Murder by magic.
His thoughts churned. It was the worst kind of case. It was a rare occurrence, thank the gods, but when it happened, it was inevitably on the night shift. Why? he cursed. Why, for once, couldn’t it happen in the daytime? It would be fun to watch Korbian Arthuran stew in his own ineptitude if he ever actually tried to solve a real crime. Of course, Garett’s pompous superior would never really sully his hands with a case. He’d delegate the task to someone. Most likely to Garett.
He walked halfway down the steps, stopped, and stared up and down the Street of Temples. The dim light from street lamps hung high on slender poles cast shadows everywhere. A wind swept suddenly up the street, blowing a thin curtain of swirling dust before it. The flames in the lamps flickered only slightly, just enough to set the shadows dancing.
Across the street rose the graceful and beautifully designed Temple of Celestian, the Star Wanderer, which was really more of an observatory and an educational center for astronomers, astrologers, navigators, and philosophers than an institution for religious worship. Its principal tower rose higher than the roof of any other temple or building in the quarter, giving a clear, unobstructed view of the night sky.
The teachers and priests of Celestian were not watching the sky tonight, however. The temple’s porticoes and porches were unlit, but Garett Starlen noticed the figures milling about curiously in the darkness, their gazes turned toward the Boccob temple. Obviously, the Celestianites knew something was up. Probably, someone had heard the cries that had alerted Rudi’s patrol. Certainly, they had seen the Ratikkan escorted away.
He looked to the temple on his right. The adherents of St. Cuthbert were equally intrigued. The chief priest, a stout fellow with flowing white hair, dressed in a fluttering green robe, stared firmly in Garett’s direction and lifted a hand in greeting or salute, while shaking the mace he clutched in the other hand. Garett recognized the salute for what it truly was, an offer to help if help was needed.
The followers of St. Cuthbert were like that, helpful to the point of being meddlesome. Garett returned the salute, then turned his back to the old man as a gesture of “thanks, but no thanks.”
Why Acton Kathenor? Garett asked himself slowly. Why the high priest of Boccob and not the priests of Celestian or St. Cuthbert? Some personal grudge? An old enemy of Kathenor’s?
Garett glanced toward the Temple of Istus, a two-level sprawling complex just to the left and down the road. No lights burned in any of its windows, and as far as he could see, no one stirred upon its open grounds.
Footsteps sounded on the marble steps behind him. Garett turned as Burge, minus the torch, descended to his side and gave an exaggerated sigh that did little to mask the impatience and irritation that radiated from him. “It’s times like this, Cap’n,” he muttered, “when I wish I’d never left the elven highlands and my father’s people.” “Death can be disturbing,” Garett agreed, “particularly the grisly ones like this.”
“Give me a break, Cap’n.” Burge answered disdainfully. He shot a look over his shoulder at the half-open temple door. “It’s priests, I’m talkin’ about. Mealymouthed psalm-sayers. One of ’em tried to convert me while we were finishin’ up. ‘Get a life,’ I told him.” The violet of Burge’s eyes flashed suddenly in the street light as he rubbed a hand over the dark stubble of his cheek, frowned further, and continued shaking his head. “Soft as a slug’s belly, he was, under that robe. Never so much as held a sword in his life. You could tell by lookin’ at him.”
Garett smiled inwardly. Normally, he couldn’t stand elves or folks with elven blood. Too damned ethereal and otherworldly for his tastes. It was almost impossible to hold a decent conversation with one, unless it was on some matter of philosophy, and that usually degenerated into a lecture if a human dared hold another point of view. Oh, they were great hunters and artists and builders and all that. But there was a chauvinism in most of them that he found more than vaguely annoying.
Not Burge, though. It seemed his mother had managed to get herself pregnant by some passing elf prince who’d promised her the world, shown her the hayloft, and vanished shortly after. With an almost vengeful determination, she’d grounded her son in the agrarian values of small-town farming life, attempting to stifle any trace of otherworldliness he might harbor in his father’s blood. In time, of course, Burge rebelled and ran away to seek his father. But his mother’s training had taken root too deeply. After a short stay with his father’s people in the highlands, he left and took a job as a riverboatman working the Nyr Dyv and the Selintan. That life, with all its crudities and hardships, had driven the last drop of elven influence from his blood. At least that’s what Burge had once confided to Garett.
