War in Tethyr

27

"You're sure this is the way into the palace?" Zaranda asked.

Farlorn's beautiful features assumed a long-suffering look by torchlight. "I didn't spend our previous so-journ in the city cutting out paper dolls. Naturally the palace attracted my interest, as a monument to elephantine bad taste if for no other reason. I made inquiry, and explored some on my own. That's one nice thing about trying to infiltrate buildings built less than an eon ago; it's a lot easier to buy a workman a jack of good ale at a tavern than it is to summon up his shade,"

Zaranda's party was recapitulating Simonne's sewer-crawl of the night before, which had precipitated today's crisis. Zaranda's group, while smaller, was much more seasoned. Farlorn led the way with a bull's-eye lantern in one hand and his rapier in the other, es-chewing any armor but the leather jerkin he wore over a white blouse with lace at throat and cuffs. Beside him walked Stillhawk with an arrow nocked to his elvish longbow and long sword belted at his hip; as was his custom, he too wore no armor, though his heavy leather tonic gave some protection.

Next came Zaranda, armed with a splendid if non-magical long sword from Hembreon's armory and a long-bladed dagger with a knuckle bow for parrying. Unless mounted, she hated a shield's encumbrance; her left hand held a torch. Her only armor was a steel cuirass. Chen followed, unarmored in loose blouse and trousers, with a dagger thrust through her belt, primarily for effect. She refused to be left behind, and given her service in springing the great orog, Zaranda didn't argue.

Shield of Innocence brought up the rear. The orog was magnificent and fearful in armor which, like the scimitars in his taloned hands, he had crafted himself under the guidance of Term, whose gauntlet was inlaid in gold in the center of his breastplate. He wore a helmet close-molded to his head with cheekpiece flanges that left his pointed ears clear to facilitate hearing, and steel greaves and vambraces, all polished to a mirror shine. His expression was serene. If his imprisonment had engendered resentment in his mighty breast, it didn't show on his face.

The tunnel running under the palace was high enough that all save Shield could walk without stooping. The smell was no less appalling for the comparatively short time the sewer had been in use, but Zaranda had endured worse. None of the others wasted breath on it either. Chen, who was not normally slow to speak up if things were not to her liking, had always been indifferent to smells, most notably her own, in the days before Zaranda brought her around on the hygiene issue. Farlorn, most aesthetically sensitive of the lot, displayed the loftiness of his contempt by not deigning to complain.

The tunnel began to branch to serve the various parts of the vast structure. Zazesspur, with its wealth of innovative and assiduous artisans, had enjoyed running water and indoor plumbing longer even than most great cities of Faerun; it was a simple enough technic, involving no magic, unless one were Calishite and simply had to have one's needs served by a bowl of water summoning. The half-elf led them left, right, left again down passages that diminished at every fork, so that even Chen, shortest of the group, had to double over, and Shield had to waddle in a painful-looking squat. His placid look never wavered.

" 'Ware upward," Farlorn called back over his shoulder. "Anything falling from above is unlikely to be the manna of the gods!"

"Thanks so much for reminding us," Zaranda said in a low voice. Farlorn laughed musically. "And could you please be quiet? If Hardisty hears voices floating up out of his commode he's not going to think it's an angelic chorus come to sing his praises."

The half-elf grinned at her and, maddeningly, laughed aloud. His olive cheeks were flushed, eyes fever-bright. From experience, Zaranda knew that when the manic mood came upon him there was no containing him. She likewise knew that, while in such an exalted state he might take risks that seemed insane, he had never brought disaster on himself or his comrades. Yet.

Just when it seemed Zaranda's thigh muscles were going to split straight across, Stillhawk and Farlorn straightened. Zaranda came up alongside them and found a round passage rising straight up.

"What's this," she asked, "a giant's oubliette?"

Farlorn shone the beam of his bull's-eye over metal rungs running up the tube's side to a circular wooden hatch ten feet up. "An access passage, so that workmen can enter the sewers in case of blockage."

Zaranda drew in a deep breath and blew it out through pursed lips. "Once we're up, there'll be no turning back."

She turned and embraced the others in turn. The rest exchanged handshakes and hugs. This might be the last chance to say good-bye.

Stillhawk came to Shield of Innocence, paused, stuck out his hand. The great orc gripped him firmly, forearm to forearm. Then the orog turned to Farlorn.

The half-elf sneered and turned away.

Zaranda looked at him, then up at the hatch. "Locked?"

"Of course. Did you think this would be easy?"

