Wizard of War Gheldaert was never in the best of tempers-even when he awakened from slumber at his own pace. Roused frantically from his bed by several perturbed younger war wizards, he was decidedly not in the best of tempers now.
Glaring around the room full of anxious young faces, he said, 'And why should I care that a barn burned down outside Wheloon? Why should I even be told that a barn burned down anywhere? Why should any of you waste your time and tongue-wagging over such trifles? Are you not war wizards? And being so, have you nothing better to do?'
'Gheldaert, this wasn't just any fire!' Rhindin said. 'The barn burst like a spell blast and hurled out bolts of lightning in all directions-and balls of green flame that flew everywhere, too!'
'So someone was spellhurling and made a mistake, or two mages decided to hold their little private duel in a barn! I presume you've spent a few spells trying to find out, yes? As the standing orders that Old Thunderspells never tires of reminding us all about insist be done? Or are you telling me all this because someone forgot to do so-or cast the spells but blew himself up, leaving only smoking boots behind? Or just went missing?'
'We're telling you this, Irvgal Gheldaert,' came a cold voice from the door, 'because the investigator of the fire that destroyed Indarr Andemar's barn wrote his name in the duty book, added the title of a report on his investigation, and then stopped writing, leaving the test of the page blank. And the name he wrote was Gheldaert Howndroe. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?'
Gheldaert gaped at the person standing in the doorway. 'Q-Queen Filfaeril?'
'Ah, war wizards always penetrate my best disguises,' the woman in the doorway, who wore no disguise at all-and clearly nothing much at all beneath her clinging silken nightgown-replied in a voice that dripped with acid. 'Wherefore I'll expect a full report on this in the morning. Not until then, mind. I have a little private duel of my own to attend to right now. In the Royal Bedchamber.'
'Y-yes, Great Queen,' Gheldaert managed to reply. 'I, uh, I-'
'And while you're at it, Irvgal,' the Dragon Queen added over her shoulder, as she turned and strode barefoot out of the room, 'you've been following up on that shapeshifting matter in Shadowdale-Craunor Askelo's report, remember? — for some months now. Are you not a war wizard? And being so, have you nothing better to do?'
Gheldaert swallowed, not knowing what to say, then tried to say something. What came out was a heartfelt 'Tluin.'
He froze, aghast. Gods! He had just said a very impolite word to the Queen of Cormyr.
'Indeed,' she replied from down the passage. 'That's exactly what I'll be doing. How perceptive of you. With such keenwitted Wizards of War serving us so diligently, there's hope for the realm yet.'
Then she added something that sent him staggering to the floor in sudden relief. She chuckled.
It was as dry and gleefully dirty a chuckle as he'd ever heard.
Dalonder Ree blinked, shook himself, and blinked again. He was sranding our of doors on well-trampled ground amid trees. Somewhere. Where was he?
Oh.
The Harper was standing in the camp hollow between the road and the Stagheart ruin, in the bright moonlight of a calm, warm night.
In just the same mannet as he was blinking and staring around Lorbryn, Tsantress, and two of the Knights of Myth Drannor-the ranger Florin and the fighting-lass Islif, both looking more than a little dazed-were staring around at the hollow, at each other, and down at themselves.
Those glances down showed them the Wizard of War Laspeera lying face-up and senseless on the ttampled turf between them, clutching the broken and smoking ends of wands in both her hands.
Farther away, strewn all around them, lay the crumpled bodies of the ornrion Dauntless, the bullyblade Brorn Hallomond, and the rest of the Knights.
'How-?' Florin asked hoarsely.
'The wizard Laspeera,' Ree told him. 'Obeying the Royal Magician to get us all here, out of the Lost Palace. While he remained behind to fight alone against-'
He stopped speaking and whirled, raising his wands, as behind him arose a faint chiming as of faerie bells, and the air glowed a sudden, vivid blue-white.
Then the glow was gone, and a dozen or so men who had not been there before were standing where it had been. They blinked around ar the hollow. Each held a sword in his hand. Most were Purple Dragons in armor, but standing with them in Court-fashionable finery wete the noble Lords Spurbright, father and son, looking stern.
'Well met,' Tsantress greeted them in a dry voice, raising and aiming her own wands at them. 'How come you here, Lords, and on what purpose bent?'
'To defend Cormyr by aiding the wizard Vangerdahast in his time of need,' the elder Lord Spurbright replied. 'We were sent here by the Princess-'
One of the Dragons behind him shrieked, flung his arms wide, and toppled forward. A glowing blade was just sliding back out of his backside, glistening with his blood.
' 'Ware!' Dalonder Ree cried, firing his wands at the blade. 'Guard yourselves!'
Tsantress blasted it, too, as the Dragons and nobles hastily scattered, cursing. Deltalon scrambled to where he could blast it clearly.
The sword darted here and there, thrusting at legs and hands and then springing up ro stab at Purple Dragon faces.
'Get it!' Ree snarled. 'These wands must be good for something! Blast it to shards!'
Lorbryn and Tsantress joined him in blasting the sword, striking it repeatedly as the Dragons and nobles flung themselves down, scrambled and rolled aside, and clawed their ways back to where wandfire could give them some protection from the flying blade.
Flying raggedly, the sword finally veered off behind trees and fled, disappearing back into the forest under the lash of their blasrs.
Silence fell, broken only by the hisses of pain from some of the lacerated Dragons. Ree looked at the wounded men, then down at all the silent bodies. The last place he looked was up at Lorbryn and Tsantress to ask, 'And now… what?'
As the Spurbrights came silently up beside them, the two war wizards shrugged.
Tsantress frowned as a thought struck her. Wagging a finger, she said, 'Turn Laspeera over. She'll have some healing porions on her. She always does.'
Gingerly, Ree lifted the war wizard's limp torso and turned her over. Bending over him, Lorbryn Deltalon plucked some metal vials from loops along the back of Laspeera's belt.
The Harper frowned. 'I'm wearing a whole sash of those, I think. Took them off Vangey's table.'
He slapped his hip, and a hitherto-invisible baldric melted back into visibilitv and soliditv.
Tsantress peered at the row of metal vials tanged down that baldric. She nodded and smiled at what she saw, then pointed at the stricken and the bodies all around.
'Start pouring them down throats. Don't choke someone you're healing, mind, or they'll haunt you.'
Remembering the liches crowding in closer back in the passage, Ree shivered.
In a spell-sealed chamber in a certain tower of Zhenril Keep, the Brotherhood wizard Targon peered into a scrying sphere at a moonlit hollow that now held nary a flying sword at all.
Old Ghost knew a magic that Targon had never known, which would have enabled him to force the crystal ball to trace and watch the sword's flight on through the forest-but he couldn't be bothered.
Shrugging, he turned away. 'Horaundoon, Horaundoon!' he told the empty air disgustedly, as he flung the door-bar aside and threw open the doors into the moonlit chamber beyond. 'No discipline. Slaughtering just anyone merely gets you blasted. I gave you orders. Idiot.'
The same moonlight that fell upon the exasperated Zhentarim mage Targon fell also upon a high room in a ruined, window-less tower that soared up out of the leafy canopy of a wooded wilderness.
It touched the boots of the wizard Hesperdan as he stood with his arms folded across his chest, watching a floating, glowing, spell-spun scene in midair. The disgusted Targon was turning away from that distant scrying sphere and striding to the door.
