“Oh, would you?”
“Our grand entrance,” Semoor commented, “and we emerge behind a pillar. How fitting.”
“Still the tongue, holywits,” Jhessail said. “There are four tiers of balconies above us; they have to hold them up with something.”
They stood in shadows beneath the balcony, amid many servants deftly gliding here and there with decanters and platters of smallbites in their hands. A few gave the bloody, disheveled Knights sharp looks or frowns, but the Purple Dragon tabards and holy symbols seemed to reassure them. One hurrying maid plucked a polishing-towel from her hip and tossed it to them. Pennae deftly caught it with a smile of thanks.
“Crusted silverfin cheese,” Doust moaned from behind her, getting a whiff from some smallbites passing nearby. “In the name of Tymora, lass, feed a starving priest!”
The serving maid he’d called to turned with a grin. “There are no starving priests, saer, but by all means eat your fill.”
Doust swept the platter out of her hands, agreeing, “No starving priests any more!”
Before the maid could protest, Pennae had scooped an armful of the greasy, flaky-crusted smallbites off the platter and thrust them at her fellow Knights. Doust gave her a hurt look and turned away to shield what was left with his shoulder, but his protest was lost amid the rumbles of the Knights’ stomachs. They emptied Pennae’s hands in a single breath, Semoor bending forward to lick her fingers until she snatched them away and slapped him with them.
That made the serving maid grin, shrug, and depart for another platter.
“There!” Florin said suddenly, pointing out into the brightly lit center of the hall, over the heads of courtiers, nobles, and commoners in their brightly hued best, all standing talking with drinks in their hands.
Standing quite near, in the midst of a throng of daringly gowned ladies hanging on his every growled word, was Vangerdahast.
The Knights hurried toward him. At the sight of them, Purple Dragons clad in full shining armor, with halberds in their hands, stepped away from pillars they’d been stationed at, and trotted to intercept the intruders.
“Stand aside,” Florin murmured as the first guard moved to bar his way. The halberd came down to menace him, but the ranger slowed not a whit.
One of the ladies clustered around Vangerdahast saw the flash of the halberd descending as she glanced idly in that direction-and screamed.
As heads turned and guests started to stare and murmur, the Royal Magician of the Realm looked up, saw the Knights, and glared.
A guard thrust a halberd in Islif’s way. She ducked under its head, grasped its shaft, and heaved, hurling the man aside. Finding herself in possession of the polearm, she flicked its other end between the ankles of the next hurrying guard-and then lost the halberd as he crashed forward onto it, nose-first, and went on to find the floor, hard.
A halberd jabbed at Pennae from another direction. She dived under its thrust and rolled swiftly across the floor to crash under its wielder’s ankles, toppling him-into Florin’s arms.
The ranger plucked the guard off his feet and hurled him bodily into the two guards right behind him, sending them all crashing down in a welter of bouncing halberds.
Lady revelers shrieked and tried to flee-and a reeling, off-balance guard stepped on the trailing gown of one buxom lady merchant and bared her to dethma and elegantly jeweled clout as her low-backed, lower-fronted gown tore from top to bottom. There were cries of both glee and rage at that-and Vangerdahast swept grandly out of his ring of admirers and spread his hands, rings catching fire on all of his fingers, to blast the Knights.
Florin desperately swept Pennae up off her feet, boosted her upright to his shoulder, and threw her forward and high into the air-as the Royal Magician’s spell-blast slammed into the Knights, hurling them back. Pennae, aloft, escaped that roaring magic, but it flattened guards, servants, and guests alike, sweeping them all, bone-shakingly, past pillars to the back wall, to end up with the Knights in a chaos of bruised, interlocked, writhing folk.
Guests screamed, and their cries brought every head in the hall around and an astonished silence to the scene.
Ramurra Hornmantle and Ildaergra Steelcastle hastily drained their flagons, not taking their eyes off what was unfolding for an instant.
They saw Pennae land, drop into a crouch, and without pause spring up again like an acrobat, to deftly avoid the emerald beams of Vangerdahast’s next magic-which struck plumes of smoke from the polished floor.
Pennae came crashing down into the Royal Magician’s arms, bearing him to the floor and entwining herself around him to hiss into his startled face, “There’s a conspiracy to kill you, Wizard! Don’t look into or go near any crystal balls! Any moment now, word will come that both princesses are endangered-that’s the signal!”
As Vangey blinked at her, Lord Maniol Crownsilver cried despairingly from halfway down the hall, “Lord Vangerdahast! Royal Magician! A rescue! A rescue! Ghoruld Applethorn told me to tell you I’ve-he’s-captured the princesses! Gloating, that’s it! Then he vanished right in front of my eyes, and I don’t know where he’s gone!”
“Oh, tluin, ” Vangerdahast groaned, and took hold of Pennae’s wrist in a grip of iron. “Go nowhere, little thief. You are going to explain all of this to me.”
“Gladly, my lord,” Pennae breathed in lavish imitation of an ardent, smitten lady.
The stout, bearded mage underneath her gave her a glare and growled, “Adventurers! Now get off my bladder and let me up. ”
Wizard of War Beldos Margaster was, as usual, in his chambers. When events as large as this revel were unfolding, his scrying involved more than a dozen hovering-in-air crystal balls, and he preferred quiet solitude and room to work ordered as he saw fit, to use them in.
Wherefore he looked up, blinking, as the War Wizards Tathanter Doarmond and Malvert Lulleer bustled into his chambers at the head of a dozen Purple Dragons, who bore the bodies of Lady Laspeera and an ornrion of the Dragons on great decorative shields obviously torn down off the Palace walls.
“I’ve purge-poisoned the Lady Laspeera, and she’s waking,” Tathanter explained excitedly, without even a greeting, “but that’s my one such spell. Can you see to this ornrion? We found them in the Long Passage. Its Palace-end guards were served the same way; all but two who came to us, warning of adventurers who must be in the Palace right now!”
Beldos Margaster frowned. “How so, when they’d have to wade through scores of other Dragons, on guard all over the cellars?”
“That’s just what they’ve done,” one of the Purple Dragons growled.
Margaster crooked a disbelieving eyebrow, then got a good look at the face of the ornrion on the shield, and hurried to a cabinet to pluck forth a vial.
“For this,” he said, waving at both of the stricken, “potions are more reliable than the purge spell. That’s why I’ve no such spell ready to cast.”
He forced open the ornrion’s mouth, emptied the vial into it, and held those slack lips together with his hand.
Almost instantly, Ornrion Taltar Dahauntul’s still face creased, he started to cough, and then his eyes flew open.
They met Margaster’s gaze a moment later, as the mage hastily took his fingers away, and Dauntless growled, “Gaster! Wanted to tell you, next I saw you: we left the Dragonfire swords behind us, in Halfhap! They’re real after all! Flying and glowing, right enough. They’re holding up most of the inn right now!”
Margaster looked interested, but said, “They’ll have to wait until after you tell me what befell you and the Lady Laspeera. Here, that is, in the Long Passage, not in Halfhap.”
Dauntless blinked. “Oh, gods! The Knights of Myth Drannor! They came out of Halfhap with us, but the moment the Lady Laspeera told them the Royal Magician was hunting them, they went mad! The thief slapped us both with a sleep-venom ring!”