Swords of Eveningstar

There!” Florin shouted, pointing ahead with his sword as they pounded along a back alley slippery underfoot with rotting cabbage leaves. A crossbow promptly cracked, followed by another.

Florin flung himself at the wall, taking Islif down with him, and the Dragon running behind them screamed and crashed to his face, bouncing and moaning, with a bolt quivering through his knee.

“Jhess,” the forester growled, scrambling up, “you shouldn’t be here! You’ve no armor-”

“Shut up, Florin,” came the furious reply, at about the same time as two familiar voices cried, “Wait for us! We bring holy blessings!”

Jhessail rolled her eyes. “You’re shunning me? What about them? The Happy Dancing Holynoses themselves?”

Islif flung her a rare grin, and Florin waved his surrender-then peered and cursed. In admiration.

A weak, pale, weaving-on-her-feet Pennae was running alongside Doust and Semoor.

Together once more, the Swords trotted on, the watch lionar beside them puffing, “We’ve closed the gates, and called every last blade out of barracks-the lady lord herself’s out running around with her sword drawn, somewhere. So they can’t escape us! ’Tis just a matter of time…”

Islif threw him a jaundiced look, but said nothing, until they ducked around a sagging, permanently parked cart to burst out of the alley, and she shouted and pointed. “There!”

“There” was the dark doorway of a warehouse, a refuse-strewn threshold where Agannor was just jerking his sword out of the throat of a reeling, blood-spattering Purple Dragon. Two crossbow bolts came humming past him out of the darkness, and one took down another Dragon. A war wizard stepped coolly sideways to escape the other, and went right on casting a spell.

Purple Dragons were converging from all directions. Agannor cast looks all around, saw the Swords and gave them a mocking wave, and disappeared into the warehouse. Another pair of crossbow bolts claimed another two Dragons.

Puffing along beside Florin, the swordcaptain growled, “Where’re our bowmen?”

“Those murdering bastards could be just inside, aimed and waiting for us, know you!” another Dragon gasped as they sprinted for the warehouse door, keeping close to the walls of other buildings in hopes they’d not run right up to meet more crossbow bolts.

Islif gave him a wolf’s grin. “I know. I’m rather counting on it.”

Something crashed down right in front of her, exploding into shards and splinters as it bounced and cartwheeled away. A chair, or had been.

Islif looked up-in time to see a grinning pair of men launch a wardrobe over a balcony rail at her. “ ’Ware!” she roared, launching herself into a full-length leap.

The crash, right behind her, was thunderous; two Dragons managed not even a peep as they were crushed.

Semoor, running hard, skidded helplessly in the sudden pool of blood, but kept his feet and came on. “What the tluin is going on? They’re throwing wardrobes at us?”

A crossbow bolt hummed out of the warehouse and spun him around, laying open his arm at the elbow as it grazed him-and took a Dragon full in the face.

“Naed,” Semoor gasped, and then shouted, two sprinting steps later, “Ho! Changed my mind! Let’s have more wardrobes!”

“What is going on?” Jhessail gasped, as they neared the gaping warehouse door. “Who are all these foes?”

“Zhent agents,” a Dragon grunted, from right behind her. “ ’Least those two on the balcony were.”

“Were?”

“They just got ’em,” he growled in satisfaction.

Florin ducked down, plucked up the splayed shards of a smashed and discarded shipping crate, and turned. “Fire spell?”

“Done,” Jhessail gasped, stopping and fumbling forth what she needed from her belt pouch. A Purple Dragon ran on, into the warehouse, warily ducking low-and promptly screamed as two crossbow bolts tore through him.

Flame flared up from Jhessail’s hand. She caressed the rotten wood Florin held out to her, then another crate proffered by Islif.

Florin thanked her with a grin, turned, and hurled the blazing wreckage into the warehouse, where its merrily leaping flames showed all watching dusty shelves of sacks and coffers, a sprawled dead man, two men fleeing with crossbows, the Purple Dragon who’d stopped two bolts writhing in agony on the floor, and “Where’re the hoist chains?” the ranger asked suspiciously. “Don’t these high loft warehouses load wagons right there, just inside their doors?”

