The ground rumbled and shook, flinging everyone off their feet and sending the flying sword cartwheeling away through the night sky, trailing little flickering flames. Dousr's modest little sphere of light expanded into a huge dome as bright as day, and at the heart of it the wizard's body, arms flung wide, hung motionless in the air, frozen in the instant before he would have struck the ground. The dead wizard burned.
"Now these,"Pennae shouted, "are contingency spells!"
"Fury of Tempus!" Dauntless cried, his face gone from purple to pale. "Let's get out of here!"
"Oh?" Semoor shouted back. "How? Axe we supposed to fly?"
Dauntless stared at him, then turned and pointed back at the cliff. "Everyone!" he bellowed as the ground shook again under them and the burning body of Ruldroun grew too bright to see, "Over there! Muster to me! Laspeera and Vangerdahast gave me magic!"
They all gathered around Dauntless.
He looked around at all of them, smiled tightly, held up what looked like a rune-covered tile shaped like a flat bar-and broke it. The world quivered.
The cliff, burning wizard, and all the strewn bodies and scorched trees vanished.
They stood in an open area where stars aplenty glimmered through high, tattered gray clouds above them, and a narrower, more rutted road than the Moonsea Ride was under their boots. On either side of the road was deep forest, stretching as far as they could see.
A little way east, along the way-east if they'd judged the stars right-a mound of rocks rose up on the north side of the road, bare of trees. Otherwise, there was nothing that could be called a landmark anywhere in sight.
Semoor peered in every direction, straining to see as far as he could in the night gloom, then asked, "Where by the Morninglord's rosy behind are we now? And what fell wizards, monsters, and stlarning magic flying swords are sneaking up on us this time?"
Vangerdahast smiled upon the simmering Princess Alusair. He gestured airily.
"See? Just as we planned," he said, strolling over to stand on the far side of the scrying sphere that had just shown Dauntless and the Knights vanishing from the battle-ravaged forest.
He frowned and let disapproval creep into his voice. "If you're going to give orders, Highness, be very certain you know what's happening, what's been planned, and what you're blundering into the midst of. I always do."
Whereupon Cadeln Hawklin snarled, "So you walked in on me, when I was seducing Marissra Brassfeather, on purpose? You dung-eating snake!"
"Compliments, compliments," Laspeera said soothingly, her hand around Cadeln's sword wrist. Though the slender, ceremonial, Hawklin courtsaber was half out of its scabbatd, that's where it stayed, no matter how furiously he glared and sttained. Her grip was surprisingly strong.
"Now say nothing but pleasantries," the motherly Wizard of War added. "You'll only goad him into worse things. A lot of being a successful noble is something that's the same for succeeding as a commoner or a Wizard of War."
"Oh?" Lharak Huntcrown was unable to resist asking. "What's that?"
"Knowing when to keep your mouth shut and await a better time to settle scores," Laspeera replied.
"Every fell wizard, monster, and stlarning flying sword you just woke up, dolt of Lathander," Dauntless growled at Semoor. "Witless idiot."
"No, no, he has wits," Pennae said. "That's what's so tragic. Instead of using them, he carries them around in a bucker and hurls them at the rest of us."
"As is the way of holynoses," Semoor said with dignity, "despite the pointed lack of appreciation that-"
"Shut up, Semoor," Islif said. "Dauntless, have you any idea where we are?"
"Certainly," the Purple Dragon said. "In the Dalelands, past Tilverton and the Shadow Gap. This, under our boots, is the Northtide. The road to Daggerdale joins it a half day's fast ride back that way, and yon rise is Bellowhar's Horn, a waymark where a drinkable spring rises. Caravans sometimes camped here, back before the goblinkin got so bad."
"Ah," Doust said. " 'Got so bad,' eh? That's reassuring."
"Keeping 'em down'U be your duty now, I'm thinking," Dauntless said. "Them and the Zhents. There's caravans as appears on this road, seemingly out of nowhere; they head for Cormyr but never come through Shadowdale. Or so our spies swear."
"Spies?"
"Spies. Shadowdale's an easy walk past the Horn. Fare you well, heroes."
The ornrion raised one hand in a salute as he stepped back.
"Huh," Semoor replied, "you didn'r have to be sarcasric."
Dauntless stared right at him. "I'm not. If ever we meet again, be aware that I consider you friends. And good Knights of Cormyr. And true heroes rhat the bards'll sing about when they find out about you."
"Oh," Pennae said. "That changes something." She held out her hand to him.
There was something small, leather, and bulging in it.
The ornrion peered at it, blinked, and decided it was time for his eyes to bulge almost as much.
"My purse!" He stared at her. "Why, you srlarning little minx of a-" Then he chuckled, husky mirth that swiftly built into a loud guffaw.
Pennae strolled forward and dropped her purloined burden into his hand, ft clinked when it landed.
"One doesn't steal from friends," she said. "Much."
And she leaned forward and kissed him. Very thoroughly.
The Sword That Nevet Sleeps scudded through the night, sharing the chill sky with a few tattets of cloud. Zhentil Keep wasn't far ahead, now.
Whom to collect?
Old Ghost pondered. Just because the sword that now held him could also hold a'dozen or so others didn't mean he should make it do so.
He needed sentiences who knew useful things, who didn't raise his ire from mere contact, and whom he could control. Or did he?
There was no need to rush into this. Anyone the sword slew, whom he commanded its magics to subsume, would be drawn into the blade. Not their bodies but all else that made them who they were.
Bodies, they could regain later, if he helped them conquer the minds of beings wounded by Armaukran. They could shatter those minds and take over the bodies.
He could do that, too, and in the space of a few breaths become a king. Or a queen. Or even an adventurer. Preferably one less bumbling than, say, a Knight of Myth Drannor.
Old Ghost chuckled and flew on into the night.
Epilogue
Morning touched chilled skin and slowly brought cold, stiff Knights awake from wherever atop the boulder-strewn Horn they'd slumped to sleep the night before.
They yawned, stretched, scratched at itches, and winced at aching feet in worn boots, saying little to each other. The water in the spring was so cold that it numbed their mouths.
Before them, the road awaited, rising as it ran on through the trees. Around that little bend and over that hill, or the next one, was Shadowdale.
Florin peered around, collecting silent nods of readiness.
No one wanted to tarry over a roadside morningfeast of greens and ditchwater tea when there was an inn somewhere ahead. Semoor's stomach growled that message almost loudly enough to echo off the nearby trees. He winced amid a chorus of kindly, sympathizing chuckles.
Pennae strode to the fore, clapped Florin on the arm, and gave him her emphatic nod.
He nodded back, a slow smile stealing onto his face, and she set off at a steady pace, not hurrying. The Knights fell into line behind her.
"Oh, I've been walking all my days-" Semoor sang, but his mocking song ended abruptly when Doust drove an elbow into a gut, amid a general chorus of "Shut up, Semoor!"
No one, it seemed, felt much like talking yet.
That lasted until they reached the crest of the hill. Shadowdale wasn't stretched out before them on its far side but lay somewhere farther on. Of course. Out here, things were always farther off than they seemed.