The Sword Never Sleeps

Chapter 18

So we almost got killed-again-and lost all our horses and gear. Is this the sort of adventure we can look forward to?" Semoor said. He winced as his feet pained him more and more with each step. The blisters weren't something he was looking forward to lancing. "How long before we're walking along naked and starving, waiting for the first hungry beast or knife-waving outlaw to happen along and put us out of our misery?"

"Think of it as an unending sequence of new beginnings, Wolftooth dearest," Pennae said, "and the Morninglord will provide. Or is your faith as weak as your backbone?"

"Hey hoy!" Semoor snapped, giving her a glare. "Do I question your profession, thief?"

Pennae shrugged. "I care not if you do, Saer Yapping Tongue. Some folk open their mouths and spew out mere noise that the rest of us soon cease heeding-and I fear you're one of rhose folk. I expect that at your funeral, your complaints and whinings and not-so-clever remarks are going to rise from your grave without pause until the gravediggers shovel enough earth on top of you that we finally won't have to hear it all any longer."

"Here, now," Jhessail said. "Enough. Some band of adventurers we'll be, if we start clawing at each other like brawling tavern drunkards!" on offer in Espar," Pennae said, "and while I agree with you to a point, Jhess, I think 'tis time and past time we aired some things. Before I strangle Saer Semoor with his own sharp, forked tongue."

Doust reached a quelling hand to his longtime friend's arm at about the time Islif clapped a hand over the crimson, fiery-eyed Lathanderite's mouth.

"Before you respond to Pennae, Stoop," she said in his ear gently, "I'd like you to do one thing for me. Pretend that several senior priests of the Morninglord are standing right here listening to all you say. Please?"

She withdrew her hand. Semoor shot her a simmering look and the words, "Thank you, Islif."

Then he turned to tegard Pennae and said, "I am what I am. If there's something about me you think teally must be changed, you'll have to convince me. Not that I think insults will move me much. Would they change you?"

"Oh, shrewdly said," Doust murmured.

Florin nodded. "Your words, Semoor, ring true enough in my ears. Pennae?"

The thief regarded Florin thoughtfully, then nodded, turned, and went to Semoor-and kissed him.

He tried to lean and turn his face away from her, stiffly, but she was far more agile than he and could caress and kiss very skillfully when she wanted to. In mere moments he was groaning under her tongue and embracing her fiercely.

Jhessail rolled her eyes skyward. "And of course there's always that way to solve every little dispute, too. Not being a jack, I haven't what fills a codpiece to be led around by, but it seems to wotk for them. Every time."

"Lead me around by my codpiece, lass?" Doust asked her hopefully, waving a hand. " 'Tis just down here!"

Islif decided it was her turn to indulge in some eye-rolling. "How far is it to Shadowdale?" she asked Florin, in world-weary tones.

"Don't ask me!" he jested. "I'm but a simple backwoods tanger!"

"Who walks with kings and beds noble lasses as calmly as some Ed greenwood of us change our jerkins," Pennae teased him, coming up for air.

"If I pick another fight with you," Semoor asked her hopefully, nor releasing her from his embrace, "will you make peace wirh me like this again? About the time we make camp and decide on sleeping arrangements for the night, say?"

"Speaking of which," Islif said, "we're walking rhrough wild country, and we'd better decide how to camp and keep ourselves alive before we fall asleep and anything small with jaws has its way with us. Even a weasel or a groundcat can take your throat out with ease if you're just lying on the ground snoring."

"So we'll be standing watch every night? Oh, gods," Semoor snarled, "why is the world so stlarning unfair?"

It was Florin who stopped walking this time, to spin around and fix Semoor with a stern look. "I don't know why. Perhaps the gods do. What I do know is that we're adventurers and that, yes, the world isn't fah. Making it fair is our job. Yours, mine, all of us."

Silence fell after he finished speaking those words, and in its cloak the Knights walked on, one by one nodding and murmuring agreement in their various ways.

Lost in thought, the wizard Targon turned from a high balcony in Zhentil Keep and strolled across the gloomy and deserted chamber into which the balcony opened. He had no particular quarrel with most of the Zhentarim wizards of lesser rank-they were ruthless graspers-after-power, to be sure, but who of the Brotherhood was not? — bur the five or six mages he did want brought down were difficult targets. To avoid being exposed to the entire Brotherhood as a peril to all, he would have to move very carefully against whichever one of them he chose to slay first.

