Doust gave the lich a hard-eyed glare and sent his spell at its head, while Semoor aimed for irs raised hand, aglow with all those rings.
They saw the brief, silent radiances of their spells striking those targets, glows that flared and died away again, having done nothing at all. The lich went right on ignoring them.
It also went right on shuffling forward and was now barely more than an arm's length from Jhessail. Her nonsense-chanting mouth was trembling on the verge of a scream.
Semoor took two swift steps and snatched up the snoring, hairy thing Florin had become, taking hold of it high on the legs, where they joined the body.
It was heavy-Watching Gods Above, it was heavy! — but he could… could…
Semoor staggered for a moment under the boar's weight, saw Doust staring at him with mouth agape, and started to run.
Semoor was bent over backward under the weight of the boar, making of his arms and chest a sloping shelf on which the snoring beast bounced as the priest rushed forward. Semoor prayed its hairy bulk would serve as a shield against any spells the lich might cast.
He was almost at the wall-where Jhessail was staring in horror at the lich, as its arms reached hungrily for her-when he caught up to the lich, planted his right foot, and used the staggering momentum he'd built up to swing around to face the lich and heave the hairy, snoring bulk in his arms right at the lich's hands.
The boar fell through them to the floor, crashing solidly down and awakening with an aggrieved and startled snort. In his wake he left tumbling pieces of bone. Magic rings bounced in all directions. Two splintered, broken-off pairs of forearm bones clattered to the floor.
The glittering points of light that served the lich for eyes blazed up into flames of fury. It roared in anger and turned to confront Semoor.
The Light of Lathander shrank back, just as terrified as Jhessail.
Doust's piglet, the sleeping Islif, hurled with all the grunting might the Jewel of Tymora could muster, smashed right into-and through-what was left of the lich's face. The falling boar took the head off the lich's shoulders. The skull struck the floor and exploded into bony, spraying shards. The reeling body was now topped by cracked, chipped shoulderblades and collar bones. As the two priests stared, one arm fell off.
Doust and Semoor looked at each other, shrugged a little more happily this time, and sprinted past what was left of the lich to pluck up the last piglet.
"Up, Pennae," Semoor said, as they clawed the piglet up to their collective knees, staggered, and hefted it higher. "You make a most fetching boarlet-or whatever these beasts are properly called!"
Trotting together this time, the two priests took careful aim at the lurching remnants of the lich, got the boar to almost the height of the skeleton's ribcage-and gave a little heave before letting go.
The third piglet crashed right through the lich, smashing the corpse's pelvis and legs to ruin.
With triumphant yells the two priests sprang in, beating at those bony shards with their maces, pulverizing bones down to grit and dust.
"Holy water!" Semoor snapped, plucking at one of the precious belt vials he and Doust had been given by the Royal Court in the wake of the now-infamous reception for the lady envoy of Silverymoon.
He and Doust kicked what was left of the bones together, mashing the few larger pieces down to grit with a few last mace-blows, then sprinkled their mace-heads and the heap of riven shards with holy water.
Smoke gouted up with loud hissings, as if they were dashing water on a fire. In the wake of those sounds, the heaped bone remnants glowed momentarily. A faint, eerie half-moan and half-sigh… and the bone grit melted away to nothing but a dark patch on the stone floor.
Doust knelt and plucked up the cobweblike, collapsing rag that had been the lich's robes. Crouching together, he and Semoor peered at it, watching its row of buttons slowly fall through the disintegrating fabric, one by one, to shatter as they struck the floor. The dyed bone domes bore alternating engravings: rhe dragon encircled by nine stars and then a circle of chain, which was the old sigil of the Wizards of War, and the old crossed hunting horns badge of a noble family Doust couldn't quite recall.
"Emmarask," Jhessail said over their shoulders, her voice still thin and panting. "That was once an Emmarask."
"And a war wizard," Semoor said grimly. "Good to know what fate they can look forward to, eh?"
"I wasn't thinking of becoming a war wizard," Jhessail said.
"I wasn't thinking they'd accept you," he rerorted. "Now, O great mage, about all these other liches and our friends the snorting boars-"
"Yes?" Islif asked from above them. "I've been called worse, mind, yet even a farm lass prefers not to be mistaken for-"
Jhessail and the two priests looked up, as the last of the cloth crumbled away from between Doust's fingers. Florin, Islif, and Pennae smiled down at them, back in their proper shapes.
"Always thought you were a real pig, underneath," Semoor greeted Florin with a grin.
"Careful," Pennae said. "Any priest fool-tongued enough to make any jests about sows or anything of the sort is going to regret it-as the toe of my boot makes reply to that!"
Semoor looked at Doust, who raised a warning finger and said over it with a smile, "Hail, fellow destroyer of liches!"
The Light of Lathander grinned. "Aye, wait'll they hear about thatsx a temple! Real fire-at-the-altar deeds-and ours!"
"Ahem," Jhessail tremulously reminded them both, "forget not one thing: We have to find a way out of here, somehow, and get to a temple, first."
"Indeed," a familiar male voice said from out of the darkness.
The younger Princess Obarskyr of Cormyr had made it back to her chambers without anyone in the stables or Palace seeing her in her commoner's garb, but she had been missed, and neither her maids nor the old, scarred war wizard nor yet the younger but no-less-scarred Purple Dragon guard commander had been all that pleased with her.
In the end, Alusair had planted her hands on her hips, faced them all across the receiving room of her chambers, and said, "You all seem to forget that I'm a child. Well, children-even princesses, and yes, even in civilized Cormyr-get to play and have adventures, and I was busy doing those things."
"You," her senior maid said, "stopped being a child about seven days after you were born."
"And whose fault is that?" Alusait said, finding herself on the verge of tears and made even angrier by that humiliation. "I can't even squat on a chamber pot without being spied upon! All the Watching Gods damn you all, can't I even-"
She caught herself on the very precipice of blurting out what she'd been out doing, but by then the Purple Dragon ornrion, bless him, had growled, "I've heard enough. Leave the royal miss alone, all of you. Damn me if I'd not feel the same way, were I standing in her boots. Er, slippers."
He turned for the door, windmilling his arms so as to sweep all the rest of them along with him, and added, "Now let's get out of here and leave her some peace. I'm sure you'll all take the opportunity to report her or scold her yourselves over the next day or so, anyhail, so-"
The war wizard protested something in an angry whisper as they shouldered through the door together, but the guard commander didn't bother to whisper his response. "I see that as your problem. Get Old Thunderspells to cast some sort of waist-down chastity spell on her if that's what you're so worried over."
Then, blessedly, Alusair was all alone, except for the glaring senior maid and two chambermaids who'd carefully kept silent and out of sight in the inner rooms.
Alusair curtly dismissed old Tsashaeree two words into the tirade she was starring, then rang the bell that would bring in the two Purple Dragon door guards to escort her out. They came grinning, one of them giving her a wink, and Alusair was careful not to let Tsashaeree see her winking back. She didn't want to give anyone the idea that she needed Dragons at her elbows day and night.