The Sword Never Sleeps

Chapter 23

The flames howled on, toppling trees and setting them aflame. Silhouetted against that bright raging stood all that was left of Lotbryn Deltalon.

A column of gray ash shaped like a wizard who'd turned his head in astonishment faced Ruldroun with one hand half-raised. Then it slumped down and swirled away, gone forever. Beyond it, the fire snarled.

Ruldroun hastened out of the glade on the far side from the fire, seeking-and finding-a tree with two trunks and a saddle between them large enough for him to stand in.

Leaning back against one trunk, eyes on the dying flames in the distance, he swiftly cast a spell many a Wizard of War had found useful when away from the cities of the realm.

The magic made his fingertips and ears tingle briefly as it took hold. Now, and for most of the time until dawn, he would be made aware of all minds approaching him, and their direction and distance.

It might well be imperative for the continued life of Onsler Ruldroun to see who-and what-the blaze lured near.

Fire roared into being off to his left, too suddenly and violently to be anything but a spell.

Brorn Hallomond smiled, held up his bone-coated hands to more clearly see how skeletal they looked, admired them in the dancing firelight for a moment, then turned off the road into the trees, heading for the blaze.

"From beyond the grave, I come for thee," he murmured the old saying and flexed his hands again.

Even if the fire-makers didn't happen to be the Knights of Myth Drannor, he certainly felt like killing someone.

"A gray render, too? You have been busy!"

The only answer Florin gave to Dalonder Ree was a shrug, but the Hatper didn't have to look at the ranger's face to know his words had left Falconhand rather pleased.

He was just turning to begin a look all around, seeking any signs of other predators watching from the trees, when a great gout of flame blossomed out of nowhere with a roar, some way off in the forest, but racing toward them with frightening speed.

Off to Ree's left, Dauntless cursed at the sight, but even as he did the Harper could see the conflagration was small. It would die down long before getting anywhere near them.

Still, burning trees were toppling, sparks were wafting up into the night, and-what was that?

Dalonder whirled to his left, sword flashing up, and saw Florin and Dauntless doing the same.

Dark figures were racing at them, bursting out of the darkness, plunging out from between trees with swords and daggers flashing in theit hands.

" 'Ware all!" Dauntless roared. "We're under attack!"

By then, swords were clanging against swords in hasty parries, men were grunting as they tried to slash right through the swords and strength of foes, and someone was screaming as the tip of Dalonder Ree's sword slid through his hand, sending the dagger in it spinning away.

"Klarn!" the wounded man called desperately. "Klarn, aid!"

Steel clanged on steel. Dalonder Ree ducked one way and then hurled himself in another direction. The wounded man ctied out in fear as his sword missed the dodging Harper entirely. Klarn didn't come-and the wounded man was falling, life-blood gurgling out of his opened throat.

Florin and Dauntless were hacking at three men, Klarn presumably one of them, and another had burst past the fray to come racing along the base of the gravel slope.

Pennae ran after him, dagger in hand. The last thing the Knights of Myth Drannor needed just now was a foe lurking in the night to fell them from behind, one by one.

It was a man, a little taller and stronger than she was but agile father than hulking. There was something… not right about his head, as if something had shifted there, moving somehow since her first glimpse of him. A disguise slipping, perhaps.

The man came to a boulder among the scree. He dodged out and around it, which meant she had just enough time toPennae threw the dagger in her hand, straight and hard. The man stiffened, arching back and grabbing at his shoulder; reflected firelight glinted off her little jutting fang there, just for a moment.

Pennae smiled a tight little smile and hurled her second dagger.

The man cried out as her dagger wobbled in rhe back of his upper left arm. Again he clutched at it. This time, her weapon fell out just before his clawing fingers got to it.

He ran on, stumbling, and Pennae bent at the full run and plucked up that second dagger, dark and wet with his blood.

By then, he was desperately climbing the cliff, stones bouncing down into her face with the clumsy haste of his climb.

Pennae's smile widened.

