Swords of Dragonfire

So what, by the holy light of Lathander, is going on in this inn?” Semoor demanded, staring down at the eyeless bodies of the serving-jacks. “Does the innkeeper not know these corpses are down here? Or did he herd us down here so he can ‘find’ us with the bodies and blame their murders on us?”

Islif shrugged. “The rest of us know how to ask questions too. ’Tis answers we’re short of providing.” She lifted her head to gaze warily around into the darkness. “Doust, fetch down that lantern-on the pillar by your head, there. We need it lit. There are rooms ahead of us and behind us. The stairs are the only way we know to depart these cellars, so we must guard them, but otherwise stick together, as we master what’s where in these cellars, and who or what can harm us down here. I dislike surprises.”

“Really?” Semoor murmured. “You surprise me.”

“Whereas you,” Islif murmured, “utterly fail to amuse me with such pointless witticisms at this particular time. Florin?”

“I’ve always hated having foes or the unknown behind me,” the ranger said slowly, “but this time, for some reason, I very much want to go on. Straight ahead, in that direction. If these bodies were left for us to find, they might have been intended as a ‘turn back from here’ warning, to keep us from proceeding…”

Pennae nodded, walked around the bodies to the bare floor beyond them, and murmured, “Then let’s go this way. This is a large room to leave empty. With open stairs down from the common room, I was expecting to see a dozen kegs or more, right here at the bottom of the stairs. Or empty chests or potato bins or something. The running of this inn seems strange.”

Doust nodded. “D’you think that man at the gate was waiting for us, to send us straight into a prepared trap?” Under his careful hands, the lantern flared smokily into life.

“Huh-uh,” Pennae disagreed. “We’re not that important, that every town and village we ride into will have a trap ready-waiting for us. Let’s go find this treasure.” Her fellow Knights nodded, and they started to move.

“Ah,” Semoor asked, “but what if it’s a trap for all unwelcome visiting adventurers, not the Knights of Myth Drannor specifically?”

No one answered him.

“Keep together,” Florin reminded everyone, as they walked cautiously into the darkness.

“Doorway,” Pennae murmured, almost immediately. “Nothing else except… yes, a few old barrels and crates that look like they’ve been rotting down here for years, over in yon corner.”

“Lead on,” Florin urged. “Islif?”

“I’ll guard our rear,” she murmured, “alongside our holynoses. Where did all those rats run to, I wonder?”

“Rooms beyond rooms we haven’t found, yet,” Pennae replied, lifting her lantern to peer at the massive ceiling-beams overhead. Black with thick-shrouded cobwebs, they sprouted uneven rows of rusty storage-hooks that should have supported bulging nets of onions and garlic, or rotting arnark boughs sprouting fistfuls of kitchen mushrooms, but instead were all empty.

“Every one,” she murmured, half to herself. “No guests, no food-is Doust right? Did they open this inn just for us? The stables seemed busy enough, but…”

She went cautiously to the open doorway and peered through, half-closing the shutters of her lantern to make its light a beam she could aim into the darkness beyond. She checked the floor and ceiling just past that door-opening, then to left and right, hard by the door, to make sure no one-or thing — was lurking to stab or pounce on any Knight of Myth Drannor bold enough to step through.

No lurking foe, and no fallen door nor any sign the opening had ever been fitted with one. The room beyond was crowded with kegs in wooden cradles, and crates of food. Onionskins were strewn across the floor, and here and there she saw the beady gazes of rats peering back at her.

In short, all of the clutter Pennae had expected to find at the foot of the stairs. There was a faint glow coming from the far end of the room. She turned aside her lantern, and made sure of it. Yes, another doorway, or door standing open, and coming through its gap, a soft, steady golden glow.

“What we’re looking for may well lie just ahead,” she murmured, without looking away from the room through the doorway. “Come and see.”

The Knights pressed in close around her, and she opened the lantern wide again.

“We’re guarding the rear,” Islif reminded Doust. “Keep your lantern and your eyes facing back that way. We’ll have plenty of time to see this next room when we’re in it.”

“Tymora bids me take chances,” Doust told her with dignity, but whatever else he might have gone on to say was lost in her reply.

