Murder in Halruaa

by Richard Meyers

  His dark, stylish jacket concealed numerous hidden pockets, from its high collar to its midthigh length. The pockets were filled with his remaining savings. The outfit had served him well throughout the long trip, yet its only reward upon arrival was the promise of a thorough soaking.

  Almost as if the forces of nature agreed with his gloomy assessment, a biting, piercing wind suddenly coursed over the lush green incline. Covington shivered as the limb of the tree above him shook, making the lifeless body of Gamor Turkal seem to nod at the miserable, newly-arrived messenger from the north. It was as if Gamor were saying, from beyond the grave, “That’s what you get for seeking a cushy job for life!”

  “Don’t gloat,” Pryce muttered, trying vainly to protect his ears with his jacket collar.

  The bending tree answered with a groan, and the rain began to slash, slicing down at an angle as the winds added their own moaning voice. Odd, Pryce thought. This was surprisingly chilly weather for early autumn in southern Halruaa. He turned and looked back toward the road he had followed to arrive at this disastrous rendezvous.

  Only five minutes or so back to the road, he judged, then another ten or fifteen to reach the Lallor Gate. If he could gain entrance to the city, maybe he could find some simple place that was warm, dry, and affordable, considering the meager savings he had brought with him. Once his wits returned to full strength, he could consider his options.

  Why not? he asked himself. Although Gamor was dead, somewhere within the city walls, a cushy job for life awaited him, and if anyone could find it, it was Pryce Covington. That’s what Gamor would have wanted, he thought. After all, that’s why his old tavern mate and short-lived business associate had summoned him in the first place! Surely Gamor would have wanted Pryce to have the occupation of his dreams. Absolutely!

  Pryce squared his shoulders and started to march away. He hadn’t gotten ten paces when the wind began to howl with renewed force and it began to rain even harder. He bent his head down and tried to make headway against the raging wind. His pace grew slower, and soon he was panting against the Lallor Wall.

  He realized that this sudden storm would give him some sort of respiratory illness if he walked through it for more than five minutes. It seemed yet another oppressive sign, but he vowed that it would not defeat him. Instead, Pryce reluctantly returned to the relative shelter of the tree. He stood beneath its wildly trembling branches, scanning the sky for any sign of a break in the weather.

  But every time he thought he saw some sun, Gamor’s body would swing into view. Turkal’s horrible head, now dripping wet, seemed to mock him by sticking out its tongue and making bulging-eyed faces. Pryce turned away, only to find himself staring into the face of the dead stranger. Much to his own surprise, Covington no longer felt queasy or emotional. Instead, he was suddenly and strangely certain. The face of the unknown dead man presented a hidden problem, and Pryce was determined to solve it. Past experience had taught him how to read faces.

  The unknown man’s face held indications of education and intelligence in its muscle patterns. Stupid or ignorant people looked different, even in death. This man’s hairline was high, the hair short and so waxen it was almost clear. The skin was reasonably taut, neither so lined that it silently spoke of manual labor nor so smooth that it told of an idle life. From what Pryce could see, this person had won the biological sweepstakes. The lack of excess fat and strength of the neck spoke of good family stock and an occupation that maintained health.

  That information wasn’t enough. Covington was convinced he was missing something obvious, and he knew he would have to investigate further. He knelt by the body and studied it thoughtfully.

  Look into the dead man’s eyes, Pryce finally thought, surprising himself. Why the eyes? The eyes are the window of the soul, not to mention the pockets of the face. He would see what lay hidden inside visually, much in the same way he might go through the man’s actual pockets physically. But first he would have to open the man’s closed eyelids.

  Covington’s fingers touched the smooth, dry skin. He pressed his thumb lightly on the eyelid, feeling the eye beneath. He realized that he was holding his breath. Then he finally realized what had interested him about the man’s face. His fingers stiffened, motionless, on the dry skin.

  Pryce’s head whirled around to look up at Gamor, still swinging in the wind. Rain was streaming from his body. Covington looked down at himself. His own clothes and, more importantly, his own skin were soaked. He looked back at the stranger. The stranger’s head was as dry as a creditor’s smile.

