The Sword Never Sleeps

Chapter 17

He had done the right thing, cutting his losses and getting out. The right thing, he reminded himself, seeking the cool, calculating calm he prized so much.

Hotheads doom themselves. Hot rage burns the rager. Be as the patient ice and stone, biding in silence until the right moment of thunderous fall.

The trite sayings brought just about as much comfort as he'd expected them to, and Manshoon kept right on striding along the dark passages of Zhentil Keep, knowing he should feel relief if he let himself feel anything at all. Still he burned with fury.

"Black, black temper," he murmured the words of a currently popular ditty, seeking to divert himself. And failing.

He was in a black temper. He'd done a mastetful job of impersonating Vangerdahast. He'd brought the Unbinding to the proverbial brink of being complete. He'd brought about the destruction of many of the liches he'd had to work so hard to escape or pacify on his earlier visits to the Lost Palace. And he'd caused many potential foes-those adventurers, a few Harpers, some war wizards, perhaps even Vangerdahast himself-to be wounded, weakened, or even slain.

Yet he could find no pleasure or satisfaction or even just some scrap of comfort in any of that.

He was furious at those who'd brought him so close to death and more furious at himself for being afraid to return to the Lost Palace to destroy them all.

"Blackfire," he snarled. "Talar and blackfire!"

Mild oaths, but he seldom cursed at all-and almost never aloud. Commanders had no need to curse, and that was the image he'd chosen to armor himself in-especially among all of these sly, murderously ambitious Brothers in his Zhentarim.

Murderous, yes. That's what it was time to be, now. For the greater glory of Bane and the greater exaltation of a certain Manshoon, too. He knew now what he had to do.

Accordingly, he took the side way out of the next grand chamber, turning in the echoing darkness to head for a certain vault.

It was not a short journey. Keeping his face impassive, he strode past guardpost after guardpost, crisply answering challenge after challenge.

Ahead, beyond yet more guarded doors, was a table. It stood alone in a dark room, four straight legs and a smooth top upon which rested an open-ended wooden cradle. On that cradle lay the greatest magical treasure he'd managed to craft thus far: a Staff of Doom.

Not quite a match for the doomstaves of old yet. In fact, something of a one-joke jester's act. Aside from allowing a wielder to fall slowly from a cliff or high place, and altering light in a small area about itself, it could do just one thing: emit death tyrants. That is, its globular ends, upon command, became portals that spat out an undead beholder each from a stasis-space he'd filled with four-and-ten undead beholders thus far.

He'd been saving this secret for a pressing need, in hopes that such a need would come after he had mastered ways of augmenting the staff with other battle powers.

Yet death comes for those who wait too long for rheir needs to seem pressing.

He could-should-use it now.

He'd whisk himself back to the Lost Palace, plant the staff in a suitable spot, trigger it to unleash two death tyrants to destroy all life and unlife in the place, and depart. A few tendays later, upon his return, the death tyrants should be the only sentiences left. He'd command them back into the staff for later use and plunder the place at leisure. Or leave them drifting around to do battle with Vangerdahast or any war wizards who came blundering along while he was stripping the Lost Palace of all the magic he wanted.

He had passed the last human guards long ago, and the monsters held in stasis-except for the venomous spider that waited in the vault itself. He had passed the last pair of sword-wielding automatons, too, and he was just stepping through the opening his mutmurings had made in the spell-confined curtain of crawling, flesh-eating ooze. Which left only his own wards: shimmering curtains of interlaced magical spells that could be destroyed by a sufficiently powerful onslaught of magic but couldn't be restored exactly as he'd left them by anyone except him.

In front of him, they glimmered untouched. Of course.

He walked on, parting each one as he reached ir and letting it seal again behind him. Carelessness kills more mages than anything else, and being careless among the Brotherhood was like dancing blindfolded and naked in a pit of angry, hungry vipers.

The last ward parted at his word and gesrure, and he strode into the vault, speaking the words that would keep the spider frozen above him.

He stopped, gasping in disbelief.

The cradle on the table was empty.

He shot glances all around the room, even as he strode over to the cradle. "Whiteblood!" he whispered slowly, aghast.

