Hand of Fire

by Ed Greenwood

  “Indeed. Don’t smash decanters this time. ’Tis a waste of good wine, drink that I’ve a feeling you’re going to need.”

  Panting, Besmer risked a look back. They were still plodding after him, red-faced and scowling, swords out.

  It had been a mistake, aye, but—a firespitting wand that anyone could use! How often in a life did one get the chance to snatch one of those?

  Perhaps just once, if those bully-blades caught up to him. Pounds of heavy armor they were wearing, and still closing! Catching up despite the miles he’d loped, then walked, and now staggered since stabbing the merchant.

  Most traders had guards who were only too glad to plunder the baggage and be gone when you slew their masters, but … most merchants didn’t wander the Chionthar-bank trails with wands thrust through their belts, either.

  He didn’t need to see the face of the Master of Shadows to know all too well that the lady with the sword—gods, what a beauty!—had been right. He had to get out of Scornubel in haste or die.

  Following the Chionthar couldn’t get him lost but wasn’t a road the Master’s Eyes could ride swiftly along, seeking him. West it led, to Baldur’s Gate, where he could take ship for Waterdeep to hide amongst the throngs.

  Besmer knew better than to take a barge downriver. If he was spotted, signals could race to Scornubel and back, and his execution could be ordered without any warning to him.

  What he hadn’t known better than to do was put his dagger through the throat of that boastful merchant, after the man’s pack-train had come out of nowhere to the pool Besmer was drinking from. Who’d have thought a dead man could command such loyalty?

  Perhaps they just wanted the wand as much as he did. ’Twas a beautiful thing, a massive and smooth-wrought metal grip that fit the hand beautifully, mated to a jewel-studded carved wood shaft. As he staggered on, his hand went to its reassuring comfort time and time again. More like a royal scepter than a wizard’s wand. Those were usually plain sticks of wood, but this gaudy thing was real enough. He’d seen that merchant blast a boar and clearly heard the muttered word that unleashed a ball of fire. It had streamed across the pool, trailing sparks, and cooked the boar before it could even begin its charge.

  A dinner none of them would ever enjoy, now. He’d had the man’s throat open and the wand in his own hand in a trice and been off through the tall grass before a single bodyguard had even shouted. They’d set off after him like hounds, not hesitating a moment, and not giving up as the miles passed and hills rose and fell under their boots.

  None of them had turned back even after he’d given the two swiftest the wand they so wanted—or at least its fireballs, two air-shattering blasts that turned hard-striding men to whirling ashes. The surviving bodyguards had been careful to keep well apart from each other after that.

  He touched the wand again. He’d never had magic at his command before, and gods, now he knew why wizards swaggered so! What power! Look at someone, point your wand, say a word, and wham! Knight or lord, priest or mage, they went down, gone in smoke at your whim.

  Oh, he could see why they wanted this wand, all right. He didn’t want to use it too often, lest there be some limit to the fires it held … particularly if he used it all before getting away from these doggedly pursuing men. His feet felt like two heavy-laden coffers, his lungs burned, and he was starting to slip and stumble. He had to catch his breath, win time to rest—

  Blarrrgh! Besmer fell on his face, slid to a stop and hopped upright again, his ankle shrieking protest. He hobbled on, downslope, and had to look back. One of them was cresting the height he’d just left already, teeth bared in an angry grin.

  Tymora claw Beshaba for me now! Nothing could stop that man from catching him before he reached the bottom of the slope. Besmer assumed a look of despair, drew the wand and held it concealed, close to his body. He waited until the man’s thudding boots were growing loud behind him, then whirled, said the word, and pointed.

  The blast of flame snatched him back off his feet and hurled him away, head ringing and half-blinded. He’d seen the man’s agonized, spreadeagled body outlined by fire, ere he’d been whirled away, but … ’twas done.

  Shaking his head to clear it, Besmer got up and stumbled on, never seeing the dark, wraith-like cloud descending out of the sky behind his shoulders.

  Waterdeep had been glorious, a feast of magics, and Evaereol Rathrane had grown strong enough to manifest hands that could snatch and hold and carry. Greatness soon to come was more than a dream now.

