by Ed Greenwood
Narm smiled reassuringly at her from nearby, where he sat in the arch of an old, ruined stone window, his spellbook on his lap.
“What happened?” she demanded to know, pulling on her boots and getting up. Where was her tunic?
“You needed sleep—sleep you didn’t get enough of, after all your fire-hurling. So we let you sleep. Delg’s been fishing most of the day in some pools at the other end of the ruins.”
Shandril strode to him. “Fishing?”
“Aye—he said he wanted to be done before you were ready to bathe in the same water.” Narm grinned—and then ducked aside to get his spellbook out of the way of her friendly fists.
She pummeled him playfully, until he caught her wrists. They rolled over, chuckling and straining to slap and tickle each other—until their struggles took them over the sill of the window, to a hard and graceless landing on the turf below.
Delg stumped toward them in dripping triumph, gleaming fish gasping and flapping in both hands. He raised an eloquent eyebrow.
Shandril met his gaze, blushed, and said, “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, no,” Mirt said in jolly derision, from behind the dwarf. “Of course not …”
Shandril scrambled to her feet. “Well, it’s not,” she said indignantly and marched back to where she’d lain. She turned, a dangerous look in her eye, and stood with hands on hips to glare at them all. “What have you done with my tunic?”
Then she met Mirt’s appraising eyes, blushed, and covered herself with her arms. Delg kept his eyes carefully on hers, and said, “It’s drying, on the rocks yonder. It took me awhile to find the right plants to scrub your smell out of it with.”
“My smell?” Shandril sighed; she just didn’t have any more energy left to be indignant. She turned to snatch up Narm’s cloak—but stopped, staring.
“Look,” she said in tones of wonder, then reached out a hand.
“Don’t!” Delg flung his fish down and shoved her roughly aside. “In strange places, girl, don’t reach for things barehanded.”
Fast as the dwarf was, Mirt was faster. The fat merchant strode around them both, boots flapping, and plucked up what had caught Shandril’s eye. It had lain among the stones beside where her head had been the night through. They all saw it then—a teardrop-shaped gem, smooth and hard and iridescent, like the still-wet scales of the fish Delg had dropped in his haste to stop Shandril. It winked and sparkled in Mirt’s hand.
As he turned it, the colors in the heart of the gem mirrored the rainbow and seemed to flash and swirl like liquid in a glass goblet. “My, but it’s a beautiful thing,” the fat man said softly. “The gods must have left it here for ye to find, lass.”
He held it out toward her; Delg gave a hoarse exclamation and grabbed it from him. “Look!” One stubby finger pointed at a tiny, exquisite engraving on the curving flank of the stone: a harp between the points of a crescent moon, with four stars spaced around. “The sign of the Harpers!”
Shandril reached for it, and he laid it gently in her cupped hands.
“Aye, keep it, lass—it cannot be a bad thing.” The dwarf turned to rake Mirt with a keen look. “D’you know what sort of gem it is?”
The fat man nodded. “Aye. A rogue stone.”
The dwarf nodded, eyeing him suspiciously. “I wonder how it came to be here?” he asked.
Mirt shrugged, smiled slightly, and looked up at the sky. “The gods work in strange ways, their wisdom hidden from us ’til after they’re done,” he quoted, in the manner of a pompous priest.
Narm thought Delg would bristle at that hoary old saying, but the dwarf only smiled and said, “Keep that stone safe, lass—and not worn openly, for all to see. You’d best leave it with your lad while you wash—if you go down with him now, we’ll have these fish ready when you’re done.”
Shandril smiled happily and did as she was bid.
The fire crackled, dying to hot red-glowing coals. Delg poked at it, and then went to his pack, which lay among the rocks. Well back from the coals, Narm sat beside a small candle-lamp, intent on his spellbook. Mirt stood watch somewhere off in the darkness.
Shandril, comfortable for the first time in what seemed like days, lay at ease in the warmth of the fire. No spellfire roiled or tingled within her; she was at peace with the world. She looked up as Delg bent over her—and sighed at his intent expression. She could hardly believe she’d once been hungry for adventure; now it seemed as if it would never let her alone.
