How had that bitch of a she-thief known he was there? He’d watched quietly from cover, not moving except to rise a little out of his crouch to see better, and not working any spells. How had she known?
Well, whatever the reason for that, she had, and this changed things. She had to be taken down, even before the spellhurlers and the ranger.
“The gauntlets,” he told the darkness around him with an angry hiss, “are off.”
He was half-expecting to hear an angry, answering hiss, but none came.
“Dead,” Pennae said in grim satisfaction. “The displacer beast, I mean, not the man out there whose bidding it was doing. He got away. For now.”
“So,” Semoor grunted, feeling his ribs and wincing, “are we great heroes? Or do children in the Dales wrestle down displacer beasts?”
“It certainly looked fearsome enough,” Doust said. “And I’m not going to be able to wear this armor again until we hammer it out.”
Semoor grinned. “Give it here. I’d welcome something to batter flat, about now.”
“No,” Islif and Pennae said in unison, severely.
“You want to make enough noise to draw things to us for more than a day’s travel all around?” the thief added. “Know how far that sort of sound carries?”
Semoor gave her a bright, idiotic grin. “Evidently not. Farther than your curses?”
“How’s Jhess?” Florin asked. “I think she took the full force of whatever spell she sent at it. Something made the spell turn back on her.”
“That would be the work of the wizard who was watching,” Pennae told him, joining him as he peered down at Jhessail’s sprawled, unconscious body. “Who I don’t think is a war wizard.”
“Doesn’t seem like their style, no,” Islif agreed. “So, what other foes do we have?” She shot Pennae a look. “Just how busy have you been, separating nobles from their coins?”
The thief shrugged. “No busier than we’ve all been, getting them separated from their heads by war wizards as they get caught doing treason, time and again. I doubt most of them care overmuch about us, if they think of us at all.”
“Well.” Semoor sighed. “Someone is thinking of us. Right attentively, too.”
“Let’s hope he’s tasted enough battle for one night,” Pennae said, looking at Doust’s ribs. “This ledge and slope here is probably the best camp we’ll find for defending in the dark against anyone who can’t loose arrows at us.”
She looked up at Semoor. “Heal your friend, here. Tymora shouldn’t mind. He certainly took his chances.”
“What about Jhess?”
“Let her lie in peace for now. At dawn, the two of you may need to be healing her. I didn’t recognize the spell she tried to use—did either of you?”
The priests both shook their heads.
“Well, sit on either side of her and keep watching her. If she turns cold or doesn’t rouse, start with the healings right away. Or we may be down one mage.”
“Is she that bad?” Florin asked grimly, planting his sword and going to his knees beside the still, wan-faced Jhessail.
Pennae shrugged. “Don’t know, not knowing the spell she tried. All we can do is wait and see.”
“Why not cast the healings right now?”
“Because it’s not morning yet, Florin,” the thief said. “We don’t know when we’ll be attacked next. One of us may end up needing them more urgently than little Flamehair here.”
Florin nodded and turned to face the night, where they could already hear beasts moving. The creatures were heading for where the corpse of the dirlagraun lay. To feed.
His left arm, leg, and the left side of him were all covered in bone now, and most of his face, too. His hair was falling out in great, dry, crumbling handfuls.
Brorn had shrugged off most of his clothing at first, for fear it would melt or rot away when the bone-change touched it.
Yet it was back on, now. His spreading, creeping covering of bone was affecting only his skin. Beneath it, he still felt like himself—strong, agile, alive, not a brittle, light, dead thing.
It hadn’t covered his eyes. Yet. It had done something to them, though. He could see keenly in the night-gloom, walking among the trees as sure-footed as on a cloudy day.
And half of him, stlarn it, looked like a walking skeleton.
He dared not go out to the road, where folk could see him. He probably shouldn’t let himself be seen as he was now, in Cormyr, at all. In the Dales, they were backwoods farmers, simpler folk. His appearance might terrify them, but they weren’t of Cormyr, so he didn’t care what they thought of him, so long as none of them got brave enough to start thrusting pitchforks or aiming crossbows his way.
