wandfire tore at it, then it surged down the cellar toward Lord Crownsilver.
Only to explode in its own burst of blinding white light, a blast that-laced with Pennae's shriek and srartled shouts from the Sembians-drove its own burning rays into everyone…
Aumrune Trantor stopped midstep, teetering awkwardly with one foot raised-and then brought it down, lurched against a passage wall, and stayed there, leaning like a drunkard.
Old Ghost had found something.
Something in Aumrune's mind made him seethe with excitement and glee-so bright and fierce that Horaundoon, sharing that mind with him, cowered.
Aumrune's pet project, kept secret from all except Manshoon and Hesperdan, who seemed to approve of it, was adding magics to an ancient, flying magic sword: Armaukran, the Sword That Never Sleeps. Aumrune had already infused the blade with new powers to make it obey him.
Surging in bright exultation, Old Ghost uncovered the way into the sword from Aumrune's mind.
The body of Aumrune Trantor thrust itself away from the wall so briskly it almost fell. It hurried off down that gloomy, deserted passage in Zhentil Keep, headed for where a certain hidden sword awaited.
This was going to be good. Very good.
Two flights down a deserted staircase in the Royal Court, while passing his forry-third faded tapestry, Vangerdahast stopped and murmured, 'Far enough. Best alter things before we run into the real Vangerdahast.'
The features more than a thousand courtiers and servants knew and feared rippled and flowed, melting down off a quite different face as the hargaunt sought the chin of Telgarth Boarblade, and points below.
As he held open the front of his doorjack's jerkin to let the hargaunt flow down out of sight, Telgarth Boarblade smiled. Lord Rhallogant Caladanter was a buffoon of the most childish sort, aye, but he must have done well enough in telling War Wizard Ironchylde the tale Boarblade had so carefully concocted. She'd been white with fright and seeing foes in every shadow. Well delivered, indeed.
Still wearing his satisfied smile, the doorjack who was not a doorjack went down the stairs at a more dignified pace, and out through a door three floors down.
Only after he had heard the familiar slight scrape of that door closing did the old doorjack-who'd been watching Boarblade's transformation from behind one of the faded tapestries that lined the staircase walls-dare to breathe again.
Myarlin Handaerback was trembling and purple from lack of air and indignation. As he thrust aside the tapestry and started his own ascent in the gloom, he muttered, 'There's more confounded creeping as goes on in this place! Not like in the old days, when it was all pretty lasses seeking their suitors or the suitors chasing after them. First adventurers and now men with oozing things that disguise their faces! Now we're getting the riff raff, to be sure!'
The little tower room was thick with dust from the many yellowing, rolled maps, deeds, and contracts that choked its storage shelves-but not a single speck of it marred the sword that lay gleaming on the trestle table that filled the center of the room.
Aumrune carefully locked, latched, bolted, and then barred the lone door behind him. Old Ghost made him edge past the table and do something he never did: Undog and swing aside the inner shutter that covered the window and its bars, unlatch and take down those bars, and undog the window itself.
Horaundoon paid little attention. Horaundoon, crouched in one corner of Aumrune's mind, had all his attention bent on the magnificent sword that lay on the table.
It was a long blade, nigh as long as some men stood tall, about two thirds of it a slender blade of bright silver and the last third a large hilt neatly wrapped in black silver, with sleekly curved double quillons and a cabochon-cut blue gem for a pommel, smooth and rounded and glowing with a faint light of magic.
Gods, it was beautiful. The Sword That Never Sleeps, crafted by that rarest of creatures, if the tales could be believed: a smith of the elves!
Not that Old Ghost could tell, after all the enchantments that had been cast, recast, broken, and overlaid upon the sharp steel. Certainly its curves suggested elven stylings, and the oldest surviving enchantments felt like elf work.
Armaukran was the name of someone it had slain, whose life-force had been infused into the sword through datk spells. It had been forged for a purpose-but that purpose was lost, at least to Old Ghost and Horaundoon.
What remained clear and delighred Old Ghost very much was that seven enchantments remained rooted in the blade that shared a purpose: binding souls, spirits, or sentiences into the blade.
Horaundoon wallowed in the intricacies and elegances of all the castings upon the blade. Their sweepingly shaped, subtly reinforced incantations, the balanced flows of Weave-work… even the lesser, simpler magics added by Aumrune Trantor, grafted on recently, were but plainer outer garments draped over great beauty beneath. He ached to do such work, to so ride the Weave that he could craft such beauty…
Lost in lust, he never saw his peril.
Old Ghost found the words of magic he needed in those seven binding enchantments, gathered himself-then spoke them, clearly and crisply, plucking the forces they unleashed as deftly as any master hatpist and using them to thrust a helpless Hotaundoon into the Sword That Never Sleeps. Down into the brightness the younger, lesser spirit so hungered for, down into the cold, thrilling embrace of bindings that tightened and anchored themselves upon him in a dozen ways, then a score of ways-bindings that burned when Old Ghost bent his will upon them.
The splendid sword rose into the air to float silently above the table.
'Yes,' Old Ghost murmured through Aumrune Trantor's lips, his thoughts blazing loudly into Horaundoon through the sword's bindings, 'you are mine now. Mine to bid, to command as surely as if my hands were firm around this hilt. Yet chafe not, Horaundoon. This is a task you'll thoroughly enjoy.'
Aumrune Trantor opened the window and the outer shutters beyond, letting in the sun and a cool breeze that was scudding past all the towers of Zhentil Keep.
'Go,' Old Ghost commanded. 'Go and kill Zhentarim. I shall be with you, watching. Try to take them alone, where others will not see you. Go and seek Zhents to slay. Not Manshoon, mind. Not yet. And not Hesperdan, for both of them can probably destroy Armaukran with ease. Which leaves you, O Hungry Slayer of Zhentarim, just about every other member of the Brotherhood you care to fell.'
The Sword That Never Sleeps rose from the table and slid forward through the air, point first, as sleek as any arrow.
Out the window it went, banking and plunging hastily down out of sight, seeking concealing shadows.
A path of his awareness plunging down with it, Old Ghost smiled inside Aumrune Trantor and made the Zhent mage reach out and close the shutters and then the window.
It was time and past time to begin remaking the Zhentarim into something worthy in fair Faerun.
Florin blinked. Aye. He was Florin.
Florin Falconhand… and he lay on his back on cool, hard stone.
It was too smooth to be anything but a floor, and there was nothing but darkness above him.
Or so it seemed. Things were coming back gradually. They'd been in that cellar, facing Lord Crownsilver. Then the blast…
Wherever he now was, it wasn't the cellar. This place was larger and a lot less dank. Dusty, evenFlorin sneezed. Hard and uncontrollably and several times, bouncing his shoulders off the unyielding stone beneath him.
Someone groaned from floor level nearby. Off to his left.
Florin tried to move his hands. He couldn't seem to feel them, but they were there… and whole. When he thrust one up in front of his face and wriggled his fingers, they responded normally enough. He thrust two of them into his nose to quell further sneezes, and he tried to roll over onto his elbow and sit up.
Done, as easily as usual. Aside from aches all over-the back of his head and his left arm and shoulder in particular-it seemed he was unhurt, with his fellow Knights lying sptawled and motionless around him. Or almost motionless. Yonder, someone was moving and groaning. Doust, from the sound.
