Ed Greenwood - Swords of Dragonfire

The deadly dagger came at him again, and Florin rolled desperately away, taking them both across the roof as the slayer’s knife waved wildly, the strangling man fighting for balance.

The knife swept down, and Florin shoved hard, flinging the man into a last roll over and then half-under him. The slayer ran out of rooftop, ending up scrabbling right on the edge, still clutching Florin.

Florin pulled his feet up to his chest and kicked out, thrusting the slayer upright, arms windmilling, and away.

The man’s foot came down awkwardly on the roof-edge, and he fell over backward, toppling right onto the gate-spikes, where he slumped, hanging helpless and dying, spikes thrusting up through his chest like red fangs.

Florin could see the man’s fate, illuminated in the light of lanterns bobbing nearer, below. Wincing, he rolled over, breathing hard, and made for the back of the roof, as far as he could get from the Purple Dragon patrol now stalking along the alley. His shoulder felt like his arm was dangling by shreds, about to fall off.

The lass shrank back a little as he crawled up to her, and no wonder; he must look fearsome, drenched in blood and dragging one arm, his face twisted in pain.

“Are you all right?” the ranger gasped, shifting so the shadow of his body shielded her face from the lanternlight. Behind and below, the gate rattled and Purple Dragons snapped terse words back and forth.

“I am, goodsir,” she murmured, frowning, “but you’re hurt.”

“Sorely, as they say,” Florin hissed, managing a crooked grin, “but I mustn’t be found here. I must get away somehow.”

The lass plucked a long pendant from around her neck, put it into his good hand, and whispered, “Break it with your fingers! Now!”

Florin looked at her wonderingly, and did so. A pale, tingling radiance washed over his fingers and ran up his arm, and he found himself gasping and shuddering in a rapture that washed all his pain away. He could feel his wound closing, the sliced muscles knitting together again…

When he could see again, Florin blinked, swallowed, and said, “Lady, you have my deepest thanks.” He was completely unhurt, healed as if he’d never been wounded. “Who are you?”

The lass gave him a rather superior smile-gods, she could not be more than thirteen or so! — drew herself up, and announced, “I am Alusair Nacacia Obarskyr, Princess of Cormyr.”

From behind them both came curses of amazement, and then a more startled oath as the Purple Dragon at the top of the gate lost his footing in his astonishment and fell back among, or onto, his fellows.

“Princess-Highness-I am honored,” Florin stammered, “but I must go.”

He knelt to her, on the roof, and Alusair put her hand on his, so light and swift a caress that it seemed almost as if a breeze had touched him, and said quickly, “Of course. Pray begone, and may the gods guard you.”

He gave her a smile, nodded, and thankfully raced away along the broad top of the ornate mansion wall.

Behind him, he heard a Purple Dragon gasp, “It is her, hrast all the gods! Princess, how came you to be here? ”

Florin caught hold of the top of some sort of carved stone ornament adorning the wall and turned to swing himself around and down-but paused for a moment to watch what befell the princess.

“I am unaccustomed to giving any account of myself to passing Purple Dragons,” she snapped, her voice rising in anger as she saw the soldiers hastening to encircle her.

Various Purple Dragons converged on her on the gatehouse roof, holding up their lanterns. Florin was in time to see the Princess Alusair smile triumphantly and vanish, winking out of their clutches.

The Purple Dragons swore in hearty and collective earnest.

Ghoruld Applethorn, Master of Alarphons of the Wizards of War, chuckled in glee at what was unfolding in his scrying crystal. This particular wet night in Arabel offered superb entertainment.

The crystal winked as lightning split the sky somewhere between Arabel and Suzail, and the unicorn ring on his finger winked back at it. The surging energies made the hargaunt restless; it slithered across the floor, a mottled rippling curtain with a tail and ever-shifting tentacle-arms, and started to climb Applethorn’s leg.

The battle in the stables was over, Purple Dragons converging on the place and rushing around with shouts and brandished swords. Idiots.

“Better and better,” Applethorn purred. “These Knights are going to prove so useful. How many war wizards and overambitious nobles can I manage to get them to kill before they’re out of the realm?”

He ran a toying finger over the warm, yielding skin of the hargaunt, now slithering up his thigh, and murmured, “Out of the realm for now, that is. Until I need them to deal death again.”

Stepping through the blue mists that took Laspeera at a single stride from Arabel to the Palace seemed a mere moment ago; a moment that had been spent hastening to a robing room to exchange her wet, clinging garments for dry robes, and then hurrying on, by secret ways, to the queen’s apartments, where the hurrying would end. The regular duty of guarding the queen overnight thankfully involved very little haste and tumult.

Yet no sooner had the Wizard of War Laspeera settled into this night’s attendance on Queen Filfaeril than a seldom-heard chime sounded.

Laspeera looked up, frowning sharply. The triggering of that warning-spell meant that someone had just traversed a nearby portal. Specifically “the Back Way,” a wardrobe that stood in one of the few rooms of this wing of the Palace that wasn’t heavily warded against translocation magics, and had probably been created in the days of the Royal Magician Amedahast. Kept for emergencies, it was known only to Azoun and his queen, a handful of Highknights, and a few senior war wizards. Or so she’d thought.

“Something’s wrong,” Filfaeril murmured. Laspeera pulled a wand from her belt, and a secret panel slid open with the faintest of whisperings to admit Margaster, who stepped into the room with a heavy black rod in his hand that crackled with blue glows and arcings of awakened power. Filfaeril took up a dagger and a magic orb from a sidetable. “If my Az-”

Tapestries billowed aside as Dove of the Harpers shouldered through them and strode into the room, carrying an unconscious Princess Alusair in her arms.

The queen went white, but Dove gave her a smile and said firmly, “She’s alive and unharmed. Her slumber’s due to a spell of mine.”

The slack mouth and lolling head of the princess made her look a lot worse than asleep, and Filfaeril looked less than reassured as the tall, burly woman in worn leathers stalked across the room to arrange her royal burden gently upon a cushion-strewn lounge. “Where-?” Filfaeril began.

“A hilltop near Jester’s Green,” Dove said over her shoulder, “where I happened to be meeting privately with a fellow Harper. Your daughter appeared rather abruptly between us-thanks to magic, obviously-soaked through as you see her, and seemed profanely disinclined to follow my suggestion to accompany me back here.”

Laspeera started to smile. “So you…”

“So I cast a little spell on her, which sent her off to visit her dreams for a bit, while she was still threatening both of us with her little dagger. Fee, your little one is growing teeth, and starting to use them.”

The Dragon Queen almost smiled. “Did she say where she’d been, and what she had been doing?”

“No,” Dove said calmly, “so I then used a little more magic on our sleeper here to learn what she’d been up to. I could scarce resist. How often these days do minstrels have a chance to cast spells on sleeping princesses?”

Laspeera’s smile vanished. “You dared use magic on an Obarskyr? Do we not have an agreement, between Harpers and Crown?”