Large roughly bound volumes featured the engraved A of the Ambersong family on their covers. They were all crammed with different-colored parchment, detailing spells and conjuring not yet imagined. There were models of an Ambersong skyship, hovering in the air near the stone ceiling like heavenly stars. There was even a girdle of priestly might, glowing with unknown power, standing of its own accord on a rock shelf.
There were beakers, bottles and tubes of every color, shape, size, and consistencysome made of glass, some of gems, some of wood, and some of steel. Inside were powders, liquids, beads, and flakes of every imaginable magical necessity. It was all so amazing and impressive that it took several seconds before the three explorers noticed something incongruous on the floor.
Lying on its face, in the middle of the room, was a motionless human body.
CHAPTER TEN
Human Life Is Pryceless
Six eyes settled on the body at the same time. Two mouths below four of the eyes spoke not a word, but Dearlyn broke the stony silence.
“Father?”
No answer.
When the wall had opened, illumination spells had been activated, and a comforting glow bathed everything, including the unmoving figure, in soft light. The figure on the floor was swathed in thick, rich crimson and jade clothing, complete with a full cape, high boots, and a furlined cowl. The three onlookers hesitated to enter the workshop for individual reasons. Pryce, for one, couldn’t help wondering what magical defenses might lie beyond the open partition.
Then, as if on cue, the cloak clasps popped out of the grate in the wall. Gheevy let out a little cry of surprise as they heard the clasps disconnect and start to roll the rest of the way through the tube. Without thinking, Pryce stepped forward to catch them as they slipped out of a little round hole in the other side of the open partition.
Dearlyn looked at Pryce anxiously. By way of answering, Pryce tossed one clasp over to her and quickly started to reattach Blade’s clasp to his cloak. Dearlyn caught hers in one hand. Gheevy just stood there, nonplussed.
Pryce looked at Gheevy. Gheevy looked at Dearlyn. They all looked back at the body. Then they all took their first tentative steps toward the prone form together.
Only when they were all huddled around the form was there another tentative pause. The woman and the halfling looked directly at Covingtonthe former with hope and the latter with dread.
Pryce felt compelled to say something, but his brain warned him to keep quiet. There was no way anything he said would have a positive effect… not until he knew whose body this was. Carefully Pryce placed his hand beneath the figure’s shoulder and, with a certainty of purpose, pulled.
To his embarrassment, Pryce could hardly move the figure. If this was Dearlyn’s father, he had been eating and drinking way too much. Pryce braced himself by laying his other hand flat on the floor then used all his strength to roll the body over.
The three stared down into the face of Teddington Fullmer.
Dearlyn exhaled audibly in relief, then seemed ashamed. Gheevy made a little grunting sound of surprise, then looked away. Only Pryce continued to stare directly at the visage in confusion. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel relief. On the contrary. In a distant, annoying way, he was glad that the blackmailing blackguard was no longer around to make his life miserable. He would have preferred that he had simply moved miles away of his own accord, but there it was.
‘Teddington Fullmer,” he said aloud slowly. ‘Teddington Fullmer?”
The halfling looked at the woman, then turned to the seemingly mesmerized Pryce. “What is it, Blade?” Gheevy said with concern.
Pryce looked wonderingly at Wotfirr. “I was attacked earlier tonight,” he said thoughtfully. “I thought it was by him.” He pointed at Fullmer.
Dearlyn had leaned in to listen to the hushed conversation. “It still could have been,” she reminded him.
Gheevy looked worriedly at Pryce, but Covington already knew that he couldn’t say everything he was thinking in front of Dearlyn. Silently he pursued the evasive mental clue that was even now trying to form in his brain. “Well, I suppose he could have had accomplices.”
“Or maybe he followed you,” Dearlyn suggested. “And someone followed him.”
The body groaned.
They all leapt back.
“I thought he was dead,” Gheevy said in alarm as he cowered on all fours.