"I thought it would be harder already." She shut her eyes and concentrated. It was difficult to summon the dweomer; fatigue dragged her down with leaden fingers. Get through this and you can rest all you want, she told herself. One way or another.

She spoke the spell. The squeal of metal on metal sounded through the thick wooden disk as a bolt withdrew. Farlorn sheathed his rapier, swarmed up the rungs like a squirrel, and tested the hatch.

He spat a curse in Elven. "Still locked!"

The words struck Zaranda like a fist in the belly. The breath chuffed out of her, and she bent over as if in physical pain, resting hands on thighs. She had had but the one knock spell memorized. "Farlorn, it's not like you to do so slipshod a job of scouting."

"No one else did any kind of scouting at all."

"That's fair enough," Zaranda said. She straightened and scrutinized the disk. Its blank, rough wood suggested nothing.

"I can try to open it," Chen offered.

"You haven't learned the knock spell," Zaranda re-minded her.

"Maybe I can use my other powers."

"No. They're too unpredictable. And I've a feeling there are things within the palace for whom such a concentration of dweomer would be like tocsins ringing. I'm uneasy enough about the puny little spell I cast."

"The great Zaranda Star, admitting defeat?" said Farlorn. "I don't believe it."

"Don't," Zaranda said. "Yet. Still-we go in here, or try to batter down the front door."

"Let me," Shield of Innocence said. He strode toward the ladder. Farlorn flowed down like a cat, jumped clear sо as not to let the orog near him. Sheathing swords across his back, Shield climbed up. He tested the disk with his hand, then braced his feet on the rungs, laid the side of his head and his shoulder to the wood, and heaved.

Veins bulged from forehead and great corded neck. His spine creaked loudly. Wood groaned like a soul in torment, and with a twang and a crash the hatch popped free.

"So much for stealth," Chenowyn said.

"We had few choices," Zaranda said, "and now must play out the game we chose. Up, now, and quickly."

The orog had already disappeared through the hole. Yellow lamplight streamed down into the sewer. Farlorn swarmed up, then Stillhawk with bow slung over his shoulder. Zaranda let Chen go next, keeping long sword ready, then followed

She found herself in an octagonal chamber of about the same dimensions as Hardisty's receiving room on the topmost floor. Four shadowed passageways led out of the chamber. A pair of thick columns flanked each entrance about six feet in. Each pillar was fitted with a black-iron sconce in which a torch flared.

The hatch was three feet across and six inches thick. Shield picked it up as if it were a serving tray and fitted it back into the hole. Two heavy brass slide-latches had secured it. One was neatly opened, the other a twisted ruin.

"Put them back in place," Zaranda said. "We'll just have to hope nobody chancing by gives them too close a look."

The orog did as he was bid.

Which way? signed Stillhawk.

"This way lies the rear of the palace," said Farlorn, indicating a corridor.

"As good a way as any," Zaranda said, and led the group that way.

There came a rumble, a friction squeal, and a thunderclap crash. Zaranda dropped to her knees, ears ringing. She snapped her head around.

A five-foot-thick column of stone had dropped from the ceiling to seal the hatch.

"Trapped!" she cried. "Farlorn, you've led us into a thieves' foyer!" In the Empires of the Sands it was customary for dwellings of pretense to be built so as to offer prospective thieves a means of ingress-not too easy, just enough to challenge the skills of a self-respecting rogue. The covert entrances led not to treasures but to traps, of varying degrees of lethality.

This one was obviously designed to capture, not kill. Feeling the dull throb of failure beginning in her temples, Zaranda gathered herself to dash for the corridor.

"Correct, Countess Morninggold," a familiar voice mid cheerily. "But not just any thieves' foyer."

In the entryway before her appeared Armenides, white-robed and smiling. Armed men thronged the passage behind him. At the same time blue-and-bronzes stepped out from behind the pillars, leveling crossbows at the group.

Zaranda stopped. She flicked a tiny pellet at the false Ao priest, murmuring height and range, and flung herself backward to escape the fireball's blast.

The pellet struck the archpriest's sternum and bounced. It fell to the floor by his sandaled feet. He knelt, picked it up, sniffed it.

"Bat dung and sulfur." He smiled. "Why, Countess, I do believe you've just tried to incinerate me." He laughed delightedly. "Did you not think other walls than the dungeon's might be imbued with the god bones of Tantras?"

She squeezed her eyes shut.

"Now I'll trouble you to put down your weapons," Armenides said.

