Laspeera smiled. “ ‘Oho,’ indeed. Yes, Pennae, the treasury vaults are somewhere behind us. Before you race off in search of them, know this: the guardians of those vaults were old and wise a thousand years ago, and they can destroy any of us with casual ease.”
Semoor looked interested. “Even the Royal Magician?”
“If he’s not careful. Just now he’s being very careful: he’s hunting you. Now, have I your word that you’ll peacefully accompany me to where I can translocate all of you safely to Shadowdale, right now, or am I going to have to-”
Pennae launched herself into the air, hurling herself right at the war wizard. Dauntless stepped forward to clutch at her, but she kicked his hands aside-and slapped Laspeera’s face as she hurtled past.
The war wizard reeled, threw up her hand to the spot of blood now welling up on her cheek, and murmured a little sadly, “Poison?”
“Sleep venom,” Pennae said tenderly, lifting her hand to display a fanged ring on the inside of one finger.
Laspeera nodded-and toppled over. Florin caught her, even as Dauntless cursed and clawed out his sword.
Pennae sprang back at the ornrion, and did a handstand right in front of his reaching blade to arch over in the wake of his swinging steel and kick him in the face.
Shaking his head and growling, Dauntless grabbed at her knee to haul her down.
Pennae slapped twice at his hand as he hauled at her, but he twisted away to protect his face and managed to kick her arm aside, winning himself room enough to pluck her up by breast and back of knee-and charge her hard into the passage wall, putting his shoulder into her.
Pennae gasped as something snapped wetly-Jhessail shuddered-and the ornrion ground her against the unyielding stones. Half-hidden behind his bulk, the thief-Knight sobbed.
“You little bitch,” Dauntless growled, waving his sword wildly to keep the other Knights at bay. “If you’ve harmed Lasleeeraaahhh…”
As his voice trailed off into gurgles, he sagged down the length of Pennae’s body to the floor. By the time he reached her boots, he was snoring.
Pennae kicked herself free of him and went to Laspeera in Florin’s arms, wincing as she bent over to snatch the last few potions from the war wizard’s belt. Drinking one, she thrust the others through her belt.
“Pennae,” Florin snapped, into her sweating face, “ what have you done? ”
“Won us a little time to rescue the princesses!” Pennae blazed back at him. Then she looked from Knight to Knight, and raised her voice. “Listen! There’s a conspiracy to kill Lord High-and-Mighty Vangerdahast and the king, and the queen-and I’m beginning to think all the war wizards except Vangey are in on it! See that?”
She pointed down the passage, at where the words were written on the wall.
“ ‘Leak here,’ ” Semoor said slowly. “Doesn’t look as if anyone’s obeyed it yet…”
“Ha-ha. Look yon, across from it. Any writing there?”
“No.”
“Good. This side is one wizard saying he’s ready. If there were another ‘Leak here’ yonder, it would mean the other wizard was ready, too, and to start it all by grabbing the princesses. Well, we’ve got to stop it! You heard Laspeera: Vangey’s hunting us. Well, the Royal hrasting Magician doesn’t hunt with dogs or riders in the forest: he hunts with spells. I want him off my well-rounded rump now — and henceforth. You saved the princess! That ought to be worth some thing! If we can get to the queen and get her to order Vangey off our trail and work with us, mayhap we can stop this treason.”
“It’ll be one more order he disobeys,” Semoor said sourly. “That man is a law unto himself.”
“Well, then,” Pennae said angrily, “isn’t it time we were too?”
Faerun holds many deep, dank stone chambers.
Chambers beyond counting, most built by hands now forgotten and crumbled to dust, many for purposes now unregarded. A man may spend a lifetime just visiting the rooms that are safe to enter, free of hauntings and monsters, and those not guarded by the jealous vengeance of kings and rich merchants, who regard every visitor as a thief bent on stealing what they have hidden down there.
Even an elder elf or a tireless dwarf may exhaust their days before seeing and counting all such chambers, even if they limit themselves to those no more deeply buried than the buildings most men dwell in rise above that ground.
Yet Faerun is large enough to hold them all, without complaint and with very few murmurs.
Consider just one such chamber. This one had a war wizard in it, rushing around alone. He is working, placing crystal balls on black stone waist-high plinths and chalking circles around them, which he then links back, with carefully chalked lines, to a central circle. And as he works, in the way of many wizards who trust no one but themselves-and perhaps not even that-he is talking to himself.
“First Vangerdahast must fall,” Ghoruld Applethorn murmured aloud, carefully touching up a ragged edge of his latest chalked line. “And then the Obarskyrs.”
“Alaphondar and half a dozen Highknights have come to consult with me,” a sharp, exasperated male voice announced suddenly from the empty air above his head, “and I can’t get away to write ‘Leak here’ on anything. So take it as written. Do it now!”
“I hear!” Ghoruld replied loudly, and he glanced over at the one crystal that was awake.
A bright scene was shifting in its depths. He strode over to it, folded his arms, and watched.
“Yes,” he said, murmuring to himself again, the smile that was growing across his face repeatedly threatening to twist into a sneer. “Vangey’s closing his net around them now.”
He turned away and went to the door, letting the sneer take hold. “Gloat over them long enough, Old Goat,” he told the door as he swung it open, “and my spell will be ready. And every scrying crystal in all Suzail will explode, and behead anyone looking into it, upon my signal. It’s a pity your self-importance demands you surround yourself with eight or nine crystals. There won’t be enough left of you for them to find and bury.”
Pennae raced down the Long Passage like a storm wind in a hurry to catch up with its gale. The rest of the Knights pounded after her.
“So just where are we heading?” Islif demanded, putting her shoulders down and really starting to move.
“Well, if Laspeera was honest with us and the Palace is this way,” Pennae panted, racing along just ahead of her, “we have to get past the guards and up out of its cellars into the Palace proper. The royal wing is at the back and on the east side, overlooking the gardens.”
“I was, ah, talking with one of the maids, once,” Semoor gasped, “and-well-aren’t all the secret passages inside the Palace guarded too?”
“Yes,” Pennae said sweetly.
“We’ll have to change everything, ” Lord Yellander muttered, a step ahead of Lord Eldroon as they hurried along the hallways of the Royal Court. “There’s no way we can take shipments through Halfhap with every jack and brat in the town crawling all over the inn ruins, gawking.”
“True, true,” Eldroon agreed, nodding and wagging his forefinger as if it were a sword. “The heart of it for us right now, though, is how much do the war wizards know about us? That’s what Ruldroun’ll know-but we’ve got to get in and out fast, in case old Thunderspells already has them all looking for us!”
Yellander nodded grimly. They ducked through a door, stopped in the side passage beyond immediately and faced another door on their right, opened it, and stepped into the usual gloom.
“Ruldroun?” Yellander said into the darkness. “The raven hunts at twilight.”
All around them, darkness fell away in a sudden blossoming of bright white, magical light, showing them a large, thronelike chair with a matching footstool. Rising from it was a bearded and all-too-familiar man in robes, who offered the two noble lords a wintry smile.
Vangerdahast’s teeth positively gleamed. “I’m sure Ruldroun will be fascinated to learn the habits of ravens- in a decade or so, when I let him out of the deep cells. Old Thunderspells, traitors, at your service!”
“ Naed, ” Lord Yellander spat, and whirled to run.
There was no door behind them any longer-only a thing like a fleshy wall, of many staring eyes and silently screaming mouths and clawlike fingers, looming up over them like a great, crawling darkness.
Vangerdahast smiled gently and said in a voice as soft as silk, “Do try to run. Please. We haven’t fed the gravewall for days.”
