Realms of Mystery a-6

by Elaine Cunningham

  “By singing, it could create mass hallucinations, make a small force seem like an army, make enemies think they were wounded, make them faint, unconscious, believing themselves slain. It won its wars by singing, not by slaying… not by blood.”

  “A singing sword,” I said, admiring the weapon. “Perhaps even an operatic sword? This would be quite an item for a person such as you to have. A wonderful prop that could turn a fine actor into a magnificent tenor.”

  “He is a magnificent tenor,” the rebec player protested. “He has a beautiful voice. Sing for him, Tonias. Sing for him!”

  Tonias patted her hand, defensiveness melting as he comforted her. “It’s no use. He’ll know soon enough.” He lifted his eyes to me, and the fire and irritation were gone, leaving only the red, wounded look of a lost child. “I am a good tenor, yes, but not a great tenor. Not the great tenor Tonias of Selgaunt. That was all an act. It was the sword singing, not me. So, you can see, Ranjir was my career, my life. I’d never have drawn blood with it.”

  I nodded, sliding my notebook away. He was telling the truth, I was sure. Otherwise, he was throwing his career away for nothing. “So, you’re finished then, yes?”

  Thnias snorted. “I’ll say the belly wound stole my breath. I’ll say I can’t sing four bars straight through. I’ll say something and retire from opera forever.”

  I got up to go, still carrying the sword, but turned with one final question. “You said Ranjir was a murder victim. If you didn’t murder the sword, who did?”

  The heat returned to his eyes. “V’Torres. He must have found out about the sword, that it sang for me. He must have found out how to kill it, and stabbed me to provoke me into using it on him. He may have attempted to murder me, Quaid, but he succeeded in murdering Ranjir.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why kill the sword?”

  “Jealousy, pure and simple. He wanted to destroy my career just like he destroyed his own.”

  It all seemed to be falling into place. I headed toward the door. “I’m confiscating the sword till this thing gets cleared up.”

  Tonias waved the blade away. “It’s worthless to me, now. Do whatever you want with it.”

  “I’d like to show it to V’Torres and see what he has to say.” I motioned to the two city guardsmen. “And I’m going to ask these fellows to stick with you until we’ve got this whole mess sorted out.”

  “I understand,” Tonias said snidely, patting his girlfriend’s hand. “After all, somebody’s got to guard me.”

  The other tenor’s dressing room was down in the bowels of the opera house-no windows, no silver mirrors, no fainting couch, no Shou Lung carpets. It was a cramped space of drippy brick. Flanked by guards, V’Torres lay on a moldy pallet on the floor. He wore black rags and clutched a metal flask in his hand. His face was grimy with stage makeup, his black hair a tangled mass above dissipated eyes.

  The yet-smiling priest met me at the door. “We’ve been doubly blessed today. The Morninglord saw fit to heal this man, as well. He’s lost much blood, but is no longer in danger.”

  I raked the bloody sword out toward V’Torres. “We’ll see how long that remains the case. Thanks for your help,” I said by way of dismissal. The priest made a shallow bow and ducked from the mildewy place.

  I considered the wounded man, real-life equivalent of the leprous, murderous Garragius. “So, what do you have to say for yourself, stabbing your rival onstage, before thousands of witnesses?”

  “I didn’t do it,” he rasped out miserably, and took another bitter swallow.

  I nodded. Every man in the dungeons was innocent. “So, your dagger just slipped. Maybe you’d been drinking and started to lose your balance. Maybe the blade couldn’t help hitting the biggest thing around.”

  “Not even that,” the man said darkly, coughing as the rot-gut brought tears to his eyes. “I stuck the dagger in the space under his left arm, just as I always do.”

  “When you’re seeing double, it’s hard to know which left arm-”

  “I’d had nothing to drink before the performance. It was only after… everything that I…”

  “Then where did all the blood come from? And how did ten priests get a look at Tonias’s bowel? And why am I here having to talk to you?”

  “I didn’t stab him.”

  I towered over the supine man. “Tonias thinks you did. Tonias, and me, and the rest of Selgaunt. Not only do I think that, but also that you killed his sword, too… this sword.” I held out the bloody blade.

