Her free hand snarched the warding token from the wizard's belt and held it up to ward off any magic the other Sembian might hurl.
Thus defended, Highknight Lady Ismra Targrael watched the man choke and strangle on her steel. Her smile never changed as he sagged, gurgling his way down to the passage floor with his staring eyes fixed on her.
Letting go of her sword as the dying Sembian took it to the floor and as Lord Crownsilver stared at her, aghast and paling, she plucked a dagger from her belt, danced sideways, and threw it deftly.
The noble couldn't turn his head fast enough to follow its flashing flight, but he saw well enough where that journey ended.
Wearing the dagger hilt-deep in his left eye, the second Sembian mage toppled, tiny lightnings spitting and swirling vainly around the blade as feeble defensive magics sought to deal with it… and failed.
Targrael didn't even bother to watch him fall. She was busy tugging her sword free.
Lord Crownsilver stared down at the two bodies on the passage floor in front of him. Then he looked up at the woman who'd killed them. Who was still smiling.
"Well, little traitor noble," she purred, stalking forward, twirling het sword. "It seems it's now just you and me."
Manshoon smiled. He'd been ready to foil the priests' truth-sensing magics-feeble things, really-but he'd been spared the trouble. They were so eager to save Faerun, these Knights. Naive fools.
If every land had a dozen such bands, he could conquer the entire Realms in a season.
There had been a time when Vangerdahast had come here often, when the treasures stored here had been everyday needs and comforts, armor of sorts against his fears. Yet it had been a long time since he'd burst in here in any hurry, seeking… seeking…
Snarling like an angry wolf, Vangerdahast raged around the room, snatching up wands here, rods there, and-and-and belts of potions over there! Amulets-best have some of them, too.
He dropped them in a great heap onto the table and whirled away to face the nearest wardrobe. Snatching it open, he glared at a suit of gleaming magical elven armor inside. He peered past it in a vain search for somerhing more useful, then savagely slammed the doors on the armor again, rurning away with a heartfelt growl.
Which was when he caught sight of a man in worn leathers watching him from the doorway. A man whose name he didn't know, but whom he vaguely recalled seeing around the Palace once or twice before.
This in itself irritated Vangey. No one should visit the Palace more than once without the Royal Magician knowing who they were and why they were there.
"Who-?"
"Dalonder Ree, Harper," the man said softly, "here to help. You look very much like a Royal Magician of Cormyr who needs it. And if the Royal Magician doesn't, the Court Wizard of Cormyr seems in even worse need of aid."
"I need nothing of the sort!" Vangey snapped.
Laspeera ducked past the Harper into the room and said breathlessly, "I've never heard you this upset before! What d'you need me for?"
Vangerdahast srared helplessly into the Harper's carefully expressionless gaze for a moment, then thtew up his hands in surrender and snapped at his most loyal war wizard, "Strap on all of this you can carry, and come with me! Some madwits may be about to work the Unbinding and empty the Lost Palace onto our laps!"
Laspeera blinked, cursed in a crisp and very unladylike manner, and started grabbing at the magic items Vangey had dumped on the table. So did the Harper.
"Not you!" Vangey snarled at him. "Don't you have something else to meddle in?"
"Nothing nearly as important as this!" Ree said.
"Well, you could stay right hete, keep your hands off all magic, and go running around rounding up Wizards of War and sending them after us! If we all go down, it really won't matter how few are left here to defend the throne! Oh, and you could warn the royal fam-"
"As it happens, wizard," Princess Alusair said crisply from the doorway, "I can and will take care of that. This valiant Harper will be accompanying you, if he desires. I can't give him a royal command, but I can so command you-and I should have started doing so years ago, I'm thinking."
Vangey started to say something, anger rising in him like a great tide, but the younger princess of the realm raised her voice in superb mimicry of his own, roaring right over him, "Now stop arguing with everyone you see and get going!'"
"This one should do, to begin the Unbinding," Vangerdahast said slowly, stopping at a panel. As the Knights gathered around him, Islif couldn't help but look back the way they'd come, and Jhessail and the priests spun around to face outward, faces tight with fear.
The smell was following them. A faint, sickly rotting scent, overlaid by mildew, that was wafting from the six or so liches now shuffling after them.
Gods, if just one of them decided to hurl a spell…
"Florin?" the Royal Magician asked gravely.
The ranger nodded, drew in a deep breath, and swung the mace he'd borrowed from Doust.
The panel shattered under his solid swing, its magical disguise of stained and polished wood disintegrating in brief little puffs and swirls of blue-green radiance.
Vangerdahast told them, "Look up and down this passage, everyone! Quickly!"
"There!" Pennae said, right on the heels of his words, pointing.
"Hasten," the Royal Magician said, shouldering through the Knights in the direction of the distant glowing panel. "Hurry! We must mark the right one!"
He strode straight toward the liches, snapping over his shoulder, "Come! They won't hurt you. They want to be freed, to find rest at last!"
A gruesome gallery of undead was still gathering, appearing out of dark side passages and through doorways, but they parted and gave way even before the empry air glowed blue-green around Vangerdahast and forced the liches back.
The Knights hurried in his wake, trying not to look too closely at the shuffling crowd that was now watching them-and that closed in behind them to follow down the passage.
The liches were in many states of decay, from floating, glowing disembodied skulls wearing crowns to rotting women who'd lost limbs, in ragged wisps of crumbling gowns. Some were even carrying their heads under their arms.
The blue-green wardings seemed to hold back liches in one direction and quell real terror in the other, but none of the Knights was really calm. On three sides, as they walked, the silently drifting and shuffling crowd was almost close enough to touch, and the liches looked so macabre that it was like walking through a nightmare that wouldn't end.
"I think I have to relieve myself," Semoor said.
Behind him, Jhessail winced. "I wish you hadn't said that."
"I-wait! Don't kill me!" Lord Crownsilver babbled, backing away. "I'm rich! I can pay you well! Rubies, gold, even king's tears! I-"
"Talk too much," the Highknight told him, a certain fire in her eyes. "I don't want gold, puling little man."
"Land, then! Land-a little keep, all your own? Or a tallhouse in Suzail-two tallhouses!"
Step by step, the nobleman was giving ground, and step by step, Targrael was stalking him, leisurely, stretching like a cat. "Oooh, a little castle," she drawled. "Now you tempt me, Maniol."
"I do?" Lord Crownsilverbrightened, gabbling wildly. "Th-that's good, isn't it? Wha-wha-what can I do to tempt you more?"
"Die," the Highknight told him calmly and stretched out to her full sleek length. Her lunge sent her blade through Maniol Crownsilver's hand and into his throat.
"Almost leisurely," she said. "Not the hardest noble death I've dealt down the years, to be sure."