“Another one?” The Purple Dragon rolled his eyes and told the passage ceiling wearily, “Big state revels certainly bring out all the madfolk to join the parade.”
“I’m serious!” Crownsilver sputtered.
“Aye, aye, of course you are. Wherefore we’re going to take you into this handy little room here, where you can drop your hose and cods and fine doublet, and-”
“ What? ”
“Oh, ’tis the latest fashion at Court, Haven’t you been keeping up, Lord? Aye, ’tis clothes off if you need whisper important things to Old-to Vangey. Orders of the king, of course.”
Lord Maniol Crownsilver opened his mouth to say something, then, but nothing came out. He settled for blinking, once or twice, as firm hands towed him into a chamber lit by three braziers, with a bare table in it and half a dozen big, burly Purple Dragons who greeted him with welcoming smiles.
“The table warms up once you’re on it, mind,” a large-jawed, burly Dragon leaned over him to advise with fatherly joviality.
Lord Maniol Crownsilver shuddered, muttered, “The things I do for love of Cormyr,” and firmly shut his eyes.
“Tell me when it’s over,” he snarled at the unseen soldiers around him, through clenched teeth.
“Well,” Islif puffed, as they rounded another corner and ran on, “at least we’re seeing passages we haven’t been in before.”
“Progress,” Semoor added cheerfully. “Something every church supports!”
“Aye,” Pennae agreed, “but they mean a little farther down the road to getting their own way in everything!”
Semoor grinned. “But of course! Isn’t that what the word means? ”
“There may come a time when we’ll have the leisure to sit down and discuss such matters,” Pennae replied. “I may even have learned patience enough to discuss them with you, by then. However-”
“However,” Florin said firmly, “we’re passing lots of closed doors, and I’m starting to hear folk talking behind some of them; should we open any, and look? We seem to be just running along bli-”
A door promptly opened, ahead of the running Knights, and a bearded Highknight in leathers peered out, gave the onrushing adventurers a startled look that fell into a glare, and shouted loudly, “ ’Ware! Thieves!”
Doors banged open, up and down the passage. Purple Dragons stepped through them, both before and behind the Knights of Myth Drannor, who came to a swift halt.
In the sudden silence after their boots were stilled, there was a loud hiss as many swords were drawn.
Crownsilver kept his eyes closed as he was disarmed, stripped, and searched most thoroughly. At length, they helped him to dress again, asking him questions throughout, their voices becoming steadily more respectful.
In the end, the constal said gravely, “Lord Crownsilver, I shall be honored to escort you to the Royal Magician of the Realm.”
“Good,” Maniol Crownsilver said, not bothering to hide his sigh of relief. “Then let us go. I cannot help but think that urgency looms larger above us, with every passing breath.”
Soon he was marching along passages with an escort, the constal calling out to guards they approached as to the whereabouts of Vangerdahast.
The lionar of the sixth such guardpost frowned and said, “He passed this way not long ago. By now, he’s personally attending the Silverymoon reception, in Anglond’s Great Hall.”
The constal nodded, turned and opened a particular door, and started to run.
“Stop!” Florin said sternly to the Purple Dragons who were forming a ring around the Knights. “We’ve no desire to spill blood here! We but seek the Dragondown Chambers!”
It seemed he’d said the wrong thing.
The ring of Purple Dragons around the Knights widened as every guard stepped hastily back, their swords rising to readiness.
The ornrions among them and the lone Highknight slapped fingers over rings they were wearing, and hissed into those rings, “War wizard aid! War wizard aid! Armory Shadowpassage! Armory Shadowpassage!”
The two wizards standing in the Longstride Hall were just beginning to hope that their shift might somehow go off without a hitch, as day headed into evening, when the pendants they both wore under their splendid uniforms suddenly murmured, “War wizard aid! War wizard aid! Armory Shadowpassage! Armory Shadowpassage!”
“Oh, tluin, ” Tathanter told the world feelingly, as that chanted summons continued. “What now? ”
Malvert had already snatched a wand out of its chased silver scabbard on his leg; Tathanter hastily drew his too.
Dodging among curious guests, they ran to a particular panel in a tapestry-hung back corner of the hall, hastily clawed it open, and plunged through it.
“My,” a bright young shopkeeper’s wife, spectacular in a sheath of shimmerweave that covered her from throat to ankles-except where cutouts left both of her rounded hips bare-remarked to her husband, “it’s just like in the tales-wizards running everywhere, doing urgent, secret things! Isn’t it exciting? ”
Her husband scowled. “No. Unless you change ‘exciting’ to ‘frightening.’ Then I’d agree with you.”
“ ‘Frightening’? But surely not for you! You did your years in the Dragons!”
He nodded and replied curtly, “That’s why.”
Lord Maniol Crownsilver was staggering and gasping for breath by the time they reached Anglond’s Great Hall. Sweating and nigh-incoherent when he tried to speak, he clutched at a handy servant-who fought successfully to stand both still and expressionless-for support as the guards who’d escorted him laid hands on the magnificent door looming up over them, and hauled it wide open.
Crownsilver hastened inside, wiping persistent sweat from his brow, and stared around. He’d forgotten just how hrasted huge the hall was. It was heavily thronged with guests who were busy staring in all directions and marveling at the size and splendor of the hall and of each other.
Maniol Crownsilver took a few steps this way, and a few more that way, and then stopped, baffled.
He thought of Vangerdahast as a great looming figure, dark-robed and terrible, dominant at Court even when Azoun was on his throne. Yet it seemed that only in his mind was the Royal Magician of the Realms truly tall. Here, especially with all the thick-soled boots and high spiked heels being worn by guests desiring to make an impression, there were many folk who were taller than Royal Magician Vangerdahast. Many, many folk, some so tightly clustered together that movement among them was a matter of many bumped elbows and apologies.
In short, Vangey could be anywhere. And Anglond’s Great Hall was big enough to hold a lot of anywheres.
Lord Crownsilver sighed and threw his head back to gaze slowly around at the heights of the long, rounded, high-ceilinged chamber. Not so much at that magnificent painted ceiling, with its gilded, relief-carved dragons, but at the tiers and tiers of balconies below it, that circled the hall in unbroken rings, four high.
Aye, a lot of anywheres. Crownsilver shrugged, let his gaze drift down again to the floor of the hall where he was standing, and starting hunting Vangerdahast.
“The wizards are coming,” the Highknight announced, his voice startlingly loud in the tense silence that had fallen over the passage. “Maintain the ring of swords. Draw it closer. Two paces, no more.”
Slowly and with care, the Purple Dragons closed in around the Knights, swords raised.
“Keep to the ring, even if they start hurling spells?” an ornrion asked.
The Highknight shrugged. “Kill them all if we must. The war wizards can always question their corpses.”
Chapter 28
Unbar and throw open your gate, burn off its bright rune