The staff-his work, his unfinished masterpiece-was gone.

Manshoon raced around the table, knowing his search was futile. He could already see every corner of the vault and the floor behind the table. He looked up, seeing only the soft, steady glow of the radiance spell he'd cast long ago to give him light in this place. The ceiling, just like the floor and the walls, was bare. He went to his knees and peered at the underside of the table, even though the staff was far too long to be hidden there. Nothing, of course.

Rage rising in him, Manshoon of the Zhentarim cast a tracing spell on the cradle, in hopes that some too-small-to-see dust mote or fragment had crumbled off the staff and been left behind there that he could use to try ro trace the vanished staff. If the magic did its utmost, he'd be able to identify who'd taken it and where.

His spell flared, wild hope leaping in him as it found something and began to work.

The spell died, leaving Manshoon staring at something small and white lying in the cradle, that hadn't been been there-or visible there, at least-before. It was…

A tiny stone carving of a human left hand, in a fist but with its forefinger pointing straight out or up. Smooth-carved of some white stone.

A tiny holy symbol of Azuth.

Manshoon really cursed this time, his face going as white as bleached bone.

He drew back from the little carving as if burned-and then warily approached it again to stare at it intently. His rage slowly left him, and he wrapped himself in cold calm.

Traveling back through all the guardposts, he consoled himself with a sudden thought.

Manshoon of the Zhentarim. He had become important enough for gods to notice.

"An agteement, Friend Procurer, is an agreement," the plump, ragged-robed priest of Tymora said with dignity, "and I took care that this one would be a bond before the gods-or at least the gods that most govern us both. Tymora answered my prayers with holy visions both vivid and specific. Did ye not assure me that Mask did the same for ye?"

"Y-yes," Torm said reluctantly, hefting the staff in his hands: 'Tis just that I… I've never stolen anything quite this powerful or well-guarded before. I…" He waved one hand to indicate the strength of his struggle for the right words, his usual wit failing him, then burst out, "My hands don't want to let it go out of their grasp.

I hunger to hold it, to stroke it-not like a woman, mind, but yes, stroke it-often. Whenever I feel the need. Something inside me doesn't want to let it out of my presence, lest I never get the chance to hold it again. Haularake, this seems fool-headed, even when I'm just saying it to you, but… 'tis so, I tell you!"

Rathan nodded sympathetically. "We consecrated holy ones feel the same way when we first touch holy altars and relics of our gods. We cannot bear to be parted from them. 'Tis why some temple altats are surrounded of nights by sleeping priests with their hand or cheek or some part of their skin pressed against the holy stone. They end up heaped in a great snoring ring around an altar!"

"That must hamper morning devotions a trifle," the young thief said, folding his arms around the staff as if it were an overlarge child he was holding tenderly to his breast. "I-no, I can't do this!"

"And failing to do it, stand foresworn before three gods?" Rathan teminded him. "Saer Torm, are ye already, in thy green count of seasons, that tired of living?"

"You're not much older!"

"I," the priest of Tymora replied with as much dignity as any old, slow, and wise high priest, "am not the one contemplating breaking a holy bond. My age enters not into this. I have never claimed ro be grayer in years then ye, nor wiser. I merely believe that a bond is a bond-and even a thief to whom lying and bond-breaking is everyday ease should hold that a bond is a bond when the very god of thieves hath been a part of the bond in question. In short, staff-stealer: break this agreement, and ye're tluined."

Totm sighed gustily, looked down at the staff in his arms, then glanced around the forest glade they were sitting in. "I know that," he said in a voice raw with anguish, kicking his heels against the great rock he was sitting on. "What, precisely, was the agreement again?"

"So ye can slithet all over it like a snake seeking a hole to slide through?" Rathan asked in amused tones. "Very well. I'm a priest. I have every last waking moment left in my life to talk over holy matters. Except when actually praying, of course. I trust that doesn't poad ve into seeking to end mv life, here and now."

"Don't tempt me," Torm muttered. "Let me hear the deal."

