Entertainment.”
The air was thick with dust, and the coughing, choking Knights, Laspeera, and a tattered and dusty Dauntless all lay in a heap, entangled with each other. The ceiling no longer groaned and shivered into shards-but it now hung just above them, nowhere more than waist-high, held up on the points of nine floating, glowing swords.
Pennae eyed the Dragonfire swords longingly. They were so close that she could easily have stroked the golden sheen of three of those blades from where she lay. Yet it was obvious that trying to take even one might well cause a collapse, and death for everyone.
She sighed. “ Now what?”
Half-pinned beneath her, Florin lifted a long arm to point down their low-ceilinged prison at one of the doorways that had been outlined in sparks by the awakening of the Dragonfire magic. It was the only portal not now walled away by rubble, and it continued to twinkle, wavering slightly as they stared at it.
“We take the only way out,” the ranger-Knight said, “and hope for the best.”
Jhessail shuddered. “And if it leads into somewhere alive with snarling beasts? Or wizards hurling spells at us?”
Florin shrugged. “I haven’t avenged Narantha yet,” he said softly. “So I cannot die. Wherefore, if you keep behind me, you should be safe.”
Jhessail stared at his eyes and shivered.
Florin looked up and down the tangle of Knights and Crown folk, and pointed again at the portal. “I say again: we chance the portal. Now.”
“And we don’t even touch any of those swords,” Islif added, looking at Pennae. “Not one, and not even for an instant. So shift your selves carefully. Let’s move. ”
“Our holynoses?”
“Drag them. Gently.”
Semoor groaned theatrically. “Oh, yes. ‘Drag me. Gently.’ Wonderful. ”
“Upon second thinking,” Islif said, “bring Doust and leave the noisy one behind to guard these valuable magic swords. We should be able to return in a year or so. He won’t lack for entertainment, nor starve; he can chew on his own words.”
“Drag me please, ” Semoor pleaded, quickly.
“Aye, I’ll drag you,” Dauntless growled. “Lady Mage?”
Laspeera had seemed senseless, but her eyelids fluttered as he shook her gently. “Lady Laspeera? Lady of the war wizards?”
She gasped, opened one eye, winced and gasped again, and finally murmured, “I–I’ll be all right. My head… someone just cast spells, up above us, that smote my head like a hammer.”
“Oh?” Semoor asked brightly. “You’ve been smitten with hammers before?”
“Yes, Holy Wolftooth,” Laspeera replied, “I have. If it’s a sensation you’re seeking to know firsthand, I’m sure Ornrion Dahauntul can oblige you, when we reach a place that has a hammer.”
“And room enough to swing it,” Dauntless grunted, as they crawled down the chamber, clambering through the rubble until they could pass-one by flaring one-through the waiting portal.
Dauntless found himself at the rear of this undignified journey, with his leathers in tatters and all trace of anything that might have been deemed a Purple Dragon uniform all but gone. Though he was behind everyone, Laspeera turned in front of the portal, frowning, and waved him through.
He hesitated. “Lady? Is this wise?”
“Disobeying my orders?” she muttered, eyes catching fire. “No, not wise at all, Ornrion Dahauntul!”
He nodded, bowed his head wordlessly, and crawled past her into the waiting, silent fire.
Laspeera sighed and shook her head. It was by merest chance she’d happened to remember the potions. Gods above, was this the beginning of getting old?
No matter. That could be worried about later. Right now, she had to crawl back, paw around in the rubble to find them, and bring them along.
“Doing what is needful and best for the realm,” she murmured, smiling wryly. “Just as I do every day.” She winced her way over some knee-jabbing fragments of stone. “Well, ’tis a life.”
With one arm cradling potions, she turned once more to face the waiting portal, crawled a little way, and then stopped and looked longingly up at the nearest Dragonfire sword, floating so near, its glowing point so close overhead.
Upon a whim she silently reached for one. Its glow blazed up as if in welcome as her long fingers got close…
Then Laspeera of the Wizards of War shrugged, smiled, shook her head, drew her arm firmly back, and used it to crawl steadily through the portal.
Lord Prester Yellander stood at the back door of his hunting lodge, and stared out into the depths of the Hullack Forest, at a wild and familiar beauty that didn’t seem to hold any answers.
Ignoring the questioning looks the swordjacks guarding the door were giving him, Lord Yellander hauled the door shut, dropped its bar into place for good measure, and turned back to face Lord Blundebel Eldroon.
“I still don’t know what to do now,” he snapped, waving an angry hand. “So speak. ‘Confer with me worriedly,’ as the writers-of-plays say. Everything seems to be going wrong.”
Lord Eldroon said, “I have little comfort to give. You saw what I saw.”
The two nobles exchanged grim looks. Both of their Halfhap portals now opened into sagging, splintered- wood ruin. It seemed the Oldcoats Inn had been destroyed. Purple Dragons wading in that rubble had seen and shouted at the bullyblades Yellander and Eldroon sent through the portals to learn more. Those blades had hastily returned, but there was no telling how soon Purple Dragons might-would-come flooding into the hunting lodge through those portals.
“We must put this all behind us, or our heads and shoulders will soon want for each other’s company,” Yellander muttered. Then he clapped his hands, drew himself up briskly, and went back to the door.
“Brorn, Steldurth: Bring all the lads in here! At once!” he barked. To Eldroon’s silent, questioning look, he murmured, “Later.”
When his four-and-ten surviving bullyblades were assembled, Lord Yellander crisply directed them to heap the furniture in the room into two long barricades well out from the walls, facing the two portals both before and behind.
“Poisoned bolts,” he commanded. “You are to await and fell anyone coming through these magical ways except Lord Eldroon or myself-or anyone with us, if we tell you to refrain from slaying them. Keep at this duty in shifts, until I order you to cease, even if that’s a tenday or more hence. Use the other rooms to sleep, eat, and cook. Keep hidden behind the barricades when in this one, and keep all doors closed. If Purple Dragons come to the outer doors, you know not where I am, and are guarding these portals-which just appeared, startling myself and the Lord Eldroon very much-for the safety of the realm, awaiting our return with war wizards to deal with them. You’ve never been through them, you don’t even want to go near them, and you don’t know where they lead.”
Collecting their nods of obedience, Yellander nodded curtly back at his men and turned away, tapping Eldroon’s forearm in a silent direction to walk with him.
Together they strode through the door that led into a retiring room, and thence to Yellander’s bedchamber. As the door swung shut behind them, Yellander silently directed Eldroon to help him lift and set into place its inner door-bar, as soundlessly as possible.
Then he hurried into the bedchamber, turned immediately through a door to enter the adjoining jakes, and turned again to pass through a small door into a wardrobe. Eldroon followed silently, following Yellander down a dark row of hanging cloaks, breeches, doublets, and boots, to a sliding panel at its end that flooded the wardrobe with cold blue light. There was just room in the cubicle beyond for them both to stand, breast to breast, without touching the portal itself. Yellander slid the panel closed again.
“Where?” Eldroon whispered, jerking his head at the cold blue fire so close to them.
“Suzail. Where we’ve been these last two days, engaged in the longest and most fascinating game of castleboard either of us has ever played.”
“Ah. Are we off to slay Crownsilver?”
Yellander lifted an incredulous eyebrow. “While he can still play the guilty traitor responsible for all? Far from it!” He inclined his head toward the panel they’d just come through and murmured merrily, “Truly, ’tis amazing, in a
