Swords of Eveningstar

Sarhthor snorted.

“Mightiest wizards” indeed. Whisper intended the intruders to swiftly wind up as food for his trapped beasts, of course, but was it really necessary to gloat like a reckless youth? Or waste the life of the best Zhent agent in Arabel?

Yes, ’twas time-well past it-to end the career of Whisper the mage. There were far more than enough reasons already, and unless Whisper did something truly surprising, he was about to hand Sarhthor a handsome opportunity.

With the thinnest of smiles, Sarhthor leaned over his scrying orb and started to cast a careful spell.

“Well?” Whisper asked the Swords. “What’re you waiting for?” He waved at the writhing, whirling webs of green radiance, or at the cursing, straining men caught in them. “I told you to kill them.”

“I-we-mislike the look of your magic,” Islif told him, pointing with her sword at the racing emerald glows. “If I stick a sword into that, what will befall me?”

“Ah. Well.” Whisper’s smile was colder this time. “You ask the wrong question, wench. Your words should be: If I fail to stick my sword into that, what will befall me?” He gestured.

The air in front of Whisper suddenly sang and shimmered. Though the Swords could still see him clearly, he now stood behind a wall of awakened magic.

“Know that I am less than pleased with you,” he announced, and calmly cast another spell. The three green glows brightened.

Agannor was pleading now, crying to the Swords for help. Bey and the Zhent in leathers were saving breath for their doomed struggles to win free of the magic that held them.

And was now drifting across the room, carrying them toward… the three paintings.

Tiny green lightning bolts crackled a greeting to the portraits, stabbing forth as each mantrapping radiance floated up to a painting… and into it.

The emerald webs melted away, and the painted monsters started moving, reaching forth hungrily for… Agannor, Bey, and the Zhent, who tumbled across the paintings as if rolling and running across a room, silently shouting in fear as they desperately swung swords and daggers.

The Swords watched them die bloodily, ravaged and battered. It took but a breath or two, as Whisper watched with his smile widening. “Eat, my guardians,” he murmured. “Eat, and be content. I promise you-”

At the sound of his voice, the three beasts turned, glared at him-and boiled forth from the paintings, emerging into the room.

Whisper’s jaw dropped, but he stammered out a swift incantation, his voice sharp with alarm.

The umber hulk, foremost of the three monsters heading for him, shook itself as his spell washed over it, and turned toward the Swords of Eveningstar.

And charged, the club-waving ettin and the chuul following it.

“Naed,” Islif whispered, hefting her sword. “We’re going to die.”

Jaw tightening, she raised her blade to launch a charge of her own-and the umber hulk stiffened, came to such an abrupt halt it tottered, and whirled around to face Whisper once more. And charged again.

Peering down at his scrying orb, Sarhthor of the Zhentarim smiled, and cast another spell.

Whisper the mage drew a wand from his belt and stood warily behind his shield, watching the monsters come for him.

As the umber hulk rushed closer, Whisper’s shield grew brighter, until it looked like a solid wall of spitting, snarling sparks. The umber hulk shuddered and slowed, as if wading on into the magic was both painful and took great effort. Whisper started to smile.

Then the shield abruptly vanished, and the umber hulk was reaching triumphantly for the horrified mage, who gaped at it in disbelief. Its claws had almost closed on his face when he scrambled back and triggered his wand.

Fire splashed over the monster, leaving it staggering and darkening. As it shuddered and slowed, the chuul opened its huge claws and rushed at Whisper from his other side.

He whirled and fed it a burst of flame, retreating quickly as the umber hulk pressed forward. The chuul shuddered but kept coming; only the ettin hung back with growls of malevolent fear.

Pennae watched the Zhent with narrowed eyes, hefting a dagger in her hand-and when Whisper turned once more to bathe the umber hulk in fire, she threw her knife hard and fast.

It flashed back firelight as it spun, and Whisper saw it and shied back. The umber hulk lunged forward, its great forearms reaching; Pennae’s dagger struck one of them and spun harmlessly away.

Whisper blasted the umber hulk again, a great burst of flame enveloping the beast-but even as he aimed his wand to unleash that fire, Pennae threw a second blade.

This one struck home, slicing Whisper’s hand and sending the wand tumbling away. Which was when the chuul’s claw caught at the mage’s other shoulder, plucking him into an awkward, hopping turn.

Its other claw thrust forward, but Whisper hissed a frantic incantation and flung himself back up the steps.