That meant he still had to learn a lot more abour their alliances with beholders and Bane priests and the gods alone knew who else, so as toHe staggered, arched over backward, and stood trembling, suddenly transfixed by the sword Armaukran.

It had come racing out of the sky and swooping through the archway from the balcony so swiftly that the light ward spell he was using hadn't even had time to chime. Now the agony was so white-hot, he could barely frame coherent thoughts.

He should have been able to sense the sword approaching.

What had happened to it?

Grimly, Old Ghost felt for the sword's enchantments with his will, red mists of pain rising to flood his mind with the looming threat of oblivion…

"Die!" Horaundoon snarled, his hatred a deafening bellow crashing through Old Ghost's thoughts. "I've been changed and need never fear you again, cruel schemer!"

The Zhentarim staggered blindly across the room with the blade through him, as two minds wrestled amid gathering darkness inside his head-a darkness that smiled and drew in around Horaundoon with tightening talons.

From somewhere near at hand, he heard Old Ghost ask silkily, "Oh? Need you not?"

Then the darkness struck, bursting into ctimson fury as sentience flooded into and overwhelmed sentience.

This time, Old Ghost made sure of his foe, rending a howling Horaundoon ruthlessly and utterly.

When the mind thunder had fallen quiet again, and he stood alone in the dripping ruins of Targon's mind and dying body, he knew only the sword was vessel enough to trust in and inhabit.

He looked and felt, coiling through threads of enchantment and long-disused powets… finding excitement again, after so long…

There is much room in this blade. Room for a dozen minds or more, if I can command that many at once. Company for centuries, to warm me with their fancies and memories and hatreds-until I tire of them and subsume or destroy them.

The dying Targon slumped down, and the sword drew back out of him and flew away, out from the balcony in a great soaring arc, heading for Shadowdale.

One less fool to trammel me. On to find others.

As the humming, blue-silver blade flashed through the air, Old Ghost wondered idly if it was smiling as smugly as he was inside it.

Not that there was any hurry. There would be plenty of time to subvert adventurers when the Knights of Myth Drannor finally arrived in Shadowdale.

Brorn Hallomond found the old casket he was looking for. It would take the strength of an owlbear to drag aside the stone lid and maul him. Here he could sleep and heal.

Gods, he wished he'd been able to steal another healing vial.

Huh. As to that, he wished he'd been able to steal himself a castle full of servants and fine food and a title to go with it, too.

Perhaps next time.

He hammered the sliding stone catch with the pommel of his dagger, gasping with the pain each blow brought him. He hauled up the hinged lid with a howl of pain and more or less fell in on top of the btittle, shrouded corpse inside.

It crackled into riven boneshards and dust under him, and he clutched himself to lessen the inevitable agony of coughing and sneezing that followed. When at last that was done, Brorn clawed the lid back down, rolled to the crack in the stone so he could breathe, and lay still, waiting for weariness to overcome pain and let him sleep.

Thank whatever gods had smiled upon him. When that war wizard lass-Santress, or whatever her name was-discovered her little token missing, it would probably be about then that she'd remember that a certain bullyblade had vanished from the hollow where all the healing was going on, too.

Hopefully she wouldn't be mule-headed enough to come back here looking for him.

Though most war wizards were just that, stlarn it.

He felt for the dagger at his belt, so he could be ready if she did haul back the lid. Hah. A dagger against her wands. And probably those of half-a-dozen more oh-so-brave Wizards of War.

Still, 'twas the best he could do. He was only Lord Yellander's bullyblade, not Lord Yellander. Yet.

"Night fog, and we're getting into rising rocks," Florin muttered. "I don't like the looks of this."

"Rocks at least ate a solid shield at our backs," Islif said. "I've yet to find a tree, however large, that I dared trust as much."

"We must stand watch," Pennae said from ahead of them all, "and find some shelter we can defend. Even if we have to butcher some bear or other and take his cave."

"Adventure," Jhessail said in an acidic voice that struggled along the edge of a yawn.

"Up there," Doust said, pointing a little way up a slope of loose stones on their left that turned into a cliff face farther up. "That overhang. If we sleep up there, nothing that doesn't have wings can get to us without making a lot of noise."

"Rolling rocks aplenty down to the Ride under their feet, or claws, or slithery belly," Pennae agreed. "Well spotted,' Luck of Tymora."

