The Sword Never Sleeps

Chapter 22

Brorn had grown tired of looking down at himself. He was entirely skeletal now, coated in bone that made his movements slower, his limbs heavy. Yet his joints were still supple enough, and thankfully he still had eyes and a tongue, his own insides-and what made him a man, too. And he felt… normal. Hah. Normal.

He shook his head and plucked again at the tangle of belts, baldrics, and sheaths that were all he now wore. He'd long ago grown weary of his clothes falling off him with every step, breeches collapsing again and again around his ankles, and suddenly huge boots wobbling and even turning loosely on his bony feet, and he had finally abandoned them. He was thinner, everywhere, as if his flesh had melted away under the coating of bone.

So now Brorn Hallomond was, in truth, the Striding Skeleton. Whether this was really bone coating him or not-and it certainly looked like bone-it seemed something of a shield against the cold. He could no longer feel the gentle touch of the night breeze.

So was he dead? Did it matter?

The night was dark, with drifting clouds cloaking most of the stars and no Selune riding high, so he'd left the thick, tiring, confusing tangles of the fotest to stalk along the Moonsea Ride.

Thus far alone and unmolested.

No honest traveler would still be out faring on a moonless night, outlaws would probably shrink back from a walking skeleton, and he could always duck into the trees if he saw anyone approaching.

So he strode along, trying to cover as much ground as he could without getting really tired. The Knights should be somewhere near, by now.

"Should I-"

"Remain still and silent? Yes. All else: No."

Laspeera's voice was brisker than shed meant it to be, so she gave the ornrion a smile and added gently, "Keep your eyes open as the spell ends. You'll be plunged into a well-lit void, rich blue emptiness that it seems you'te falling through, and then yout feet will be on solid ground, somewhere at night in the forest-that 'somewhere' being wherever the Knights of Myth Drannor are. Speak and move and draw sword then, if you deem it needful, but not before. Please."

Dauntless nodded, a trifle unhappily and showing it on his face. He stood on a worn diamond mark painted on the floor at one end of the dark and cavernous undercellar of the Royal Court-deep under the flagstone garden yard that let into the Royal Gardens proper, if he'd correctly judged how far they'd walked-and there was another war wizard and another man standing on a diamond waiting to be transported across Cormyr in a winking instant, at the other end.

He knew them both. Lorbryn Deltalon and the Harper Dalonder Ree. They were watching him, the calm murmurs of relaxed converse passing between them, as they obviously waited for Laspeera to enspell him first.

Dauntless imagined Deltalon becoming just a trifle impatient and starting his spell as Laspeera was finishing hers-and the one teleport spell clawing at the other, flaring in an explosion that spattered all four of them in a thin drenching of gore over the walls of this spellcasting chamber, in the brief instant before those stones themselves shattered and heaved… and one end of the sprawling Court erupted into the night sky, towers toppling and scores of courtiers shrieking as they died.

Wincing, he shook his head, blinked, and found himself staring into the sympathetic face of the wizatd Laspeera again. He felt shame, but it was swept away in a rush of gratitude at the caring he saw in her eyes. Small wonder that many Wizards of War called her Mother and revered her.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Pray pardon, Lady Laspeera. Silence, aye."

The smile she gave him lit up her face like a leaping brazier-flame, and Dauntless felt as if he were falling in love.

"Aye," she said and lifted her hands like a master server about to signal the servants under his command at a Palace feast.

She was going to cast the spell. The magic that would hurl him across the Forest Kingdom and beyond, out along the Ride into the wilderlands somewhere near Tilver's Gap, lands where Purple Dragons rode hard and often to keep outlaws and monsters and worse out of Cormyr proper. To see the Knights of Myth Drannor not dead, now, but safely past Tilverton and into the Dales.

Orders, as they said gravely in the service of the Purple Dragon, have changed.

Just where along the Ride he'd be in a breath or two, he didn't know, but there were a cluster of little glowing lights hanging in the air in the center of the room, a little higher than Laspeera's head, that told her where the Knights were. Each of those floating, subtly shifting glows represented one of the tracer-enchanted glowstones the Royal Magician Vangerdahast had given to the Knights of Myth Drannor.

