Farther away, strewn all around them, lay the crumpled bodies of the ornrion Dauntless, the bullyblade Brorn Hallomond, and the rest of the Knights.
"How-?" Florin asked hoarsely.
"The wizard Laspeera," Ree told him. "Obeying the Royal Magician to get us all here, out of the Lost Palace. While he remained behind to fight alone against-"
He stopped speaking and whirled, raising his wands, as behind him arose a faint chiming as of faerie bells, and the air glowed a sudden, vivid blue-white.
Then the glow was gone, and a dozen or so men who had not been there before were standing where it had been. They blinked around ar the hollow. Each held a sword in his hand. Most were Purple Dragons in armor, but standing with them in Court-fashionable finery wete the noble Lords Spurbright, father and son, looking stern.
"Well met," Tsantress greeted them in a dry voice, raising and aiming her own wands at them. "How come you here, Lords, and on what purpose bent?"
"To defend Cormyr by aiding the wizard Vangerdahast in his time of need," the elder Lord Spurbright replied. "We were sent here by the Princess-"
One of the Dragons behind him shrieked, flung his arms wide, and toppled forward. A glowing blade was just sliding back out of his backside, glistening with his blood.
" 'Ware!" Dalonder Ree cried, firing his wands at the blade. "Guard yourselves!"
Tsantress blasted it, too, as the Dragons and nobles hastily scattered, cursing. Deltalon scrambled to where he could blast it clearly.
The sword darted here and there, thrusting at legs and hands and then springing up ro stab at Purple Dragon faces.
"Get it!" Ree snarled. "These wands must be good for something! Blast it to shards!"
Lorbryn and Tsantress joined him in blasting the sword, striking it repeatedly as the Dragons and nobles flung themselves down, scrambled and rolled aside, and clawed their ways back to where wandfire could give them some protection from the flying blade.
Flying raggedly, the sword finally veered off behind trees and fled, disappearing back into the forest under the lash of their blasrs.
Silence fell, broken only by the hisses of pain from some of the lacerated Dragons. Ree looked at the wounded men, then down at all the silent bodies. The last place he looked was up at Lorbryn and Tsantress to ask, "And now… what?"
As the Spurbrights came silently up beside them, the two war wizards shrugged.
Tsantress frowned as a thought struck her. Wagging a finger, she said, "Turn Laspeera over. She'll have some healing porions on her. She always does."
Gingerly, Ree lifted the war wizard's limp torso and turned her over. Bending over him, Lorbryn Deltalon plucked some metal vials from loops along the back of Laspeera's belt.
The Harper frowned. "I'm wearing a whole sash of those, I think. Took them off Vangey's table."
He slapped his hip, and a hitherto-invisible baldric melted back into visibilitv and soliditv.
Tsantress peered at the row of metal vials tanged down that baldric. She nodded and smiled at what she saw, then pointed at the stricken and the bodies all around.
"Start pouring them down throats. Don't choke someone you're healing, mind, or they'll haunt you."
Remembering the liches crowding in closer back in the passage, Ree shivered.
In a spell-sealed chamber in a certain tower of Zhenril Keep, the Brotherhood wizard Targon peered into a scrying sphere at a moonlit hollow that now held nary a flying sword at all.
Old Ghost knew a magic that Targon had never known, which would have enabled him to force the crystal ball to trace and watch the sword's flight on through the forest-but he couldn't be bothered.
Shrugging, he turned away. "Horaundoon, Horaundoon!" he told the empty air disgustedly, as he flung the door-bar aside and threw open the doors into the moonlit chamber beyond. "No discipline. Slaughtering just anyone merely gets you blasted. I gave you orders. Idiot."
The same moonlight that fell upon the exasperated Zhentarim mage Targon fell also upon a high room in a ruined, window-less tower that soared up out of the leafy canopy of a wooded wilderness.
It touched the boots of the wizard Hesperdan as he stood with his arms folded across his chest, watching a floating, glowing, spell-spun scene in midair. The disgusted Targon was turning away from that distant scrying sphere and striding to the door.
Hesperdan smiled. "And so, Arlonder 'Old Ghost' Darmeth," he murmured, "you begin to know how it feels to have reckless, know-better-rhan-thou underlings disobey your every order, intimation, warning, and suggestion. Get used to it, in the time you have left. It shall not be nearly as long as you think it will be."
The archwizard strolled about the ruined room, the glowing scene moving with him to stay right in front of his gaze.
"Winnowing the Zhentarim of the unworthy is going to take even longer than I expected," he said to himself. He often talked to himself, for he had discovered long ago that a certain Hesperdan was by far his most patient audience. "Moreover, shifting Fzoul to the fore so I can use Manshoon for my own purposes is going to take some seasons on top of that. 'Tis a very good rhing I'm a patient man."
He stood thinking for a moment and almost absently corrected himself in a voice so soft even he could barely hear it. "Well, 'patient,' at least."
Princess Alusair gave the two men her best glare. "I thought I gave you strict orders…," she began menacingly, nettled by their almost-grins and well aware that she looked ridiculous in a full suit of very ill-fitting armor that had been her father's when he was young.
Yet she stood her ground, her gauntleted hands clutching her drawn sword's quillons. She kept it grounded point-first on the floor, her feet planted wide behind it, grimly defending the doors to het parents' bedchambet.
"The definition of an idiot," Tathanter Doarmund replied tartly, "is someone who obeys your orders. Your Highness."
"Truly, Cormyr is full of idiots," the sage Alaphondar added, his voice all I'm-merely-making-an-observation innocence.
"Hrast you, take me seriously! "Alusair snapped at them both. "If you wake my parents-!"
"Oh, we're awake," growled the King of Cormyr from just behind her.
Alusair whirled, astonished she'd never heard the door open. "So, little lioness," Azoun asked his younger daughter, crooking one Harklv snlendid evebrow. "have vou a clever explanation for rhis?
Can't your mother and I enjoy a little time together to bounce on the royal pillows without-"
His jaw dropped open in astonishment, and he stared over Alusair's shoulder down the passage.
Everyone turned.
Vangerdahast was limping slowly up the passage toward them. His face was gray, one of his arms looked like it had been melted away just below the elbow, and bare ribs showed through seared flesh on the other side of his burnt-bare torso.
"The mad liches are bound again," he rasped, "but there are far fewer of them, I fear."
"The… the mad liches?" Alusair asked, hefting her sword-and feeling herself blush hotly as she saw that the blade was trembling.
"Crown secret," Vangey said. "That you're too young to know yet."
"Oh?" she flared. "And when will I be old enough?" "Around highsun tomorrow," he mumbled-and collapsed on his face at her feet.
Chapter 17
Another Crown Secret, or Seven So I let them take my horses tall My chest of coins, wagons eleven My best boots, sword, and all For no thief can find or measure My greatest carried treasure In my head, crown secrets seven.
He had done the right thing, cutting his losses and getting out. The right thing, he reminded himself, seeking the cool, calculating calm he prized so much.