"Lathander smiles upon us too!" Semoor said.

"I've heard far better bed-me lines," the thief told him almost kindly. "Now, the swifter you get yourself up there and bedded down, the sooner you can be praying to the Morninglord to keep us alive to see his next glorious morning-and the faster we'll all get some sleep."

Semoor sighed, beckoned Doust, and started climbing.

"Sleep fully clad, boots and all," Islif put in, watching Semoor leading Doust gingerly up the slippery slope of sliding, tumbling stones. Then she looked at Florin and grinned. "Guess camp's been decided, valiant leader."

"I'm not our leader," Florin said wearily.

"Oh, yes, you are," Jhessail told him quietly. "You just happen to lead some adventurers afflicted with the minds of jesters that succeed in bursting out and conquering their wirs from time to time." She started up the slope, unbound red hair swirling around her shoulders.

A little way up she stopped, looked back at him over one shoulder, and asked, "Tuck me in, valiant leader?" Florin hoped she was teasing.

"Their names were Harreth and Yorlin," the young Wizard of War said to Vangerdahasr as they stood gazing at the two corpses in rhe dungeon cell. "We've learned that much. Worked for the ttaitor Lord Yellander. I know not how Harreth got down here or how he thought he'd free Yorlin, but whatever he did failed and killed them both."

The Royal Magician sighed. "A reasonable enough conclusion, lad-but wrong. Yorlin may be hanging in yon spell chains now, but he wasn't the prisoner I put in here nor the prisoner who was in here yestereve, when last I scryed the deep cells. There's a man missing from this cell, a war wizard trairor, and Wouldn't be a daring wager to say he was freed through the actions of these two and rewarded them for it by slaying them." His mouth crooked into a smile of sorts. "Come to think of it, 'twas a reward, indeed."

The young war wizard blinked. "Ir was?"

"However he killed them, they enjoyed swifter and less painful deaths than I'd have given them for loosing Onsler Ruldroun upon the realm again."

"Father!" Torsard Spurbright's shout was shrill with genuine excitement. His sire hastened to hide the little note from Silverymoon he'd been re-reading, by using it to mark his place in the thick tome-a history of the life of Baerauble of Cormyr-he was currently leading. He closed the book just in time, as the younger Lord Spurbright burst into the room.

"Have vou heard rhe news? A war wi7.ard traitor's esraned from the dungeons under the Royal Court-the deep cells!"

Lord Elvarr Spurbright lifted both of his bushy eyebrows. "The deep cells?"

"Yes! Rude Rune or suchlike, he's called! He's been hanging down there in spell chains because there's something precious in his mind, so Old Thunderspells can't just kill him. Have you ever heard the like?"

The elder Lord Spurbright nodded slowly. "I have, as it happens. Whence came this news? And had it any warning attached to it?"

Torsard waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, the usual, 'Mind under your beds-he's everywhere! Everywhere!' clap-cackle!"

"Cackle that was first uttered by whom?" Elvarr asked again patiently.

His son blinked. "Oh. Ah, the Princess Alusair, they're saying." Lord Elvarr Spurbright winced, then chuckled. "Oho. Dearest Vangerdahast isn't going to be pleased by that."

"My old friend Yellander repaid me well. Those dolts didn't know who I was, but they certainly knew where I was and what they had to bring to me. They even brought along his written instructions, to make certain they did everythingy «rf right."

"And?"

"And I killed them, of course. Using the spell I'd been thirsting so long to use again-the spell, by the way, that means you dare not try to betray me-I drank their lives. Which is why I'm grinning like this. The life-energy of three men is raging in me like a flame!"

Telgarth Boarblade kept his face carefully expressionless. He had wondered why a man he remembered as a cold-eyed, veteran war wizard was babbling like a gloating maniac. So he hadn't been rescued by a complete madwits, after all-just someone mostly mad-witted.

So, does taking a threefold life need three fatal blade thrusts? Something to ponder…

Onsler Ruldroun babbled on. "The beauty of it is, Vangerdahast can't lay the smallest spell on me! No realm can confine me, and no-"

"What's that? "Boarblade snapped to shut off this flow of insanity. He cocked his head and turned as if he'd heard something.

The war wizard or, Boarblade supposed, ex-war wizard-what did they officially do to war wizard traitors, anyhail, besides execute them? — fell blessedly silent. His eyes narrowed, and he thrust his head forward to listen intently.

