Nesher has rallied them again, Khelben thought. No, duped is a better word. He has the power to lead them, cheering, off a cliff.
The Blackstaff halted Kern and Noph, gave them a half bow, and with a wave of his hand toward Nesher, said calmly, “A general report of your activities is requested.” The metallic glare from beneath his brows made it clear the two had best be truthful but discreet.
The gathered eyes of Waterdeep turned to the golden paladin, the apparent hero of the hour.
It was Noph, though, who spoke first. “Well, we started right here in the palace: Kern, Miltiades, Jacob, Trandon, Aleena Paladinstar,” he smiled in remembrance, “and a few others…. Paladins, mostly, and me. We sought the fastest route to the Utter East, from whence, Khelben told us, Eidola’s kidnappers had come. As it turned out, that route was right under our feet.” He stamped on the polished floor.
“In Undermountain,” Kern explained, lifting a disapproving eyebrow at Noph’s casual manner. “Ironically, this force of great virtue was led first to a city of great vice—wicked Skullport. ‘Tis forever the burden of great men to confront and contend against the powers of darkness. Let evil know that, even to survive, it must forever wrestle great men—”
“Some women can pin evil right well, too—Aleena for one,” Noph put in. There was laughter from the crowd.
Glowering, Kern continued, “In Undermountain, we lost the first of our men, Harloon, to the fell attack of an ettin—”
“Due to my own stupidity,” Noph interjected, suddenly solemn.
“Continue,” Khelben growled. “And one at a time.”
Noph took up the tale. “We found a portal to the Utter East,” he said, “but it was crawling with fiends. We fought past most of them to reach it, but had the gods own bitter time trying to get the thing open as we fought one fiend after another. We opened it in the end. Aleena stayed behind to close it forever.”
He glanced around the room, looking for the conspicuously absent lady paladin. A gentle blush crept from his collar. “I hoped we could see—I mean, I could… uh, that she’d made it out all right.”
Impatiently, Kern brushed aside the younger man and continued. “We arrived in a land equally embattled by fiends, a realm clutched in the tyrannical tentacles of King Aetheric III, Lord of the Bloodforge!”
The awed sensation he’d intended this pronouncement to evoke was destroyed by chortles over the accidental alliteration of ‘tyrannical tentacles.’
Ruffled, the paladin snapped, “Aetheric was a twisted monstrosity, a giant whose lower body had been transformed by the bloodforge into the grasping tentacles of a squid.”
No mirth followed this description. “The more he used the bloodforge to create armies,” Kern said in tones of doom, “the more twisted he became, and the more fiends he drew to his land!”
Noph took up the story again. “You’ve Aetheric to thank for those shadow warriors who came here and busted up the place. They kidnapped Eidola. Aetheric sent them, figuring we’d send fleets of ships and armies of men to Doegan. He wanted to use them as fresh troops to fight his fiend war for him.”
“Instead of sending great armies to rescue the bride of the Open Lord, though,” Kern said with satisfaction, “we sent only a small company of paladins.”
“We certainly showed him the depths of our regard,” said Lasker Nesher, bitterly. The listeners dropped their heads, chastened that they’d valued Piergeiron’s bride so little.
Kern snapped, “We chose a small strike team instead of an army because this crucial task required a small, delicate tool.”
Khelben rolled his eyes. Kern’s diplomacy was certainly no delicate tool. The eyes of the crowd turned from the golden warrior to a more ragged, common hero.
“Hosts of fiends overran the city,” Noph said. “In the fighting, King Aetheric broke free of his dark pool. He slithered to the top of his palace and fought there like a god from the Time of Troubles! He killed fiends in their thousands before he died from the fresh air—see, he breathed poisonous salt water, not air!”
He leaned forward in remembered excitement, and the crowd leaned with him. “With Aetheric dead,” Noph added, “the city was helpless. Fiends were all over the place, while we were trapped in the dungeons of the palace. Worse yet, the bloodforge was unguarded!”
Kern gestured toward Entreri. “The assassin Artemis Entreri, scourge of Justice everywhere, was among those who tried to gain control of the foul forge, hoping, no doubt, to sell it to the highest bidder. Instead, the flesh of his left arm was scorched away, leaving only bare bone… a fitting punishment for ever-grasping avarice. Be warned, though: his fingers of bone are as deft as his fingers of flesh have ever been!”