Drathar peered out through the trees at the battle and shook his head. Dark figures seemed to be leaping on all sides, firelight flashing back reflections on swords and daggers here, there, and fleetingly everywhere. He couldn't tell one combatant from another, stlarn it!

No-wait-there! That was Florin Falconhand, and the man beside him must be an ally, being as they'd both had chances to thrust steel into each other and hadn't. It was someone he'd seen before, someone" Sark it!" he said. "Blast them both!"

Invisibility be htasted, he was going to hurl at least one foeblast!

There! He did the swift casting and flung out his arms in the usual triumphant flourish-and watched the night erupt in sudden green-gold flame, a burst embroidered by screaming bodies being flung into the air and away.

Heh-hah!

Right. Enough glee. Drathar crouched and went back to peering hard through the tangle of trees. In the eyeblinking aftermath of his spell, with the fire in the distant trees dying down, it was getting harder and harder to see. He doubted he'd slain Florin or the other man. His spell had struck just short, hurling them away rather than shattering them. Unless a helpful tree had done those shatterings for him when they'd been flung against it…

Not something he could trust in. He crouched, sinking into uncertainty again. Should he just blast away and so fell Boarblade and his men along with the Knights? Or save his spells to defend himself and leave Boarblade's men be, to help him do his work for him?

Would they help him? Or was he watching himself trade the Knights for new and stronger foes, who'd have the Pendant of Ashaba and be just as determined to defend it?

Drathar shook his head again. And some folk thought Zhentarim spent all their days preening and flogging slaves and spellhurling…

Holy Fist, when was the last time he'd flogged a slave?

In his fearful determination to get out of her reach, the man she'd wounded hadn't chosen an easy way up the cliff. Pennae knew the face she'd just climbed, and she was unhurt to boot. She swarmed up the weathered stones, tasting the iron tang of her foe's blood in her mouth as she bore the dagger between her clenched teeth. She was certain she'd passed him during her ascent, with quite some time to spare.

More than time enough to plant that dagger in the turf, pluck up two rocks of the right size from among the many strewn about atop the cliff, move to just the right spot, and wait.

Still and silent in the night, she hid in the darkness beyond the fading firelight splashing leaping teflections off the cliff face. The man never saw her until the first stone, flung full in his face, broke his jaw and left him stunned, just clinging to the weathered stone and fighting to try to think.

"B-Boaiblade," he mumbled, aftet a moment, remembering his own name with some difficulty as he stared up into the merciless smile of the beautiful woman who'd crouched down to face him.

Then her second stone slammed into his nose, shattering it; the ruptured hargaunt hissed wildly in pain and erupted in oily, foul-smelling liquid all over his face-and Telgarth Boarblade lost his hold.

His despairing cry was very short. It wasn't a particularly tall cliff. But with nothing but very hard rocks awaiting him at the bottom, and his head reaching them first, it didn't have to be.

That cry ended abruptly. Pennae looked down at the sprawled, broken figure in smiling satisfaction.

Apprehension rose in her a moment later when she saw something dark and amorphous and leathery slither away from the man's face and flow away across the tocks, rippling and creeping.

Doust Sulwood darted into view, slithering down the scree slope from the ledge in some haste. He caught up to the eerie thing and battered it enthusiastically with his mace until it flapped wildly and stopped moving. Then he emptied an unlit lantern over it-and lit the dripping mess on fire.

Watching it sizzle wetly amid the flames, Pennae's smile returned.

"Want to see who you're killing?" Semoor called from what sounded like the safety of the ledge. Stlarning holynoses.

"Yes!" Dauntless bellowed back, seeing Florin staggeting gtimly back to join him. The Harper was struggling to stand somewhere farthet off-which left a lone otnrion of the Putple Dtagons, just now, to battle these mysterious men whose faces seemed to shift and even melt as they swung theit blades.

One of them was down, sliced open by the Harper earlier, and another was fighting an unsteady battle to stand up. He'd been caught in the same spell-blast that had flung Florin and the Harper over yonder.

Which still left two-two who were clearly visible as Semoor's spell banished night, crearing a sphere of bright sunlight.

