Ed Greenwood - Swords of Eveningstar

Dropping it dazedly, he felt for the potions he knew were there. Six healing quaffs, and the others that were useless to him now…

Horaundoon gulped them frantically, feeling the hot wetness deeper and deeper in his brain as the mindworms gnawed on. Mystra have mercy, eight of them…

He was still blind, could in fact feel one of them gnawing behind his eyes, and vainly tried-with hands that trembled treacherously-to work spells on himself.

No. No.

“Not the doom I’m… looking for,” he gasped aloud, clawing his clattering way across the table again, sending useless potions flying. Ha! He had it!

Snatching up the scepter he’d been seeking, Horaundoon turned it on himself and gasped out the word that awakened it.

A glow he could no longer see warmed his face. He writhed, shuddering helplessly, but locked his fingers in his lap, cradling the scepter, and nursed the beam that ravaged him, even as he curled up around it in pain.

He was, he knew, glowing and pulsing…

Between each pulse of his scepter, Horaundoon of the Zhentarim looked increasingly wraithlike. He was translucent now… Looking down into the crystal ball that held the Zhent’s image, Amanthan cursed softly, fists clenched. “ Die, hrast you,” he whispered. “As I did.”

The husk of a body fell in on itself. With a ragged cry of despair and revulsion, a roiling glow burst up out of it.

Weeping and wailing, Horaundoon swirled around his rooms-then out of them, howling.

A fat, unshaven carter was tying up horses in the street below. Horaundoon plunged down through the man, savagely trying to slay.

The carter staggered, wheezed, stared at the street with wild, bewildered eyes-and fell on his face and lay still, his horses snorting and trying to back away.

It was that easy. That hideously easy.

And what comfort was that to him?

Howling anew, Horaundoon raced down the street, a pale and shapeless arrow, to slay again. And again. Purple Dragons, shopkeepers, alley drunks…

A lush-bodied woman in an upper window, preening before a mirror. He soared into the room and spiraled around her, not wanting to slay so much as touch… touch what he could no longer touch!

She screamed once then trembled, too fearful to breathe, tottering… He tried to hold her as she fell, but managed only to sink into her, passing not through her body but into her mind.

Which was both darker and more shallow than he’d expected, and faintly disgusted him, but which he found he could coerce… thus… and shape the thoughts of… thus. So he had no body, but could-yes! — live in the bodies of others.

Her mind was a small and cringing thing, flinching from him. Horaundoon lashed it scornfully even as he forced it to do this, then that.

She clawed her way stiffly back up from the floor, the gown she’d been trying on hanging half-off her, and went to the stairs, lurching and stumbling.

By the time she reached the street, she was walking more or less upright-stiffly, foaming at the mouth as her eyes rolled wildly. Horaundoon was still learning control.

“Ever the unsubtle, bumbling idiot,” Old Ghost sneered through Amanthan’s lips, as he scried the clumsy progress of the woman Horaundoon was mind-riding. “And as you stumble about, your schemes do the same-as clumsily as you do.”

Yet they were now two of a kind, he and the Zhent. Possessing, mind-riding spirits.

Horaundoon just didn’t realize, yet, what a great victory he’d achieved.

“Bitter laughter and applause,” Old Ghost murmured. “For us both, I suppose.”

The hargaunt was wriggling as fast as it could, flowing along the cold stone floor of a dark passage.

The flying gauntlets that pounced upon it, lifted it into the air, and expanded around it into a spherical prison were quite a surprise-but ignored its most belligerent chimings.

“You, little flowing menace, are going to come in quite useful to this war wizard traitor,” the wielder of the gauntlets purred gloatingly, toying with a ring that bore a handsome, oversized carved unicorn head. “Yes, quite useful. When my time comes.”

The war wizards had been gentle, even respectful in their questionings, and had left her some privacy to recover herself while they fetched her a meal.

That was why Narantha Crownsilver was sitting alone in a pleasantly furnished chamber somewhere in the palace in Suzail when horror burst open in her mind, unfolding with such awfulness that she could only whimper.

There was something called a mindworm in her head, linking her to this wizard-a Zhentarim! — the murderer of her Uncle Lorneth!

Who’d cold-bloodedly taken her uncle’s face and voice to deceive her, using her to spread mindworms to Florin and others… so many others… nobles all across the realm!

“Gods deliver me,” she gasped, when she could find words. “What have I done? ”

This revelation was due to this Horaundoon’s own misfortune. She watched the monster suffer under his own snake and mindworms, and she felt his sick pain-a dull echo of it, at least, as her own mind staggered…

And even as he shuddered and shrieked and wallowed in agony, her dazed mind stumbled through his dark plans, laid bare to her at last.

“No,” she whispered. “Oh no.”

He would survive this.

He would control her again, through the mindworm in her head-and through her, all she’d subverted.

“Gods!” she whispered, “so many! ”

She must do something. Right now…

So this is what real fear tastes like. Fear for all Cormyr.

Weeping and trembling, she left the room and hurried through the palace.

“Failure, Lady Lord,” Dauntless said bitterly. “Complete failure. The fugitives got clean away. I stand deserving of any punishment you see fit.”

Myrmeen Lhal’s eyes bored into his as if she were reading something written small on the inside back of his skull, but she said nothing.

And went on saying nothing as a curtain parted behind her, and the Warden of the Eastern Marches came into the room, stepped aside, and handed in an unfamiliar woman as if she outranked him. She was tall and muscular, her hair a long fall of silver-not silver as old folk go silver, but the shining silver of polished metal-and she wore green leathers, with the crescent moon badge of the Harpers at belt buckle and throat.

Baron Thomdor gave Dauntless a smile. “Well met this day, Ornrion Dahauntul. Be also well met with Dove Silverhand, of the Harpers.”

Dove inclined her head in greeting. “Myrmeen, Dauntless: you share no failure. The fugitives you’ve been chasing have just been knighted by Queen Filfaeril, and are riding in triumph into Suzail right now.”

Two jaws dropped in unison. Almost tenderly, Dove added, “When they pass through Arabel again, in a tenday or so, ’twould be best if they were made welcome, not hounded or imprisoned.”

Stunned disbelief was clear on the newly restored ornrion’s face. “And-and how can you know this?” he sputtered. “Forgive me, Lady, but words are easily said-yet more slowly trusted. Why, I’ve never even seen you before!”

“Ah, but you have, gallant Dauntless. That night at the Leaping Hart, when you danced on the tables, remember? And loudly admired the behind of a certain lass?” Dove turned and struck a pose. “Have your fingers forgotten this backside so swiftly?”

Dauntless reddened as words failed him again, and Myrmeen and Thomdor exploded into laughter.

Dove grinned and patted the ornrion’s arm. “Ne’er mind. ‘Bold to face the foe,’ remember?”

The Horngate loomed high and impressive overhead. “Lady Queen,” Florin murmured over his shoulder, “you should ride at the fore, and we behind you. ’Tis not right that-”