Islif tossed her blazing crate into the warehouse to add more light, but shook her head. “I see none. Come on. ”

Emboldened by being able to see that no crossbowmen stood aimed and waiting, Purple Dragons were rushing the doorway from several directions. The Swords joined the streams of running warriors, but were a little behind the first men-the ones who shouted in alarm and then died, smashed bloodily to the floor, as someone unseen let fall the hoist-chains from above, in great thundering heaps that buried the men they slew or struck senseless.

Other chains came swinging out of the dark corners of the warehouse in deadly arcs, smashing men into broken things even as they were hurled back into the faces of their slower fellows.

By the time Florin reached the chaos of broken and struggling men at the warehouse threshold, things were brightening-in a familiar, flickering manner. He looked up.

“Get back!” he roared, catching Islif and swinging her around into a breath-stealing, jarring meeting with the onrushing Jhessail. “ Back, everyone!”

A sword flashed above the burning crates and barrels atop the hoist-rack, severing a rope-and to the thunderous clatter-clatter-clatter of a winch going mad, the flaming hoist plunged toward the floor.

“Get out!” Florin shouted, waving his arms at onrushing Purple Dragons. “Fire!”

He was still shouting when the crash, behind him, shook him off his feet and made the entire building creak and groan. Tongues of flame spat past him, hurling shrieking, blazing men out among their fellows.

Purple Dragons cursed colorfully, war wizards threw their arms up to shield their eyes, and over the crackling roar, war horns cried fire-warning. Once, twice, thrice, and then the bellow of Dauntless could be heard, rising above all the tumult: “War wizards, quench yon fire! Swordcaptains, run to fetch every priest you can! Get that fire out! ”

As the Swords rallied around him, Florin found himself face-to-face with a Dragon he knew: Swordcaptain Nelvorr.

“Sir Sword,” that officer gasped, “put your blade away. The ones we’re chasing are in yon warehouse.” He waved his arm in a circle. “We have it surrounded, t’other side, and no one has tried to break out that way yet. If they do, they’ll die.”

Florin looked into the flames. The place was an inferno just inside the door, and the front wall was leaking plumes of smoke and swiftly climbing lines of flame, as lines of pitch that had been used to seal cracks in the boards caught alight. To either side of the door, however, the warehouse yet looked untouched, not even any smoke coming from its shuttered windows. “Are there any cellars? Tunnels?” he snapped.

“No,” replied a voice from behind him. A voice he’d heard before. “At least,” the Lady Lord of Arabel added, a wand held ready in her hand, “none are supposed to exist-and my tax collectors look hard for such things.”

“I’m going in there,” Florin told her, as a war wizard finished an elaborate spell and the fire died down noticeably.

“You surprise me not,” she replied with a half-smile, waving him forward. Florin gave her a smile and a nod, and ran, the Swords at his heels.

Smoke greeted them, thick and curling, as Florin ducked in around the eastern doorpost and led the way, sword out and keeping low.

Through the thinning blue haze the Swords hastened, peering this way and that in hopes they’d see the dreaded crossbows before a bolt found them.

The place was a labyrinth of open-sided floors, pillars with climbing pegs embedded in them, and stacked, roped-in-place sacks, barrels, and coffers. Ramps were everywhere, and cobwebs, and the motionless hanging chains of hoists.

Lanterns glimmered far behind the Swords as Purple Dragons entered the warehouse. The dancing lights of flames were gone now, leaving only the faint light of a few dusty glowstones, high up on the walls in their furry-with-webs iron cages.

Another pillar onward.

And another. With every cautious step the Swords grew warier; soon they’d reach this end of the warehouse. If the men they sought weren’t back down the other end-and from the way the catwalks up in the roof beams ran, and where Florin had seen that sword slicing the hoist-ropes, that wasn’t likely-they had to be somewhere here.

Close.

Waiting.