Every now and then, though, Garett thought with an inward grin, the elf part still slipped out.
Blossom, Rudi, and the two remaining men of Rudi’s patrol emerged from the temple. They descended the steps to the point where Garett and Burge stood, then they went down to the street together. Garett glanced up at the priests of St. Cuthbert, who were beginning to file back into their own temple, as if realizing that whatever excitement had brought the City Watch running was at last over. Only the old white-haired priest kept vigil as Garett and his companions passed by on their way back to the Citadel.
“We’re going to have to go to the Wizards’ Guild with this one,” Blossom said quietly.
Garett agreed. He’d have to make a full report to Korbian, of course, and the Directorate would have to approve any involvement by the Wizards’ Guild. Seeing Korbian meant staying up at least until early afternoon when the old fool usually showed up. Then he’d probably have to go straight over to the guildhall. It would cost a pretty coin to involve the Wizards’ Guild. Magicians placed a high value on their services, especially when the funds were coming from the city coffers. The new mayor wouldn’t like it at all.
There was nothing to be done about it, though. Politics be damned. Garett had worked enough of these kinds of cases to know he was helpless unless the guild could give him some kind of clue about how to proceed.
As they reached the end of the Street of Temples and stepped out onto the better lighted Processional, Burge touched Garett’s arm and stopped. A group of six men was approaching, coming up the Processional from the direction of Old Town, walking purposefully, and they carried their lanterns high. As they drew closer, Garett noted the cudgels that two of them carried and the blue tabards with embroidered crossed cudgels that the same pair wore. On their heads they wore light blue caps with long white feathers stuck in the bands.
“Ho, night watchmen! ” Garett called, stepping into the center of the street where he could plainly be seen.
The Guild of Night Watchmen was a group separate and distinct from the City Watch. For one thing, they were all volunteers. Each night, they walked the streets in teams of two or four. If trouble occurred, they tried quietly to calm the situation, or one would run for the City Watch while the other observed the situation. They could be hired as escorts for citizens who needed to be abroad after dark and wished the extra security, or they could be hired to guard warehouses, shops, or even estates in the High Quarter. They were scrupulously honest and maintained a good relationship with the City Watch, whose burden they helped
ease.
The man in the lead stopped suddenly and squinted. “Captain Starlen, is it?” he said with a trace of surprise. “Now there’s a bit of luck. We were just on our way to see you, sir. There’s been a murder in the Foreign Quarter.” “A murder?” Garett said. He looked past the night watch leader. Four of the men with him were not night watchmen at all. They were Attloi. By their brightly colored dress Garett recognized them. Gypsy people at heart, they knew no nation or homeland. There was always a contingent of Attloi, though, in the Foreign Quarter. Garett frowned. One murder a night was enough for him. But there was no way around this. It was his job. “Who was murdered?”
“Exebur,” one of the Attloi growled angrily. �
�What are you going to do about it?”
“Exebur the Seer,” the night watch leader explained calmly, deferentially. “Most unusual, it was, too. His throat was cut with one of his own tarot cards. Apparently while he was laying them out for a reading.”
“’You’re sure it was a card?” Blossom asked doubtfully. He was only a night watchman, after all, her tone of voice seemed to say. Not a true professional.
“A card,” the night watchman replied, unoffended. “It’s still in his neck, real deep, too, if you care to come and look, my lady.”
“If you’ll forgive a morbid curiosity,” Burge inquired, “which card?”
The angry Attloi man spoke up. “The Raptor,” he answered darkly. “It’s one of the major arcana. A card of great power. An evil omen.” Several of the other Attloi grumbled in agreement and made warding signs in the air, as if even speaking of the card was reason enough to protect them-
selves.
