The beholders drifted toward the dark hole, and the false window began to slide out over it again. “We are agreed,” the larger eye tyrant said simply. “This meeting ends.”
“We are agreed,” the two wizards echoed, “and this meeting ends.” They stood together in silence and watched the dragon window settle back into place.
Manshoon looked at Sarhthor. “Useful news.”
“If kept secret, Lord. As it shall be.” Their eyes met for a long moment—dark, steady eyes set in expressionless faces.
Then Manshoon nodded and turned away. They strode together across the marble to where the unseen gate waited to take them back to the High Hall of Zhentil Keep.
“One thing occurs to me,” Sarhthor said thoughtfully, a pace or two before Manshoon would have vanished. The high lord looked back at him silently.
“Others use this place besides us,” the wizard said. “If I were to leave a tracing spell behind to record changes in Art, we’d know precisely what castings had been done here between our meetings. No spying magic could escape our notice.”
Manshoon was already nodding. “Do it.” He turned away and disappeared.
Left alone in the chamber, Sarhthor took a few steps back the way he had come, and then cast a spell with quick, precise movements. A faint, sparkling radiance seemed to gather out of nowhere to coil around his wrists and then leap outward in all directions, streaming away until it faded back into nothingness. Wearing the faintest of smiles, the wizard looked slowly around the chamber, turned on his heel, took a few strides, and vanished in his turn. Silence fell.
Then the marble floor seemed to ripple and flow, like the farthest tongues of water that waves throw up onto the sands of a beach. Gathering in one corner behind a tapestry, the ripples rose up smoothly into a man-sized pillar, spun for a moment, and sharpened into the form of a tall, thin, bearded man in plain, rather shabby, homespun robes.
Elminster of Shadowdale dusted himself off, looked around with a critical eye at the glowing tapestries, and then stared thoughtfully up at the dragon window. Scratching his beard, he grunted, “’Tis high time, indeed … for certain folk to set down their harps and get their hands dirty. Again. Just as it’s time old Elminster got walked all over, again. ’Tis not the first time, this tenday, the world’s needed saving.”
Three
Swords Gathered in the Shadows
Stormy weather is always with us, somewhere in Faerûn. Beneath it, all too often, swords are out, the hand that wields one seeking to bury it in the body that wields another. Part of the way of things as the gods order, perhaps—or just the way of all of us flawed beings who walk this world. I fear I’ll never see a day when no swords will be drawn—or needed. But then, perhaps my sight fails too soon.
It was, as the minstrels say, a bright and beautiful morning in the forest. Birds sang and swooped in the branches as three Zhentilar warriors, whose faces and backs ran with sweat, bent to their work. Grunting under its weight, they lowered the stout frame of wooden poles into the pit where they stood. The end of each pole had been sharpened into a cruel point. “How’re we to know she’ll come this way? Aye?” “Not our worry, Guld.” The swordmaster’s voice came from above them at the lip of the pit. “We’re just swordarms. When the cover’s done, we just hide by it and wait with blades out—and that’s exactly how Lord Manshoon said it.”
The swordmaster had meant to awe them into silence with his last words, but the three sweating men—now climbing out of the pit and struggling to drag the dirt-and-brush-covered wooden lid properly onto the greased axle-pole—were young. They still owned tongues that wagged faster than the muzzle applied by prudence would allow.
“What makes high-an’-mighty Manshoon think we can do what he couldn’t? Him with a dragon and all his spells and wands, too!”
“He obviously knows your true worth better than I do, Alorth.” The swordmaster’s tone was biting.
Guld bent to slide the thin twigs into the sockets provided for them, taking care. The branches would hold the trap-cover up until this Shandril’s weight was on it. Giving the last one an extra tap, he looked up, wiping sweat and hair out of his eyes. “Seriously, Sir: what leads Lord Manshoon to send swords against this lass, where spells fail?”
Swordmaster Bluth bent his critical gaze on the finished pit trap, watching as Alorth spread a basketful of earth and leaves over its edges, kicking them into place with a practiced boot.
Then Bluth shrugged and looked up. “We’re only intended to wear this Shandril down so she’s tired and hurt and has used most of her spellfire before the magelings attack her. I’d like to surprise a few wizards, though, by capturing her ourselves.”
“Ourselves being those of us who’re still alive, you mean.” Alorth’s voice was hard. “Why attack her at all if we’re just going to our deaths? Why not leave her for the wizards—tell them she’s slipped past us somehow?”
The swordmaster walked all around the pit trap and nodded his acceptance; it was well-concealed. He stepped back to look at the trees around, searching for any signs they might have left of their presence, then replied, “Duty, lad. Duty to orders. It’s what we live for—and die for.”
“So lords can sit safe in their towers,” Alorth replied bitterly.
Bluth turned a cold eye on him. “Dangerous talk, Alorth. Taking the venomed dagger of your tongue to the plans and deeds of your betters is a sport that was old—and deadly—long before you were born.”
He looked around one last time, and then drew his sword and said to the other men briskly, “Best we get dressed again and ready. If the other lads do their work as well as we have, they’ll be here soon.”
“I’m done, Shan.” Narm shut his spellbook with a snap. “Mighty magic once more up my sleeves.”
“At least you’re not as overblown about it as most mages,” Delg said, looking up at him. “Though you’re not much better than most of ’em at walking, or cooking, or digging latrines … or anything else much useful ….”
“Delg!” Shandril and Narm protested together. The dwarf laughed and settled his bulging pack on his shoulders. As usual, he carried far more than his larger companions.
“We’d best be off before some more Zhents find us,” he said merrily. “North as before, then?”
Shandril shrugged. “You know better than I. Lead on.”
Without further words, the dwarf set off into the waiting woods.
“How do you feel today, love?” Narm’s voice was low.
Shandril gave him a smile. “Better than I have since we left Shadowdale. About time, too—it’s a long way to Silverymoon. From what Storm said, if we walk and have to avoid Zhents more than once or twice, winter could well find us before we’re halfway there.”
“See Faerûn,” Narm said, gesturing at the trees around them. “Know high adventure. Meet strange and fearsome beasts, the like few folk have ever seen—”
“And slay them.” Shandril’s voice was wry. She seemed to be looking at something far away. “I never dreamt, back at the Moon, that when I finally got my taste of adventure, it would mean I went around burning powerful wizards and veteran warriors to ash—and that the Cult of the Dragon, the Zhentarim, and just about everyone else I met would attack me.”
Narm hastened to head off her darkening mood. “Who else your age, though, has fought dragons—undead dragons, even—and lived?”
He caught his lady by the shoulders, eyes dancing, and went on jovially, “Has been rude to Elminster the Sage—and lived? Blasted Manshoon of Zhentil Keep and the dragon he rode out of the sky, and sent them fleeing for home? Blown up entire castles? Made friends with the Harpers, with Elminster, and with the Knights of Myth Drannor? Walked the ruined streets of Myth Drannor, that folk all over Faerûn talk of?”