crossbow quarrel came scudding through the trees straight into her arm, punching through armor and hurling her away from the window to crash down atop someone.
'Sorry,' she gasped, and then she sobbed at the sickening pain her movements dealt to her arm.
'Islif?' Florin said nearby, concern in his voice. 'Are you hurt?'
'Am I ever anything else?' she asked wearily, rolling off the unseen body and hearing it groan. Her landing bumped the end of the quarrel on the floor, leaving her gasping and shuddering in pain. 'Gods!' she hissed. 'Where are you, priests?'
'I'm over here,' Semoor told her, from her left. 'Trying to remember a prayer for calling up some holy light. As for Doust, you're probably sitting on him. Or whatever's left of him.'
'Doust?' Islif asked doubtfully, before she lowered her voice and muttered a few more curses to herself..
The reply was some panting, and then the weak words, 'Pray to… Tymora for me… someone? No breath to do it… m'self.'
'I can still manage a glow,' Jhessail said. 'I think.'
'Don't think,' Semoor told her. 'We're adventurers. Things always get worse when we think.'
Someone snorted, not all that far away.
'Florin?' Jhessail asked. 'Is that you?'
'Does anyone know what this place is?' Doust asked, his voice a little stronger.
'Yes,' a cold voice answered out of the darkness.
'Hoy,' one door guard whispered. 'Whirlwind, come a-reaping!'
He and his fellow guard snapped to rigid attention. Old Myarlin Handaerback, the grandly uniformed doorjack standing between them, stepped smartly away from the door and then spun to open it for the swift-striding younger Princess of Cormyr. He stood ready to announce her.
Princess Alusair darted at that doorjack so swiftly that one guard snatched at his sword out of sheer habit. The princess took a firm hold of the elbow of Myarlin's gaudily trimmed jacket and dragged him bodily back from the door to stagger awkwardly to a halt beside her simmering gaze.
'Thank you,' she told Myarlin, 'but I do not wish to be announced. Bide you here, saer. Close the door behind me, and kindly refrain from trying to listen through the keyhole. For once.'
Myarlin blinked and then bowed in acknowledgment. The other door guard snorted, but he was a veteran-as were all the sentinels in the royal wing of the Palace-and managed to keep his face as straight as that of the nearest statue.
The young princess gave him a warning look, opened the door, and slipped inside.
There were fresh furs down on the floor of the Helmed Lady's Room, and someone had cast rose petals into the lamp sconces to pleasantly scent the dimly lit chamber. From around the polished black bulk of the Helmed Lady statue that shielded Alusair's view of much of the chamber came a familiar voice. It made Alusair check her furious stride for a moment-and then shrug and hasten on.
Tana or no haughty Tana, this could not wait.
Chapter 8
Doors, Disputes, and sudden Downfalls
I do my work and preen my pretty head Caring nothing for curses and catcalls But listen right well for, and deeply dread, Doors, disputes, and sudden downfalls.
So you see, Royal Mother,' Tanalasta was saying smoothly, 'I find the time I spend seeking to master the lute to be largely wasted, and I would prefer to-'
'Sire!' Alusair burst out, rounding the statue and looking to her father. 'Pray pardon for the interruption, but I-'
'Luse, darling,' Queen Filfaeril said firmly, 'you are 'storming angrily' Again. Is the realm being invaded?'
'No, but-' Alusair looked helplessly at her father, but he merely gestured that she should attend her mother. 'Is the palace on fire?' 'No, Mother, but-'
'If, as I suspect, your concern is primarily with a slight done to you,' the Dragon Queen said calmly, 'then you need not interrupt our private converse with Tanalasta quite so precipitously.'
'Mother, I can speak with you later,' Crown Princess Tanalasta put in smoothly, giving her younger sister a look of cold scorn. 'I have learned a lirtle patience.'
'Stay,' the queen said softly, bending her gaze ro meet Alusair's blazing eyes. 'Your matter is not trivial. Perhaps what Alusair is bursting to tell us is not, either. Daughter?'
This last word was clearly addressed to Alusair, who bit her lips ro quell the curse that sprang to mind, and forced herself to ask quietly, 'Royal Mother, have I leave to speak?'
Queen Filfaeril nodded. 'Please do. Better to spew than explode.'
The king smiled slightly.
Alusair sighed, threw back her head, and announced, 'I have just learned that Royal Magician Vangerdahast sent my personal champion off to the northeasternmost corner of the realm on a mission that bids fair to get him killed and forbade him to inform me that he was going! I want-'
'Luse,' her farher broke in calmly, 'hold hard a moment. I didn't know you had a personal champion. Who is this paragon, and how came you to have him?'
Alusair sighed, closed her eyes, opened them again, and said, 'Earlier this day, I named Ornrion Taltar Dahaunrul of the Purple Dragons my personal champion. To Vangey's face I proclaimed him thus and told our good Royal Magician that as I now had a champion to protect me, the war wizards he was assigning to spy upon my every last nose-picking and chamber pot-filling moment-'
'Ohh!' Tanalasta exclaimed in disgust. 'Must you mention such things? Really!'
'I can well believe that you no longer use chamber pots,' Alusair snapped at her sister. 'In fact, that explains some things.'
She turned her glare back to her parents before anyone could admonish her and added crisply, 'Yet I digress. As I was saying, I informed him that his spies were no longer needed to be nannies and sneaks and jailers upon me-all three at once and every moment of my life, waking and otherwise. The Royal Magician openly sneered at me and said he took no orders from me, so I set him straight on that-and departed his company. Only to learn that the moment he'd seen my back, he summoned the ornrion and sent him off to be killed, doing this wholly to flout my will and hurl his disobedience into my very teeth!'
'And so?' the king asked gently.
'And so I want him disciplined-for once! — and Dauntless brought back to me.'
'Disciplined?' the queen asked. 'Disciplined how, exactly?'
Tanalasta rolled her eyes. 'She's going to say 'horsewhipped,' Mother!'
Alusair gave her sister a look that had drawn daggers in it, and then turned back to the Queen of Cormyr and snapped defiantly, 'Publicly horsewhipped. For a start.'
Her father made a sound that might have been a suppressed snort of amusement-but when all three Obarskyr females looked sharply at him, they found his face stern and wearing the beginnings of a real frown.
'Alusair Nacacia Obarskyr,' Queen Filfaeril began, almost sweetly, and both of her daughters stiffened. The use of a full formal name meant trouble.
'I should leave,' Tanalasta announced quickly, ducking her head and starting for the nearest door. Only to discover a slender arm had somehow become hooked around hers and had become as unmoving as an iron window bar. The Queen of Cormyr was stronger than she looked.
'Stay and attend, Crown Princess,' her mother said softly in an order as absolute as if she'd thundered it.
