blue bolts of lightning leaped and spat from its rings, arcing back and forth-and suddenly twisted up into a writhing, crackling lance that stabbed at the Knights… only to become a flood of white blossoms that showered petals in all directions as they tumbled to the floor.
'No Witch Lord shall depart this place alive!' the lich said. 'You have wrought your last craven foulness and foolishly strayed within my reach at last! Die! Die!'
The magic that roared forth at the Knights this time was a rose red flame that made hitherto-invisible preservative enchantments on the great carved door flare up a vivid blue-a spitting tongue of fire that became a hissing rain of' Cider? ' Islif exclaimed. 'That's cider I smell!'
The lich flung out a hand to point at Islif's nose and stalked forward, right at her. 'You, Pretender Prince, are rhe very root and branch of evil that we have for so long striven to winnow out of fair Cormyr! I know you and decry you, false knight! You no more have Obarskyr blood than I do! Why, I'd not be surprised if you were even a woman, behind your posturings and oversized codpieces!'
'Strangely enough,' Islif said wryly, as the lich-fear faded suddenly from all the Knights, 'neither would I.'
That pointing fingertip was only inches from her nose. She resisted the impulse to chop it with her sword and instead ducked away.
'Come!' Islif urged her fellow Knights-as the fear surged back over her in a wave that made her heart lurch, and the need to run rose in her mindlessly. She sprinted along the wall and took the cross passage. 'Let's get away from this thing. We don't have the spells to stand and fight it if its charms suddenly turn effective!'
'R-r-right behind you!' Doust panted as he and Semoor stumbled over each other in their clawing terror to be the first to follow her. In their wake, teeth chattering, Florin slashed aside the lich's arm as the creature turned to follow them. His strike sent it tottering away across the passage.
'Filth of Sembia!' it said, pointing now at the wall. 'You fail to deceive me with your clever disguise of aping polished wood! I shall hunt you down and destroy you utterly! Hah! '
The magic that roared out from it this time looked like a darting swarm of tiny white hummingbirds that burst into tinkling, flashing dust before they could reach the wall the lich was now angrily confronting.
Fear surging and ebbing in them like roiling nausea, the Knights fled, following Islif around the corner and down the cross passage.
'This is… not good,' Pennae snapped, wiping sweat from her face. 'I know it's the lich-magic making me afraid, but I feel just as scared as if there were a good reason to be! We've got to find a way out of this place. That mad lich back there won't menace the wall forever!'
'I'm thinking the way out might be on the other side of that door,' Semoor said. 'Care to lead the charge?'
'Sabruin,' Pennae cursed him. 'Tluining well do it yourself, Saer Holy Smarttongue.'
'Ah, no, I think not,' he said. 'Getting blown apart with a spell isn't the sort of new beginning Lathander intends his priests to seek.'
The thief gave him a contemptuous look. 'So priests of the Morninglord justify becoming adventurers how, exactly?'
'Not now, you two,' Florin said. 'We've got-ohh!'
His voice rose in helpless fear even as a bolt of fire snarled past his ear ro claw at the paneled wall high over his shoulder. Protective magics arose from it like rainbow-hued flames to ward off the fire-bolt, even as the Knights cursed and backed away from this new peril: a second lich, taller and clad in robes less decayed than the first one.
It strode toward them as purposefully and lithely as any vigorous living foe, wearing no rings but waving some sort of scepter that clasped around its forearm like a bracer and sparkled in the wake of its firebolt- hurling.
'Intruders into the royal vaults can expect only one fate,' it said, raising the scepter again, 'and I shall swiftly visit that doom upon you!'
Fear ebbed from the Knights again, and Florin said, 'Scatter!
Don't give it a good target! Give yourselves room ro run without slamming into someone else!'
The lich laughed hollowly. 'Scheming will avail you naught, foes of Cormyr! Prepare to die!'
'These fellows were waystop-inn actots in life, weren't they?' Semoor asked. 'Bad ones.'
'The first lich isn't blocking out way back,' Islif said. 'We still have time to get back across that passage crossing by the door and go the other way!'
'So run!' Semoor cried, spinning around and doing just that. A firebolt snarled past, so close to his shoulder that his right ear and cheek felt its heat. The firebolt wrestled again with flaring defensive magics, then fizzled out.
The Knights ran.
'Is this the being brave adventurers part?' Doust panted in the rear of the line. 'Fleeing like children?'
'Who's fleeing?' Pennae called back. 'Have you no appreciation fot battlefield strategy? We're not retreating. We're strategically withdrawing to seek better ground!'
'Ah hah,'Xyouit said in open disbelief. 'Better ground where?'
They pelted past the cross passage where the first lich was still loudly threatening the wall. They ran down a slight ramp or slope through another passage crossing to reach… a dead end.
'Doors, anyone?' Florin called, slowing. 'No one digs out a passage to a dead end and then goes to the trouble of paneling the walls!'
' 'Digs'? How can we be sure we're underground?' Pennae said. 'Holynoses, your glowstones! I need to get a good look at the walls, to see it-'
' 'Ware, all!' Doust shouted, fear making his voice high and wild again. 'We're trapped!' 'Trapped?' Pennae asked.
The Knights whirled around again to stare at the priest and where he was pointing.
Out of that second ctoss passage had stepped a third lich, this one taller than the other two and wearing a gold circlet around its brow. It carried a black staff surmounted by a bulbous head, inset with gems and graven with glowing copper and silver runes. The lich did not seem to be calling forth any magic from the staff. Instead, it held the staff in the crook of one arm and raised both hands to cast a spell-hands whose skeletal fingers were adorned with many glowing rings.
'Naed,' Semoor muttered. 'Jhess, is there anything left that you can cast to get us out of this?'
'N-no,' Jhessail replied from beside his elbow.
A moment later, Islif and Florin both drew in breath in loud, startled hisses.
As the other Knights looked at them and saw where they were staring and pointing, they realized why.
Standing among them were two Jhessail Silvertrees, not just one.
The cave was deserted. Tsantress sighed with relief as she reached its mouth and peered out into the forest. There was no sign of any lurking creature and no spoor suggesting anything had even come close to her little hidehold.
'Tsantress Ironchylde,' she murmured as she stepped past the little teethlike knobs of stone jutting up through the tangled grasses that marked where she'd cast her wards. Saying her name would prevent her passage from ending the ward spell she'd cast seasons ago.
She needed to think-think hard and not stlarn her conclusions, because for once her life really would depend on that-and knew she did that best while wandering the woods near the cave, not crouching in its dark depths.
What should she do? Where should she go?
And, stlarn it, was there any way Vangerdahast could trace her?
Tsantress was a good six paces out into the tall grass, with bird-song starting to die away at her presence, when it struck her that she should probably pray to Azuth and Mystra for guidance-and an answer to that last question.
She returned to the cave and sought out its deepest, darkest back crevice and in the cool, damp darkness knelt down. Her knees knew the right spot, even if she could see nothing in the gloom. She cast a spell into the darkness in front of her. A small working, a light-kindling.
The altar she'd made swallowed the magic silently, giving her back a brief glow all around its edges. A very