Aye, orders might change, but some things never did. Rise up sun and go down moon, every last jack and lass in Cormyr danced to a tune, whether they knew it or not, and the piper was the wizard Vangerdahast.

Laspeera's hands finished tracing elaborate gestures in the air, her smile grew wider, andSmiling war wizard, chamber, and all were gone, and this par-ticular Purple Dragon ornrion was falling endlessly through a deep blue void.

"Florin!" Pennae snapped, leaping down the last little stretch of cliff to land heels-first in the loose scree beside him, with a crash of shifting stones.

"I hear it," the ranger said. "Back up onto the ledge, everyone! Stoop, Clumsum, is there anythingyoxi can do for Jhess?" "Pray?" Semoor said.

"Tluin!" Florin barked in amused exasperation. "Just tluin off!"

"Oh, bright Morninglord, aid me as I obey the esteemed and manly Florin Falconhand!" Semoor cried as he scrambled up onto the ledge. "Let the rosy hue of your approval bathe-"

"Semoor!" Islif and Florin roared in unison. "Shut up!"

"— even my decidedly less than devout, silence-loving companions-"

Doust reached the ledge, planted his mace on its stone with one hand, and swung his other arm up and around in a wild bid for balance.

Out of sheer luck, the hand on the end of that arm made abrupt contact with Semoor's mouth, and whatever else he'd been going to say was abruptly silenced.

Leaving everyone ample opportunity to hear the eager roar that was rising from two throats, as something twice as tall as Florin burst around and over the last few trees, branches splintering, and charged at the Knights.

It was a two-headed giant, all massive, corded muscles and hungry fury. Drool sluiced past the jutting tusks of its shovel mouths in a rain as it broke off its roaring run forward to bellow something.

"That's an ettin!" Semoor shouted. "Saw it in one of the Palace bestiaries!"

The ettin bellowed and flung wide its arms, both of them as long as Islif's body. Gigantic iron morningstars in its fists rattled out at full swing to crash against tree trunks.

"Why, thank you, Semoor!" Pennae said. "Whenever I want to know what's trying to kill me, I can turn to you for its proper name!"

The ettin charged.

"Pennae, circle and hamstring, but only when you can get back and away fast!" Florin shouted. "Holynoses, pick up Jhess, and be ready to run along the ledge as fast as arrows! Islif and I will stand against it, but we can't shove it back!"

A morningstar crashed down as if to underscore his' words, striking sparks from the stones as it just missed Islif-a result she managed to achieve by hurling herself face-first downslope into gravel.

Florin's sword rang like a bell, and his body trembled along with it, as the other morningstar glanced off it, whirling hard, and started to enwtap it in chain. Cursing, the ranger ducked down and let go of his blade, seeking to avoid being bound up helplessly against his own weapon.

"Where in the Nine stlarning Hells did it get two morningstars that size?" Semoor demanded of the night at large, waving his mace for balance as he and Doust struggled to loft the limp burden of Jhessail between them.

"Temple of Tempus?" Doust offered. "Tore them out of all those oversized weapons they like to hang above their gates?"

"While the war-priests did what? Sat and watched? Laid wagers?"

Doust shrugged. "Well, if it wasn't temple-theft, he killed someone and took them. A giant someone."

"Holynoses," Pennae's voice came out of the night from somewhere in the darkness at the bottom of the slope, "could you find something else to talk about, just now? Like what useful holy spells you can smite this thing with? I'd rather not be reminded of what those things can do!"

"Tymora!" Doust coughed, grimacing. "This thing stinks!"

"You don't say!" Islif shouted back, scrambling to her feet amid tumbling gravel and slashing out wildly at one huge, corded leg as she slid past onto fitm footing.

The ettin roared and tried to club her with a morningstar, smashing thornbushes and saplings to tumbling splinters in her wake as Islif ducked around behind it-and ran full-tilt into Pennae.

