Pennae moved closer, shining her light everywhere. No other doors, no corpses or brown bones. No tools or weapons lying anywhere. “In,” she told Islif and Agannor, “and watch that door. Don’t push it open. I’m for the chests.”
They proved to be empty, and their damp wood crumbled at a touch like badly made nutbread. By the time Pennae was finished looking at all of them and behind them, at the underside of the table and all around the bunks, Agannor and Islif had looked long and hard at the stony mass on the floor, prodding it with their swords and shifting it aside to make sure no hole or anything else was concealed beneath it. The rest of the Swords watched from the doorway. Pennae thrust aside chairs and the remnants of chairs to clear a wide path from doorway to where Agannor and Islif stood.
“Look at this,” Agannor told everyone, pointing at the stone heap with his sword.
From the doorway, Jhessail did just that. When she spoke, her voice sounded uneasy, on the edge of disgust. “What is it?”
Even curled up as it was, it was a little thing, all stumpy legs and long, gangly arms, with a malicious face, flat-nosed and fang-mouthed, glaring down at the broken short sword it held. Its ears were pointed like a cat’s, and it wore armor made of random plates of salvaged, battered human armor tied together in an untidy, overlapping array.
“Never seen a goblin before?” Agannor’s voice was bleak. “This is-or was-a goblin. Something’s turned it to stone.”
Chapter 14
Find your swords, ye who still have eyes to see them, hands to wield them, and wits enough left to search for them. Polish them if it heartens ye, and drink a last goblet to those who have already fallen. Then gather ye with sword and shield by the old oak, and await my coming.
We are fated to die, and may as well do it together, achieving some small vengement upon our foes, as do it apart, falling alone beneath the blades of laughing foes.
So strike as one, for Cormyr, and go down into darkness with savage smiles, and the blood of dying foes on your blades. Seek not to flee or hold aloof from the fray; ’tis too late for that.
The dark days are come at last.
Andrath Dragonarl,
Knight of Cormyr
A Call to Arms pinned to trees throughout the realm in the Year of the Floating Rock
D ark days for the realm, indeed,” Blundebel Eldroon growled, setting down his gigantic tallglass. It was now half-full, but had been sparkling to the rim with the very finest of glowfire a moment ago. “I know old nobles always say something of the sort, but this time, as the gods bear witness, Cormyr truly-”
“Ah, Lord Eldroon,” Prester Yellander said, his interruption as firm as the snap of a lash, “but that’s just where your words fall into misadventure. Cormyr does not ‘truly’ anything. That is our problem, lords: we are so fallen into deceit and deception, with a royal magician insanely unable to tell the truth about the weather, the color of his own robes, and even his own name, let alone affairs of state, leading us daily farther and farther astray!”
“Strong words, Lord Yellander,” Sardyn Wintersun observed. “As Lord Eldroon intimates, is this slide into untruth not a dark doom decried by every generation of nobles and sages-and Obarskyr kings, for that matter? Does the realm truly totter on the brink of savagery, civil war, and a shattered throne? We may dislike the manner and even particular stratagems of the royal magician, but many a crofter of the realm-and merchant both Cormyrean and outlander-likes well the stability his vigilant war wizards, and the king’s well-trained Purple Dragons, have wrought. The realm prospers, the people multiply and are largely content, the-”
“Cowdung being spewed in this chamber near reaches my eyeballs,” Lord Eldroon growled. “Have you a head of solid stone, Wintersun? Canst think at all? Try looking past the smiles of the fool-headed rabble and underlings beyond counting, to hear and see the ire among those of us who matter: we nobles, who own much land, sponsor many mercantile ventures, pay good coin to all of the rabble of the realm who happen to toil for us-and pay a lot of bad coin, too, taxed from our hands into the court vaults.”
He drained his glass in a single great sip, to snarl, “ ’Tis our contentedness or lack of same as should be measured, not the views of some toothless old retired dragonard who’s happy if his downsun tankard comes to his lips every night, and is served with some juicy gossip to chew over with his goodfellows!”
“Speaking of which,” Lord Yellander told his own fingernails, “I’ve heard some interesting news, my lords. I chanced upon the Lady Jalassa Crownsilver yestermorn, and she seemed anxious to show me her new magecloak earrings.”
Lord Wintersun wrinkled his brow. “Your juicy gossip concerns earrings? ”
Prester Yellander sighed and steepled his fingertips, regarding Wintersun pityingly over them. “Your holdings are rural, aren’t they, Sardyn? The term ‘magecloak’ is obviously unfamiliar to you, so my duty is clear. Magecloak items-be they rings, earrings, anklets, or false beards-are works of magic that foil magical scrying. While you wear one, no war wizard can see or hear you from afar. Perhaps not even the oh-so-awesome Vangerdahast.”
“Made-or at least sold-in the cities of Sembia, for far too much,” Eldroon growled.
Lord Yellander shrugged. “The price will fall when someone duplicates their magics and offers them for less than the price of a good keep.” He slid back his sleeve to display a thin gold band. “Rest easy, Wintersun, mine should keep our converse relatively private, so long as you stray not far from me, and say nothing too imprudent.”
Eldroon tapped a large jargoon ring on his fat and hairy left little finger. “I go nowhere without mine, these days.”
“Yet be not led astray, Lord Wintersun, by our little displays,” Prester Yellander said, “for Lady Crownsilver’s baubles were merely her excuse to tarry and converse with me, not the choice gossip that was the weightiest part of her words to me. Nay, Lords, I’d hardly waste your time informing you that this or that high lady now goes about magecloaked.”
“So what juice did she spout?” Eldroon asked, reaching for the decanter of glowfire.
“That the king has just chartered his own adventuring company, the Swords of Eveningstar, and sent them off to Eveningstar for a little training. When they’ve become seasoned killers, he intends to unleash them on nobles he sees as his opponents. So now Azoun Loosecods has his own private little slaying force-and ’tis a blade about to be thrust at us. Beware!”
Wintersun sighed and swirled his glass, to watch the dregs swirl like amber fire as they caught the light. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about.”
“You’re sure?” Eldroon asked. “This isn’t just wildtalk? Jalassa had this from someone reliable? If so, who? And how?”
“She pieced it together, she told me, from three court scribes, an overly talkative war wizard too young to keep in mind that others in the realm besides his kind know how to use spells-and something she heard from the lips of Vangerdahast himself.”
“Then he wanted all of us to know it,” Eldroon said darkly. “That man says nothing unguarded. Nothing at all.”
Lord Yellander shrugged. “He’s just a man. I could hire a mightier mage on the morrow.”
“Oh? Then why don’t you?”
“The war wizards are too splendid a blade to shatter. Better by far to find the way to take hold of their hilt.”
“Kill Vangerdahast, you mean.”
“ Replace Vangerdahast, by something that looks just like him. And obeys me.”
“And is there such a ‘something,’ in all the world?”.
“Oh, yes. I found it long ago.”