kicked it frantically, sending it staggering back-and hurled herself forward inro it in a wild dive, punching with her fists. Fell flames roared up all around her, bathing her, clawing at her face, and setting her hair to sizzling… then she hit the floor hard, amid breaking, scattering bones, and the flames were gone. A lich cackled from somewhere above her, and suddenly a strong hand took her by the ankle and pulled.
'Sorry,' she heatd Florin gasp. ' 'Ware your eyes, Jhess!'
She was being dragged swiftly over bony shards, back toward the door.
'Won't open!' she heard Pennae shout. 'No lock, but I can't get this tluining thing open!'
Then Pennae sobbed as if in sudden pain, and Doust cried, 'What?'
'Burned my fingers,' the thief gasped, sounding much closet now, as Florin's dragging went on. 'This door is… is…'
'Magical, yes,' Islif panted. 'Doust, leave Semoor. We need you to fight these liches! '
Florin let go; Jhessail opened her eyes, tried to struggle to her knees-and screamed at what she saw. A dozen liches or more had gathered in a sort of wall across the passage. They advanced on the Knights. The glowing, pulsing door was only a pace or two away behind their backs, and the liches were thrusting forward, seeking to overwhelm the swinging swords of Florin and Islif, bear them down under weight and numbers, and tear them apart. Spells seemed to have become useless in the waves rushing out from the door, spell after spell fading vainly from the fingertips of the liches casting them. But liches were working magics on themselves, too, making their fingerbones into long, raking claws, and those spells seemed to be holding.
'Endless!' Doust panted, joining Islif and Florin with his mace.
Pennae mewed in pain and flung herself at the door again, braving its magical fires to feel for any carch or lock or opening her eyes might have missed. 'These stlarning liches are endless!'
'Pretend you're hewing firewood back in Espar!' Islif gasped. 'Take it all down, and we can go in and lounge by the fite!'
'Oh,gods, I wish you hadn't said that!' Pennae snarled from right behind them.
The door exploded.
Orders, Strict, and Otherwise Much of the troubles, in my or any ordered life come about as the sometimes- deadly results of orders, strict and otherwise, that are flagrantly disobeyed or that never should have been given in the first place.
The world was all bright flame and silence-the brief and troubled silence of the tempotarily deafened. The passage spun around Jhessail as she was hurled far down it, tumbling helplessly through the air with her fellow Knights around her. Vangerdahast and many liches were swept along as helplessly as storm-whipped autumn leaves in front of her.
Bones bounced and broke apart, skeletons scattering as they struck the unyielding passage floor, and Jhessail just had time to realize that she was racing to experience the very same bone-shattering fate before she slammed hard inro something very solid that wore armor. Something that groaned at her arrival, even as it wrapped arms around her and skidded along the passage floor under the force of her landing, leaving a silenrly sprawled bullyblade in its wake.
It was Dauntless. She'd landed in the arms of the ornrion who'd murderously stalked the Knights for so long- and what was he doing here, anyhail? — and he was now staring at her in open-mouthed starrlement, as sounds slowly came back to her. Jhessail dazedly started to think she was still alive, after all.
Someone else, huddled on the floor right by her outflung left foot, moved, heaving himself upright. It was Vangerdahasr. Magic swirled around him as he staggered, and he seemed for a moment to be someone taller, leaner, and darker of garb.
Then he was the familiar oaunchv. elowerine Roval Maeician of Cormyr again, muttering out a spell entitely unfamiliar to her as he shot suspicious glances all around-in particular at the bright wall of flames that cloaked one side of the passage, well beyond him.
Liches watched Vangerdahast from the distance, down the passage beyond those flames, but no one struck at him or hurled magic his way.
Vangey finished growling out his spell and stepped back, spreading his hands in a sort of grim triumph.
Whereupon the empty air right in front of him split apart in a dark, roiling rift, as if slashed open by an unseen giant's blade. The rift was taller than a man and rapidly drew wider, roiling darkness churning half-seen within it.
As it grew, Jhessail, Dauntless, and everyone else felt a sudden, terrible tugging, a plucking at their flesh and clothing and even the breath in their lungs that sought to drag them to the rift. As they stared at this new danger, Vangerdahast calmly stepped into it.
At his heels there was a flash of light-and the rift and its inexorable pull were gone, as abruptly as they had come into being. Jhessail blinked. Now that the passage was empty of Royal Magicians of Cormyr, she noticed something that had been hidden from her behind his arm-waving bulk.
The flying sword was back.
It arrowed toward the rift, racing fast to try to reach it.
With the rift gone, the sword-Gods Above, but it was a splendid thing, large and long and sleek! — flashed vainly through the empty air where the rift had been and sped on, not slowing in the slightest.
Jhessail found she could turn her head in the ornrion's cradling grasp to follow its speeding flight. That magnificent sword went right on down the rest of the passage to plunge through the dark opening where the door that had blown her away had been.
Or try to, that is. As it entered the empty doorway, the darkness there vanished in a bursr of light as another glowing, upright oval- tluin, was there no end to portals lurking everywhere? — flashed into being.
Jhessail clearly saw the portal swallow the scudding sword. The blade winked out rather than piercing through the glow.
The glow that now hung, silent and bright, waiting in the air.
Laspeera, Lorbryn, and the Harper were aiming theit failing wands with care and precision. They had their backs to the wall of flame as they took down lich after lich. Vangerdahast trusted their skill enough to risk leaving off blasting for a moment to snatch a look or two behind him.
The harrowfire he'd twisted into lich-melting flames was fading and dying, just as he'd expected. Yet for no reason he could fathom, those flames were melting away from the far side of the passage toward the near wall, revealing more and more of the bone-filled passage as they did so.
'A graveyard of liches,' he murmured, more to himself than anyone else, looking at all the strewn, crumbling bones.
The sword had gone streaking down the passage to its end, and he could see no sign of it now. Nor the false Vangerdahasr, either.
He suspected the terrific blast had been the enchantments on the door at the end of the passage exploding. And he'd been right. Yonder was the gaping doorway where the door had been, and here, sttewn before him, were the bodies of the Knights, fallen where they'd been flung. Some were moaning. Falconhand and the farm lass, Lurelake, were even moving, struggling ro rise.
Enough. They had to be stopped. Now.
'Dauntless!' he snapped at the ornrion sitting dazedly on the floor with one of the adventurers-the little lass, of course; soldiers never miss a chance, do they? — in his lap. 'Stop the Knights! Stop them smashing wall panels, if you have to kill every last one of them!'
He saw Dauntless turn his head and look at the Knight in his arms-Jhessail, that was her name-and saw her look right back at him, their noses almost touching. Their faces wore looks that were more bewildered than anything else.
Together the mage and the ornrion looked at the Knights around them. Doust was sprawled senseless,
