Always thought you were a real pig, underneath," Semoor greeted Florin with a grin.

"Careful," Pennae said. "Any priest fool-tongued enough to make any jests about sows or anything of the sort is going to regret it-as the toe of my boot makes reply to that!"

Semoor looked at Doust, who raised a warning finger and said over it with a smile, "Hail, fellow destroyer of liches!"

The Light of Lathander grinned. "Aye, wait'll they hear about thatsx a temple! Real fire-at-the-altar deeds-and ours!"

"Ahem," Jhessail tremulously reminded them both, "forget not one thing: We have to find a way out of here, somehow, and get to a temple, first."

"Indeed," a familiar male voice said from out of the darkness.

The younger Princess Obarskyr of Cormyr had made it back to her chambers without anyone in the stables or Palace seeing her in her commoner's garb, but she had been missed, and neither her maids nor the old, scarred war wizard nor yet the younger but no-less-scarred Purple Dragon guard commander had been all that pleased with her.

In the end, Alusair had planted her hands on her hips, faced them all across the receiving room of her chambers, and said, "You all seem to forget that I'm a child. Well, children-even princesses, and yes, even in civilized Cormyr-get to play and have adventures, and I was busy doing those things."

"You," her senior maid said, "stopped being a child about seven days after you were born."

"And whose fault is that?" Alusait said, finding herself on the verge of tears and made even angrier by that humiliation. "I can't even squat on a chamber pot without being spied upon! All the Watching Gods damn you all, can't I even-"

She caught herself on the very precipice of blurting out what she'd been out doing, but by then the Purple Dragon ornrion, bless him, had growled, "I've heard enough. Leave the royal miss alone, all of you. Damn me if I'd not feel the same way, were I standing in her boots. Er, slippers."

He turned for the door, windmilling his arms so as to sweep all the rest of them along with him, and added, "Now let's get out of here and leave her some peace. I'm sure you'll all take the opportunity to report her or scold her yourselves over the next day or so, anyhail, so-"

The war wizard protested something in an angry whisper as they shouldered through the door together, but the guard commander didn't bother to whisper his response. "I see that as your problem. Get Old Thunderspells to cast some sort of waist-down chastity spell on her if that's what you're so worried over."

Then, blessedly, Alusair was all alone, except for the glaring senior maid and two chambermaids who'd carefully kept silent and out of sight in the inner rooms.

Alusair curtly dismissed old Tsashaeree two words into the tirade she was starring, then rang the bell that would bring in the two Purple Dragon door guards to escort her out. They came grinning, one of them giving her a wink, and Alusair was careful not to let Tsashaeree see her winking back. She didn't want to give anyone the idea that she needed Dragons at her elbows day and night.

Alusair went in through the rooms to submit to the deft and deferential attentions of the chambermaids. They seemed in awe of her, for once, but this night that gave her no pleasure. She was too restless, too apprehensive that there would be consequences, and all for nothing. The Harper might have forgotten his promise or be half Faerun away from hearing her entreaty-or lying wounded or even dead somewhere, never to answer any summons again.

Lying in her bed in the dark, that same restlessness kept its hold over her, and she tossed and turned for what seemed like an eternity.

She must have fallen asleep in the end-because she certainly came awake when a male whisper asked softly into her ear, "You wanted me, Highness?"

The wizard Targon stood alone on the high balcony of a tower in Zhentil Keep, glaring out into the night. It wasn't something Targon often did, but then there was no one near to see him doing it and think his behavior strange.

Old. Ghost made his new host body smile wryly. 'Twasn't all that surprising, this lack of spying Zhentarim, given just how many Horaundoon had slaughtered before word had properly spread to bring down any official wariness.

Right now, it was taking all Old Ghost's will to reach across the distance between them and tug the unwilling flying sword back from even more happy slayings. Armaukran was a thirsty blade, and Horaundoon, it seemed, really hated a lot of Zhentarim.

Wherefore it was time-and more than time-for them to talk.

The warding spell Targon had cast around himself was ready to turn aside Armaukran's piercing point and deadly edge if the blade somehow outpaced his ability to govern Horaundoon's will, but Old Ghost really didn't think Horaundoon would be that stupid.

The sword came streaking out of the night with a flourish, arrowing poinr-first but then sweeping up, twisting in the air, and coming to an abrupt but silent stop in the air just out of reach of Targon, vertical with hilt uppermost.

"Well met," Old Ghost said.

"I'm finding I enjoy removing unworthy elements from the Brotherhood," was the response. "I hunger to eliminate more."

"I'll return you to that delight soon enough," Old Ghost told the sword. "How many have you slain? And who, specifically?"

"Fourscore and a few," Horaundoon replied. "Harkult and old Gesker and some magelings who were fawning over them, paltry wizards I knew not. No one else I can put a name to, but many, many priesrs of Bane, mostly underpriests because I could catch them alone and unseen-oh, and one little spy."

