could clearly see her dagger. It had stopped just in front of the northernmost of the bronzen double doors, a tiny wisp of smoke drifting lazily up from its scorched hilt.
The watcher leaned forward to stare hard into the crystal, the fingers of one hand pausing in their usual stroking of the unicorn-headed ring on the other hand. Was this a magic that could in time be used to fell the mighty Vangerdahast?
Or could these adventurers become the weapon that would slay the royal magician, and leave Cormyr unguarded, for the taking?
The last lightning bolts leaped and snapped, and the Swords gave each other grim smiles.
“This will come as a deep surprise, I’m sure,” Islif said gruffly, “but I’m not in favor of proceeding to yon doors.”
The answering chuckles were dry. Amid them, Pennae leaned forward far enough to peer up and down the cross-passage, and Agannor grinned and came over to her with his lantern.
“Doust, Semoor, Bey, Martess,” Florin said gently. “Mount you a rearguard right here, while the rest of us go south down this cross-passage, to see what we may see.”
Agannor gave the forester a challenging glance, just for an instant, then shrugged and started down the cross-passage, Pennae right beside him and Islif trotting to catch up. Jhessail rolled her eyes and followed, Florin with her.
A bare ten paces on, the passage opened out into a room, a dark doorway yawning in its western wall-and another passage branching off through its east wall.
“Halt,” Pennae told everyone, in a voice of iron, before she ducked low and leaned out to shine her beam- lantern down the passage. It ran on a slant, back toward the rooms and passages they’d already been in, to end in a bare, angled wall. Pennae’s eyes narrowed again.
She prowled along the short, doorless passage to its end, where she peered at the stone wall, running her fingers along cracks and tool marks and-aha!
“A secret door,” she called back, her voice shrill with excitement. “And I can open it!”
Her fingers had already found two hollows wherein something clicked under her fingertips-and the door trembled, grating ever-so-slightly.
Agannor and Islif came hurrying along the passage, blades drawn. “Not before we-”
Pennae gave them both an “oh, please ” look, and thrust the door wide. Though it proved to be thicker than her own body, piercing a wall of the same girth, it made no further sound, nor opened with any difficulty. She could push its ponderous weight with a fingertip.
The three Swords peered together into the room of the puddle and the heap of weapons. It was very much as they’d left it, holding no sign of lurking beasts, spies, or anyone but themselves.
Pennae studied the exposed doorframe for a moment, then the balance of the hinges and the frame behind them, too. Then she peered at the door-edge, looking for locks and catches and finding just the one she’d opened. She threw up a hand. “Wait here a moment.”
Then she was through the door and across the room like an arrow in flight, fetching up in front of the far wall with narrowed eyes and searching fingers. After a moment she nodded in satisfaction and thrust her fingers into two widely separated tool gouges.
Another concealed door promptly clicked open in the wall, its outlines appearing out of the weathered stone as if by magic. It was just as thick as the first one, but moved even more quietly. Recently used.
Pennae peered quickly into another slantwise passage, a mirror image of the one she’d just traversed. Seeing nothing but stone walls and an utter lack of marauding beasts, she hooked her fingertips into two other handy hollows to pull the door closed again. Its click was barely audible.
“Another slantwise passage, running so,” she told the others, gesturing to indicate its position, as they hastened to rejoin Florin and Jhessail.
Jhessail greeted them with a frown. “Is it wise to go running off in twos and threes?”
“No,” Islif agreed. “A mistake we’ll not repeat.” She gave Agannor a glance. “I hope.”
“We must never leave some area unexplored, that could conceal a man-or even a biting snake-between us and the way out,” Pennae warned them all, “lest we get trapped in here by a monster-or a band of outlaws.”
Her fellow Swords, up and down the passage, nodded soberly.
“So, shall we continue?” Agannor asked, waving at the empty room before them, where the passage ended and that dark doorway awaited.
“Yes.” Florin turned to look back at the rearguard. “All quiet?”
They both nodded, and the forester added, “Pennae and Islif to the fore. Agannor right behind, ready to charge in. Then you, Jhessail.”
Pennae quickly circled the empty room, peering at the walls and ceiling. When she reached the doorway, she stepped well back to shine her lantern inside.
The Swords saw a table and chairs, some of the latter overturned or hacked apart. Bunk beds around the walls, some hewn and splintered. Strongchests under the lower bunks, their locks and hasps smashed. A door-ajar into darkness-in the middle of the south wall, with something odd huddled on the floor in front of it; something of a stonelike hue.
Pennae moved closer, shining her light everywhere. No other doors, no corpses or brown bones. No tools or weapons lying anywhere. “In,” she told Islif and Agannor, “and watch that door. Don’t push it open. I’m for the chests.”
They proved to be empty, and their damp wood crumbled at a touch like badly made nutbread. By the time Pennae was finished looking at all of them and behind them, at the underside of the table and all around the bunks, Agannor and Islif had looked long and hard at the stony mass on the floor, prodding it with their swords and shifting it aside to make sure no hole or anything else was concealed beneath it. The rest of the Swords watched from the doorway. Pennae thrust aside chairs and the remnants of chairs to clear a wide path from doorway to where Agannor and Islif stood.
“Look at this,” Agannor told everyone, pointing at the stone heap with his sword.
From the doorway, Jhessail did just that. When she spoke, her voice sounded uneasy, on the edge of disgust. “What is it?”
Even curled up as it was, it was a little thing, all stumpy legs and long, gangly arms, with a malicious face, flat-nosed and fang-mouthed, glaring down at the broken short sword it held. Its ears were pointed like a cat’s, and it wore armor made of random plates of salvaged, battered human armor tied together in an untidy, overlapping array.
“Never seen a goblin before?” Agannor’s voice was bleak. “This is-or was-a goblin. Something’s turned it to stone.”
Chapter 14
Find your swords, ye who still have eyes to see them, hands to wield them, and wits enough left to search for them. Polish them if it heartens ye, and drink a last goblet to those who have already fallen. Then gather ye with sword and shield by the old oak, and await my coming.
We are fated to die, and may as well do it together, achieving some small vengement upon our foes, as do it apart, falling alone beneath the blades of laughing foes.
So strike as one, for Cormyr, and go down into darkness with savage smiles, and the blood of dying foes on your blades. Seek not to flee or hold aloof from the fray; ’tis too late for that.
The dark days are come at last.
Andrath Dragonarl,
Knight of Cormyr
A Call to Arms pinned to trees throughout the realm in the Year of the Floating Rock
D ark days for the realm, indeed,” Blundebel Eldroon growled, setting down his gigantic tallglass. It was now
