"Agreed," Florin said, looking around at everyone. "Any grievous wounds? Can everyone walk?"
"Being as we seem to keep losing our horses…" Jhessail replied with a frown, "I seem to be getting steadily better at walking."
Everyone pulled out their glowstones, and the light in the room grew with them. Semoor got a good look at Pennae, and he leered appreciatively.
"Like em?" she asked calmly and without waiting for a reply added, "Can't have em!"
"I'm making like a good Cormyrean, successful and wealthy and settled in Suzail," the priest replied innocently. "I'm window-shopping."
Doust and Jhessail snorted in amusement, and even Pennae grinned.
She shook her head and waved a finger in mock warning. "That tongue of yours, lad…"
"Yes?" Semoor asked brightly, hope shining in his eyes.
"Never mind. We've a palace to explore, or hadn't you noticed, lost in your unholy fixation on my charms?"
Semoor looked aggrieved, though his eyes were dancing. "Madam, you wound me! 'Unholy' how? Lathander warmly embraces new beginnings, and I perceive an opportunity to warmly embrace-"
"My left hand, crushing your codpiece and all it contains, if you don't leave off, Bright Morninglord of Lust!" Pennae snapped. "Now belt up! Some of us have work to do that just might keep the rest of us alive. And spare me whatever clever little jest you were trying to think up about how this could be another 'new beginning,' too."
Above them both, Florin was standing by the archway, glowstone raised, peering into the darkness arid ignoring their dispute. Without looking back, he waved his hand to get their attention. "Kick some of the stones we brought with us together into a little heap to mark this room for later. We'll have to start exploring or just die of thirst-and I don't think we should split up or leave anyone behind. For any reason."
Semoor obediently applied his boots to sliding most of the stones together, then looked up. "Done. Let's go exploring. I'm getting hungry."
"Would that be a holy hunger?" Islif teased.
"One of mine," the priest replied, drawing smoothly back out of Pennae's reach. "One of mine."
He strode to join Florin. "Come. None of us is getting any younger."
The little, out-of-the-way room in the Royal Palace of Suzail where Vangerdahast was closeted with his most trusted Wizard of War had no name, and the Royal Magician liked it that way. He'd have been even happier if it hadn't ever appeared on any floor plans of the Palace, even though he'd done his level best for years now to track down and seize every last formal or hand-drawn charting of anything architectural about the most royal of buildings in Suzail.
Vangerdahast enjoyed having and knowing secrets, liked having hideaways where no one would be able to track him down and disturb him, and especially valued being able to occasionally take off his boots, fart, belch, scratch himself, and genuinely relax in the company of someone who wasn't offended by such behavior.
That the "someone" was a beautiful woman whom he trusted and regarded as a friend made her company that much more precious. Despite the facts that they were both-aside from his boots-fully clad and likely to remain so, and they were discussing grave business of the realm.
Specifically, the most pressing problems the Wizards of War needed to deal with.
"Then there's the matter of the Hidden Princess," he said heavily across the little table where they sat crouching, murmuring almost nose to nose.
"That never seems to go away," Laspeera said, nodding. "What now, specifically?"
"Some of the elder Illances have gotten it into their heads that I'm up to something."
Laspeera grinned. "And are you?"
"Hardly, Lasp," he growled. "They think I've got her spellbound and stashed in a bedchamber somewhere and visit her every tenday or so for a night of wildly trying to sire a secret branch of the Obarskyrs to hold in reserve in case-"
He stiffened suddenly, lifted his head so abruptly they almost bumped noses together, and started cursing softly.
Laspeera raised an eyebrow in silent query.
"The Lost Palace," the Royal Magician said. "Someone's triggered one of my alarm spells. They're inside, somehow."
Laspeera stood, went to a wall carving, did something to it with her fingers, and swung it forward from the wall as if it were a door. Its hollowed-out back sported a rack of sheathed wands. Deftly she started taking down sheaths and hooking them onto her belt.
"Nay, Lasp," Vangerdahast said. "This is my folly and my battle."
"Lord Vangerdahast," she replied, "you can't be everywhere, and if the realm loses you on this sort of backchambet-"
"No! Take off those wands and sit down!" Vangerdahast roared, slamming down a fist on the table and startling her with his sudden fury. "There are good reasons I alone should go there! Not the least of which being that all the defenses are keyed to me, and anyone else will have to battle them every few steps, not just our unknown intruder!"
Laspeera nodded and handed him wands.
Vangerdahast took them, crooked a finger to whisk another two particular wands across empty air from the panel into his hands, whirled away to the door, and hurried out.
He was out and down the passage beyond like a storm wind, his robes billowing out behind him, and didn't notice Wizard of War Lorbryn Deltalon step out of a doorway in his wake. Deltalon grimly watched him go.
The Knights found themselves cautiously exploring room after dark, thick-with-dust room. A seemingly endless labyrinth of deserted, interlinked chambers, all of them ornately paneled with soaring ceilings losrin the darkness beyond the reach of theit glowstones. A palace.
Perhaps an underground palace. They could find no sign of a window or sunlight or any way out-nor any sign of other life. The air smelled stale and long unmoving, the dust lay like an undisturbed blanket everywhere, and the only light, aside from rheir glowstones, came from the faint glows of old, decaying preservative magics on the magnificent wood paneling all around them.
A hallway larger and longer rhan most brought them to a cross-way of similar grandeur-and across it, only a few strides along a stub end of passage, a huge wooden door. As wide as Florin's shoulders three times over and more than twice as tall, it was carved with an oval badge of a unicorn's head thrusting forth to the dexter from between two curving trees: an oak and a maple.
"Esparin," Jhessail said. "This was a palace of Esparin-probably the palace of Esparin."
Semoor, who was staring hard at the carved device, frowned without looking away from it. "I didn't know you knew olden-days heraldry."
"You've never asked me what I know," Jhessail replied softly. Something in her voice made him look at her sharply.
"The Lost Palace of Esparin," Doust murmured from behind them. "There was something about this place. Something I read… that I should remember. Some interesting peril or other…"
Something half-skeletal shuffled into view around the corner where the crossway met the stub end of the passage.
It peered at them with eyes that were twin points of cold light in a face that was half falling off the skull beneath. It looked like what was left of a man, in what was left of once-grand robes.
"Oh, Tymora. Liches," Doust whispered, as cold fear fell on all of the Knights like a heavy cloak, washing over them and leaving them trembling uncontrollably. "I remember now! Th-th-this is where Vangerdahast's predecessors b-b-bound all the wizards who went mad!"
The lich took a slow step forward, raising its hands. As the Knights of Myth Drannor tried to curse and scatter, magic rings on those bony fingers winked into life.
Chapter 10
Tasks, Travels, and Life altering choices Tasks are given to us all Travels embraced or forced upon us All our daily choices alter our lives And shape also those of others So we must master tasks, travels, and choices Or lack precious time enough For love, friendship, and laughter.