Breast-to-breast they slammed together, the wind gasping out of both of them, and fell helplessly to the ground. Islif wrapped an arm around the thief and rolled desperarely, trailing her sword behind her. Both she and Pennae had been slicing at the backs of the ettin's legs, butThe ettin screamed-rwo raw, ear-numbing shrieks of agony-then stumbled, morningstars crashing down. Whereupon it suddenly became Florin's turn to dive for his life, face-first into gravel.

He did so, clawing and scrabbling to propel himself onward, riding the scree.

"Heroic, very heroic!" Semoor called from the ledge.

Florin called something back that was more profane than heroic.

He was still angrily doing so when his sword clanged and tumbled on stones somewhere far behind and above him, where the morningstar chain had flung it.

The ettin roared in pain, hopping awkwardly sideways-through a tree-and trying to turn and see what had hurt it so much.

Islif kept rolling with Pennae in her arms, whooping and fighting for breath, trying to get them both away behind too many trees for the two-headed giant to smash aside.

"Jhess!" Semoot said up on the ledge, shaking the shoulder he had hold of and trying to ignore the wildly lolling head atop it. "Wake up! Wake up! We need you to blast something!"

Florin reached the end of the gravel and slid into a thornbush. The ertin was headed away from him now, hitting out viciously behind itself with both morningstars. The ranger fought his way free and to his feet, snatching out his dagger and thinking just how useless it would be against this foe even as he did so. His sword was lost somewhere up on the scree yonder, with no moonlight to make it glint, andRight in front of him, not the reach of an arm from the point of his dagger, a vivid blue flash of light split the night-gloom.

Laspeera lowered her arms, looked over her shoulder at Lorbryn Deltalon, and nodded.

He returned her nod and began casring the same spell. Dalonder Ree stood like a calm statue until the blue flash claimed him, leaving the diamond on the floor empty and just the two war wizards in the chamber.

They looked at each other down the length of the room. By the faint glow of the shieldings Laspeera had raised around them when they'd first brought Dauntless and Dalonder into the spellcasting chamber, each could see that the other wasn't smiling.

"Well, that's done," Laspeera said. "Up to the scrying spheres to watch them."

Deltalon shook his head. "You watch. I'm going after them."

The second-most-powetful Wizard of War in all the land stared at him expressionlessly. Then, slowly and carefully, she drew a wand from her belt.

Deltalon took a step back, going tense. If she used it on him, there was little he dared do to try to counter the magic, standing here in the grip of her shielding.

Laspeera walked down the room toward him, face still expressionless.

Deltalon retreated anorher step, then stood his ground.

When she was close enough to touch him, Laspeera stopped, reversed the wand, and handed it to him, butt first. "Force spheres," she almost whispered. "To confine a foe or englobe and protect a friend. Nine of them. Come back alive, if you can."

She opened her arms to him.

Deltalon hugged her fiercely, overcome with gtatitude and relief, the wand solid and comforting in his hand.

"And if I do not," he whispered into her ear as they rocked together in their shared embrace, "beware a possible Wizard of War traitor. The man I've seen binding the mindworm-touched nobles under his personal control: Vangerdahast, the Royal Magician of Cormyr."

Laspeera sighed against his neck, then whispered, "Thank you, Lorbryn. All good gods watch over you."

She kissed his neck, then drew smoothly back and away, leaving his skin tingling.

Deltalon swallowed, saluted her with the wand, thrusr it through his belt, then carefully teleported himself away.

Laspeera stood gazing at the spot where he'd been standing for a long time, pondering things. Then she lifted her head and out of habit gazed all around the empty chamber.

It was indeed empty, looking precisely as it should. Biting her lip gently to keep a wry smile from climbing onto her face at what she knew she was about to discover, she lifted her hands and made the simple gesture that would banish her shielding spell. The new shielding was of her own devising, subtly different from the one Vangerdahast had taught her to use.

The shielding crackled and collapsed rather than fading-telling her that it had been under assault from a spell probe.

The smile found its way onto her face after all, though it was just as crooked as she'd thought it would be. It was his, of course.

So the second-most-powerful Wizard of War in the Forest Kingdom lifted her head and said softly to the empty air, "Fair evening, Lord Vangerdahasr. Master."

Then she wenr to the door to throw its bolts and begin her ascent to the room of scrying spheres.