Of course, this was the lowest level; they could be anywhere behind the sacks up above, on all those dark, open-sided storage floors.

“ How many warehouses like this does the city hold, again?” Semoor muttered to Pennae. “Strikes me you could steal stuff by the wagon-load for years, and it’d not be missed.”

Pennae gave him a fierce grin-then a fiercer scowl. “Later,” she whispered into his ear. “We’ll talk about this later. O high-principled holy man.”

Ahead, Florin abruptly threw up his arm in a warning wave. Then he drew aside against a stack of crates and pointed.

The Swords looked out at what he’d already discovered: a sea of spilled grain, fallen from sacks sliced open in some accident or other, and now hanging limp and nigh-empty.

A line of boot prints ploughed through them, in a path that ended abruptly, in otherwise undisturbed drifts of grain. Men had hurried this way and then simply-vanished.

“Jhessail?”

The mageling stepped forward, her face set, until she was standing just on the edge of the grain. “Strong magic,” she murmured, spreading her arms almost as if basking in the sun, embracing the empty air. “Like a fire, beating on my face.” She took a long step sideways, shook her head, then did the same in the other direction, returning to where she’d first been standing. “Just here.”

“Like a door,” Doust murmured.

Semoor bent, scooped up some grain in his cupped hands, strode along the path of disturbed grain, and when he got to its end, threw his handful forward.

Aside from a little wisp of drifting dust, it abruptly vanished, right in front of him. “The way is open,” he said, stepping hastily to one side.

No crossbow bolts came hissing out of the empty air, and after a tense breath or two Semoor rejoined them.

“Agannor and Bey went this way, you think?”

Islif nodded grimly. “I think.”

Florin nodded too. “All right. We’ve not got our armor or gear, but if we go back to get them, I’m thinking the murderers will be gone forever. What say you?”

“Let’s go get them,” Pennae whispered. “I saw their faces, and her blood on their swords-and they tried to slice me often enough.”

Jhessail nodded. “They know all about us. I don’t want that creeping back at me unawares, some night while I sleep! After them!”

The Swords turned as one and started through the grain.

There was an angry shout from behind them. “Hoy! Hold! Stand and down weapons!”

The Esparran spun around, weapons raised, and found themselves looking at Purple Dragons. Lots of Purple Dragons. In full battle armor, these, wearing helms and shields, and hefting spears in their hands.

“Swords of Eveningstar, down weapons and surrender! Now! ”

A hard-faced ornrion none of the Swords had ever seen before, who bore a flame-encircled red dragon on his shield, was striding to the fore, wagging a gauntleted forefinger at them. “We’ve heard all about you! I arrest you, all of you, for firesetting and-”

Florin regarded the ornrion incredulously. “What?”

“Down weapons, or we’ll down you. And quick about it! Or I’ll seize the excuse and save Arabel a lot of bother, by just butchering you like the mad dogs you are! Adventurers are always trouble-”

Trailing his sword behind him in his fingertips, Florin trudged to meet the man-who came on at him like an angry storm, wading into the grain and continuing his tirade.

“You’re mistaken,” the forester began, “and the Lady Lord of-”

“ Horsedung, lying adventurer! ’Tis from her tongue we all heard of your villainy! Your crossbows have murdered a dozen Dragons this night, and if her orders to try to take you alive weren’t riding me, I’d-”

Florin spread his hands to show his peaceful intent-and the ornrion’s hand came up and took him by the throat.

For a moment the forester stared disbelievingly into the man’s grimly smiling face. Then his fist came in with all the force he could put behind it, smashing up under the Dragon’s jaw.

The click of teeth clashing on teeth was loud, and the ornrion was suddenly staring at the rafters, up on tiptoe and already senseless. His failing hand let go of Florin’s throat, the forester twisted and snatched-and the flaming dragon shield tore free of the man’s toppling body.

“Swords!” Florin roared, spinning around with his sword in one hand and the just-seized shield half-on his other arm. “To me!”

And he charged through the grain until he-wasn’t there.