Someone walked past her. She opened her eyes to see the half-elf approaching Armenides. She scrambled to her feet. "Farlorn-no!"

The bard walked between two crossbowmen, turned, and smiled. "Your concern is touching, Zaranda, my love. But quite misplaced. I have nothing to fear from my friends."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we've all done our poor orc friend a grave disservice. He's a sincere servant of good, may all such die in agony-as will you anon, I might add. I'm your traitor."

"What are you saying?" Zaranda asked, stunned.

"Consider the love of a woods-elf maid for a human man. Then consider a cow who can jump over Selune in a single bound: both have the same chance of existing. It was rape that engendered me, not romance."

His dark eyes caught the torchlight like the eyes of an animal, and his features seemed feral. "I grew to adulthood scarcely tolerated by my true folk, my mother's folk-and worse, pitied by them. At last I per-formed deeds that all the pity in the wide green forests of Faerun would not serve to cover, and fled. Since then I have walked among my father's people, the ravisher's kind, and secretly I have paid my mother's debt a thousandfold."

He looked Zaranda in the eyes. "Oh, you were sweet, Zaranda Star! Woman warrior, woman wizard, war leader, merchant-beautiful and haughty. What delight it was to bend you to my will, knowing always that some day I would bring you ruin."

"What was done to your mother was terrible," she said in a level voice. "But why keep it clutched to your breast all these years like your most precious possession?"

"Because it is my most precious possession! In hatred have I found all that I am; I have found a purpose, a destiny!" He reached inside his blouse, brought forth a medallion on which were embossed three lightning bolts branching from a central point.

"When I was driven from my ancestral forest I consecrated my life to Talos the Destroyer. I dream of the day when humankind is cast down in blood and ruin, and the wilderness reclaims its own!"

He let the medallion hang. "Long have I awaited my chance to strike a decisive blow. When we approached Zazesspur last year a Voice spoke to me in dreams. And I knew then that the time was come."

"A Voice?" Zaranda repeated. She swayed.

"Now I serve the One Below," the bard said. "I serve the Whisperer in Darkness. In his name have I destroyed you."

Armenides chuckled. "There. I'm sure we all feel better. Confession is so good for the soul. Now, please undo your sword belts and let them drop. You'll have no need for weapons where you're bound."

With a guttural roar of rage, Shield of Innocence hurled himself forward.

Chenowyn screamed. Crossbows thumped. No non-magical armor could turn a crossbow quarrel at this range. The milled-steel missiles punched through Shield's breastplate with loud clangs and buried them-selves in his flesh.

Bellowing, the great orc caught Farlorn's neck with one arm and swung him around. The half-elf screamed as crossbow bolts pierced him.

Zaranda tore her borrowed long sword from its scabbard. The crossbowmen who had shot Shield and Farlorn stood flat-footed, the realization slowly dawning that they were now disarmed. Zaranda hacked them down as they turned to flee. Stillhawk, bow and quiver still slung, snatched his own sword off the floor and at-tacked. A blue-and-bronze, quicker on the uptake than his fellows, snatched out his heavy broadsword and thrust at him. He swept the blade aside with a mighty stroke and spun the man back, unreeling blood streamers with the return.

Armenides stepped to the side. Behind him more crossbowmen aimed and loosed. Shield swung round, holding the feebly struggling bard before him. Half a dozen bolts struck the traitor. Some drove onward through metal to pierce the great orc's flesh.

"This way!" Zaranda shouted, pointing her bloodied sword at the entrance opposite the one occupied by Armenides and his troops. Chen had drawn her dagger rand crouched beside her mentor, menacing air. Zaranda grabbed her arm. "Let's go!"

Though Chen complied, the ranger was reluctant. Won't leave Shield, he signed.

"No one's leaving anybody. Shield, bring a live one!" The orog reached out a black-nailed hand, grabbed a nearby guard by the scruff as if grabbing a rabbit. Then he backed across the octagonal chamber, clutching his captive and the now-limp bard, looking like a child with two rag dolls. Shoulder to shoulder, Stillhawk backed with him, facing the enemy as the civic guards wrestled back their crossbow strings

Zaranda practically flung Chen down the corridor. Shield and Stillhawk backed in as guardsmen finished cocking weapons and reached for fresh quarrels. Zaranda flung a handful of skunk cabbage leaves from her magic pouch, which Chen had brought her, past her comrades and onto the floor. Dense green smoke billowed.

