Share the affliction of spitting insults,
Shouting denunciations, and snarling orders
Only to vanish like shadows before full sun
When the killing starts.
So what, by the holy light of Lathander, is going on in this inn?” Semoor demanded, staring down at the eyeless bodies of the serving-jacks. “Does the innkeeper not know these corpses are down here? Or did he herd us down here so he can ‘find’ us with the bodies and blame their murders on us?”
Islif shrugged. “The rest of us know how to ask questions too. ’Tis answers we’re short of providing.” She lifted her head to gaze warily around into the darkness. “Doust, fetch down that lantern-on the pillar by your head, there. We need it lit. There are rooms ahead of us and behind us. The stairs are the only way we know to depart these cellars, so we must guard them, but otherwise stick together, as we master what’s where in these cellars, and who or what can harm us down here. I dislike surprises.”
“Really?” Semoor murmured. “You surprise me.”
“Whereas you,” Islif murmured, “utterly fail to amuse me with such pointless witticisms at this particular time. Florin?”
“I’ve always hated having foes or the unknown behind me,” the ranger said slowly, “but this time, for some reason, I very much want to go on. Straight ahead, in that direction. If these bodies were left for us to find, they might have been intended as a ‘turn back from here’ warning, to keep us from proceeding…”
Pennae nodded, walked around the bodies to the bare floor beyond them, and murmured, “Then let’s go this way. This is a large room to leave empty. With open stairs down from the common room, I was expecting to see a dozen kegs or more, right here at the bottom of the stairs. Or empty chests or potato bins or something. The running of this inn seems strange.”
Doust nodded. “D’you think that man at the gate was waiting for us, to send us straight into a prepared trap?” Under his careful hands, the lantern flared smokily into life.
“Huh-uh,” Pennae disagreed. “We’re not that important, that every town and village we ride into will have a trap ready-waiting for us. Let’s go find this treasure.” Her fellow Knights nodded, and they started to move.
“Ah,” Semoor asked, “but what if it’s a trap for all unwelcome visiting adventurers, not the Knights of Myth Drannor specifically?”
No one answered him.
“Keep together,” Florin reminded everyone, as they walked cautiously into the darkness.
“Doorway,” Pennae murmured, almost immediately. “Nothing else except… yes, a few old barrels and crates that look like they’ve been rotting down here for years, over in yon corner.”
“Lead on,” Florin urged. “Islif?”
“I’ll guard our rear,” she murmured, “alongside our holynoses. Where did all those rats run to, I wonder?”
“Rooms beyond rooms we haven’t found, yet,” Pennae replied, lifting her lantern to peer at the massive ceiling-beams overhead. Black with thick-shrouded cobwebs, they sprouted uneven rows of rusty storage-hooks that should have supported bulging nets of onions and garlic, or rotting arnark boughs sprouting fistfuls of kitchen mushrooms, but instead were all empty.
“Every one,” she murmured, half to herself. “No guests, no food-is Doust right? Did they open this inn just for us? The stables seemed busy enough, but…”
She went cautiously to the open doorway and peered through, half-closing the shutters of her lantern to make its light a beam she could aim into the darkness beyond. She checked the floor and ceiling just past that door-opening, then to left and right, hard by the door, to make sure no one-or thing — was lurking to stab or pounce on any Knight of Myth Drannor bold enough to step through.
No lurking foe, and no fallen door nor any sign the opening had ever been fitted with one. The room beyond was crowded with kegs in wooden cradles, and crates of food. Onionskins were strewn across the floor, and here and there she saw the beady gazes of rats peering back at her.
In short, all of the clutter Pennae had expected to find at the foot of the stairs. There was a faint glow coming from the far end of the room. She turned aside her lantern, and made sure of it. Yes, another doorway, or door standing open, and coming through its gap, a soft, steady golden glow.
“What we’re looking for may well lie just ahead,” she murmured, without looking away from the room through the doorway. “Come and see.”
The Knights pressed in close around her, and she opened the lantern wide again.
“We’re guarding the rear,” Islif reminded Doust. “Keep your lantern and your eyes facing back that way. We’ll have plenty of time to see this next room when we’re in it.”
“Tymora bids me take chances,” Doust told her with dignity, but whatever else he might have gone on to say was lost in her reply.
“You’re adventuring. I’d say that’s more than chance enough,” Islif said. “If you want your life to swiftly grow more chancy, just ignore my bidding again, and I’ll see that it does-with an alacrity that’s certain to please Lady Luck.”
“How many places are there where you think an armed man could hide from us, amid those casks and such?” Florin asked Pennae, waving at the room beyond the doorway.
“Six at least… four more, perhaps,” she murmured. “I’ll know better once I’m over the threshold. Stay close to me, but when I look right, down the room, be sure you face left and watch sharp.”
Without waiting for a reply, she lowered the lantern and stepped through the doorway. Florin scrambled to follow. The rest of the Knights leaned forward to watch. Islif had to disgustedly take hold of Doust’s shoulder and firmly turn him around to face back the way they’d come.
“I’ll ‘Tymora’ you, see if I don’t,” she muttered fiercely into his ear.
Behind them, Pennae and Florin had found no foes, and were already down the crowded cellar room to that far doorway, and peering cautiously around its edge, lantern entirely hooded, to try to see the source of the glow.
Then they gasped softly, in unison, at the sight of Treasure. Golden treasure-a long, low heap of rods and scepters and wands and thick spellbooks, coins spilling out of chests and gems glittering inside open coffers, a harp and a sword and something that looked like a shield with horns and fins of metal filigree projecting from it. The golden hue bathed everything, and came not from the heap itself-a pile about as long as two Jhessails laid end to end, and about as high as her head, when she was sitting on the ground-but from the guardian ring of swords that hung in the air above it.
Four-and-ten… no, six-and-ten swords, all identical, with long slender blades, black hilts and black, hooked quillons, floating silently in the air point-down, that steady golden glow running down the sides of their blades and thrusting like the beam of a spell from their points, lighting the air golden as well as Emmaera Dragonfire’s treasures beneath.
“This, Florin, is why one goes adventuring,” Pennae murmured. “The favor of kings and the kisses of princesses and noble ladies are well enough, but they fade or are swept away with the passing days and years- whereas gold and magic endure, gleaming and unchanged.”
“We’d best go tell everyone,” Florin murmured. “ Don’t go touching it, now! Not one bauble!”
Pennae crooked an eyebrow at him. “With that many swords hanging there waiting for my blood? Not likely!”
They turned and hastened back through the room of casks and crates. “We found it,” Florin told the waiting Knights. “Just as the innkeeper described it. I-”
“ ‘Ware!” Islif snapped. “Weapons out! ”
Everyone turned to stare where she was looking. Past the stairs that had brought them down here, into the darkness where a broad and sudden blue glow was just dying away-and eight hard-eyed men in robes were standing, in a spot that had been dark and empty a moment before.
“Knights of Myth Drannor!” one of them boomed. “In the name of King Azoun, fourth of that name, who
