The great shoulders started to turn. Florin yelled, “Pennae! Get past-and keep running! There’s a narrow place; get beyond it!” and launched himself at the guardian’s gigantic legs, seeking to move in behind the Doom as the man-mountain turned.
“Florin!” Pennae almost shrieked. “Where have you been? ”
“Touring the Palace,” he shouted back, and then had no more breath for shouting. The Doorwarden knew what he was doing; he kicked his great boot sideways as he turned, smashing into Florin’s hastily raised sword and flinging the ranger helplessly through the air.
Where was Pennae? She wasn’t running past! Where The Doorwarden loomed up, sword and axe slicing down, one after the other, so that wherever he scrambled to avoid the first attack would be where the second weapon went hunting.
Florin launched himself forward, right at the Doom, seeking to get in between his legs where his own bulk would keep the Doom from seeing him properly to hack and slice.
The Doom backed away hastily, sword and axe swinging wildly to aid its balance-and Florin’s mouth went dry as he caught sight of Pennae, rushing up the many seams and plates of the huge guardian’s crudely cobbled- together boots to reach the back of his right knee, and thrust her dagger in under the plate there.
The guardian felt her presence, as she tried to saw at straps she could not see, and growled, bringing his sword fist down to slam into her. Pennae swung around right behind the knee, dangling.
“Run!” Florin yelled at her, from where he was right in front of the Doom. “Just drop and run! ”
Pennae swung, kicked her legs high into the air like a juggler swinging from an overhead pole, and at the top of her swing let go.
Florin stopped watching; if he was to live, he had to get between the Doom’s legs right now, and He managed it, fetching up on the inside of the guardian’s left boot. There was a tempting split there in the overlapping hides and metal plates covering those huge feet, so he drove his sword into it, twisted, and then plucked the blade back out and kept running.
It was well he did. The Doorwarden roared in pain, deafening echoes rebounding off the ceiling and rolling up and down the passage, and stumbled, hopping awkwardly sideways, two huge boots moving through the spot where the ranger had been moments before.
Behind the Doorwarden, and with the way clear before him and Pennae watching anxiously from the distance, Florin put down his head and ran. If the Doom fell over…
“Run!” he yelled, the moment he had breath to do so. “Keep running!”
Pennae stood where she was, waiting for him.
“Run, hrast you!” Florin bellowed at her.
She started to move, backing so she could keep watching him and the stumbling Doorwarden-who’d gotten himself turned now, and was coming after them, shaking the passage in his angry haste.
“Pennae!” Florin roared in exasperation, as he came up to her.
She grinned. “I never was very good at taking orders,” she said. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed a time or two.”
“Just run! ” he snapped as he pounded past, whacking her backside with the flat of his sword.
“Ah-such a greeting you give a lass!” She laughed, breaking into a run that kept her at his elbow.
Winded, Florin only nodded-and then, as she darted ahead, plunged thankfully through the doorframe after her and slowed, stumbling.
Pennae looked back as the Doorwarden roared his frustration at them, and then put out an arm and clung to Florin as he bent over, panting.
When he had his breath back, he straightened and held out her jack. It was blood-soaked, cold, and wet, but Pennae’s eyes shone as if he’d been proffering the greatest treasure in all Cormyr.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling widely, and tore the gown off over her head. Flinging it down, she took her jack and slipped it on, shivering at its clamminess.
“Come on!” Florin told her, clapping her arm. “I’ve uncovered another plot. Someone named Blacksilver is wandering the Palace, and-”
Pennae put firm fingers over his mouth to silence him, and then took them away a moment later to kiss him.
He blinked at her.
She smiled wryly. “Well, I had to shut you up somehow. Now listen and heed, O mighty and valiant Falconhand!”
Florin nodded, gave her a rueful half-smile, and waved at her to “say on.” “Nothing,” Pennae told him, her eyes large and serious, “ nothing at all, in all the Realms, is more important than finding our fellow Knights. Kingdom rise or kingdom fall, we’re going through this together. I am sick unto death-or hrasted nearly was-of running around in these stlarning cellars, lost and alone! We find Jhess and Islif and our two chucklehead holynoses, too, and we stand together. Then we all go and seek out the king, the queen, and the hrasted Royal Magician Vangerdahast! Any disputes, faithful dog of a ranger?”
“None,” Florin replied, his eyes shining. “None at all.” Then he put a firm arm around her, and kissed her with fervor. And not a little valiant might too.
Chapter 27
Together we stand against hosts
And prevail, glorious, victorious.
Together we rouse kingdoms
Gathering trouble as farmers reap turnips
Together we share laughter
And dig and remember each other’s graves.
A pplethorn swallowed, grimaced, and then shuddered all over and gasped, “Always hated the taste of these. Despite the relief-mmm, almost rapture-they bring.”
Sitting in the dusty shadows of one of his secret places in the Palace, the alarphon restoppered the healing potion, put it upside down in the rack to remind himself later that it was now empty, and closed the cast-iron lid to keep the rats at bay. Nibbled corks meant healed rats… and doomed wizards.
One of the luxuries of a hiding hold was the chance to speak his thoughts aloud; he did so now, rather grimly.
“I can’t spare any more time now for hunting down Knights of Myth Drannor. Vangey will check in with me soon. I must get back to my duties. Later, it won’t matter a whit if he suspects, and comes for me-but not yet. Not quite yet. Not until his doom-as they say-is assured.”
He chuckled, stepped through the sliding panel that would take him into the back of a wardrobe built into one of the long-disused apartments of the Northturret wing, still smoke-damaged from a minor fire of four decades ago, went via other panels into other wardrobes to emerge several apartments away, and hurried to the stair that would bring him down behind the pantries.
Healed and hale again, War Wizard Ghoruld Applethorn was his cold-eyed, smilingly alert self from the moment he stepped out into the back passage and started shooting looks at various war wizards that they answered with silent “all serene here” hand-signals.
Wherefore, when the expected gruff voice touched his mind and asked him much the same as he’d just been