Zaranda patted the air frantically with her hands, signing, Down! Down! Stillhawk understood at once and threw himself flat, drawing the orog and his captive down with him. Zaranda tackled Chenowyn and pinned her to the floor.

Steel bolts buzzed overhead to clatter off walls and ceiling. Zaranda lay a moment with blood drumming in her ears. None of the blue-and-bronzes had had the wit to reserve a shot in case their quarry was up to tricks.

"Run for the cross-passage," Zaranda hissed as she jumped up. Her voice was raw from breathing the fringes of the stinking cloud she'd raised. "Head left. Go!"

They did. For a moment Zaranda crouched, gazing at the body of Farlorn, sprawled on the floor. Then she followed her friends.

She dodged around the corner. Shield stood in the cross-passage calmly pulling a crossbow quarrel through his left biceps. At least four projectiles jutted from his body.

"Can you still walk?" she asked him.

"Don't fear for me," he rumbled. Beside him Still-hawk pinned the prisoner to the wall, his sword tip pressed to the hollow of his throat. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine," Zaranda said. "You're badly hurt."

Shield took her sword hand in one bloody claw, raised it to his tusked mouth, kissed it. "Waste no tears on me, Mistress," he said. "I'll lose nothing today that hasn't been forfeit for a long time."

Coughing and choked curses echoed down the corridor. Zaranda stuck her head around the corner. Blue-and-bronzes were braving the noxious smoke. Several had torn the voluminous sleeves from their doublets and tied them over their faces. Two collapsed, retching, on the floor the instant they came through.

Zaranda plucked another pellet from her pouch, spoke words, hurled it, and ducked back as the corridor filled with fire and screams.

"Hardisty," she said to the terrified captive. "The false king. Lead us to him. And no wrong turns, or the orc will twist your head off."

Zaranda had misjudged the former Baron Hardisty. She was sure he would await the unfolding of events in his room on the uppermost floor, with his model city to keep him company.

But he was king now, even if he'd had to crown himself, and would play the role to the lasts and stays. He had prepared himself a throne room on the palace's ground floor and a throne to go with it, and he occupied both when Shield of Innocence put his shoulder to the fancy double doors and crashed them open.

A score of blue-and-bronzes stood between entrance and king, shifting weight from boot to boot and looking nervous. Behind them Tatrina sat slumped beside the huge gilt-washed throne. When the adventurers burst into the throne room, wild-eyed and bristling with weapons, she gasped, leapt to her feet, and tried to run to them.

The king caught her wrist. "Where are you going, my love?" he asked, baritone voice as beautifully modulated as if he asked if she wished to go for a ride in the country. "It's treason to desert your king. Or lese-majeste at least; I've never been clear on the distinction."

Zaranda pointed her sword at him. "Hardisty! You are deposed. Let the girl go and surrender, and we'll leave you with your life. Your freedom, even-if you'll help us stop the evil you set loose."

King Faneuil put back his head and laughed. His crown was a surprisingly modest circlet of gold. "Always fanciful, Zaranda. Might I point out that you're outnumbered?"

"Let's alter the balance, then," Zaranda said She spoke mystic words and cast a pinch of sand at the guardsmen. Five slumped down, sound asleep, their halberds clattering to the marble floor beside them. The rest leveled weapons and charged.

Stillhawk drew back his bow and loosed. Not for nothing had the king spent years as a fighter. Already in motion as Stillhawk pulled his bowstring, he rolled over the arm of the throne as the arrow sang past to strike the back and vibrate at the precise point his crowned head had occupied a heartbeat before.

He came up with an arm around Tatrina's neck. "No, no," he said, wagging a finger at Stillhawk. "Don't try that again. Kill them."

The last was to his guardsmen, who were already trying their best. Stillhawk had reslung his bow and was standing off three halberdiers with his long sword. Shield drew his two scimitars and began to lay about him. Zaranda ran straight at the guards. One pulled up short, clutching his halberd across his chest as if unsure how to deal with this menace. In passing, Zaranda gave him a jab to the face with the studded knuckleduster hilt of her left-hand dagger, then parried an overhand cut from a second foe.

Towing his reluctant consort behind, Faneuil dodged behind his throne and ducked under the corner of a huge tapestry depicting him, crowned in a laurel wreath, standing guard over a tiny stylized Zazesspur with sword in one upraised hand and a white radiance, representing Ao, in the palm of the other.

