"I didn't want to use any magic," Tsantress said grimly, "but…" She shook her head in exasperation and went back to staring through the thicket in which they were crouching at the roofless ruin that half the population of eastern Cormyr seemed to have vanished inside, now.
Watching Gods Above, it can't be that big inside. If they weren't falling down some pit or other, they must be heaped up like… like…
"Oh, gods," she whispered, "are they all dead, d'you think?"
"Now, lady wizard, thinking always gets us Purple Dragons in trouble-as the Royal Magician is all too fond of reminding us," Dauntless said. "If you're asking me if I'm anxious to draw sword and step in there, the answer is no. Not at this time."
Tsantress grinned at his mimicry of one of Alaphondar's favorite Court phrases. She stiffened and tapped a warning finger across her lips. When Dauntless stared a silent question at her, she used that same finger to point through the brush in another direction. She crouched down even lower.
Another man had come into view, walking warily and holding a wand out before him as if it were a sword. He seemed unfamiliar with the terrain and almost to be feeling-no, sensing-his way forward.
"What's Lorbryn doing here?" Tsantress breathed, more to herself than Dauntless. "What's going on? Is Vangerdahast sending watchers to watch his watchers?"
Chapter 14
Into Our Laps Forward, my bold, brave Dragons Swords out, all, and check the maps A plenitude of beauties and flagons Seek, all to end up in our laps!
Growling to himself, the Royal Magician of Cormyr casr the scrying spell a second time, then sat back to gaze upon the glossy black marble tabletop and wait. Again, nothing.
He shook his head. With all of these augmentations and a perfect casting, the magic should have yielded some indications. Even if Deltalon was on another plane or dead, the Weave echo should have come back to Vangerdahast to tell him the magic had sought but failed.
Yet it became clear that no echo was coming. Nothing. As if the spell were racing away across infinite distances, seeking, forever seeking, and not finding…
Vangerdahast grunted. This looked darker and darker.
He heaved himself to his feet and started to stride from the room, then stopped, settled down in his chair again, and cast a much simpler magic.
Not seeking Deltalon, this time, but on impulse, checking on Taltar Dahauntul through the ornrion's belt and boots. He murmured the added incantation that would also let him see through the Dragon's eyes. That would give Dauntless a raging headache, but, hah, to quote words he'd used far too often down the years, we must all make these little sacrifices in the service of Cormyr.
The air over the table whirled silently, then coalesced into a scene.
He was now seeing what Dauntless was gazing at… and he was peering through a thick tangle of saplings, clinging vines, and forest brush at-Lorbryn Deltalon!
Vangerdahast blinked, drew breath to swear, and abruptly the view over the table changed as the distant Dauntless turned his head. He was now looking at Wizard of War Tsantress Ironchylde, who was evidently crouching in a foresr thicket somewhere, right beside the ornrion.
Dauntless turned his head again to watch Deltalon stalk cautiously across a clearing of sorts, wand in hand, up to the missing door ofVangerdahast stood bolt upright, upending his stool with a clatter, and roared the most furious curses he knew at the ceiling.
The scene above the table calmly continued to unfold, no matter how hard and often the Royal Magician glared at it.
"All gods stlarn it all!"
He ran out of verbal filth to spew and shook his head, aghast at where the two war wizards and that pain-in-the-sitter ornrion were: the only open way into the Lost Palace.
Vangerdahast called on the power of his rings and bellowed, "Laspeera!"
Through a surging red mist of pain and a gasp, both supplied by his most trusted Wizard of War half the Palace away, he saw the astonished faces of the novice war wizards she'd been instructing.
She was wincing and clutching at her head, but Vangey wasted no time on apologies or niceties. Brutally ramming what he was seeing over the table into her mind, he snarled, "Do you know anything about this?"
"No, Van-Lord Vangerdahast," Laspeera groaned, fingers clawing at her temples and face pinched in pain. "I don't. At all."
The students staring at her clearly heard the Royal Magician's answering roar, spilling out of her ears. "To me! Right now! Hurry! The safety of the realm hangs on this!"
Laspeera slumped over with a gasp as the raging wizard left her mind, then she straighted and gave her young war wizards a lopsided smile.
"He's always like this," she explained. "One gets used to it."
She turned and dashed out the door.
"What is this place?" one of the Sembians asked, peering at the dark passages ahead.
"I was hoping you could tell me that," Lord Maniol Crownsilver snapped. "You're the wizards here."
"Hold!" The other Sembians voice was tight with fear. "What's that?"
He was pointing ahead into the dark mouth of a side passage, where something half-seen was moving.
Out into their passage it came, walking as slowly as an elderly, unsteady noble, and wearing the ragged remnants of what had once been splendid gatments of shimmerweave and musterdelvys. Its head was half flesh and lank hair and half bare bone, and its eyes were two glittering motes of light. It was smiling.
"A lich, I'm thinking," the fitst Sembian said quietly, his hands already busy at his belt.
"So, my tutor," the undead asked them, "what is it to be this time? Are we calling up fiends? Or hurling fire into flagons?"
The Sembians looked sidelong at each other. "Neither," the second Sembian said. "No magic this day."
"No? But I've practiced so long! Watch!" Bony fingers sketched briefly in empty air, rose-hued motes of light started to trail from fingertips, and a sudden flare of rose-purple light snarled out in Lord Crownsilver's direction.
"Do something!" the noble shouted, cowering back. "I'm paying you to do something!"
Even as his voice rose in wild fear, the crawling, stabbing rose-purple radiance struck something half-seen and emerald-hued that seemed to be emanating from the first Sembians belt. The purple light was deflected to strike at the passage wall, where rainbow-hued radiances flared inro being and wrestled with it.
"Oooh!" The lich clapped its hands together, staring at where its magic was striking the emerald-hued warding. "Pretty! Very pretty! And have you more delights to share with me, dusky sorceress?"
Lord Crownsilver and the two Sembians exchanged glances then looked back at the lich. It had turned its back on them and was strolling away down the passage now, flouncing along as if dancing or skipping, and crooning, "Pretty… oh, so pretty…"
"Look," the second Sembian said, pointing past the wandering lich ar something leaning out to look at them from another passage mouth. "There's another one."
"Azuth's flaming spittle," the first mage cursed.
The two Sembians looked at each other, nodded in accord, and turned away from the liches.
"Here, now!" Lord Crownsilver snapped, plucking at the sleeve of the first Sembian. "What're you playing at? I'm paying you to-"
The Sembian thrust his face forward at his patron so aggressively that the shorrer noble flinched back, and the wizard snapped, "Lord, those are liches. Mad liches. Not all the gold and gems in Cormyr will keep me here now."
"Aye," the other Sembian said. "Dead men spend no riches. And we'll all be dead men-or worse-very swiftly if we tarry here longer. Why, I-"
His fellow mage-for-hire gurgled loudly.
The Sembian had torn his sleeve from Crownsilver's grasp, taken two swift strides back down the passage-and run right onto the sword that a grimly smiling woman in black leathers was holding ready, right at the level of his throat.