Noph bolted up the stairs, hoping he could find his way to the Eye of Ao before Lady Eidola flew through it in death.
Piergeiron stood uneasily at the front of the sanctuary and watched his bride approach. She moved with constant, stately grace. The smile on her face seemed one part joy and one part wry discomfort. He wondered if she felt as troubled as he….
Something was very wrong here. Piergeiron could not dismiss the dizzy dread. It was almost unbearable. Worst of all, he could do nothing to combat it. He could only stand, smile distressedly, and hope—hope that whatever plots had been hatched would fail, or would not come into being until he and Eidola were lawfully wed.
Beyond Eidola, her attendants slowed and stopped. They curtseyed once, their bodies rigidly upright, and began to back slowly away.
Where were they going? They were supposed to accompany Eidola to the altar. Did they back away because of some terrible danger about to descend on her?
Piergeiron glanced up into the black vault, unseeable above his bride. Were those leathery wings? Was that a lashing tail? No, he thought, only shadow play, only particles swimming in my eyes.
Piergeiron steadied himself and looked back down, all the while wondering what invisible monsters of fate hovered above them, ready to descend.
The martial cadence of the bagpipes slowed. Eidola took two final steps and stood beside him. The roar of trumpets and drums ceased and echoed away.
Bride and groom turned to face the podium that held Sandrew, the Savant of Oghma. He gestured for the people to be seated. As the muffled sound of creaking benches settled into silence, he spoke:
“Friends, we are here to witness a union that will mean joy and peace for all of us, but especially for this man and this woman.”
I only hope he is right about that, thought Piergeiron. I could use a few lifetimes of peace just now….
Noph at last topped the ladder and gently lifted the trapdoor above him.
“Found it,” he whispered to himself.
Beyond the trapdoor was a small, candlelit loft. Its far wall was the stained-glass Eye of Ao. Countless candles lined the base of the Eye, and fire gleamed in its edges.
Through the huge pupil came the murmurous sound of Sandrew’s homily on marriage.
On this side of the pupil, though, was a cocked crossbow poised on a wooden stand. Its quarrel was trained downward, pointing to the spot where Eidola and Piergeiron stood.
Noph almost flung wide the trapdoor and rushed in, but he noticed a string tied to the door. It was threaded through an eyelet in the floor and then rose up to the trigger of the crossbow. He eased the door downward an inch, and watched as the quivering line loosened. The trigger settled back in its place.
Clever. Whoever had placed this crossbow here had rigged it to go off if the trapdoor was opened. Cleverer, still, there was another string attached to the trigger. It was tied to a clockwork mechanism. As Noph watched, the string wound slowly around the clock spindle, and the trigger tightened.
“…The crossbow is already in place….”
So, even now, the lizard-woman is conspicuously sitting in the crowd, thought Noph, with a solid alibi for the moment when the quarrel flies and the lady or the lord is slain….
He had another minute at most—a minute to cut the first string, climb into the loft, and cut the second.
He reached for his dagger and pulled it forth—or tried to. The peace strings held the damned thing in place. He yanked harder, but he didn’t have the strength of a Piergeiron to snap them. Groaning in frustration, Noph fiddled for a moment more, trying to untie the tangle.
Thirty seconds… The clockwork string tightened….
Noph reached up past the trapdoor, feeling for where the first line was attached. His hand followed the string to another eyelet that was screwed into the top of the door. A yank on the eyelet told him this knot was secure.
Nineteen seconds…
Noph gingerly rolled his fingertips across the string, his nails slowly fraying the fibers apart.
Eight seconds…
A grunt and a yank. The frayed string broke loose of the eyelet. Noph flung back the trapdoor. It boomed loudly, but he did not care.
Two seconds… The crossbow trigger drew back, trembling.
Noph lunged for the clockwork mechanism. A crooked nail in the floorboards caught his toe, and he fell.
One second… The trigger clicked….
Noph snatched the base of the crossbow stand and wrenched it. The quarrel shot away. It pinged off the edge of Ao’s pupil and darted down into the crowd. A woman’s scream came up to him, followed by the shout of a man. Noph leapt to his feet and peered out the pupil. Below, an old dowager clutched a bleeding arm.