  That’s when Pryce Covington finally noticed the cloak.

  It was beautiful in a simple, deceptive way. From a distance of even a few feet, it looked so natural it was almost invisible, even though it reached from the top of the seated body’s head to the knees. Pryce could see that the hood, when folded back, would lie flat on the cape, adding to its timeless styling.

  The cloak itself was a dusky blend of dark colors, like the sky just after sunset. Pryce could distinguish some blue, some black, and even some purple, interwoven with flecks that could be compared to stars just coming to life as daylight fled. Around the edges, it seemed to turn gray, like the promise of a new world just over the horizon.

  The cloak may have been wet, but it was so sturdily stitched that it kept its wearer perfectly dry, unlike the outfits of Pryce and the late Gamor Turkal.

  Pryce was surprised by his reaction to what first appeared to be a simple piece of clothing, but that was the kind of response this cloak elicited. Yet this was nothing compared to the clasp that held it in place. The circular clasp, which could not have been more than two and a half inches around at most, was one of the most ornate metalworking jobs Pryce had ever seen. Glimpsed superficially, it looked like a standard circular clasp with some sort of vine design, but upon closer examination, it looked like a cross-section of dense forest … like looking deep into a briar patch.

  Pryce ran his finger over the clasp. It felt smooth and cool to the touch. It seemed to draw his finger in an interesting pattern: first down, then around and up to the top left, then back right and down around twice more to the bottom left. Fascinating.

  Just as he began to raise his finger from the metal circle, the clasp sprang open and the cloak fell open.

  Pryce sprawled backward in surprise, landing on his seat in a mud puddle. He was on his feet immediately, as if he had accidentally sat on a baby. He felt the mud through the thick cloth of his pants and grimaced at the mess. He quickly wiped himself off as best he could and even leaned his bottom out from under the branches to get a quick rinse in the rain.

  He really needed the dead man’s cloak, he decided, both to keep dry and to cover any stain that might have been left on his trousers. There’s nothing more impressive to city gatekeepers than a stranger who has seemingly soiled himself.

  Later, Pryce would rationalize that his “accident” was what had made him “borrow” the cloak, but secretly he knew that he had wanted it almost as soon as he had examined it. It was as if it had been waiting for him all his life. Still, it took him more than a few moments to convince himself that he should steal from a corpse.

  Utter practicality won the day. The corpse didn’t need to stay dry. It made no difference to the corpse. The living had precedence. Right? Right.

  Pryce almost shivered with delight as the cloak settled over him. Not only was the rain suddenly shut out, but a wonderful warmth, the deepness of which he hadn’t known on his entire journey, settled over him. What is this marvelous garment made of? he wondered, but any further inquiries were ignored as a new sense of purpose gripped him.

  With this cloak to protect him, it was time to move on. A cushy job for life beckoned from somewhere inside the city’s walls, and Pryce Covington didn’t want to miss it. Silently he thanked the cloak’s former owner, then took a resolute stride out from under the oddly shaped tree.

  He studiously avoided looking back up at his ex-partner, determin
ing instead to think only of good feelings and the hale and hearty promise made to him. “Come to Lallor, Pryce,” the vision of Gamor had said. “It’s the secret jewel of Halruaa, where every creature of every sort is accepted and feels perfectly at home.…”

  Home, Pryce thought. His strides became longer and more purposeful, the rain a distant memory outside the protection of his new cloak.

  Ever since his mother had died, Pryce had had a nagging feeling that Merrickarta was not his true home. The place where he would feel at peace was somewhere away from the Nath … perhaps where he would find his father again … but for now, Lallor seemed most promising.

  “It is a shining region,” Gamor had declared with a grin. Pryce smiled inwardly at the memory of that grin—the knowing, wicked grin that always signaled to Pryce that Turkal only thought he knew what he was talking about. The kind of grin that made empty but large promises that the hapless conniver then scrambled to justify … and sometimes even to make come true.

