by Mel Odom
"Yes, Malla."
"Step back." When the drow warrior moved back, Krystarn flipped the dagger slightly, cutting through the male's nostril and creating a slit almost a half-inch long.
To his credit, the warrior said nothing, though his ebony face grayed in pain.
Krystarn put her dagger away, secreting it once more. "Do not ever let me think you see me in a moment of weakness," she told all of the men. "I shall not be weak because that would only encourage the craftiest among you to try to slip a blade between my ribs. And I do not intend to lose any more of you than I have to." So far, only two of her warriors had died in the tunnels surrounding the library's hiding place.
The wounded man stepped back into the military formation, ignoring the blood that streamed down his chin and dripped to his tunic.
"Captain Vnk'itn, we are traveling again. Get your men into a bag of holding."
The captain waved his arm and one of the men produced a large bag of holding from a backpack. He held it open while the man next to him climbed inside and disappeared without a sound.
"Also," Krystarn told her captain, "I want yourself and two other men whose nerve will not fail to stay with me." She grasped the staff Shallowsoul had given her and waited for her orders to be carried out.
It would be good to get back to the business of taking lives. Lloth would be pleased. The ranger was as good as dead.
11
"What would the Waterdhavian Watch want with you, Baylee?"
The ranger shook his head at Serellia's question as he lounged in the shadows by a tree overlooking the table where Cordyan Tsald sat with one of her companions. The female watch lieutenant's name was already being passed rapidly throughout the forgathering after the axe throwing event.
"The only tie I have there is Golsway," Baylee answered. He watched a brief fluttering of leathery wings take to the air from a branch near Cordyan's head. Xuxa, what have you learned?
A lot of silly intrigues that are currently in vogue in Waterdeep, the azmyth bat answered. But nothing regarding you.
Baylee watched the woman, eating as unconcernedly as if she had a right to be there. He smiled. In a way, he found her behavior curious. And she had chosen the right way to set all the tongues wagging at the forgathering. As well liked as he was by most rangers who knew him, Baylee also knew he had people who disliked him, if they didn't count him as a definite enemy.
Aymric held up an arm. Xuxa landed neatly on it, hanging upside down. "A reward, dear Xuxa, for your daring efforts." He offered her a small piece of apple nut crunch.
Gossip collecting, you mean. Still Xuxa took the offered treat.
"They are deliberately not talking about you," Serellia stated.
"Well," Karg rumbled, standing beside them, "after the display I'm told she put on at the axe throwing contest, everyone else is talking about you."
"They came at you straightaway, my friend," Aymric pointed out. "If they had a fell purpose in mind, they would have waited for you outside the forgathering."
"Even then, that would not have been a wise move," Karg said. "Our sentries spotted them a full two hours before they arrived and had word sent back to Myndhl. He's in charge of security this year, you know."
Baylee did know. Myndhl was a forest runner like Vaggit, and several areas in the Dalelands named Myndhl as an outlaw. His largesse didn't necessarily stem from the coffers of Zhentil Keep as Vaggit's did. Many times over the years, Myndhl's victims had included the wealthier houses around the Dalelands whose only crime was success. As such a wanted person, Myndhl's security systems were elaborate.
"Then I suppose there's nothing to be done for it," Baylee said.
"What do you mean?" Aymric asked, peering through the branches.
"I'll go down there and kill the man sitting with the lieutenant," Baylee replied. "Then she'll talk."
"You're kidding," Karg rumbled.
"Yes." Baylee started out from the tree, aiming straight for the table where Cordyan and her companion sat. Heads turned as he passed by, and he knew that most of the rangers at the forgathering knew what was going on.
"Then what are you going to do?" Serellia demanded, rushing up to walk with him.
"I'm going to introduce myself and ask her what she wants."
"And what if she grabs you and teleports you out of here?" Aymric demanded, coming up on the other side of Baylee.
"That's why I'm here," a voice spoke out of thin air.
"Carceus?" Aymric asked. "Is that you, you old god-seller?"