What would happen to him when the bone covered him entirely? Would it start gnawing at his innards or growing across his eyes?
Was he doomed?
Not that there was a thing he could do to stop it.
Which meant he might as well keep on as if he was going to live, until the gods showed him otherwise.
So he was looking like a monster already and very soon would be a monster to most folk of Faerûn. Which meant the life of a lurking, forest-dwelling outlaw would be all he could hope for.
Well, the northern Dales were the best place he could think of to try to do that. All the vast forest to lurk in, good farms to plunder crops from …
There was nothing left for him in Cormyr, unless he could get the Pendant of Ashaba.
It would be useless to him in Shadowdale. No simple farmers would accept a walking skeleton as their ruling lord.
Yet if he could get it back to, say, Arabel and see the Lady Lord there, he could bargain with it and perhaps get a war wizard to banish this bone armor and turn him back the way he’d looked before.
To get the Pendant, of course, he’d have to kill some Knights of Myth Drannor. No great crime, that, in the eyes of the Cormyrean authorities. At least from what he’d seen and heard. That ornrion had looked to be itching to butcher some Knights himself.
Moreover, Brorn Hallomond had a sworn score to settle. Lord Yellander must be avenged.
Something shifted in his groin. Gods, it had covered him there.
Well, that was it. He was a monster.
Could he get work in Sembia in one of the festhalls? The Man of Bone, now onstage, dancing with the highcoin lasses?
Say, now …
No. Try for the lordship first. Noble lords in Cormyr were all far richer than dancers in clubs, and with coin enough he could buy all the lasses he wanted to dance with.
He had to have that Pendant.
Knights of Myth Drannor had to die.
Telgarth Boarblade leaned forward over the table, the better to murmur to the four conspirators Ruldroun had sent here. “See those men coming in now? Each of you get a good look at the face of one of them. Thorm, that one. Darratur, the tall one. Glays, the one with the mustache. Klarn, the balding one. I’ll take the one with the beard. Go upstairs to pretend to look for rooms if you have to, or follow them into the jakes—just get a good look. Don’t make them suspicious by staring. Try to seem bored, and look around idly, often, as if you always do. But fix their features in your memories. The moment you have, go out front, and we’ll meet by the hitching rail.”
“Why?” Klarn asked.
Boarblade decided there and then that Klarn would be the first of the four to die, if the need arose. He did not need someone questioning his every word.
“They are a Crown envoy and his bodyguards. We’re going to wait until they’re abed, use our hargaunts to adopt their faces, then firmly but urgently require the discreet use of our mounts—their horses; they’ll be fast, first-rank beasts, believe me!—and ride on out of here.”
Four faces stared intently at him. They were excited. Good.
“Trot until we’re out of sight of this place,” he added, “then walk until we find a stream. Rest the horses a bit, then walk them again, and start looking for a place off the road to cam
p. Come the warm hours after highsun on the morrow, if we do all that right, we can be galloping hard along the Ride.”
He sat back and said firmly, “We’ve got us some Knights to catch, they’ve a long start, and I for one am not walking all the way to Shadowdale. Which is certainly how far we’ll have to go if we try to catch up to them, just plodding along on foot. Anyone dispute that?”
No one did.
Chapter 21
ALONE I FACED THE DRAGON
And now you laugh and stamp your feet
And profanely bellow for more ale
And mock my limp, my burns, and scars
Weakness your valor makes hale
Well let me tell, sneering younglings
As ’gainst my feeble sloth you rail
There was a time when I was as you
Bold, foolish, young, and pale
Riding to tame the world entire
Though dreams ’gainst talons fail
Fell my friends and lovers all, one by one
Burned, gnawed, screamingly pierced-impaled
Gutted and bone-smashed, ’til in the end
Alone I faced the dragon and lived to tell the tale
Tameldra Anlath,
Lady Bard of Baldur’s Gate
from the ballad “Alone I Faced The Dragon”
first performed circa the Year of the Sword and Stars
Drathar hadn’t had magic to hurl for all that long.
