"As in fatal danger," Pennae said. "Care to be more specific?"
Vangerdahast gave her a dark look. "If you work arcane spells, they can twist into quite different magics and be unleashed without warning to harm yourself and others. This occurs only in the wake of your working a particular unbinding, in the long sequence that makes up the ritual."
"So this Unbinding is a series of little steps?" Pennae asked. "Destructive ones, I presume?"
"Yes, and I must warn you rhat powerful enchanted items on your persons can be affected just as powerful spells can. Minor magics of either sort should do no harm, though their presence may give you something of a headache."
The Royal Magician pointed along the wall across from the one he was leaning against. "There are many carved panels among the wood sheathing of these walls. Some are actually thin, worked stone, painted and treated to look like wood. At my direcrion, you Knights must shatter a particular stone panel, and then go and do the same thing to whichever nearby panel winks with sudden light when you shatter the first. The Unbinding is simply a series of such breakings."
"Which will do what?" Islif and Florin asked, in perfect unison.
"Deliver all of us from this place. The liches will fall apart. The bindings are all that is keeping them from doing so right now. You'll know the Unbinding has worked because now-sleeping portals hidden all over this palace will awaken and reach out to suck us through, snatching us all to one place: the robing room behind the Throne Chamber in the Royal Palace in Suzail."
"And then?" Semoor asked. "We'll be blasted down by some waiting guard of war wizards?"
"No, bur I'd take it kindly if you fought at my side as I seek out the false Vangerdahasr. We'll have ro move swiftly and- regrettably-deal with any war wizards we meet who try to stop us, because the impostor will undoubtedly seek to reach the royal family, probably to slay one of them and take that shape or ro try to hold them hostage in return for his own safe escape."
Vangerdahast fell silent then and turned his head to give all of them the closest thing to a beseeching look that any of the Knights had ever seen on his usually imperious face.
The Knights stared at him, then eyed each other.
There were several unhappy sighs before Florin said slowly, "We must confer and decide together."
"Aye," Pennae agreed. "Let's talk."
Targrael sank down onto the stairs, melting against them. She dared not count on these three dolts being such utter fools as never to look back her way.
After all, they might well turn back from the portal right now, and" One of you in front of me and one behind," Lord Crownsilver said. "Come! The longer we give them to get ahead of us…"
Warily, one of the Sembians walked up to and through the portal, vanishing in a silent instant. Breathing something that might have been a prayer or a curse, the nobleman followed. The second Sembian peered for a moment at the rubble behind the portal, where beams and the ceiling had crashed down in a now-frozen torrent of sagging collapse, sighed loudly, and strode after them.
Still flattened on the stairs, Highknight Ismta Targrael waited in cautious silence for some time ere she rose in smooth, catlike' silence and stalked to the portal. Turning smoothly in a complete rotation to look everywhere behind her, she stepped into its embrace, drawn sword first.
In silence it swallowed her, and that silence stretched for several long breaths before something else moved in the darkened cellar, rising from behind a particularly large heap of rubble.
It was a man-a man known to a diminishing number of living Cormyreans as Brorn Hallomond, personal bodyguard in the service of the Lord Prester Yellander, and more widely tetmed a lord's "bullyblade"-and he hefted his sword in his hand as he stared at the portal he'd just seen four people pass through.
Would it be the folly of a reckless fool to go after them? Or his road to riches enough to settle down somewhere safe in the Forest Kingdom and live like a lord the rest of his days?
A short way down the passage, beyond the moot, a door opened, and a lich clad in robes of rich purple strode out, clutching a rod that winked with magical lights up and down its dark length.
"Aha!" it cried. "More thieves! Come to despoil the royal vaults of fair Cormyr! Can'r turn my back and lose myself in a spell for half a candle without another scurrying infestation of you creeping in behind me to-"
Running out of words, it growled in rage and charged forward, waving the staff.
Vangerdahast calmly worked a swift and intricate spell, a casting unlike any Jhessail had ever seen before-and a strange red mist appeared, swept along the passage, snatched the lich off its feet, and bundled it back through the door, rod and all. The mists melted fingerbones, robes, and the feet off the lich as it struggled.
Then the mists slammed the door and roiled in front of it, sealing it off.
"That much," the Royal Magician turned and told the Knights a little sadly, "I can still do." He seemed on the verge of saying more, then hesitated before adding, "I quite understand and respect your need to take some time over deciding to aid me or not. I have waited decades for certain things to befall Cormyr, worked for years to bring many of those things about. I have mastered waiting. I shall withdraw yonder"-he pointed down the passage, a little way beyond the door where his spell was raging-"and let you debate without my interference."
Pennae nodded and held up a hand to silence the rest of the Knights as they watched Vangerdahast walk away. "Doust," she said softly, "watch him as if you're a hungry hawk. Speak if you see him do anything that might be spellcasting."
"Understood," Doust said.
"We're lost here, and these liches seem real enough to me," Islif said without waiting for anyone else to speak. "Which means we'll die, sooner or later, if one comes blundering up to us like the one we just saw-whether he staged that or not. We may need him as much as he needs us."
Florin nodded. "Yet before we plunge into talking tactics-"
"Arguing tactics," Pennae interrupted with a grin, never turning her head from watching Vangerdahast.
"Arguing tactics," Florin granted, "I think we must decide how far we can trust Vangerdahast. Is he speaking truth to us now?"
Doust shrugged and pointed at Semoor. "If I pray-if either or both of us priests prays properly-we can be granted the power to know falsehoods when uttered. We can do this and put specific questions to Vangey-questions vIe should frame carefully. The spells have strict limits, but we will know if this tale of Unbinding and an impostor and our ennoblement is truth."
"Let's do that," Islif said.
"Agreed," Pennae said, "but remember this: Vangey will be standing listening to everything we say. Let's decide some things, quickly, while we have this much privacy."
Manshoon had half-turned away from the Knights, feigning what he fancied might be the dignity-or perhaps pomposity would be a better word-of Vangerdahast. They were walking slowly toward him now, all of them, so he turned back to face them.
Florin walked at their fore, face stern. "Very well, Lord Vangerdahast," he said formally, stopping a few paces away. "We'll do it. And may the curses of all the gods of Faerun drown and dismember you if you've deceived us."
"You probably got it all," Dauntless said. "One can't tell from the smoke. That's apt to go on for some time. Yet I'm not expecting the forest to flare up around us." He shrugged. "We'll have Dragon patrols here, regardless. The smoke'll do that much."