Pryce was also on his hands and knees. “I thought so, too,” he said truthfully. He looked down at Fullmer carefully, but the body hadn’t moved. “No discernible marks that I can see. No signs of violence…”
‘There’s no look of fear or anger on his face,” Dearlyn pointed out. It was true. Fullmer looked positively placid.
The halfling and the impostor stared directly at each other, silently acknowledging that Teddington Fullmer’s face looked as composed as Darlington Blade’s dead countenance had.
Dearlyn interrupted their moment of realization. “All you can see is his face and hands. What about the rest of him?”
It was true. Pryce had been struck on the head. Maybe Fullmer had been as well, and the thick cowl had soaked up all the blood. “Good point,” Covington acknowledged. “We had better do a thorough examination.”
“Use your magic,” she suggested. Gheevy looked up in a near panic.
“Don’t be absurd!” Pryce flared, restraining his own dismay. “Whoever did thishe struggled to find a way out of the sentence, then rushed to finish it with triumphant relief”is a master magician! He… or she,” he stressed, getting into the spirit of his anti-casual-use-of-magic diatribe, “would be sure to use obscuring spells to make me believe whatever he or she wants me to believe.” He grumbled, walking on his knees so he could get closer to Fullmer’s head. “Soon you’ll be using magic for the simplest of things, and then where will we be?”
“All right, all right,” Dearlyn muttered back, walking on her own knees toward Fullmer’s head from the opposite direction. “It was only a suggestion.” She certainly wasn’t going to use her own illicit teachings… not with Gheevy there as a possible witness against her.
The three huddled around Fullmer’s head. Pryce wiggled his fingers in preparation. He moved them like spider legs over Fullmer’s cranium, preparing to pull back the cowl. “We’ll look for any contusions and I’ll check for a pulse,” he told them.
Nobody argued with him, and they found themselves holding their breath. Pryce carefully gripped the fur cowl and started to pull the material back. As it receded, they all leaned closer until they were no more than six inches from Fullmer’s face.
That’s when the trader’s eyes popped open and he sprang upward with an ear-shattering scream.
The reaction couldn’t have been any more severe had someone thrown a basketful of poisonous snakes into the room. Pryce literally did a backward somersault in midair, slapping his hands on the floor and springingfeet first, belly downover a floating stone tabletop. Gheevy leapt from all fours to the side, slamming into a pillow-cushioned stone chair. And Dearlyn cried out, using her staff as a pole vault to push herself up onto her feet, then slid back until she hit the side wall.
They gripped whatever they were close toa table, a chair, and a wallto keep from fleeing as Fullmer continued to screech, shriek, groan, and gurgle, his feet slapping the floor and his arms swinging wildly. His cowl fell back, and they all could clearly see the deep, wide, awful gash on the side of his head.
Sante says the side means death! Pryce remembered with a sinking sensation.
All three began to realize that something beyond the obvious was terribly wrong. On his feet now, Fullmer wasn’t waking up, nor was he fighting an imaginary assailant. He was acting like a marionette controlled by an amateur puppeteer. He was like a newborn hippogriff trying to control its limbs and wings.
“What’s the matter with him?” Gheevy called, cowering in the chair.
“I don’t know,” Pryce said, studying Fullmer carefully. ‘Teddingto
n!” he called. ‘Teddington! It’s me, Pry, uh, Darlington Blade.” He glanced nervously at Dearlyn, but she only had eyes for the lurching trader. “I’m over here, Teddington… Darlington Blade, remember?”
The staggering man showed no specific reaction. Instead, he just kept jerking and jabbering.
“A haunt!” Dearlyn suddenly cried.
“A what?” Pryce couldn’t prevent himself from asking.
“A haunt,” she repeated more urgently. She looked directly at Pryce. “Don’t you feel its presence?”
He looked away from her to stare with calculated determination at Fullmer… or whoever he now was. “Of course,” he snapped with authority, as if grading her. “Good call.”
“A haunt?” Gheevy wailed. “What’s that?”
‘The restless spirit of a person who died leaving some vital task unfinished!” Dearlyn said in a rush.
