“I’ll not be looking for trouble,” Maniol Crownsilver snarled, “I’ll be looking for adventurers!”
She gave him a bright smile. “Oh? Are they not the same thing?”
His eyes changed, and his dark face of fury slipped. It twisted momentarily into a grudging grin, ere he whirled, spitting oaths, and stormed out.
Chapter 17
There’s not a scheme that’s been schemed that won’t afford some entertainment to its conspirators, when they gather to whisper and ponder strategies and second guesses. However, when the scheme nears its end, for good or for ill-ah, that’s when the real entertainment begins.
Ortharryn Khantlow, Scribe Royal
Thirty Years Behind The Dragon Throne published in the Year of the Stag
I t was hot and airless under the trees along the sides of Starwater Gorge, after highsun on the fifth day since the Swords had first set boot in the Haunted Halls.
The morning had been spent trading many of their fast-dwindling handfuls of coins to Evenor shopkeepers and farmers for food and lamp oil. Prayers added to such chores took Doust and Semoor longer than some of their fellows, so they were the last to arrive at the moot.
And knew it. They were sweating hard by the time they dumped their heavy packs under the broad leaves of a clump of starrach larger than some cottages in Eveningstar, and hastened through the thicket beyond.
Praise Tymora and Lathander, the path was right where they’d expected it to be, and they swiftly-if precariously-ascended the side of the gorge to the huge, lichen-speckled jutting rock they’d dubbed “the Snout.”
Islif Lurelake was standing sentinel atop it, in her homemade armor, looking as alert as ever.
Semoor squinted up at her. “Anyone watching? Following?”
She shook her head, murmuring unnecessarily, “And you’re the last.”
The two friends nodded and ducked down into a small, dark hole under the Snout. Overhead, they knew, Islif would be taking a few steps back to stand over the crack that would carry their voices up to her, so she could listen in without leaving off her scrutiny of the gorge. Those mysterious bowmen-and, folk in Eveningstar insisted, outlaws by the score, trolls beyond numbering, and modest armies of orcs and goblins, to say nothing of fell hooded wizards, wyverns, and worse beasties-were still out here, somewhere. Somewhere near.
The crawl hole opened out into a dank little bowl of a cave that had been choked with windblown leaves, old dung, and older bones when the Swords had first found it. Now it held only them, standing all crowded together around a rough table of four felled saplings lashed together like a raft, wedged across the cave, and anointed with a lit lantern.
Its flickering glow fell on no less than six crudely drawn maps of the Haunted Halls. Semoor’s faith let him buy parchment from the House of the Morning at a few copper thumbs less than the ruinous prices they charged everyone else, and he’d made good use of that favor.
“We got it all,” Pennae was reassuring the other Swords. “At least, all the green slime in that room, and there was none in the privy here or the passage here that has the ambush elbow. Its smoke cleared fast enough that we know plenty of air gets down into the western halls somewhere-probably several somewheres-from above. This must be so, because with the front doors as open as they are now, everything blows out into the gorge.”
“I care not a whit where the breezes blow,” Agannor grunted, “so long as some gold coins flow into my hands from somewhere. Soon.”
“All the tales say the Haunted Halls stretch on for room after room after passage-dozens at least, with feast halls and big chambers with pillars, too. I don’t think we’ve found a twentieth of it, yet,” Martess said firmly. “There must be some hidden ways on that we’ve missed thus far. Look you at this doubling-back hall, here: surely there’s a room in this angle that we can’t get to yet. Unless we break through the wall.”
Bey gave her a look. “You want us to start digging in there? Mining? Lass, have you ever tried to break apart stones? We’d be dead-dragon-tired in a trice, and making noise and shudderings enough to draw every monster that’s anywhere in the place! So there we’d be, choking on rock dust and knee-deep in stumble-making rubble, too weary to lift weapons-and finding ourselves facing down a slug the size of two warhorses, or something that’s all tentacles with fangs on the ends of them! Can your spells save us then? Hey?”
Martess reddened, her lips going thin.
Florin hastened to draw the converse elsewhere. “I think Martess is right about that room-there might well be one just here, too-but I don’t think we’ve come to digging, yet. After all, we have this grand way on, that has doors as tall as two of us, and two statues pointing it out to us!”
“Aye, and it also features a death trap, unless you know some way to outrun lightning!” Agannor was frowning. “Or do our spell-hurling lasses know a way to undo that magic?”
Jhessail and Martess both shook their heads.
Agannor looked at Doust and Semoor. “Holy men? Anyone?”
More heads were shaken. Agannor sighed and sat back, growling, “Well, someone had better think of some thing, or ’tis going to be a long and hungry winter for us, and off to Sembia in spring to sell our charter, split up, and look for drudge-toil under the tongues of grasping merchants, for all of us.”
Pennae sighed. “Such bright cheer you proffer, Agannor. Myself, I think there’s much treasure to be found in the Haunted Halls- if we don’t run afoul of whoever set up this guardroom, here.”
“ ’Twas empty when we came along,” Bey growled. “Why worry you?”
“The new strike-gong on the wall, and the just-as-new wire running from behind it through a hole in the north wall to we-know-not-where. I’ll wager all the gold in Sembia that wire runs to another gong, so striking one causes the other to echo. Who dwells where that other gong is? And when will they notice us? The place doesn’t feel deserted, nor yet abandoned and roamed by beasts: it feels like someone lives there.”
Agannor and Florin both nodded, and Jhessail murmured, “I have that feeling, too.”
“I begin to see,” Doust said, “why so many folk fell in yon Halls-and the rest fled to spread tales of it.”
“Agannor’s right,” Semoor said sourly. “We’d better find something worth good coin to sell soon. We two holynoses resold that peddler’s horse just now, to the next caravan through Eveningstar-”
Pennae looked up. “A caravan came through Eveningstar? And we missed it? I can scarce begin to believe-”
“Oh, all right: a merchant with five wagons, look you? Anyhail, he bought the pack-nag, and we made-hear this-all of three thumbs on the deal. That’s not going to see us through winter, unless…”
Semoor looked meaningfully at Pennae, who gave him a flat stare and the flatter reply: “This is far too small a place to steal things, Wolftooth. You expect our necks to last long if I vanish one man’s best shovel and try to sell it to his neighbor?”
Semoor nodded, shrugged, smiled, and turned his knowing look on Martess, who leaned past the lantern and said icily, “Not-so-holy-man, hear this welclass="underline" I’m not going to dance in taverns or suffer the gropings of a lot of hard-breathing, gnarly handed farmers again… nor train Jhess here to do so, either!”
“ ’Tis not such a bad fate as all that,” Pennae told her map, as Semoor rolled his eyes up to regard the ceiling with an air of holy innocence.
“Semoor,” Florin said, “such suggestions are more harmful than useful-and unworthy of a man of Lathander, to my way of thinking. Where’s the bright new beginning in asking fellow Swords to fall back on shady work they’ve done before?”
“I was but trying to be helpful,” Semoor replied, with an edge to his voice none of them had heard before. “If we’re talking about coins enough to live, we should talk freely, raising all matters, yes?”