Pennae raced down the Long Passage like a storm wind in a hurry to catch up with its gale. The rest of the Knights pounded after her.
“So just where are we heading?” Islif demanded, putting her shoulders down and really starting to move.
“Well, if Laspeera was honest with us and the Palace is this way,” Pennae panted, racing along just ahead of her, “we have to get past the guards and up out of its cellars into the Palace proper. The royal wing is at the back and on the east side, overlooking the gardens.”
“I was, ah, talking with one of the maids, once,” Semoor gasped, “and-well-aren’t all the secret passages inside the Palace guarded too?”
“Yes,” Pennae said sweetly.
“We’ll have to change everything, ” Lord Yellander muttered, a step ahead of Lord Eldroon as they hurried along the hallways of the Royal Court. “There’s no way we can take shipments through Halfhap with every jack and brat in the town crawling all over the inn ruins, gawking.”
“True, true,” Eldroon agreed, nodding and wagging his forefinger as if it were a sword. “The heart of it for us right now, though, is how much do the war wizards know about us? That’s what Ruldroun’ll know-but we’ve got to get in and out fast, in case old Thunderspells already has them all looking for us!”
Yellander nodded grimly. They ducked through a door, stopped in the side passage beyond immediately and faced another door on their right, opened it, and stepped into the usual gloom.
“Ruldroun?” Yellander said into the darkness. “The raven hunts at twilight.”
All around them, darkness fell away in a sudden blossoming of bright white, magical light, showing them a large, thronelike chair with a matching footstool. Rising from it was a bearded and all-too-familiar man in robes, who offered the two noble lords a wintry smile.
Vangerdahast’s teeth positively gleamed. “I’m sure Ruldroun will be fascinated to learn the habits of ravens-in a decade or so, when I let him out of the deep cells. Old Thunderspells, traitors, at your service!”
“ Naed, ” Lord Yellander spat, and whirled to run.
There was no door behind them any longer-only a thing like a fleshy wall, of many staring eyes and silently screaming mouths and clawlike fingers, looming up over them like a great, crawling darkness.
Vangerdahast smiled gently and said in a voice as soft as silk, “Do try to run. Please. We haven’t fed the gravewall for days.”
“You promised, ” Lord Maniol Crownsilver hissed.
“And I’ll do it,” Wizard of War Ghoruld Applethorn said, holding the trembling lord by the shoulders. “Your Jalassa will live again. This very night. There’s just one thing you have to do for me first.”
“What?”
“Run to Vangerdahast-right now, and getting past anyone who tries to stop you. Tell them you bear an urgent, private message to him from the king, that’s for Vangey’s ears only. If he happens to be with the king, then say the message is from me. Anyroad, the moment you’re alone with him, tell the Royal Magician I’ve captured the princesses! You heard me gloating, but then I vanished right in front of your eyes, and you don’t know where I’ve gone!”
“ What? ”
“That’s all you have to say-just that! Go! And Jalassa will be in your arms again tonight, alive and loving!”
Lord Crownsilver blinked, shook his head as if to clear it, and rushed away, sideswiping a table in the process.
The war wizard watched him go, and grew a slow smile that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a wolf.
Hearing that news, Vangerdahast could hardly help but look into a crystal ball-or teleport into the Dragondown Chambers.
And either way, headless Royal Magicians make poor powers-behind-thrones.
“ Hold! Who are you?”
The end of the Long Passage was indeed guarded, and the Purple Dragon hailing the hurrying Knights sounded angry. His spear flashed as he turned to menace them. It bore a collar that supported a ring of eight more spear tips, all pointing at the Knights, and seeming to fill the passage, all by themselves.
Beyond him, in a little ring of glowing light, another six-or more-Dragons readied their own weapons, one of them turning toward an alarm gong, and fumbling for his dagger to strike it with.
As Pennae skidded to a halt, panting hard and clawing at the wall to slow herself before she came within reach of all those sharp points, Florin snapped, “Stop the one at the gong!”
Doust and Semoor nodded and stepped grandly past him in almost perfect unison, raising their holy symbols. Waving their free arms in flourishes, they fixed the rearmost guards with flashing eyes, calling upon divine power, and commanded: “ Fall! ”
And those two guards crumpled, the gong unstruck.
“Eight in all!” Pennae cried. “Two down!”
“For Cormyr!” Florin roared as he charged. “That the king may live!”
“Forget not the queen!” Islif shouted, springing to join him as he struck aside the unwieldy Crown-spear and kept running, hurling its wielder back into the Dragons behind. Islif did the same, ducking and parrying so the spear menacing her went past her shoulder and she could simply run in along it, drive her sword between her Dragon’s legs, and bring the flat of it up as she kept running, thrusting him off his feet and back into more Dragons, behind. They in turn stumbled over their two fallen comrades, just behind them, and went over on their backs in a confusion of wildly kicking boots.
The Dragons were all shouting now, as they fell into a confused tangle. Pennae sprang forward and swarmed into it, slapping faces with her ring as she danced, ducked, ran up arms, and vaulted sagging bodies.
She slapped the last guard standing three times, leaving him shaking his head, glaring at her-and then bringing up his spear in slow menace.
Pennae danced back, waved the hand with the ring at her fellow Knights, and sighed, “Out of venom, I guess.”
“Ah,” Semoor responded, wading through the heaped bodies. “Well, then.”
The spear swung around at him, but he clawed up the shaft of a fallen spear from the tangled fallen to block its point, and then thrust it aside. “I do most humbly beg your apology for this indignity,” he said to the startled Dragon, as he pulled his way down the spear-shaft to reach the man, “but the needs of bright Cormyr compel us all, and in this particular case, that means-”
He tugged with all his strength on the spear, the snarling Purple Dragon kept hold of it but overbalanced and came staggering forward-and Semoor lifted his knee to take the man under the chin with devastating force.
As the man crumpled, Doust picked his way past all the fallen Dragons.
Islif gave him a look. “What’re you doing, holynose?”
“Seeing if I can take this gong down — without sounding it-so we can take it with us. They’ll find it a little hard to ring it if it’s missing, no?”
“Yes. Or no. Just be careful.”
“I don’t like this,” Jhessail hissed. “Fighting loyal Dragons of the realm, courting banishment or worse at our every step!” Her voice rose, trembling-as her light spell wavered and then failed. “What’re we doing? ”
“There, there, Jhess. Greet a little calm,” Semoor told her. “We’re the heroes, remember? This will all end happily.”
Jhessail glared at him. “But what if it doesn’t? ”
Florin put an arm around her shoulders. “Ah. Then, lass, it’s not really the end.”
Chapter 18
Be ready, O thou minstrels