“You’re adventuring. I’d say that’s more than chance enough,” Islif said. “If you want your life to swiftly grow more chancy, just ignore my bidding again, and I’ll see that it does-with an alacrity that’s certain to please Lady Luck.”

“How many places are there where you think an armed man could hide from us, amid those casks and such?” Florin asked Pennae, waving at the room beyond the doorway.

“Six at least… four more, perhaps,” she murmured. “I’ll know better once I’m over the threshold. Stay close to me, but when I look right, down the room, be sure you face left and watch sharp.”

Without waiting for a reply, she lowered the lantern and stepped through the doorway. Florin scrambled to follow. The rest of the Knights leaned forward to watch. Islif had to disgustedly take hold of Doust’s shoulder and firmly turn him around to face back the way they’d come.

“I’ll ‘Tymora’ you, see if I don’t,” she muttered fiercely into his ear.

Behind them, Pennae and Florin had found no foes, and were already down the crowded cellar room to that far doorway, and peering cautiously around its edge, lantern entirely hooded, to try to see the source of the glow.

Then they gasped softly, in unison, at the sight of Treasure. Golden treasure-a long, low heap of rods and scepters and wands and thick spellbooks, coins spilling out of chests and gems glittering inside open coffers, a harp and a sword and something that looked like a shield with horns and fins of metal filigree projecting from it. The golden hue bathed everything, and came not from the heap itself-a pile about as long as two Jhessails laid end to end, and about as high as her head, when she was sitting on the ground-but from the guardian ring of swords that hung in the air above it.

Four-and-ten… no, six-and-ten swords, all identical, with long slender blades, black hilts and black, hooked quillons, floating silently in the air point-down, that steady golden glow running down the sides of their blades and thrusting like the beam of a spell from their points, lighting the air golden as well as Emmaera Dragonfire’s treasures beneath.

“This, Florin, is why one goes adventuring,” Pennae murmured. “The favor of kings and the kisses of princesses and noble ladies are well enough, but they fade or are swept away with the passing days and years-whereas gold and magic endure, gleaming and unchanged.”

“We’d best go tell everyone,” Florin murmured. “ Don’t go touching it, now! Not one bauble!”

Pennae crooked an eyebrow at him. “With that many swords hanging there waiting for my blood? Not likely!”

They turned and hastened back through the room of casks and crates. “We found it,” Florin told the waiting Knights. “Just as the innkeeper described it. I-”

“ ‘Ware!” Islif snapped. “Weapons out! ”

Everyone turned to stare where she was looking. Past the stairs that had brought them down here, into the darkness where a broad and sudden blue glow was just dying away-and eight hard-eyed men in robes were standing, in a spot that had been dark and empty a moment before.

“Knights of Myth Drannor!” one of them boomed. “In the name of King Azoun, fourth of that name, who signed your charter, I command you to down weapons! In the name of Queen Filfaeril, who granted your knighthoods, I demand your ready obedience. We are war wizards, of the fair kingdom of Cormyr, and we would have peaceable speech with you.”

Florin and Islif both grounded their blades, putting their sword points to the floor.

“Florin Falconhand am I,” the ranger announced, “and I have every intention of obeying the Crown of Cormyr. Yet words are spoken easily, and I have only this handful of yours to say that you speak with royal authority-and it is that very same royal authority you invoke that allows us to bear arms within the realm. Is your royal authority somehow better than mine? Moreover, we do not now stand within the Forest Kingdom, but in a border protectorate. What laws and authority apply at all? I desire no dispute with any of you, and so seek to know more, that I may best decide how to proceed. I have given you my name, Lord Mage. Might I now know yours?”

“Taeroch am I,” the wizard replied, “and I am not accustomed to having to repeat clear and reasonable orders. Sir Florin, I say agai-”

During the converse, one of the war wizards had quietly stepped back from the line of cross-armed, expressionless mages, and half turned away. He whirled back to face the Knights again, with a wand in his hitherto-empty hand-aimed at his nearest fellow war wizard.

He fired it, moving it to blast not just that man, but the next and the next. As he drew a second wand with his other hand, to unleash smiting magic in the wake of the first.

