A bare breath later, he was smiling at Azoun and making the deft little gesture that told Gordrar he was to withdraw. “Yes, my king?”
“Vangey! My new adventurers-how fare they? Where are they, and what are they up to?”
The royal magician put on his best mildly puzzled face. “Adven-ah, yes, I recall. The ‘Swords of Eveningstar.’ I must confess I’ve spent neither spell nor time watching them, thus far. Yet if you deem it needful-”
“Nay, nay. When you’ve time will do. I was merely… curious.”
“Ah.” Vangerdahast looked up at the king in the manner of a kindly but disapproving tutor. “You were merely… curious. A flaw, I fear; rulers should-”
“Leave such character failings to their wizards?” Azoun’s voice was dry. “Pray tell me, Vangey, which particular flaws do you think I should cultivate?”
Oh, naed.
Naed, naed, naed, naed, naed.
“Your Majesty,” Vangerdahast began, in his most cajolingly hurt voice, “I hope you believe not for a moment that…”
The gates proved to be fused solid, the Swords heard no alarm raised, the crossbow didn’t fire-and the assault on the gates began.
Rust fell in flakes, specks, and a fine dust that had Islif, Agannor, and Bey swearing, ducking away, and shaking their heads to try to get it out of their eyes. Finally, a snarling, sweating Islif, tendons standing out on her neck like the edges of daggers, managed to force her shoulder between two bars. She pulled with all her gasping, growling might.
When she fell back, panting and shuddering, two of the bars were bowed visibly apart-and the rest of the Swords were regarding her with new respect, Agannor and Bey gaping in disbelief. They looked at each other, nodded, and strode forward to the two bent bars, hauling and tugging on them with growls of effort and hissed oaths.
Agannor’s bar bent visibly, but Bey’s suddenly broke free of its frame at the top, and leaned out a handwidth. He threw himself shoulder-first against it, groaning at the bone-numbing impact, but managed to shift it only a fingerwidth or so more.
“Break off,” Florin told the three, “and catch your wind.” When they did, gasping and shaking their numbed hands, Florin waved Doust and Semoor forward.
Their struggles made no appreciable difference to the positions of the bars, but when they retreated, wincing and wringing their hands, they took most of the rest of the scaly rust with them, and the Swords could clearly see there was now an oval opening in the gates that someone tall, or someone who hopped in just the right manner, could traverse sideways.
“Behold,” Semoor gasped, waving his hand at it. “Valiant victory.”
“Our first,” Jhessail agreed wryly. “Indeed, yon gates fought hard.”
“I’m growing older, ” Agannor complained, striding to the bent bars with Doust’s lantern in his hand.
“Wait,” Pennae snapped, but he waved dismissively and shouldered his way through the gap in the barrier, into the passage beyond.
Going straight to its south wall, Agannor strode briskly along it to where he could shine lanternlight along the cross-passage to the north. Then he played his light for some time on the crossbow. It stood dust-covered and slightly askew atop its dark wooden tripod, with a widening room behind it that seemed to end in two temple-tall, bronzen double doors, with two statues of the same hue flanking them. The southern statue was of an armored warrior woman, staring endlessly at the Swords with one hand on scabbarded sword hilt and her other arm indicating the doors behind her. The northern statue was a similarly armed and armored man who was looking at the doors he was pointing at, his other hand also on sword hilt.
Agannor peered more closely at the sagging crossbow-then chuckled, strolled unconcernedly into its line of fire, and looked the other way along the cross-passage. Nothing erupted at him.
“Nothing to see but some old bones strewn all over the place,” he said back over his shoulder. “So old they’ve gone brown.”
He waved his hand back and forth, to indicate the cross-passage. “Both ways look the same: they run ten paces or so and open out into rooms that look the same size, and stretch on to the west beyond where I can see. I’m going to-”
“ ’Ware!” Pennae shouted, pointing.
Agannor whirled to regard her, then back along the line of her pointing arm, in time to see brown bones rising into the air beyond the tripod.
The bones drew together into two eerily silent whirlwinds that built with frightening speed into two human skeletons, brown and tottering.
He took a step back, cursing and reaching for his blade. They danced forward, their finger bones lengthening into long claws and cold lights whirling into being in the dark depths of their eye sockets.
Pennae was through the bars like a racing eel, with Islif right behind her.
“Stoop! Clumsum!” Florin snapped, following her. “Can’t priests drive undeath down?”
Doust and Semoor looked at each other, swallowed in unison, and reluctantly started toward the bars.
“I don’t know how ’tis done, exactly. Don’t we need-”
“We’re not real priests, yet-”
Bones were slithering along the passages, gathering into untidy brown heaps, and whirling up into more skeletons, swaying and dancing. Florin blinked. Dancing?
The bones weren’t quite touching each other, and none of the skeletal feet were touching the stone tiles. The bones were all floating in the air, like biting flies swarming in clouds above ponds, rather than joined together.
Agannor snarled and slashed crosswise with his blade, shearing claws into bony shards. He ducked away wildly as that skeleton raked at him with its other hand-and Pennae crashed into it, hacking furiously with her daggers.
Islif smashed aside one claw with her own arm and swung her blade like a woodsman’s axe, hewing through ribs and spine. Her skeleton tottered but did not fall, its severed upper part bobbing in midair, apparently unaffected.
Doust swallowed, facing a skeleton, and in a trembling voice said, “By the luck of the Lady, I abjure thee! Go down! Go-”
Claws raked the air in front of his nose, and he stumbled back, something that was almost a shriek rising in his throat.
“They’ve triggered my spell.” The words were as cold and as calm as a crofter agreeing that the next village indeed lay in that direction. “You’re ready?”
“Aye: bows, windlasses, one quiver each.”
“Good. Maglor says there are nine of them. Two she-mages and two he-priests, both novices, Lathander and Tymora. Strike hard and then get out. Get clear before they can hit back, don’t tarry to do battle so they get good looks at you. Any of you who get wounded or worse must be brought out with you. Meet back here, this side of the stone. Understood?”
“Yes, Master Whisper.”
“Good. Go.”
The skeleton reached for him again, and Doust almost fell, wind-milling his arms to keep his feet.
Bey Freemantle lurched in front of him, snarling, “Don’t talk at it, priest! Hack it to shards!” The warrior proceeded to do just that, plying steel vigorously in both hands as bone shards tumbled in the air, forming a cloud around him.
Florin, Islif, and Agannor hacked separate paths through it, cleaving skulls and shattering shoulder blades-and still the bones came slithering, hissing along the floor in their scores and dozens, ere rising up in whirling spirals to form new skeletal foes.
Semoor stammered a long and impressive prayer against “walking undeath” as he waved his hands at the skeletons.
Without effect. Bones rose up before him, eyeless skulls grinning behind long fingerbones that came reaching…
Dove sipped. “Ahhh, nice broth. Thanks, Old Mage.”
“My pleasure, lass. Now ask thy questions.”
“Questions?” Dove gave the Mage of Shadowdale her most innocent look.