Silverfall: Stories of the Seven Sisters (forgotten realms)

by Ed Greenwood

  Somehow he found his feet again and stumbled on down the street. Prendle was just two lanes over, and in his house he could get a bath. Nuin had an ornate tub. The man must have had a thing for cleanliness. Perhaps he'd fallen down, just like this, once too often, and gotten tired of crawling naked under the pump in the stable yard. Auvrarn's stomach lurched as a stray breath of sea breeze brought a fresh waft of the smell coming off him to his nose. The breeze didn't touch his hair, which felt like glue. There was probably dung all through it. Labraster moaned, and felt like throwing up again-well, gods, why not?

  Emptying his stomach into the street made him feel just a bit better, but it still seemed like a stinking, reeling eternity before he found his own gateposts. The stone lions stared patiently out into the night, not bothering to give him the disgusted and incredulous stares several of his neighbors had favored him with as he'd reeled past, knowing he was wearing a sick smile and raging inside, He muttered a heartfelt curse upon the heads of all hermit priestesses, High Ladies, and stupidly honest cloth merchants, wherever they might be, and kicked and hammered at his own front door until he felt better.

  That got him one thing. When the last of his three keys clicked in its lock and the door groaned wide, both of the young, empty-headed maids he'd had to hire to replace Alaithe were awake and in the hall, wide-eyed and clutching garden shears and fire tongs in their trembling hands. They were wearing two of his dressing gowns, and had obviously been too stupid-fortunately for him-to think of together lifting the door bar into place.

  He cursed them all the way up the stairs. Nalambra and Karlae-Stonehead and Clumsyhands. Ardent and curvaceous they might be, but they were also slow and lazy everywhere but in bed. Anticipate his needs? Think at all for themselves? Bah! Now he'd have to shiver naked in the cold metal bathtub for hours as they pumped water and gasped their way up the stairs with hearth fire-warmed rocks to heat it.

  Alaithe would have had a hot bath waiting, and if he'd not bothered with it, she'd have had fresh rocks ready to heat it anew in the morning, without a murmur of com shy;plaint. For perhaps the seven hundredth time he regretted strangling her and burying her in the garden, but he'd had no choice. She'd been suspicious of him from the first, and set about devising little tests and traps to see if he wasn't the "real" Blandras Nuin. Once he'd smelled the kaurdyl in his morning broth, he'd had no choice. If she was trying to kill him, it was time to slay her. Fat and unlovely she may have been, but what a housekeeper! Perhaps, to Blandras, more than that. Hadn't it started that first night, when he'd bolted his bedchamber door and pretended to be asleep when she'd tried to open it at dawn?

  Ah, gods, but none of it mattered now. "Nalambra! Karlae!" Labraster snarled. "Stop all that screaming and get up here and pump." Gods, but he smelled. He unlatched the window that overlooked the garden and started hauling off sodden, dung-caked garments and hurling them out into the night. Out with it, out with it all!

  Even the boots went, and the belt with the dagger built into its buckle. No one would scale the high, barred gate or force a way through the thornhedge to steal things so foul anyway. All he left-in an empty chamber pot, not on the table-were his coin-purse, his belt-knife, and the rings from his fingers-all of them. As they clattered into the pot, he shoved it away with his foot, stepped into the bath, and grimly crouched down to wait. He knew he was going to have some long, cold hours yet before morning.

  The worst of the dung was gone from his hair and his skin, at least, but the bath Auvrarn Labraster sat in was brown and covered with a swirl of bubble-adorned white scum. It smelled as if it was more liquid dung now than water. Worse than that, it was cold, and getting colder by the minute, and his two lazy maids with the stone-sling and the hot stones that would make this bearable were nowhere to be seen.

  "Nalambra!" he bellowed. "Karlae! Where in all the yawning pits of the Abyss are you?"

  As if his shout had been a signal, two throat-stripping screams erupted downstairs. A chair fell over, or maybe a table-the whole house shook-and fainter crashes fol shy;lowed, one of them the bang of his front door trailing all of its chains and bolts as it slammed shut, then rebounded. The splintering crash that came on the heels of that booming sounded as if someone had burst out of the kitchen midden chute without waiting to open it.

  Then came the silence, stretching out in the cold as Labraster waited, and shivered, and waited.