In the silence that followed, Khelben thoughtfully stroked his black beard. “Where are the other paladins from your party? Dead? And where is Eidola?”
“Some are dead,” Noph said regretfully. “Some are pursuing Eidola; we don’t know where she’s led them.”
“‘Led them’?” interrupted Lasker Nesher. He glared at his disowned son. “What nonsense is this? Since when does a kidnap victim run from her rescuers?”
Khelben’s look was keen and level, his eyes testing Noph’s response.
The young man rose to his father’s challenge. “Not all of us were rescuers, Father. This assassin”—he gestured toward Entreri—“led a party of pirates, natives of the Utter East, to slay Eidola. She knew folk were out to kill her. Of course she ran; you would have, too. In the confusion of a fiend war, it’s easy enough to mistake a friend for a foe. I’m certain once Miltiades catches her, though, everything will be set right.”
“Eidola is alive!” the Brothers Boarskyr shouted in gleeful unison. Becil, the more verbal of the two, waded forward through the mob, his half-wit brother capering in his wake. “Which means she’s inheritable to the Throne of King Pallidson!” he roared, “And we’re her most conjugal relations, now that the king’s reclining in the slumberous arms of the bucket he just kicked….”
Khelben shook his head, motioning them to silence. The gesture was too subtle for the likes of Becil and Bullard.
“…And if she’s become mortified of late, due to the felicitous aptitudes of eternal wherewithal and so forth, the throne is destined to languish beneath our collective posteriors into perpetuous posterity—”
“First,” Khelben roared, “Piergeiron is not king, but Open Lord. Second, he has no throne. And third, the funerary rites are not completed, and therefore he is not officially dead. As for Eidola, she was never officially married to the Open Lord, and even if she were, the office of Open Lord is not hereditary—and even if it were, it wouldn’t be passed to shirttail relations!”
Blinking at the volume and fury of this sudden outburst, Becil and Bullard glanced down at their shirt-tails, which flapped about their waists, and tucked them before striding on.
“Well,” Becil returned smoothly, “we are entitled to certain entitlements due to the titular title of our cousin as regards her impending matrimony to this impending deadman, especially if she herself is found to be in a status symbol wanting of breath and other indications of livingness.”
It was not Khelben’s breath that was steaming now. “I’m under the impression your quarters this last month were more than lavish,” he said almost silkily, “to say nothing of the food and drink granted you. Now I’ve rather more appropriate accommodations in mind. Captain Rulathon, I believe you’re well acquainted with the fine facilities in the deepest parts of the palace?”
The watch captain nodded happily, hooking an arm through Becil’s. “Come with me, sir. You’ll get everything coming to you.”
Bullard crowded forward, hand reaching toward Rulathon’s belt. “How’s about I’ve a look at your sword, hey?”
The response was immediate. Four Watchmen intervened with such speed that even Bullard was unaware exactly when and how he was knocked cold. This event also passed the notice of Becil, along with most of the crowd
, since unconsciousness did not dramatically change Bullard’s intellectual carriage.
As the two numbskulls (one quite literally) were assisted in their departure, the mood of the crowd grew dark. Waterdeep had been through a lot in the past month. If the Open Lord’s bride wasn’t safe in Piergeiron’s Palace on her wedding day, no one was safe anywhere. There’d been talk of doppelgängers, guild conspirators, shadow warriors, assassins, pirates, and squid lords—and not just talk. All of these villains were involved in recent troubles, but none were the greatest, deepest threat. So what then? If these were only surface distractions, what dastardly foes lurked behind them all?
Guilds had closed their doors. Merchants had hired muscle. Guards were ordered to kill first and let the resurrection men ask questions later. Disaffected young nobles spoke fashionably of ending their lives, though none yet had.
The city cowered beneath an occupying army, invisible and unnamed. Unseen foes were poised to pillage, slaughter, and burn. And while Waterdeep lay at the mercy of these foes, her leader lay at the mercy of death itself. In his stead ruled a secretive, ill-tempered archmage known to have dabbled in every wicked thing to happen since the Godswar—and during that darkest of times, and before! A ruler not elected or appointed, though no one had yet quite dared to point this out to him.
Now, at long last, here was a foe one could see. Artemis Entreri. An assassin! More than that—an assassin sent to slay Eidola! An avaricious butcher, who turned from his bloody task to capture a weapon of unspeakable evil. A man whose hand and arm were now skeletal—half man, half monster!