In his wake, bolts of chain lightning arced and played the length of the chuul’s body. It lurched sideways, wisps of smoke curling from its joints, its claws spasming with an eerie clattering. The umber hulk shouldered it aside-but Whisper was already fleeing.

He raced for three strides before the ettin’s hurled club took his feet out from under him, and he slammed hard into the wall.

The umber hulk reached for him again, roaring-and Whisper plucked something dark and tiny from his belt and threw it down the monster’s open mouth, throwing himself to one side.

The umber hulk exploded, spraying the reeling chuul with razor-sharp shards of brown body plates that tore it open in a dozen places, and snatching the ettin off its feet with the force of the explosion.

The ettin slammed into the floor, slid along stone twisting and roaring in pain, and when it skidded to a stop, staggered to its feet again and lurched forward.

By then the Swords were past it, trotting up the stairs with their weapons ready.

Whisper was on his feet, leaning on the wall and glaring at them.

Islif ran right at him, Pennae and a pale-faced Florin not far behind. The Zhentarim raised a bleeding hand to work a spell.

Snarling, Islif flung herself at him, waving her sword wildly, hoping to ruin his casting.

She landed just out of sword-reach, and threw herself forward again, her blade slashing viciously. Whisper’s body flickered, vanished-and even as she cursed and hacked the empty air where he’d been, reappeared just a stride away.

He saw her and started to scream. Her first slash was at his mouth, to spoil any spell.

Then Pennae arrived, driving home a dagger hilt-deep under the mage’s ribs, and following it with another into his throat.

Jhessail joined in the butchering, and the wizard reeled and slumped, fountaining blood in many places, to bounce once and lie still, his blood a pool of swift-spreading crimson around him.

Islif promptly sprang back across it to greet the ettin, Doust and Semoor whirling around with curses and ready maces to stand with her.

Frantic in their fear, the Swords swarmed the foul-smelling beast, thrusting, hacking, and clubbing it from all sides. It soon toppled like a felled tree, crashing down atop Whisper.

Who, forever staring, moved not a finger.

In Maglor’s dusty back room, far away in Eveningstar, a gasping, bleeding man staggered to a bench, clung to it long enough to catch his breath, snatched a dusty cloth off Maglor’s scrying orb, and passed his hand over it.

It awakened with a soft and silent glow, warming his face even as a scene from afar spun into sharp coherence in its depths.

Still breathing raggedly, Whisper the mage watched Maglor reel as blades struck ruthlessly home. He saw the screaming apothecary die in his place-and whispered fervent thanks to Bane and Mystra both for the long-prepared spell that switched his body with that of Maglor, and the even older spell that gave Maglor the face and appearance of Whisper.

As the Swords killed the ettin in the depths of the orb, Whisper turned his back on it and stumbled away, feeling sick and afraid. It was the first time he’d been truly frightened in… yes, years.

Pale, eerie radiance flared, banishing the gloom of the cold, dark tomb, as Old Ghost reared up, his eyes blazing in fury.

“ Now you go too far,” it whispered to the silence. “Maglor was a worm, yes, but he was my worm, his life mine to spend at a time and place of my choosing. Whisper, your life is forfeit.”

The wraith stormed out of the tomb, chill fire moving with swift purpose.

The war wizard finished casting, let his hands fall to his sides, and sighed.

With a much softer sigh, a glowing doorway appeared in the empty air before him.

“That’s where they went,” he said. “Now I really must get back to the lady lord’s side. By now, she could be halfway across-”

“Hold!” Dauntless was every whit as furious as he looked. His words snapped as fiercely as crossbow. “Is it safe to pass through?”

The mage shrugged. “Anything could await on t’other side-a dozen blades ready to stab, for instance. Yet unless the one who crafted yon portal commands magic so strong that the portal-enchantments can subvert my probing spells-unlikely, but by no means impossible-the portal itself is safe to traverse, yes.”

Dauntless snapped names and orders over his shoulder, mustering particular Dragons by name to step through the waiting door, and ended rather ungraciously, “And Swordcaptain Draeth, I suppose.”

Draeth swallowed. “Uh… hadn’t we best clear this with Lady Lord Myrmeen Lhal?”

Dauntless spun around, his roar almost blasting the swordcaptain off his boots as he said “ Hang Myrmeen, and her orders, too!”

“Ho, now! I think not, Lionar Dahauntul,” a crisp voice said out of the darkness along the warehouse wall.

Dauntless peered, not seeing who’d spoken. “Who speaks? And I’m an ornrion, not a lionar.”