She knew she'd find a certain Royal Magician waiting there.

"What are they fighting?"

Klarn was, it seemed, one of those men who cannot abide not having his curiosity assuaged.

"We'll soon see," Boarblade said in tones intended as a clear and emphatic "Silence, dolt!" warning.

Klarn, it also seemed, was a man deaf to tonal warnings. "It sounds gods-murdering big! How in all these trees did they find it?" "It found them." "Huh?"

He left Klarn's astonished grunt unanswered and stalked ahead, crouching low and moving as quietly as possible.

Klarn came after him, thudding heavily through the forest like the oaf he was. Thorm and Darratur followed him like silent shadows. Boarblade couldn't see Glays bringing up the rear, but he had every confidence that the man was there, moving through the night as softly as a ghost.

Not that it seemed necessary any longer. Trees were being shattered, their rendings loud and violent, and the ettin was screaming. Nothing else could scream with two mouths like that, except a much larger two-headed giant, and Boarblade had seen nothing looming taller than the trees.

There was a lot of crashing and thrashing going on and men and women shouting. He skulked nearer, smiling openly now.

The smile went away in an instant when he saw the blue flash.

A man stood in front of him. He hadn't been there a moment ago. A man he knew. A man in armor who was snatching out his sword and throwing out his gauntleted hand to dash aside Florin's dagger.

The ranger stepped smoothly back, seeing the ettin peering their way and blinking. It wasn't too badly hurt to turn in a flash when it needed to, and both of its heads were thrust fotward, low and menacing, in the direction of the now-vanished flash.

"Dauntless," Florin said, "look out behind you. We've got larger problems than each other."

"I'm a friend, not a foe!" the ornrion said, then risked a fleeting look back over his shoulder.

Dauntless, Florin, and the ettin were all in time to see the second flash.

Drathar frowned. Some sort of showy teleport spell. Bringing an individual here, not whisking anyone away. But who'd wotked it?

Not that little flamehaired Knight, that was for sure and certain, unless Mystra or Azuth had arrived personally to work the spell for her.

Then came the second flash-and by its light the Zhent wizard saw something that took him far beyond frowning.

Telgarth Boarblade was coming toward him. He'd know that fluid, gliding walk anywhere, though his fellow Zhent-fellow rival, though just one of many-was using some sott of magic to disguise himself. There was at least one man with Boarblade, and likely more.

Drathat stepped hastily behind a tree, turned until his shoulders were against it, then worked a swift invisibility spell.

Thus hidden-as much as anyone could be hidden in a night full of flashing magic and roaring, tree-smashing ettins-he sat down against the tree trunk to keep quiet and watch what unfolded.

With the Knights of Myth Drannor, the ettin, Boarblade and his blades, and rhe Watching Gods alone knew who'd magically arrived all converging here, what unfolded promised to be good.

Or at least entertaining.

"Sorry," Islif panted, boosting Pennae to her feet.

The thief grinned. "Well, I'd rather be in your arms than embracing an ettin. Still have your blade?"

Islif waved it. Neither of them could see it in the dark, but they both heard the dull ring of its encounter with a sapling.

Pennae's grin widened. "I kept hold of mine, too. Let's both of us be after its hamstrings again. It's going for Florin, see?"

"Those flashes," Islif murmured. "Semoor? Doust? I can't believe it!"

"Nor I," Pennae agreed. "Looked like-"

She peered as a faint glow blossomed on one of the ettin's faces, and added, "That's Semoor's magic." Then she peered harder at what that tadiance could let her see down in front of the ettin.

Frowning, she cursed.

"What?" Islif snapped as they both trotted forward.

"Tluining Dauntless, stlarn it!" Pennae spat. "Someone-Vangey the Royal Meddling Magician, for a wager! — must be watching us and has teleported him in here! Gods stlarn it!"

"Dauntless?" Islif gasped, astonished.

The ettin lurched forward in obvious pain, moving along the base of the gravel slope from left to right in front of them. Its dis-comfott was feeding a growing fury, and it was flailing the air with its morningstars as it sought to reach its foes: the ornrion Dauntless, Florin, and… that Harper from the Palace! Dalonder Ree, that was his name.