Those three wizards stiffened as their shielding spells flared and were swiftly overwhelmed. Even before they could turn and shout, they were staggering and falling, blasted where they stood.

The Knights stood aghast as the mage with the wands turned to serve the other four the same way.

They were fast, and were already striking at him with wand-blasts and ring-beams of their own-but even before his mantle-spell collapsed in a roiling chaos of short-lived black stars, the Knights saw the wizard’s eyes go dark and empty, and something like a wraith rush out of his soundlessly screaming mouth.

By the time the renegade war wizard was being torn apart by four magical dooms lancing into him at once, the wraith-thing had plunged into the face of the nearest of the four remaining war wizards.

He turned stiffly to point at the Knights and scream, “ They’re doing it! Their magic-in my mind! Stop them! ”

Doust and Semoor gaped in utter astonishment, but Florin and Islif were already racing forward, and Pennae promptly hurled her lit lantern into the accusing face of that war wizard and yelled, “Scatter!”

The Knights scattered, as men with swords and daggers in their hands came charging down the common room stairs-and plunged into the war wizards, thrusting and hacking.

“Brors!” a war wizard shouted as Florin reached him.

The man Pennae had just struck staggered past, screaming and clawing at a face whose beard-through the blood spilled by the many shards of glass-was flaming and shriveling, and the wraithlike thing started streaming out of him again.

Jhessail slashed at it with her dagger, but found herself slicing nothing more tangible than smoke, and hearing horrible whispering laughter in her ears that seemed to say, See, Old Ghost? Horaundoon does know how to obey!

The air around the stairs erupted in a sudden rain of bright fire that left many men shouting in pain and sagging back, as the wizard Brors hurled a spell intended to drive Florin and Islif away from his colleague.

A dagger came whirling down the stairs, flashing harmlessly past the war wizard’s head. In its wake, the thunder of boots on the stairs announced the arrival of a second wave of bullyblades with swords and daggers-and as they sprang down to join the fray, these reinforcements roared, “Zhentarim forever! Zhentarim triumphant! ”

Lords Yellander and Eldroon stood in the darkened, tapestry-hung private dining room with Yellander’s crossbowmen, all of them listening intently to what could be heard through the half-open door into the common room of the Oldcoats Inn. Behind them, the cold blue fire of their portal flickered almost hungrily.

As the Zhentarim war cry rang back off the common room rafters, Yellander turned and snapped, “Now! Quickly!”

He waved his waiting crossbowmen past him, toward the door. “Before anyone gets the upper hand! Use poisoned tips! Kill wizards first!”

The crossbowmen streamed past him and banged through the door.

The two nobles grinned at each other. “Why, I do believe it would be highly prudent to be elsewhere about now,” Yellander drawled-and ducked back through the portal, Eldroon hard on his heels.

Eldroon’s rearmost boot was just vanishing into the throbbing blueness when a tapestry across the room was thrust aside.

The hand moving that worn and none-too-clean cloth belonged to Laspeera of the war wizards-who strode across the room with a purposeful cluster of veteran war wizards right behind her, and plunged through the portal after the two noble traitors.

The wizards followed in smooth haste; Andabral, Torthym, Larlammitur, Alsketh, Cordorve, and the least battle-experienced, Yassandra, last.

At least, that was the intended order. Yassandra, bringing up the rear, smiled crookedly at the shimmering blue portal in front of her-and whirled away from it to head across the ground floor of the Oldcoats Inn.

Toward the cellars.

“It is good,” the dead, purple lips of Lathalance mumbled, before Old Ghost billowed out of him to tower over Horaundoon. And smile.

Behind the two wraithlike spirits, as they raced out into Halfhap, the Zhentarim’s abandoned body lolled limply in the chair at the center of his rented inn room.

Old Ghost and Horaundoon scudded along alleyways and over rooftops like one wisp of smoke chasing another, eager to possess local Zhentarim and draw them into the fray at Oldcoats.

It seemed the mageling Tantarlus hadn’t thought about chimneys when casting wards around his home, so two unwelcome-but utterly unnoticed-guests curled like lazy smoke along the bottom of tapestries as he yelled excitedly to the mouth inset into the center of his corner table, “This is a Bane-bestowed chance to slaughter many war wizards! Send as many of the Brotherhood as you can through my portal!”