“Lass,” the dwarf said in low tones, unwrapping dark cloth from something he’d dredged out of his pack. “We need you to have spellfire. Touch this.”
Wondering, Shandril peered at what he held. It was long, massive, and black—a dwarven war hammer. It looked ancient, made for brutal killing. From the deep cracks running across it and the bands of beaten metal that held it together, it looked to have seen use in some mighty battles. Awed, Shandril laid a finger on it to trace a curving crack—and felt the tingling of magic.
She looked up at Delg. “Oh, no. Delg, I couldn’t.” He looked back at her, his intent expression unchanged. “It must be old, and precious to you,” Shandril added softly. “I’ve never seen it, not in all the days since you first came to the inn with the company.”
“It’s a lump of forged metal, lass—my friends are far more precious to me than things I can make, and make again.”
“You made this?”
“No—’tis ancient, lass; a war hammer of the Ironstar clan. It’s about the only magic I have left.”
Shandril looked at him, shocked. “I can’t, Delg! Not your only magic—it must have cost you dearly.”
Delg put a hand on hers. “Do you … are you my friend, Shan?” He seemed to find the words difficult.
Shandril reached out a hand to stroke his bearded jaw. “Of course, Delg. You know that.” Impulsively, she leaned forward and kissed his grizzled cheek.
The dwarf harrumphed and shifted on his haunches. “Then, please, Shan—take the magic out o’ this old thing … I’ve a bad feeling that we’ll all be needing it, right soon now. Please?”
Reluctantly, staring into his beseeching eyes, Shandril grasped the cold, heavy head of the war hammer and pulled at its magic with her will, feeling the tingling flow begin.
At that moment, a twig snapped in the woods, not far away. Narm’s head jerked up, and he threw down his spellbook to peer into the trees.
Delg closed Shandril’s hands firmly around the war hammer and told her, “Keep on at it, lass!” Then he rose, took two rapid, gliding steps to where his axe was propped against a rock, and swung it up to the ready.
The attackers came in a rush once they saw the camp alert: a score or so of Zhentilar warriors, nets and clubs in their hands.
Delg looked around and cursed bitterly. Their fat, wheezing host was nowhere to be seen.
“So I let my guard drop for once. Just once!” he snarled as the Zhents rushed down upon them. “Get your back against a rock, lad! Over here, where my axe can guard you!”
Narm had no time to rush across to him, even if he’d wanted to; a Zhent swung a club at his face in the next instant. The young mage ducked coolly, and two pulses of light burst from his hand into the face of the Zhent, who staggered, roared, and clutched at unseeing eyes. An instant later, Narm’s dagger was in his throat.
As the Zhent toppled, Narm sprang away—right into the folds of a weighted net, backed up by a flurry of clubs. He went down without a sound.
Delg had time for no more than a glance at the young mage. His axe flashed as fast as his strong shoulders could swing it, but height made it hard for him to cut the nets—nets that were settling over him from above by twos and threes. He was soon entangled. Then the net-hurlers drew the net ropes taut with their own great weight and reach. The dwarf was dragged down.
Shandril dropped the crumbling war hammer—it had been old, its enchantments all that still held it together—and rose from behind where Delg was struggling. Fl
ames leapt and raged in her eyes.
The men who hauled on the nets that held Delg down were only two paces away. Without a word she flung herself into them, letting spellfire rage from her hands and mouth. She crashed bruisingly against armor, heard men snarl and then shriek amid the rising, roaring flames—and then they fell silent.
Shandril drew the flames back into herself, and looked down at the blackened, smoking corpses. Beside her, Delg was fighting his way free of the scorched remnants of webbing as the next wave of Zhentilar rushed at them.
Shandril hurled spellfire again—ragged and faltering fire. She swallowed grimly and threw out one hand. Fire streaked from it to lash the Zhents bending over Narm. They staggered and fell, shouting hoarsely amid raging flames. Shandril raised her other hand to burn the warriors charging at her from the edge of the clearing. A moment later, however, they laughed in triumph as her spellfire rushed outward, then sputtered and died away in their faces.