  "Nalambra?" he called, when he could wait no longer, "Karlae?"

  He rolled out of the bath and stood up to hear better, leaning forward with one arm on a chair. Shivering thus, he waited until the water he stood in stilled again, and lis shy;tened intently for any sounds of movement in the house below. Even stealthy sounds that meant he'd best find the blade under the bed would tell him something, but there was nothing more than the faint whisper of the sea breeze blowing through open doors and windows below.

  "Blast all smugly blazing gods and their sky splitting thunderbolts!" Auvrarn Labraster snarled at last, as his wet hands slipped and he fell on the cold lip of the bath, before crashing back down into its depths with a helpless, mighty splash, that emptied the top foot or so of its con shy;tents all over the room around him.

  His candle lamp went out.

  Labraster stared into the darkness in real alarm. There'd been no breeze, the thing had full shutters to keep water-even a wave of dung stained bathwater-out, and the candle had been less than a third burned down. What, then, had …?

  Something that glowed faintly glided past the door shy;way, and Auvrarn Labraster's heart froze. He struggled to swallow, to rouse himself to rise and run for his sword, but the blade was in his bedchamber, and the bedcham shy;ber was through that door.

  The glow was out there, somewhere off to the right, but he knew all too well what he'd seen. It was the image of a burly woman-Alaithe-bobbing along just as she'd always bustled along the upstairs hall. An image that glowed, that he could see through, and that moved in utter silence.

  It came back again, and he bit his lip to keep from screaming. The ghost of his housekeeper moved more slowly this time, as if carrying something he could not see. She did not look in his direction or appear to know he was there, but on her throat he could clearly see the dark, deep grooves of fingers.

  Auvrarn Labraster shivered, snatched up the only thing he could reach that might serve as a weapon-the bath stool-and cowered down in the icy, noisome bath shy;water. He would not scream. He would not die here this night, if he didn't leap out the window or do something stupid. It was only an image, nothing that could harm him.

  When Alaithe's sad, hollow-eyed, glowing face rose up out of the waters between his knees, Auvrarn Labraster discovered that he could scream. Quite well.

  She loomed forward as she emerged from the water, swaying over him like a snake, her face coming ever closer to his. He tried screaming again, enthusiastically, and again.

  "Be silent, master," she said, her white lips moving, "or I'll touch you."

  Quite suddenly Labraster discovered that he could keep very quiet. He whimpered once, deep in his throat, but the ghost came no closer-not that six inches from his own nose was a comfortable distance. For just a moment, the face so close to his melted into skin shriv shy;eled over a skull, with a fat white worm crawling out of one eye socket. Labraster struggled on the shrieking edge of howling out a scream, then the face was Alaithe's again, plump-necked, familiar, almost motherly, and somehow reassuring.

  "The dead rise because they need to know," Alaithe whispered, her voice the same husky drone, "and I have a need to know why you slew me, and more-much more. I will haunt you forever, no matter where in all Faerun you run, unless you release me to my rest by telling me all. Speak freely, man, so long as you don't scream or shout."

  "H-haunt me?" Labraster stammered, raising the stool up out of the water like a shield.

  "Haunt you, man, freezing your heart and your loins, so that you always feel cold. Appearing at your shoulder for others to see, wheneve
r you try to court, or make deals, or speak to priests. More than those, you shall never sleep again unless I desire to let you sleep, and never share a bed again unless it be with someone who is blind, and deaf, and feels not the cold. Yes, I shall haunt you, man."

  Auvrarn Labraster sank down in the now icy water, shivering uncontrollably. The breeze rose and blew sea mist into the room, but the ghostly woman leaning over him never wavered or took her dark and terrible eyes from his.

  "A-and if I tell you what you want to know?"

  The ghost seemed to recede a little from him, and her strangled voice came more faintly. "Then Alaithe whom you slew shall sink back into the garden, and you shall see her no more."

  "I… you won't hurt me?"

  "Not if you tell all," the ghost said in tones of doom, "and avoid using any of the lies that fall so easily from your lips."

  Auvrarn Labraster licked those lips, heard his teeth chatter, and asked, "C-could I, perhaps, get out of this bath?"