“All right, Tantarlus,” the mouth said, “you needn’t shout. Some of your fellow magelings-those you trained with at the Citadel-will shortly be arriving in your parlor. They will need to be directed to the inn. See to it.”

The mouth closed and faded into dark, carved immobility. Tantarlus covered it reverently with the cloth that customarily concealed it, put the oil lamp back in its usual place atop that cloth-and stiffened as Old Ghost plunged into him, possessing him with far greater care than Horaundoon had used on the war wizards.

But then, Old Ghost had no intention of burning out this useful host yet. He turned to Horaundoon. “Keep hidden from the arriving magelings,” he ordered. “They will be all too eager to blast anything that interests them.”

“And you are?”

“Off through the portal in the other direction, to Zhentil Keep. Where Tantarlus of the Zhentarim will eloquently exaggerate this skirmish into something that demands an even larger response.”

“Will they listen to a mere mageling, stationed as local eyes in Halfhap?”

“Yes, if that mageling speaks forcefully enough of great magic to be gained, a chance to break the strength of the local war wizards, seize control of Halfhap, butcher the Purple Dragon garrison, and provoke Cormyr into sending forth an army that can then be blasted at will.”

Dauntless glared at the streets and hovels of Halfhap as if they personally affronted him-and would serve all Faerun better if they were hurled down before the next nightfall. Weary and stubble-chinned, he was sore from riding through the night, and not even snarling at the gate-guards until they openly cowered had given him any satisfaction.

At least they’d reluctantly imparted the information that the Knights of Myth Drannor had reached Halfhap and been directed to the Oldcoats Inn, though Dauntless had felt the silent contempt of his five picked Purple Dragons, boring into his back, all the while he’d bullied the two guards.

He was beyond caring. He just wanted to arrest the Knights, clap them in the dungeons of the Halfhap keeps, and get some sleep. They could be questioned as to the whereabouts of Lord Duskur Ebonhawk’s belongings-a lot of coin, in a cloth-of-gold-covered metal purse with the black hawkhead family badge on its clasps-later. Now, Halfhap wasn’t that big, so this sagging black-painted dump before him had to be the Oldcoats Inn.

A man and two maids were standing together on its front steps. The wenches were dressed alike, with matching vests over their gowns-inn staff. By his manner, the man was their master, and had the look of an innkeeper, though less stout than most.

Dauntless halted his tired mount in front of them, and looked down from his saddle at the man. “Is this the Oldcoats Inn? And are you master here?”

The man looked up at him expressionlessly. “I am, and this the Oldcoats Inn. Fitting lodgings for Dragons of the Realm. Ondal Maelrin, at your service.”

Dauntless didn’t bother to nod. “You have adventurers staying here who call themselves the Knights of Myth Drannor, I believe?”

The innkeeper shrugged. “We have guests, yes. I haven’t heard that grand title before, no. You can examine my lodging ledger, of course.”

Dauntless glowered. Maelrin stared back at him.

“Well,” the ornrion snapped, “get it, man! The duty of all good citizens is to obey Dragons and officers of the Crown without hesitation or dispute!”

Maelrin’s eyes went cold, and he snapped right back, “You’re mistaken, soldier! I have this from the lips of the King himself: the duty of all good citizens are to watch those who govern them like hungry hawks, and to defend whoever needs defending!”

“His Majesty was a young lad when he said that; an adventurer!”

“So he’s changed the brain in his head since then, has he? I must have missed that proclamation!”

Dauntless snarled in wordless anger and swung himself down from his saddle, pretending not to hear a lone snicker from the five Dragons at his back. Wincing, he strode stiffly past the innkeeper.

Who said, without turning his head, “Ledger’s on a table at the bottom of the cellar stairs. They descend from the center of the common room, which you’ll be standing in when you pass through the front doors.”

Without replying, Dauntless and his five men stalked into the inn.

Maelrin turned to smile frostily at their backs ere murmuring to the maids, “Time to get up there and plunder the Knights’ belongings, lasses. Then out the back and gone. They’ll soon be hurling spells that’ll blow this place into the sky even before it gets burned to the ground!”