Murder in Halruaa

by Richard Meyers

  “You-vee,” Gheevy formed the sound. “But what about the ‘ow’?”

  “I’ll give you the ‘ow’ in a second if you don’t keep quiet,” Pryce warned, the tension beginning to make him giddy. He held up Darlington Blade’s clasp, turned it sideways and to the left, then all the way around. The D and B created from the thorns became a half oval and a rounded W. “Put them both together—” which he did—“and they spell—”

  “You-vow,” Gheevy said admiringly.

  Dearlyn nodded proudly. “Of course my father would want us to work together. It’s just like him!”

  Pryce looked at her with concern before continuing. “Now to put my theory to the test.” He stepped toward the wall, then stopped and turned back. “No one with a thinner arm, I suppose, would be interested?… No, I had better do this myself.”

  He put the two clasps side by side in his hand, surprised by how naturally they seemed to fit together. The flower petals and the thorns seemed to link together in position, maintaining the oddly designed U-V-O-W in place. With his other hand, Pryce gripped the lip of the hole he knew was there and started to pull himself up. “Gheevy,” he grunted. “I need a solid surface to stand on to position the clasps just right.”

  The halfling rolled his eyes. It had been an eventful night already, and he was weary … not to mention irritable. “And I suppose you want my back as that solid surface?”

  Dearlyn looked down at him with reproach. “Don’t be petty,” she admonished. “If you won’t do it, I will!” She was already on one knee when the halfling stopped her.

  “All right, all right. I’ll do it. Just wait a moment, would you?” Gheevy got down on all fours and placed his side against the rock wall. “Very well, Blade. Go ahead.”

  Pryce grabbed the upper rock protrusion, then stepped on Wotfirr’s back. “All right?” he inquired, to which the halfling grunted in the affirmative. Covington found himself gritting his teeth. If he was wrong, there was no predicting what might happen. At the very least, he could probably say good-bye to his arm. So, under his breath, he did. Then he cautiously put that selfsame arm down the tube, holding the clasps out before him. Pryce grimaced, then winked as sweat rolled into his eyes. Soon his arm was completely inside the rock, his muscles straining.

  “Anything?” Gheevy asked.

  “Not … yet,” Pryce grunted, but then the top of the clasps touched the grating and were sucked from Covington’s fingers with an audible clanking sound.

  Pryce leapt down from the wall as if the tube had ejected his arm. As he hit the opposite wall, they all heard a hum, then a grinding of gears.

  Pryce rose to his feet, holding on to the opposite wall for support. They all watched, amazed, as a section of the cave wall swung out like a vault door.

  The edge of the swinging partition just flicked the end of Pryce’s nose, but it swept the kneeling halfling along like a broom sweeping up a particularly annoying dust ball. “Dar-ling-ton!” Gheevy cried in fear. Pryce was grateful that, even in what could have been his last seconds on Toril, the halfling hadn’t revealed his true identity.

  Just as it seemed that Wotfirr would be crushed against the rock wall, the partition ground to a stop.

  The halfling rolled one way and the illumination orb he had been holding rolled another. Dearlyn ran forward to gather Gheevy up in her arms, while Pryce nimbly caught the orb and slipped it into his pocket. Then his eyes widened and he caught his breath. He remained stock still, standing before the opening, taking in the room that was revealed beyond.

  Within moments, all three stopped moving, talking, or even breathing as they got their first look at the secret workshop of Geerling Ambersong.

  It was a room dug out of the very earth beyond the cave wall, a section of which served as the door. All the furniture was made of stone, the chairs made comfortable with thick, comfortable-looking, ornately decorated pillows. There were stone tables and stone shelves, some attached to the wall and supported by stone legs and braces, while others seemed to float of their own accord. There was a modicum of solid and liquid refreshment—even some barrels from Schreders—but mostly every surface was covered with spellbooks and magical items. It was what Dearlyn Ambersong had dreamt of all her life. She looked as if she were about to faint.

  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 consistency—some 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 fur-lined 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 Covington—the 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 this—he 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 springing—feet first, belly down—over 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 to—a table, a chair, and a wall—to 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.

  Santé 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. “Teddington!” 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 height—to 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 to—ouch!—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 ghost—a 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 Blade!” 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 must—I won’t blame you—but 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.