'Thy assurances,' the priest told him dryly, 'are as strong as thy faith.'
He stood up, the staff in his hands, and gave Torm a long, steady look.
'Do it,' the thief said quietly after a time. 'I won't jump you or try to snatch it.'
Rathan nodded, turned slowly, and then solemnly strode the length of the glade, the staff held out before him horizontally. Torm trailed after him, well to one side, watching the staff and the altar in turn, half expecting either or both of them to burst into something loud and bright and different.
Nothing happened, and no one sprang into view behind the altar.
When he reached that massive, plain disk of stone, the priest of Tymora stopped, held out the staff, and announced calmly, 'Rathan Thentraver am I, and unworthy, a priest of Tymora. To holy Azuth this we give, Saer Torm and myself.'
Leaning forward, he carefully laid the staff down on the altar, stepped back, bowed deeply, and stepped back further.
The staff stayed motionless on the altar. Silence fell. Nothing happened.
After several long breaths had dragged by, Torm sighed. 'Well, that was a bit of a-'
The altar glowed, a bright white fist of dancing motes rising from the bare dark stone around the staff and gathering together in a sphere a foot or so above the altat.
As Torm and Rathan stared, the sphere grew to shield size, then as large as the boulders they'd been sitting on at the far end of rhe glade, a blinding white light that made the thief hastily back away. 'If that explodes-!'
Rathan stood his ground.
The light streamed down to cover the altar, dripping down its sides like white candle wax, hiding the staff entirely. Then, very suddenly, it went from white to a deep, rich blue… and statted to fade.
The staff was gone, but there was something in its place. A heap-no, two heaps, accompanied by a whiff of pipesmoke.
The blue radiance ebbed even more, and two small heaps of gems could be seen sitting side by side on the altar, each covered with a leather pouch from which prorruded a neat quartet of cylindrical metal vials.
'Healing potions?' Torm breathed as the last of the glow faded away.
'Mayhap,' Rathan muttered, his gaze never leaving the altar. One of the two pouches was labeled 'Torm' and the othet 'Rathan.' Both had small, folded scraps of parchment thrusr into them.
Torm and Rathan broke off staring at the altar long enough to stare at each other in astonishment. Then they both shrugged, stepped forward, took up their parchments, and read them.
'Well, holy man?'
'Rathan,' the priest read aloud, 'go ye to Shadowdale. Once there, use any pretext to become a trusted Knight of Myth Drannor.'
Then he made a surprised sound. The parchment melted away to dust in his fingets. He looked quickly at the thief.
'Torm,' Torm read out rather hastily, 'go ye to Shadowdale. Once there, use any pretext to become a trusted Knight of Myth Drannor.' His parchment, too, promptly fell to dust.
They stared at each other. Again.
Rathan finally found his voice, rather feebly. 'Trusted? Us?' Torm grinned. 'Got anything to drink? I find myself in need of something like that just now. Rather a lot of it, too.'
Standing alone in a room of the Royal Palace in Suzail, the War Wizard Laspeera carefully finished casting a spell.
There was a momentary twinkling of sound and light around the hargaunt, where it was floating motionless in midair, and Laspeera stared at it in grim silence for the space of a long breath.
Nothing happened. The hargaunt was securely held in stasis.
Stepping back out of the chamber wirhout taking her eyes off the amorphous blob, Laspeera used a wand to seal the door. Then she drew a second wand from its sheath on her hip and cast a second seal atop the first.
Standing in the passage beside her were three people who had watched all she had done: Princess Alusair, King Azoun, and Queen Filfaeril. They all turned away together and srarted down the deserted, door-lined passage.
'And so we gain another crown secret,' Azoun murmured. 'Quite a collecrion, now.'
'Indeed,' Laspeera said, falling into step behind the royals.
'I believe I heard you think-but not quite say-the words, 'And that's counting just those we let you non- Wizards of War know about,' if I'm not mistaken,' the queen said.
Laspeera halted in midstride, just for a moment, then repeated politely, 'Indeed,' and walked on.
'Is knowing when the Royal Magician is going to be his usual snarling self again one of them?' the king asked.
'For the moment,' Laspeera replied gently, 'yes. I'm afraid so.'
They all jumped, then-and Alusair let out a little shriek-as from the dark doorway they were passing, the wizard Vangerdahast thrust his head out and snapped, 'Snatl!'
Then he favored them with a grin of the sort generally termed 'sheepish.'
Queen Filfaeril rolled her eyes. 'I keep forgetting Elminster trained you.'
Slowly, dimly, Highknight Lady Ismra Targrael became aware of herself again. Her limbs tangled, she was lying on her back on something hard and smooth. Cold, damp stone, underground. A place that seemed not familiar but seen before… recently.
She tried to disentangle her arms and legs. Her body felt heavy and somehow profoundly numb. There was a faint smell rising from it. An unpleasant smell.
She moved again, trying to sit up. Her limbs were heavy-very heavy-and unresponsive. She was dead, wasn't she?
It was dark around her, with walls of dark, paneled wood rising up beyond the reach of what she could see in the dimness. She was still in the Lost Palace.
So this must be undeath.
Something moved closer to her. Something she could feel- power, a cold energy-before she could see it. Something that became a man standing over her.
Looming over her and looking down at her with eyes that wete coldly twinkling lights in dark sockets, out of a face that was mere flesh wrapped loose around a skull. A lich.
Then there was another. A rhird, and fourth, a ring of skeleral faces above her, staring coldly down. Targrael recognized one of them as the lich that had killed her.
'Rise,' that lich commanded. 'And dance. Can you learn to love us?'
Lying on the floor among the gathering, Targrael looked around at all the cold, glittering eyes, skulls, and rotting flesh and murmured, 'I… I don't think so.'
'Well,' another lich observed coldly, 'your flesh still has beauty- for a time, at least. Long enough for you to learn.'
Skeletal arms reached down. Targrael discovered her newly heavy self could nor move nearly fast enough to evade them.
With astonishing strength they plucked her body upright.
'Learn to embrace madness,' the lich who'd murdered her said, and he leaned in to kiss her.
Targrael tried to scream but found herself mute.
His hand on his sword hilt, Dauntless glared at the Knights of Myth Drannor. 'I am the Royal Champion of Princess Alusair,' he said, 'and stand here-still! — under the clear and explicir orders of the Royal Magician, Vangerdahast. I am to see that you depart the realm, tarrying nowhere and working no rreason.'
'We intend none,' Florin replied a little wearily. 'Tell Lord Vangerdahast that when you see him.'
'And tell him this, too,' Islif added. ' 'Tis never too late to learn to trust folk of Cormyr. Even adventurers.'
'I will deliver your messages,' Dauntless said. Then a smile that was as sudden as it was unexpected split the ornrion's face. 'Though I believe it might be decades too late for that particular wizard to learn anything.'