“Disobeying superior officers, and speaking of bringing about their deaths, are offenses that may yet earn you more than a simple demotion, Lionar Dahauntul,” the voice replied coldly.

Its owner strode forward into the lanternlight, and there were hoarse gasps and muttered oaths as the gathered Dragons recognized the king’s cousin, Baron Thomdor, Warden of the Eastern Marches.

All of the watch went to their knees, Dauntless among them, sputtering, “Pray pardon, Lord! I must confess I-”

“Save it,” Thomdor told him, “and tell me this: who went through that, and why d’you want to follow them?”

“Adventurers,” Dauntless explained. “Chartered, but well on the way to becoming wildsword nuisances. Some here are saying they set this warehouse afire-but ’tis certain they fled through this magical way, to some unknown Zhent stronghold, in the company of known Zhentarim agents who’ve murdered more than a few Dragons this night. I’ll be aft-that is, I want to pursue them with all the force I can muster, war wizards and all, and scour out the Zhents on the far end of yon portal, once and for all.”

“No,” Baron Thomdor said. “We’ll let these Swords of Eveningstar handle things. That’s what Crown adventurers’ charters are for. ”

“If he were trying to trick us,” Pennae replied, “d’you think he’d try to do it with potions he’d so cleverly hidden away?”

“Keen thought,” Doust said, taking one of the vials she was passing out.

Jhessail peered at hers. “What’s this shining-sun mark?”

“A symbol for healing,” the thief replied, watching Florin flick away the cork she’d loosened for him, and proceed to swallow the contents of his vial.

“It’s working,” he husked, holding out his hand for another.

Pennae grinned and slapped another vial into the forester’s palm. “Good. Drink deep. Whisper seems to have stored his spellbooks and suchlike somewhere else-and the prospect of stumbling through his vile traps trying to find all of his other hidden magic is not one that leaves me especially eager.”

Florin swallowed, sighed gustily, and leaned back against the wall, looking much better as pain drained from his face. He held up his no-longer-broken arm, wiggling his fingers gingerly.

The Swords were cautiously plundering Whisper’s lair of what scant riches they could find and magic they dared touch. A room away, two glowing portals waited.

Not knowing where either led had touched off a halting debate regarding what they should do next.

Penny grinned. “I walked around rather more streets in Arabel than the rest of you-”

“Yes,” Semoor interrupted, “and bedchambers, shop stockrooms, and back pantries, too, I daresay!”

There was a ripple of laughter, in which Pennae joined, ere she gave him a rude gesture and continued, “-and saw the same royal proclamation posted in five places: a screed promising the title of ‘Baron of the Stonelands,’ with a fortune and an army to go with it, to anyone who builds a castle in the Stonelands and holds it for two straight years, cleansing it of a certain count of brigands and beasts-the beasts’ heads to be proofs of this.”

Islif snorted. “Godhood, too?”

Everyone laughed.

“ Next month, hey?” Semoor commented. “After we’re whole and hearty again, and the priests back at the House of the Morning have granted me my god-name and told me what a great champion of the faith I am.”

Giving Semoor a hard look, Pennae waved at the single small coffer of Whisper’s coins they’d found. “And just how much coin out of this are you going to have to give them to get them to do that?”

More laughter ensued; mirth that was punctuated by Doust’s loud throat-clearing reminder that other gods needed to be properly thanked, too.

“Sark them all,” Whisper hissed, searching through paltry magics cached here so long ago that he’d half-forgotten what they were. “In fact, tluin all hrasted adventurers!”

What would he need to blast those darkblades? They’d butchered his three guardians, and Maglor too, and were doubtless plundering his magics right now. At least his hacked hand was whole once more, though it had taken two potions. Motherless bastards.

“May Mystra wither them and Bane maim them,” he snarled, rummaging and peering. These were all baubles and battle-useless things-he needed the means to blast, melt, and humble!

Lost in his fury, Whisper never noticed the pale glow blossoming behind him, or gliding forward to plunge silently into him.

Then, with Old Ghost chilling his spine, it was too late.

The mage found himself forced upright with a strangled gargle, and reaching to pluck up a rod that “felt” metals and minerals from among his treasures.

Holding it stiffly, Whisper turned and walked, heavily and unwillingly, to his hidehold’s waiting portal.

His hopes that whatever had him in its thrall would be stripped away during the translocation were dashed when the blue mists fell away and he was standing in a dim passage in his crypt.

Useless wand in hand, the helpless Zhentarim began the slow, unwilling trudge toward his storeroom, where the adventurers would almost certainly be by now. The walk to his own doom.