Oh, he’d always known from the tinglings when he was near a spell being cast or when walking through the roiling aftermath of a spell battle that he’d had a touch of the Art. Yet he’d been a thief, and no more than a thief, before he’d found the Qaethur.
It had been the Qaethur, a worn and chipped gemstone carved into a shallow relief depiction of a human face, that barely filled his palm, that had whispered to him, opening up a door in his mind to the glory of the Weave. Unthinking and eternal, the Qaethur spoke the same things to everyone who touched it. He had been one of the lucky few.
He had Varandrar to thank for that. The senior Zhent in Arabel had sent him to do that slaying and robbery, had known the Qaethur was there for the taking, and had specifically mentioned it to Drathar. Varandrar had meant him to find it.
The bastard.
Now he had power few thieves could do more than dream of and the riches that power had let him wrest from others. Now he was truly someone worthy among the Zhentarim, not a mere tolerated lackey.
And now, he knew as much as many in the Brotherhood did and so knew something else: true fear.
His spells were too paltry and fresh-learned for him to battle any but the greenest wizard, Art against Art, and hope to live. Yet he had a talent for the spells that called and coerced beasts to his bidding.
Which is why the Knights of Myth Drannor were soon going to be facing a gray render.
“Soon” as in very shortly after it finished tearing apart the joints of the wyvern it had just slain, gnawed the last shreds of meat, and went looking for more to devour to fill up the yawning, gurgling emptiness in its belly.
Riding its mind as lightly and gingerly as possible, Drathar smiled tightly as the horrible rending and splintering of bone went on.
As the old Dale saying put it, his own mother wouldn’t know him now.
The hargaunt was spread very thinly across his face—just enough to make him seem a pocked, wrinkled woman who looked nothing like a certain former war wizard. Most of its bulk was busy doing its best to thrust his chest out into a rather impressive, though sagging with age, bust.
The tattered and dirty dress he’d had to strangle the crone he now resembled to gain possession of—hargaunt-disguised as the ornrion Dauntless, he’d intended merely to rob her, but she’d persisted in screaming and trying to blind him with her clawing fingers and everything breakable she could snatch up and throw—was catching on thorns and twigs and the gods alone knew what else as he fought his way through the brush, but what of that?
Torn went with dirty, and dirty suited him. He didn’t want to look well-to-do or beautiful enough to make anyone consider him worth waylaying.
Onsler Ruldroun was in a hurry to do a little waylaying of his own.
“Auril’s kisses, but ’tis cold,” Pennae murmured nigh Florin’s ear, gently pushing aside the tip of his sword from where it had reached out to menace her as she approached. Hunched over and hugging herself for warmth, on the verge of shivering, she tried to thrust herself against his armpit. “There’s always a chill before dawn, yes, but this is worse than I’ve tasted for a long time.”
“And if a monster swoops swiftly in at me?” the ranger whispered. “What then?”
“Throw me at it, and use my screams to wake the others. Or use me as a shield.”
Florin sighed, put his free arm around her, and started rocking the thief gently back and forth, shifting weight from one boot to another just as he was, to restore the rhythm he’d established before she’d risen from huddled sleep to join him.
It was cold, and he’d been feeling it.
“Alone I faced the dragon,” he muttered to himself, barely above a whisper.
“And lived to tell the tale,” she whispered back, her soft breath almost a tune. “And before you think of it, don’t bother telling me to go back to sleep. I’m too chilled for slumber. In fact …”
Florin felt deft, iron-strong fingers sliding in under the waist of his breeches, reaching into the warmth—
He stepped away. “No. Not now.”
