Palace, but in a smaller, dingier room with boarded-over windows, that by the sounds of clottering hooves and creaking wagon wheels, stood hard by a street or drovers’ alley, somewhere slightly colder than Suzail.
“Mother,” Wizard of War Sarmeir Landorl asked cautiously, “do I risk my neck at this time, if I dare to ask you some questions about this matter at hand?”
Laspeera’s sudden smile was as bright as a flaring flame. “Of course not, Sarm. You need not fear my ‘brisk moments’ in the slightest, so long as you obey me with alacrity during them.”
“Huh,” muttered another mage. “Vangey says the same thing.”
“Indeed, Orzil, wherefore it should come as no surprise to you to learn you’d do well to believe us both,” Laspeera said, “and conduct yourself accordingly. Your questions, Sarm?”
“This is the hideaway-house in Arabel, yes?”
“Yes,” Laspeera confirmed pleasantly.
Sarm waited for her to add more. In vain. As the silence started to stretch and Laspeera’s gentle smile wavered not at all, some of the other wizards started to grin.
“So,” Sarmeir said carefully, “that being the case, why didn’t we just march the Knights through the usual portal?”
“Sarmeir,” Laspeera replied, “we may need half the Dales not to know about that particular portal for a little while longer. Moreover, none of our snorers here are keyed to the portal, and I don’t want them to know about that, either.”
“Why would they need to be keyed?”
“Doing so cuts down on vanishings, and they’re carrying a pendant we do not want them to lose.”
“Vanishings?”
“Have you never wondered why-given that all sufficiently gifted folk can craft portals-merchants still struggle overland, through mud and stinging flies, brigands and blizzards, to carry, say, candles from the hamlet of Hither to waiting townsfolk at the market of Yon?”
“Well, no, ” Sarmeir replied. “We seem to receive far more encouragement to do as we’re told, and leave ‘wonderings’ to the likes of Vangerdahast, and Margaster-and you.”
“Shrewdly struck, Sarm. I reel, but recover.” Laspeera’s dimples told the now tensely watching war wizards no eruption was about to occur. “Harken, then, to the new, emerging danger of portal travel: vanishings.”
“You mean people going missing?”
“No, that’s hardly a new danger. I speak rather of the matter of the portals themselves betimes melting away things taken through them-trade goods, the sword in a wayfarer’s hand or on her belt. Suchlike.”
“Ah,” Orzil put in, “the old matter of ‘on dread deeds bent, I charge through the waiting way full-armored and sword in hand-and arrive at the other end grinning at my foes, naked and weaponless.’ ”
“Indeed.”
Yassandra, the darkly beautiful lady war wizard, frowned at that. “I thought sages of matters arcane always blamed such vanishings on snatchings done by creatures watching over or guarding the portals. The same creatures who sometimes do or intend far greater ill to portal-users.”
“They do. I thought alarphons were better schooled than to believe them.”
Yassandra flushed and said sharply, “None of us, so far as I know, have been told anything of portal vanishings. If I understand you correctly, they are why portals will never replace caravans for overland trade, yes?”
Laspeera nodded. “And why we still use mass teleport spells, yes.”
Sarmeir frowned. “But we’ve been told that a teleportation done purely by a spell can’t be traced later, whereas a portal jump-particularly by a keyed individual-can. So was that a lie, and these vanishings the real reason?”
“No. War wizards use portals whenever possible because they are both more reliable and for tracing reasons. If you run into trouble, the rest of us can more easily trace you, and if you are pursued and hide a document or item to keep foes from seizing it when they take you, colleagues investigating later can follow your portal uses and know where to search. Yet everyone not already sworn to the Crown of Cormyr and standing high in both service and trust who learns the location and nature of a portal opens a gap in the shared armor of the realm. Wherefore we avoid portals and cleave to spells instead when time and circumstances allow, when shuttling common citizens and outlanders around Cormyr. Keying can’t be done on the sly; even if a person we do it to is unaware of what we’re doing, he soon discovers what we did, and what powers he’s now gained. That’s why we don’t tend to key just- risen adventurers, whose loyalties may stray far from us-” She waved her hand at the row of sprawled and sleeping Knights of Myth Drannor, just as Doust started to slide off his chair. Laspeera launched herself across the room in time to catch him and thrust him back onto the seat, turning back to the younger wizards with a shushing finger to her lips, and concluded, “-but do key Crown messengers and envoys.”