"And whom else would it be?"
Looking in the direction of the voice, Baylee thought he saw a shadow ripple through the darkness at his side. Carceus Ravnei was a traveling cleric in the service of Gond Wonderbringer. He enjoyed friendships with a number of rangers due to his wandering travels trying to increase the number of followers of Gond in the Dalelands. His invisibility was due to some enchanted item that no one had quite nailed down over the years. The cleric had his secrets.
"Thank you for coming," Baylee said.
"After Xuxa's impassioned plea but a moment or two ago, how could I not come?"
Baylee watched as Cordyan's head came up. Her eyes held the color of newly worked copper still drawing some of the red of a fire into them. He stopped at the head of the table.
Cordyan stood up, her left hand drifting down to her sword hilt.
Baylee spread his hands, showing he was unarmed. "You were looking for me."
Xuxa fluttered through the night overhead, then settled onto a branch over the table. Her thoughts are closed to me, the azmyth bat announced. She has a very disciplined mind, though. And her intentions are definite.
Whatever they are? Baylee asked sarcastically.
Xuxa chirped in disapproval, almost drawing the lieutenant's gaze.
The man sitting at the table remained on the bench, looking up with no expression. He ate neatly from a small clay plate.
He is a watch wizard, Xuxa announced, though more than that I cannot fathom.
"Baylee Arnvold?" Cordyan asked.
"And you are Lieutenant Cordyan Tsald, though I don't know why you would be looking for me." Baylee watched the way the woman moved, noting the symmetry of power and grace. Though young in years, she carried experience wrapped around her. And for one so young, she had gone far in a very challenging arena to make lieutenant.
"First I must inform you I am here in an official capacity."
Baylee inclined his head. "Of course. I hope you've enjoyed the festivities despite that capacity. I hear you're quite good with an axe."
The woman let the compliment roll past her without acknowledgment. "I need to know when the last time was that you spoke with Fannt Golsway."
"I would have to refer to my journal to give you the exact date," Baylee said. Without warning, a leaden feeling filled his stomach.
"An approximation at this point would be adequate."
"Months," Baylee replied.
"What was the nature of that discussion?"
"I'm sure it had something to do with an antiquity or a point of history," Baylee assured the watch lieutenant. "Golsway has little time to talk to anyone about anything other than that."
"Would that be in your journal as well?"
"If it was something I was interested in."
The woman shifted, taking a step closer to Baylee. "I've been told you and your mentor weren't on the best of speaking terms the last time you saw him."
"We had a disagreement," Baylee agreed. "One which I fully intend to redress when I see him at the end of the second tenday from now."
"You have intentions of traveling to Waterdeep?"
Baylee glanced around at the forgathering. The questioning had drawn more than a few spectators. "Yes."
"Why?" Cordyan asked.
"You ask a number of questions without giving me an explanation," Baylee said.
"I'm afraid that is the nature of my business." Cordyan's face remained unreadable even to Bay
lee's trained eye.
"I'm returning to Waterdeep to see Fannt Golsway," Baylee answered.
Cordyan regarded him silently for a moment. Then she said, "I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. Fannt Golsway is dead."
"Malla, we are ready."
Turning her attention from the staff she held, Krystarn looked over the three men standing in the hallway with her. Only minutes had passed as the men readied themselves for the coming battle. "That is satisfactory, Captain Vnk'itn." She handed him one of the golden bands Shallowsoul had given her. "You understand my instructions on how to use this?"
"Yes, Malla."
Krystarn gave the two remaining bands to the other drow males. 'To flinch or lose your focus will get you killed more surely than a blade in the back."
All three males nodded. None of them appeared happy about being in possession of the bands.
"Those of you who fail to use the bands will die by my hand," she promised. Then she took up the staff the lich had given her. She spoke the activation phrase and tapped the staff against the floor.
A ruby beam spat out from the tip of the staff and splashed against the empty space between the walls of the hallway. The beam formed a thin crescent at first, finally flaring out into a full circle that rapidly expanded and filled with swirling rainbows. In heartbeats, it filled the hallway.
