Several of the Knights tried to answer her at once, all of them sternly, but it was Jhessail's voice that overrode those of her companions: 'Because he can turn us into toads or blast us to dust, along with whatever mountain we're hiding behind, that's why!'
Pennae sighed in mock dismay. 'Oh, dear. Too late.'
'Oh? What does that mean?' Islif snarled. 'What clever theft have you managed now? Does it involve the Royal Magician of Cormyr directly?'
Pennae shrugged. 'Once, there was a thief who was also a Knight of Myth Drannor. Let's call her 'Pennae.' And being a woman and therefore vain about her appearance, she owned a mirror. A little oval of bright-burnished metal. Now, not being quite that vain after all, there were days on end during which she never took up or even looked at the mirror. Yet she knew its heft and looks and tiny nicks and scratches well enough-and one night, in the Royal Palace of Suzail, this particular wench got a little surprise. Her carefully packed mirror was gone, and another, very similar-but lighter and with different scrarches and nicks-mirror was just as carefully packed in its place.'
'War wizards,' Semoor murmured. 'Vangerdahast.'
Pennae inclined her head in firm agreement. 'Indeed. Some war wizard stole my mirror and introduced a substitute. Obviously on Vangerdahast's orders, and almost certainly so he could spy on us all and trace me with ease. Such trust abounds in fair Cormyr.' Islif frowned. 'So because of this you intend to steal-' Pennae threw up a hand sharply to indicate she wasn't done. 'So I dropped that new mirror down the guard tower garderobe last night.
However, I considered Vangey's little ploy ample justification for a theft of my own.'
Islif sighed. 'Of course.'
Pennae shrugged. 'If wolves force me to run with them, may I not take an occasional bite, too?'
'A moral stance that gets debated often by we who serve Tymora,' Doust said, 'and-'
'Holynose,' Islif said pleasantly, 'shut up.'
Pennae nodded thanks at the Lady Knight, inspected the back of her left hand, and told it, 'The Palace is a large and fascinating place, just made for wandering. It's astonishing what one can overhear from time to time on such meanderings, if one escapes notice. Among many other fascinating things-remind me to relate some amusing details of the sexual preferences of some high ladies of the Court, should we ever need, say, a tenday of verbal diversions-I overheard one Wizard of War proudly explaining the powets of a row of gems he'd just finished crafting for the use of Vangey's little army of spell-hurlers, on the Royal Magician's orders, of course. Tracer-gems, they are, and I have one of them with me now.'
'Tracer gems? As in, you're making it easier for the war wizards to trace us right now?'
Pennae shook her head, did something to het leathers on the inside of her left elbow, and held up what she'd slid out of them: a small, dull, almond-shaped stone. 'This works for just two beings, possibly only humans. If you can get blood, tears, or spittle from them to smear on it, one person per side of the gem.'
'Works how, exactly?' Florin asked, glancing alertly at the trees and hills around them, as if he expected arrow-loosing armies to rise up out of concealment at any moment and chatge down on the Knights.
'There's a word graven around the edge, here. When it's spoken, the side of the gem that's uncovered or uppermost is the side that works, telling the bearer the direction and distance away the one it can trace is at that moment.'
'So use it,' Semoor urged-and then frowned. 'Wait! Who are the two people?'
Pennae gave him a tight smile. 'Well, I managed to get some of Vangerdahast's spittle when he was snarling at us.'
Florin rolled his eyes. 'And the other?'
'Dauntless,' Pennae told him. 'Gained the same way, at rather closer range.'
'Use it,' Semoor repeated.
Pennae raised her palm out before her and set the gem into it, pinning it in place with her forefinger. 'Who first?'
'Can you use it whenever you want?' Doust asked 'Seeking one person doesn't delay you in looking for the other?'
'Yes. And no, it doesn't.'
'Vangerdahast,' Florin and Islif said in unison.
Pennae shrugged, murmured a word the other Knights couldn't catch, closed her eyes briefly, and then announced, 'Back in Suzail, so far as I can tell.'
'Dauntless?'
Pennae turned the gem over, pronounced the word, and promptly acquired a wry smile. 'Right behind us.'
'So Vangey wants us safely out of the realm-just a stride or two will do-where the laws of Cormyr won't apply,' Semoor said, 'before his personal band of oh-so-loyal Dragons sink their swords into our backs. And those bastards'll do it, too!'
'They're not butchers, man!' Islif snapped, as Pennae put the gem away. 'They're good and loyal folk; stalwarts doing the best they can, following the orders of the king and laws of the country, just trying to get by.'
Semoor matched her glare with one of his own. 'Aye. And so are all the good folk rhey kill, too.'
'Before we really get going at snarling at each other,' Pennae interrupted, 'I suggest we settle one thing in our minds: Whether or not Dauntless really is following us-and ir certainly looks that way, doesn't it? — or by a very long and supple arm of coincidence, is merely following orders that have nothing to do with us at all, that just happen to take him along the same road.'
Doust's smile was as wryly crooked as it was sudden. 'And we're going to establish the truth with certainty on this matter how, exactly? Turn around and ask him? When his reply may well be arrows or spears down our throats?'
Pennae gave him a mocking smile and waggled all the curled fingers of her left hand, back outermost, in Doust's direction, in the latest fashionable rude gesture that meant, to state its message most politely, 'Right back at you, stonehead!'
'It may astonish you to learn, Holiest Ornament of Tymora,' she replied, 'that one or perhaps two personages of Faerun have, in the days before this one, given some thought to situations similar to this one. It may even stagger you to learn that some of them have proposed solutions-and bids fair to stun you into mutely blinking insensibility to grasp that I have heard of, and myself understood, their proposals. To whit: I hereby suggest that all of us turn norrh off the Ride, the moment we're not seeing thick forest beside us, into the wild countryside.'
Semoor frowned. 'Right into the jaws of the waiting wolves, outlaws-or worse.'
Pennae arched a brow in his direction. 'I thought we were adventurers,' she said, in a precise imitation of his voice at its most mocking.
'He's the priest of Tymora, not me!' Semoor snapped, jerking a thumb at Doust.
'Enough,' Islif said. 'Florin?'
The ranger stared back at his fellow Knights thoughtfully. Then his eyes flashed in a decision made, and he nodded at the trees flanking the north side of the Ride.
'Pennae's right,' he said. 'We look for the first way into the wilds that won't lame our horses, and take it. Seeking a place where we can hide and watch the road. I'd like a word or three with Ornrion Dahauntul, with whatever magic we can mount that tells us when he's speaking truth and when he's not. I think we need to know why we're being followed.'
'Who's using us this time, and why?' Pennae murmured.
Florin's answering word and nod were equally grim. 'Precisely.'
'I believe that's a break in the trees, ahead there,' Semoor said, pointing.
'So who's waiting there to feather us with arrows, d'you think?' Doust asked, crouching a little lower in his saddle.
Islif shook her head. 'There may be archers hereabouts, but not there. I've been watching birds fly in and out of it. Unconcernedly lighring on a branch, soft-calling their kind, then hopping to the next.'
Pennae, in the lead, nodded agreement. 'Yon's an old road, by the looks of it. Overgrown but wide enough for wagons, for all the tall weeds, and-'
She held up a hand to signal a halt, swung down from her saddle as smoothly and swiftly as any stream eel
