Old Ghost soared down the alley, well pleased. He’d passed through all of the Swords, and worked two things on each of them in doing so: left their minds open to his return, no matter what shieldings might then exist, and-until that future visit-enabled them to perceive any nearby portal they gazed upon as a glowing “door.”
A bearded head of translucent radiance, touches of white hair at his temples but with dark and scowling brows above storm-gray eyes, Old Ghost raced on, turning onto one street then another. He turned a corner where Lionar Dauntless was running along, shouting orders to the Dragons trotting behind him-and darted into that shouting mouth.
The lionar’s eyes glowed eerily, just for a moment. Then Dauntless grew a crooked smile and ran on.
“This way!” Pennae panted, sprinting down another street. The far end of the cellars had been full of Purple Dragons searching for wayward Swords of Eveningstar. The Swords had been forced to flee up old and sagging stairs and through a bakeshop full of fat, shrieking cooks, out into streets where more Dragons were closing in from all sides. Arabel was roused against them.
“Shouldn’t we?” Doust gasped, stumbling after her, “Be trying to get to a city gate, to get out?”
“No,” Pennae shouted back. “Those three sharp hornblasts, same note in a row? That was them telling each other, gate by gate, that all was secured. There’ll be no getting out that way!”
“Back to the wizard’s underground lair?” Semoor suggested slyly.
“Go tluin yourself,” Pennae told him crisply. “With a shovel.”
Another horncall rang out, close at hand, and she erupted in swiftly hissed curses as she looked up at the tall, unbroken stone wall of a mansion compound beside her, a flood of invective that ended, “Mercy of Mask, if I but had one of those horns!”
“False calls?” Florin panted.
She nodded as they pelted around a corner-then pointed at a high-heaped cart groaning slowly along the street toward them. “Stop that one for us! Ask the driver if he knows Oddjack and can tell us where to find him!”
Florin frowned at her, but sheathed his sword and flung up his hands, stepping into the path of the slow cart. “Hoy!”
Running the length of the cart, Pennae didn’t wait for the puzzled drover to haul on his reins. “Follow me,” she hissed, and swarmed up the back of the lashed sacks of the cart’s load, where the man couldn’t possibly see her. From the height of that load she sprang over the frowning stone mansion wall-and through a mansion window beyond, with a horrific tinkling crash.
Jhessail stared up at that gaping window, her mouth open-then grinned, clawed her way up the sacks of the slowing, creaking cart beside a puffing Doust and Semoor, and plunged through the window in turn.
She found herself in a grand room of tapestries and pleated, neatly arranged draperies, its floor covered with fur rugs and a litter of broken glass.
Pennae stood in the doorway, listening to distant, fading shrieks. “The wealthy widow and all her maids, fleeing to the other side of doors they can slam and lock,” she said with a wry smile. “Are the others coming?”
Doust came through the window, caught his heels on a rug, and sat down with a crash, skidding halfway across the chamber-which was fortunate, given that Semoor then landed like a full grainsack on the floor where Doust had just been.
“Gods above, our very own jesters,” Islif observed, her boots slamming down on either side of Wolftooth’s cringing body. She bent, plucked him up-more like a grainsack than ever-and sprang out of the way.
It was, however, a few breaths more before Florin came in over the sill to trample the same spot of floor. “Gods above, can yon drover curse!” he said admiringly. “So, whose grand house is this? Not a Dragon commander’s, I hope?”
“Your sense of humor is even more twisted than mine,” Pennae told him. “No, this belongs to a merchant’s widow I robbed a tenday back. No place to hide here, even if they weren’t all shrieking like banshees. I’m heading for the next mansion over; a reclusive wizard lives there.”
“A wizard. Splendid, ” Islif said cuttingly. “Oh, joy, even!”
“Your better alternative?” Pennae snapped. “No? Then come!”
And she led them on another run, this one down sweeping staircases and through grand rooms dripping with opulence, heading west. Dragon horncalls sounded again outside, close by, and Pennae answered them with curses as she plunged through a door, out into a garden of little fishponds, moss-covered modest mermaid statues, and artfully pruned shrubberies.
The Swords pelted after her, out of the gardens, past a stables where a startled horse awakened and tossed its head, and up an ivy-cloaked wall that had trees beyond it. As the last Sword-Semoor-scaled it, armored men burst around the corner of the mansion they’d just left, shouted, and started sprinting through the garden. There were splashes as the foremost runners precipitously explored the fishponds. Twisting silverfin flew into the air.
Grinning, Semoor turned away, clawed his way up the last torn ivy, and crested the wall, slipping once-which turned out to be a good thing.
The lightning bolt that greeted him raced past his shoulder, lifting every hair on that side of his body, and clawed harmlessly at the sky.
In the light of the scrying orb Horaundoon smiled and sat back, ignoring the hargaunt’s squirmings. This was becoming a superb show. Amanthan had once been an apprentice of the Blackstaff, hadn’t he?
“Get out of here!” The tall young mage was so angry he was trembling. “I’m not afraid of kidnappers and thieves! I’ll-”
“Live longer if you calm down and hold your tongue,” Pennae said, drawing a wand from her belt and aiming it at him.
Behind her, the rest of the Swords all plucked out various rods, wands, and scepters they’d plundered from Whisper’s hoard, and leveled them at the wizard. He need not know they hadn’t the faintest wisp of a notion what the items did, or even if they dared to find out.
Their eyes were all fixed on his-except for the young lass with flame-red hair, who seemed to be peering with great interest across his gardens.
Amanthan swallowed, looking again along the line of wands. The lass in leathers, at the fore, was now hefting something more than the wand she’d trained on him: she’d produced a small metal sphere from somewhere, and was juggling it in the palm of her other hand. Her eyes were cool and uncaring.
Amanthan swallowed again. “W-what do you want?” he stammered.
“To pass into your house in peace,” the tall ranger said, “and hide there. We-”
Jhessail put a quelling hand on Florin’s arm and pointed across the garden, to where she could see a blue glow between two trees. “Where does yon portal go?”
The wizard blinked. “Waterdeep.”
“Good. Let us pass unhindered through it, and say nothing of where we went. Do this, and I’ll toss this — ” She shook the scepter in her hand. “-to your feet as we depart. To be yours.”
Amanthan blinked at her again, then shrugged. “Accepted.”
The adventurers flowed past him like a hurrying wave, wands pointing at him all the time. The flame-haired lass lingered to do as she’d promised, bending to send her scepter skittering to Amanthan’s feet.
He stared at it, then darted swiftly to one side, eyeing the portal warily.
Nothing came through it at him, as he drew three long, deep breaths in succession. Finally he sighed, took up the scepter gingerly-and whirled around as he heard the rustling of ivy tearing free of stone.
An armored flood of Purple Dragons poured over his wall.
Amanthan strode forward, finding he did not have to feign anger. “And just what,” he snapped, “is the meaning of this?”
The Dragons landed with heavy thuds, panting and staggering. One of them, a lionar by his badge, dodged through the dozen or so who were busy drawing their swords, and growled, “Fugitives from justice-six of them-came over this wall moments ago. Where did they go?”