'Llander! Tarthane! Up those stairs,' the Iron Fox bellowed, brandishing his blade. 'Now!'
His most loyal warriors were both noticeably hesitant to obey, but they mounted the stairs as instructed. The Fox took care to back himself in under the edge of the gallery as he watched them ascend, under the guise of ordering Durlim to get down the passage to the bottom of the back stairs to the gallery, in real haste.
He lumbered after Durlim as far as the archway that led into the passage, and crouched there, peering up at the gallery.
Llander and Tarthane were up there, moving cautiously forward.
'Well?' he bellowed. 'What news?'
It was then that the tapestry fell on Llander. Tarthane stumbled back to avoid his friend's wild sword thrusts, then lunged, striking past the chaos of heavy cloth with his black war blade, hoping to stab whoever was beyond it and swarming all over the shrouded Llander.
That someone was already flat on the floor, tugging at the runner-rug under all their feet. Tarthane, already off-balance, flailed about, made a grab for the railing to keep upright missed his hold, and toppled over with a crash. The hawk-nosed man bounced up from behind the rolled tapestry and drove a dagger into Tarthane's face.
Llander's sword burst blindly out of the tapestry to stab at the man, who jabbed his dagger through the fabric in response, then vaulted over the railing to land lightly in the feast hall, give the Iron Fox a cheery wave, and race away toward the front of the tower.
Enraged, the Iron Fox gave roaring chase, then stopped two strides short of leaving the hall and put up his blade. No … he'd be running alone into a part of the keep he'd sent his men away from, an area offering all too many places where a man with a knife could get above an armored foe and leap down. No, it was time to see if Llander was still alive and go find Durlim, and the three of them could find some defensible room to hold against leaping madmen with knives.
He lumbered back across the feast hall, slashing backhanded behind him twice on the way, and mounted the stairs where Tarthane lay crumpled and the tapestry was rippling slowly and wearily.
'Llander?' he called, hoping not to get a sword thrust in the face. 'Llander?'
He heard a small sound behind him and lashed out viciously with his blade, hacking so hard that the steel rang off the stone wall with numbing force, shedding a few tinkling shards of metal in its wake.
He was rewarded with a gasp. When he turned to see who it was, the Iron Fox found himself face to face not with a hawk-nosed man or a bleeding corpse but with a young lass he'd seen a time or two before about the Starn. She was three safe steps down the stair, beyond his sword tip, and looked very stern, a hand at her throat. As the Fox gazed at her, still startled to see this wench here in his locked and barred tower, she brought her hand slowly and deliberately down, and the front of her gown open with it.
His eyes followed her movement until the halberd smashing into his ankles from above sent him cannoning helplessly down the stairs. He screamed out a curse as he swung his blade around to hack away this latest attack. The Fox found himself once more nose to nose with the grinning, hawk-nosed man. A slim dagger driven by a slender but firm arm plunged into the Iron Fox's right eye, and Faerun whirled away from him forever.
Breathing heavily, Immeira sprang away from the huge armored carcass and let it clang and slither a little way down the stair, gauntlets clutching vainly at empty air.
Then she looked quickly away and up at the man who was smiling down at her. 'Wanlorn,' she moaned, and found herself trembling…a moment before she burst into tears. 'Wanlorn, we've done it!'
'Nay, lass,' said the soothing voice that went with the arms that held her then. 'We've but done the easiest part. Now the hard and true work begins. Ye've slain a few rats, is all… the house they infested must still be set in order.'
He plucked the fouled and dripping dagger from her hands and tossed it away, she heard it ring against the floor tiles below.
'The Realm of the Iron Fox is broken, but Buckralam's Starn must be made to live again.'
'How?' she moaned into his chest. 'Guide me. You said you would not stay….'
'I cannot, lass…not more than a season. 'Twould be better for thee if I left this night.'
Her arms tightened around him like a vise.
'No!'
'Easy, lass,' he said. 'I'll stay long enough to see you take old Rarendon…and whichever of the orphans and farmers ye can trust as an escort on the road — to Saern Hill. I'll write ye a note to give to a man there, a horse breeder named Nantlin, ask him if his harp sounds as sweet as ever, and he'll know who the note is really from. He'll bring folk to dwell here and women and men of honor and ready blades to keep laws all Starneir approve of, to make the Starn strong again. There is a doom laid upon me though, lass… I must be gone before he or any of his folk come into the valley.'
Immeira stared up at him, her face drenched with tears. She could see plain sorrow in his eyes and tight-set lips, reaching up two timid fingers to trace the set of his jaw.
'Will you tell me your true name, before you go?' 'Immeira,' he said solemnly, 'I will.' 'Good,' she said almost fiercely, reaching up her hands to his neck, 'for I'll not give myself to a nameless man.'
A smile that did not belong to Immeira swam through his dreams and sent Elminster into sudden, coldly sweating wakefulness. 'Mystra,' he breathed into the darkness, staring up at the cracked stone ceiling of the best bedchamber in Fox Tower. 'Lady, have I pleased thee at last?'
Only silence followed…but in it, sudden fire appeared, racing across the ceiling, shaping letters that read: 'Serve the one called Dasumia.'
Then they were gone, and Elminster was blinking up at darkness. He felt very alone…until he heard the soft whisper against his throat.
'Elminster?' Immeira asked, sounding awed and frightened. 'What was that? Do you serve the gods?
Elminster reached up his hand to touch her face feeling suddenly close to tears. 'We all do, lass, he said huskily. 'We all do, if we but know it.'
Three: A Feast In Felmorel
If human, dragon, orc, and elf can in peace sit down anywhere together in these Realms, it must be at a good feast. The trick is to keep them from feasting on each other.
'And just who,' the shortest and loudest of the three gate guards asked with deceptive cheerfulness, 'an you?'
The hawk-nosed, neat-bearded man he was staring coldly at…who was standing out in the pelting spring rain, on foot and muddy-booted, yet somehow dry above the tops of his high and well-worn boots…matched the guard's bright, false smile and replied, 'A man whom the Lord Esbre will be very sorry to have missed at his table, if ye turn me away.'
'A man who has magic and thinks himself clever enough to avoid answering a demand for his name,” the guard captain said flatly, crossing his arms across his chest so that the fingers of one hand rested on the high- pommeled dagger sheathed at the right front of his belt, and the fingers of the other could stroke the mace couched in a sling-sheath on the left front. The other two guards also dropped their hands ever so casually to the waiting hilts of their weapons.
The man out in the rain smiled easily and added, 'Wanlorn is my name, and Athalantar my country.'
The captain snorted, 'Never heard of it, and every third brigand calls himself Wanlorn.'
'Good,' the man said brightly, 'that's settled, then.'
He strode forward with such calm confidence that he was among the guards before two hard shoves…from gauntlets coming at him from quite different directions…brought him to an abrupt halt.
'Just where d'you think you're going?' the captain snarled, reaching out his hand to add his own shove to