  "Of course … if you'd like to try to bed a ghost, or answer my questions out in the street, just as you are." The ghostly face was very close to his, and so were its fin shy;gers, outstretched on either side of him and curving inward toward his throat.

  Auvrarn Labraster gave a little yelp, ducked down until the cold water splashed his chin, and managed to say, "H-here is just fine-uh, just fine! A-ask your questions."

  "Why did you slay me?"

  "B-because you tried to kill me!" Labraster said quickly. Ghostly hands reached for him, and he shouted desperately, "Because you knew I wasn't Blandras!"

  "And what happened to my good master?"

  "I don't know," Labraster babbled. "I-an evil priestess forced me to come here. She changed me into his shape."

  "What did I say earlier about lies?" A cold finger slid forward, and the quivering, whimpering merchant felt a needle of ice stab through his left eye. Though his trem shy;bling fingers found no blood or wound, he could not see out of that eye.

  "Don't make me touch you again, man," the face so ter shy;ribly close to his added, in its droning whisper. "Tell me the truth about Meira and the altar Blandras Nuin died on."

  "Y-you know? Well, why make me tell you if-"

  "I want you to tell all. I need you to tell all. If I cannot rest, neither shall you."

  "Aha, aye, yes yes," Labraster said hastily, terror making his tongue swift. "I–I was visiting the priestess Meira for my own purposes, and sh-"

  "Which purposes?"

  "I needed to hide from a foe. Her spells could do it."

  "And who are you, really?"

  Auvrarn Labraster drew in a deep breath. "A merchant of Waterdeep. Uh, no one important. I'm a dealer in furs and trinkets. My name is n-"

  "Auvrarn Labraster, have a care for your remaining eye," the ghost said mildly.

  "— ot so well known as I'd like. Auvrarn Labraster, as you know, and-and-"

  "And you are hiding from what foe?"

  Labraster licked his lips. "Ah, Alustriel, the High Lady of Silverymoon. I-we fought."

  "Why?"

  "There was a murder-a tradelord of Neverwinter. She thought I did it, but it was an umber hulk, really, and-"

  "And you can tell me the truth, Auvrarn Labraster, about your connection to that umber hulk, can't you?"

  "I-" Auvrarn Labraster's good eye narrowed, and he asked, "What does this have to do with Blandras Nuin?"

  "I need to know it all, false man and murderer, all. The cycle, the wizards of Thay … I need to hear it all from your lips. You will feel much better once you tell me. Much warmer, to be sure, for the furs that cloak your bed await but steps away."

  "I could just get up and run through you and get those furs now!" Labraster shouted through chattering teeth, the bathwater swirling wildly about him.

  "Men whose joints are frozen can't bend them. They can fall-once, but thereafter they cannot even crawl."

  Auvrarn Labraster moaned and slid back in the bath until the waters lapped at his mouth. "I could just let myself slide under," he murmured.

  "I think you know that I would not let you die until I'd heard it all," that horrible, patient voice came back at him.

  "How would I know that?" the shivering merchant shouted. "You tried to kill me, remember?"

  The husky voice of the wraith glowing above him was, somehow, dripping with contempt. "Kaurdyl is a spice, ignorant man. Only huge doses of it can kill-then only when it is mixed with certain oils."

  "A-and how is it that you know that?" Labraster asked quickly, as if each accusation was a weapon that could fend off a vengeful ghost.

  "All cooks have to know such things. If they can't be bothered, they become merchants instead. If they're too lazy to make coin as a merchant, why then, they can always murder a merchant and take what is his, can't they?"

  The man in the bath shrank down so suddenly that cold water lapped over its edge and slapped across the bath chamber floor. "I never killed Nuin," he stammered. "Y-you know that."

  "I was speaking of other merchants, back in Waterdeep," the ghost said flatly, 'but I'll speak no more of them. You will speak. You will answer my every question, or-"

  Ghostly hands stretched out, and the merchant's teeth set up an uncontrollable chatter from the sudden chill. He waved a desperate hand, fending the wraith away, and cried, "I'll tell! I'll tell!"

  The ghost nodded. "You will indeed," she said, and it sounded like a king's command.

  Labraster stared at it-her-and ran one desperate hand through his wet, ruined hair. When he found his voice again, it sounded on the quavering edge of tears, "Will you tell me something first? I need to know why you rose. I mean, folk die all the time, and they don't come whispering to their sons and daughters wanting to know things."