Unfortunately, the two melt-faces were moving well apart so as ro come at Dauntless from sharply opposing sides at the same time. Their swords, daggers, and reeth all gleamed. They wore identical merciless smiles.

"Gah," the Harper groaned from somewhere behind Dauntless. "This light! It's like fighting on a stage in some Swotd Coast city theater!"

"We'll be… right with you," Florin gasped, reeling, from even closer at hand.

"Worry not," Dauntless called back over his shoulder. "There are only two, after all."

Florin lurched past him, swinging his sword for balance. One of the melting-faced men mistook the ranger's groggy state for clumsiness and went for an easy lunge to the vitals.

The man blinked as Florin was somehow-and quite suddenly- nowhere near the sword reaching for him. Rather, he was past the lunging man and aiming a cut at the back of an undefended knee on his way on to cross swords with the other melt-face.

That cut landed, and the knee's owner crashed to the ground, shoulders first. Winded, he was still struggling for breath when the sharpest knife Dauntless owned sliced through the shapeless thing on his face, which was rearing up like a snake-and slashed it right off his face.

Shorn of his nose, the man screamed. So did the shapeless thing on the ground beside him. Spurting gore and squalling, it had been severed into two pieces. Both of them reared up in energetic undulations, seeking to get away as swiftly as possible.

The Harper bent and deftly diced both into many small, wriggling fragments. "These should be burned," he said. "I've never seen them before, but I think I know what they are. Hrasted if I can remember the name, though. They shapechange."

"Ah," Dauntless said as he cut the fallen man's throat. In the same movement he turned to menace the last of the melting-faced men. "Useful to know. Can they change themselves into hard metal armor, or do swords still work on them?"

Florin was striking a series of ringing blows against the desperate parries of that last man, who was backing away as he saw that he now stood alone. His dazed and reeling fellow blade had just been slain by the Harper-who was now carefully butchering the hargaunt that he'd just sliced away from the dead face it was clinging to.

"Mercy!" the last melting-faced man ctied suddenly. "I am Glays Tarnmantle and can offer twenty thousand golden lions of the realm in return for my life! I-"

The masklike, drooping thing on the man's face flowed with sudden urgency, streaming into his nose and mouth.

Glays struggled to shout something through its surging, but his nose was swelling up, stuffed full. His mouth was already distended into a grotesque, froglike shape, and as he shuddered and clawed at the shapeless thing, his face went slowly reddish-purple.

It was almost black by the time he staggered, then teeled, eyes bulging.

He fell headlong, crashing down to trampled forest turf. The sword clattered from his hand, and he lay still. The thing that had choked him flowed out onto the ground, dark and shapeless and menacing.

"Hooh," Dalonder Ree said, eyeing the corpse. "It seems something was in a real hurry to collect that gold. We should burn that something."

"When we're done here," Florin said, pointing.

A large-boned skeleton was striding out of the night at them. It plucked up a fallen sword, hefted it, and then swung it with a flourish, still walking their way.

Dauntless sighed. "Some nights, you wonder what else the forest can spit up to entertain you."

Hefting his own sword, he strode to meet the skeleton.

In the chamber of scrying, everyone looked like a ghost.

Ot so the saying went, established years ago by war wizards after their first experience of seeing the glow of over two dozen scrying spheres lighting all faces eerily from beneath.

As eerily ghostlike as any of them, Laspeera raised her eyes from some of those spheres to give her superior a rather grim look.

"So passes Lorbryn Deltalon," she said. "We have few enough left who are skilled at both Art and diplomacy and truly havens for our trust."

"Tell me what I don't know, lass," Vangerdahast said. "Reduced to sending Dauntless with a few enspelled trinkets in his pouches. That's us." He crooked an eyebrow at Laspeera's busy hands. "What're you doing?"

"Avenging Deltalon, if I can. It's worth a few scrying spheres to try to harm Onsler Ruldroun. I taught him so much. All wasted…"

"He's probably fled beyond our reach," the Royal Magician said. "Yet it's worth doing anyhail. At the very least, it'll stop him using the glade. Let him try to sleep up a tree."