There was an instant of gently falling through endless rich blue mists ere Florin’s boot came down on hard stone. Stone somewhere underground, by the coolness and the damp, earthen smell. The blue radiance faded At about the same instant as something crashed into and through the shield, slamming into him hard enough to shatter its stout metal.

And Florin’s arm beneath it.

Triumphant laughter roared out from ahead as the fletched end of the broken crossbow bolt that had maimed him brushed past Florin’s nose, into dark oblivion.

Stumbling back as pain lanced through him, Florin wondered how likely he was to end up following it…

The Purple Dragons charged, a shouting wave of deadly spear points.

“Get through!” Islif yelled at Jhessail and Pennae, swatting their behinds to urge them to greater haste as they plunged past her. “Stoop! Clumsum! Get in there! ”

She waved her sword in defiance as she raced after them, grinning frantically as the foremost spear reached for her, perhaps the length of her own hand away from piercing her.

And then the world blinked, and she was falling through blue mist.

And blinked again, and Islif was standing in a dark stone-lined corridor with the rest of the Swords, who were clustered around… Florin? Hurt?

“Hoy!” she cried, as she spun around to face the blue glow behind her, “weapons out! ”

Spears were emerging from it, thrusting out of the swirling blueness with grim-faced Purple Dragons behind them. Three soldiers whose eyes widened at the sight of their surroundings.

They widened still more when Islif struck aside two spearheads with her sword, and ran in past the third to backhand its wielder across the face.

He stumbled into his fellows, there was a moment of startled hopping and cursing-and Pennae came out of the dark with a startling shriek, daggers flashing in both hands, Doust and Semoor trotting behind her.

The Purple Dragons wavered, and Islif drove her knee hard up into a codpiece and then thrust her leg sideways, toppling that soldier into the one next to him. Pennae landed hard on their wavering spears, smashing them to the stone floor and splintering the shaft of one of them as she flung herself forward, her fists hammering down two dagger pommels into two helms.

The Dragons reeled, and Pennae jerked on their helms, tilting the metal down half-over their faces. They struggled under her, punching and kicking and trying to rise-and as Islif wrenched spears out of the hands of two of them, Semoor leaned in, plucked a mace from the belt of one Dragon, and crowned the man solidly with it, leaving him reeling.

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” he remarked happily. “Are you going to start cutting pieces off them now?”

The Dragons were already trying to shove themselves back and away, and his words goaded them into frantic flight. Back into the blue glow, with Islif’s and Pennae’s chuckles trailing them.

“Now get away,” Islif ordered, waving her fellow Swords to the sides of the passage. “Against the walls and away. I’d not put it past them to find some bows and start volleying right down this-”

A spear burst out of the mist and sailed down the passage, to bounce and skitter to a harmless stop beside Jhessail, who was helping a sweating Florin up, and easing the bent and ruined shield off his arm.

“Move!” Islif roared, as a second spear followed the first. The Swords moved, in haste, as a third spear rattled past them.

“Florin says there’s a crossbowman somewhere ahead of us,” Jhessail warned, as they hastened on together.

“Broke my arm,” Florin grunted. “Never saw him.”

“When do we start having fun?” Semoor complained. “Pools of coins and gems, dancing girls, our own castles… when does that side of adventure kiss and cuddle us?”

Behind them, the blue glow burst into a wild, blinding-bright explosion that spat lightning bolts down the passage at them, crackling and ricocheting in a chaos that sounded like hundreds of harps being smashed all at once, metal strings jangling and shrieking. In its wake, all light faded; the blue glow was gone.

“A war wizard making sure we won’t return,” Jhessail said as darkness descended, leaving them all blind.

Doust groaned. “Now what?”

“Well,” Semoor said, “we can sit down right here and pray, the two of us-and in the fullness of time be granted the power to make light to see by.”

A dim glow occurred not far from his elbow, and brightened, as it was uncovered and held up, to about the same strength as a mica-shuttered lantern. “Or,” Pennae told them all, holding what they could now see was a hand-sized glowstone, “we can use this.” Its radiance showed them her sweet smile.

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.”