Targon lifted one eyebrow in silent query, and the sword explained, "A beholderkin the size of my fist or a little smaller. A little floating eyeball that was hovering by the shoulder of a wizard who got away."

Old Ghost made his host body nod. "He wasn't the only one to escape you. Your work is causing tumult in the Brotherhood, with every Zhent suspicious of his fellows and many of the senior wizards conducting their own 'investigations' into who's behind the slayings."

"Dozens of futile inquiries, yes. One Brother suspecting all his fellows of meaning him murderous ill is hardly unusual, but the elder Zhentarim have started giving orders and handing me an increasing problem. They are retreating inside warded and spell-guarded fortresses and sending their greenest magelings and most lowly acolytes out to do Zhent business. It is slowing and crippling Brotherhood work but leaving me with few targets worth slaughtering. More than that, Manshoon seems to have gone missing. Many senior Zhentarim have tried to contact him and met with only silence."

Old Ghost shrugged. What mattered it, if Horaundoon knew this? He shared something that had for years been his host body's greatest fear and secret, one that Targon knew would someday bring about his death, very soon after the moment Manshoon discovered he knew it. "That silence is almost certainly real. Manshoon is probably off on one of his little magic-gathering forays."

"Gaining new magic is certainly a good way to remain atop the Brotherhood, yes," Horaundoon agreed. "What forays, exactly?"

Old Ghost discovered with some amusement that Targon's fingers were drumming idly on the stone balcony rail. So this body retained some will of its own, after all. He must take care to remember that.

"From the days before there was a Black Brotherhood," he explained, "Manshoon had the habit of venturing alone around Faerun, usually in disguise, to ah… explore. It's how he first met the eye tyrants, I believe. Translocation spells and old portals are handy things."

"Go places, find those with magic you want, kill them, return home with the loot."

"Not a new strategy for any of us," Old Ghost agreed. "Long, long ago there was a kingdom in the north of what is now-nominally- Cormyr. Occupying most of the Stonelands and a little of the land-along the Ride north of the Hullack."

"Esparin."

"Esparin. And kingdoms often have palaces. Now, not quite so long ago, Cormyr had a king named Duar, who had to fight for his throne against a conspiracy that ruled most of Cormyr for a time."

"Executing or exiling the nobles who conspired against him," Horaundoon replied. "I have been told about the reign of Duar Obarskyr. Civil strife means wizards killed and magic hastily hidden."

"Indeed. So we have the Lost Palace of Esparin, which has remained lost because it lies hidden underground-somewhere under the Stonelands. We also have one particular noble family out of the dozen-some who were exiled for their deeds against King Duar. The Staghearts, now extinct. Which means the Crown owns the old, ruined Stagheart mansion but is unaware that it is linked by portals to the palace. More than that, Vangerdahast and his war wizards are unaware of these portals, too, or they and the Obarskyrs would never have let the place fall into ruin and be swallowed by Cormyr's ever-vigorous forests."

"So Manshoon knows this way into the Lost Palace?"

Targon nodded. "For years, Manshoon has been occasionally slipping into the Lost Palace of Esparin to explore, and he has plundered it of many magic items and old spellbooks."

"So if I were to get into this Lost Palace…"

"No," Old Ghost said. "Put out of your mind thoughts of becoming mightier than me by picking up magics that lie waiting in those halls. You'll find your own doom instead. The Palace has… complications."

"That you're going to keep from me, aren't you?" Horaundoon asked, more thoughtfully than bitterly.

"No," Old Ghost said, "but they certainly exist and close that particular door to both of us. Wherefore I'd prefer to discuss what you should do first and only then chat about, ah, romantic fancies."

"Very well. So Manshoon is in hiding and so are all the other most powerful Zhents, leaving me only worthless magelings to kill. While the beholders and the Bane priests and the most senior wizards all try to find or craft magics to find and destroy me."

"Well put. So we must make that tumult of yours shake them right out of doing so by making it much greater. I believe the best way to flush the most powerful out into the open is to hand the Brotherhood either a real crisis or a real opportunity. A war with Cormyr, perhaps…"

Old Ghost could feel Horaundoon's mind swirl with incredulous, eager delight. "Which you're going to cause how?"

"Through your strict obedience to my orders," Old Ghost said. "I am sending you to find and slay any of the Knights of Myth Drannor and to seize the Pendant of Ashaba. You will then bring it back here, by means of its chain looped about your blade, so Zhenril Keep can openly lay claim to Shadowdale. I-that is, this body I inhabit-can handle that." "While I-?"

"You will already have slipped back into Cormyr to do a little more butchery."

"Specific butchery."