Pennae looked back over her shoulder, her fierce grin back. "Hamstring time! Both of us!"

She raced for the ettin so swiftly that Islif had to put her head down and sprint to catch up.

It was long past time for stealth. The ettin was cursing loudly and rending trees again-and Dauntless, at least, had decided to cling to tradition enough to snarl a war cry.

"For the Purple Dragon! Cormyr forever!"

Swords flashed, and morningstars swung-and struck. Smashed up and off his feet, Dauntless grunted in pain as the armor shielding his ribs crumpled and some of those ribs crumpled with it.

Dalonder Ree fended off the other morningstar with a precisely angled sword as he raced along under the ettin's swing. The ettin roared in triumph as he saw the ornrion's body go flying-and Pennae reached the ettin's far leg, leaving the nearer one for Islif, sprang as high as she could, and put all the strength in both of her shapely arms behind a keen slash of her dagger.

The blade bit into stinking flesh a moment before the Harper's sword sank into the ettin's crotch.

The two-headed giant stiffened, drew breath-and proved to every ear between Halfhap and Tilver's Gap that it really knew how to scream.

Islif reached its other leg, swinging her long sword as hard as she could.

The ettin screamed again, reeled, and toppled, felling several trees in its crash.

Dalonder Ree and Florin swarmed over its faces and necks, stabbing down into eyes and laying open throats.

The ettin convulsed with a wild, heaving violence that sent the men flying to join Dauntless in groaning, huddled heaps on the gravel slope. It fell silent and still.

"See?" Semoor observed from the ledge. "Lathander did that! All praise be unto the Morninglord!"

"Tempus defend me!" Islif snarled in exasperation, glaring up at the ledge.

"I wonder whar the penance is for strangling a priest with his own tongue," Pennae said beside her. "I believe I've stolen just about enough to pay it, by now-and if not, I'd cheerfully enslave myself to the nearest orc-pandering festhall for a month or two to make up the difference!"

"Festhalls! That's it! That's how we'll make coin enough to do Lathandet's great works for him!" Semoor called delightedly. "Pennae, I could kiss you!"

"And holynoses can fly, with about as much success," Pennae said under her breath. Then she brightened. "Unless I take you up atop yon cliff to start learning how, right now."

"Come!" Boarblade whispered fiercely, right in Klarn's face. "Tell all the others! We attack now, before they've settled themselves again! Swords out and slay!"

Klarn gaped at him, then turned and tan-blundering right into Darratur and receiving a firm shove rhat sent him aside into a tree.

The moment Boarblade saw Glay's face, he waved at them all to accompany him, turned back toward the Knights, drew his sword, and ran.

He could hear the four charging after him.

Good. Let them burst out to confront the Knights. He'd tty to gut the ranger or the fighting lass as he ran past-and then keep right on running, past the fray and into the trees, to plunge back into hiding.

Where he'd hide and lurk, awaiting his best chance to find that Pendant.

If the four dolts he'd been saddled with butchered a good share of Knights, well and good. He'd have that much less work left. Not that he was counting on it.

With Pennae and Islif helping him, Dauntless sat up, wincing.

"Ate you sure you didn't bring this beast with you?" he growled, waving a hand at the sprawled, dead ettin. "Or let it loose from somewhere in your pryings and thievings?"

"Of course we did," Pennae snapped. "We have scores of pets like this one-and worse! — and as we cavort across Faerun, we let them all loose to frolic through the trees and try to kill us! Gods above, how stupid can Purple Dragons be? You do know which end of a sword is which, I hope?"

"Oh, aye." Dauntless showed his teeth in a grin that wasn't pleasant at all. "I do know that-and so will your shapely backside in a breath or two, saucy lass!"

Pennae sneered. "Lick my sauce? Do my hair? Announce me to the queen?"

"Identify your head when I place it before her on a platter, more likely," Dauntless said. "With all the rest."

Pennae sighed loudly and gave the ornrion a shove that toppled him over, groaning in pain on his side in the gravel again.

