Mauliykhus smiled, shrugged, raised both hands dramatically above the black table upon which he'd arranged everything he would need-and began the incantation. Sealing One's Own Doom, some of the older grimoires tauntingly entitled the words he was now reading.
It took only half a dozen of the deep, harsh-sounding words for the room to darken, all of the braziers flickering at once, and chill shadows to start to glide and swoop out of the darkness.
He spoke on. The dark, cruising wisps seemed sentient, yet he'd been told many a time they weren't. They merely sought life and light and warmth, stuff of what made up worlds and that which lay between worlds.
A way started to open between his locked and barred stone chamber in Zhentil Keep and somewhere in the Abyss.
Mauliykhus brought his hands down, watched fire that was not fire form between them and circle from thumb to thumb and smallest finger to smallest finger to shape a silent hole in the air…
The way began to open, and he was through and doomed.
Darker shadows of malicious-and gleeful-awareness streaked into him out of the yawning, howling darkness. Into his ears they plunged, before he could say a word to stop them, lashing into his mind like burning ice.
Fury drove them, fury and exultation. Harsh, ruthless, and insane they were, and they knew themselves as Old Ghost and Horaundoon as they reveled in ravaging his mind.
What had been Mauliykhus quailed and cowered, unable to even mew in his terror; one of the terrible spirits in his head had already slashed control of his mouth and hands. They leered into his silently shrieking self, leaned in, and took big, greedy bites… and Mauliykhus knew no more.
The body of the ambitious Zhentarim wizard stumbled around the locked room, toppling a brazier onto the stones, its coals spilling harmlessly amid hissing smoke. His head sank in slightly, literally beginning to melt from within as both angry wraiths, snarling their Abyssal madness ar each other, roiled around behind his eyes.
Mauliykhus lurched upright and staggered to tug at the bars of the innermost iron-bound doors. Mad Old Ghost and Horaundoon might be, but their cunning was stronger than their raving, and they knew very well what they both most wanted.
Mauliykhus of the Zhentarim clawed the doors open and hastened to the next set of doors.
Vangerdahast favored the tapestry that had fallen back into place behind his loyal Laspeera with a faint smile. He knew very well she'd be sighing and rolling her eyes about now.
"Such a task will nettle you as it always does," he said, "but you'll do it, darling Lasp, as you always do." Then the Royal Magician sighed and turned away. "If you knew just a little less about what I've had to do… and I were a whole lot younger…"
He sighed again, went to one of the magnificently paneled walls of the ready chamber-the only one where tapestries and broad doors were both lacking-and put a finger onto a particular piece of carved trim on the glossy dark phandar wood. It obediently swiveled into the wall, undoing an unseen catch, and the ornate panel just below it smoothly folded down from the wall to become a seat, revealing a shallow drawer set into the wall behind it.
Vangerdahast sat on the seat and pulled open the drawer to reveal a dressed leather desk surface complete with quills, an inkwell, and a small heap of parchments. He plucked up the topmost, set it aside with a snort, took up the one that had been beneath it, nodded, stroked his chin, and settled down to read and hopefully-if the scribes hadn't been too creative-sign this heap of decrees he'd ordered drafted earlier.
There was always much to be done and never enough time to do it.
When, some six parchments later, the faint but approaching din of a raging princess fell upon his ears, echoing down passages and rooms and through several closed doors, he allowed himself the faintest of smiles.
Royal Magician of Suzail was an office that afforded him so little real entertainment, but he was going to enjoy some now.
"Farewell, Halfhap," Semoor said mockingly. "Deathtrap inns, dragonfire swords, and all. I wonder where our faithful Purple Dragon shadows are, this time."
Florin shrugged.."Using a war wizard to scry us so they can stay out of sight, but I'll wager Dauntless is leading them and that they came from yon gate towers on this side of Halfhap. So they got a good look at us when we rode around Halfhap and past them. They'll be somewhere behind us all the way to wherever along the Ride they usually turn back."
"I'm not complaining," Pennae said. "I can still feel that arrow." She shuddered, shook her head, and then asked, "They're still out there, aren't they? The ones who attacked us, I mean."
"Yes," Doust said quietly. "Six at least got away. I heard the Dragons talking. They took one alive and questioned him. Our foes were-are-Lord Yellander's bullyblades."
Pennae cursed and added, "That's not good."
No one argued with her.
"I'd rather talk about Shadowdale," Doust said. "I've heard 'tis all trees and farms, with the Old Skull landmark along the Ride in its midst. Oh, and the beautiful lady bard Srorm Silverhand that they tell so many tales about dwells there. Yet what's befalling there now, that the queen wants us there with such urgency?"
Semoor snorted. "The urgency is to get us out of Cormyr, out of the royal hair-"
"Vangerdahast's hair!" Pennae corrected sharply.
"— not any urgency in and about sleepy Shadowdale, I'll wager."
"Vangerdahast paid us to get out of the realm, that's what he did," Jhessail said darkly.
"And this bothers you?" Semoor gave her an incredulous look. "More coin each than we'd probably have made in a summer of hard work, if all of us had been striving together?"
The stare the fire-haired mage gave him back was grim. "And what if we don't live to reach the border? Vangerdahast is a powerful wizard, remember? Who rules an army of wizards who can watch every step we take and whisk themselves to stand in our path with blasting wands ready, whenever they choose. I suspect Old Thunderspells has every intention of retrieving these gold coins from what's left of us- when we're well away from where the citizens of Suzail can see our smoking bones and mutter unpleasant comments about what happens to heroes of the realm when Vangey gets his hands on them."
Doust held up a hand and then waved at the trees along the road, beside them and ahead of them as far as the eye could see. "We're well away from where the citizens of Suzail can see anything now."
"But not yet where the traders in Halfhap and travelers between Halfhap and Tilver's Gap can't see what happens to us," Islif said.
"And you think Vangey-or the nearest Purple Dragon or anyone else in all the fair Forest Kingdom, for that matter, gives an altar-warming damn about our fates?" Jhessail's voice was bitter. "Other than how entertaining the tale of our fall is when told at taverns? Or reassurance that one more dangerous irritant has been removed from their lives?"
"Our little lady hath found armor at last," Doust murmured. "Stout, strong, gleaming-and very properly called cynicism."
Jhessail shot him a searing look, then accompanied it with a certain gesture.
Florin raised his eyebrows at the sight of that rude signal. Semoor and Islif chuckled.
Pennae murmured, "Teeth at last. I knew she had some…"
"Are you going to be this gloomy all the way to Shadowdale?" Semoor asked Jhessail, his innocent manner a blatant fraud.
"Not much to look forward to, is it?" Pennae teased.
"Neither is my blade up your backside," Islif said. "Which is what certain folk riding here are risking by goading our Jhess."
"Oooh, the threat direct!" Pennae gave Islif a rather disapproving look. "Haven't learned much subtlety yet, have you, Longface?"