  V’Torres blinked at the gory steel, then screwed his eyes closed in torment. “Ranjir was mine, Quaid. Why would I murder my own sword?”

  I was incredulous. I crouched down atop my heels and held the blade on my knees. “Your sword? Then why was it in your rival’s hand?”

  “Why, indeed?” V’Torres nodded, eyes still closed. “Back in my heyday, it had been mine. I’d used it just like Tonias did. It was the voice behind my career. But then it got stolen. I was ruined. I refused to perform. Drank heavily. Woke up in a lot of odd places. People came to their own conclusions. But the real end of my career was losing Ranjir.” He took a shuddering breath. “May I see the blade?”

  I handed him the blood-stained sword, and V’Torres positioned it on his body, point down like a weapon laid on a corpse. V’Torres’s nostrils flared as he drew in the scent of the metal. Eyes closing tight once again, he smiled in pain. “In my hands again, at last.”

  Tonias’s blade? V’Torres’s blade? It made sense. Two great tenors, one great voice. “If it’s yours, why didn’t you try to hunt it down?”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing for the last five years? I suspected Tonias at his debut, but couldn’t get close enough to find out. I’d been banned from concert halls, you know. Offstage he kept the sword in a triple-locked iron trunk. I knew for certain it was Ranjir only when we began rehearsals for Terra Incognita. Since then, I’ve been trying to take it back. I even went to the Guild of Thespians, Bards, and Choristers-”

  “Why would they help you? You’re a fraud. Tonias is a fraud.”

  “Ranjir was just an instrument, like a cittern-that’s what I told them. They turned me down flat. Guild or no guild, I was determined get the sword back. As long as I was alive I wouldn’t give it up. Tonias knew that. He just didn’t know what my blood would do to the sword.”

  “He’s the one that told me how the blade died.”

  “He’d tried it once before… took a swipe at me. I’d warned him then, but he scoffed. Now he knows the truth.”

  Tonias might have known the truth, but I didn’t. The stories of both men were plausible enough, but still stories, still lies.

  “You’d stop at nothing to get the sword back,” I said. “I’m sending you off with the city watch, suggesting you be charged with attempted murder.” I took the sword from the tenor and glanced up at the guardsmen. “Shackle him and take him to the dungeons. I’ll be by shortly to explain.”

  Even as the men set to work, rolling V’Torres on his side, the tenor said, “And what about Tonias?”

  “He’ll be charged with attempted murder, too.”

  “And what about Ranjir? Who killed Ranjirr

  I turned the crimson blade slowly in my hand. “That, I still don’t know.”

  I delivered the bad news to Tonias and his girlfriend and endured a whole new opera of bluster and threats. That was enough. I’d had a bellyful of singers and silk, hubris and hoi polloi. I wanted dark streets and smoking chimneys, stray dogs and the smell of old fish. I wanted some good honest dirt, dirt that called itself dirt and looked dirty. In the end, even gold and diamonds were just dressed-up dirt.

  I took Ranjir with me and headed out alone to the city garrison. On the way, I stopped to get a breath, to get my bearings.

  I stood in a small circular courtyard, a cobbled alley surrounded by fieldstone towithouses. The crescent moon was a bright scar on the belly of the night. Thin clouds wrapped the sky in torn gauze. The roof
line of the city rankled below. Black tiles, seeping shakes, and shaggy humps of thatch. Widow’s walks bristled like vulgar crowns. Water whispered in gutters and glinted in the distant cup of the sea.

  Selgaunt. A quarter the size of Waterdeep, but still embroiled in nastiness. Fakery. Mendacity. Rich fat prima donnas attacking rich fat prima donnas. All that I could’ve stood-I was used to it-but caught in the center of this fight was something fine, something noble and beautiful.

  I hefted the sanguine blade before me. Ranjir, ancient singing sword of elven kings, forged for battle, hero of a hundred wars, shaper of continents… and forevermore dead. Killed as an evening’s entertainment. That wasn’t even the worst of it. Before all that, the sword had been enslaved to two stupid, petty men. They’d made it sing for applause, perform like a trick monkey, and spend the rest of its time in triple-locked darkness. It might as well have been used to slice watermelons and pry open stuck doors.