  “You'd be surprised," the ghost of Alaithe said in a voice that echoed with doom.

  Labraster stared at her, swallowed with an effort, then pleaded, "Just tell me, please? Did Blandras mean all that much to you?"

  "Yes." The whisper was so fierce, and the ghostly face so close to his, that Auvrarn Labraster almost threw himself under the water without thinking.

  He cowered for a long time, staring into the dead gaze in those dark pits of eyes, before he managed to ask, "L-love?"

  In answer, the wraith hovering over him drew away to the foot of the bath, and rose upright then, slowly, turned from the fat, motherly, homely figure of Alaithe into a younger, buxom, strikingly beautiful woman. "I was once like this," the ghostly voice came to him, "and Blandras knew me then. He loved me, and I spurned him. Our ways parted. Years later, I was as you knew me-" The vision of beauty became the familiar bulk of Alaithe once more. "-and was thrown out of my job in favor of a younger, more beautiful woman. I came to Neverwinter, and by chance, begging for work in the streets, met Blandras. He took me in."

  "As your master, or man?" Labraster asked roughly.

  The ghost drifted a little nearer. "There is hope for you yet, murderer. As my husband, Blandras was. Now it is time for you to answer me again."

  Labraster let out a sigh, shivered uncontrollably from cold rather than fear, and hugged himself in the frigid water. "Yes," he said faintly. "Ask."

  "You and the priestess Meira are part of a chain of folk who work together. Who are the others?"

  "There are drow, in Scornubel, who speak to me and others through one of their number, the slaver Brella," Labraster said slowly. "They, as I, have many who work for them personally, knowing nothing of us or our aims. A woman in Waterdeep, for example, has no idea why I give her orders to invest thus or hire so. It is hard to ans-"

  "Meira outranks you, as you outrank Mrilla Malsander. Who is of your standing, or higher?"

  "The Red Wizards Azmyrandyr, Roeblen, and Thaltar, at least two other Red Wizards above them, I think, and at least one other mage who leads us all. There are other clergy of Shar whose names have been kept from me."

  "Does your group have a name?"

  A bitter smile touched
Labraster's lips. "You begin to sound like a watch officer.. no."

  "Who is that one other mage?"

  Labraster looked very nervous. "I-there may be a spell on me that slays if I speak his name."

  The ghost drifted almost nose to nose with the shiver shy;ing merchant, and said softly, "Why not risk that chance?" Ghostly fingers slid down to loosely encircle Labraster's throat. They did not touch him, but he could feel the icy chill radiating from them,

  "I, ah, the mad mage who dwells under Waterdeep! All know of him. Need I name him?"

  There were many dark stories about Halaster Blackcloak, the mad wizard who lurked in fabled Undermountain-stories of an old, thin-lipped sorcerer who could stroke cats and aid children, or blast towers to rubble with revelers inside, or transport horrific monsters onto the feast tables of proud merchants. A wizard mighty enough to spell-tame dragons with a wave of his hand, or blast mountain peaks to rubble if they ruined his view. Labraster had heard grisly stories around many a tavern hearth about the Mad Mage of Undermountain, and some of those tales might even be true. As the years passed, stories he'd scoffed at in his younger days were turning out to be disturbingly accurate, if they were about wizards. He wished he could say the same about some of the other tales.

  "Halaster Blackcloak is hardly lucid enough to lead a cabal for long, unless it was of folk working only in Undermountain," the ghost said, leaning so close that Labraster felt a chill all over his face and throat, and was jolted cruelly back to the here and now. "Who really leads you, Labraster?"

  "I know not-I swear I know not! Even Meira knows only her Sharran superiors, just as I know the Thayans! Please believe me, 'tis truth!"

  The ghost withdrew a little from the sobbing man in the bath and asked, "And your aims? Tell me more about them."

  Auvrarn Labraster sagged against the high, upright masterpiece of scrollwork that was the back of his-well, Blandras Nuin's, but his now-bath and gasped in relief, staring at the ceiling with one wild eye and one blankly staring one. The ghost let him pant for a long time before drifting nearer, but she did not have to threaten again before he started to stammer out a reply.