Once the dimensional door was secure, the beam faded away.
"Kill the ranger, Baylee Arnvold," she said. "And kill any who are with him." The drow warrior leaped into the dimensional door in front of her. The familiar chill wrapped around her, then took her away.
"When did Golsway die?"
Cordyan Tsald stared into the jade gaze of Baylee Arnvold. "A tenday and two days ago." Her heart went out to the ranger, and she wasn't used to it doing that so easily. In her trade, she worked with thieves and liars on a continual basis. And men motivated by a need for power or wealth. There were few whom she respected.
Hurt flickered in his eyes, scarcely under control. He had not known about the old mage's death. Cordyan would have wagered anything on that.
No, child, he did not know. Nor did he realize how hurt and confused he would be by such an act.
Cordyan looked at the woman standing beside Baylee who gently put a hand to his shoulder. She was surely too young to have been the one to touch her mind. The voice that she had heard carried more age than the young woman beside the ranger.
My name is Xuxa. I am in the tree above you.
Cordyan kept her off hand on her sword pommel as she glanced up. She saw the bat hanging from a branch above her, spreading its wings to further draw her attention.
He must know the rest of it. There will be no easy way to tell him.
"What happened?" Baylee asked.
With practiced neutrality, the watch lieutenant relayed all she had learned of the old mage's murder. She had worked the night patrol in Waterdeep long enough to know there was no proper way to tell anyone a loved one would not be returning home. Each word seemed to weigh the ranger down. The easy, light-hearted and challenging smile had dropped from his face from the beginning, and grimness hammered his features into tight, hard lines.
"Someone sent you out here to tell me about this?" Baylee asked.
The elf at Baylee's side shook his head slowly. "They suspected you of the old mage's death, my friend. Isn't that right, lieutenant?"
Cordyan didn't flinch from the question. Hiding wasn't her way. "There has been some consideration."
The words reached through the confusion and hurt that had surrounded Baylee. The ranger's emotions were immediately apparent to Cordyan, as were the real concerns of his friends around him. As she watched, a portly bald man in priest's robes materialized at his side as well, offering his sympathies.
"I am your only suspect then?" the ranger asked.
"I don't know," Cordyan answered. "I was given only to find you and question you. Then find out if you would be willing to accompany me back to Waterdeep. Even without the matter of the assassination, there remains the estate to be administered."
"The estate?" Baylee looked at her, clearly puzzled.
"Yes. He had his will filed with a law-reader. The house and the surrounding grounds in Waterdeep are all yours. Most of his other belongings as well, except for a few items that are to be disbursed among other friends."
Baylee shook his head. "When will you be ready to leave?"
"As soon as you are."
"I would be willing to start riding tonight."
Calebaan Lahjir shifted at the table. "My sympathies for your loss, Baylee Arnvold, but after morningfeast would be more logical."
"Of course. I shall be ready." Baylee looked into Cordyan's eyes. "If there isn't anything else, I'd like to be alone with my friends now."
Cordyan nodded and watched the ranger walk away. She cursed the luck that she should have to tell him the old mage was dead. It would have almost been better had he been Golsway's killer. That way her own heart wouldn't be filled with sadness. Movement broke away from the branch overhead. She glanced up and watched as the bat flew after the ranger in a flutter of leathery wings. She signaled across the way to two of her best trackers, setting them on Baylee and his party. Even though she believed the ranger, there was a possibility other information could be gleaned from watching him.
Cordyan sat at the table, suddenly overcome from all the fatigue of the travels that had brought them to the Glass Eye Concourse. She had no stomach for the remnants of the meal she'd been enjoying only moments ago. "Some days I hate the employment I have."
"You like him." Calebaan seemed genuinely surprised by the announcement even though he'd uttered it.
"I feel for him," Cordyan said. "His pain is real."
"Yes, and I have the feeling that if we don't leave after morningfeast, we're going to be chasing him all the way home, hoping to catch up."