  Standing there under gauze clouds and frightened little stars, I knew with a sudden certainty that Tonias and V’Torres hadn’t been the sword’s first taskmasters. How many of the other great tenors of Semmite opera had used this blade? For how many hundreds of years had the singing sword of elven kings been enslaved by puffed up blowfish like Tonias and V’Torres?

  Suddenly, there it was again. The smell of death.

  I was no longer alone in the cobbled courtyard. From beneath crumbling arched alleyways they came. They emerged from behind ragged wooden tool sheds, abandoned flower boxes, a pile of rotten barrels. Lean, black-suited fighters with eyes like candle flames. They were all around me, blocking all exits.

  I crouched, holding out the sword before me, and noticed that not a single one wore any armor over their body stockings.

  An eloquent and dramatic voice came from one of my attackers, “It would seem, Agent Quaid, that you are at our mercy, and mercy is perhaps the rarest coin in our realm.” Not assassins. Thespians. “Surrender the sword to us, Quaid, for we have taken your mettle, and our taste is for a much finer alloy.” Bad thespians. There was a bit of whispered protest after that line, and a small slap fight to determine who would get to address me in the future.

  “This sword is at the center of this investigation,” I said flatly. “You can’t have it. Besides, it’s dead. What would the Guild of Thespians, Bards, and Choristers want with a dead sword?”

  That brought more nervous whispers. Someone argued they should make a run for it. In the end, a new voice won out. “Believe what you will about who surrounds you, Quaid. We will believe what we will about the sword. Now, hand it over or taste our own tongues of steel.” That speech was the most popular so far. Heads nodded in the darkness.

  Thespians or no, there were twenty of them. They could kill me with prop swords. Still, Ranjir had been through too much already. I wasn’t about to surrender it to another batch of simpering fops. “Come, take it.”

  “We will!” someone improvised, though the group seemed anything but keen on charging me.

  The circle slowly tightened. I shifted my feet, turning to keep them all in view. Quick footsteps came behind me. I whirled. Ranjir whistled into the space. Steel struck steel and sparks flashed before a black goatee. With another swipe, I drove the attacker back.

  And whirled. Two more swords darted toward my back. Ranjir cracked against them, one, two… I charged after the swordsmen, needing more room. They staggered back, fashionable berets outlined against the starry night, and foundered on a pile of barrels. Staves popped and rusty hoops groaned as they tumbled.

  I’d gotten room enough to breathe but wanted to keep it. I swung Ranjir in a wide arc to my right and let the weight of the blade spin me around. With an audible gasp, the black body-suits fell back.

  I assumed a fighting stance and growled out, “The damned blade is dead. Give it up, or you may be as well.”

  They seemed impressed by this speech-literarily, not literally. One shouted back, “Give it up, or you may be as well.” That pleased the crowd even more, and hardened my resolve. Dead or alive, Ranjir would not end up in the hands of more theatrical taskinasters.

  I took the battle to them, rushing a pair of men outlined by an alleyway. If I could bash past them.

  Swords rang angrily on each other. The attackers’ blades sounded tinny mixed with the bell-tones of Ranjir. Even dead, it was a beautifully turned blade. I lunged. The tip of Ranjir catching in the basket hilt of a foe’s sword. As I struggled to wrench the blade away, something lashed my sword arm. My shoulder felt suddenly hot and achy. I won free and backed up, carving space around me.

  Blood was creeping down my arm, dousing the sleeve of my shirt. One of the leotard crew had gotten in a lucky strike. The blow was superficial. It stung, but I could still wag Ranjir well enough. Then one of the actors was counting to three in an ominous stage whisper, and they all rushed me. I shouted in surprise, but there was no time for threats or words or even breath.

  A thicket of blades surrounded me, jabbing in, nicking my side, my back, my neck. Ranjir danced with a will all its own, seeming to drag my wounded arm behind. All the while my blood crept down from shoulder to elbow to forearm to wrist. I was losing, and I knew it.

  Ranjir knew it, too.

  Light suddenly flashed through the courtyard. Thirty-some lanterns were unhooded at once, surrounding us in glare. Lances of light sliced through the circle of thespians. They shrank back, muttering about watchmen and dungeons and the fact that the world never recognizes true genius. Then they bolted, scrambling away through the shadows like so many rats. I expected to hear sounds of struggle and eloquent protests as the watchmen collared them.