Other eyes widened in surprise over another scrying orb.

Then Horaundoon’s eyes narrowed again.

Whisper’s reluctant return had been astonishing enough, but his fareye was showing him more. The faintest of glows was riding Whisper: another sentience!

Grinning, Horaundoon leaned forward, not wanting to miss a moment of what was about to unfold.

This should be very interesting.

“Naed!” Doust gasped, scrambling to his feet. Whisper stood menacingly in the doorway, wand aimed at them.

The rest of the Swords looked-saw-and froze.

Slowly, very slowly, almost as if small segments of his upper lip were separately being pulled back from his teeth, the Zhentarim smiled.

And one of Pennae’s daggers spun out of nowhere to stand forth, hilt deep, from his right eye.

The Swords erupted, weapons flashing out, but Whisper moved not at all.

Until, still smiling, he toppled forward to crash onto his face, limbs bouncing loosely.

As the Swords all stared, something ghostly and pale rose from him in wisps, to gather eerily in the air, ignoring the swords that thrust and slashed into it. When it had gained the strength and shape of a tall, broad-shouldered man, it turned its head slowly to regard each of the horrified adventurers. Though it had no mouth, it seemed almost to be smiling smugly, alight with glee… as it rose and drifted away, as lazily purposeful as a great shark.

Jhessail shivered as she watched it go, and none of the Swords said a word or lifted a hand to do anything until it was out of sight.

Whereupon, inevitably, it was Semoor who stirred. “What the tluin was that?”

No one had a reply.

Horaundoon reared back from his scrying orb as if someone had thrust dung in his face-then leaned forward again to peer intently.

The wraith-thing that had gathered above Whisper’s corpse-and had come out of Whisper, he was certain-looked at all of the Swords of Eveningstar, slowly glided away.

As he bent his will to move the scrying orb’s field to follow it, he realized what he was looking at and gasped.

“So the mindworms can be taken that far,” he whispered, “and that is what their user becomes.”

He shivered involuntarily, but it was the hargaunt that spasmed, squalling in fear, and wet his head.

There’s a singing in the air here,” Pennae said tersely. “Magic.” The passage turned dark ahead of her, but in the light of the glowstones the Swords had taken from Whisper’s rooms, they could see dust-covered human statues standing clustered in the passage.

“The way on looks… unused,” Florin mused. “Perhaps the magic is some sort of barrier, and yon is ‘wild country,’ for lack of a better term.”

Pennae shrugged. “One way to find out.” She strolled forward, despite his swift hiss of protest, into the singing magic.

Nothing befell her, and the magic did not change or vanish-but the moment Pennae stepped beyond it, the dusty statues moved, raising their arms to reach for her. She retreated hastily, watching them shuffle after her, and returned to the watching Swords.

“Zombies,” she said. “Let’s look for another way out.”

“Six-no, seven portals back there,” Semoor reminded her.

Pennae nodded. “I’m afraid we’re going to end up stepping through one of them.”

“And if one of them turns out to be a death trap, so we’re stepping into fire or whirling lightning?” Islif asked.

The thief gave her a sour look. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”

“I am the Lady Narantha Crownsilver,” Narantha told the old, whitebearded war wizard, ignoring the lesser wizards who’d escorted her to this soaring stone chamber so deep in the palace.

Every chamber of this fortress around her was starker and more brooding and unfriendly than the rooms of the palace in Suzail. She was beginning to truly hate Arabel.

“You wanted to see me?”

The war wizard inclined his head to her. “Not me, Lady.” He stepped aside, indicating the curtain behind him.

With an exasperated sigh Narantha stepped forward through its parting, into an audience room where a plain stone throne was flanked by two towering candlesticks. Two war wizards stood under those flickering flames, and one look at the seated man had her knee-dipping deeply.

“Narantha Crownsilver?” Baron Thomdor asked her.

“Lord Baron, I am she,” Narantha replied. Aside from distant glimpses across rooms at revels and state occasions, she’d not seen the warden since she’d been a little girl. What interest could he have in her now?

“I regret the bluntness of this,” Thomdor said, rising and extending his hand to her, “but your father stands in urgent need. Your mother has died, and Lord Crownsilver very much desires your presence, right now.”

Narantha could only stare at him.

“These loyal servants of Cormyr stand ready to take you to him,” the warden told her gently, indicating the war wizards. Narantha stumbled toward them, blinded by a sudden waterfall of tears.

