by Ed Greenwood
Lanterns and candles had crashed down everywhere to start little leaping fires, and their flickering glows showed Lord Hawkwinter a swaying, swinging chaos of ropes and beams. Smoke was rolling and eddying energetically-and all around him wood was screaming.
Taeros wouldn't have believed splintering, rending wood could scream, but then, he hadn't known it could groan, either.
It was doing both right now, even more loudly than the frantic, sobbing screams of women blundering about in the alarmingly leaning labyrinth of pillars and sagging balconies. Men were shouting and coughing, and at least one fool had drawn a sword and was slashing wildly as he came staggering through the dusty gloom, as if sharp steel could slaughter dust.
As Taeros struggled to his feet, the remains of someone's chair and table falling away from his bruised shoulders, a balcony tore free and plunged to the stage with a thunderous crash. In an instant, the man waving the sword was smashed into a bloody smear on those shattered, bouncing boards.
Taeros saw that sword, still clutched by the severed ruin of a forearm, clatter to the floor near Malark, who was having troubles of his own amid much splintered furniture. Then roiling dust hid Lord Kothont again.
Curses and thuds heralded someone wearing a splendid scarlet-and-gold tunic, not Malark's emerald gemfire, who came stumbling out of the dust. The man clawed his way past Taeros, trailing a stream of curses and half-dragging someone long-haired and presumably feminine whose slender shoulder slammed into Beldar with force enough to stop a Roaringhorn bellow in mid-roar, and leave Beldar retching on his knees.
Well, at least Taeros now knew where that friend was. He turned toward Beldar, but Another balcony fell, with a splintering, floor-shaking crash. And then another.
Taeros fought for balance on floorboards that were suddenly rising and falling like waves rolling into the harbor.
The next crash was a long, rolling, ear-hammering chaos, and Taeros saw a ceiling-beam, wreathed in flames, plunge to the floor. Dust rose like a wall.
As the echoes of its rolling faded, he became aware that someone was shouting-someone familiar. Beldar had found his breath again.
"Get out! Come on! We've got to get out!"
Taeros turned, staggering as loose boards shifted under his boots, and then glanced back. Had Malark-?
Other patrons were thundering past, running blindly. Some slammed into already trembling pillars and reeled sideways or fell senseless.
Flames flared as a fallen curtain ignited, and Taeros could suddenly see the stage again, where blood lay in pools and still, huddled forms were sprawled under tangles of jagged wood.
"Malark?" Taeros shouted, peering at where his friend had been. Dust swirled thickly there, but he thought he saw a glimmer of green.
He started forward-and fell hard as something else collapsed, far off in the gloom, and the floor bounced and rippled again.
More grandly garbed folk came running out of the smoke and dust, wild-eyed and staggering. Among them, a woman who wore a tiara and dripped with jewels was cursing like a sailor as she tried to twist and tear free of three or four terrified serving-girls who were clinging to her long sleeves and trailing gown.
"Let go!" the woman spat. Cloth tore with a long snarl of protest, baring her legs, and a mewling trio of maids crashed to their knees in the wreckage.
Weeping with fear and rage, the woman ran on, spraying jewels in her wake like hailstones. Across much dust and chaos, Taeros finally caught sight of Malark's familiar grin-directed not at him, but at a servant-lass who was clinging to him, sobbing and trembling.
As they emerged fully from the dense smoke, Lord Kothont put her gently away from him and gave her a little shove in the direction of the door. She stumbled, then caught herself and darted toward safety. Malark nodded in satisfaction, then reached down to pluck up one of the three terrified maids.
And then, with a crash like the hammer of Gond coming down on his Greatforge, three or four ceiling-beams came down right in front of Taeros, hurling him helplessly back, arms flailing, into-something hard yet yielding that cursed as it collapsed under him.
"Hawkwinter?" whoever it was snarled. "That you?"
"Beldar!" Taeros gasped, fighting for breath. His arm was numb, one of his knees was burning as if afire, and "Up, and out of this!" Beldar growled, rising up under Taeros like a harbor wave. His snarling strength hauled them both to their feet, and they swayed together as more beams fell. Then the young flower of House Roaringhorn snatched, heaved, and broke into a stumbling run, Taeros Hawkwinter bobbing along on his shoulder like a sack of meal.