"Captain Closl and Lord Piergeiron are not going to be happy about Baylee's arrival there," Cordyan prophesied. "When I first heard the stories about him, I thought perhaps they were tall tales, made up because he walked for so long in Golsway's shadow. But now that I get the measure of the man, I don't think that is the case at all." She looked after the ranger, watching him disappear in the darkness between the campfires spread out across the forgathering.
"No," Calebaan agreed. "Baylee will bear watching even after he returns to Waterdeep. I don't think he will let-" Calebaan sat up, suddenly more straight. "Do you feel it?"
Cordyan looked at her friend. "Feel what?"
Calebaan pointed toward the east, in the direction Baylee had walked. "The cold breath of death itself."
Knowing her friend was sometimes given to poetic expression, Cordyan turned her head. Only darkness met her gaze. Then she felt the chill, like a high wind coming across Icewind Dale. The sensation came to her sharply, bringing with it the memory of two tendays the circus had spent playing Ten Towns when she'd been yet a girl, not then allowed to swing from the high wires with her brothers and sister.
But suddenly that dark space seemed to fold in on itself. Ruby light spilled from the corners of those folds in the next moment. Then the center of that fold collapsed, opening onto a hole.
Four figures stepped through that ruby hole into the midst of approaching rangers and a horde of animals.
"Something's wrong." Cordyan said. She stood and loosened her sword in its sheath. The copper and gold Shandaularan coin mounted in the hilt sparked a yellow light and felt warm to the touch. The sword was the watch lieutenant's as a reward from Khelben Arunsun for work she had done as a Harper while she was sixteen years old. The sword, Khelben had assured her, came from the renowned collection of Azoun, King of Cormyr for a bit of business the archmage had performed for the king.
The enchantment on the blade made it move lightly in her grasp, and it cleaved more surely through armor than any edged weapon she had ever owned. But the Shandaularan coin had an even further enchantment laid upon it. In t
he presence of drow, the coin would spark yellow.
Cordyan knew the enchantment was true because she'd seen it spark twice before. Both times, drow had been around. Once, the sword's warning had been enough to save her from a drow down in the warrens under the Waterdhavian docks.
The Shandaularan sparked again as she studied it. "Drow," she told Calebaan. She looked up at the glowing red hole to see the first of them step through. Her hand covered the Shandaularan coin as she bared her weapon.
12
"Hurry!" Krystarn Fellhammer ordered the three drow males hurtling through the dimension door behind her. She carried the staff in one hand and gestured with the other. Her magic swelled inside her for a moment, then burst out to roll over the line of approaching rangers.
A streak of flame leapt from her forefinger to arc across the sky above the forest. A few of the rangers managed to stop short, evidently having seen the spell before.
Krystarn narrowed her eyes as the fiery sphere took shape in the air, then burst with a low roar that spread flames in all directions. At least a handful of the rangers died in the immediate inferno, and others were dreadfully injured. Fires caught in the grasses and trees, driving the animals back in panic.
The advance of the rangers halted when they realized they faced a truly deadly foe. A number of arrows streaked toward the drow.
Krystarn loosed a second burst of magical energy. Thick strands materialized in the air, spanning the distance between the trees in front of her, becoming a mass of sticky gray webbing that ran twenty feet across, ten feet high, and forty feet deep.
The flying arrows didn't make it through the web, getting caught in the multilayered, sticky strands. Several of the rangers were also ensnared. A moment later and the webbing touched the fires burning in several spots across the ground. Extremely flammable, the webbing caught fire at once.
The rangers trapped within the webbing burned with it. Several of them screamed in agony. Many of them died. None of them were Baylee, Krystarn saw.
She gestured once more, unleashing the third spell she'd prepared for the raid. She felt the calm warmth surround her as the magic threaded into place before her just in time to stop two of the arrows that had managed to get through the webbing. Less than a yard in front of her, the arrows suddenly stopped dead and dropped to the ground.