The bolt had missed Lady Eidola and Piergeiron. They were safe.
“The whole of Waterdeep will owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Except that Waterdeep had confused the details….
Someone pointed up toward the Eye of Ao and shouted: “Assassin!”
Noph went white. As other faces turned toward him, he backed away into the dark chamber. He was no assassin. He was the hero who stopped the murderers. Once the people saw the evidence… once they saw the stand and the strings and clockwork mechanism, they would understand the truth….
The cries of the congregation were interrupted by the hiss of a line of smokepowder, lit by the candles beneath the eye.
Smokepowder?
Boom!
Searing heat. Noph was thrown against a very hard wall. He groaned and crumpled amid orange flames. They died back as quickly as they had come. Bleeding, Noph struggled to smother the fire on his cape.
Numbly, he realized what had happened. The woman who had set up the crossbow had trapped it to explode once it had gone off, destroying the evidence of her crime, destroying the evidence of Noph’s innocence.
Crossbow, stand, and clockwork machine had been blasted apart.
“Assassin! Assassin!” came the cries from below.
Chapter 5
Where Trust Is Placed
“Assassin!”
Piergeiron clutched Eidola protectively to him and looked up toward the Eye of Ao. The crossbow bolt had come from there. In the pupil of the Eye was the frightened, hopeful face of young Noph.
The Open Lord’s heart sank. What treachery was this?
Noph backed quickly away, turning to flee.
“Guards!” called Piergeiron. “To the Eye of Ao!”
His command was interrupted when the Eye flared brilliantly, as though it had ceased to be stained glass and had become the very flesh and soul of a god. Fire shot out through the pupil, jetting twenty feet into the sanctuary.
Piergeiron clutched his bride all the more tightly as the holocaust roared overhead. He saw their shadows, cast downward by the bright blast—an image malformed and monstrous.
Then the blast, too, was gone. Piergeiron looked up to see a charred Eye of Ao, black smoke bleeding up into the caliginous vault above. He stepped away from his bride and drew Halcyon for the third time that day.
“Forgive me, Eidola, but the duties of office call,” Piergeiron said, bowing to kiss her hand.
Already, sounds of struggle came from the Eye of Ao; the guards had reached the would-be assassin. Kern and Miltiades rushed toward the sounds, swords unsheathed. Piergeiron looked the other way, where men carried away the wounded dowager.
He shrugged, “Perhaps my aid won’t be needed, after all.”
“Got him!” shouted someone in the Eye. “We got him!”
During all this commotion, Sandrew, the Savant of Oghma, had remained unflappable. “Shall I continue?”
Hushed flashes and muffled booms suddenly came from the crying room at the far end of the sanctuary. Screams answered, and more flares, and a man’s angry voice shouting arcane words. Guests standing in the narthex shied back from the sounds.
A smoldering door barked open and spilled flames out into the rear of the sanctuary. A gasp
ran through the chapel. Guests scrambled over each other to get out of the way. A tattered and smoky Khelben Arunsun staggered out through the opening and stopped to cough violently.
“Khelben looks to need some aid,” Piergeiron noted mildly to Eidola.
She was apparently in complete agreement, for she had already turned to dart down the aisle, dragging the groom after her. Piergeiron had to step lively to keep from getting tangled in her train.
They were halfway to the Lord Mage when lightning jabbed from the doorway, struck him, glowed along hair and teeth and bones, and flashed him away to smoke and ash.
Wide-eyed, Piergeiron and Eidola ran all the faster. Guards converged on the smoky scene.
Another Khelben fell out through the door, his robes ablaze. The guards halted, stunned. One young soldier rushed in to pat out the flames. He, too, leapt back as a fireball roared into being atop the writhing form.
Khelben was toasted, yet again….
“What is this?” Piergeiron shouted to his running bride.
