that no one heard.
People were crowding around the preening princess, as she sipped thankfully from the cooling-spout of the most ornate soup bowl in the tavern, and sighed her appreciation. Everyone was trying to get a good look at royalty, and many faces wore a hesitancy that betokened an inward war between wanting to touch the princess for good luck, and not daring such a boldness lest it offend-and cause spell-hidden war wizards and Purple Dragons melt out of the air to slay anyone so profaning an Obarskyr.
Old retired Purple Dragons shuffled forward in reverent silence, and outlanders peered and even stood on chairs to feed their curiosity. Among all the others seeking to gaze upon the Princess Alusair, no one noticed a lone diner-a quiet little man in a dark weathercloak, tunic, and breeches-eyeing the princess very thoughtfully from his nearby table. He nodded, as if in respect, rose, edged out of the press of awed Cormyreans, ducked through a curtain into a back room, and failed to emerge again.
Chapter 5
It’s not all the bowing and fawning over princesses as turns my stomach whilst giving me bloody wounds and white hairs.
No. It’s rescuing the princesses-again! when they blunder witlessly into doom after doom. Hard life lesson after hard life lesson that our heroics let them ignore.
No wonder they learn so little.
The eerie silence faded. Florin’s lunging, rearing horse almost brained him on a low crossbeam for the third time. He gave up on staying in the saddle and flung himself sideways into a heap of hay.
Pennae rolled over and over on the floor, viciously stabbing the man she grappled with, her dagger wet and glistening to her very knuckles. As the man’s groans ended, she rolled to her feet, giving Florin a cheerful grin, and sprinted across the stables to pounce on a man who was trying to haul Jhessail out of her saddle.
As her dagger found the man’s ribs from behind, the lashing hooves of Jhessail’s terrified mount crashed into him from the front. The man crumpled, Pennae coolly slitting his throat as they went into the straw together. Florin saw a trail of three sprawled corpses behind the one he’d seen her slay.
Three brightnesses flared from someone’s fingertips at the far end of the stables-and streaked through the air, curving around pillars to follow the hastening, battling Knights-and Florin saw Pennae gasp and reel as one of the spell-bolts struck her. An instant later, Islif grunted and stiffened in midparry, her attacker seizing the chance to drive her blade aside and send her staggering back. As Florin launched himself at the man, the last missile struck Doust and slammed him head-first into a pillar. He fell without a sound.
Florin’s charge carried him into the swordsman with a solid crash. The man went down. Florin trampled him and ran on, heading for the spot where some Zhentarim wizard had cast that spell. Islif could handle her foes without his aid, but if that mage took it into his head to, say, blast a few of the pillars with a fire spell that brought the stables down on top of them all and set it afire…
The Zhents all seemed to wear motley leathers and everyday traders’ vests and boots, and to be wielding similarly mismatched swords and daggers. They also seemed to be dying very swiftly-behind him, a man screamed suddenly and started choking wetly, and he heard Pennae laugh and call, “I’ve run out of foes again! Over here, all craven assailants!”-which would not be viewed favorably by the Watch of Arabel.
Was this whole affair a trap? These men had appeared the moment the war wizard took himself away. Who was left to attest that the Knights had been given these mounts and weren’t just horse-thieves in the night?
Those thoughts took Florin up a dimly seen hayloft ladder, a fleeing black robe flapping not far ahead of him, and out through an open hatch in a frantic, stumbling run so he could get through before the wizard readied any sort of spell, onto a rooftop of old shakes slippery in the slackening rain.
The wizard was backing away from him with an uncertain sneer, as more Zhent warriors waving swords and daggers came hurrying from the warehouse roof to surround him in a protective ring-and then advance on Florin. Ten… a dozen… Florin planted himself, and wondered how long it would take a newly knighted young ranger from Espar to die.
In the back room of the Old Warhound tavern, Andaero Hardtower of the Zhentarim hissed fiercely into the face of the short man in the dark weathercloak, “Ravelo, I don’t care if all the kings of every last Border Kingdom are out in the taproom-and all their jeweled strumpets too! I’m late reporting in and the scrying crystal’s starting to glow and I must be alone! Get gone!”
Scowling, Ravelo whirled around and ducked out-just as the palm-sized crystal ball in front of Hardtower flickered into sudden glowing life, and a cold voice asked, without bothering with any greeting, “Well? What idiocy are you up to now? ”
“N-none, Lord Sarhthor!” Andaero gasped excitedly. “All but a handful of my forces are busy carrying out Lathalance’s orders right now!”
There was a sigh. “And just what orders did Lathalance give?”
“He bade us see this night to the elimination of the Knights of Myth Drannor. They have a pendant we are to seize. Lathalance says slaying them and getting that bauble will shatter and once and for all end the schemes of the Royal Magician and the Blackstaff of Waterdeep and their confounded Harpers, and hand Shadowdale to us. ”
The glowing crystal was showing no image in its depths-and that suddenly seemed like a good thing to Andaero, as it erupted in a stream of snarled curses that ended in an exasperated, “Stop them, fool!”
“T-too late,” Hardtower stammered. “They’re fighting the Knights right now!”
“Do you command a drunken rabble,” Sarhthor inquired icily, “or Zhentilar warriors?”
“A-a drunken rabble, Lord. All the men you trained have been killed fighting the Knights and all the roused Dragons in Arabel, with Baron Thomdor leading them! These we have now are our spies and lazynecks, plus all I could induce with coin to fight for us-or coerce by threat of exposing them to the Dragons-in a day. Neldrar leads them.”
“Then let them die, and Neldrar with them, and get yourself well away from it all,” Sarhthor ordered coldly. “Now.”
As the crystal started to dim, Hardtower heard the fading beginnings of an incantation, and shivered as he recognized it.
The tall, slender double doors of flame-hued, glossy copper parted, and a cloaked half-elf who was also tall and slender stepped through them and drew them firmly closed behind him. Even before they closed in velvet silence, the dwarf who’d been leaning against a curved wall, waiting, stepped forward to block the half-elf’s path, and squinted up to ask gruffly, “And what was all that about, aye?”
“Well met, Raurig,” the half-elf said with a smile that hinted otherwise, but added smoothly, “The High Lady desires closer ties of trade and friendship with the Forest Kingdom, Cormyr.”
“And so?”
“And so will shortly announce the investiture of a new envoy to the Royal Court of King Azoun, in Suzail.”
“Who will be-? Gods above, Laroncel, getting specifics out of ye is like prodding a sullen orc prisoner!”
“Oh? Well, that seems fitting, Raurig. Entertaining your questions always seems much akin to answering an angry orc trying to browbeat replies out of a captive! I have good reason to believe Lady Alustriel still possesses a mouth-”
“Heh! I’ll bet ye do!”
“I see no need at all for low coarseness, Raurig, nor for allusions to matters not now under discussion. As I
