Then with slow care, they closed in, cruel grins widening.

"Know any holy spells that'd be really useful about now?" Semoor shouted desperately over his shoulder.

"No!" Doust shouted back. "Do you?"

They stepped apart long enough to turn and stare at each other, as if some divine deliverance might be found written across the face of one of them for the other to discover.

Jhessail looked helplessly up at them, clutching the heavy and unfamiliar sword she so hoped she'd not have to try to use. They were going to die. Here, a few breaths from now. This wasn't some bardic ballad, where an improbable rescue would burst upon them all.

She could see that same realization in the faces of her two friends, as they peered at each other, found no up-any-sleeve escape… and let all hope drain out of their eyes.

"Tluin!" they snarled, in emphatic unison, and spun around to slam shoulders against each other once more. Waving their maces and staring at the battle around with empty, despairing faces, they prepared to die.

Telgarth Boarblade slipped through the study door, glided to a halt in front of his employer, and bowed, saying nothing. Aside from his eyes, asking an eager, wordless question as to how he could tender service, his face was an impassive mask. Rhallogant Caladanter might be an unobservant fool, but from time to time rather more sharp-witted folk had been known to visit him.

Boarblade already knew why he had been summoned and Caladanter's intentions regarding him, but he let nothing of that show in his expression or manner. Letting one's guard drop or getting careless had meant death long before he'd ever come to Cormyr and let the foolish young Caladanter heir "discover" him.

Caladanter was reclining in his favorite chair, one glossy-booted leg up on a footstool carved into quite a good likeness of a snarling panther. The decanter beside it was already almost empty, and the ring-dripping hand that waved that huge goblet so jauntily trembled visibly. Drunken sot.