she added meaningfully. 'Tymora smile upon thee. Which reminds me: Trust in no magic nor any god or goddess, for strangeness is afoot.'
'As usual,' Itharr answered solemnly as they drew blades and saluted her in a flash of steel. 'Our thanks, Lady. I shall never forget crossing blades with thee.'
'Nor I,' Belkram added simply. 'If you grow lonely, mind, and want a man about the place…'
Storm laughed and shooed them on their way. 'Get you gone! Elminster waits for no man, nor woman!'
Sharantyr looked about. They had come to a land of wild ridges, trees, and winding, steep cart tracks linking overgrown farms. 'Where are we? Northwest of Shadowdale, I know, but-'
'Dagger Wood,' Elminster said briefly. 'Daggerdale begins over that way.' He waved to the northwest. 'Not a place to be caught out in by night.'
'Shall I find us a place to sleep?' The lady ranger looked about. 'Or go hunting? I had no time to find food, and it looks as if you brought none.'
'I never do,' Elminster replied. 'It's the work of but a thought and-' He fell silent, then whispered, 'And a little magic.'
Sharantyr's only reply was a firm, wordless clasp of his shoulder. Then she was gone, with the whispered words 'Wait here' floating back to him. Elminster snorted, took a long stride after her, then stopped, shrugged, and felt for his pipe. Trust the lass to choose a place with no stump to sit on.
It was nearly dark before she returned. Two plump rabbits hung in one hand; the other held berries, mushrooms, and other things Elminster couldn't remember the names of. 'My apologies for the length of our parting,' Sharantyr said. 'This land is wild indeed. Twice I've had to dodge orc arrows, and-But ne'er mind. Come, Old Mage. I've found us a camp.'
Elminster rose, smiled at her, and extended a hand for the rabbits. 'You may need a free arm to swing a sword,' he said impatiently. Dangling the rabbits before his eyes, he asked, 'Dare we have fire?'
Sharantyr shrugged. 'There'll be others about, no doubt.'
'The orcs ye met?'
'They'll bother no folk again,' was the calm reply. Elminster looked at her slim, strong shoulders expressionlessly and followed her down into a wooded gully.
'Magic gone for a day, and already I'm being ordered about by women,' he said gruffly. Sharantyr cast a look back over her shoulder, and he winked. Shaking her head, she hastened on through a thicket of small trees whose branches caught at them both.
Elminster grumbled and flailed along in her wake. Sharantyr's blade reached back from time to time to hold aside the worst of the barbed branches.
They came out into a little open space that faced the setting sun. Below them the land fell away into a smooth-sloped hollow. It had once been a farm-Elminster could see the line of a ruined fence-but youngish trees now grew in its fields. The gaping, vine-cloaked ruins of a timber-and-stone house and barn rose on a far slope. Sharantyr nodded at them with her chin and said, 'Come on. Let's get off this height. We can be seen for miles.'
'Can't an old man even enjoy the sunset?' Elminster grumbled, trotting obediently after her.
'That depends on whether or not you want to live to see another sunset after this one,' Sharantyr replied in low, wry tones. Elminster remembered a gesture from very long ago and made it in her general direction.
Sharantyr only grinned and said fondly, 'Now, you know I'm too young to know what that means,' and led him down a twisting, overgrown trail that took them by stones across a little brook, and up again to the waiting, gloomy ruins ahead.
Sharantyr looked at him in the gathering darkness. 'Best move and speak quietly from now on. Can you cook?'
'If ye light the fire,' Elminster replied, glancing at the rabbits again.
Sharantyr said only, 'Wood,' in reply and was gone again.
In the twilight, two Harpers stood over four dead men. 'Not long gone,' Itharr said, 'and this one died by a dagger.'
'Lawless men,' Belkram agreed, on his knees beside another body. 'And not robbed of the few coins they carried, either.' He frowned. 'We've found no other trace of him, and Storm did say he collected trouble as roaming cats find fleas.'
Itharr grunted. 'By the looks of this-if it was him-we're being sent to guard a marauding tiger, not a feeble old man.'
'What think you? Is this a false trail?'
Itharr shrugged. 'It's all we've found. It must be his doing, or he and another. There was a lot of running about here, and he may have someone else with him.'
Belkram shrugged. 'In these woods, we'll lose any trail in the dark, unless he plans to mark his passage with brigands' bodies every hundred paces or so.'
They chuckled together. 'That'd take a lot of brigands,' Itharr replied. 'We'd best drag these a good way off, to keep wolves and such from the tracks we'll want to find tomorrow.'
Belkram nodded, and they worked swiftly, dragging the bodies all in the same direction, toward and then around thick stands of trees, to a spot where it was unlikely any survivors of the fray had headed. When the bodies had been removed, the two Harpers retired to the dale again, camping near ruined Castle Grimstead, behind the new temples that had been raised west of the river.
'We could be under Storm's roof this night,' Belkram said softly after a time. Itharr looked at him and said nothing but grinned very slowly. After a moment, Belkram matched the expression.
A good walk away, in the dark woods, wolves wore similar grins as they came warily to four sprawled bodies and began to feed.
The fire was long out. Sharantyr and Elminster lay shoulder to shoulder in the darkness, wrapped in their cloaks, awake but unspeaking. Around them, the small night noises of hunting animals rustled, hooted, and from time to time squeaked or snarled. They lay still, like two breathing stones, and hoped the night would pass them by.
Suddenly, close by to the north, there came into being a glowing radiance in the trees. One moment it was not there, and the next it was. Magic.
Wordlessly they struggled up and pulled on their boots. Sharantyr drew her sword but held her cloak up in front of it to ward off any flashing reflections. Elminster stepped to one side and melted into the dark shadow of what was left of a wall.
The glowing had begun as pale amber in hue. It brightened now and swirled, at times more ruddy, at times almost green. Perhaps forty paces away, across rising ground, the glow hung in a little clearing amid the trees, forming an upright oval in the air.
A mage-gate, without doubt. A moment later, a hard-eyed, wary man in the black armor of Zhentil Keep stepped out of the gate, a loaded crossbow ready in his hands. Behind him, a black-bladed saber appeared in the light, followed by the one who held it: another Zhentilar soldier.
The two warriors stepped forward, twisting to look all around, weapons held ready. A moment later, another man emerged from the flickering oval. This one wore robes of rich purple, a cruel expression, and a short, pointed black beard. He carried a wand in one hand and was followed by a third armored soldier.
The mage and his bodyguard stepped forward together. In the center of a protective ring of bodies, the bearded mage held the wand loosely in his hands. It shifted almost lazily back and forth, then seemed to quiver in his hands and point directly at where Sharantyr stood, unmoving, cloaked in darkness. A moment later the wand turned a bit to indicate where Elminster hid.
The mage hissed something, and the guards closed ranks in front of him, weapons coming up, facing the ruined farmhouse. There was a half-seen gesture from behind them, and suddenly the night was lit as bright as day, and Elminster and Sharantyr were staring right into the eyes of the four men.
The looks directed back at them were not pleasant. In the sudden silence they all heard one of the guards