  Yet he still dropped things from time to time, and found it easier by far to drift along as a shifting, shapeless cloud, as he was drifting now, excited by his whelmed power but wary. The world had changed much since his days in Jethaere.

  These humans would have marveled at Jethaere of the Towers, and might well have been less arrogant than to call their crowded, stinking harbor-huddle a “City of Splendors,” but they rolled in magic—magic so carelessly and lavishly used as to seemingly be held of little value.

  Yet Waterdeep had not been an unguarded treasure-house. Rathrane still shuddered at the remembered pain of its wards and leaping enchantments and the spells hurled by furious mages who saw him and lashed out without a moment’s hesitation. Flames too bright and too close still burned more than they succored.

  He’d fled from pain, lashed and hooked and scorched, out over wilderlands once more, drifting on from where a frantic flight from guardian-gargoyles had taken him in the painful aftermath of his last and worst attempt to snatch magic in Waterdeep. Wizards of Jethaere would never have spun spells in such a rough-and-tumble way, nor spent so much Art for clawing guardian beasts. Would every last mage’s tower be girt with such fearsome sentinels as well as the more subtle, exacting, and expected wards? Such fastnesses should be out here, yes, far from—

  Magic blossomed below, bright and sudden, and the shadowy thing that had been Rathrane of Jethaere smiled an unseen smile and sank swiftly toward that beckoning glow.

  Mhegras of the Zhentarim groaned as he swam out of darkness and blinked awake. He lay still and silent on his back, hearing little rustlings in tangled and interwoven branches above him. He was weak and sore, and when he strove to lift a hand, it was some time before his quavering fingers rose into view. “Bane preserve me,” he whispered hoarsely, watching them tremble.

  “Pray indeed to our Dark and Dread Lord,” a familiar voice said sourly from close by, “for by his will we’re delivered from death.” Sabran, no doubt lying here too. Those Harpers, a grip like iron …

  Mhegras thrust away that frightening memory with a whimper, and weighed the priest’s words. Bewilderment came. “H-he took direct interest in us?”

  “Nay,” Sabran snarled in low tones, “the spell that brought us back was mine, cast beforehand at the cost of a life for each of us, lives provided by those two idiot weavers in the squeaking wagon. Great Bane granted that spell to me. I didn’t think much of your protective magics—rightly, as it turns out.”

  Mhegras scowled and tried to sit up. There was a moment of trees and sky whirling around, sickening weakness, and … he was lying on his back again, looking up at the sky, with fresh aches, and mists drifting through his thoughts. His neck …

  He moved his head a little, to make the pain go away, but it got worse. He groaned again.

  “Wait,” Sabran hissed, “and be glad those two Harpers just broke our necks and threw us down in this ditch, that they didn’t go chopping pieces off us or looting our pouches. If you give my magic time to finish its work, you’ll be able to walk. If we can find something to eat, we’ll soon feel as if nothing happened to us.”

  Mhegras felt his fingers itching. When he lifted them into view, he saw that they were twitching uncontrollably. Marvellous for casting spells! He let his hands fall back, clawed the ground beside him in sudden fury, and announced harshly, “When I get my hands on that Arauntar, he’ll wish nothing happened, too—for the few moments I give him, before my conjured
brainbore-worm burrows into one of his eyes and starts gnawing his brain!”

  They were coming for him now, and the sky was darkening strangely ahead, almost as if it was growing greedy, long-fingered hands, reaching for his wand!

  Besmer stumbled back as the armored men came lumbering down the hillside with growls of triumph and was struck by a sudden, chilling thought: What if that merchant had been a wizard, after all? Was this his ghost, come to claim his wand back?

  Gods, yes! He could see a dark face, now, two dark twinkling stars of eyes in a shadowy head that had no jaw, on shoulders with no chest below, only a cloud of swirling shadows and those two reaching arms …

  Screaming, Besmer Altuth thrust his wand forward and gave the wraith fire—flame that dwindled to nothing!

  The wandfire disappeared as fast as it erupted, hissing to silence as the wand sputtered and the tingling cloud of shadows settled over Besmer like descending nightfall.