“Exebur was our greatest seer,” the Attloi leader went on bitterly. “He made us much money wherever we went. He had the true vision.”
Garett pursed his lips thoughtfully. This Attloi was more concerned about the loss of income to his tribe than about another man’s death. He looked the man up and down, studied him, and noted the garish quality of his clothing. He was wealthy by Attloi standards, perhaps a gypsy prince. His bearing conveyed the same impression.
There was more here, though. Something to take note of. It couldn’t be coincidence. Garett didn’t believe in coincidence , especially when murder was involved. He looked to Burge and turned his back to the others. In a voice too low for anyone else to hear, he said, “Kathenor was a seer.”
Burge raised an eyebrow. “Think there’s a connection, Cap’n?”
“I think we’re not going back to the Citadel yet,” Garett answered, his head bobbing up and down slowly, his mind racing. Here was a mystery. The high priest of the wealthiest temple in Greyhawk and an old gypsy fortune-teller, both murdered on the same night, apparently in the same hour. He put his hands together and began to rub circles on his left palm with his right thumb. It was a habit he had when confronted with a puzzle. “I want to see the body,” he announced.
“I told you!” the night watch leader beamed suddenly, his face lighting up as he turned to the Attloi at his side. “If your friend had to get murdered, night’s the time for it. Captain Starlen there, he knows what’s what. We’ll have the killer now, that’s for sure, and soon!” He turned back to Garett, and flashed a proud smile. “Who do you think did it, Captain, sir?”
Garett put on his best patient expression. “Maybe I’d better see the body first,” he reminded.
“Right,” the night watchman agreed with a hint of embarrassment. “Right this way.” He parted the Attloi men
and beckoned, and they all started south on the Processional for the Foreign Quarter.
The gypsies dwelled in the poorest section of the Foreign Quarter. The stone and stucco tenements rose up ominously, shutting out the moonlight, as the party turned off Marsh Street and walked up Chokerat Road. Here there were no street lamps, and Garett was grateful for the night watchmen’s lanterns. The air in this part of the city smelled vaguely of the swamps that stretched just beyond Greyhawk’s wall. Whenever the wind blew, it brought the marshy odor.
As they turned another corner and started up Mouser’s Way, the heart of the Attloi community, they spied torches and a crowd of people all quietly packing wagons, hitching mules, and preparing to leave. No matter that it was the dead of night. Even as Garett and his companions drew nearer, a pair of carts separated from the rest and headed for the Marsh Gate, the closest exit from the city. A man and his son drove the mule. A woman and two small daughters walked alongside. No one was speaking.
The night watch leader brought the group inside Exe-bur’s apartment. The single room was filthy and littered with possessions, knickknacks, and things Garett guessed the old man had scavenged from the alleyways of Greyhawk. A pair of candles burned on the table in the center of the room, and a deck of fortune-telling cards lay scattered all about, as if a powerful wind had swept through the only window.
On the floor beside a chair that had turned over, Exebur’s body lay in a pool of its own blood. As the night watchman had assured him, the throat had been cut. A thin red line was plainly visible from one side of the neck to the other, and the edge of a single card was still deeply embedded under the left jaw.
“I’ve seen paper cuts,” Burge muttered, “but this is ridiculous.”
Garett took one of the candles and knelt by the body. He
bit his lip. Then, seizing a corner of the deadly card, he drew it out and held it up to better light. Blood streamed down one edge and dripped on the knee of the captain’s trousers until he stood up.
The card was saturated with Exebur’s life fluid, but it was still possible to see the huge black bird painted upon it, wings displayed, its red eyes burning, a naked man and woman grasped in each of its talons as it swept them into the air.
Garett shivered as he looked at the card. The Raptor, it was called by the Attloi. Or, sometimes, The Bird of Prey. He placed the card down on the table and backed a step without taking his eyes off it. It disturbed him strangely, lying there among the other cards, stained as it was.
