Far ahead, facing them at the end of the passage, stood a tall door graven with a unicorn's head amid trees.
As they came closer, the door started to glow, its graven lines flaring a deep blue. As they got nearer still, those glowing channels started to pulse and spit little blue lightnings.
This was Rhallogant Caladanter's favorite room in all Suzail. Which was a eood thine, beine as it was a room in his own house. Reclining on his favorite lounge, he sipped another tallglass of wine-his seventh, or was it eighth? — and wondered where Boarblade had gotten to.
The door opened. Rhallogant looked up to see which servant was daring to disturb his solitude, and then his jaw dropped. He was staring at-himself!
As he gaped, the other Rhallogant pushed past the lounge and strode toward the door to his bedchamber.
"Here, now!" Rhallogant protested to the intruder's back, waving his tallglass. "Who d'you think you are?"
His double stopped, turned, and gave him a crooked smile. The face wearing that smile changed. He saw Telgarth Boarblade and something more. Something humplike was receding down rhe front of Boarblade's jerkin. Ah. Some sorr of mask he'd tugged off. Must be.
"Good disguise, hmm?"
Rhallogant nodded, flustered at being so bewildered. "Certainly, certainly. 'Tis indeed. So, what's afoot?"
Boarblade's smile widened to near smugness. "Much tumult. We'll be going to the Palace later this night with an urgent need to.speak to some war wizards."
"About?"
"About something secret."
Boarblade went to Rhallogant's spirits cabinet as if it were his own, carelessly swinging open the doors and taking forth a tall, slender decanter the master of House Caladanter couldn't remember ever having seen before.
As it caught the light, he saw it was more than half full of a purplish translucent liquid. As he watched, Boarblade unstoppered it and calmly set about dipping the blades of all the daggers he was carrying in it, one after another, setting them on the tailboard to dry. He seemed to be wearing a lot of daggers, some of them hidden in rather surprising places.
"What're you-?" Rhallogant started to ask, then he hastily waved his hand to banish his question. "No, no. Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I want to live."
Boarblade looked up with an almost fond smile. "Very wise of you. And you will, if you do exactly as I say." "Poison," Rhallogant muttered.
"What a good thing I didn't catch that," Boarblade said. "The results, if I had, might well have been fatal. Some war wizards are going to catch some of this soon, and we'll see how they fare, hmm?"
Rhallogant suddenly felt very cold. He found himself shivering and decided-reaching for the second decanter of his best rubyfire-he needed another glass of wine to warm himself up.
Watching the noble trying unsteadily to refill his tallglass, Boarblade's cold smile grew wider.
Laspeera climbed up out of the cellar, out of the ruin, and into the forest. If she was fated to die after she followed Vangey through that portal, she wanted to smell a fresh breeze and see forest leaves one last time.
Three steps away from rhe opening that had once held a door, a dozen Purple Dragons suddenly appeared all around Laspeera. The trodden turf was empty of all but leaves one moment-and full of grim, fully armored soldiery the next.
Warriors who were all staring at her expectantly.
Laspeera met the eyes of most of them, trying to look as calmly imperious as Vangey always did, then turned, pointed at the doorway, and said, "Through there! Down the stairs and step right through the glow. Save Cormyr, and obey Vangerdahast. As usual."
That earned her their grim grins-grins that widened when they saw her turn to hurry in and lead them down the stairs rather than stopping to watch them go on into the unknown without her.
Barely finished nodding and smiling pleasanrly to the armory door guards as he passed by, Lord Elvarr Spurbright looked ahead of himself once more and blinked in surprise.
Yes, 'twas the Princess Alusair hurrying toward him along the passage, striding along as sternly as any angry Highknight. What was she now, all of thirteen summers?
As she approached and their gazes met, her eyes fairly scorched him. Oh, she had the fiery side of the Obarskyr temperament! Flame where her morher, the queen, was ice.
Almost jovially he sketched a deep bow and asked her if he might be of service.
"Yes," she snapped, startling rhe lord. Her nexr words took him past blinking into dumbfounded staring. "Find a sword and that preening son of yours-and anyone else you can think of who's handy and knows how to die for Cormyr-and ger to the Hall of the Unicorn as quick as you can! There you'll find Wizard of War Tathanter Doarmund and the Royal Sage Alaphondar. Tathanter will send you to where you're needed. I understand there's a portal you must step through, in a ruins."
Lord Spurbright gaped at her. "Die for Cormyr? Doing what?"
"The same cause of death that awaits most Dragons," she told him tersely over her shoulder as she continued on, "obeying Lord Vangerdahast."
"While you will be doing what, exactly?"
"Deciding where and how I can best defend the king, my father," she said, as she stopped before the doors of the armory and waved at the door guards to get out of her way.
Spurbright blinked again at her back as she plunged through those hastily opened doors.
Then he turned and started to trot along the passage. Torsard should be in one of the forehalls by now, enjoying a goblet or two before departing the Palace for the Spurbright city tallhouse.
"With me," Laspeera commanded, and she plunged through the portal.
The six Purple Dragons right behind her never slowed, charging inro its glow after her.
The others were still hastening down the stairs, in such a hurry to follow that the flying blade that came lancing down the stairs behind them struck thrice in swift succession before the last three Dragons even knew it was there.
Its third victim fell forward after the sword banked, whirled, and thrust its gleaming length in his open helm and through his throat-to thrust into the Dragon who'd just reached the bottom of the steps below him.
Both men slammed to the ground to the accompaniment of a startled shout from the Dragon underneath. That made the two Dragons hastening for the portal whirl, their own swords flashing out of their scabbards.
They were in time to see a sword that flew like an arrow, with no warrior's arm guiding it, sliding at them out of the darkness. They were not in time to parry well enough to save their lives.
The flying sword whirled away from them and buried itself deep into the mouth of the Dragon fallen at the foot of the stairs, who'd just shed his dead comrade and had struggled to his feet.
The sword drew back, dripping dark blood, and hung in the air for a moment, as if studying the portal.
The glow of that magical door seemed to brighten as the Sword That Never Sleeps drifted slowly nearer, point-first.
Then it shot forward, racing into the waiting glow.
The portal flickered, snarled as angry lightnings burst out of it and raced up and down its length in wild spirals-and then the portal collapsed in a flood of drifting sparks that swiftly scattered and faded, leaving only darkness to cloak the sprawled dead Dragons.
"Welcome to the Lost Palace of Esparin," Vangerdahast said grimly to the Harper behind him as they sprinted through dark, empty chamber aftet dark, empty chamber.
Dalonder Ree was wise enough to keep his mouth shut and let the wizard lead him. The Royal Magician, it seemed, needed almost all of his bteath iust to keen uo his whirlwind nace.
"Graul," he muttered at last, as they came out into a room where someone had recently smashed one of the wall panels, "feel that? They're almost done! We've got to…"