saddlebags, too! Why, I'll wager the Knights of Myth Drannot are watching and listening to us right now! Not that they'll dare to show their faces with all of us-'
A man with a sword in his hand and a half-smile on his face stepped into view around one side of the clustered horses, in perfect unison with the appearance of a tall, burly woman in armor around their other side.
'— here,' Dauntless added, voice faltering.
'Falconhand!' one of his men snarled, drawing his sword.
'Aye,' another snapped, amid a chorus of Purple Dragon curses. 'The woman's one of the Knights, too! She was the one who-'
'Scatter!' Dauntless roared from his saddle, waving one arm wildly at his men as he pointed into the trees with the sword in his other hand. ' 'Ware spells, curse you!'
His sword point indicated two small, faint glows that were growing stronger by the moment, outlining the slender hands in their midst. Above those glows, Jhessail Silvertree smiled coldly.
'There'll be priests somewhere around here, too!' Dauntless shouted, backing his mount away. 'Best we get clear of this, and-'
A scream that was as shrill as it was high drowned him out and sent most of the Dragons wincing and stumbling backward.
It rose higher and turned raw as it came, approaching swiftly out of the forest behind the camp glade, becoming a series of pain-wracked shrieks rarher than sounds of terror.
The Purple Dragons started to obey Dauntless, scattering in grunting haste and waving their swords. The horses under them snorted and stumbled as their riders lurched in their saddles, trying to watch not where they were going but the trees where those screams were coming from.
Trees that promptly vomited forth a screaming, sprinting woman in leathers, whose racing limbs were rippling with fire!
'That'll be them,' Highknight Targrael said, an unlovely smile rising to her lips as they listened to the screams. 'You know what to do.'
Telsword Bareskar of the Palace Guard nodded, fitted his windlass to his crossbow, and set it to whirring.
A certain laundry chute had left him with a score he dearly wanted to settle. Even his growing fear of the dark Highknight hadn't made him regret the eagerness with which he'd obeyed her command to depart his post and accompany her in a little Knight hunting.
The head of a chartered adventurer or two wasn't the sort of trophy he'd expected to mount on the wall of the guard room, but he was warming to the notion.
Especially if it was the head of a certain half-naked lass he'd chased through half his floor of the Palace cellars…
Crossbow ready, he took a quarrel into his hand and dared to give Highknight Targrael a grin.
The cold grin she gave him back as she beckoned him on through the treegloom sent a chill through him, even before he heard her soft whisper.
'As do I.'
The castle had seen better days. Roofless and forgotten, with old and towering trees thrusting up through its stones like so many dark spears and shrouding its crumbling walls beneath heavy boughs full of leaves, it stood in deep wilderlands, far from roads now in use and folk who might be ruled by a lord who dwelt in such a stronghold. Its dungeons and lower floors were prowled by dark, tentacled things, which had kept smaller, furrier forest creatures from lairing overmuch in its riven upper rooms. Birds, though, hadn't the wits to care about tentacled things, dark or otherwise. Their nests and voidings covered the floors thickly.
Except in one corner of a small, high room that retained not only its roof but a stone table flanked by two stone benches. A large arched window overlooked rhe table. The window lacked all trace of shutters, framing, or anything that might have filled that frame.
Through that spacious hole flew a large, untidy black bird that might have been a hawk-if hawks grew as large as horses.
The hawk landed heavily and awkwardly, glared around at the gloomy emptiness of the deserted room with its fierce gold-rimmed eyes, and then shook itself-and in a moment of unpleasant shiftings became a broad- shouldered man in black robes with a pepper-and-salt beard and tufted eyebrows to match. His eyes were every bit as fierce as the hawk's.
Massive gold rings on his fingers winked and glowed briefly, then went dark. 'Good,' rhe man announced, seeming to relax. He strode to the neatest bench and sat, slamming his forearms down on the table. 'I've arrived first. For once.'
'If it pleases ye to think so,' part of the roof replied as it leisurely peeled away from the rest and dropped down into the room, leaving a gaping hole behind. What landed feather-light on the floor was a white-bearded man in torn and patched gray robes and battered brown boots. He looked older than the hawk-mage and held a curved pipe in his hand. His blue-gray eyes were fierce and bright. 'Myself, I can't think why it matters. D'ye still measure thyself against others? Truly?'
Khelben Arunsun was too disgusted-and astonished-to rise to this bait. 'But the rings showed no-'
'Haven't ye learned how to defeat such detections yet? Bend the Weave around them, man! Bend the Weave around them!'
As he delivered this vigorous advice, Elminster sat down across from Khelben and puffed his hitherto dark and empty pipe into spark-swirling life. 'Yet before ye master such trifles, suppose ye tell me what's struck ye as so important that ye needed to mindcall me hither-without telling me why. What's afoot?'
'Trouble.' Khelben glowered.
The pipe floated out of Elminster's mouth to hang hovering beside his lips. 'Trouble is always afoot,' he said. 'Could ye be a bit more specific?'
'These Knights of Myth Drannor,' the Blackstaff said. 'Or to be more specific, the two self-made Zhentarim ghosts clinging to them.'
'Horaundoon and the one who calls himself Old Ghost,' Elminster said. 'The elements that-aside from your connection to these adventurers and therefore Vangerdahast's desire to be rid of them in somewhat indecent haste-make the Knights of more interest to the Realms than any other band of bumbling novice adventurers.'
'Ah…precisely.'
Elminster smiled, nodded, and acquainted himself with his pipe again. Waiting patiently.
Khelben glared across the old stone table into those mocking blue-gray eyes, started to speak-and paused to tap the table with a forefinger. He looked up from that finger like a lion lunging forward with a roar and said, 'What do you know of these two Zhents?'
'They are, or were, Zhentarim mages of some accomplishment. Now able to pass into and possess the living, otherwise very much like wraiths, they're in hiding, pursuing unknown aims. Formerly at odds, they now seem to be working together. They've established links of some sort with the Knights and seem able to appear at will wherever those adventurers may be. Ye know more?'
'No,' Khelben admitted, still glowering.
'So are we met, here and now, so ye can argue with me how to handle the Knights and these two Zhent wraiths?'
'Well, no, no… Yes.'
Elminster sat back and sighed. 'Progress,' he told his pipe as it floated out of his mouth once more. Then he locked gazes with Khelben again and said, 'Suppose ye say what it is ye want to do-and want me to do and not to do-so we can get on to the shouting and blustering without further delay, hmm?'
'Elminster Aumar,' Khelben asked, 'can't you take one Lady-damned thing seriously?'
The Old Mage acquired a look of amazed horror. 'What? After all these years? With all the sanity that would require?'
'Indeed,' Khelben agreed heavily. 'And as I know you're the sanest of us all and that there are just the two of us here, can you please drop the capering clowning long enough to discuss this properly? For once?'
'Well,' Elminster said quietly, 'so long as 'tis just this once…'