Watching and listening to Laspeera's casting, Vangerdahast catefully began one of his own, deftly reaching his hands over and among hers with the familiarity of long practice at spell-weaving together.

When it was done, they both stepped back and thrust their wills at the other floating scrying spheres, seeking to force them away from the quartet that were flaring brightly and about to burst. They weren't fast enough to save them all.

In the tinkling, ear-ringing aftermath, both mages rolled over from where they ended up-on the floor and driven against a wall. They looked at each other. Their upflung arms had saved their faces and throats from deadly shards of crystal, but they were bleeding from the usual countless tiny nicks and slices, and their garments now looked as if a dozen assassins had hacked at them with tazot-sharp blades.

"Before you try to think of something clever to say about my new fashion look," Laspeera said, as she struggled to her feet and held out a hand to haul him up, "consider that you look worse. Much worse."

" 'Tis the paunch and the body hair," Vangerdahast said. "So now for the rest of our evening's entertainment: the intrepid Dauntless faring into the forest."

"As all the Nine Hells break loose," Laspeera said. She murmured the cantrip that would rid her hair of a thousand tiny shards of crystal.

Vangerdahast murmured something more substantial, and his hands were suddenly full of stark black robes. With a flourish he held the uppermost garment out to Laspeera.

She took it with a smile and asked, "Aren't you going to turn your back as I slip into this?"

"No," Vangerdahast told her, shrugging off his own tatters. "Why?"

He had always loved Laspeera's laugh.

The glade exploded.

Ruldroun didn't even have time to leap down out of the tree before its great trunks shattered above him, its boughs torn off and swept away in a crashing rain-and he was hurled along after them, his shielding buffeted, struck hard, slammed against other trees, and shattered.

He hit the ground in a tumbling chaos of snapping twigs, sliding wet leaves, mud, and bruised wizard.

"And so I taste the Royal Magician's little slap," he grunted. Pain flared in his left side. Broken ribs, probably. His shielding had done its work, but it was clear that it would be the act of an utter fool to tarry anywhere near the glade.

He'd best get to the Knights and skulk along aftet them. He could still conjure his best shielding and weave a lesser one as well, then combine the two-but he'd best do it only after he'd passed the clearing and gotten well clear of its other side.

Not that there was anything forcing the Knights to stay where they were. Ruldroun sighed, winced again at the pain that brought, turned to face the pattering of falling twigs that matked whete the clearing had just enlarged itself, and started to run.

"I believe that particular tactic would be one I'd deem, in the words of Lord Piergeiron, 'less than wise,' "a warm, lyrical, woman's voice said. That would be Sharanralee.

"I'm not talking wise, look ye," Mirt the Moneylender rumbled. "I'm laying all the tactics I can think of before us, rather than sorting out just those I deem best or preferable beforehand. I've heard too many lords' deliberations-or Harper moots, come to that-to want to do otherwise."

"So," an amused, mature, man's voice asked in quiet amusement, "are we then as bad as Harpers, Mirt-or as good as Harpers?"

That would be the wizard Tarrhus, straying from Piergeiron's shadow for once. The Open Lord of Waterdeep must be very well guarded by someone else just now.

The night was dark, the turret that held those three folk was widely deemed inaccessible to creatures who couldn't fly, and the wards around it would raise instant alarm upon the approach of any flying creatures.

It seemed those wards deemed hovering magical swords to be something other than creatures. Whereupon no alarm had been raised, and it was extremely unlikely that anyone would be out and peering up at the turret just to check up on the efficacy of those wards.

Besides, Old Ghost was making Armaukran float absolutely motionless, vertical, and quite close to the shutters of the window. The little conference was quite interesting.

It was folk such as these three whom he wanted to collect in the Sword That Never Sleeps. To know the workings of the Harpers, or the Lords of Waterdeep, orIt was at that moment that a spell Old Ghost had cast a long time ago suddenly stirred, sending its brief and faint warning across half of Faertin.