A third and fourth Khelben rushed from the crying room. These two clasped hands and barged past the stunned guards, dropping them to the floor. A whirling swarm of magic missiles spun out the doorway, shot past the guards, and pelted through the fleeing Blackstaffs. Light blazed within, and the two, still holding hands, fell in a burning heap together.
The fifth Khelben emerged from the crying room just as Eidola and Piergeiron fought their way through a stampede of guests fleeing up the aisle. Piergeiron pushed ahead of Eidola and raised his sword.
“Hurl no more magics!” the Open Lord commanded.
The latest Khelben cocked a hairy brow at him. “That would be inconvenient, just now.” He turned and flung out his fingers. A mystic hand appeared before the door, and into it two more Khelbens charged. The hand closed on them and squeezed, crushing flesh, bone, fabric, and magic.
“I said, hold!” cried Piergeiron. He rushed up behind the master mage and slid Halcyon beneath his neck.
“I suppose you did,” replied the fifth Khelben. Cautiously, he raised his hands up into the air. “But there is one more of me coming. You’ll have to tell him, too.”
A ninth Khelben darted from the door, halted in shock as the guards caught him, looked around at the tableau of drifting ash and dripping flesh, and snarled, “Unhand me!”
The guards did. The mage straightened his rumpled black robes and glared at Piergeiron. “Nice of you to get involved.”
The Open Lord said, “Guards, slay that man if he makes so much as a sorcerous twitch.” The guards moved into position to do so. “Good. Now, what is happening here?”
“Shapeshifters,” the Khelbens replied in unison. The fifth fell silent in Piergeiron’s grasp as the ninth explained. “Somehow they disposed of Lady Eidola’s attendants and took their places. When I found them out, I led them back into the crying room for questioning. One of them attacked. They rushed for the door, taking my form to confuse pursuit.”
“If I am a shapeshifter,” said the fifth, “why did I slay two of my comrades with a crushing hand?”
The ninth shook his head. “He slew only those two, and in front of you so that you would believe him. I killed the rest.”
“A crushing hand is no easy spell, Open Lord,” said the fifth.
“Many shapeshifters know magic,” the ninth replied. “Your casting is no proof of your identity.”
Piergeiron ground his teeth together. “This is like blind-fighting. I’m as likely to kill friend as foe.”
“Wouldn’t it be better, Open Lord,” said the fifth, “to let a shapechanger free than to accidentally slay the Lord Mage of Waterdeep?”
He was right. Piergeiron released his hold on the fifth Khelben.
The mage staggered free, huffed, and then struggled to straighten his robes. He glanced up in irritation at Piergeiron. “Thanks for the rough treatment. I have half a mind—”
Then, absurdly, his words were literally true. His head split down the middle and fountained red upon all those around. The Open Lord reeled back in surprise and revulsion, and the body slumped to the floor.
Eidola pulled back from the slain form, the sword in her hand dripping gore. She looked as surprised by her action as did everyone else. Her wedding dress was painted in crimson, and her hands trembled.
“You were quite right,” said the ninth Khelben, stepping toward her. “You knew I would never try to save myself at the peril of the city. Gentles, if you would put away your swords—”
“Wait!” shouted Piergeiron. “We still have no proof.”
Eidola gave him a look of injured pride.
Piergeiron thought of all those in whom he had placed his trust—Noph, who turned out to be an assassin; Khelben, who was eight parts shapeshifter to one part master mage; and beautiful, mysterious Eidola, the spirit and image of long-gone Shaleen.
“Put away your swords,” the Open Lord said, lowering his blade. “The judgment of my bride is proof enough.”
“That’s good,” said the Blackstaff. “The monster she just slew would concur.” He gestured toward the riven head and body before them.
They all saw it, then. The body had returned to its true appearance—a gray-hided humanoid creature with huge eyes and a broad, spiky head.
“A doppelgӓnger?” the Open Lord gasped.
“So it would seem,” said Khelben, prodding the thing with an iron-toed boot. “Not malaugrym, but doppelgӓngers.”
“But why?” asked Piergeiron. He turned to his bride and clutched her hand. “To kill Eidola?”