“And why,” the Wizard of War Ghoruld Applethorn purred, smiling at the unwitting face of Laspeera in his glowing scrying crystal, “I can trace everyone who uses any portal in the Palace.”
He beamed at her unseeing beauty and told her unhearing ears, “Vangey has trusted me too much, for too long. And trust, as better men than our dear Royal Magician discovered to their costs long ago, is a blade with two sharp edges.”
Florin came awake very suddenly, and found himself looking into a pair of alert dark brown eyes. They belonged to a slender, dark-haired, handsome man in robes, now bending over him, that he’d seen somewhere before, recently, but… oh, yes: this was a war wizard, one of the five Laspeera had introduced to them, in Quick glances told him his fellow Knights were still sitting on chairs beside him, Islif as awake as he was, the others seemingly asleep. But they were in no room Florin knew or had ever been in before. And of Vangerdahast, Laspeera, and the other war wizards, there was no sign.
“Where are we?” he asked. “And why?”
“This is Arabel, and you are here in obedience to the queen.”
“Departing the realm forthwith,” Islif said. “And you are… Melandar ah, Raentree.”
The handsome war wizard nodded, his smile tight, his face revealing nothing. “At your service. You were magically transported here while you slept. I have been assigned to oversee your departure.”
“Well,” Semoor grunted, “I suppose it is too much to expect the queen to trust us-we being her sworn Knights, and all.”
“We being adventurers, ” Jhessail told him, her smile rueful. It seemed everyone was awakening.
“Well met again, fellow weaver of the Art, and Holy of Lathander,” Melandar greeted them both. “Not much time has passed since you spoke with Her Majesty, but by means of magic you are now in Arabel. This is a-well, a nondescript backstreet house owned by the Crown, that stands hard by a busy stable. Wherein await mounts for all of you, saddled and ready. Purple Dragon mounts when this day began, but yours to keep now.”
“Oh?” Semoor’s eyes narrowed. “How many Purple Dragons know this? And how many are going to be riding hard after us, eager to chain and dungeon us as horse-thieves?”
Florin frowned. “This is… very swift. The Lady Narantha Crownsilver lies not even in her family crypt yet, and no one has paid the price for her death. Something I mean to attend to, before I depart Cormyr!”
The war wizard nodded gravely. “I understand your feelings, believe me-but betimes our oaths of loyalty must govern us sternly, and we must set aside revenge until a better time.”
The look Florin gave him then was stony. “And did Narantha’s murderer choose a ‘better time’ to bring doom down upon her?”
Jhessail turned and laid a gentle hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Florin,” she murmured, “nothing we do-or don’t do-will bring her back. Please find some calm inside you, and listen. Vangerdahast promised me that her death would be fully investigated, and the queen said so too. I trust her to see that he does what he promised-and he can do far more, with his spells and working among nobles he knows and has some authority over, than we could ever hope to do. We can’t threaten nobles into confessing or aiding us; we have nothing to threaten them with.”
“Not now we’ve been ordered out of the realm,” Florin said bitterly, “but do any of them know that yet?” He glared at Melandar. “How long will it be before they all know?”
“Sir Falconhand,” the war wizard replied carefully, “please listen to the wise words of Lady Knight Silvertree, and depart the kingdom-for now-without delay or dispute. If you knew exactly who was guilty and how to reach them, and they happened to be here in Arabel, I myself would aid you with my spells to get into their presence, and keep what you did as secret as possible. Yet such is not the case, and it could take you years of blundering around