She saw the cause: it came out of the night in front of the warriors, a band of utter darkness like a fence or an impossibly wide shield—a black band floating before them as they came. Just behind the warriors trotted a man in robes—a Zhentarim wizard!—with triumph shining in his dark eyes.
Shandril snarled and lashed out at their feet with spellfire, aiming below the dark band. The wizard hastily lowered his creation—but he was too slow to save the feet of one running Zhentilar. Spellfire blasted, and the man’s boots vanished. With a shriek of agony, the charging warrior toppled forward into the darkness and was gone, his cry cut off suddenly. As the wall of darkness advanced, Shandril could see the remains of the man, twitching on the ground—two trunkless, footless legs.
Shandril gasped in horror—and then let her hands fall to her sides as the band of darkness came to a halt an arm’s stretch away, right above the still-struggling form of Delg.
“On your knees, wench—or he dies!” The Zhentarim’s voice was coldly triumphant.
Shandril looked both ways along the band. It fenced her in against the rocky remnant of an ancient wall, and from only feet away, a dozen or more Zhentilar warriors grinned at her, clubs raised.
She sank down, bitter despair flooding her mouth. The wizard snapped his fingers, and hurled clubs were suddenly crashing in on her from all sides, even before the magical darkness winked out and was gone.…
6
FINDING THE TRUE WAY
Finding one’s true way in life can sometimes take an entire lifetime, for it is often the hardest task one faces—after finding out where the next meal is coming from, how to keep from freezing every winter night, where there’s a sleeping-place safe from enemies, and just who one can trust to share it with, that is. Oh, aye—and finding the time to do all of these things …
Mirt the Moneylender
Wanderings With Quill and Sword
Year of Rising Mist
“It worked! Hah-ha!” Fimril, mage of the Zhentarim, laughed in glee as the Zhentilar hastened to truss their senseless captives. They were careful not to do the three any further damage—the orders they had been so coldly given about this came from much higher up than this capering wizard, and had been most menacingly specific.
Fimril had spent a long and hard year in private, hurling spells and modifying his castings until he’d fashioned a shieldlike band of magical annihilation: a deadly magic that sucked in light, warmth—even campfires and braziers of fire—and solid things, like stools and unfortunate captives, too.
All the way here, through the forest, a tiny voice inside him wailed that his shield wouldn’t absorb spellfire after all, that he was marching to his doom. If the spell failed him, he was doomed … even if he escaped the girl’s blazing spellfire, any of the warriors who got away would see that he paid for his folly—painfully and permanently. Magelings were not well loved among the Zhentilar fighting men.
But it had worked—and now not a one of them dared betray him; their orders had been very clear about that. Fimril chortled and gloated, watching the warriors securely truss their unconscious quarry. Ah, but this was sweet! At last, he, Fimril of Westgate, would get what he deserved, rising in the ranks of the Zhentarim … perhaps even all the way.
He cast quick glances around, checking his bodyguard. Yes, they were ready—four burly, well-armed Zhentarim standing in a crescent at his back, making sure that no harm would come to him until he was safely back in Zhentil Keep.
Fimril laughed aloud and shouted down to the man who was busily checking the knots at Shandril’s throat, “Ho! Lyrkon! How are our losses this night?”
The Zhentilar finished his task, controlling his exasperation. The knots seemed tight enough: if she struggled, she’d strangle herself. Aye, good enough. Slowly the Zhentilar stood. “A moment, Lord Wizard; I’ll see.” Gods, but this mage was going to be insufferable now …
He dusted his hands and looked around. Four—no, five; he’d forgotten Duthspurn until his eyes fell on the poor bastard’s legs lying motionless on the ground. And that should be all.… Wait, wasn’t there a sixth, over there?
Lyrkon took a stride down the ruined wall—in time to see another of his men fall as silently as a gentle breeze glides through leafless trees. He stared at the hand that had appeared over Glondar’s mouth—and as the soldier slumped, the face that came into view behind it: a fat, grinning face adorned with fierce gray-white brows and mustaches. Its blue-gray eyes met his own—and winked. Gods!