“So Fullmer still has to be alive,” Pryce realized, but barely, by the look of his wound.
“Yes,” Dearlyn replied breathlessly. “A haunt can’t take over a body of the dead.”
“Fullmer!” Pryce cried, knowing they didn’t have much time. “What is it? Who is it?”
“The possession must be incomplete,” Dearlyn warned. “It’s struggling for control of his body!”
“What then? What then?” Gheevy moaned, practically crawling into the chair’s pillow.
“It will use the body to complete its task and to gain final release from this world,” she shouted over Fullmer’s increasing commotion.
Fullmer suddenly took an awkward step toward the chair. Gheevy let out a squawk, and Pryce used the floating tabletop as a bar to swing himself over to where the cowering halfling sat. Covington stood in front of the chair, protecting arms wide, just as Fullmer bent, veered, and finally rose to his full heightto face the woman.
“D-D-D-Dearlyn,” it managed to mumble through rubbery lips, “my… my… my… d-d-daughter…”
Pryce leaned back. Gheevy leaned forward. The woman’s jaw dropped open.
“F-F-Father?”
“Dearlyn, my child!” the haunt howled, then stumbled back, its arms flailing, until it hit the far wall of the workshop. Glass shattered, dust flew out in a multicolored cloud, and parchment scattered like autumn leaves in a stiff breeze.
“Father!” she cried, leaping toward him. Pryce intercepted her, wrapping his arms around her waist and swinging her back just in time to prevent the clutching fingers of the haunt from closing on her hair.
“Wait!” Pryce cried, struggling to hold on to her fighting form.
“He’s my father, curse you!” she said, pummeling him on the head and shoulders. She was kind enough to keep her palms open, however.
“Ow! He says he’s your father, blast it!” Pryce insisted. “Are you going toouch! run into the arms of everything that calls you ‘daughter’?”
She took careful aim and hit him again. “Darlington, he’s a haunt! Not a groaning spirit, not a specter, not a ghosta haunt! What sort of mage are you, anyway?”
He let her go instantly, stung by his own guilt. She turned, but by the time she returned her gaze to Fullmer, her expression wasn’t so certain. “Father?” she called with a quaking voice, suddenly keeping her distance. “Father? Is that you?”
The voice that answered was a far-off lament. “Dearlynnnnn… ”
“Are you dead, Father?” The sudden realization made her start. She began to cry. “Did someone kill you?”
Fullmer’s face was turned away, his arms jerking at his side, his fingers shaking like willow branches in the wind. “Yessssss…” came the answer.
“Who, Father, who?” Dearlyn asked urgently through her tears. “Who killed you?”
Pryce was beside her now, leaning toward the haunt. So when it suddenly spun around, its arm stiffly out, its accusing finger was pointing almost directly in Pryce’s face.
“Darlington Blade…” it cried.
Pryce was fast, but Dearlyn’s staff was almost faster. He spun his head toward her, but his vision filled with her look of hatred and revenge before it was replaced by spinning red horsehair and sharpened gardening tools.
Pryce dived backward, just missing the side of the stone seat where Gheevy sat. He executed a quick backflip, but Dearlyn was there, stomping on the hem of his cloak. He wrenched his head back, popping the clasp. The cloak snapped off, and he landed on his knees before her, his arms outstretched.
“I’m not Darlington Bladel” he screamed just as the pole touched his sternum.
The tip of the staff froze a centimeter into his chest. “What did you say?”
“I’m not Darlington Blade!” he repeated, his hands wide, his knees at the edge of the accursed cloak, which she ground under her foot. “Kill me if you mustI won’t blame youbut I swear on the memory of my own father, I am not Darlington Blade!”
That stopped her for a moment, but a moment only. Then her expression changed back into one of pure loathing, and her fingers tightened on her staff. ‘Why, you”
“No, mistress!” Gheevy cried, sliding in front of Pryce, his own hands clasped in supplication. “He didn’t mean it. I swear, it was an accident!”
“Out of my way, halfling!”
