The duskwood tree was old, large, and had been lightning-scarred long ago, leaving its loftier reaches with a sort of natural seat where its trunk split into three. Anyone sitting in that juncture could teadily lean his back against the eastward trunk, prop one booted foot against the rising northwestern trunk, and stare between it and the southern trunk to enjoy a good view southwest over Cormyr. Even as the thick canopy of leaves above gave him full shelter from the wind, weather, and all but the closest prying eyes.
A lone man sat in that lookout seat now, a heavy sack beside him, enjoying the view.
The Immerflow was just visible far off to the left, a glimmering silver ribbon in the sunlight with the unbroken dark green horizon of the Hullack Forest beyond. Rolling emerald hills rose to a few gentle peaks in the distance ahead, and the higher, broken Stonelands-all torturous cliffs and crags cloaked with scrub woods-thrust up to the right, with the Moonsea Ride arising over a succession of hillcrests between the peaks and the Stonelands to run right past the tree. Two distant dust clouds were moving along the road, but otherwise it seemed deserted.
That suited Totm fine, just now. He needed time to sit and think, and the bulging sack of stolen coins, gems, and small valuables sharing his perch was a large part of why he was pondering where to go and what to do next.
Things were getting rather hot for him in the Forest Kingdom, but he'd found he vastly preferred it, for all its laws and ever-nosy war wizards, to noisy, crowded Sembia, where hired spying and alarm and warding spells were becoming all too common, and rivals and foes both too numerous to count.
Abruprly he became aware that something was floating in midair right in front of him. Something that certainly hadn't been there- two arms-lengths away from his nose, blocking his view of the gentle peaks-a moment ago.
It was a curved pipe of a style favored by older and whiskered men or backcountry farmers. A thin wisp of smoke was arising from its bowl, as if someone invisible, who could somehow recline leisurely on empty air about sixty feet off the ground, was enjoying a relaxed smoke.
Torm was so astonished by this sudden apparition that he almost fell out of the tree, but he knew full well that he was staring at magic, and that magic in Cormyr meant war wizards, andHe snatched out a dagger.
Only to find his hand pinned against the tree trunk by a stone-strong force.
"Oh, stop that," a man's voice drawled at him, apparently issuing from the pipe. "As I see it, ye now have a choice, young Torm. One of those life-altering ones. Ye can accept the task I'm about to offer ye, or I'll dump ye into the hands of the war wizards-specifically, into a cell in the little prison they maintain in the Royal Court in Suzail. I'm feeling rather patient at the moment, so I'll give ye the space of six full breaths to decide which fate ye wish to embrace."
"What sort of task?" Torm asked suspiciously.
"Stealing something."
Torm brightened.
"Traitors, you cannot escape the vengeance of Cormyr!" The lich's voice seemed hollow and distant. Tiny blue bolts of lightning leaped and spat from its rings, arcing back and forth-and suddenly twisted up into a writhing, crackling lance that stabbed at the Knights… only to become a flood of white blossoms that showered petals in all directions as they tumbled to the floor.
"No Witch Lord shall depart this place alive!" the lich said. "You have wrought your last craven foulness and foolishly strayed within my reach at last! Die! Die!"
The magic that roared forth at the Knights this time was a rose red flame that made hitherto-invisible preservative enchantments on the great carved door flare up a vivid blue-a spitting tongue of fire that became a hissing rain of" Cider? " Islif exclaimed. "That's cider I smell!"
The lich flung out a hand to point at Islif's nose and stalked forward, right at her. "You, Pretender Prince, are rhe very root and branch of evil that we have for so long striven to winnow out of fair Cormyr! I know you and decry you, false knight! You no more have Obarskyr blood than I do! Why, I'd not be surprised if you were even a woman, behind your posturings and oversized codpieces!"
"Strangely enough," Islif said wryly, as the lich-fear faded suddenly from all the Knights, "neither would I."
That pointing fingertip was only inches from her nose. She resisted the impulse to chop it with her sword and instead ducked away.
"Come!" Islif urged her fellow Knights-as the fear surged back over her in a wave that made her heart lurch, and the need to run rose in her mindlessly. She sprinted along the wall and took the cross passage. "Let's get away from this thing. We don't have the spells to stand and fight it if its charms suddenly turn effective!"
"R-r-right behind you!" Doust panted as he and Semoor stumbled over each other in their clawing terror to be the first to follow her. In their wake, teeth chattering, Florin slashed aside the lich's arm as the creature turned to follow them. His strike sent it tottering away across the passage.
"Filth of Sembia!" it said, pointing now at the wall. "You fail to deceive me with your clever disguise of aping polished wood! I shall hunt you down and destroy you utterly! Hah! "
The magic that roared out from it this time looked like a darting swarm of tiny white hummingbirds that burst into tinkling, flashing dust before they could reach the wall the lich was now angrily confronting.
Fear surging and ebbing in them like roiling nausea, the Knights fled, following Islif around the corner and down the cross passage.
"This is… not good," Pennae snapped, wiping sweat from her face. "I know it's the lich-magic making me afraid, but I feel just as scared as if there were a good reason to be! We've got to find a way out of this place. That mad lich back there won't menace the wall forever!"
"I'm thinking the way out might be on the other side of that door," Semoor said. "Care to lead the charge?"
"Sabruin," Pennae cursed him. "Tluining well do it yourself, Saer Holy Smarttongue."
"Ah, no, I think not," he said. "Getting blown apart with a spell isn't the sort of new beginning Lathander intends his priests to seek."
The thief gave him a contemptuous look. "So priests of the Morninglord justify becoming adventurers how, exactly?"
"Not now, you two," Florin said. "We've got-ohh!"
His voice rose in helpless fear even as a bolt of fire snarled past his ear ro claw at the paneled wall high over his shoulder. Protective magics arose from it like rainbow-hued flames to ward off the fire-bolt, even as the Knights cursed and backed away from this new periclass="underline" a second lich, taller and clad in robes less decayed than the first one.
It strode toward them as purposefully and lithely as any vigorous living foe, wearing no rings but waving some sort of scepter that clasped around its forearm like a bracer and sparkled in the wake of its firebolt-hurling.
"Intruders into the royal vaults can expect only one fate," it said, raising the scepter again, "and I shall swiftly visit that doom upon you!"
Fear ebbed from the Knights again, and Florin said, "Scatter!
Don't give it a good target! Give yourselves room ro run without slamming into someone else!"
The lich laughed hollowly. "Scheming will avail you naught, foes of Cormyr! Prepare to die!"
"These fellows were waystop-inn actots in life, weren't they?" Semoor asked. "Bad ones."
"The first lich isn't blocking out way back," Islif said. "We still have time to get back across that passage crossing by the door and go the other way!"
"So run!" Semoor cried, spinning around and doing just that. A firebolt snarled past, so close to his shoulder that his right ear and cheek felt its heat. The firebolt wrestled again with flaring defensive magics, then fizzled out.