Dauntless nodded, a trifle unhappily and showing it on his face. He stood on a worn diamond mark painted on the floor at one end of the dark and cavernous undercellar of the Royal Court-deep under the flagstone garden yard that let into the Royal Gardens proper, if he'd correctly judged how far they'd walked-and there was another war wizard and another man standing on a diamond waiting to be transported across Cormyr in a winking instant, at the other end.
He knew them both. Lorbryn Deltalon and the Harper Dalonder Ree. They were watching him, the calm murmurs of relaxed converse passing between them, as they obviously waited for Laspeera to enspell him first.
Dauntless imagined Deltalon becoming just a trifle impatient and starting his spell as Laspeera was finishing hers-and the one teleport spell clawing at the other, flaring in an explosion that spattered all four of them in a thin drenching of gore over the walls of this spellcasting chamber, in the brief instant before those stones themselves shattered and heaved… and one end of the sprawling Court erupted into the night sky, towers toppling and scores of courtiers shrieking as they died.
Wincing, he shook his head, blinked, and found himself staring into the sympathetic face of the wizatd Laspeera again. He felt shame, but it was swept away in a rush of gratitude at the caring he saw in her eyes. Small wonder that many Wizards of War called her Mother and revered her.
"Sorry," he muttered. "Pray pardon, Lady Laspeera. Silence, aye."
The smile she gave him lit up her face like a leaping brazier-flame, and Dauntless felt as if he were falling in love.
"Aye," she said and lifted her hands like a master server about to signal the servants under his command at a Palace feast.
She was going to cast the spell. The magic that would hurl him across the Forest Kingdom and beyond, out along the Ride into the wilderlands somewhere near Tilver's Gap, lands where Purple Dragons rode hard and often to keep outlaws and monsters and worse out of Cormyr proper. To see the Knights of Myth Drannor not dead, now, but safely past Tilverton and into the Dales.
Orders, as they said gravely in the service of the Purple Dragon, have changed.
Just where along the Ride he'd be in a breath or two, he didn't know, but there were a cluster of little glowing lights hanging in the air in the center of the room, a little higher than Laspeera's head, that told her where the Knights were. Each of those floating, subtly shifting glows represented one of the tracer-enchanted glowstones the Royal Magician Vangerdahast had given to the Knights of Myth Drannor.
Aye, orders might change, but some things never did. Rise up sun and go down moon, every last jack and lass in Cormyr danced to a tune, whether they knew it or not, and the piper was the wizard Vangerdahast.
Laspeera's hands finished tracing elaborate gestures in the air, her smile grew wider, andSmiling war wizard, chamber, and all were gone, and this par-ticular Purple Dragon ornrion was falling endlessly through a deep blue void.
"Florin!" Pennae snapped, leaping down the last little stretch of cliff to land heels-first in the loose scree beside him, with a crash of shifting stones.
"I hear it," the ranger said. "Back up onto the ledge, everyone! Stoop, Clumsum, is there anythingyoxi can do for Jhess?" "Pray?" Semoor said.
"Tluin!" Florin barked in amused exasperation. "Just tluin off!"
"Oh, bright Morninglord, aid me as I obey the esteemed and manly Florin Falconhand!" Semoor cried as he scrambled up onto the ledge. "Let the rosy hue of your approval bathe-"
"Semoor!" Islif and Florin roared in unison. "Shut up!"
"— even my decidedly less than devout, silence-loving companions-"
Doust reached the ledge, planted his mace on its stone with one hand, and swung his other arm up and around in a wild bid for balance.
Out of sheer luck, the hand on the end of that arm made abrupt contact with Semoor's mouth, and whatever else he'd been going to say was abruptly silenced.
Leaving everyone ample opportunity to hear the eager roar that was rising from two throats, as something twice as tall as Florin burst around and over the last few trees, branches splintering, and charged at the Knights.
It was a two-headed giant, all massive, corded muscles and hungry fury. Drool sluiced past the jutting tusks of its shovel mouths in a rain as it broke off its roaring run forward to bellow something.
"That's an ettin!" Semoor shouted. "Saw it in one of the Palace bestiaries!"
The ettin bellowed and flung wide its arms, both of them as long as Islif's body. Gigantic iron morningstars in its fists rattled out at full swing to crash against tree trunks.
"Why, thank you, Semoor!" Pennae said. "Whenever I want to know what's trying to kill me, I can turn to you for its proper name!"
The ettin charged.
"Pennae, circle and hamstring, but only when you can get back and away fast!" Florin shouted. "Holynoses, pick up Jhess, and be ready to run along the ledge as fast as arrows! Islif and I will stand against it, but we can't shove it back!"
A morningstar crashed down as if to underscore his' words, striking sparks from the stones as it just missed Islif-a result she managed to achieve by hurling herself face-first downslope into gravel.
Florin's sword rang like a bell, and his body trembled along with it, as the other morningstar glanced off it, whirling hard, and started to enwtap it in chain. Cursing, the ranger ducked down and let go of his blade, seeking to avoid being bound up helplessly against his own weapon.
"Where in the Nine stlarning Hells did it get two morningstars that size?" Semoor demanded of the night at large, waving his mace for balance as he and Doust struggled to loft the limp burden of Jhessail between them.
"Temple of Tempus?" Doust offered. "Tore them out of all those oversized weapons they like to hang above their gates?"
"While the war-priests did what? Sat and watched? Laid wagers?"
Doust shrugged. "Well, if it wasn't temple-theft, he killed someone and took them. A giant someone."
"Holynoses," Pennae's voice came out of the night from somewhere in the darkness at the bottom of the slope, "could you find something else to talk about, just now? Like what useful holy spells you can smite this thing with? I'd rather not be reminded of what those things can do!"
"Tymora!" Doust coughed, grimacing. "This thing stinks!"
"You don't say!" Islif shouted back, scrambling to her feet amid tumbling gravel and slashing out wildly at one huge, corded leg as she slid past onto fitm footing.
The ettin roared and tried to club her with a morningstar, smashing thornbushes and saplings to tumbling splinters in her wake as Islif ducked around behind it-and ran full-tilt into Pennae.
Breast-to-breast they slammed together, the wind gasping out of both of them, and fell helplessly to the ground. Islif wrapped an arm around the thief and rolled desperarely, trailing her sword behind her. Both she and Pennae had been slicing at the backs of the ettin's legs, butThe ettin screamed-rwo raw, ear-numbing shrieks of agony-then stumbled, morningstars crashing down. Whereupon it suddenly became Florin's turn to dive for his life, face-first into gravel.
He did so, clawing and scrabbling to propel himself onward, riding the scree.
"Heroic, very heroic!" Semoor called from the ledge.
Florin called something back that was more profane than heroic.
He was still angrily doing so when his sword clanged and tumbled on stones somewhere far behind and above him, where the morningstar chain had flung it.