low-heeled and the current jewelry simple, and hurried to pin up his hair.
He was staring into a mirror, three of the pins in his mouth and one in his hand, when a hollow chant arose from whence he’d come. He slammed the hairpins down on the table and hurried back to his study.
“An intruder!” the remaining two skulls chanted in unison, jawbones wagging. They were still rising up from the table as Horaundoon slid to a halt in front of them. “An intruder!”
“Blast him down!” Horaundoon roared, “and trouble me no more with such trifles!”
He was two running strides back toward the mirror when the floor under him shook slightly, there was a long and rolling booming sound, and the skulls ceased their chanting in mid-word.
Duly blasted. Good.
Horaundoon snatched up the pins and grimly set to work again pinning up his hair. With all the war wizards infesting this oh-so-peaceful Forest Kingdom, beautiful and wealthy merchants’ widows could get far closer to king’s lords than archmages widely suspected of being Zhentarim could.
And there was a lord or three in Cormyr he wanted to befriend. They might well come in very useful when the time was right. Soon.
“We… we’re following the stream, aren’t we?” Lady Narantha gasped, clambering up to join Florin beside an overhanging tangle of exposed tree roots and boulders.
The forester gave her a sharp look. “We are. Well spotted. ’Tis the best way not to get lost.”
“Won’t the bears and the… the hunting beasts follow it, too?”
“Yes.”
“But-” Narantha started to scramble up a stairlike tangle of roots, to look over the boulders. Florin’s hand shot out and caught hold of her elbow-and Narantha found herself struggling to climb but not moving one fingersbreadth forward. “What’re you-?” she gasped.
Florin drew her close and murmured sternly, “Never show yourself over the top of a ridge like that. Haven’t you been watching me? Cautious, duck low, show as little head as possible as you take a good look; that’s the way. Now, you just used one of my least favorite words: ‘but.’ What were you going to say after that?”
The noblewoman blinked at him, as they stood nose to nose, then frowned as she remembered. “ But if the beasts follow the stream, they’ll find us-and what then?”
“Ah.” Florin nodded. “Then this.” He held up the sword Narantha had all but forgotten was in his hand.
She looked at it, then up at him. He asked, “You’ve never been trained to use one of these, have you?”
Narantha frowned. “Well, of course not.”
“ ‘Of course’ nothing. What were your parents thinking? Or not thinking? Lord Hezom will likely have you swinging steel-something light enough for to suit your arm, mind, not this.”
“Crownsilvers,” Narantha said haughtily, waving an airy hand to indicate phantom legions of retainers in lace and livery, “need not swing swords. We have servants enough to do that for us.”
“Oh?” Florin crooked an eyebrow. “And if the person who seeks to slay you is one of those servants? What then?”
The noblewoman looked incredulous. “No servant would ever dare — ”
“And yet I do-constantly, it seems-and again and again you exclaim that I wouldn’t or shouldn’t. I think you’d be unpleasantly surprised at just what some folk of Faerun will dare, if ever they catch someone as beautiful and as important as you alone.”
Narantha stared at the forester, eyes widening and face going pale, then took a swift step back from him. Unfortunately, a root was right behind her.
A moment later she was blinking up at him, flat on her back and winded, with Florin reaching down a helping hand.
She gazed up at him for a long, hard-breathing moment, face unreadable. Then, slowly, she reached out and took that proffered hand.
Gently but firmly, the ranger pulled her upright. “Lady Narantha,” he said, “I don’t mean to give you orders or offer you rudeness. Yet understand this well: doing the wrong thing, out here in the forest, can get us both killed. Please do as I suggest until you are safely in the hands of Lord Hezom-or your family. Please. ”
The flower of the Crownsilvers was breathing fast and her face was set, her eyes hard and unfriendly. But she nodded, curtly, and snapped, “I’ll try, man-what was your name again? Hawkhand? Falconhand? I’ll try.”
“Florin Falconhand thanks you, Lady,” the handsome forester said, his manner almost humble.
Narantha inclined her head regally. “ That’s better,” she declared, starting to climb the ridge again.
This time, Florin let her go, merely snaking swiftly around a boulder to look at the forest ahead before whatever might be lurking in it got a good look at a wild-haired young noblewoman of Cormyr with a dirty, once- translucent nightrobe plastered to her, and large, flopping mens’ boots on her feet.
A bird took startled wing at Narantha’s appearance, but nothing more sinister seemed to be lurking in the trees just ahead.
“Coming, Falconhand?” the Lady Crownsilver called imperiously. “I grow tired of seeing nothing but rocks and trees. Is all this corner of Cormyr endless rocks and trees? No wonder no one ever goes here, or thinks of it. My father must be mad.”
Florin rolled his eyes. So much for terrifying her. So this was a high noble of Cormyr.
And this was an adventure.
Florin rolled his eyes again. Ye gods.
“I will see the crown princess alone, ” Vangerdahast said, cold iron in his voice. The royal magician was making it clear that he’d grown unused to having to repeat orders-and that this was not one of his patient days.
The two most senior highknights of the Bodyguard Royal hesitated. “Our orders-”
“Were given to you by me, as I recall,” Vangerdahast almost snarled. “Now, to a thinking man, wouldn’t that lead rather readily to the conclusion that having given them, I can also countermand them?”
The knights nodded reluctantly, turned and saluted the princess between them, turned again, and marched out of the Greatgauntlet Audience Chamber, bootheels clicking on the tiled floor. Just before the two war wizards outside the doors closed them, to leave the royal magician and the crown princess alone together, one of the highknights remarked to the other, his voice carefully pitched to carry clearly back into the audience chamber, “Well, old Thunderspells is certainly having one of his bad days!”
Vangerdahast turned away before the Princess Tanalasta could see him smile. Better that she thought him furious, and sat still to listen, for once.
Fourteen years old and turning into quite the Lady Wildnose; he should have squashed her rebelliousness long ago. Of course Azoun and Filfaeril had spoiled her. Nevertheless, his duty was clear. Well, he could make a good start on it today. He casually turned back to the princess-and found her looking away, down to the dark and empty end of the room. Obviously she did not want to be here, and was trying to pretend, for a few breaths more, that she was elsewhere.
Tanalasta turned her head away in case wily old Vangey could tell she was fighting down a smirk. It wouldn’t do to give him something to pounce on as evidence of her “wild, wanton waywardness” he was so fond of complaining to Mother about. He wanted to have a free hand in disciplining her-short of chaining her up and flogging her with a whip, the way they broke wild horses, or perhaps not short of that-and would seize on just about anything to achieve that.
And in Cormyr, what the royal magician wanted, the royal magician got. Well, doomed or not, she was going to make him work hard for this prize. She was going to be as solemn and as regal as she knew how, all stiff formality and words chosen with care.
Vangerdahast clasped his hands behind his back and strolled toward her. Just as he swept out a hand to point at the lone highbacked chair he’d ordered set in the center of the room, and before he could order her to sit down on it, Crown Princess Tanalasta folded her skirts gracefully under her and sat down unbidden, as if assuming a throne.
“You requested audience with me, Magician Vangerdahast,” she said in neutral tones, looking not at him but up at the giant’s gauntlet for which the room had been named, a long-ago battle trophy hung high on the opposite wall. “Your request was couched in terms that the queen my mother termed ‘just shy of a command,’ and I concur with her. I find it highly… unusual to find myself unescorted by my maids or my knights-of-presence, meeting with you in private.” Her hands went to her half-cloak and drew forth the Fire Tiara. She donned it with slow deliberation,
