We’ll-“
His words died in his throat as slim hands drew a chain up out of her bodice to reveal a trio of long-barreled, dark, ornate keys. “It seems the bards are wrong for once,” the masked mage said softly. “Draw your sword now and keep watch. Danger awaits us.”
Three archways led out of the room, the masked mage chose the one to the left, and they entered a room full of small casks branded with the device of a flying bird encircled by stars. The next room held stacks of crates, and its loftier ceiling was held up by three pillars. A ladder on wheels leaned against the central pillar, and as they approached, something seemed to boil down out of the tangle of railing and platforms at the top of the contraption. It appeared as tendrils of smoke, yet the misty tentacles moved of their own volition.
“Dauneth-strike at it!” the masked mage snapped, stepping back. Without hesitation, the nobleman thrust his blade into the heart of the smokelike mass. His companion snarled out some words, and something like lightning leapt from her hands to touch his blade.
The weapon seemed to leap and then hum numbingly in his hands, and Dauneth almost dropped it, but around him the smokelike thing seemed to be shuddering and fading all at once.
In another moment, it was gone, leaving the vault silent except for his loud breathing. Dauneth stared around to find that the masked mage was already continuing on down the room to the door at its far end. He hastened after her.
“What was that?” he panted.
“A guardian,” said the mage, “one that my spells would have had little effect against. Hush now.”
The woman in the azure mask muttered a few words, and the door swung wide. Something moved in the darkness beyond: a warhelm, hanging in the air as if it rested on a man’s shoulders. It turned a little, and then flew into the room like a gliding bird, right over the mage’s shoulder.
Fire blossomed from the helm’s eye slits, twin beams of flame that stabbed out at Dauneth. The nobleman dodged behind the nearest pillar, hissing something that was half prayer and half curse. Fire scorched the stone, and sparks sprayed and tumbled around his head. Rolling, Dauneth tried to get away, keep hold of his blade, and find his feet all at once-and then purple fire exploded overhead, and the room shook soundlessly.
He scrambled up, still fleeing from the pillar, to see the masked mage gesturing him to halt. He did, staring around wildly. A pulsing, spitting sphere of purple radiance hung in the air not far from them. Dauneth stared at it. There was a round, dark shadow at the center of the sphere.
“The flying helm?” he asked, his mouth suddenly dry.
The mage nodded. “Now it will serve as our guide. We stay behind it for the next few rooms, and the guardians waiting there will leave us be, so long as you don’t touch any of them.”
They went on through chambers and down another flight of stairs into a long, narrow hall whose walls were broken by many niches, each home to a silent, unmoving suit of dark plate armor. The purple sphere floated ahead of them, and twice along the passage unseen magical barriers suddenly flared into violet radiance, flashed white, and then parted.
The masked mage ignored such displays, striding steadily ahead until she reached a closed stone door. Dauneth peered at it curiously, save for a pull-ring and a keyhole, it bore no mark. Was this what they’d come for?
The masked mage selected one of the keys, murmured something over it, put it to her lips, and then slid it into the lock.
Dauneth didn’t know what he’d expected to see beyond the door-Vangerdahast and a dozen senior war wizards bound and gagged, perhaps-but he’d thought the royal treasure vault would have gates and an inscription and guards.
The masked mage in blue strode in without hesitation, glanced around quickly, and then stepped aside, the pulsing purple sphere moving with her. Dauneth followed, his sword raised and ready. Dust rose around their boots and hung heavy everywhere else, though someone-no, several someones-had come in and crossed the room recently. Armed men stood ready for them-no, just old and ornate suits of chased and gem-studded armor. Dauneth eyed them warily, then looked around.
Along the walls sat massive chests, except to the left, where there was a row of dragon skulls. Small purple gems gleamed along the brow of each of the great bone heads.
A stuffed, well-worn minotaur stood guard over a low table where a line of crowns sat, all of them grander than the simple circlet King Azoun favored. Dauneth blinked at the size of the gems in some of them-there was one ruby as large as his own fist-and then glanced quickly around the room again, still expecting some sort of attack. Another wall displayed a row of swords, halberds, and maces. Among them was a small glass case that held the scorched head of a sledgehammer.
The footprints in the dust led to an armoire of tarnished electrum that pulsed with a faint blue glow of guardian magic. Its double doors stood open, revealing a fire-ravaged interior where ruined things had melted and dripped down to puddle on the floor long ago.
The masked mage was peering carefully at a yellowed map. As Dauneth turned to look at it, she rolled it up, thrust it back into her bodice, and announced, “Rightnow we start back. My trap sphere won’t last forever, and the helm will go free once the sphere evaporates.”
Dauneth frowned. “We’re leaving? Didn’t we come here to find something… something to save the life of the king?”
The masked head nodded. “We did and we have,” she said, turning to go. “We came to find if something was missing from this room, and it is. Now we know much more than we did before.”
Dauneth’s eyebrows rose in disbelief. “We do? I don’t.”
The masked head turned back to him. “Come,” she said simply and went out the door, the purple sphere moving before her. He shrugged and followed.
The woman in blue reached past him to point and whisper. Her spell made dust swirl up from the floor of the room for a brief instant before it settled again, hiding the marks of their boots.
“The golden bull that struck the king down,” she said crisply as they swung the door closed again, “was an automaton called an abraxus, a constructed creature animated by magic. One such beast appeared in Cormyr in the past and ended up-disabled-in this room. Now it’s missing, and that means-“
“That someone who can get down here is responsible for the king’s condition,” Dauneth said slowly. “Either someone able to work the sort of magic you did to bring us past the guards and barriers, or someone in the palace.” His eyes locked with hers. “Someone in the palace is a traitor.”
“Quite so,” the lips behind the mask said softly. “Which brings us to your more difficult task…”
Chapter 24: Sembians
Year of the Soft Fogs (1188 DR)
King Pryntaler stormed around the campfire, his arms pinwheeling so violently that Jorunhast thought he’d take flight right then and there. “If war is what they want, then war is what they’ll get,” he snarled for the fifth time during this current rant.
“War is not what they want,” the wizard replied calmly. “What they want is Marsember. If they can get it without war, then so much the better.”
The pair stood in the midst of a small encamped band of nobles, clerics, scribes and guards at the narrowest part of Thunder Gap, the traditional boundary between the Land of the Purple Dragon and the Chondathan colonies of Sembia. But now the Sembian cities were colonies no longer, but a nation of merchant cities ruled by expediency and gold rather than kings and wizards. The uplands around the storm-haunted peaks, which had been so much wilderness for so many centuries, were now regularly transversed by merchant caravans.
The Cormyrean group was camped on the near side of the pass, the Sembians in their oversized wagons on the far side. Their mutual meeting ground was at the saddle of the pass, a great field where tents of purple and black had been erected. The intention had been to hearken back to the splendor and power of the elves, but instead of radiant elven pavilions, these meeting tents looked like smoky mountains made of storm clouds.
The activity within the largest tent was as stormy as the color of its canvas. For three days, the king had met