He felt the others around him watching him, Burge and Blossom and Rudi, the two patrolmen, the night watchmen, and the four Attloi who had come seeking him. Even Exebur. No one had closed the old seer’s eyes yet. They were all watching him. Perhaps they, too, felt the same strange tension, like a fire in the air.
Let them think what they would. Garett couldn’t help himself. He picked the card up again and held it to the candle flame. At first, it only sputtered and smoked, too wet to take fire. But the flame found a dry spot near Garett’s fingers and began to eat its way into the card’s heart. Garett dropped it. Before it touched the floor, most of it was ash. What remained blackened and curled and folded and crumbled in on itself.
A tenuous smoke wafted unpleasantly through the room. Garett looked at his comrades as he took another step away from the table. The sole of his boot was sticky. When he looked down to see why, he discovered that the red pool around the old man had spread to the spot where he’d been standing.
Three more seers were found dead before morning rose over Greyhawk. In the Garden Quarter, the seeress Katina was found drowned with no more than a scrying bowl full of water on the table above her body. In the River Quarter, Davin Timbriel was discovered by the late-night arrival of his lover, who had summoned the watch at once; his skull had been crushed, and his own crystal ball had been the weapon.
On an impulse, Garett sent Rudi’s patrol back into the university section of the Halls to check on old Qester Redmorn, the most renowned seer in the city. The aging Redmorn lived alone and seldom ventured out. His ability to foretell events once had brought him renown throughout the entire Flanaess. Rudi found the old man with the thin gold chain of a pendulum twisted and knotted around his throat. The windowless room in which he died had been locked from the inside.
All the greatest seers in Greyhawk were dead, murdered in one night, possibly in the same hour, each by the instrument of his or her divinatory art.
“I want this kept quiet,” Korbian Arthuran insisted, thumping his hand down on the corner of his desk for emphasis. He glared at his night shift commander. “Do you understand? Warn your people they’re not to speak of it. The mayor’s investiture is just a few days away. We don’t want to frighten the citizenry before such an important occasion.”
Garett stood at ease in the center of the captain-general’s office, unable to hide the look of disdain on his face. It had been a long night and a longer morning. He rightfully should be home in bed now, but there’d been too much for him to attend to for him simply to leave at the end of his shift. Unfortunately, he’d been obligated to inform Korbian of events. Now his superior officer was trying to tell him how to run the show.
Korbian Arthuran, however, had not been able to keep the news to himself, and shortly after his arrival at the Citadel, the new mayor had walked in. For most of an hour, Ellon Thigpen had listened quietly, even intently, to Garett’s report. He had asked a few reasonably intelligent questions, then fallen silent again.
Suddenly, though, he stepped away from the shadowed corner where he’d been leaning. “And how do you propose to keep the murder of five notable citizens quiet, Korbian?”
Thigpen was all politeness and manners as he moved about the room. Yet, Garett wondered abruptly if there wasn’t just a hint of acid in the mayor’s tone of voice as he spoke to the captain-general.
“Particularly these five,” Thigpen continued. “Except for the priest, Kathenor, and old Qester, the others have clients, some of whom are probably showing up for appointments even as we stand here.” He rubbed his chin with one hand and inclined his bald head thoughtfully as he paced back and forth between Garett and Korbian. “No, no. There’s no way we can keep their deaths secret. What we must do, however, is play down this magical angle. Convince the people these are common murders.”
Garett gave a sigh as he listened to Ellon Thigpen. He once had held the man in some regard, considering him one of the few honest individuals to hold a seat on the Directorate. But even in the short time since the announcement that Thigpen would become mayor, Garett thought he noted changes. There was his dress, for one thing. As a wealthy merchant, Thigpen had always been well groomed and fitted. But of late he had taken to wearing robes from cloth-of-gold and blouses of the finest silks. Where before he had worn none at all, now his body fairly dripped with jewelry. Fat chains of gold and silver hung from his neck, and brilliant gems in elaborate settings ringed his fingers. “I’m making you responsible for this matter, Garett.”
D& D - Greyhawk - Night Watch Page 3