door of the Royal Court, Bravran Merendil found himself sweating hard in Dorn Talask’s clothes and trying even harder to forget how Talask had yielded up those clothes. It was still a long walk to the Palace proper, where he was supposed to find some chamber called the Dawnlurdusk Room, and report to Skeldulk Maumurthorn, Master of the Red Passage.
Dodging among throngs of excitedly scurrying servants, he found the right hall and started the trudge to the Palace.
Only to fetch up, almost immediately, against a balding old courtier in all-black finery-ribbon-trimmed hose, a puffed-sleeves doublet, fine gold chains at wrists and throat, a matching black throat ruff-who was regarding him what seemed to be barely leashed fury.
“Talask, I thought you went home to bathe and change into finery!” this unexpected obstacle snapped. “ This is finery? The same clothes, only torn here-look! — and dirtied there?”
Bravran swallowed, catching himself on the very point of snarling, “Well at least Talask didn’t bleed all over it, when they took him down!”
For a moment he almost thought he’d said it aloud, the courtier was giving him such an odd look.
The old man took him by his ruffed collar and shook him. “Dorn, Dorn! Come out of it! ‘Tis me, Rolloral! Don’t look at me like you don’t know me!” He frowned. “ ’Tis a lass, isn’t it? Bathe in her, you meant, you rogue!”
Abruptly, Rolloral broke into a grin and clapped “Talask” on the arm. “Good lad! Hah, to be your age, again! Tell me all about it, mind-on the morrow! Right now, we’ve the gods’ own list of things to do, and precious little time to do them in! Maumurthorn’s been summoned to the Dragondown Chambers for a jawing, and left us with all his inspections to do, before he comes back and does them again and thunders at us for how we did them; you know. Come on! ”
“Dorn Talask” shook himself once more, felt again inside the grand barrel-front of his jacket for the reassuring heft of his dagger, and came on.
When Wizard of War Ellard Duskeld got to where imperious royal lips had ordered him to go, he stopped. And blinked.
The Dragondown Chambers were in an uproar. Senior courtiers, a few hulking Purple Dragons in polished-to- gleaming armor, and robed war wizards snapping orders and, looking grim, were striding purposefully everywhere.
And at the heart of it all, Vangerdahast, Court Wizard of Cormyr and Royal Magician of the Realm, stood conferring with an ever-changing ring of younger war wizards, deploying them hither and thither in the Palace to accomplish the security concerns of the moment.
“Of course we need a man in the Royal Gardens!” Old Thunderspells said gruffly. “ ’Tis the best way to get a large armed force-or a dragon, for that matter! — up to the very windows of the Palace without fighting through guard after guard! You think mere helmheaded Purple Dragons can stop a dragon? Or one wizard riding any sort of winged steed? Do you want this day to turn out to be the grandest disaster of the season?”
Ellard Duskard swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and marched purposefully across the room, almost colliding with no fewer than three hard-striding war wizards moving in other directions, and in the process collecting one glare and two disdainful looks. He had to force his way shoulder-first into the ring, where he bowed deeply in greeting, straightened, and awaited a chance to speak.
“Not now, Khalaeto!” Vangerdahast dismissed a short, bespectacled war wizard who looked like a clerk-of- coins; the man scuttled hastily away with scrolls and quill in hand. The Royal Magician of the Realm turned a little, like a weary Purple Dragon moving a crossbow along to aim at the next target, fixed his eyes on Ellard, and snapped, “Speak, man! And don’t shuffle so.”
“Uh. Ah. Ahem, yes. The princess begs leave to speak with you.”
“Which one, lad?”
“Uh… oh! Tanalasta, saer.”
“Well, bring her!” Vangey’s growl was impatient.
“She…” Ellard Duskard reddened to the roots of his tangled hair, uncomfortably aware that the Royal Magician’s glare was practically shouting, “What is it with younglings, these days, and their hair? Have they no combs? Nor dressers to draw them water? Or did they all like the feel of lice wriggling around their heads all the time?”
