"How do you know that?" Regrar protested, grounding his shovel and leaning on it. "There's nothing more official than telling the King directly, and if all they were doing was cuddling and cooing, what did he need the map for? Even our Dragon must do something besides rutting and hoisting goblets-he likes women who can talk and have wits to match his own, or better!"
"Bah, she doesn't talk policy and make reports!" said. another voice. "The woman's a snake!"
Another Highknight who'd been silent until now spoke up. "Whether she is or she isn't, I know what the spell was about, and the priestesses. She took them to the Tombgate and sent someone else a skull-token that will take them to its far end."
"She's setting up some sort of meeting there," Forold said thoughtfully, "but why?"
The flames of the brazier suddenly blazed up green, then white and purple, growing brighter. "Blood of the Dragon! Someone's scrying us!" Regrar snarled. "Where's that War Wizard? Get him, quickly!"
Korthauvar looked sharply at Hlael, who hastily hissed a word and slashed his hand through the smoke in front of him. In a matter of moments the scrying-spell collapsed, the smoke fading to half-seen curls… then nothing.
The two wizards exchanged glances. "The Tombgate," Hlael murmured. "Old Hesperdan will know where it leads, if anyone outside Candlekeep does."
"If Hesperdan doesn't," Korthauvar said grimly, "Tessaril Winter does."
Stiff and uncomfortable in ill-fitting, much-mended leather armor and trying hard to look like the seasoned guards they weren't, Narm and Shandril exchanged brief glances through the slits in their cavernous helms and shifted their crossbows to more comfortable positions on their shoulders.
"More comfortable" was a laughable term, given the bone-jarring bouncing and pitching of the laden wagons crashing up, over, and through ruts. They both stood on high platforms that jutted out around the drovers' heads-platforms they shared with lumpy sacks and bundles that had been lashed down with enough ropes and straps to make them resemble the web-bundled prey of some very energetic spider.
Around them, half-hidden by the thick dust. Voldovan's real guards raced about on their leaping, plunging mounts, holding their saddles easily amid the tumult and glaring hard-eyed at everything and everyone. Orthil's caravan was just leaving Scornubel-and the guards wanted very much to leave the city's grasping hands and swift swindles behind. Twice Narm saw blades half-drawn warningly as local lads raced in to snatch at things or men pushing carts tried to get in the way of the caravan-whether to steal, stage an accident, or try to trade, he could only guess.
They'd both been posted on "ready wagons," Voldovan's oldest and most leaky conveyances. Below and behind them, the steep-sided wagon beds were crammed with spare wheels and axles, boards and buckets and mallets, all wedged in with spare carrychests and barrels of water, with haybales thrust atop everything. Spare weather-sheets of old, patched ship sails were lashed down several layers deep over the arched tops of both wagons, and everything stank of fish oil, sheepfat grease, and old sweat.
Their request to go disguised in armor had vastly amused Voldovan-and pleased him, for their presence on the ready wagons freed up two of his real guards for outrider duty, rather than-as he put it-"a-wasting them to stand as targets when they could be doing something useful!"
Shandril had even drawn comfort from the leering pair of grizzled guards who'd hung extra plates of armor to clang and clatter down Shandril's front, and smeared greasy fingers around her jaw to make her look unshaven and "more've a man, har har!" One of them had taken care to lean close and momentarily pluck out the tiniest silver harp on a chain that she'd ever seen, and introduced himself baldly as "Arauntar."
The other had sent her staggering with an adjusting slap at the shoulder-plates her breastplates were hanging from and announced grandly, "Beldimarr, at yer service-hands an'jaws an' I've one o' them little trinkets, too!"
Beldimarr sported a long, snakelike white scar that ran from his right temple right down his neck, to disappear somewhere in the unwashed hairiness below. Narm stared at it in fascination until the grizzled caravan guard thrust his face into the young mage's, bestowing on Narm the fruits of breath enriched by rotting scraps of meat amid rotten teeth, and snarled, "Starin' at me, pretty boy? Well, begone with yer hungry eyes-'tis women I fancy, almost as much as-hah-they fancy me, now!"
Shandril ducked her head away to hide her mirth at Narm's incredulously gagging expression, but she needn't have bothered-Arauntar roared with laughter enough for them both. When he could speak again-still hooting with occasional glee-he slapped a crossbow into her midriff with enough force to drive her breathless, and announced gruffly, "This way up, see? An' you can crank it tight an' ready, but mind you loosen it at every stop, after you wind another tight an' ready-so as to switch back an' forth, so they're slower to break, see? An' no loading of it until you've a foe to fire at, for I do perceive that y'art violently carried away from sanity-an' I'd just as rather I didn't get violently carried away by a stray bolt from you!"
Orthil Voldovan had come up to inspect his two new standing targets at that moment, with a wolflike smile and the cheerful words, "Behold: Here be a pair of strange beasts, which folk of experience call 'fools.' "
Now, with her teeth clacking together every few breaths from the crashings of the journey-she'd already nipped her own tongue painfully, and they weren't even out of Scornubel yet! — Shandril was heartily glad her crossbow wasn't loaded… and in full agreement with old Orthil about she and Narm being fools, too. The drover down beside her knees was a thin, sour man by the name of Storstil, and Narm had a stouter one, Narbuth, who never stopped talking and telling jokes, even to himself.
No family or clan names were given among Voldovan's men-this seemed to be an unwritten but firm caravan rule-and they were all men, too. Narm and Shandril had counted thirty-two wagons, not counting the cook wagon, Voldovan's own "strongwagon" where the smallest, most valuable cargoes were carried ("coffers o' gems," as Beldi-marr had described the strongwagon's load, "and maps 'n' treaties 'n' coins an' things-together wi' boxes of scorpions and deadly biting vipers, to give thieves somethin' final to think about, har har"), and the two ready wagons they rode on. Everyone riding with the caravan had been paraded before the guards so disappearances and uninvited guests among them could be noted, later, but Shandril couldn't say she remembered every face and name, or even all of those who'd looked suspicious… because that had been more than half of them.
Now, they could see few wagons and fewer faces of the riders, either-both because of the clouds of dust, and because of the improvised cloth masks almost everyone wore over their faces, against that dust. Shandril's eyes were already stinging as they finally left Scornubel behind, with its shouting traders and running, mud-clod-hurling boys, and gazed out on what would become a very familiar view, ahead of them: a wide vista of hills and mountains, distant and haze-shrouded off to the left, nigh the sea, and nearby and soaring to their right. Open wilderlands, of rolling hills and scrub forest, with a line of dust running ever ahead of them: the Trade Way, a-crawl with caravans.
The hills around them were alive with brigands and raiding bands of bugbears, ores, and goblins, the guards had delighted in telling every client riding with the caravan-and this was monster country, too. It was a long way to Triel, the next settlement of any size on the road- and as they passed the ashes and tumbled stones of a few burned and long-abandoned steadings, Shandril could guess why. Anything that wasn't well-armed and on the move in this lawless lower end of the Sword Coast was a sitting target waiting to be plucked. Suddenly she was grateful for the dust and the din around her and pleased to be rolling and bouncing along in the midst of thirty-odd groaning wagons. 'Twas comforting, though she knew it shouldn't be: unlike some of the small, fast caravans of a dozen wagons or even half that many, they could outrun nothing and hide nowhere. All they could do was fight whatever came at them. If it used bows, and there were a lot of them around her right now, some of them possibly in the hands of folk who knew who she was and what she bore within her, she might not even be able to use spellfire against that "whatever" or whoever…