Rathan smiled and leaned forward on his rock to stab one stubby finger at the thief. "Ye were to steal the staff and put the token of Azuth that I gave ye in its place. Ye would thereby be protected from all harm by the spells and vigilance of the Unseen One, god of spellcasters, while ye did the theft. After, I am to put the staff on this altar of Azuth"-the priest swung around on his rock to point down the glade at the circular, flat-topped stone that lay in the leaf-littered moss and dirt at the far end of the clearing-"and the Unseen One will then magically claim it and leave a reward in its place. We split that offering evenly- evenly, thief-and ye give thy half to Mask, whilst I lay mine upon an altar of Tymora."

Torm nodded a trifle wearily. "I rise in Mask's measuring thanks ro my daring theft of something truly powerful, and you earn a smile from Lady Luck for chancing this crazed scheme and persuading me to have a hand in it."

"Precisely,"Rathan agreed heartily. "Tymora be praised."

"And Mask be tickled pink or some such favorable hue," Torm replied sourly-and thrust one end of the staff out to touch Rathan's chest, bowing his head and closing his eyes. "Take it!"

Carefully, almost reverently, the priest closed both hands around the staff and tugged ever so gently.

Flinging back his head to sigh loudly enough to stir an echo in the nearest trees of Hullack Forest, Torm let go.

"There, now," Rathan said soothingly. "That wasn't-"

"Don't say it!" Torm shouted, springing up from his rock to yell in the priest's face. "Yes, it was stlarning hard. Thank you very much for nor asking nor even suggesting I think along such lines! Grrr!"

He strode around the rocks, drawing his needle blade and slashing the air with it so furiously, it hissed and whistled as it cut nothing at all.

He stopped, sighed again, resheathed his thin sword, and sat down on the rocks again as if nothing had happened.

"Right," he said calmly. "That's done. Yout turn, I believe."

Rathan nodded, his attention-as it had been from the moment the thief's sword had slid back into its sheath-on the staff in his hands. He wasn't stroking it as Torm had been, but he was studying it, hefting it in his hands as if to try to feel the magic it contained.

"Tymora look down!" he gasped. "Such arrogance! He even labeled itI"

"Staff of Doom," Torm intoned grandly. "Made by Manshoon, mightiest of Zhentarim." He chuckled. "Modest, isn't he?"

"Hmm. Mayhap he feared it would get mixed up with the staff of another Zhent at some Brotherhood gathering or other," the priest of Tymora said. "We must grant that possibility."

"We can grant the possibility that the tree he cut this from grew this limb with those words graven in it by the hands of the gods," Torm replied sarcastically, "and he merely found it and was seized by inspitation, but forgive me if I refrain from betting on such a likelihood, hey?"

Rathan raised his head and gave the thief a severe look. "Thy faith is less than strong."

"My faith in myself is strong," Torm countered. "The gods, I'm not so sure about. Especially the fanciful versions of gods some priests try to hand me. Some priests, note. Not you, stout champion of Tymora."

Rathan looked up again. "Stout champion?"

"Ah, you were listening." Torm grinned. "Purely an accidental slip of the tongue, I assure you."

"Thy assurances," the priest told him dryly, "are as strong as thy faith."

He stood up, the staff in his hands, and gave Torm a long, steady look.

"Do it," the thief said quietly after a time. "I won't jump you or try to snatch it."

Rathan nodded, turned slowly, and then solemnly strode the length of the glade, the staff held out before him horizontally. Torm trailed after him, well to one side, watching the staff and the altar in turn, half expecting either or both of them to burst into something loud and bright and different.

Nothing happened, and no one sprang into view behind the altar.

When he reached that massive, plain disk of stone, the priest of Tymora stopped, held out the staff, and announced calmly, "Rathan Thentraver am I, and unworthy, a priest of Tymora. To holy Azuth this we give, Saer Torm and myself."

Leaning forward, he carefully laid the staff down on the altar, stepped back, bowed deeply, and stepped back further.

The staff stayed motionless on the altar. Silence fell. Nothing happened.

After several long breaths had dragged by, Torm sighed. "Well, that was a bit of a-"

The altar glowed, a bright white fist of dancing motes rising from the bare dark stone around the staff and gathering together in a sphere a foot or so above the altat.

As Torm and Rathan stared, the sphere grew to shield size, then as large as the boulders they'd been sitting on at the far end of rhe glade, a blinding white light that made the thief hastily back away. "If that explodes-!"