“She-she wants you to come to her, Lord Vangerdahast,” he managed to blurt out. “Says it’s a royal command.” Then, sinking into misery, he shook like a storm-flailed weed, fearing the inevitable.
Astonishingly, Old Thunderspells smiled. “Did she, now?”
He turned away before adding, “Look you, lad! Do I seem to you to have time to spare to kneel before spoiled little girls at time or two, just to indulge their ever-changing whims, right now?”
“Ah… no, saer.’
“Brilliant boy!” Vangerdahast said. “No, saer, indeed. You’ve captured it right off! So go you back to Princess High-And-Mighty Tanalasta, and tell her it took you forever to find me, and when you did I changed into a bat and flapped around you by way of answer, and you don’t speak bat so you don’t know what reply to give her, and so you’ve come back to her to ask her what she wants you to do now. Oh, and tell her you last saw me flapping off across the Royal Gardens with her father’s best state crown hovering above me. That’ll give her something to puzzle over!”
Wincing, Ellard Duskard turned and hurried back the way he’d come, slipping out the door a breath too soon to see two war wizards appear in a doorway clear across the largest Dragondown Chamber, with their arms full of golden-glowing swords and eager smiles on their faces.
Vangerdahast frowned at the sight of them, plucked his staff from the war wizard who’d been patiently holding it for him, and aimed it at them as he snapped, “Yassandra? Brors? You’re dead, so who are you, really? ”
That shout brought down a hush over the Chambers-in which the false Yassandra and Brors flung their swords at the Royal Magician of the Realm, and fled. Sixteen golden blades raced across the room like a volley of speeding arrows.
Vangerdahast roared the command that triggered his staff.
And the air in front of it exploded.
“In the name of the king and the queen,” Florin replied, sword raised against the darkness, “stand aside and let me try to save the realm. I must reach Vangerdahast without delay! I have no desire to fight you or anyone else, believe me.”
“I obey the orders I am given,” the unseen guardian replied. “Cormyr would be a fairer place by far if more folk did. Aramadaera. You, on the other hand, have defied the orders of loyal Purple Dragons, just as you defy mine, now. So you must now yield or die.”
As that deep voice spoke the lone word unfamiliar to Florin, there arose a faint, brief singing sound in the darkness, and the ranger-Knight now perceived a glimmering across the chamber, a glimmering that swiftly kindled into a glow bright enough to show Florin that it emanated from a helm-an open-face helm worn by a mountain of a man.
Well, a mountain at least. This Palace guardian was half again as tall as Florin, who was used to being among the tallest men in any gathering, and his arms and shoulders would have put any two oxen to shame. Grotesquely corded muscles rippled under a web-work of scars that bared throbbing veins here and highlighted knife-sharp tendons there. The guardian did not so much wear armor as have battered fragments of armor strapped to him and bolted to each other, in a great coat muffled from clangor by ragged leather hides affixed between the shifting metal plates. The man’s bracers bristled with outthrust sword blades, one hand ending in a greataxe and the other hefting a short, very broad sword that ended in a trident of horns like those of a bull. As the glow of the helm strengthened, it became apparent that its magics had been crafted to illuminate the air out in front of the man, so that for twice his sword-reach, wherever he was looking, foes were illuminated.
“Mielikki forfend!” Florin gasped.
The man-mountain nodded as if he had heard such reactions far too many times before. “They call me the Dread Doorwarden,” he announced, gloomily rather than triumphantly. “Or sometimes, the Stalking Doom.”
Florin shuddered, recalling those names spoken by retired Purple Dragons telling horrific tales on sunny days back in Espar-a place where he’d far rather be, just now, than facing death in the dark passages under the Palace of the Purple Dragon. Those stories had been gory horror-yarns about men, sent on errands, who strayed into the
