Semoor shrugged. 'I believe I'm safe enough in doing so. I don't think there's anyone left in hiding who could take it as a cue. What happened to you?'
'Imminent death, deliverance from same by Florin,' Doust said grimly. 'I don't think Tymora intended me to wage war.'
'I know Lathander didn't want me to,' Semoor said brightly. 'He meant me to intone soft prayers and bathe in the offering coins gently bestowed upon me by an adoring populace, and I've been practicing my intonings, too, but people who want to kill us keep interrupting, by-'
'Perhaps they're critics,' Florin said in a dry voice, joining them with Jhessail at his side. 'Where's Pennae?'
All of the Knights peered across the clearing, looking this way and that, afraid they'd catch a glimpse of Pennae's dark leathers among the sprawled fallen. It was Semoor who saw her first.
'There,' he said, pointing.
Something that had been feebly rolling in the creek rose up rather wearily and gave rhem all a bleak look.
It was Pennae, looking rather the worse for wear. She had been wounded in several places, caked in foul- smelling mud, and mosr of her hair was gone, her scalp blackened and scorched. Doust and Jhessail both looked at the threads of blood curling lazily in the slow waters of the stream sliding past their boors, and then back along that winding water to the thief.
'She's hurt,' Doust announced to no one in particular, and he started across the clearing.
'Doust!' Islif snapped, hastening to catch up with him. 'There could be a score of foes in these trees!'
Doust shrugged. 'Tymora, remember? The bolder I dare, the safer I'll be.'
Islif frowned. 'I'm not sure that's quite how the luckpriests put it.'
He waved her words away, still hastening on to where Pennae was now standing, wincing a little as she settled herself into a pose against a handy tree trunk.
'Hail, fellow conquering heroes,' she greeted them as they came up to her. Her face-even her lips-were pale, but her grin was as sardonic as ever.
'You're hurt,' Doust said without greeting. 'Sit down.'
'No, you can paw me just as well if I stay right where I am,' Pennae replied a little wearily. 'Sit down would probably turn into fall down, and I've bled quite enough already.'
Doust shook his head, threw up a hand to his fellow Knights to keep clear, and started to murmur a healing prayer.
'Heed me,' Pennae told the rest of the Knights, over his shoulder. 'Up this hill behind me, in the trees, there's a little hollow, and it's full of what's left of an old stone mansion. Ruined, overgrown- trees right up through it-but someone's still-'
She gasped as Doust's glowing fingertips touched the worst of her cuts. She closed her eyes and trembled for a moment as he moved his hands gingerly over her, and then she opened them, smiled, and said, 'I do so love a man's hands on me. When he's doing me good, at least.'
Semoor rolled his eyes. 'You were saying? Someone's still…'
'Using it for something,' Pennae said. 'I got caught in a spell that had been cast across its doorway. Some sort of fire rrap.'
Semoor rubbed his hands and grinned. 'Treasure!'
'Is that allyou think of?' Florin and Islif asked disapprovingly, in almost perfect unison.
'No, but it'll do to think about until more important things arise,' Semoor said. 'Such as matters of the Morninglord. and… well, more matters of the Morninglord!'
'Indeed,' Islif said. 'This ruined mansion will be a good place to get well away from.'
As if her words had been a cue, a crossbow quarrel came humming out of the woods and smashed her off her feet.
'Down!' Florin roared, flinging Jhessail to the turf as he spun down into a crouch to reach out a hand to Islif.
Who was clutching her ribs and groaning, her armor dented deeply on one flank.
'Are you-?' he snapped.
'Alive? Aye,' she gasped. 'More than that, I'm not willing to venture.'
'Come on, 'Semoor snarled at them all. 'Stone walls are about all I know that can stop arrows!'
Pennae had already dropped from leaning against the tree to crouching in its lee, beckoning them.
The Knights scrambled after her. 'I told you not to mention arrows,' Doust told Semoor, 'and now look-'
'Luckiest of Holynoses,' Pennae said over her shoulder, 'please accept my thanks for healing me, and forthwith shut up. Are you unaware rhat a bowman can loose at where he hears our voices coming from?'
Doust shut up.
Pennae beckoned them again, crouching low. Bent over and scuttling through the underbrush, she led them up through thickly standing trees, in more branch-snapping hasre rhan stealth, and into the hollow.
The mansion loomed before them, low and dark in the gloomy shade of the trees that had grown up through it and flung out boughs to overhang it. Its scorched and empty doorway yawned like an open, waiting mouth, the air still sharp with the smell of the fire that had recently raged in it, but Pennae hurried past, keeping low. Ducking around a corner, she plunged without pause through a dark, gaping opening that had once held a window.
The other Knights hesitated, listening. All of them half-expected flames to roar up or to be near-deafened by the sudden snarl of some fearsome beast, followed by Pennae's raw scream.
They heard only silence. They had all traded doubrful glances.
Florin shrugged, put his hands in the exact same places on the lip of the window opening that Pennae had touched, and vaulted through it into unknown darkness. They heard the light thumps of his boots landing on what sounded like wood.
A moment later, he reappeared at the window, a warning finger to his lips. He beckoned them, wordlessly gesturing that they should each move to one side once they landed inside the window.
Jhessail stepped forward, waving at Doust to give her a boost, and went over and in-unexpectedly aided by Semoor's uninvited hand under her trim behind.
One by one, the other Knights followed to find themselves standing in near darkness, the only light filtering in through the shadowed window.
They could hear each other breathing but nothing more. Until one of them took a cautious stride forward.
As if that had been a signal, they heard a sudden roar and crackle of flame in the distance, from the far end of the mansion-a toat that was promprly joined by a scream.
An unknown someone had triggered another fire trap.
'Pennae?' Florin whispered. 'You're still here, right?'
'Idiot,' she teplied, even more quietly. 'Now you've done it.'
And it seemed he had.
They heard the sound of a rope groaning as it stretched, then a squealing of wood sliding on wood-and the floor fell away under the boots of Doust and Semoor as if it were a door swinging open, pitching them down into unseen depths.
They landed hard on smooth, flat stone, yells dying as they clashed teeth, bit their tongues-and were driven flat and breathless under the sudden weights of their fellow Knights tumbling down on top of them.
Small squeaking things fled in all directions, Florin rolled off a squirming Semoor, and Jhessail muttered, 'Well, at least the cellar wasn't too far down.'
'Jhess?' Islif called softly from above them. 'Is everyone-?'
'We're fine,' Semoor said sourly. 'Just fine. Flatter than we were a moment ago, mind you, but-hold! Where are you?'
'Up here. I'm holding onto the window, inside the house. My boots dangling into nothing.'
'I'm getting out of the way,' Semoor told her, rolling and groaning as he did so. 'Just give me a moment!'
The hum of something approaching very swifrly filled the air. Before Islif recognized it for what it was, a
