Florin swallowed, seeking words, but Islif’s tongue was swifter. “Command us, Highness.”
As Alaphondar scrambled to pack his things, Filfaeril turned to Khelben. “Blackstaff?”
“Of course,” Khelben replied. “I know the place.” He raised one hand idly-and the Knights of Myth Drannor, the sage Alaphondar, and Queen Filfaeril of Cormyr were suddenly standing in strong-smelling straw, blinking at each other.
“I’ll never get used to that,” Filfaeril sighed. Then she gave the dazed adventurers a little girl’s grin. “Knights, choose your mounts!”
A handful of hairs flared up in sudden flame. Horaundoon looked at them in satisfaction.
His spell had worked. Florin’s hairs, torn from him on that moonlit night above Starwater Gorge by Narantha Crownsilver’s ardent hands, were now giving this particular cunning Zhentarim a way to reach Florin once more.
So the ranger was outside the wards of Blackstaff Tower, and in… Cormyr?
“Azuth mount Mystra,” the Zhentarim cursed disbelievingly. Was the Blackstaff with the forester?
Horaundoon cast a spell over the bowl of water, watched it ripple violently then smooth out-and found himself gazing down at a stables, with three-no, all six surviving Swords leading forth horses… splendid beasts… and two others: a courtier and Queen Filfaeril.
“Mystra return the favor,” he swore in astonishment.
And then clapped his hands, raced across the room for what he’d need, and set to work. Victory comes never to the mage who casts not.
Swinging his fire-tongs with all his strength, Amanthan shattered the crystal ball into a thousand shards. Just to be safe.
In life, Old Ghost had been a mage few could match, but the Blackstaff was one of Mystra’s Chosen.
Poor doomed bastard.
Eyes glowing eerily with Old Ghost’s riding presence, the young mage hurried into the next room, to fetch another crystal ball. ’Twas time to scry Horaundoon-before that Zhent fool got up to any more mischief.
“There!” Horaundoon beamed triumphantly, stepping back from the flying snake. It was frozen in spell-stasis, wings spread and head thrust forward, its body a graceful curve. He’d just placed the last of the eight mindworms around its snout. Six Swords were grand quarry, but a senior courtier of Cormyr now… and its queen!
He snorted in sheer glee, and worked the teleport that would snatch his serpent to the air just behind Florin Falconhand’s head, whence it could easily swoop and strike.
Amanthan was feverishly working a spell of his own, glancing up betimes at one of the two crystal balls flanking him-the one scrying Horaundoon.
Done. Whew. The hairs he’d plucked from the vial that had appeared in front of him melted away, and the mage sat back in satisfaction.
Old Ghost would prevail. As always.
He waved the second crystal into life and looked from the first-Horaundoon-to the second: the newly minted Knights of Myth Drannor, riding along a road with the royal sage and the Dragon Queen of Cormyr in their midst.
To echo Horaundoon, this was shaping up into a superb show.
Radiance blossomed silently in the air behind the knights’ heads, hidden from view in the lee of tree-boughs the knights had just ridden under. Out of that swift-fading light glided a flying snake. A single wingbeat took it over the boughs and into a long glide, its mouth opening, toward the back of Florin’s neck.
Mindworms wriggled down the snake’s pointed head to cluster between its fangs, dark and glistening…
Dove sat bolt upright in sudden alarm, eyes widening. “No!” she cried, silver fire kindling in her eyes as she clenched trembling fists. “Not Florin!”
The Weave howled with the frantic fury of her reaching.
Though he was too far.
And she was too late.
The snake struck, Florin grunting and stiffening-but no fangs sank into his neck, for at their touch the serpent vanished in a sudden burst of spell-light.
Horaundoon hadn’t even time to blink as serpent jaws gaped, right in front of his face.
He did find time to scream as it struck, fangs biting deep-and the mindworms surged forward, to burrow in.
He went on screaming, reeling blindly around the room, clawing at the snake as the mindworms gnawed and devoured, sinking deeper.
He could feel the hargaunt fleeing from him, but was too lost in agony to care, raking at the snake until scales flew-and he finally tore it free, much of his cheeks and brow going with it, to dash it again and again against a wall, clubbing it into soft ruin.
Dropping it dazedly, he felt for the potions he knew were there. Six healing quaffs, and the others that were useless to him now…
Horaundoon gulped them frantically, feeling the hot wetness deeper and deeper in his brain as the mindworms gnawed on. Mystra have mercy, eight of them…
He was still blind, could in fact feel one of them gnawing behind his eyes, and vainly tried-with hands that trembled treacherously-to work spells on himself.
No. No.
“Not the doom I’m… looking for,” he gasped aloud, clawing his clattering way across the table again, sending useless potions flying. Ha! He had it!
Snatching up the scepter he’d been seeking, Horaundoon turned it on himself and gasped out the word that awakened it.
A glow he could no longer see warmed his face. He writhed, shuddering helplessly, but locked his fingers in his lap, cradling the scepter, and nursed the beam that ravaged him, even as he curled up around it in pain.
He was, he knew, glowing and pulsing…
Between each pulse of his scepter, Horaundoon of the Zhentarim looked increasingly wraithlike. He was translucent now… Looking down into the crystal ball that held the Zhent’s image, Amanthan cursed softly, fists clenched. “ Die, hrast you,” he whispered. “As I did.”
The husk of a body fell in on itself. With a ragged cry of despair and revulsion, a roiling glow burst up out of it.
Weeping and wailing, Horaundoon swirled around his rooms-then out of them, howling.
A fat, unshaven carter was tying up horses in the street below. Horaundoon plunged down through the man, savagely trying to slay.
The carter staggered, wheezed, stared at the street with wild, bewildered eyes-and fell on his face and lay still, his horses snorting and trying to back away.
It was that easy. That hideously easy.
And what comfort was that to him?
Howling anew, Horaundoon raced down the street, a pale and shapeless arrow, to slay again. And again. Purple Dragons, shopkeepers, alley drunks…
A lush-bodied woman in an upper window, preening before a mirror. He soared into the room and spiraled around her, not wanting to slay so much as touch… touch what he could no longer touch!
She screamed once then trembled, too fearful to breathe, tottering… He tried to hold her as she fell, but managed only to sink into her, passing not through her body but into her mind.
Which was both darker and more shallow than he’d expected, and faintly disgusted him, but which he found he could coerce… thus… and shape the thoughts of… thus. So he had no body, but could-yes! — live in the bodies of others.
Her mind was a small and cringing thing, flinching from him. Horaundoon lashed it scornfully even as he forced it to do this, then that.
She clawed her way stiffly back up from the floor, the gown she’d been trying on hanging half-off her, and went to the stairs, lurching and stumbling.
By the time she reached the street, she was walking more or less upright-stiffly, foaming at the mouth as her eyes rolled wildly. Horaundoon was still learning control.
“Ever the unsubtle, bumbling idiot,” Old Ghost sneered through Amanthan’s lips, as he scried the clumsy progress of the woman Horaundoon was mind-riding. “And as you stumble about, your schemes do the same-as clumsily as you do.”