Then, careful to keep tension on the hook so it wouldn’t slip off, she backed away, keeping to the route along the wall she’d probed earlier. When she reached the end of the sapling and had to let go of it, she’d already wound the cord thrice around her arm, so as the wood sagged, the cord stayed as taut as a ready bowstring-and the door started to creak open.
Pennae stopped to frantically wave the Swords away to either side. After a moment, all of them obeyed, moving to right or left of the passage-mouth, and she nodded grimly and resumed her retreat, dragging the door open.
The doors proved not to be latched to each other, or secured in any way. They were old, thick, and heavy, but hung a thumbwidth or so clear of the flagstones, and so didn’t stick against the floor.
Beyond them was dark stillness. With one of the two doors fully open, Pennae crouched, aiming her lantern up high inside. Then, cautiously, she advanced along the wall, retrieving her hook and placing the sapling as a prop to hold the door wide.
She was restoring the cord to around her waist when Agannor stirred, sighed, and growled, “I’m not standing out here all day! Let’s be about this!”
A moment later, he’d drawn his sword and was striding forward, approaching the doors square-on as if traversing a long hallway in purposeful haste.
“Wait-” Pennae blurted, throwing out one hand.
Ignoring her, the fair-haired fighter ducked through the open door, glancing quickly to the right, then up at the ceiling. Then he stepped back. “Dark in here,” he drawled. “Lass, that lantern of yours?”
Pennae sighed in exasperation, took up her sapling, and joined him. He reached for the lantern, but she deftly ducked away behind him, snapping, “No. Bladesmen with lanterns make superb targets. Get yourself killed on your own time.”
Agannor glared at her for a moment, his eyes two hard points-then relaxed, laughed, and waved Pennae forward with a grand flourish.
Uneasily the rest of the Swords moved forward.
Take command, Florin reminded himself, hastening to their forefront. Behind him, Semoor asked the listening world, “So we’ve poked our noses into the Haunted Halls, yes? Fulfilled our promise to the king, and can go elsewhere, right now, heads high and-”
“Stoop,” Islif snapped, elbowing the priestling in the gut as she passed, “belt up. Now.”
Walking in her wake, Jhessail sighed. “I wondered how long it would take before we happy merry adventurers ended up at each other’s throats.”
Behind them, Doust cleared his throat tentatively. “Uh, do you want me to stay here on trollwatch? Or…?”
Islif swung around. “Come on, Clumsum. Stride on up here and get killed with the rest of us.”
Jhessail rolled her eyes.
Two tunics tied around his shoulders and his old and patched weathercloak shrugged on over them, plus the hargaunt arranged just so, made Horaundoon seem a huge-headed, bulbous-nosed giant of a man. As he lurched down from the wagon to have his things carried into the Tankard, feigning being far stouter and shorter of breath than he truly was, his gaze fell upon a slender, black-haired man striding along the road toward him with a satchel on his shoulder. The satchel was probably full of vials, being as its bottom was something rare in satchels: a wooden box.
So this would be Maglor the apothecary, Whisper’s spy and obedient fingers-in-the-dark in Eveningstar.
Their eyes met, and Horaundoon gave Maglor the disinterested stare of a total stranger and turned away. If he needed this darkjack in times ahead, he’d doubtless be wearing a different guise when they met.
The apothecary made a wide birth around the caravan wagons, and Horaundoon trudged up onto the inn porch. It looked a nice enough place.
’Twas almost a pity he was going to have to kill or mindmaim most of the folk here, before he was done.
“Scream if you must,” Florin told his fellow Swords, as they peered around the room, “but no yelling or making loud noises. I’d rather we surprise whatever lurks here, rather than the other way around.”
“Yes, O King,” Agannor muttered.
“None of that,” Islif told him sharply. “Florin’s valor won us this charter, and he bears the favor of the goddess Mielikki. If he desires to lead us, he leads us.”
“ I have no problem with that,” Pennae said, looking at Florin in clear invitation. “So whither now, Falconhand?”
The room they stood in held only a puddle of water and a heap of weapons, surmounted by a shield. Pennae had already warned everyone fiercely not to so much as approach the pile, let alone touch it. The passage that had brought them to the room continued out its other side, west into the solid rock underlying the high sheep pasture-the southern edge of the wild, dreaded Stonelands-that was somewhere above their heads.
The air was cool, and gently moving. It smelled of damp stone and earth. When Florin waved his hands for silence, the Swords could hear nothing but their own breathing.
A pair of rust-orange metal gates, firmly chained together, barred the way on, where the passage opened out of the center of the innermost wall. Through those close-spaced vertical bars, their lanterns showed that the passage ran straight on into the rock, intersecting with a cross-passage and continuing, to open out into a larger chamber or cavern. Partway down the farther run stood a wooden tripod surmounted with a crossbow too large for most men to lift.
It was loaded and ready-and pointed along the passage right at the Swords.
Florin borrowed Pennae’s lantern (the only one they had that shone a beam, rather than illuminating blindingly in all directions) to peer at the crossbow. “It doesn’t look in good shape,” he murmured.
“Neither do these gates,” Islif put in. “Why don’t Agannor, Bey, and I try to break or bend just one bar, off to the side here, while everyone else clears right over to that side wall? Then, if it fires…”
“ ’Tis only us who’ll embrace sudden ventilation,” Agannor growled-then grinned. “Let’s do it.”
“Should I hook at it, first?” Pennae offered. “It looks solid, but that mass of chain might collapse into dust. I doubt it, but ’tis worth a try-and if the crossbow fires, we’ll learn how it’s aimed, and if its firing brings someone to reload it.”
“Or something to reload it,” Semoor remarked.
“Yes,” Florin said firmly. “Pennae’s hook-and-pole first, then work on the bars.”
Semoor sighed loudly. “I feel swindled by the gods! Thus far, ‘adventure’ seems to be almost all ‘work.’ When does the fun start?”
Islif hefted her sword. “When the first monsters find us.”
“They’re inside the Haunted Halls,” Laspeera said, pointing at the scrying crystal.
Vangerdahast clapped her on the shoulder. “Thanks. Watch them closely until I return. It shouldn’t take me all that long to have a mere merchants’ delegation wetting themsel-”
A deep chime sounded in the next room.
Laspeera looked at the royal magician, and the royal magician looked back at Laspeera and told her, “Stay right here and keep scrying. The merchants will wait; I’ll see what His Majesty wants first.”
He strode out and down the passage, taking the swiftest route to the Chamber of Charts. For anything less than royalty, Gordrar would have sent a junior war wizard to fetch him; the chime meant the presence of Azoun himself, in anger or at least impatience-or Azoun was dead and another Obarskyr was standing there very upset about it.
Now, that would be dark disaster indeed for the Forest Kingdom. And he’d had quite enough dark disas Passing through a curtain, Vangerdahast opened a door into a tiny cubicle where the air sang with mighty magic. There he pulled the door firmly closed before he opened the door on its far side, bustled through that door and down a thickly carpeted ramp into the back of a wardrobe, thrust its well-oiled doors open, slipped out, and closed it again. He peered quickly around the deserted Chamber of Treaties to make sure it truly was deserted, crossed to its far wall, and went through a concealed door there into the servants’ passage that ran behind the Chamber of Charts.