Standing alone in a room of the Royal Palace in Suzail, the War Wizard Laspeera carefully finished casting a spell.
There was a momentary twinkling of sound and light around the hargaunt, where it was floating motionless in midair, and Laspeera stared at it in grim silence for the space of a long breath.
Nothing happened. The hargaunt was securely held in stasis.
Stepping back out of the chamber wirhout taking her eyes off the amorphous blob, Laspeera used a wand to seal the door. Then she drew a second wand from its sheath on her hip and cast a second seal atop the first.
Standing in the passage beside her were three people who had watched all she had done: Princess Alusair, King Azoun, and Queen Filfaeril. They all turned away together and srarted down the deserted, door-lined passage.
"And so we gain another crown secret," Azoun murmured. "Quite a collecrion, now."
"Indeed," Laspeera said, falling into step behind the royals.
"I believe I heard you think-but not quite say-the words, 'And that's counting just those we let you non-Wizards of War know about,' if I'm not mistaken," the queen said.
Laspeera halted in midstride, just for a moment, then repeated politely, "Indeed," and walked on.
"Is knowing when the Royal Magician is going to be his usual snarling self again one of them?" the king asked.
"For the moment," Laspeera replied gently, "yes. I'm afraid so."
They all jumped, then-and Alusair let out a little shriek-as from the dark doorway they were passing, the wizard Vangerdahast thrust his head out and snapped, "Snatl!"
Then he favored them with a grin of the sort generally termed "sheepish."
Queen Filfaeril rolled her eyes. "I keep forgetting Elminster trained you."
Slowly, dimly, Highknight Lady Ismra Targrael became aware of herself again. Her limbs tangled, she was lying on her back on something hard and smooth. Cold, damp stone, underground. A place that seemed not familiar but seen before… recently.
She tried to disentangle her arms and legs. Her body felt heavy and somehow profoundly numb. There was a faint smell rising from it. An unpleasant smell.
She moved again, trying to sit up. Her limbs were heavy-very heavy-and unresponsive. She was dead, wasn't she?
It was dark around her, with walls of dark, paneled wood rising up beyond the reach of what she could see in the dimness. She was still in the Lost Palace.
So this must be undeath.
Something moved closer to her. Something she could feel- power, a cold energy-before she could see it. Something that became a man standing over her.
Looming over her and looking down at her with eyes that wete coldly twinkling lights in dark sockets, out of a face that was mere flesh wrapped loose around a skull. A lich.
Then there was another. A rhird, and fourth, a ring of skeleral faces above her, staring coldly down. Targrael recognized one of them as the lich that had killed her.
"Rise," that lich commanded. "And dance. Can you learn to love us?"
Lying on the floor among the gathering, Targrael looked around at all the cold, glittering eyes, skulls, and rotting flesh and murmured, "I… I don't think so."
"Well," another lich observed coldly, "your flesh still has beauty- for a time, at least. Long enough for you to learn."
Skeletal arms reached down. Targrael discovered her newly heavy self could nor move nearly fast enough to evade them.
With astonishing strength they plucked her body upright.
"Learn to embrace madness," the lich who'd murdered her said, and he leaned in to kiss her.
Targrael tried to scream but found herself mute.
His hand on his sword hilt, Dauntless glared at the Knights of Myth Drannor. "I am the Royal Champion of Princess Alusair," he said, "and stand here-still! — under the clear and explicir orders of the Royal Magician, Vangerdahast. I am to see that you depart the realm, tarrying nowhere and working no rreason."
"We intend none," Florin replied a little wearily. "Tell Lord Vangerdahast that when you see him."
"And tell him this, too," Islif added. " 'Tis never too late to learn to trust folk of Cormyr. Even adventurers."
"I will deliver your messages," Dauntless said. Then a smile that was as sudden as it was unexpected split the ornrion's face. "Though I believe it might be decades too late for that particular wizard to learn anything."
At his elbow, the War Wizard Tsantress rolled her eyes. "I'd hate to have heard that, because I just might agree with it-and then what sort of trouble would I be in?"
"I still can't believe he's alive," Lorbryn Deltalon put in from behind them both.
"Believe it," Laspeera said wearily. Then she stepped forward, astonished Florin by embracing him, and over his shoulder announced, "You are good folk, you Knights. But get you on to Shadowdale with your pendant, before anything else happens."
The Knights muttered various forms of agreement, turned with waves and smiles, and went out to the Moonsea Ride to walk east.
Dauntless promptly strode to where he could watch them go. Laspeera grinned and shook her head at that, then turned and carefully conjured a portal in the center of the clearing.
When the glow of that magical doot was bright and steady, she ushered the Harper and her fellow war wizards toward it. They obeyed, filing through the glow and journeying back to Suzail in a single step.
"Ornrion," she called.
Dauntless turned his head, saw the portal and her beckoning gesture, gave the dwindling figures of the Knights one last, long look, then obediently started toward the waiting glow.
He was still a pace away from it when something slid silently out of the trees ar the far end of rhe clearing.
The flying sword, point-first, gliding low beneath the leaves.
"Get through!" Laspeera snapped at the ornrion. "No, don't stoo and turn-go!"
Dauntless ran, and Laspeera ducked aside from the portal and hastily started to close it.
The flying sword streaked at the portal's waning glow.
Laspeera frowned as a sudden rhought struck her. She whipped two wands from her belt and unleashed them with cafe at the flickering, shrinking edges of the portal.
It guttered, rippled wildly, and suddenly shot up into the air, the sword slicing air just beneath it, then arcing around to speed at it again.
The rippling glow dodged again, the sword almost plunging through it. The radiance seemed for just a moment to collapse into a wildly agitated helix… then became bright and hard again, but smaller and humming loudly. The sword shot toward it again.
Laspeera willed the doorway onto its edge and to rise, and again the sword just missed it. By then, her former portal had raced to hover before her like a shield.
The sword was getting faster. It darted at the shield, plunged into it as silently as if the shield were mere empty air… and slowed to a snail's pace in midair, hanging almost motionless as it worked its way through the glowing barrier.
Its point was glittering a mere arm's length from Laspeera's breast.
She stepped aside leisurely, resheathed her wands, and got the strongest spell she knew ready, mouth going dry.
Either she had just made the biggest-and quite likely the last- mistake of her life, or…
The sword emerged from the shield, still gliding so slowly it seemed almost frozen. It had acquired a strange glow of its own, a pulsing purple-white sheen that raced up its length to its elegantly curled quillons, then back down.
"Yes!" an exulting voice erupted from it. "Yessss!"
The Sword That Never Sleeps turned and streaked off northeast, faster than it had ever sped before.
Chapter 18
No realm can confine me Sick of working? Want to be free? Of lack of coins, of the drudge's load? I'm an adventurer a-wandering New forays ever pondering No realm can confine me; I'm for the open road.