  Pryce remembered the time when Gamor had promised that the lovely Benetarian twins awaited them at the Chomp ’n’ Choke Tavern upon the completion of their latest message check for a wizard named Petarius.

  “Absurd!” Pryce had countered. “First of all, the likes of Victoria and Rebecca Benetarian wouldn’t be caught comatose in a hole like the Chomp ‘n’ Choke. Secondly, why would such beauties require the company of two prospectless suitors such as you and I?”

  But Gamor’s wicked grin had only grown more wicked, so Pryce had allowed his hopes to rise as they raced to check the successful communication of a recipe spell. When they finally returned to the Chomp ‘n’ Choke, they found Petarius’s two apprentices wooing the twins in a back booth.

  The ladies sarcastically thanked Gamor for pointing out the location of a boîte so discreet that no associate of the disapproving Petarius would ever see them there. Then, after Gamor had sardonically suggested he might mention the situation to the apprentices’ master, they laughed and maintained that any tale such a lowly messenger told the wizard would be interpreted by the arrogant mage as an envious lie to discredit his honorable students.

  Pryce had watched as Gamor was thrown from the pub once, twice, three times, assisted by a combination of fists, boots, and ejection spells. He watched the first two times as Turkal landed on his back and side respectively, but he turned away when his partner landed on his head. Then Pryce shook his own head from side to side as his battered associate got up on wobbly legs, dusted himself off, then zigzagged shakily back into the establishment.

  When he came out again, he was on his own two feet and carrying an intricately curved bottle of deep turquoise. “Let’s go drown our sorrows,” he said.

  “But that’s a bottle of the finest Maerbian wine!” Pryce exclaimed. “How could you afford that?” His eyes narrowed. “Did you spend all our money?”

  “I did not,” the bloodied but unbowed Turkal had replied with offended pride. “I went right back in there, marched up to the back booth, and stuck my hand out. They say that the better man should win,’ I told them, ‘and in this case, it is obviously true. I should have known better than to trifle with the likes of Petarian-educated gentlemen and well-bred, high-minded Merrickartian ladies. Please allow me to show you that I have learned my lesson and that there are no hard feelings.’ ”

  “You didn’t,” Pryce said.

  “I did,” Gamor replied. “I marched right up to the bar and said, ‘A round for my friends and a round for the house. The apprentices of the great magician Petarius want to show the realm what a fine, talented, altruistic, charitable man their master is!’ ”

  Pryce started to laugh. “Why didn’t you just tell the bartender they would pay and then wave to them so they’d wave back?”

  “They might have known about that trick!” Gamor exclaimed. “Think about it. What could they do? Cry out ‘Oh, no’ so that every laggard in town would hear them insult their own master? Besides, this way they won’t have time to dally with the treacherous, teasing twins … not with the lowest life this side of the Nath pounding them on the back every other moment. Now let’s get out of here before they’re able to make their way through all those drunken thank-yous and restraining hands!”

  Then off the two ran … into the mists of Pryce’s memory. Covington allowed them to disappear into the distance of his mind’s eye, then reluctantly permitted his concentration to return to the unfortunate matter at hand. He slowed, then stopped on the thick green, grassy incline outside the city wall.

  Pryce turned as the first rumble of thunder rolled across the sky. In a crack of lightning, he saw his associate, Gamor Turkal, swinging from the end of a long, wet, tightly knotted rope, his boots six feet off the ground.

  Curse this rain, Pryce thought. It made vision very difficult. For the second time that afternoon, he wiped beads of water from around his eyes. Some cunning thief he was! He couldn’t get twenty paces without letting his emotions get the better of him. Gamor may have been a womanizing, self-important rascal, but he had also been a predictable business associate and sometimes even a friend.

  Turkal’s present position, however, had become too much for Pryce to bear. So Covington undertook an even worse transgression than stealing a cloak and leaving an apparent crime scene. He set about altering that crime scene.

  Pryce couldn’t just leave his ex-partner swinging at the end of a knotted rope. Ignoring the storm, Covington shimmied up the tree to lay his old pal, Gamor Turkal, to rest.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Pryce of Admission

  The sudden, violent storm had ended by the time Pryce Covington reached the end of the long line of people waiting outside the Lallor Gate. He stood on the opposite side of the road, surveying the setup.