"Indeed. You will slay the spies Vangerdahast sent after the Knights. You will also kill Myrmeen Lhal, in Arabel, then anyone the war wizards and the Dragon Throne send to look into her demise and the disappearances of the pendant, the Knights, and their spies. Cormyr will thus be weakened and infuriated at the same time as the most ambitious Zhents seek to take advantage of this weakness."

"You again."

"Targon again, suggesting and advising and 'discovering' where it will do the most good. I'll see to it that Brotherhood milirary strength in Shadowdale is built up and commanded by someone recklessly ambitious-we have a lot of Zhentilar like that-and goad them into taking Tilverton and Halfhap and threatening Arabel. The Zhentilar are to do battle with Purple Dragons wherever they see them. That will soon bring Cormyr riding this way with fire and sword-and that, if conquering Tilver's Gap hasn't done it already, will inevitably draw the rest of the Brotherhood into the conflict."

Horaundoon's mind had darkened, eagerness giving way to apprehension. "But what if Cormyr is too strong and shatters the Brotherhood, menacing Zhentil Keep itself?"

Old Ghost's satisfaction could be felt even more strongly than Targon's face could express. "As ro that," he said, "we need never fear Cormyr's strength. The Lost Palace is bulging with mad liches, all of them deranged but very powerful spell-slayers. All we need do is work the Unbinding that frees them all, and it will thrust them through an old portal right into the heart of the Royal Palace in Suzail-dooming that city. Its citizens will die horribly, twisted or blasted by ruthless magic, before the liches start to roam."

"And we'll then stop these rampaging liches how?"

"It matters not if they wreak havoc in other lands. In fact, we would do well to goad or steer some of them into dealing much death in Thay. If they do turn on us, who is better equipped than the Brotherhood to destroy them?"

"A Zhentarim empire… Thay brought low…" Horaundoon's thrilled mind was bright with eager, growing hunger.

"Once the elder wizards of the Brotherhood are out of their fortresses and active, we can select victims at will."

"Manshoon and the most debauched wizards."

"When they are eliminated, Fzoul and the beholders are certain to seek command of the Zhentarim. When that bloodbath is done, one side or both will be gone, leaving just the hardened survivors and the weakest of magelings."

"Whom we can control."

Targon nodded. "Whereupon the Brotherhood will be back on the path to greatness-an empire-at last. Which we safeguard, watching and continuing to prune away anyone who reveals himself as the same sort of power-hungry fool that Manshoon has become."

The brightness in Horaundoon's mind suddenly clouded over with fear again. "What about Hesperdan?"

Old Ghost made his host body shrug. "He's always been a mystery, that one-and far more powerful than he has any right to be. Yet even if he steps forward to seize all, he has never seemed as reckless as Manshoon. Yes, Hesperdan just might be the greatest tyrant mage Faerun has ever known."

Princess Alusair's heart was pounding so thunderously, she thought it might awaken the maids dozing in the outer robing room. She rolled over in flash and by the faint, familiar glow of her moonstone bracelet on her bedside table could just see that there was a dark figure in bed beside her. A man-sized figure.

"Who are you?" she whispered, clutching the silken sheets up to her chin. She was suddenly very aware that the nearest knife was hidden behind a panel inside one of the four soaring bedposts on the far side of the intruder-and that all she was wearing was a black ribbon choker around her neck.

"Dalonder Ree, Harper, here in answer to your summons," he said.

Alusair let out a great sigh of relief then said, "I need you to help me!"

Dalonder gazed at the young princess, briefly marveling at the way her eyes almost blazed with excitement and anger. "Help you how, Princess?" he whispered.

"Vangerdahast senr away my personal champion, an ornrion everyone calls Dauntless, though his real name-"

"I know him. You want him brought back here?"

"Yes!"

"And what's to stop Vangerdahast from just sending him away somewhere worse?" "I… don't know."

Dalonder plucked something from a belt pouch, deftly captured a royal hand in the datkness, and pressed the item into her palm.

"What-?"

" Tis just a black leather button. Nothing magical. If someone takes it from you, find another. Think about how you can protect Dauntless if he does return here. When you've thought of something, drop this out yout window into the garden bed below-and I'll come back, probably in this manner. Until then, be aware that Harpers are already watching over Dauntless and the Knights of Myth Drannor."

"The Knights?"

"Yes. Your ornrion was sent to see them out of the realm. Old Thunderspells neglected to tell you that, I see. He neglects rather too much, these days."

Whatever Alusair was going to say vanished when the man in bed with her deftly captured her other hand, dropped a genrle kiss into her palm-and was gone through the bed curtains, leaving her alone with her heart pounding hard again.

After a long, tense time of listening to nothing, Alusair relaxed, rolled onto her back, and smiled into the darkness.

She was caught up in Palace intrigue at last. Men slipping into her bed in the proverbial cat-hours of the night. Her bed.

She mattered.