Florin stepped out into-grain shifting underfoot, in a familiar warehouse that was now brightly lit indeed. Forty Purple Dragons, or more, were staring impassively at him over leveled spears, in a wall that extended around him in-yes-a ring.
A ring of Dragons at least two deep, that was broken in only one place: right ahead of him, where an officer stood with a drawn sword in his hand, looking both weary and profoundly unamused.
“Take them,” Lionar Dahauntul ordered flatly, as the Swords emerged to stand with Florin.
“Alive?” a veteran Dragon asked.
“Take them,” Dauntless repeated grimly.
Chapter 26
In life there are three real treasures: loving partners, true friends, and your brightest dreams. The trick is to avoid losing them along the way.
"No,” Horaundoon murmured, “I dare not use a mind-link now. Not when one of these fools is so likely to get slain while our minds are touching.” He sat back with a sigh to watch what unfolded in the scrying orb.
If the gods smiled, he might not lose all of his tools this day.
If.
The orb glowed brighter, rising. In its depths, the Zhentarim saw Florin snap, “Jhess, behind me! Pennae, behind Islif! If they throw those spears-”
A spear sailed through the air, and his sword smashed it up and aside. Another flew, as the Dragons started striding forward.
“The wands!” Jhessail cried, reaching around Florin to aim the one she held. “Use them- now! ”
More spears flew, Swords chanted strange words-and fire, lightning, ice, and dark tentacled shadows exploded outward. The gate’s silent whirling built into a roar that towered over everything.
The air itself seemed to boil, Purple Dragons were flung in all directions like rag dolls, and Semoor screamed as his wand exploded, taking most of his hand with it. Doust’s wand started to spit sparks and glow, and he flung it away and ducked, reaching out an arm to take Semoor to the ground with him.
The wand exploded against the nearest warehouse wall with a fury that sent everyone flying, timbers creaking and groaning, and grain and dust whirling up into a blinding cloud.
Horaundoon peered vainly at the dark roilings for a time, then shrugged. He could, after all, trace Florin at any time through the mindworm.
If, that is, the noble foolhead of a forester was still alive.
In a dark, chill chamber far underground, a lich turned in surprise as its crystal ball glowed into sudden life. How Something that glowed palely darted past its moldering workbench, darting among grimoires that had been old when the lich yet lived, and raced up into the lich’s bony face before it could lift one withered hand.
The lich stood abruptly, overturning its highbacked chair, and flung out its arms wildly, bony limbs flopping and clashing together like the arms of a doll shaken hard by an angry child. It shuddered, bending over sharply and then arching back, and hastened across the chamber, babbling half-words that spilled over each other, sometimes rising into shouts. Parts of its body grew fur, or scales, or bulging muscles, and lost them again just as swiftly.
Then it shook itself all over, as a moose reaching a riverbank shakes off water, and stood still, an almost-skeletal lich once more.
The crystal ball, its aging cloth cover fallen away, showed a tumbling cloud of dust and debris. The lich waved a hand, and the cloud seemed to move, showing dark heaps-bodies-and a brightness with ragged edges. A hole in a wall that folk were stumbling through.
Folk who’d have been strangers to the lich, but whom Old Ghost, now master of what had been the lich, knew. He watched the one called Semoor swig a vial as he ran, fling it away, and hold out a ruined hand to watch it heal.
“Swords of Eveningstar,” he told the darkness, his newly stolen jaw creaking. “You shall prove useful to me. Live a time longer, until I reach for you.”
Then his jaw crumbled-and fell off.
The sound of a woman crying was sufficiently rare in the Royal Palace in Suzail that it made Vangerdahast turn his head from talking to Laspeera outside the tall doors of the Soaring Dragon Room, and look.
Two impassive war wizards were leading a weeping Lady Narantha Crownsilver down Longwatch Hall toward Vangerdahast.
The two highest-ranking Wizards of War watched her pass in silence. In the wake of that passing, Vangerdahast told Laspeera rather grimly, “I wish I had time to attend to this one myself, now, but…”
Laspeera gave him a look. “I’m sure you do,” she murmured teasingly. “I’m sure you do.”
“Down here!” Pennae hissed, pointing-and disappeared.
The Swords ducked after her, around a heap of rotting crates in the reeking alley and down a flight of worn steps that seemed carpeted in shrilly squeaking rats, into-a stone-lined, refuse-strewn room that Pennae had already crossed, to beckon them from a dark doorway beyond.
“Cellars,” she called, low-voiced. “Come on! ”
They sprinted across the room, through another, and were halfway across a third room when a cold light burst in the empty air in front of them. Out of it, almost touching Pennae as she fought to halt without falling, stepped a tall, dead-looking man who seemed to be holding his jaw on as tiny blue bolts of lightning encircled it. He was tall, bald, and strong-featured, and wore dark robes that left his pale, dead-white chest bare. He stank of death and mildew.
“Hold, Swords of Eveningstar!” he said hollowly, his half-healed jaw drooping. “I-”
Pennae launched herself from the floor into him, daggers glinting in both hands.
Before either of those metal fangs could hit home, an unseen magic had hurled her away. Her outflung body smashed Doust and Semoor to the floor.
“Hold, I say!” the lich snapped, raising his hands.
Florin and Islif were already moving. Hurling themselves against unseen magic that made them grimace with the effort of fighting their ways forward, they thrust their swords… right through the lich.
Its mouth gaped in pain, but no scream came forth. Instead, a teardrop of fell glow shot out of that withered maw, flying wraith-stuff that swooped, darted, and circled around the Swords-Doust missing it with a twisting swing of his mace from where he lay-as it grew.
The lich stood unmoving until Islif’s mighty slash sent it toppling to the floor, where it lay still. The flying thing, however, ducked under Florin’s fierce attack, shooting under his arms as he swung and swung again, only to soar up above them all long enough for Jhessail to set herself in a stance and raise her hands to lash it with a spell.
They could see through its glow a bearded, severe-browed human male head trailing away into a tail like a falling star. It glared at them, swerved suddenly to avoid Islif’s reaching blade, then plunged down at Jhessail.
Who gabbled her spell desperately, and never knew if she’d cast the magic properly or not as the racing head plunged into her.
She gasped. There was no crashing impact, but merely a chill that stabbed up past her heart into her head, and left her breathlessly staring at inward darkness in something of a daze.
Behind her, Semoor shouted in alarm more than pain, and stiffened. The head tore right through him as it had through Jhessail-and as she watched, it did the same to Doust.
The wizard who answered to the name Amanthan raised his head sharply, as if sniffing the air. He’d been hearing the boots of running Dragons, short horncalls, and shouted orders, this last little while, over the wall that kept all Arabel out of his garden, but this-this was something more.
Strong magic. Strange magic. Mother Mystra, what now?
In this city of folk who could smell as well as see, the lich was best abandoned anyhail. It had served his needs, and a living body would make a better host for several reasons.