  The line outside the gate was actually two lines: one very short, along a beautifully paved rock roadway; and one very long, in a muddy pathway that looked more like a narrow ditch, created by decades of hopeful immigrants desperate for an opportunity to prove their worth to the founding fathers of this bayside retreat.

  The two roads ran parallel, nestled between a cunningly constructed landscape, obviously designed for both beauty and security. Although greenery and foliage were much in evidence, the plants were trimmed low, so no lines of sight were obscured. Only narrow blooms and shrubbery were planted, so there were no real hiding places for any thief or attacker to use as cover.

  Standing amid the carefully tended plants and flowers, Pryce considered the two roads that led to the Lallor Gate. He saw that the paved road was similar to the wall that surrounded the city, in that it seemed to be constructed of interlocking stones, only these were a good deal smaller and more jewel-like than those used in the wall. Perhaps Gamor hadn’t been exaggerating when he called Lallor the jewel of Halruaa!

  No, Pryce thought, it couldn’t be. These couldn’t be dull, uncut gemstones! If they were, the magic protecting them must have been prodigious. Besides, why tempt every thief from the seaport of Githim in the south to the Bandit Wastes hundreds of miles to the north? Even if they weren’t actual jewels, it was an. impressive entry path for those wealthy or powerful enough to use it.

  Pryce’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at the wall, then down the divided road to the Lallor Gate. Even from this distance, the gate was obviously a magnificent construction. The woodworking was exquisite and seemed to shine in places, as if the logs were mortared with silver and gold. Pryce’s eyes narrowed even more as he tried to make out a subtle design amongst the interweaving vines and bark.

  Suddenly, incredibly, a large eye opened at the very top of the gate. It had to be twenty feet across, stretching from one side of the gate opening to the other. The pupil was as black as darkest night, the white as milky as the stars in the sky. But between the two was an oval that changed color from brown to blue to green in rapid succession.

  At first Pryce Covington thought the giant eye was looking straight through him, but soon he realized that it was following th
e progress of a newcomer who had been granted entry to the city. It watched carefully as the man slowly hurried … that is, the man was clearly in a hurry to make his way inside Lallor, but careful not to show the witnessing eye any disrespect. He was actually hurrying slowly.

  Pryce made a face like a frog, his lips stretching as far down as they could go on either side. Then his mouth bounced back to its natural mildly pleasant expression, and he made his way nonchalantly across the gemstone road to the line of refugees. He trudged to take up his position behind the last person in line, careful not to jostle or disturb him.

  After all, suspicion of outsiders was commonplace in Halruaa. It was a rich nation and quite exclusive. Having faced invasions on a regular basis from jealous outsiders, Halruans had become cautious by nature. Pryce appreciated this and tried to be as considerate as his ego would let him. Cautiously avoiding puddles, he waited at the very end of the long line, deciding that the wait was probably a good thing. It would give him time to figure out what he was going to do.

  More of his father’s words reached him through the murk of his memory. “Every day is another play,” he recalled with remarkable clarity. “Think of your life as a comedy-drama with you as the hero. Prepare yourself for every eventuality as if your god were a master playwright. Then comport yourself as you would want your hero to behave. Be the star of your own life!” For an abandoning scoundrel who had left him next to nothing, Pryce’s father had managed to tell his only son a lot of useful things.

  Pryce shrugged off the memory. He had two dead bodies to worry about, which had complicated his life more than anything he had previously experienced. Even so, he decided that he had come too far to stop now. After all, he had already torn up his Merrickartian roots to travel hundreds of miles down the Nath, past Lake Maeru, over the River Maeru, to the dangerous Lallor Pass. It was a tiny strip of serviceable land wedged between the undead-riddled ruins of the Zalasuu-Assundath Swamp, the monster-infested mountains of the Zhal Strip, and the bandit-filled desert of the Lower Swagdar outlaw wastes.