asking questions and waving your sword before you learned anything useful about whom you should be seeking. If, that is, this or that noble didn’t have you killed out of sheer irritation, first.”
Florin turned his head to look down the line of chairs. “Well?” he growled. “What do the rest of you think?”
Doust held up a hand to quell what others might have been going to say, and replied quietly, “I hate to leave Cormyr. This is not what I intended, when I dreamed of adventure. Yet I like even less the thought of disobeying a royal command as almost our first act as Knights.”
“Pennae?”
The thief shrugged. “When a queen lets on that she knows all you’ve been up to, and in the same breath tells you to get out of town… let’s just say that as I’m not a disguised dragon or arch-lich able to overthrow thrones whenever I please, minstrels’ fantasies notwithstanding, disobeying Queen Fee is not my first instinct. Nor yet my sixth or seventh.”
Melandar winced visibly at that “Queen Fee,” but said nothing. His look in Islif’s direction, however, was as clear as if he’d snapped an order.
Islif gave him a thin smile and then turned to Florin and said, “I, too, am reluctant to leave our beloved Cormyr-but I am not interested in being hunted by nobles or rushing around looking for culprits, just now. It will end in our having to fight some of our countrymen, and that will end with us imprisoned, exiled for good, or dead. Florin, if you stay now to avenge Narantha, I’m afraid you’ll do so alone. And this is a war wizard standing in front of us; you won’t be free to flit around Cormyr by night and put your sword through suspected culprits-unless you do so as Vangey’s puppet. Not quite the adventurers’ glory I’d be seeking.”
Florin stared at her grimly, then looked at Jhessail, and in the end glared at Melandar again. The war wizard said nothing.
From somewhere nearby, there came a muffled crash, some shouts of men disagreeing enthusiastically over something, and a series of thuds, as if heavy things were being stacked up and shifted around.
Pennae looked questioningly at Melandar, who murmured, “This house stands hard by a warehouse too-just the far side of the stable. There’s always bustle, night and day.”
The war wizard’s gaze never left Florin’s face, and a silence fell-broken only by the creaking and clottering of a cart passing, outside-that ended only when the ranger looked up and said through clenched teeth, “Very well. We go. For now.”
“Good,” Melandar said. “This is an ideal time to depart Arabel. Night has fallen, and it’s raining lightly. Few folk will be out on the streets to get a good look at your faces as you ride by.”
Doust frowned. “But if ’tis after nightfall, the gates-”
“Strangely enough,” Melandar said with a wry smile, “we’ve taken care of that.”
The rain dripped from Norandur’s cloak in loud and swift abundance. “S’come on to rain,” he said, unnecessarily.
“Um-hmm, so it has,” Ornrion Dauntless growled, looking up from his desk. “So, who are these war wizard highnoses, who need all our best horses so suddenly?”
Norandur snorted. “The adventurers we chased all over that warehouse,” he rasped, as a raindrop descended from his nose, “that the queen knighted. Seems she has some private little mission in mind for them.”
Dauntless stared at the Purple Dragon with his mouth open, his face slowly going white with anger.
Norandur stared back, impassively. This ought to be entertaining.
The dripping First Sword wasn’t disappointed. Dauntless slammed the quill in his hand down on the table so hard that it seemed he was trying to drive it through the thick, scarred wood. It snapped, and the blow caused his inkpot to skip off the table and shatter noisily on the flagstone floor. “Tyr and Torm blast me if they deserve any such thing! Private little mission where? ”
The soldier shrugged. “I know not. There’s just one war wizard left with them now, and he gave me the cold eye when I tried to talk to them.”
“Well, we’ll just let our eyes serve where our tongues can’t!” Dauntless snarled. “They won’t ride a horselength without us seeing it, from now until-”
“Until I order you to do otherwise, Ornrion Dahauntul,” the wizard Laspeera said coldly, materializing out of empty air at his elbow. “As I’m doing right now. Clean up that ink and see to your work here, and the Knights of Myth Drannor will just ride out of all our lives. If Tymora smiles on us.”
The blue mists were suddenly gone, and Princess Alusair found herself in a city, standing outside in the night, in gently falling rain. She was on a slick but almost level slate rooftop. She blinked at a huge and impressive wall of stone spires soaring up beside her-nay, towering over her. A temple rooftop.
Alusair peered around through the wet night, until she was sure. Yes, familiar towers and gables, a streetmoot she knew; she was in Arabel, though she couldn’t remember just which god this holy place belonged to.
No matter; she was here, and she was alone at last. Adventure!
The roof under her feet was nothing but a rain-cover, to give shelter to a coach or wagon loading area, where a temple door opened out into a cartway running back to a stable. At its outward end (she walked cautiously away from the towering temple), it ended at a stone wall enclosing the temple grounds, a wall crowned with a rusty row of iron spikes. A man’s boot wouldn’t fit between those spikes, but her slippered feet could.
Beyond, she could just see a narrow alleyway in the night-gloom, running along the shabby, shuttered- windowed backs of shops and homes that were nothing compared to the temple behind her.
The temple that must be full of priests and their magic, and possibly guardian beasts and enchanted stone sentinels too!
Alusair shivered in sheer thrill, getting wet but not caring, and went to the row of spikes in an excited crouch, planting the sword in her hand like a staff to balance with. Adventure at last!
She’d been to Arabel twice or thrice that she could remember; the Rebel City, some courtiers called it. “Almost outside the kingdom,” as some in Suzail never missed a chance to describe it, or even “the fortress that keeps the Stonelands at bay.”
Not that she believed half the wild tales of dragons and worse that the Stonelands were supposed to be a- crawl with. Why Enough. She was getting wet through. She needed her adventure to feature a warm fireside or at least a cloak soon.
Alusair drew in a deep breath of wet Arabellan air, smiled at the uncaring night, and set one foot carefully between two spikes. She shifted her weight back to make sure she could lift that foot easily back out of its wedged position, found that she could-and stood up tall, swinging sword and dagger wide with a flourish, to step boldly forward, into a feet-first jump down into the dark alley below.
Her landing jarred, and she crushed something wet and squishy that she was glad she couldn’t see-her slippers slid in something that felt like hair or fur-underfoot. Springing away to her right, Alusair trotted down the alleyway, finding it evil-smelling and strewn with rotten fragments of wood and what looked like slimy remnants of leaves that were beyond rotten.
Her heart leaped as something moved in the gloom ahead. A man! A lurching, bleary-eyed man in worn leathers and a tunic that looked more like a rag than clothing, who peered at her and mumbled, “S’truth! The l’il lasses ’re a-waving swords and daggers, now? Are the orcs come again, then?”
He reached out for her with shaking fingers, but she swiveled her hips, quickened her pace, and was past, giving him a smile but no reply-and trailing her sword behind her to discourage him following. She looked back, a few breaths later, to see no sign of him in the night shadows.
The alley stank, of dung and rotting food and worse, everchanging smells overlaid by woodsmoke and the occasional lovely aroma of a cooked meal, but Alusair breathed it all in deeply and happily, running along in the rain with a smile on her face. She was having an adventure!
And not a war wizard in sight! Nay, she was The hand thrusting out of the darkness this time was swift and strong, taking her by the shoulder and spinning her around before she could do more than utter a startled eeep.
Adventure…