"Malark-"
"Can fend for his bloody self," Beldar panted. "Much good we'll be… to him… flat as… fish-heads underfoot… on the docks. 'Sides, have you ever known Malark not slide out of anything?"
Taeros couldn't find breath for a reply as he was hustled along, bouncing jaw biting his own tongue repeatedly, but he didn't have to. Malark would come out unscathed. Malark always did.
He couldn't stop coughing.
On his knees on the dirty cobbles, Taeros hacked and spat and heaved, shoulders shaking, until a grim-jawed Beldar slapped his back hard enough to drive him nose down onto the stones, which promptly rattled and shook hard enough to numb a Hawkwinter chin and send its owner rolling helplessly over onto his side, still coughing.
"What was-?" he managed to ask.
"The last of the Slow Cheese," Beldar Roaringhorn snapped, in a voice that promised brutal death to someone, and soon. "Going down flat."
"M-Malark?"
"Under it, somewhere." Beldar thrust something under his friend's nose.
Taeros blinked at it, fighting for breath.
"This," Beldar growled, "was stuck to a spar that was flung into the air just after I carried you over here-and damned near skewered me coming down. It was stuck there with blood."
Taeros stared at what his friend was holding: A blood-smeared scrap of emerald green gemweave, cloth that in all Waterdeep, only Malark Kothont could have been wearing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The first rumble and roar brought Golskyn from his bed, coverlets flying. He hurried to the window of their upper room and gazed up into the midnight sky, his uncovered eye searching the stars with open longing.
"A dragon's heart," he said wistfully. "Now that would be a true test of a man's strength!"
Mrelder stumbled to his father's side, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His thoughts were not of dragon flight, nor the wondrous challenge of capturing, dismembering, and incorporating that greatest of creatures. He thought instead of the city all around and the folk who dwelt in it. Fresh rumblings drew his gaze.
"A building's fallen!" He pointed. "Look, there: Dust rising. Flames now, too."
Golskyn peered. "Dragonfire?" he asked hopefully, not ready to relinquish his fond hope.
"No dragons," his son murmured.
Mrelder thought he might know the cause of the collapse. The mongrelmen had tunneled thereabouts to link to the cellars of another of Golskyn's buildings. Lord Unity wasn't the only priest of monstrous gods in Waterdeep, but he was new to Waterdhavians, and undeniably impressive. Folk were flocking to his hidden rituals, and the traffic beneath Waterdeep's streets was rapidly increasing. If one foundation had been so weakened, what else might soon fall?
Once the rubble was cleared, that tunnel would be discovered, and then The sharp, suspicious glare of his father's uncovered eye suddenly blocked Mrelder's view.
"You know something of this," Golskyn snapped. It was not a question.
Mrelder's thoughts raced. Nothing less than a solution would serve; Golskyn had no patience for unsolved problems.
"Well?"
A map of the city sewers came suddenly to mind, and with it his answer.
"I had the mongrelmen undermine yon building's foundation," Mrelder lied. Golskyn scowled, and his son added hastily, "Their work runs very close to a long established sewer-run. It'll be short work to breach what's between the
m and use the dirt and stone to block off one end of our passage, keeping it secret."
"And the other end?"
"Leads to an old warehouse, half-full of the rubble of our diggings."
Golskyn's scowl remained. "I like this not. Too high a risk."
"How so? Investigation will show only that someone's extending tunnels. Most Waterdhavians believe the Lords control the tunnels, so the Lords'll be blamed. The more troubles Lord Piergeiron must answer for, the more frequently he'll be out among the people-and the more opportunities we'll have to lay hands on the Guardian's Gorget."
"And this warehouse?"
A genuine smile spread across Mrelder's face. "I won it at dice-no coin changed hands, no papers-from an old, retired merchant. He had no family, and, ahem, died suddenly. Shortly after our game."
"He'd no parts worth keeping, I'll warrant," Golskyn muttered predictably, in his usual response to news of death, dismemberment, or murder.
"Alas, none. Heirs and mourners: None again. If anyone wonders who owns the warehouse, the law's clear: as he had no heirs, it's now city property. Another finger pointing at the Lords."