  But there were no watchmen, no lanterns. The light, in fact, radiated from the ancient elven sword I bore. The ruby blazed with light and life. The sword sang sadly:

  “Lift me, if you please. The blood on your hand Could kill me.”

  I complied, raising the blade overhead and watching the trickle of blood on my hand reverse, flowing back down my wrist. And there I stood, sword lifted high, a shabby, common version of King Orpheus. And, as in the play, the sword sang:

  “I rise. I rise upon the dawning hope of Distalia, Like pollen in the teaming air of Spring.

  I rise. I rise as all life rises, green and soft Through iron-hard ground to daylight gleam. I rise. I rise from roots that turn your dark decay To golden finery, turn grave soil to wind-borne seed. I rise, as all of life, I rise”

  “So,” I interrupted wryly, “it was you all along. You used your mass hallucination powers to fake your own death?”

  “How else could I get shut

  Of simpering, bellowing fools?

  They wouldn’t let me go

  Except in death.

  Death also rises,

  Or didn’t you know?”

  “And you faked the stab wounds, too. No wonder they healed so easily. I was surprised even the Morninglord was so solicitous. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if you somehow sent some of those death threats, too.”

  “Yes, I’ve been waiting these centuries

  To find a hand such as yours,

  The hand of a real warrior.

  I’ve been pining for real battles again,

  No more snake-oil stage shows.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, fetching up the edge of my shirt and wiping the blood from my hand. “I work alone. I can’t be seen singing whenever I get in a fight.” Once the blood was well stanched, I lowered Ranjir and looked it square in the ruby. “Still, I wouldn’t mind some company on the way back to Waterdeep. And I know a certain weaponsmith who supplies fine swords to real warriors. I imagine I could enlist his aid to find you a fist headed for battle.”

  The sword seemed almost to laugh as it sang out again:

  “I rise. I rise upon the dawning hope of Waterdeep, like buds and flowers from wintry sleep. I rise!”

  An Unusual Suspect

  Brian M. Thomsen

  There were three corpses laid out on the dock be
fore me; two of them were burnt beyond recognition, the pungent smell of charred flesh wafting up from the ashy remains.

  The third corpse had miraculously avoided incineration… and it was Kitten’s.

  Others knew her as Nymara Scheiron, just another tousled-haired dockyard coquette of dubious alignment (if you know what I mean), but for me she has always been Kitten. She was my oldest friend despite the fact that I’ve only known her for three months. That being the exact period of time I can claim to know anything or anyone; before that point others might know, just not me.

  Don’t get me wrong or mistake me for some lunatic, liar, or lover. I’m not some bardic romantic whose life metaphorically began when he first set eyes on his lady love. Kitten and I are, I mean, were friends, not lovers, at least not as far as I can recall. Three months ago I woke up in a Waterdeep dockyard alley with my mind wiped of all knowledge concerning my past. A walking tabula rasa, you might say, perfect prey to everyone and anyone, a wandering stranger unto himself with naught to confirm his existence except a splitting headache and the scent that comes with being unwashed for longer than polite company wish to be aware. I don’t remember exactly what happened (something I say a bit too often for even my own comfort), but somehow Kitten came upon me and nursed me back to health. Not just satisfied with mending my body, she even found me a useful place in the society at hand and lined up work (of a sort) for me, to keep my belly fed and the rest of me adequately warm and comfortable until my memory returned (which it hasn’t yet).

  She got me back on my feet when no one else seemed to give a damn.

  Kitten was the oldest memory still in my head, and now her lifeless body was laying before me and I knew I would have to avenge her death.

  I had been sleeping off a celebratory bender on a recent job’s successful completion when I was aroused from the golden slumbers of the inebriated by a dockyard lad of the streets who had been sent to fetch me. (This was the usual way I was drafted by the mysterious group who I had to look upon as being potential clients.) Throwing just enough cold water on my face to enable me to see clearly (and not enough to cause frost in my close-cropped whiskers in the pre-morning chill), I followed the boy as I knew that my potential clients usually didn’t like to be kept waiting.