cross-passage to the north. Then he played his light for some time on the crossbow. It stood dust-covered and slightly askew atop its dark wooden tripod, with a widening room behind it that seemed to end in two temple-tall, bronzen double doors, with two statues of the same hue flanking them. The southern statue was of an armored warrior woman, staring endlessly at the Swords with one hand on scabbarded sword hilt and her other arm indicating the doors behind her. The northern statue was a similarly armed and armored man who was looking at the doors he was pointing at, his other hand also on sword hilt.
Agannor peered more closely at the sagging crossbow-then chuckled, strolled unconcernedly into its line of fire, and looked the other way along the cross-passage. Nothing erupted at him.
“Nothing to see but some old bones strewn all over the place,” he said back over his shoulder. “So old they’ve gone brown.”
He waved his hand back and forth, to indicate the cross-passage. “Both ways look the same: they run ten paces or so and open out into rooms that look the same size, and stretch on to the west beyond where I can see. I’m going to-”
“ ’Ware!” Pennae shouted, pointing.
Agannor whirled to regard her, then back along the line of her pointing arm, in time to see brown bones rising into the air beyond the tripod.
The bones drew together into two eerily silent whirlwinds that built with frightening speed into two human skeletons, brown and tottering.
He took a step back, cursing and reaching for his blade. They danced forward, their finger bones lengthening into long claws and cold lights whirling into being in the dark depths of their eye sockets.
Pennae was through the bars like a racing eel, with Islif right behind her.
“Stoop! Clumsum!” Florin snapped, following her. “Can’t priests drive undeath down?”
Doust and Semoor looked at each other, swallowed in unison, and reluctantly started toward the bars.
“I don’t know how ’tis done, exactly. Don’t we need-”
“We’re not real priests, yet-”
Bones were slithering along the passages, gathering into untidy brown heaps, and whirling up into more skeletons, swaying and dancing. Florin blinked. Dancing?
The bones weren’t quite touching each other, and none of the skeletal feet were touching the stone tiles. The bones were all floating in the air, like biting flies swarming in clouds above ponds, rather than joined together.
Agannor snarled and slashed crosswise with his blade, shearing claws into bony shards. He ducked away wildly as that skeleton raked at him with its other hand-and Pennae crashed into it, hacking furiously with her daggers.
Islif smashed aside one claw with her own arm and swung her blade like a woodsman’s axe, hewing through ribs and spine. Her skeleton tottered but did not fall, its severed upper part bobbing in midair, apparently unaffected.
Doust swallowed, facing a skeleton, and in a trembling voice said, “By the luck of the Lady, I abjure thee! Go down! Go-”
Claws raked the air in front of his nose, and he stumbled back, something that was almost a shriek rising in his throat.
“They’ve triggered my spell.” The words were as cold and as calm as a crofter agreeing that the next village indeed lay in that direction. “You’re ready?”
“Aye: bows, windlasses, one quiver each.”
“Good. Maglor says there are nine of them. Two she-mages and two he-priests, both novices, Lathander and Tymora. Strike hard and then get out. Get clear before they can hit back, don’t tarry to do battle so they get good looks at you. Any of you who get wounded or worse must be brought out with you. Meet back here, this side of the stone. Understood?”
“Yes, Master Whisper.”
“Good. Go.”
The skeleton reached for him again, and Doust almost fell, wind-milling his arms to keep his feet.
Bey Freemantle lurched in front of him, snarling, “Don’t talk at it, priest! Hack it to shards!” The warrior proceeded to do just that, plying steel vigorously in both hands as bone shards tumbled in the air, forming a cloud around him.
Florin, Islif, and Agannor hacked separate paths through it, cleaving skulls and shattering shoulder blades-and still the bones came slithering, hissing along the floor in their scores and dozens, ere rising up in whirling spirals to form new skeletal foes.
Semoor stammered a long and impressive prayer against “walking undeath” as he waved his hands at the skeletons.
Without effect. Bones rose up before him, eyeless skulls grinning behind long fingerbones that came reaching…
Dove sipped. “Ahhh, nice broth. Thanks, Old Mage.”
“My pleasure, lass. Now ask thy questions.”
“Questions?” Dove gave the Mage of Shadowdale her most innocent look.
“Lass, that hasn’t fooled me since ye could toddle. Ask.”
“Right, then. The Zhents, in and about Eveningstar. Maglor’s just eyes and ears, yes?”
“Aye. Reports through intermediaries to Whisper, who reports to Sarhthor-when he must.”
Dove nodded. “Those two I know. I’ve been sensing others this last month, scrying and prying.”
Elminster shrugged. “Zhents crawl out from under stones by the score when they sniff opportunity. One-I know not who, yet-just found a way to strike at mantled elf mages.”
“So that’s what befell Arlathna. Know you a wraith Zhentarim? Or any entity that drifts about wraithlike, possessing living men?”
“I know of many such. Setting aside brief skulkings or fleeing in wraithform, only one Zhent, though: Old Ghost, he calls himself. Acts as a go-between for the lowliest Zhents and those just above them-Maglor and Whisper-yet serves Manshoon personally.”
“Standing-right, drifting-outside the Zhent chain of command. The sort of being you usually strike down.”
“Aye. Mystra has ordered otherwise.”
Astonishment made Dove’s eyes flare bright silver for an instant, and Elminster smiled and topped up her tankard.
Pennae drew back from the fray, winded, to watch these new dooms rise up, and saw something that made her eyes narrow.
Farther down the central passage, right in front of that menacing crossbow, a circle of finger-sized somethings whirled around and around above a particular floor tile: brown, dancing somethings.
She watched those tiny skeletons for a moment-then hefted one of her daggers, ducked a reaching skeletal claw, and threw her steel fang, hard and fast.
Her dagger crashed through the center of the whirling ring, bouncing and hopping with a flash and clang of steel, scattering tiny bones in all directions.
And all around the battling Swords, the remaining skeletons flew apart, shedding bones in all directions.
Pennae never saw them. She was watching her dagger skitter on across the tiles. It struck one of tripod’s feet and bounded into the air, heading for those tall bronzen double doors and the two figures on their pedestals before them. It was going to fall short, strike the stones, and skirl to a stop.
Unless her suspicions about those overly grand statues were correct. This had been an embattled lord’s hold, once, if that garrulous tavernmaster in Dhedluk had spoken truth-and not a man along the aleboard had disputed with him. And what lord spends good coin on such fripperies, unless he’s a madman who thinks himself Lord Emperor of All, or they’re part of a trap Sudden blue-white light cracked, lashing out from the male statue to strike her dagger aside. Tiny crawling lightnings hummed and snarled after it, their roots playing briefly across the breast of the statue.
They were answered from the female statue, deadly pale twisted fingers reaching through the air toward its crackling male counterpart.
Most of the Swords stood gaping at the lightnings, but Pennae took two swift steps sideways, to where she