“Miss Ambersong,” Wotfirr pleaded, “he is a poor specimen, to be sure, but to his credit, he never told anyone he was Darlington Blade. They simply assumed it!”
“I just borrowed the cloak. I didn’t know whose it was”
“And by the time he found out, it was too late!”
The two babbled quicker and quicker in front of the enraged woman, but they would never know what she would have done, because at that moment the man who had been Teddington Fullmer loomed up behind her.
Gheevy screamed as the haunt slammed down across her shoulders. Dearlyn was dragged down by its weight. They both landed on top of Pryce Covington as Wotfirr scampered away in horror.
Dearlyn struggled to get out from under the flailing body of Teddington Fullmer as Pryce struggled to get out from under them both. But then the haunt’s rubbery lips finally spoke directly into the woman’s ear.
“… didn’t kill me!” the working mouth frothed as Fullmer’s mind had to force each word out. “Darlington Blade did not kill me!”
Gheevy cowered in the corner as the haunt continued to hiss directly into Dearlyn’s ear. “It wasn’t Darlington Blade. It was the one behind him… behind him!”
Then they all heard ita death rattle, starting high in his throat and dropping into his esophagus. Teddington Fullmer had run out of life. Geerling Ambersong had run out of time.
All they heard now was Dearlyn’s angry sobbing as she kicked and punched her way out from beneath the dead weight of the man who had been Pryce’s betrayer and the last evidence of her father. Pryce just lay there, exhausted, his arms out, not making a single move to help her.
Finally she clawed her way free to sit beside the corpse, sweating and panting, her purple face swollen with shock, grief, wrath, and confusion. “What,” she choked, “was that?”
Pryce raised his head to stare at the finally dead figure with wonder and a strange, sickening feeling of recognition. “A dying clue,” he whispered blankly.
He only reacted when Dearlyn suddenly turned to yell directly at him. “You… you… nothing! You are nothing! You know nothing! Nothing!” Then she collapsed on the floor, her face in her hands, sobbing.
All Pryce could do was stare at her, his face twisted with regret and helplessness. Finally the full realization of his responsibility lay across his shoulders with all the weight of the Inquistrix Castle. “I know what I have to do,” he finally said, to himself more than anyone. Dearlyn looked up, but tearfully choked back her response. Instead, she hung her head and whimpered in disgust and loss.
Gheevy Wotfirr ran forward, struggling to help Pryce out from beneath the corpse of Teddington Fullmer. “Hush, my friend,” the halfling advised. “You are in shock.”
But Pryce Covington
was too distracted even to recognize the symptoms. As if in a trance, he let the halfling help him up. “A locked room mystery,” he whispered, leaning over to Wotfirr so
Dearlyn wouldn’t hear. “And a dying clue. It’s a triple mystery, with all the trappings of legend. Gheevy!” he gasped in amazement, “after all this time pussyfooting around behind the scenes, here’s a murder we can ooenly solve!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Blades to Ploughshares
With a thump, Pryce Covington closed the last book of philosophy written by Sante, the renowned priest, healer, and, from what he could read, even judge. A cloud of dust blown from the aged pages settled down on every side of the volume, as well as on Pryce’s crossed legs. He was tired but fascinated, saddened but informed, remorseful yet satisfied. With the help of these volumes of ancient instruction, brilliantly translated from archaic languages by Geerling Ambersong himself, Covington had successfully taken hold of the tiger’s tail.
Now all he had to do was ride the beast without being eaten alive.
Pryce sat alone in the secret workshop, creating new strategies. For some reason, his original motto repeatedly came back to mind, only this time in a slightly amended form: “Everything to lose; nowhere to run. I will do what must be done.”
The halfling grotto manager stuck his head between the stone door and the stationary cave wall. “Blade?” he inquired quietly.
“Yes, Gheevy?”
“Dearlyn is resting back at the Ambersong residence.” Pryce sighed. “Good. I’m glad. I hope she’ll be able to get some sleep.”
Murder in Halruaa (forgotten realms) Page 17