Someone was weeping bitterly; she was burying her head in a stranger’s breast before she realized it was her.

In their tenth dark passage, the Swords stopped-and stared. Disgustedly.

Whisper’s tenth ward sang in the air before them. Beyond it stood the tenth silently waiting group of undead.

A dozen skeletons lurched forward, raising rusty swords. One overbalanced a handwidth too far-and fell into dust as the ward flared up through it, into a glittering wall of sparks. Beyond that deadly glow, something that might have been the skeleton of a giant came down the passage, hefting an axe larger than Florin.

“That’s it,” Islif sighed, as the Swords retreated. “Either we step into a portal to depart this place-or starve here, trapped.”

There were reluctant nods.

“Should we try some of Whisper’s wands?” Doust asked doubtfully, lifting the one he held.

“Triggering powers we don’t know, into a spell that’s holding back undead right now, but might well explode? Or shoot lightnings? Or turn us all purple? At undead that it might blast, but then again might make them grow, or come back to life? Or-?”

And with those words, Pennae turned to lead the way to the nearest portals: a pair flickering in what had probably been Whisper’s storage cellar.

Everyone followed, without a word.

“Mine,” Florin said, stepping into the waiting glow.

And through it, to stand frowning on its far side, still in the cellar. He stepped through it again in the other direction, toward the rest of the Swords-and found himself standing facing them, as if he’d been walking through nothing but empty air.

“Jhess,” Pennae said, “doff your belt and try. Perhaps ’tis the metal that keeps it from working; I’ve heard of portals like that.”

Jhessail handed over her belt and stepped through the first gate. Like Florin, she simply ended up on its far side, still in the cellar. She stepped through it again, in the other direction. Still in the cellar. With a shrug, she went to the second gate and tried it. With the same result.

“Could be we’re lacking a password,” Islif suggested. Pennae nodded.

Semoor sighed. “Well, Whisper’s just a little too dead to ask, now, isn’t he? Come on; let’s try them all.”

Much trudging and fruitless stepping through glows ensued, until they were back in the room of now-empty paintings and sprawled, dead monsters. Whisper still lay as he’d fallen, under the ettin. Rats scattered from the carrion as the Swords came down the steps and stopped in front of the glowing oval.

“Think it’ll work for us, back to Arabel?” Semoor asked.

“Or will it take us somewhere else, I wonder?” Doust put in.

“ Thank you, cheerful holynoses,” Pennae said with a grin. “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

Florin hefted his sword and strode forward. “Mine. Again.”

Silently, the glow swallowed him.

“ Quick, now,” Islif snapped, trotting forward. “And keep those wands ready!”

The Swords hurried.

A spell cast long ago, that showed the watchful apprentices on duty who stepped through particular portals, flickered once more into life.

The master of those apprentices, crossing the room behind their desks, stopped in mid-stride to see who was departing Whisper’s Crypt for Arabel. He nodded, saying nothing, as a succession of images flowed across that part of the wall.

“The Swords of Eveningstar,” one of the apprentices reported excitedly.

“I am unsurprised, Alaise,” her master replied. “Please take over doorguard from Thander now. You may soon be seeing the Swords in person.”

He walked on, his mind already on scores of larger matters.

Not that the Swords lacked interest. Indeed, to an archmage who talked often with Dove Silverhand and betimes with Hawkstone the ranger, and at other times eavesdropped undetected on the minds of the herald from Espar, Lord Elvarr Spurbright, and Dauntless of the Purple Dragons-to name but three-these fledgling adventurers were interesting indeed.

Not just for who they were and what they were doing, but for who was trying to manipulate them.

The wizard ascended a winding stone stair to a higher level of his tower, passing many storage niches let into the walls. His gaze fell on a curious twisted pendant hanging in one niche, behind the warding that would sear all hands but his to the bone, and the Swords came back into his thoughts.

He had plans for the Swords of Eveningstar. Oh, yes, indeed.

Florin stepped out into-grain shifting underfoot, in a familiar warehouse that was now brightly lit indeed. Forty Purple Dragons, or more, were staring impassively at him over leveled spears, in a wall that extended around him in-yes-a ring.

A ring of Dragons at least two deep, that was broken in only one place: right ahead of him, where an officer stood with a drawn sword in his hand, looking both weary and profoundly unamused.

“Take them,” Lionar Dahauntul ordered flatly, as the Swords emerged to stand with Florin.

“Alive?” a veteran Dragon asked.

“Take them,” Dauntless repeated grimly.