  Despairingly Besmer waved the wand like a blade, slashing at shadows, and spat out its word for fire again and again. Nothing happened, as the first swordsman’s slashing blade took Besmer’s dagger out of his hand along with two fingers, and the man’s second blow brought Besmer more pain than he’d ever felt before.

  He lost the wand during his helpless, agonized stagger, trying to drag out his sword with his other hand even though he knew the life was leaking out of him. The blade had gone right through him, down low on his right side, and—

  Another running swordsman arrived with a shout, and Besmer saw his blade come whirring up—

  Now there was too much pain to see anything or do anything but fall into the greedily reaching darkness.

  The thunder of hooves faded as Arauntar and Beldimarr spurred forward, scouting ahead for a campsite. Darhabran Windhome watched them go, spat thoughtfully to one side, and told the man on the perch beside him unnecessarily, “Triel, right enough.”

  Orthil Voldovan refrained from snapping something sarcastic. Windhome was old and loyal, a good man, and was carrying his wounds better than many guards far younger. All day the old guard had worked the reins of this mismatched team of beasts expertly with no betrayal of his pain but the odd grunt or growl, and kept the battered wagon on the much-rutted road.

  He leaned closer to the caravan master now and muttered, “Master, wouldn’t it be best if we just put a knife in the lass right now?”

  He did not have to say who “the lass” might be.

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” Orthil grunted. “If we didn’t need her fire to defend us on the run past Dragonspear, I’d do it right now.”

  “We can’t trust her!”

  “I know, but we have to—unless you can grow me a dozen crossbowmen and two dozen good swordsmen, all of them in quarrel-proof armor and on quarrel-proof horses!”

  The old guard gave Voldovan a sidelong growl of disgust. “She’s a blade at our backs, I tell thee!”

  Orthil put a hand on his arm. “Easy, Darhabran. ’Twon’t be for much longer; of that, at least, I can assure you. And if we have to dagger her in a hurry—well, I know who I can call on.”

  Rathrane hung close above the grunting, brutally thrusting men until long after they’d leaned panting on their swords around the sprawled, much-hacked figure in the trampled grass. The crumbling remnants of the wand he’d drained were plucked up, tossed aside with sighs, and the men wiped their blades and wearily began looting the body of the man they’d slain.

  Not a spark of magic shone about any of them, so the wraith-wizard drifted on, heading away from the river now. Distant echoes of recent great magic roiled ever so faintly off to the northeast. That was as good a direction as any.

  The taste of the wand had awakened fresh hunger in him. He was so close to being able to materialize fully, to have a body once more, to stride this changed Faerûn as boldly as any of these swaggering fools who called themselves wizards. He could taste once more, smell again, and feel the cool breezes he was riding.

  Evaereol Rathrane would be a name heard again in Faerûn, a name feared and respected. A name that would be spreading soon … he needed but a trifle more, and if these echoes were good indication of what lay ahead, he’d shortly have more than enough, perhaps more might than ever before.

  Greywings were honking in the distant backlands as Beldimarr waved them off the road close by the crude gates of Triel.

  Obediently Shandril guided their groaning wagon along a palisade of huge, graying old tree trunks toward the distant figure of Arauntar, who stood atop some rocks, directing wagons. As they bumped across the grassy but much-rutted field, Narm frowned. “Why aren’t we going into Triel?”

  Shandril shrugged. “Ask him,” she said, waving a hand at the grizzled Harper, so Narm did.

  Arauntar swung himself up on the perch and growled, “Just along here … aye … right, halt! Tether and hobble, lad. I’ll chock your wheels.”

  “Well?” Narm prompted him, a few minutes of stooping and rein-wrestling later.

  In a low voice Arauntar told them both, “Yer short answer: Triel’s ruled by a madman, Elvar the Grainlord. He’s so afraid outlanders’ll try to steal food from him—he who’s no slouch at thieving himself—that he won’t let any of us stay a night inside his walls.”

  Narm looked at the decaying but still formidable stockade, and muttered, “Is he one of those gigantic waddling gluttons?”