Rathan stood his ground.

The light streamed down to cover the altar, dripping down its sides like white candle wax, hiding the staff entirely. Then, very suddenly, it went from white to a deep, rich blue… and statted to fade.

The staff was gone, but there was something in its place. A heap-no, two heaps, accompanied by a whiff of pipesmoke.

The blue radiance ebbed even more, and two small heaps of gems could be seen sitting side by side on the altar, each covered with a leather pouch from which prorruded a neat quartet of cylindrical metal vials.

"Healing potions?" Torm breathed as the last of the glow faded away.

"Mayhap," Rathan muttered, his gaze never leaving the altar. One of the two pouches was labeled "Torm" and the othet "Rathan." Both had small, folded scraps of parchment thrusr into them.

Torm and Rathan broke off staring at the altar long enough to stare at each other in astonishment. Then they both shrugged, stepped forward, took up their parchments, and read them.

"Well, holy man?"

"Rathan," the priest read aloud, "go ye to Shadowdale. Once there, use any pretext to become a trusted Knight of Myth Drannor."

Then he made a surprised sound. The parchment melted away to dust in his fingets. He looked quickly at the thief.

"Torm," Torm read out rather hastily, "go ye to Shadowdale. Once there, use any pretext to become a trusted Knight of Myth Drannor." His parchment, too, promptly fell to dust.

They stared at each other. Again.

Rathan finally found his voice, rather feebly. "Trusted? Us?" Torm grinned. "Got anything to drink? I find myself in need of something like that just now. Rather a lot of it, too."

Standing alone in a room of the Royal Palace in Suzail, the War Wizard Laspeera carefully finished casting a spell.

There was a momentary twinkling of sound and light around the hargaunt, where it was floating motionless in midair, and Laspeera stared at it in grim silence for the space of a long breath.

Nothing happened. The hargaunt was securely held in stasis.

Stepping back out of the chamber wirhout taking her eyes off the amorphous blob, Laspeera used a wand to seal the door. Then she drew a second wand from its sheath on her hip and cast a second seal atop the first.

Standing in the passage beside her were three people who had watched all she had done: Princess Alusair, King Azoun, and Queen Filfaeril. They all turned away together and srarted down the deserted, door-lined passage.

"And so we gain another crown secret," Azoun murmured. "Quite a collecrion, now."

"Indeed," Laspeera said, falling into step behind the royals.

"I believe I heard you think-but not quite say-the words, 'And that's counting just those we let you non-Wizards of War know about,' if I'm not mistaken," the queen said.

Laspeera halted in midstride, just for a moment, then repeated politely, "Indeed," and walked on.

"Is knowing when the Royal Magician is going to be his usual snarling self again one of them?" the king asked.

"For the moment," Laspeera replied gently, "yes. I'm afraid so."

They all jumped, then-and Alusair let out a little shriek-as from the dark doorway they were passing, the wizard Vangerdahast thrust his head out and snapped, "Snatl!"

Then he favored them with a grin of the sort generally termed "sheepish."

Queen Filfaeril rolled her eyes. "I keep forgetting Elminster trained you."

Slowly, dimly, Highknight Lady Ismra Targrael became aware of herself again. Her limbs tangled, she was lying on her back on something hard and smooth. Cold, damp stone, underground. A place that seemed not familiar but seen before… recently.

She tried to disentangle her arms and legs. Her body felt heavy and somehow profoundly numb. There was a faint smell rising from it. An unpleasant smell.

She moved again, trying to sit up. Her limbs were heavy-very heavy-and unresponsive. She was dead, wasn't she?

It was dark around her, with walls of dark, paneled wood rising up beyond the reach of what she could see in the dimness. She was still in the Lost Palace.

So this must be undeath.

Something moved closer to her. Something she could feel- power, a cold energy-before she could see it. Something that became a man standing over her.

Looming over her and looking down at her with eyes that wete coldly twinkling lights in dark sockets, out of a face that was mere flesh wrapped loose around a skull. A lich.

Then there was another. A rhird, and fourth, a ring of skeleral faces above her, staring coldly down. Targrael recognized one of them as the lich that had killed her.

