signed your charter, I command you to down weapons! In the name of Queen Filfaeril, who granted your knighthoods, I demand your ready obedience. We are war wizards, of the fair kingdom of Cormyr, and we would have peaceable speech with you.”
Florin and Islif both grounded their blades, putting their sword points to the floor.
“Florin Falconhand am I,” the ranger announced, “and I have every intention of obeying the Crown of Cormyr. Yet words are spoken easily, and I have only this handful of yours to say that you speak with royal authority-and it is that very same royal authority you invoke that allows us to bear arms within the realm. Is your royal authority somehow better than mine? Moreover, we do not now stand within the Forest Kingdom, but in a border protectorate. What laws and authority apply at all? I desire no dispute with any of you, and so seek to know more, that I may best decide how to proceed. I have given you my name, Lord Mage. Might I now know yours?”
“Taeroch am I,” the wizard replied, “and I am not accustomed to having to repeat clear and reasonable orders. Sir Florin, I say agai-”
During the converse, one of the war wizards had quietly stepped back from the line of cross-armed, expressionless mages, and half turned away. He whirled back to face the Knights again, with a wand in his hitherto-empty hand-aimed at his nearest fellow war wizard.
He fired it, moving it to blast not just that man, but the next and the next. As he drew a second wand with his other hand, to unleash smiting magic in the wake of the first.
Those three wizards stiffened as their shielding spells flared and were swiftly overwhelmed. Even before they could turn and shout, they were staggering and falling, blasted where they stood.
The Knights stood aghast as the mage with the wands turned to serve the other four the same way.
They were fast, and were already striking at him with wand-blasts and ring-beams of their own-but even before his mantle-spell collapsed in a roiling chaos of short-lived black stars, the Knights saw the wizard’s eyes go dark and empty, and something like a wraith rush out of his soundlessly screaming mouth.
By the time the renegade war wizard was being torn apart by four magical dooms lancing into him at once, the wraith-thing had plunged into the face of the nearest of the four remaining war wizards.
He turned stiffly to point at the Knights and scream, “ They’re doing it! Their magic-in my mind! Stop them! ”
Doust and Semoor gaped in utter astonishment, but Florin and Islif were already racing forward, and Pennae promptly hurled her lit lantern into the accusing face of that war wizard and yelled, “Scatter!”
The Knights scattered, as men with swords and daggers in their hands came charging down the common room stairs-and plunged into the war wizards, thrusting and hacking.
“Brors!” a war wizard shouted as Florin reached him.
The man Pennae had just struck staggered past, screaming and clawing at a face whose beard-through the blood spilled by the many shards of glass-was flaming and shriveling, and the wraithlike thing started streaming out of him again.
Jhessail slashed at it with her dagger, but found herself slicing nothing more tangible than smoke, and hearing horrible whispering laughter in her ears that seemed to say, See, Old Ghost? Horaundoon does know how to obey!
The air around the stairs erupted in a sudden rain of bright fire that left many men shouting in pain and sagging back, as the wizard Brors hurled a spell intended to drive Florin and Islif away from his colleague.
A dagger came whirling down the stairs, flashing harmlessly past the war wizard’s head. In its wake, the thunder of boots on the stairs announced the arrival of a second wave of bullyblades with swords and daggers-and as they sprang down to join the fray, these reinforcements roared, “Zhentarim forever! Zhentarim triumphant! ”
Lords Yellander and Eldroon stood in the darkened, tapestry-hung private dining room with Yellander’s crossbowmen, all of them listening intently to what could be heard through the half-open door into the common room of the Oldcoats Inn. Behind them, the cold blue fire of their portal flickered almost hungrily.
As the Zhentarim war cry rang back off the common room rafters, Yellander turned and snapped, “Now! Quickly!”
He waved his waiting crossbowmen past him, toward the door. “Before anyone gets the upper hand! Use poisoned tips! Kill wizards first!”
The crossbowmen streamed past him and banged through the door.
The two nobles grinned at each other. “Why, I do believe it would be highly prudent to be elsewhere about now,” Yellander drawled-and ducked back through the portal, Eldroon hard on his heels.
Eldroon’s rearmost boot was just vanishing into the throbbing blueness when a tapestry across the room was thrust aside.
The hand moving that worn and none-too-clean cloth belonged to Laspeera of the war wizards-who strode across the room with a purposeful cluster of veteran war wizards right behind her, and plunged through the portal after the two noble traitors.
The wizards followed in smooth haste; Andabral, Torthym, Larlammitur, Alsketh, Cordorve, and the least battle-experienced, Yassandra, last.
At least, that was the intended order. Yassandra, bringing up the rear, smiled crookedly at the shimmering blue portal in front of her-and whirled away from it to head across the ground floor of the Oldcoats Inn.
Toward the cellars.
“It is good,” the dead, purple lips of Lathalance mumbled, before Old Ghost billowed out of him to tower over Horaundoon. And smile.
Behind the two wraithlike spirits, as they raced out into Halfhap, the Zhentarim’s abandoned body lolled limply in the chair at the center of his rented inn room.
Old Ghost and Horaundoon scudded along alleyways and over rooftops like one wisp of smoke chasing another, eager to possess local Zhentarim and draw them into the fray at Oldcoats.
It seemed the mageling Tantarlus hadn’t thought about chimneys when casting wards around his home, so two unwelcome-but utterly unnoticed-guests curled like lazy smoke along the bottom of tapestries as he yelled excitedly to the mouth inset into the center of his corner table, “This is a Bane-bestowed chance to slaughter many war wizards! Send as many of the Brotherhood as you can through my portal!”
“All right, Tantarlus,” the mouth said, “you needn’t shout. Some of your fellow magelings-those you trained with at the Citadel-will shortly be arriving in your parlor. They will need to be directed to the inn. See to it.”
The mouth closed and faded into dark, carved immobility. Tantarlus covered it reverently with the cloth that customarily concealed it, put the oil lamp back in its usual place atop that cloth-and stiffened as Old Ghost plunged into him, possessing him with far greater care than Horaundoon had used on the war wizards.
But then, Old Ghost had no intention of burning out this useful host yet. He turned to Horaundoon. “Keep hidden from the arriving magelings,” he ordered. “They will be all too eager to blast anything that interests them.”
“And you are?”
“Off through the portal in the other direction, to Zhentil Keep. Where Tantarlus of the Zhentarim will eloquently exaggerate this skirmish into something that demands an even larger response.”
“Will they listen to a mere mageling, stationed as local eyes in Halfhap?”
“Yes, if that mageling speaks forcefully enough of great magic to be gained, a chance to break the strength of the local war wizards, seize control of Halfhap, butcher the Purple Dragon garrison, and provoke Cormyr into sending forth an army that can then be blasted at will.”
Dauntless glared at the streets and hovels of Halfhap as if they personally affronted him-and would serve all Faerun better if they were hurled down before the next nightfall. Weary and stubble-chinned, he was sore from riding through the night, and not even snarling at the gate-guards until they openly cowered had given him any satisfaction.
At least they’d reluctantly imparted the information that the Knights of Myth Drannor had reached Halfhap and been directed to the Oldcoats Inn, though Dauntless had felt the silent contempt of his five picked Purple Dragons, boring into his back, all the while he’d bullied the two guards.
He was beyond caring. He just wanted to arrest the Knights, clap them in the dungeons of the Halfhap keeps, and get some sleep. They could be questioned as to the whereabouts of Lord Duskur Ebonhawk’s belongings-a lot of coin, in a cloth-of-gold-covered metal purse with the black hawkhead family badge on its clasps-later. Now,