Zaranda slashed a guardsman across the fingers, causing him to shriek and drop his weapon. Another stabbed at her with his halberd. Zaranda beat the haft aside and lunged into a riposte that sent the tip of her sword through his throat. She was aware of Stillhawk on her left and Shield on her right working similar execution as they sought to win through and follow the king down his secret passage.

Chen had played little role in the proceedings. When she grabbed at Zaranda's sleeve from behind, the older woman's reflex reaction was a flash of irritation.

"Randi, look!" the girl cried.

Zaranda turned her head to see more blue-and-bronzes flooding the throne room through the double doors of the main entrance behind them, flowing to either side of Armenides, who stood with arms upraised, voicing an incantation.

By dint of long practice and hard-won experience, Zaranda had increased the suppleness and cogency of her mind enough that it could contain two fireball spells at a time. The effort in the thieves' foyer, aborted by the magic-deadening stones of Tantras, didn't count. She had one left in her, and she loosed it now.

The blast scattered guardsmen like skittles. A sphere of red flame engulfed the false priest. His flesh blackened, flowed, burned away- Revealing his true form: a fiend with the body of a giant scorpion and the head of a bull, rearing eight feet above the rose-marble flagstones. His laughter filled the throne room.

"This isn't good," Zaranda said.

"Go!" Shield roared. His blades were in constant motion, flowing about his body in intertwining loops that struck down any guardsman heedless enough to wan- der near. It seemed impossible that any foe could strike at him through such tapestries of steel, but his breast- plate was gashed, and his face and body bled from a dozen fresh wounds.

"Follow the king!" he shouted. "I'll hold them." The orog charged. You're only an apprentice paladin, Zaranda wanted to scream. And Armenides must be a puissant fiend indeed: even with the aid of Cyric, lord of deceit, it would require mighty magics for a servant of evil to produce the spurious miracles with which Armenides had bolstered his claim that Ao had grown active in this plane.

But she knew she couldn't handle the monster. Any delay the great orc could inflict would increase the others' chances. Of success, if not survival.

Stillhawk cut down the last of the king's guards who still showed fight. The rest had fled, and the sight of Armenides's horrid transfiguration only made them run the faster. Zaranda flipped up the tapestry's corner with her sword. A door yawned behind. A damp, cool breeze, touched with grave mold and brimstone, blew out of darkness into their faces.

Zaranda saw one of Shield's blades lop a short-clawed nipper off Armenides's jointed forelimb. Her heart leapt. The creature has plenty more, she re-minded herself. She bundled Chen through the door-way and down a steep stairwell. An instant later Stillhawk followed them into darkness.

Zaranda's fireball had killed or incapacitated most of the men Armenides had brought with him to the throne room. But not all. Four swarmed over Shield of Innocence from behind, one jumping on his broad back, the others trying to pin his arms.

He roared and swept his arms forward, dashing two assailants' heads together before him. A third clung to his left arm. He split his skull with his right-hand scimitar.

The man on his back produced a single-edged dagger and began sawing at the Grog's corded neck. Without relinquishing grip on his swords, Shield grabbed the man with both hands and raised him, squirming, above his head.

Another guardsman, hair blackened, crinkled, and smoking from Zaranda's fireball, took a running start and thrust the spike of his halberd into the small of Shield's back.

The orog bellowed and spun, torquing the halberd from the guardsman's grasp. He flung the man he held into the face of the one who had stabbed him. Then he reached back and plucked the weapon from his body.

Armenides caught him from behind by the arms and the legs and hoisted him in the air as easily as Shield had lifted the blue-and-bronze. "You betrayed your people and your gods," the false priest said in the voice he had used in human guise, "and now I'll flay the flesh right off your soul."

Blood spurted as pincers bit. Twisting in the monster's grasp, Shield lashed out with his right hand and opened a gash across Armenides's cheek. The bull-thing screamed in pain and dropped its prey as black blood jetted, smoking, from the wound.

Shield landed on his back. A blue-and-bronze loomed above him, halberd poised for a downward thrust. The orog hacked the man's legs from beneath him. Then he arched his body backward, snapped forward, and so regained his feet.

The monster towered over him. Shield raised his swords and charged.

Pincers caught him by arms and legs, lifted him clear of the floor again. The orog bellowed rage. His muscles heaved with all their awesome strength, but this time the monster had made sure of its grip. Shield was held immovably while other pincers made play. They cut the thick steel of his breastplate as if it were cheesecloth.

The thing that had called itself Armenides of Ao worked on the orog for longer than was strictly necessary. Then it tossed the great limp shape aside and glided forward on many legs, to the secret passageway and down.