Then he waved his hand in a swift spell.

After a moment, he nodded, scooped something from a belt pouch, and handed it to Boarblade. It was a small, ordinary-looking stone.

"Well done, Boarblade. You repay my freeing of you already. Throw that at the man you'll find skulking outside. Hit him with it, but throw it slowly, mind. Underhanded, like a little girl swinging her arm back and forth to throw something as high as she can."

Boarblade nodded, not asking for an explanation, but the bright-eyed wizard gave him one anyway.

"I need time to speak the awakening word, whilst the stone is in the air-to turn it deadly to the next living thing it touches."

"There's only the one person outside?" Boarblade asked quietly, wondering what innocent he'd doomed by his ruse-but not caring much-as he hefted the stone in his hand. "I can't mistake my target?"

"Just the one man. Throw slowly, remember." Boarblade nodded and went out. Well, he'd worked for worse masters.

As the two princesses settled themselves in the chairs to which the Royal Magician had waved them, Vangerdahasr himself closed and bolted the door, took up a wand from a sidetable close to it, and cast a careful spell that made the walls, floor, and ceiling all glow a deep, rich blue.

There arose a short-lived singing sound, and as it died away, so did the radiance, leaving everything looking as ir had before.

"The strongest warding I know," the wizard explained as he strode back to join them. "As I promised you, this meeting will be private."

Princess Tanalasta's gaze was cool, and her question politely calm. "So, Lord Vangerdahast, do our royal parents know it is taking place?"

Alusair looked around the small, simply furnished parlor. She didn't recall ever having been in the room before, despite spending some years delighting in crawling, darting, and worming her way into everywhere in the Royal Palace. How had she never noticed that door at the back of the Horndragons' Chamber before?

Stlarning magic.

Tanalasta grew tired of waiting for a reply that evidently wasn't forthcoming.

"Yes, before you ask," Tanalasta said into the deepening silence, "we are wondering why you, ah, 'invited' us here. We are also expecting some answers when we ask things, Vangey. Being of royal blood and speaking to a courtier and all."

The Royal Magician settled himself in the chair facing the two princesses, surprised them both with a friendly little grin, and said, "Sorry, Tana. Deeper apologies if informality is going to offend you-either of you. A great part of my life has been spent watching over you and trying to shape you, however fumblingly and harshly, and I all too often think of you as something akin to granddaughters. I'm hoping, in the years ahead, we can even become friends."

"He wants something," Alusait told her sister.

"Well of course he wants something," Tanalasta said. "Everyone we ever see or meet always does. However, I quite take your point- this wizard never bothers to be polite to anyone except Mother and Father unless he wants something he can't force or command out of them."

She turned her gaze back to the Royal Magician. "However, being as we are speaking in private, I don't care in the slightest if you call me Tana, Vangey." She glanced at her sister again. "Loos?"

Alusair shrugged. "He can call me anything he wants. If he gets too rude, I'll switch from 'Vangey' to 'Thunderpot.' Now can we ger on with this?"

"Yes." Vangerdahast sighed with just a hint of weariness. "Why don't we?"

"Buried, and the manute pile heaped back over rhe grave," Boarblade reported, deciding not to use any extra words. Not when his babbling master could supply far more than would ever be needed.

"Good," Ruldroun said. "Close the door."

When Boarblade turned back, the former war wizard was standing silently in the far corner of the room with two wands in his hands, both of them trained on Boarblade.

The long runner-rug that had been lying on the floor berween the door and that back corner had been rwitched aside to reveal a sequence of chalked circles, like a row of srepping stones, each touching its fellows, between where he was standing and where his new master was tegarding him from. The dangers were very clear.

"So, Telgarth Boarblade," Ruldroun said quietly, "the time has come for a little truth on your part. You are a mage of some small ability, yes?"

"Yes."

"You have been a Zhentarim for years." "I have."

"You have not mentioned this to me."

"You've never asked nor intimated a desire to know about my past."

"Your past? Are you now intimating that you are no longer a Zhent? And will not work with them again?"

Boarblade nodded. "Yes. When you snatched me out of my imprisonment and offered me service with you, I accepted, and that ended all previous allegiances. If you should ever order me to feign loyal membership in the Brotherhood, I will do so-but even before being taken by the war wizards, I had decided that the Zhentarim were fast becoming a den of vipers who all hunted for themselves, exhibiting only enough obedience to avoid being counted among the hunted. A Cormyr stripped of cohesive war wizards would be a benefit to all, so I continued with my assigned task, but I had already begun to work on a means of faking my own death and disappearing. My judgment of the Brotherhood has not changed."