"Rise," that lich commanded. "And dance. Can you learn to love us?"

Lying on the floor among the gathering, Targrael looked around at all the cold, glittering eyes, skulls, and rotting flesh and murmured, "I… I don't think so."

"Well," another lich observed coldly, "your flesh still has beauty- for a time, at least. Long enough for you to learn."

Skeletal arms reached down. Targrael discovered her newly heavy self could nor move nearly fast enough to evade them.

With astonishing strength they plucked her body upright.

"Learn to embrace madness," the lich who'd murdered her said, and he leaned in to kiss her.

Targrael tried to scream but found herself mute.

His hand on his sword hilt, Dauntless glared at the Knights of Myth Drannor. "I am the Royal Champion of Princess Alusair," he said, "and stand here-still! — under the clear and explicir orders of the Royal Magician, Vangerdahast. I am to see that you depart the realm, tarrying nowhere and working no rreason."

"We intend none," Florin replied a little wearily. "Tell Lord Vangerdahast that when you see him."

"And tell him this, too," Islif added. " 'Tis never too late to learn to trust folk of Cormyr. Even adventurers."

"I will deliver your messages," Dauntless said. Then a smile that was as sudden as it was unexpected split the ornrion's face. "Though I believe it might be decades too late for that particular wizard to learn anything."

At his elbow, the War Wizard Tsantress rolled her eyes. "I'd hate to have heard that, because I just might agree with it-and then what sort of trouble would I be in?"

"I still can't believe he's alive," Lorbryn Deltalon put in from behind them both.

"Believe it," Laspeera said wearily. Then she stepped forward, astonished Florin by embracing him, and over his shoulder announced, "You are good folk, you Knights. But get you on to Shadowdale with your pendant, before anything else happens."

The Knights muttered various forms of agreement, turned with waves and smiles, and went out to the Moonsea Ride to walk east.

Dauntless promptly strode to where he could watch them go. Laspeera grinned and shook her head at that, then turned and carefully conjured a portal in the center of the clearing.

When the glow of that magical doot was bright and steady, she ushered the Harper and her fellow war wizards toward it. They obeyed, filing through the glow and journeying back to Suzail in a single step.

"Ornrion," she called.

Dauntless turned his head, saw the portal and her beckoning gesture, gave the dwindling figures of the Knights one last, long look, then obediently started toward the waiting glow.

He was still a pace away from it when something slid silently out of the trees ar the far end of rhe clearing.

The flying sword, point-first, gliding low beneath the leaves.

"Get through!" Laspeera snapped at the ornrion. "No, don't stoo and turn-go!"

Dauntless ran, and Laspeera ducked aside from the portal and hastily started to close it.

The flying sword streaked at the portal's waning glow.

Laspeera frowned as a sudden rhought struck her. She whipped two wands from her belt and unleashed them with cafe at the flickering, shrinking edges of the portal.

It guttered, rippled wildly, and suddenly shot up into the air, the sword slicing air just beneath it, then arcing around to speed at it again.

The rippling glow dodged again, the sword almost plunging through it. The radiance seemed for just a moment to collapse into a wildly agitated helix… then became bright and hard again, but smaller and humming loudly. The sword shot toward it again.

Laspeera willed the doorway onto its edge and to rise, and again the sword just missed it. By then, her former portal had raced to hover before her like a shield.

The sword was getting faster. It darted at the shield, plunged into it as silently as if the shield were mere empty air… and slowed to a snail's pace in midair, hanging almost motionless as it worked its way through the glowing barrier.

Its point was glittering a mere arm's length from Laspeera's breast.

She stepped aside leisurely, resheathed her wands, and got the strongest spell she knew ready, mouth going dry.

Either she had just made the biggest-and quite likely the last- mistake of her life, or…

The sword emerged from the shield, still gliding so slowly it seemed almost frozen. It had acquired a strange glow of its own, a pulsing purple-white sheen that raced up its length to its elegantly curled quillons, then back down.

"Yes!" an exulting voice erupted from it. "Yessss!"

The Sword That Never Sleeps turned and streaked off northeast, faster than it had ever sped before.