Ed Greenwood - Swords of Eveningstar

Useless wand in hand, the helpless Zhentarim began the slow, unwilling trudge toward his storeroom, where the adventurers would almost certainly be by now. The walk to his own doom.

Other eyes widened in surprise over another scrying orb.

Then Horaundoon’s eyes narrowed again.

Whisper’s reluctant return had been astonishing enough, but his fareye was showing him more. The faintest of glows was riding Whisper: another sentience!

Grinning, Horaundoon leaned forward, not wanting to miss a moment of what was about to unfold.

This should be very interesting.

“Naed!” Doust gasped, scrambling to his feet. Whisper stood menacingly in the doorway, wand aimed at them.

The rest of the Swords looked-saw-and froze.

Slowly, very slowly, almost as if small segments of his upper lip were separately being pulled back from his teeth, the Zhentarim smiled.

And one of Pennae’s daggers spun out of nowhere to stand forth, hilt deep, from his right eye.

The Swords erupted, weapons flashing out, but Whisper moved not at all.

Until, still smiling, he toppled forward to crash onto his face, limbs bouncing loosely.

As the Swords all stared, something ghostly and pale rose from him in wisps, to gather eerily in the air, ignoring the swords that thrust and slashed into it. When it had gained the strength and shape of a tall, broad-shouldered man, it turned its head slowly to regard each of the horrified adventurers. Though it had no mouth, it seemed almost to be smiling smugly, alight with glee… as it rose and drifted away, as lazily purposeful as a great shark.

Jhessail shivered as she watched it go, and none of the Swords said a word or lifted a hand to do anything until it was out of sight.

Whereupon, inevitably, it was Semoor who stirred. “What the tluin was that?”

No one had a reply.

Horaundoon reared back from his scrying orb as if someone had thrust dung in his face-then leaned forward again to peer intently.

The wraith-thing that had gathered above Whisper’s corpse-and had come out of Whisper, he was certain-looked at all of the Swords of Eveningstar, slowly glided away.

As he bent his will to move the scrying orb’s field to follow it, he realized what he was looking at and gasped.

“So the mindworms can be taken that far,” he whispered, “and that is what their user becomes.”

He shivered involuntarily, but it was the hargaunt that spasmed, squalling in fear, and wet his head.

There’s a singing in the air here,” Pennae said tersely. “Magic.” The passage turned dark ahead of her, but in the light of the glowstones the Swords had taken from Whisper’s rooms, they could see dust-covered human statues standing clustered in the passage.

“The way on looks… unused,” Florin mused. “Perhaps the magic is some sort of barrier, and yon is ‘wild country,’ for lack of a better term.”

Pennae shrugged. “One way to find out.” She strolled forward, despite his swift hiss of protest, into the singing magic.

Nothing befell her, and the magic did not change or vanish-but the moment Pennae stepped beyond it, the dusty statues moved, raising their arms to reach for her. She retreated hastily, watching them shuffle after her, and returned to the watching Swords.

“Zombies,” she said. “Let’s look for another way out.”

“Six-no, seven portals back there,” Semoor reminded her.

Pennae nodded. “I’m afraid we’re going to end up stepping through one of them.”

“And if one of them turns out to be a death trap, so we’re stepping into fire or whirling lightning?” Islif asked.

The thief gave her a sour look. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”

“I am the Lady Narantha Crownsilver,” Narantha told the old, whitebearded war wizard, ignoring the lesser wizards who’d escorted her to this soaring stone chamber so deep in the palace.

Every chamber of this fortress around her was starker and more brooding and unfriendly than the rooms of the palace in Suzail. She was beginning to truly hate Arabel.

“You wanted to see me?”

The war wizard inclined his head to her. “Not me, Lady.” He stepped aside, indicating the curtain behind him.

With an exasperated sigh Narantha stepped forward through its parting, into an audience room where a plain stone throne was flanked by two towering candlesticks. Two war wizards stood under those flickering flames, and one look at the seated man had her knee-dipping deeply.

“Narantha Crownsilver?” Baron Thomdor asked her.

“Lord Baron, I am she,” Narantha replied. Aside from distant glimpses across rooms at revels and state occasions, she’d not seen the warden since she’d been a little girl. What interest could he have in her now?

“I regret the bluntness of this,” Thomdor said, rising and extending his hand to her, “but your father stands in urgent need. Your mother has died, and Lord Crownsilver very much desires your presence, right now.”

Narantha could only stare at him.

“These loyal servants of Cormyr stand ready to take you to him,” the warden told her gently, indicating the war wizards. Narantha stumbled toward them, blinded by a sudden waterfall of tears.

Someone was weeping bitterly; she was burying her head in a stranger’s breast before she realized it was her.

In their tenth dark passage, the Swords stopped-and stared. Disgustedly.

Whisper’s tenth ward sang in the air before them. Beyond it stood the tenth silently waiting group of undead.

A dozen skeletons lurched forward, raising rusty swords. One overbalanced a handwidth too far-and fell into dust as the ward flared up through it, into a glittering wall of sparks. Beyond that deadly glow, something that might have been the skeleton of a giant came down the passage, hefting an axe larger than Florin.

“That’s it,” Islif sighed, as the Swords retreated. “Either we step into a portal to depart this place-or starve here, trapped.”

There were reluctant nods.

“Should we try some of Whisper’s wands?” Doust asked doubtfully, lifting the one he held.

“Triggering powers we don’t know, into a spell that’s holding back undead right now, but might well explode? Or shoot lightnings? Or turn us all purple? At undead that it might blast, but then again might make them grow, or come back to life? Or-?”

And with those words, Pennae turned to lead the way to the nearest portals: a pair flickering in what had probably been Whisper’s storage cellar.

Everyone followed, without a word.

“Mine,” Florin said, stepping into the waiting glow.

And through it, to stand frowning on its far side, still in the cellar. He stepped through it again in the other direction, toward the rest of the Swords-and found himself standing facing them, as if he’d been walking through nothing but empty air.

“Jhess,” Pennae said, “doff your belt and try. Perhaps ’tis the metal that keeps it from working; I’ve heard of portals like that.”

Jhessail handed over her belt and stepped through the first gate. Like Florin, she simply ended up on its far side, still in the cellar. She stepped through it again, in the other direction. Still in the cellar. With a shrug, she went to the second gate and tried it. With the same result.

“Could be we’re lacking a password,” Islif suggested. Pennae nodded.

Semoor sighed. “Well, Whisper’s just a little too dead to ask, now, isn’t he? Come on; let’s try them all.”

Much trudging and fruitless stepping through glows ensued, until they were back in the room of now-empty paintings and sprawled, dead monsters. Whisper still lay as he’d fallen, under the ettin. Rats scattered from the carrion as the Swords came down the steps and stopped in front of the glowing oval.