"You still seek a Cormyr where bickering factions of nobles rise to dominance, and the Obarskyrs lose the iron control their Wizards of War grant them?"

"I believe that would be better for all than the Cormyr we stand in now. I now seek nothing but what you want me to seek."

"Well said. Spells laid upon your mind prevent me from prying into it or affecting yout feelings and views. Banish them."

Boarblade sighed. "I cannot. They were laid upon me by Zhentarim far more powerful than either of us. I cannot even begin to touch them. If you or another broke them, doing so would not only drive me mad, it would instantly alert senior Zhents as to what had happened and precisely where I was. It would also make me their tool to work through. I hardly think it likely you would want to face the spells of Lord Manshoon coming out of a body he doesn't mind risking in the slightest."

Ruldroun's eyes flicketed. "That would not be my preferred choice of situations, no. So I must trust you-yet I cannot trust you."

Boarblade shrugged. "Consider. Every man in all Faerun who is not a priest or wizard of power has to trust others without seeing into their minds-and many of them manage to do so. Sometimes that trust is justified and even rewarded. I intend to justify and reward your trust. Blood oath, if you prefer?"

Ruldroun could not hide his surprise. "That's the very spell I was going to insist upon. Better and better. Telgarth Boarblade, I could get to like you."

"And I, you, my lord. Even after the killings and betrayals start."***** "I confess myself delighted with your candor, Vangey," Princess Tanalasta said. "I would go so far as to say I doubt very much if anyone in Cormyr right now is having as blunt and candid a converse about matters of the realm and loyalty and other weighty concerns."

"See me as pleased, too," Alusair agreed, "yer annoyed that you've never seen fit to tteat us as this close to equals before."

Vangerdahast sighed. "Forgive me, Highnesses, bur before now, you frankly weren't ready for this. Oh, I've no doubt you thought yourselves ready. Your royal father did, too, quite a bit younger than either of you are now. Yet he wasn't ready until he was almost a decade older than you, Tana. He was still putting his desires of the moment before his love for the realm."

"His desires of the moment?" Alusair said. "I'd say he does that still. A chambermaid here, a passing merchant's wife there, a-"

"Loos!" Tana snapped. "That'll do!"

"Hoy! I thought we were being blunt and candid," the younger princess replied. "Or are you still trying to set limits, the way Vangey here is?"

"Highness," the wizard said reprovingly, holding up a hand to signal Tanalasta not to make angry reply, "as I've told you, I am not-"

"Oh, but you are," Alusair retorted. "You control every conversation you ever have, Vangey. Even when answering direct orders or queries from the king and queen. By what you say and don't say-and what you refuse or oh-so-gravely warn musr not be discussed-you set limits. You set limits for nigh everyrhing in the realm. 'Tis one of the things you do. Someone has to do it, I suppose, though why you, I've never found a good answer for. My mother the queen would be far better at it, and even Alaphondar. I-"

"Loos, please, enough," Tanalasta interrupted. "I agree with all you're saying, but I find it beside the point, unless we're somehow going to murder this man sitting facing us. Decrying what he does and is simply wastes all our time. I want to hear rather more blunr truth from him, in case we never have such a chance as this again." She leaned forward in her chair and said to Vangerdahast, "So tell us a story, wizard. About why the Knights of Myth Drannor were sent away and what's been happening with them, and as much as you see fit to reveal about the conspiracy within the Wizards of War-and what you were just up to in the Lost Palace."

"Very well," Vangerdahast agreed. "Where to begin?"

"We can begin with my expressing, as politely as I can," Alusair said, "what my elder sister is too well-bred and polite to say: how damned angry we both are, wizard, that we didn't even know the Lost Palace was anything more than a legend! You call this preparing us to guide-or in her case, rule-the realm?"

The Royal Magician sighed. "I suppose you'll explode if I say you weren't yet ready to be told such things?"

"Yes," Alusair told him sweetly. "And all over you, too."

Vangerdahast didn't-quite-smile. "Then, being by far the wisest man in all Cormyr, I'll not say that."

Despite het best attempts not to, Princess Tanalasta snorted.