Pennae moved back against his chest. “Flor, I’m not after … what you think I am. Right now, at least. I only wanted to get the tips of my fingers a little warmer, and there’s always just enough room—”
“Indeed,” the ranger growled into her ear in mock disapproval. Then he put his arm around her again and drew her gently back against him to settle into just where she’d been before.
“Who d’you reckon is still after us, now?” she whispered, sliding her fingers a little way back in under his breeches, then bringing them to a firm halt.
Florin shrugged. “Half the stlarning Realms, it seems,” he murmured. “To say nothing of Those Who Harp and anyone else who may just be watching what befalls us, rather than hunting us down to do the befalling. I—”
He stiffened suddenly and thrust her away.
“What?” Pennae hissed, seeing his intent face and his rising sword. He was staring tensely out into the night, gaze hard upon something. Yet she hadn’t heard a thing.
Trying to look down into the dark forest before them, she stiffened. That was just it.
She, too, couldn’t hear a thing from in front of her. No little night noises, no gentle sighing of ghost-breeze-driven leaves.
Nothing at all.
She could hear those faint forest sounds coming from off to her right—and to the left, too, when she crouched and turned. Yet straight ahead, noth—
Then she saw it. A movement in the trees, a thrusting that was mirrored by Florin’s sword lifting sharply in response beside her.
Something large was approaching through the night-gloom. Something that was tearing aside trees and trampling down bushes and saplings in the heart of that eerie silence.
It was massive—a great, gray, neckless, hulk of stonelike hide and rippling muscle, reaching out with two huge black-taloned, manlike arms so long that they dragged knuckles through the brush whenever they weren’t reaching up to claw aside a tree trunk. It was shouldering through a thick stand of trees to reach their ledge, lumbering along heavily, massive shoulders and that bony snout that thrust forward from between the shoulders rather than rising above them on any sort of neck.
Florin cursed softly, then told Pennae, “Wake the others now, in case its silence comes right up here onto the ledge with it. Not Jhess, but stand over her, ready to kick her awake or drag her aside if you have to.”
The thief nodded, staring at black fangs jutting out of large, parted jaws, as the snout lifted to better peer in thei
r direction. A line of three small, amber yellow eyes ran down each side of its bone-ridged head and beheld her with dull, hungry malice. Or was it merely hunger?
Drathar winced. The render’s hunger was quickening, and that made its mind a flaring, roiling thing that threatened to draw him in. He didn’t want to end up lost in that hunger-driven flood.
He was too good, mayhap, at this beast-coercing. Best to hang back farther. He’d intended to, anyhail, to keep well away from the thief’s hurled daggers. The mindlink would tell him when it was feeding. There would be time enough when the real battle was over to skulk in closer and see how matters lay.
He’d cast silence on the creature to cloak its approach. That would have to be cleverness enough. Else he’d be striding along after it, bloodying his fingers on trees, presenting himself as ready meat for anything bold enough to get close to a feeding gray render.
Which would have to be something so bold, he wouldn’t want to face it at the best of times.
“Tempus, Tymora, and doom,” Islif muttered, managing to look angry and sleepy at the same time. “I don’t like the chances of my sword being able to carve that. D’you think there are any loose shards of rock up atop this cliff you could climb up and shove down onto its head?”
Pennae shrugged. “I saw some deep clefts up there, with greenery doing the lush tumble down out of them. Whether I can get anything free in time is another thing. I’ll take that battlehammer Semoor lugs with him but never wants to use and see what I can do—but mind, falling stone really doesn’t care if it hits ugly monster or valiant Knight of Myth Drannor.”
“Pennae,” Islif replied, “We’re too desperate to worry about that. Get climbing.”
The thief nodded, turned away, and started up the weathered stone as if it were a well-lit ladder.
Islif wondered what Pennae would do if there were other forest prowlers waiting for her with bared and grinning fangs at the top of the cliff.
Then she wondered if the thief had already stolen the Pendant and, upon reaching the top of the cliff, would just sidle off through the trees, leaving the rest of them to a swift and bloody doom.
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