“I doubt it,” Khelben said dryly, shaking his head. “They could have killed her a hundred times before now. Besides, as our young friend Noph has shown, there are much easier ways to assassinate a lady.”
“But if not to kill her,” Piergeiron asked, “then why?”
Khelben cocked a knowing eyebrow at the bride and said, “That very simple question will take, I am afraid, a very long time to puzzle out.” He cast his gaze outward at the stone-silent crowd, many of whom stood with candle sticks and snuffers and other improvised weapons in hand. “And this is neither the time nor place for such riddles.”
With a wave of Khelben’s hand, Eidola’s dress, makeup, and hair were once again in perfect order. She looked admiringly at herself, then glanced at her groom to see that he, also, had been made over.
Khelben addressed the crowd, “I fear I haven’t spells for all of you, so tuck in those shirt tails, straighten those gowns, and lick back those bangs. We’ve a wedding to celebrate!”
A wondering murmur circulated among the crowd.
“Music!” called Khelben.
The trumpets responded first, once again taking up the bridal march. The drums added their cadence, and the bagpipes growled to life.
Khelben motioned to the guards to remove the body and clean up the soot. They flinched at first from his flicking fingers, but then busied themselves about their tasks.
Arm in arm, bride and groom headed down the aisle, striding to the martial strains of the wedding march. In waves, the crowd shook off its stunned silence and straightened its collective cummerbund. It even mustered a smile for the wedding couple.
Piergeiron tried to return the smile, but couldn’t.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t stop swallowing.
His head felt like a papier-mâché mask.
Oh, to sleep….
This dread. This mourning. He had not felt such anguish since the night Shaleen had died. The image of his first wife again rose before him, filled his vision.
Oh, to sleep….
The candles all through the sanctuary abruptly flared to life. Their flames leapt up six feet into the air. The congregation cowered away from this new assault, and the trumpets and drums faltered into silence. In the agonized dying of the bagpipes came human shrieks—
Fiery figures formed in the flaring candles: warriors, dressed in armor, their swords drawn.
&nbs
p; With a final flash, the flaming beings became solid flesh. They dropped to the floor. With them descended a heavy, preternatural night.
Chapter 6
Blind Fighting
This is not the end, thought Noph, not by a long shot. He had begun the evening a disaffected young noble. Judging by others of his breed, he had been clearly destined to become a jaded and decadent middle-aged noble. But something had happened along the way. Somehow he’d caught a glimpse of what he was going to be and had boldly worked to change it all. He had decided to be a hero.
Why, then, was he imprisoned in a dungeon cell, awaiting trial and execution as an assassin?
He had heard that such was often the lot of heroes—to be misunderstood and branded villains. Only now did it occur to him just how galling was such a fate. He had been disowned by his father, had risked his skin to save Lord Piergeiron and Lady Eidola, and at the end of it all, had been labeled a monster.
“Some hero I turned out to be,” he told himself dismally.
A scream sounded above, then shouts, and curses, and the rumble of soldiers’ feet. A man’s voice came echoing down into the dungeon. “Guards, everyone! Above! Above!”
The young soldier who had been sitting outside Noph’s cell was suddenly gone, his chair no longer leaning against the wall but rattling dully where he had been.
There was a new catastrophe in the sanctuary above.
Noph’s own voice echoed in his head: Some hero you’ll turn out to be if you give up now. They need you up there.
From all of Waterdeep, the Open Lord had selected Noph to trust—Noph and three others. Just because Noph was accused of betraying that trust did not mean he was guilty of doing so.
Not yet, at least.
He stood up. In the dim light sifting into his cell, he began to study the walls and door for some means of escape. He’d get out of this cell, aid Piergeiron in the new conflict, and find the woman with the burr in her voice—no, not just her, but her whole clan of assassins.
A hero could do no less.
As the shadows fell about him, Piergeiron wearily drew his sword. He glimpsed Eiolola’s white face, eyes wide, one hand clutching the gem at her throat.
Forgotten Realms - [Double Diamond Triangle Saga 01] - The Abduction Page 5