You can find no answer save “Bleed some more.”
Florin Falconhand turned a corner. Was that light, ahead?
He quickened his pace, moving to the wall of the passage where, yes, a light was spilling down-down! — out of a break. Stairs at last?
Stairs at last. Growing a grin of relief, the ranger mounted the broad, steep stone steps in great eager bounds, hearing a faint din of voices growing swiftly louder. The grand Palace staterooms were before him at last, and Lamplight glinted on drawn steel, as blades were lowered to menace him. In the passage at the head of the stairs, seven full-armored Purple Dragons barred his way, swords or halberds in hand and stern looks on their faces.
“And who might you be,” their commanding lionar asked, “racing up from the dungeons with sword in hand and someone’s blood soaking that cloak in your hand?”
Florin drew in a deep breath, smiled with a confidence he did not feel, and announced, “I’m Florin Falconhand, Knight of the queen, and I must urgently speak with Her Majesty-or the king, or Lord Vangerdahast!”
The lionar scowled. “You were sent out of the realm, as I recall, and the lads up in Arabel were bidden to see you safely outside our borders. Now, I don’t know what you did, you and your Knights of Myth Drannor, but by the Dragon we swear by, I’m letting you get nowhere near the three most valuable persons in all the realm!”
He leveled his drawn sword at Florin as if it was a crossbow, and snapped, “Now throw down your weapons and submit to us, or by the Dragon I’ll put sword to you, here and now! You’re an adventurer, and I don’t trust adventurers as far as I can boot them with my toe up their backsides-and believe me, I’ve booted my share and more, down the years! Surrender, Falconhand! Surrender or perish!”
“Are those my only choices?” Florin asked, letting a little of his anger show as he started up the last few steps. “No taking me to your commander? Or conveying me to Vangerdahast under guard?”
“Not today, lad. Not with the Palace crawling with thousands of troublenecks, just like you, and we loyal blades stretched past our limits! Now throw down that sword, or die!”
“Do all of you read the same bad chapbooks?” Florin asked wearily, coming up the stairs to cross swords with five waiting blades-and slashing aside the two halberds that came thrusting for him.
Those halberds sliced at him from either flank, and he backed down a step or two, out of their reach, and carefully set down the glowstone and Pennae’s jack on a lower step, keeping his eyes on the Dragons as he did so.
It was as well he did, because the two guards with halberds advanced down the steps to thrust at him again.
This time Florin rushed swiftly up between the halberds, past the heads, and clamped their shafts under each arm. He kicked out hard, hurling himself back down the steps-jerking both halberd-wielding Dragons off their feet into helpless tumbles after him.
Florin let the halberds fall with a clatter as he whipped off their helms and brought his sword hilt crashing down on the backs of their necks. The two sprawled guards quivered and then went still.
A roar of rage arose, and amid it three of the Dragons rushed him, swords gleaming. The ranger dodged to one side along his step and then swiftly back again, drawing the three hastening guards to converge-with clangs and jostlings-into each other’s way.
As they stumbled, Florin snatched up a fallen halberd and drove its blade into one Dragon’s ankles. He fell down the steps, shouting curses. Florin rushed after him, pounced, and struck him senseless with his sword hilt.
“Stop, you fools!” the lionar bellowed. “Break off! Get back up here!”
One Dragon turned to obey-and Florin’s sword chopped his ankles out from under him. With a yell of pain he toppled, crashing and rolling all the long, painful way down the stairs with many bangs and boomings of metal on stone… to lie still at the bottom, senseless.
“O most mighty Dragons,” Florin taunted, as he crossed swords with the last of the three Dragons who’d dared the steps. “Truly, your skill in battle awes bards and honest Cormyreans from end to end of the realm, and will be much talked of, in days to come! Behold: seven against one becomes three against one! Ah, but so bravely have those seven contended that no victory the like of theirs has resounded across the kingdom these ninety years past! No, not since-”
“Shut your tluining face!” the Dragon fighting him raged, hacking at the ranger wildly. “Just tluin yourself, you-”
Florin ducked, the man’s wild swing cost him his balance, the ranger kicked his opponent hard behind a knee-and the cursing Dragon’s knees slammed down hard on the edge of a step, ere sliding to a jarring landing on the step below.
The guard shrieked in pain, and Florin rang his sword hilt off the man’s helm so hard he dented it as it bounded off the man’s head, falling to clang and bounce its way down the stairs. The Purple Dragon fell sideways without a sound, out cold.
“Two to one, now,” Florin said to the lionar and the lone Dragon still standing up in the passage. “Care to join the dance?”
The lionar smiled coldly, took a swift step aside from the stairs-and as the ranger started up to face the last Dragon, stepped right back into view with a loaded crossbow in his hands.
At a halberd’s length away, he took careful aim down the steps at Florin.
Slowly Pennae became aware that she was lying on her back on some sort of cot, with men standing over her, talking. Several men. She was still wearing her boots and breeches, but the weight of Yassandra’s belt, with its wand and pouches, was gone. They’d taken the gown off, too-no doubt to examine her wounds-but laid it over her like a blanket.
She kept her eyes closed and her breathing slow, trying not to change the expression on her face, as gentle but work-roughened fingers flipped the thin garment aside, to touch her over her heart, the man’s other hand going to her forehead.
“This healing will go more easily,” a man’s voice-a commoner, by his kindly tone-said suddenly, close above her, “if all of you fall silent for the short time I’ll need. Hamper me, and you may soon be questioning a corpse.”
Someone sighed impatiently. “Aye, Priest, do your wonders.”
“By the will of the Great Mother,” the cleric of Chauntea chided. “The wonders are hers.”
He started to murmur words Pennae did not know. Gently, almost reverently, his hands moved-from her forehead to her lips, throat, and right breast, and from her heart to her left breast, her navel, and then under her tight breeches to low on her belly. Both sets of fingers then trailed along her, never losing contact with her skin, to the palms of her hands. The incantation ended-and Pennae fought not to gasp aloud in pleasure, as a sudden warm tingling arose and rushed through her, washing all the pain away. She thrilled to her very fingertips as muscles throbbed and relaxed, bruises and sprains vanishing and taking their discomfort with them, and she writhed on the cot, straining involuntarily up to thrust herself into those wonderful fingers. She wanted to grind against them, plunge into them, never be parted from them…
“She’s awake!” a deeper, harsher man’s voice snapped. “The little slut’s aw-”
“No,” the priest said firmly, his firm hand guiding Pennae down flat on the cot again. He feigned pinching her, hard. “See? I pinched her hard enough to make her shriek, and she moves not. What you saw was her body enthralled by Chauntea’s divine magic, not an awakening.” Those gentle hands withdrew, covering her with the gown again. “Let her lie undisturbed for a time; she’ll waken soon enough.”
“Priest,” the deeper voice replied, sounding irritated, “we lack the time for such niceties! There’s thousands of guests in the Palace right now, and more arriving with every breath! We’re stretched past our limits! We’ve called in Dragons from out beyond the Wyvernwater, and still don’t have enough! If we weren’t all spread out at every last door and passage-moot and stairway, trying to keep all the gawkers where they belong and a few of His Majesty’s sculptures and small portables where they belong, I’d parade this wench past every last Dragon here this day. If
