It was Jhessail’s turn to groan. “Do I want to know where you ‘found’ that?”
Pennae shrugged. “I imagine the lady lord, or one of her staff, will eventually miss it. Yet I doubt, somehow, she’ll now be able to chase after us to reclaim it.”
“What happens if you drop it?” Doust asked. “Is it likely to break and go dark?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on finding out.”
“So where are we?” Florin gasped, his voice tight with pain. “And which way shall we go?”
“The Haunted Halls, of course. In the long passage just north of the room where we found the boots, pack, and pole. See yon cracks in the wall?” The thief gestured with the glowstone. “So the fastest way out is that way-and Bey might remember the route; I doubt Agannor ever paid that much attention to the maps-but the three we’re chasing went that way.”
“After them,” Florin growled. Pennae nodded.
Islif took hold of her elbow, and steered her hand to hold the glowstone close to Florin, so she could peer at him. “Healing, holy men?”
“Not until after we pray for a good long time,” Semoor told her. “We spent our divine favor helping Pennae.”
“I’ll live,” Florin told them tersely. “Let’s get after them.”
The Swords exchanged nods, hefted their weapons, and set off into the chill darkness.
They’d gone only a few paces when they came upon a discarded crossbow on the floor. Pennae peered at it. “Not broken,” she murmured, “so he was out of bolts to fire.”
“Bright news,” Semoor grunted. They hastened on to a wider chamber that offered them a door and three passages onward. Islif went to the door, made a pocketing gesture to tell Pennae to hide the light, and opened it.
Still darkness greeted her-then Pennae patted her shoulder, leaned past her, and pulled the glowstone out of its pouch again. Nothing. The room was empty-and across the door in its far wall was a fresh cobweb. Pennae shook her head and stepped back out of the room. “They probably went that way,” she said, pointing down the passage that led to the feast hall, “but we’d best check this end way, just to be sure. I don’t fancy them leaping out behind us and slicing Doust or Semoor into platter-slabs.”
The end passage ran northwest, not far, ere turning west to a chamber that still held, along one wall, the collapsed and sagging remnants of ancient barrels and carry-chests. In the center of the facing wall was a door-a stone affair that lacked lock or bolt, and led to a room that had been empty when they’d explored it, days back.
As Pennae neared it, she tensed, stepped back, and whispered, “A man’s voice-unfamiliar-declaiming some grand phrases that mean nothing to me. I’d say he’s working magic.”
“Let’s move!” Islif hissed. “In, before he finishes!” And she launched herself at the door with Pennae right behind her.
The Swords burst through the door and down the short passage beyond, startling a man who stood there into looking over his shoulder at them.
It was Bey, his drawn sword in his hands, and he shouted, “Get gone!” to someone around the corner, and ran that way.
The Swords raced after him, rounding the corner fast and ducking low, swords up in front of them.
They were in time to see Agannor’s boot vanishing through an upright, swirling oval of blue radiance of the same hue as the glow that had brought them back here. An unfamiliar man in battle-leathers was keeping Bey from following with one outflung arm, but snatched it out of the way the moment Agannor had vanished, to let Bey plunge through.
Giving the onrushing Swords a malevolent smile, he followed, leaving behind the blue glow.
“Tluin!” Jhessail spat. “Where does this one go?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Pennae flung back at her, racing for the whirling portal with Islif right behind her.
Its glow swallowed them both before any of the other Swords could reply.
Ornrion Barellkor blinked again, his head still swimming. Strong hands were lifting him by his armpits, helping him to sit up.
“All right, are you?” one of his swordcaptains asked.
Barellkor put a hand up to his jaw and tried to shake his head-which proved to be a mistake. His head felt like it was splitting slowly open with someone’s war axe firmly embedded in it. His chin felt even worse.
“I think my jaw is broken,” he moaned.
“Idiot,” the Lady Lord of Arabel said curtly, dragging the wincing man to his feet. “If that’s all the hurt you took, Tymora must smile on you, Barellkor. Now get out of my sight before I decide to reduce you to lionar.”
The ornrion stared at her disbelievingly. “But I-but they… they were the ones as murderered all our lads!”
“Horsedung, Barellkor, as I believe you’re fond of saying,” Myrmeen snapped. “Why don’t you step over there and try throttling yon portal-blasting war wizard, instead of a gallant young forester? Perhaps you two stoneheads will succeed in murdering each other, and I’ll be shut of the pair of you!”
Pennae was a little surprised not to be greeted by sharp steel stabbing at her the moment the blue glow faded before her.
She, and Islif, and a moment later all the rest of the Swords, were even more surprised by what they beheld in the large chamber in front of them.
On its far wall were mounted three huge, glowing and very vivid portraits of menacing, rampant monsters, all of them familiar to the Swords from bestiaries: a chuul, an ettin, and an umber hulk. To the right of them, stone steps led up to a passage stretching away elsewhere, and a coldly smiling, white-haired yet young man in black doublet, hose, and boots-looking for all the world like a minor courtier who might well be seen standing near the Dragon Throne-stood on those steps.
Floating in three green, swirling glows in midair, struggling to win free of them, were Agannor, Bey, and the man in leathers who’d followed them through the portal.
“These are yours, I presume?” the man on the steps asked the Swords. “Kindly slay them.” He pointed at the man in leathers. “Especially that one, who had the effrontery to open one of my private portals and lead, it seems, half the adventurers in Cormyr here.”
“Who are you?” Pennae asked, frowning in bewilderment. “And where’s ‘here’?”
“Ah. Well.” The man waved a hand, and the glow behind the Swords winked out; the portal was gone. “As you’ve no way of ever finding this place again, there’s no harm in your knowing that you stand in Whisper’s Crypt. I am Whisper, one of the mightiest wizards of the Zhentarim.”
“Oh, tluin, ” Jhessail said wearily. “When will all this running and fighting and killing end?”
The Zhentarim smiled at her. “When you die, of course.”
Chapter 25
See these hills, lad? So peaceful they seem now-but you’d not want to be standing here when the storm breaks.
Sarhthor snorted.
“Mightiest wizards” indeed. Whisper intended the intruders to swiftly wind up as food for his trapped beasts, of course, but was it really necessary to gloat like a reckless youth? Or waste the life of the best Zhent agent in Arabel?
Yes, ’twas time-well past it-to end the career of Whisper the mage. There were far more than enough reasons already, and unless Whisper did something truly surprising, he was about to hand Sarhthor a handsome opportunity.
With the thinnest of smiles, Sarhthor leaned over his scrying orb and started to cast a careful spell.
“Well?” Whisper asked the Swords. “What’re you waiting for?” He waved at the writhing, whirling webs of green radiance, or at the cursing, straining men caught in them. “I told you to kill them.”