Lord Unity's scowl was gone. "You've given this hard thought."
Mrelder nodded. "Once the 'why' of this collapse is known, citizens'll be ready enough to blame tunneling for other downfalls."
"There are other buildings down?"
"Not yet." Mrelder smiled. "Before dawn, another building will fall. Far from here, so no hint of suspicion comes to our doors."
Golskyn actually smiled. "Your sorcery will cause this?"
Mrelder bowed.
The priest squinted at the sky. "You'd best get on with it, my son. Dawn is but three bells away."
My son. Mrelder turned away to hide his blushing smile. He'd never thought to hear those words spoken so casually, much less with something approaching pride. He'd felt such happiness only once before, but then it had been Lord Piergeiron who'd looked on him with warmth and called him friend.
The sorcerer put that fond memory firmly out of his mind and strode across the room to his clothes. It was time to go out and spread dissent and destruction in Lord Piergeiron's Waterdeep.
The guards on the Palace steps gave Mrelder hard, steady stares, but let him pass.
The guards inside challenged him, and no wonder. The mists weren't off the harbor yet; it was early indeed to have honest business at the Palace.
However, it seemed the polite note he'd sent Piergeiron yestereve, mentioning his own arrival in Waterdeep and inquiring after the First Lord's health, had done its work well. Merely giving his name had the guards nodding respectfully and waving him toward a servant in a fine tabard.
"The First Lord bids you welcome and wishes Waterdeep had more friends of your mettle," that man said approvingly, as he waved Mrelder smoothly through a door that looked like most of the others in that long, lofty hall.
Morningfeast for Piergeiron was evidently a hearty serve-yourself affair. Steam was rising from platters on a sideboard, where about a dozen grandly dressed, important looking men with serious, frowning faces were forking sausages and smoked silverfin into wooden bowls, and plucking boiled eggs out of a sea of spiced butter. They looked as if they were expecting grim doom to strike them down before highsun, and had little desire to meet it with empty bellies.
The First Lord looked up from a stack of papers a clerk had just put in front of him, smiled broadly, and waved Mrelder to the sideboard.
Mrelder grinned back. Whatever his father's intended dooms for Waterdeep or anyone who stood in his way-and the First Lord of Waterdeep could hardly help but do that-he found it impossible to dislike this man.
"We can talk soon," Piergeiron promised, taking a quill the clerk was already holding out to him.
The son of Lord Unity joined the men at the sideboard, who all gave him silent "And you are-?" frowns. He found himself nose to nose with sleepy-eyed City Guard officers, a few softly gliding courtiers, and several grumpy looking Watchful Order wizards.
Mrelder's stomach rumbled. Several of the guardsmen were heaping their bowls to precarious heights, so he didn't stint in filling his own, ere he sat with the others at the long table. He had the far end from Piergeiron, of course, but as he dug into fried mushrooms dripping with some sort of sauce and gratefully received a drinking-jack of warmed zzar from a deft servant, he gathered from the speed with which the others were eating that they'd soon be out the doors to their duties.
So it proved, and Mrelder was just sitting back from his last few sausages with a sigh of contentment-gods of Amalgamation, it'd been years since he'd eaten this well! — when the oldest-looking wizard sat down right beside him and asked quietly, "And you are-?"
"Mrelder. I-"
"Fought beside the Lord Piergeiron in defense of the city, and are his personal friend, yes," the wizard said smoothly, his dark old eyes keen and bright. "Perhaps I should have added the words, 'here for' to my question, thus: And you are here for-?"
"Ah, to thank the Lord for his advice, and tell him I found my father, just as he suggested. And to give him a gift."
"Aha. What sort of a gift?" Two rings on the wizard's fingers winked into life.
Mrelder had expected this but put a puzzled frown on his face as he dug into his belt pouch. Retrieving the small copper coin he and two Amalgamation acolytes had done so much hasty work on, he put it on the table.
The mage peered at it suspiciously. Its origins were evident if one examined it closely enough, but it now had the shape of a small copper shield bearing, in an arc, the words: "All Perils Defeated."