  Arauntar grinned. “Ah, I see you’ve tasted the world a trifle already, young Lord o’ Spells. No, he’s just mad, that’s all. He tasted a hard winter a score o’ years back and has feared running out of food ever since. So inside you’ll see dirt streets, little rickety shops an’ taverns … and looming over ’em all, granary after granary, packed to the rafters. Folk in Triel go about with long jab-forks, to slay rats on sight, an’ everyone has to keep traps an’ patrol ’em proper, so no dead rat rots. They get pickled, see, in case there’s need to eat them.”

  Shandril gagged, and Arauntar grinned happily. “Oh, an’ he’s mad another way, too: about the gods.”

  Narm, still slightly green from a vivid vision of curled-up rat claws sticking up by the dozens out of an open cask of pickling-wine, asked reluctantly, “Mad about the gods how?”

  “Every four mornings or so—or swifter by now, I’ve not been in to see, yet—Elvar awakens after new dream-visions, and announces he now serves a new god. Not that he creates ’em, see—just not the god he went to sleep praying to. He’s been around ’em all dozens of times by now, an’ keeps his guards, poor dogs, busy rooting out regalia and holy symbols they hid away from the last time around for this or that Divine One.”

  “Anything else?” Shandril asked, a little faintly.

  “Enough, be it not? That’s why nary a caravan goes anywhere but around Triel or camps outside, here or over yon.”

  “What’s that other road?” Narm asked, pointing.

  “The Dusk Road, from Elturel. It joins the Trade Way at Triel midmoot, inside. That roof atop the knoll hard by is Duskview House—an inn outside the walls, for the likes o’ you and me—or rather, for the likes of travelers who dare to stay there.”

  Shandril raised an eyebrow. “Particularly dangerous?”

  “For the lady who hurls spellfire, every place we’ll see is ‘particularly dangerous,’ but no, ’tis just too pricey for Master Voldovan’s tastes. ’Tis a highcoin house, newly built an’ all, sitting all serene on its height looking down the Dusk Road. It caters to the safety of the lone traveler, and charges accordingly.”

  “So why do I see Voldovan on his way there?” Shandril asked quietly.

  “He has to look for replacement guards somewhere,” Arauntar said heavily, “or we’ll none of us live to see Waterdeep.”

  “Can we go inside by daylight?” Narm asked, squinting at the sky to judge how much day was left.

  “I might lead an armed band inside to buy us food, later—a barrel of rats or two, whatever they’ll sell,” Arauntar growled amiably, �
��but you won’t be along with me, nor any of these fat wagon-merchants.”

  Shandril raised the other eyebrow. “Thieves in the streets? Brawlers rule the taverns?”

  “Exactly,” the Harper snapped. “Taking down travelers is their sport an’ their chief source o’ coin, an’ there’s no law nor justice to appeal to.”

  He swung himself nimbly over Narm and down off the perch in one energetic lunge, landing boots-first on the ground with a solid thud, and squinted back up at them through the dust of his own landing.

  “So stay here,” he said sternly, “both of you. Triel’s like Scornubel but a twentieth its size, thrice its desperation, an’ no tense standoffs to forge peace. Here, ’tis every man for himself, an’ daggers see heavy use.”

  Shandril smiled thinly. “So how exactly, Arauntar, is it different from anywhere else in Faerûn?”

  17

  PLEASING THE BRINGER OF DOOM

  The true purposes of kings are to set fashions, take blame for famine and harsh laws and oppressions practiced by nobles, to give commoners someone to shout at and throw dung upon, bards and romantics someone to be proud of or wax tragic about, and to feed the rats—personally, with their own bones. I just wish some of them would get around to doing it sooner.

  Hanjack Thallowblade, “The Farfaring Minstrel”

  Why I’ll Never Be A Respected Bard

  Year of the Leaning Post

  “Behold,” Voldovan muttered to Beldimarr. “The only man in Triel we can trust.”

  The guard nodded, his weatherbeaten face expressionless, and murmured as softly as any sly courtier, “Pity we can’t hire him and leave these others.”

  They were looking across the palatial lounge of Duskview House at a tall, gaunt man who looked every bit as Realms-worn as Beldimarr. Voldovan had no idea what his real name was, but he’d been a fixture in Triel for thirty winters at least: the local herald, Stormshield. He was here to witness any bonds of hiring Voldovan might arrange with the motley crew of swordsmen gathered in the lounge.