'What is this place?' Semoor said, 'And what in all the Nine Hells are you doing here?'
'Kindly speak more quietly, Wolftooth,' the Royal Magician replied sourly. 'Unless you have some means of besting liches that I lack. We're standing in the Lost Palace of Esparin, and I am here because I was trapped here by a Zhent impostor who means ill for the realm. Whereas you are here because, I suppose, you are adventurers who will do anything other than depart the realm of Cormyr as you were ordered to do.'
Pennae gave him a cold look. 'So we're somewhere in Cormyr?'
Ignoring her, Vangerdahast asked, 'So how did you get here?'
'So we're somewhere in Cormyr?' Islif echoed Pennae.
'Somewhere underground, near Cormyr. Probably north of the realm proper.' The wizard turned to cast glances down passages in all directions and then strode toward the Knights. He put his back to a wall. 'My turn, I believe. Again, how did you reach this place?'
'Magic!' Pennae said. 'Not outs. Something done by Lord Crownsilver or rather his three hired, wand-waving, Sembian mages. In the woods just north off the Ride east of Halfhap, in an old roofless ruin behind a caravan camp. A place I'm sure you can name.'
'No doubt,' Vangerdahast said. 'So-'
'That was not,' the thief snapped, 'merely an observation. I can tell all too well by your temper and your hesitancy that you're going to ask for our aid, Vangey, so pray do us the little courtesy of telling us what we want to know.'
The Royal Magician's bushy eyebrows rose in unison, and he looked straight at Florin. 'Haven't learned the cost of overly smart tongues yet? Adventurers usually have quite enough trouble without needlessly borrowing more.'
Florin regarded Vangerdahast calmly. 'I don't recall our charter saying anything at all about obeying the Royal Magician of Cormyr-nor the Court Wizard, or for that matter any war wizard. I thank you for the advice. In return, here's some for you: Politely answer the lady. You'll live longer that way.'
'Growing fangs, Falconhand? Tell me, O Wise Advisor, is this a wise time to do so?' The Royal Magician sighed, moved his hand as if to wave his own words away with the back of it, and said, 'Forgive me, Knights. I… am under some strain at the moment. I very much need ro get myself out of here in some haste. Alive, too, and as you see me now, not turned into a bird or boor or some such. I do indeed find myself in need of your assistance just now.'
'Does your neediness extend to an appropriate reward?' Pennae said.
'And of what, specifically?' Semoor added.
Vangerdahast smiled wryly, just for an instant. 'Ennoblement for you all. Which would mean titles, a small gift of Crown funds, and the removal of any requirement upon you to depart the realm. Moreover, if you do continue to Shadowdale and settle there, I can promise much funding, military aid, and war wizard assistance- under your authority-in securing and transforming the dale into what you want it to be. We can even make it part of Cormyr. Ah, only if that's what you want, of course.'
Pennae crooked an eyebrow. 'My, you are desperate, aren't you?'
Jhessail frowned. 'What assistance do you have in mind?'
'And how do we know you are Vangerdahast,' Pennae added, 'and not a mad lich playing a little game with us?'
The wizard sighed and waved a hand at Doust and Semoor. 'Are there not holy men among you? Simple magics on their part will reveal my undeath-or would, if I happened to be undead. Now, as for aiding me, I need you to do something the spells laid upon me here prevent me from doing myself, of course. It's called the Unbinding, and-I'll not lie to you-there is danger in it.'
'As in fatal danger,' Pennae said. 'Care to be more specific?'
Vangerdahast gave her a dark look. 'If you work arcane spells, they can twist into quite different magics and be unleashed without warning to harm yourself and others. This occurs only in the wake of your working a particular unbinding, in the long sequence that makes up the ritual.'
'So this Unbinding is a series of little steps?' Pennae asked. 'Destructive ones, I presume?'
'Yes, and I must warn you rhat powerful enchanted items on your persons can be affected just as powerful spells can. Minor magics of either sort should do no harm, though their presence may give you something of a headache.'
The Royal Magician pointed along the wall across from the one he was leaning against. 'There are many carved panels among the wood sheathing of these walls. Some are actually thin, worked stone, painted and treated to look like wood. At my direcrion, you Knights must shatter a particular stone panel, and then go and do the same thing to whichever nearby panel winks with sudden light when you shatter the first. The Unbinding is simply a series of such breakings.'
'Which will do what?' Islif and Florin asked, in perfect unison.
'Deliver all of us from this place. The liches will fall apart. The bindings are all that is keeping them from doing so right now. You'll know the Unbinding has worked because now-sleeping portals hidden all over this palace will awaken and reach out to suck us through, snatching us all to one place: the robing room behind the Throne Chamber in the Royal Palace in Suzail.'
'And then?' Semoor asked. 'We'll be blasted down by some waiting guard of war wizards?'
'No, bur I'd take it kindly if you fought at my side as I seek out the false Vangerdahasr. We'll have ro move swiftly and- regrettably-deal with any war wizards we meet who try to stop us, because the impostor will undoubtedly seek to reach the royal family, probably to slay one of them and take that shape or ro try to hold them hostage in return for his own safe escape.'
Vangerdahast fell silent then and turned his head to give all of them the closest thing to a beseeching look that any of the Knights had ever seen on his usually imperious face.
The Knights stared at him, then eyed each other.
There were several unhappy sighs before Florin said slowly, 'We must confer and decide together.'
'Aye,' Pennae agreed. 'Let's talk.'
Targrael sank down onto the stairs, melting against them. She dared not count on these three dolts being such utter fools as never to look back her way.
After all, they might well turn back from the portal right now, and' One of you in front of me and one behind,' Lord Crownsilver said. 'Come! The longer we give them to get ahead of us…'
Warily, one of the Sembians walked up to and through the portal, vanishing in a silent instant. Breathing something that might have been a prayer or a curse, the nobleman followed. The second Sembian peered for a moment at the rubble behind the portal, where beams and the ceiling had crashed down in a now-frozen torrent of sagging collapse, sighed loudly, and strode after them.
Still flattened on the stairs, Highknight Ismta Targrael waited in cautious silence for some time ere she rose in smooth, catlike' silence and stalked to the portal. Turning smoothly in a complete rotation to look everywhere behind her, she stepped into its embrace, drawn sword first.
In silence it swallowed her, and that silence stretched for several long breaths before something else moved in the darkened cellar, rising from behind a particularly large heap of rubble.
It was a man-a man known to a diminishing number of living Cormyreans as Brorn Hallomond, personal bodyguard in the service of the Lord Prester Yellander, and more widely tetmed a lord's 'bullyblade'-and he hefted his sword in his hand as he stared at the portal he'd just seen four people pass through.
Would it be the folly of a reckless fool to go after them? Or his road to riches enough to settle down somewhere safe in the Forest Kingdom and live like a lord the rest of his days?
A short way down the passage, beyond the moot, a door opened, and a lich clad in robes of rich purple strode out, clutching a rod that winked with magical lights up and down its dark length.
'Aha!' it cried. 'More thieves! Come to despoil the royal vaults of fair Cormyr! Can'r turn my back and lose myself in a spell for half a candle without another scurrying infestation of you creeping in behind me to-'
Running out of words, it growled in rage and charged forward, waving the staff.
Vangerdahast calmly worked a swift and intricate spell, a casting unlike any Jhessail had ever seen before- and a strange red mist appeared, swept along the passage, snatched the lich off its feet, and bundled it back