"Pennae," Islif said reproachfully.

The thief shrugged. "My hand slipped," she said. "It does that. A lot."

"I've noticed," the ornrion said. "Lucky you are that my orders have changed."

"Oh?" Pennae said. "They've commanded you to be fair and reasonable, now? Is this is some special occasion?"

"When I can get up again," Dauntless said, "it certainly will be."

Boarblade raced along, heart pounding. It really didn't matter whether he had false Knights beside him-Ruldroun's four, or some of them, with their hargaunt disguises-or the real ones. Neithet could be trusted, but perhaps the real ones would be the better companions in a fight.

Well, he was about to see, wasn't he?

The stump was more or less as he remembered it. A little damp, with wet dead leaves plastered to it because rain had fallen in this stretch of the forest several times over rhe last few days, but he cared nothing for the fate of this tattered, dirty crone's dress anyhail.

He settled himself on the stump, facing down the familiar little clearing so he'd see in an instant if any war wizard arrived. Nigh every last Wizard of War knew rhis lush little glade. It was one of the pteferred "waystops" or "jump spots" for jaunts to Tilverton or the northeastern bolder wilds of the realm.

Hopefully, if one appeared, he'd not readily recognize Onsler Ruldroun behind rhe pocked and wrinkled crone's face the hargaunt had spun.

The scrying spell would be a little harder to explain away, but if he was given a chance to speak, Ruldroun knew enough of the catch-phrases to seem to be one of Those Who Harp for a few breaths.

And a few bteaths would be all he would need to triumph, tele-port away, or die.

So he sat on his stump, looking down the glade-which coinci-dentally was also facing in the direction of the battling Knights, who were not all that far off through the forest-and watched the battle through his scrying eye.

All he needed was a little more patience against the surging excitement that rose again and again within him. It was the roiling energy of the three men he'd slain that was making him so restless, he knew, but he could master this now. Enough of the wild, fevetish exhilaration was over and past. He was now always aware of what was really happening to him. When he kept away from exciting tastes and smells-good food-he could thrust aside the floods of emotion and tell himself calmly: You are awaiting the best time to step forward and seize the Pendant of Ashaba. Yes. The best time.

If Glays and the rest wete dead by then… well, there were other men who could impersonate Knights and who would welcome the backlands life of Shadowdale.

Deltalon arrived a little farther from the glowstones than the Harper.

If you appeared right beside the Knights, you found yourself in the same peril that was afflicting them-and could well taste theit own blades and spells before you had time to name yourself.

Which was the very reason he was bound for his favorite waystop glade in the heart of that part of the forest just north off the Moonsea Ride known as Hawkvale. No one dwelt there, and no eye that he knew had ever managed to discern a "vale" among all those tangled trees.

The clearing, not far from Tilverton, served the same purpose as his chosen destination. Appearing in the blink of an eye in the midst of a tavern or even just outside the walls of Tilverton warned everyone of your mastery of Art, no matter how skilled your acting to the contrary might be.

And despite what everyone remembered about the bad wat wizards, good Wizards of War always ttied to be deft and subtle.

"If you skulk out in the trees this night," the wizard Ruldroun half-murmured and half-sang. He stared at the glowing images of his conjured scrying dancing silently in midair before him. Boarblade was just beginning his charge.

Then he blinked. A man had appeared at the far end of the glade. A war wizard he knew! Lorbryn Deltalon, one of Vangerdahast's most trustedOnsler Ruldroun stood, his scrying forgotten, and whispered the strongest spell he knew.

He'd been saving that fire-gem for a long time, and it had cost him dearly, but what was that price against his very life?

The gem flashed and was gone-and the huge gout of flame blossomed from it and roared away down the clearing, fire that should sear flesh and bone alike, feeding on Art as well as mundane fuel.

Which should mean that if Deltalon was shielded in the usual ways against fire, he was doomed.

Yes, this was the place. Lush and damp and familiar. Dark now, in the depths of night, of course, but there was a spell-glow coming from the far end of the glade, andLorbryn Deltalon had just time for one final thought as Faerun exploded in blinding, white flame all around him:

So this is what it feels like to die.