“Out swords!” he bellowed, pointing at where Glondar was being killed. “We’re under attack!”
Along the wall, his men looked up at him, snatching up their clubs or drawing swords—and the one next to Glondar promptly collapsed, a sword through his armpit. The warrior next to him turned at the muffled groan—in time to get the blade of the fat, mustachioed stranger right through his throat.
“Where?” Fimril shouted, peering down at Lyrkon. “Who’s attacking us?”
Lyrkon pointed along the wall with his blade. “He is, wizard!” he snarled, making an insult of the last word.
Fimril’s nostrils flared in anger, and he felt his face going red. That was one soldier he could do without when this was over. Right now, though, he’d show them all.
Drawing himself up, Fimril pointed at the stranger, who was now battling his way along the wall. Turning his finger to keeping it aimed at the moving man, the Zhentarim thumbed open a finger-pouch in the breast pocket of his robe and spilled into his hand a dark powder that had once been a large black pearl. He cast it into the air in front of his lips as he spoke the echoing, awesome words that would bring death to the man—and to the nearest soldiers, but that was the luck the gods gave—and drew himself up in cruel triumph to watch the slaughter.
Light that was somehow dark flashed between wizard and fat man—and back again!
The eyes of Fimril, would-be ruler of the Zhentarim, and those of his bodyguard darkened as one. The mage and his men toppled to the ground like emptied husks, dead upon the instant.
The fat, puffing stranger sighed and shook the smoking remnants of a ring from his finger, saying regretfully, “Watchful Order make … they just don’t enchant these gewgaws the way they used to, when I was a lad …”
The last few Zhents, white to the lips, fell back before his lumbering advance, and as he crossed blades with the first and disarmed the man in a skirl of circling steel, they all turned and ran.
Mirt watched the man he’d disarmed scamper after the rest, and he sighed. When they were gone, he raised his voice in an eerie, singing, wordless call. It echoed mournfully off the tumbled stones of ruined Tethgard, and a long moment later, a soft reply came to him.
Mirt strode toward the origin of the sound. From a pile of rubble before him, a phantom lady slowly rose. She had long, swirling white hair and a beautiful face; her dark eyes stared into his with such sadness that Mirt found himself, as always, on the sudden edge of tears. Buried somewhere far beneath the debris, Mirt knew, lay the crypt where she had been entombe
d. Lady Duskreene of Tethgard, its door would say. Mirt silently added two words to the inscription he envisioned: Unquiet Spirit.
“Mirt,” she said, in that soft, sad voice. “It has been long since you called me.”
“Grandlady,” Mirt said huskily. “I have need of yer—powers.”
The translucent, dead-white watch-ghost frowned, emerging in a smooth, silent flight from the rubble, revealing her skeletal, legless torso. She floated in the air before him.
“Name your desire, son of my blood.”
“There are soldiers fleeing this place—Zhentilar. They must be destroyed.”
Duskreene smiled. “And your girth makes catching them all a doubtful prospect for you? Will you wait for me? I have been so lonely.”
Mirt went heavily to one knee and bowed. “I will,” he said formally.
She swirled over his head and arrowed off into the trees. After a moment, a terrified scream—suddenly cut off—came to Mirt’s ears. A few breaths later, there was another, fainter and farther away.
Mirt got to his feet, grunting at the effort, and went over to Shandril. Checking that she was still breathing, he cut the knots at her throat with his dagger, and set about unbinding her.
A few breaths later, as he was carrying the freed Narm over to the wall, he heard another scream.
Groggily, Shandril roused. “Whaa—”
“Peace, maid. Lie still while I free Delg, here. He’s got more nets on him than several boatloads o’ Moonsea fish.”
When the ghostly lady at last returned, Mirt and his companions were all awake and were nursing splitting headaches, rubbing at rope burns, and sipping cautiously at firewine from Mirt’s belt flask. Mirt had apologized to them for scouting in the wrong direction, and was telling Shandril what he guessed—not much—about magic that could swallow spellfire.