Battle spells had erupted in a certain clearing used by Cormyr's Wizards of War, a clearing he'd cast his watch spell upon-and now, scant breaths later, someone had cast a complex, manyspells shielding.

That castet had to be someone powerful, on important business bent.

Business-and a person-he was very much interested in knowing more about.

The long, slender sword silently drew away from the window, turned in the air until its point was aimed east, and raced silently away from the turret, as swiftly as if it had been loosed from the bow of a mighty archer.

Old Ghost had decided to get to that nameless forest clearing just as fast as the Swotd That Never Sleeps could fly.

Tsantress was barefoot and in her nightgown, sitting uptight on the edge of her bed-the bed she'd been tossing and turning in, mere moments ago.

No wonder, that, given the time, but her restless inability to sleep and the energetic propensity of certain unscrupulous merchants of Suzail to get up to things illicit the moment her back was turned had her renouncing all attempts to get back to sleep.

She ran her hands absently through her sleep-tangled hair and stared into her scrying sphere.

It glowed softly as it hung in the air in fronr of her nose, awakening inro a view of Albaertus Tranth's private office, quite a few streets closer to the harbor than where she was sitting.

It seemed the good merchant-if that wasn't using the tetm too loosely-was also afflicted with sleeplessness just now. He was using his wakefulness to meet with someone cowled, masked, and gloved, who appeared to have fallen into the habit of knocking on back doors in Suzail in the dark wee hours with heavy sacks of gold coins in his hand.

The war wizard bent forward and peered closely. Tranth was unlocking a heavy metal coffer with a key that had been hanging around his neck, andAbruptly the scrying sphere flashed bright white, blinding her into a sharp gasp, and flung itself across the room.

Thankfully, it struck her row of cloaks and gowns, rearing them all off their pegs as it raced past to strike a heavy tapestry.

Tsantress rolled on her bed and rhen off its edge to land hard on her spread knees on the carpeted floor. She clawed at her flooding eyes and tried to crawl toward her door on her elbows. An inescapable conclusion reared up like a'dark and inexorable foe in her mind: Vangerdahast was up to his tricks again.

No one else-save Laspeera, and she had more sense-would dare to cast a slaying spell through one of Vangey's precious scrying spheres, causing ir to explode and shattering any other scryings going on at the same time. Certainly not anywhere near the Royal Court. Or the Palace, come to that.

Either the halls were going to be crowded wirh angry, wand-waving Wizards of War in the next few breaths, or the Royal Magician was to blame, and evetything would remain still and tensely silent until morning.

Well, not this time. She could find and pull on her boots by feel, if her eyes didn't stop streaming, and probably find her way to the Palace, too.

She had to reach the Princess Alusair. That blinding flash had thrust a vision into her mind, fleeting and vivid and tluining alarming: Knights of Myth Drannor, fighting hard against some unknown foes in a deep, wild forest somewhere, with Dauntless- Alusair's champion, that Dauntless-fighting alongside them.

Now, the Royal Magician was… the Royal Magician. Very much a law unto himself, who said and did as he pleased and somehow seemed to escape consequences that would kill-not merely discomfit or career-shatter-others. She, Tsantress, was not the Royal Magician and would be before-all-the-gods damned if she behaved anything like the Royal tluining Magician.

She kept her word, once given. And she'd sworn to the Princess Alusair-an Obarskyr who just might end up on the Dragon Throne if bad things befell her family-that she'd inform the princess immediately if Vangerdahast ordered Ornrion Taltar Dahauntul into danger again.

Which meant the moment she had her boots on and had found and buckled her wand belt on over her nightgown, she was going to hurry to the tunnel that linked the Royal Court with the Royal Palace just as fast as she could sttide.

Then, blindness or no blindness, royal slumber or no royal slumber, she was getting to the Princess Alusair just as fast as she could, spitting out the pass phrase that meant doom was coming down on Cormyr, so the guards barring her way at door after guarded door would be frightened as they hurried to fling open their doors for her.

Because if Dauntless died because of Vangerdahast's orders, and the Princess Alusair found out about it, doom would be coming down on Cormyr.