Laspeera slumped over with a gasp as the raging wizard left her mind, then she straighted and gave her young war wizards a lopsided smile.
'He's always like this,' she explained. 'One gets used to it.'
She turned and dashed out the door.
'What is this place?' one of the Sembians asked, peering at the dark passages ahead.
'I was hoping you could tell me that,' Lord Maniol Crownsilver snapped. 'You're the wizards here.'
'Hold!' The other Sembians voice was tight with fear. 'What's that?'
He was pointing ahead into the dark mouth of a side passage, where something half-seen was moving.
Out into their passage it came, walking as slowly as an elderly, unsteady noble, and wearing the ragged remnants of what had once been splendid gatments of shimmerweave and musterdelvys. Its head was half flesh and lank hair and half bare bone, and its eyes were two glittering motes of light. It was smiling.
'A lich, I'm thinking,' the fitst Sembian said quietly, his hands already busy at his belt.
'So, my tutor,' the undead asked them, 'what is it to be this time? Are we calling up fiends? Or hurling fire into flagons?'
The Sembians looked sidelong at each other. 'Neither,' the second Sembian said. 'No magic this day.'
'No? But I've practiced so long! Watch!' Bony fingers sketched briefly in empty air, rose-hued motes of light started to trail from fingertips, and a sudden flare of rose-purple light snarled out in Lord Crownsilver's direction.
'Do something!' the noble shouted, cowering back. 'I'm paying you to do something!'
Even as his voice rose in wild fear, the crawling, stabbing rose-purple radiance struck something half-seen and emerald-hued that seemed to be emanating from the first Sembians belt. The purple light was deflected to strike at the passage wall, where rainbow-hued radiances flared inro being and wrestled with it.
'Oooh!' The lich clapped its hands together, staring at where its magic was striking the emerald-hued warding. 'Pretty! Very pretty! And have you more delights to share with me, dusky sorceress?'
Lord Crownsilver and the two Sembians exchanged glances then looked back at the lich. It had turned its back on them and was strolling away down the passage now, flouncing along as if dancing or skipping, and crooning, 'Pretty… oh, so pretty…'
'Look,' the second Sembian said, pointing past the wandering lich ar something leaning out to look at them from another passage mouth. 'There's another one.'
'Azuth's flaming spittle,' the first mage cursed.
The two Sembians looked at each other, nodded in accord, and turned away from the liches.
'Here, now!' Lord Crownsilver snapped, plucking at the sleeve of the first Sembian. 'What're you playing at? I'm paying you to-'
The Sembian thrust his face forward at his patron so aggressively that the shorrer noble flinched back, and the wizard snapped, 'Lord, those are liches. Mad liches. Not all the gold and gems in Cormyr will keep me here now.'
'Aye,' the other Sembian said. 'Dead men spend no riches. And we'll all be dead men-or worse-very swiftly if we tarry here longer. Why, I-'
His fellow mage-for-hire gurgled loudly.
The Sembian had torn his sleeve from Crownsilver's grasp, taken two swift strides back down the passage- and run right onto the sword that a grimly smiling woman in black leathers was holding ready, right at the level of his throat.
Her free hand snarched the warding token from the wizard's belt and held it up to ward off any magic the other Sembian might hurl.
Thus defended, Highknight Lady Ismra Targrael watched the man choke and strangle on her steel. Her smile never changed as he sagged, gurgling his way down to the passage floor with his staring eyes fixed on her.
Letting go of her sword as the dying Sembian took it to the floor and as Lord Crownsilver stared at her, aghast and paling, she plucked a dagger from her belt, danced sideways, and threw it deftly.
The noble couldn't turn his head fast enough to follow its flashing flight, but he saw well enough where that journey ended.
Wearing the dagger hilt-deep in his left eye, the second Sembian mage toppled, tiny lightnings spitting and swirling vainly around the blade as feeble defensive magics sought to deal with it… and failed.
Targrael didn't even bother to watch him fall. She was busy tugging her sword free.
Lord Crownsilver stared down at the two bodies on the passage floor in front of him. Then he looked up at the woman who'd killed them. Who was still smiling.
'Well, little traitor noble,' she purred, stalking forward, twirling het sword. 'It seems it's now just you and me.'
Manshoon smiled. He'd been ready to foil the priests' truth-sensing magics-feeble things, really-but he'd been spared the trouble. They were so eager to save Faerun, these Knights. Naive fools.
If every land had a dozen such bands, he could conquer the entire Realms in a season.
There had been a time when Vangerdahast had come here often, when the treasures stored here had been everyday needs and comforts, armor of sorts against his fears. Yet it had been a long time since he'd burst in here in any hurry, seeking… seeking…
Snarling like an angry wolf, Vangerdahast raged around the room, snatching up wands here, rods there, and- and-and belts of potions over there! Amulets-best have some of them, too.
He dropped them in a great heap onto the table and whirled away to face the nearest wardrobe. Snatching it open, he glared at a suit of gleaming magical elven armor inside. He peered past it in a vain search for somerhing more useful, then savagely slammed the doors on the armor again, rurning away with a heartfelt growl.
Which was when he caught sight of a man in worn leathers watching him from the doorway. A man whose name he didn't know, but whom he vaguely recalled seeing around the Palace once or twice before.
This in itself irritated Vangey. No one should visit the Palace more than once without the Royal Magician knowing who they were and why they were there.
'Who-?'
'Dalonder Ree, Harper,' the man said softly, 'here to help. You look very much like a Royal Magician of Cormyr who needs it. And if the Royal Magician doesn't, the Court Wizard of Cormyr seems in even worse need of aid.'
'I need nothing of the sort!' Vangey snapped.
Laspeera ducked past the Harper into the room and said breathlessly, 'I've never heard you this upset before! What d'you need me for?'
Vangerdahast srared helplessly into the Harper's carefully expressionless gaze for a moment, then thtew up his hands in surrender and snapped at his most loyal war wizard, 'Strap on all of this you can carry, and come with me! Some madwits may be about to work the Unbinding and empty the Lost Palace onto our laps!'
Laspeera blinked, cursed in a crisp and very unladylike manner, and started grabbing at the magic items Vangey had dumped on the table. So did the Harper.
'Not you!' Vangey snarled at him. 'Don't you have something else to meddle in?'
'Nothing nearly as important as this!' Ree said.
'Well, you could stay right hete, keep your hands off all magic, and go running around rounding up Wizards of War and sending them after us! If we all go down, it really won't matter how few are left here to defend the throne! Oh, and you could warn the royal fam-'
'As it happens, wizard,' Princess Alusair said crisply from the doorway, 'I can and will take care of that. This valiant Harper will be accompanying you, if he desires. I can't give him a royal command, but I can so command you-and I should have started doing so years ago, I'm thinking.'
Vangey started to say something, anger rising in him like a great tide, but the younger princess of the realm raised her voice in superb mimicry of his own, roaring right over him, 'Now stop arguing with everyone you see and get going!''