The wizard held a hand above the badge. A third ring kindled into life, and he gave Mrelder an unfriendly look. Taking up a fork left behind in someone's bowl, he carefully turned the little shield over and read aloud its obverse: "To the Open Lord of Waterdeep, in deepest respect, from admirers at Candlekeep."
"Fine folk, all! Well met, friend Mrelder!"
The sorcerer sprang up to greet his host. Piergeiron, it seemed, could move as silently as a cat when he wanted to. They grasped sword-forearms, in the greeting of one trusted warrior to another.
"You found your father?"
Gods, he remembered!
Mrelder found himself grinning widely. "Yes, Lord, and I wanted to thank you in person for your advice. We're reconciled."
In our own manner, at least.
"Good! Good! So what's got Tarthus here so suspicious?"
"I–I'm afraid I was bold enough, Lord, to bring you a gift, on behalf of all who came from Candlekeep to fight for you that day. We'd be honored-"
"As will I!" Piergeiron said heartily.
"There're no spells on it, Lord," the mage murmured, "but prudence demands…"
"Of course, of course."
Mrelder carefully kept all trace of a smile off his face. Not a spell, but a spell focus, by which Mrelder, who'd so painstakingly engraved the cruder of the two messages it bore, could with a swift spell of his own easily track Piergeiron's whereabouts.
The Open Lord took up the shield and admired it with pure, simple pleasure. "All Perils Defeated, eh? I wish I could measure up to that. Still, let it be my goal and be ever with me." He turned it in his palm. "Made from a copper piece. Clever." He fixed Mrelder with that disconcertingly direct gaze and said simply, "Thank you. This is a princely gift."
Mrelder knew he was blushing. Boldly, before he lost his nerve and the chance, he stood up, took the little badge from the Open Lord of Waterdeep, and went down the table to where Piergeiron's war-helm sat, holding down stacks of papers still awaiting the Paladin's signature.
Slipping the point of the shield firmly under the edge of the brow-guard that surmounted the helm's eye-slits, he settled it in place, centered over the nose guard. "There!"
Piergeiron grinned again. "Now, that I shall be proud to wear." His grin faded. "Though hopefully not soon. Waterdeep enjoys a hard-won peace."
Mrelder put the helm down carefully and came bac
k down the table, aware of the wizard's thoughtful scrutiny. Tarthus had doubtless noticed the spell of binding Mrelder had cast on the shield earlier, to keep it affixed wherever it was put. No matter: There was no magic more harmless.
"Peace is always my hope, too," the young sorcerer said quietly, "yet strangely, Lord, the mood in the city now seems darker than when folk were fighting beasts from the sea. If I may speak bluntly: I've been in cities in the South where unrest was strong, and this has the same feel."
Piergeiron nodded. "You see and speak truth, lad." He strode back down the table, frowning. "Waterdhavians work together against clear peril," he added slowly, "but not in times of prosperity."
Mrelder spread his hands. "Why not remind citizens that in the thrust and parry of trade, Waterdeep is in one sense always at war? Some folk only see a battle when blades are bared and blood flows."
Tarthus was frowning at Mrelder now, too. "What sort of reminder?"
Keeping his eyes on Piergeiron, Mrelder waved at the war-helm.
"Put on your armor. Be seen only clad in battle-steel, sword at your side, awakening not fear but remembrances of victories and sacrifices-a rebuke to those distracted by foolish trifles and an reminder to all of the precious cost of what they enjoy."
"You," Piergeiron replied slowly, "are a lad no longer, but well on your way to being a graybearded sage."
He strode to where he could snatch up his helm and did so, smiling at its gleaming curves. "I've always preferred honest battle-steel, even with its heat and discomfort, to walking about in whatever foppish nonsense is currently in fashion."
Mrelder nodded. "Folk know you in your armor, and it's probably best if you're seen and recognized all over the city. I heard more than a little unhappy talk in Dock Ward this morn that you were dead or gone from Waterdeep, and tax collectors were inventing their own orders and charges in your name." He spread his hands. "We of Candlekeep have a proverb: If a thing is said often enough, fools aplenty will believe it to be true."
The First Lord and his wizard exchanged a quick glance. "Graybeard indeed," murmured Piergeiron.