Thomdor set his teeth and managed a nod, mentally snarling at the young man to get on with it. The tunnel had closed almost to nothing, and the darkness around it was crawling with dark, monstrous serpents and spiders, waiting for the Warden of the Eastern Marches to falter so they could claim all three of the royals.

Aunadar turned to the baron with the wand flat across his palms. There was a shocked, questioning look on his young face.

Thomdor licked lips that were suddenly thick and numb. “Break it,” he tried to roar, but it came out as a husking whisper.

The youth remained motionless. Either Bleth could no longer understand his words, or too little of the world was left for the baron to know what he was saying.

He repeated his command, but the young puppy remained still, the wand in his hands and that shocked, waiting look on his face.

With the last of his fading energy, Baron Thomdor of Arabel, Warden of the Eastern Marches and Royal Right Hand to King Azoun IV of Cormyr, lunged forward and grabbed the boy’s hands, forcing them to close over the wand and pressing them up and together. The wand snapped like a brittle bone.

A humming familiar to the baron filled the glade, and a small silver coin appeared in midair, tumbled once, flashed, and quickly widened to form a hoop. The hoop stretched swiftly into a great circular doorway, and out of that entry to otherwhere poured royal guards in white and purple, priests of Tymora in their blue and silver, and war wizards in their violet robes. Last came Vangerdahast, the fat old mage in his familiar red-brown robes, rolling slightly as he walked, bellowing orders right and left.

The Royal Magician knelt next to the king, then looked up sharply and yelled something. Thomdor could no longer understand what was being said, and his vision had faded to a mere pinprick of light, the russet-robed wizard kneeling in a vast void of slithering darkness.