At last, here was a face to despise and spit upon, a body to gibbet and display on the gates of the city he’d so terrorized. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t killed Eidola, nor that he hadn’t been involved in any crimes in Waterdeep itself. When a scapegoat is sought, anything with small white horns and a goatee will do.
It was Lasker Nesher who gave voice to this long-pent fury. He climbed atop a bench, clutched the lapels of his mourning coat, and drew in a deep breath. All eyes turned to him—and when he spoke, his voice boiled forth with all the ferocity of steam escaping a vat of boiling acid.
“So here is one of our tormentors!” He flung his hand down to point at the assassin. Many in the crowd leaned and peered to see the dangling form. “Here is a man in league with monsters. Here is a man who thinks he can hold a whole city hostage. And not just a city. The city! Waterdeep. Jewel of the North—greatest jewel of all Faerûn!”
The roar of response was immediate and explosive.
“Are we not Waterdhavians? Are we not Waterdeep?”
The cheers were edged in anger.
“Look at us all. We are of Waterdeep: nobles, merchants and guildsmen, freemen and servants! We are the arms and minds and voice of all Waterdeep!”
Nesher turned slowly to gather all eyes before his hand swept down to point again. “Here are the Watch and armsmen of the Guard, charged with protecting us all from enemies within or without. What say you: is this assassin friend or enemy?”
From the armsmen scattered through the crowd came a ragged consensus, “Enemy. Aye, a foe.”
“And here are the Magisters, charged with trying, convicting, and sentencing those accused of attacking the folk of Waterdeep. What say you, Magisters? Is this man a menace to us?”
Again, the grudging reply, “Aye.”
Nesher grinned, victory gleaming in his eyes. “And here is the Open Lord, the one man in all Waterdeep who alone holds the power to commute a sentence. What say you, Piergeiron Paladinson? Speak, if you would commute the sentence of death laid upon this man!”
The Open Lord was silent in his casket of glass.
After a tense moment of waiting, hoping somehow that the still form of the paladin would rise and speak, the crowd shouted its support.
Lasker Nesher cried out, “Guards, bear this man to the dungeon to await hanging, drawing, and quartering at the break of day!”
Into the roar that followed, Khelben cried, “When did the jewel of Faerûn come to be run by mob justice?”
Nesher rounded on him, eyes smug in his deceitful face. “You’re not Open Lord, mage. As you yourself contend, Piergeiron remains Open Lord until declared dead. Until then, only he can commute the sentence of the Magisters!”
He pointed to Trandon, who had stood silently chained though it all. “And what of this other one?” he cried hungrily. “What is his crime?”
Noph and Kern traded reluctant glances.
“Tell us,” Nesher commanded. “Tell the people of Waterdeep, or face their judgment yourselves!”
“He posed as a paladin, that’s all,” Noph said. “Though he’s as worthy of the title as I am.”
“‘Posed as a paladin’?” crowed Nesher. “What is he really?”
When neither Noph nor Kern would elaborate, Trandon himself said, “I’m a wizard. A War Wizard.”
“A spy!” shouted Nesher. “A Cormyrean spy. An agent of Azoun in our midst. Treason! Let him die with the assassin. All in favor?”
The restored chapel—white marble, bleached oak, glowing gold, and all—shook with the thunderous voice of the mob. “Aye!”
“Away with them both! And in the morning, let us cheer again when their bodies are riven and piked in our midst!”
It seemed that only Khelben, Kern, and Noph did not cheer.
Chapter 2
A Trial for Noph
The dungeon bustled that evening. Watchmen in plenty paced beneath ceilings dripping with fungus, condensation beaded across their shoulder plates. Lantern light flickered across gritted teeth. Aside from the pad of leather soles on wet floors, though, silence reigned.
The center two cells held prisoners—men slated to die in the morning. Cells across a corridor from each other, watched over by two dozen restless armsmen… and one young man just returned from Doegan. Noph had volunteered for guard duty, hoping to meet Khelben and plead for the prisoners’ lives.
Where was the Lord Mage? He was supposed to seal the cells with warding magic.
Noph leaned against the wall beside Entreri’s cell, thoughts racing. He remembered this dungeon; he’d been imprisoned here. He’d stared at these very stones for the better part of an evening. His fingers had traced their shapes as he’d imagined their origins. Mined from black bedrock, lifted into the glaring sun, sawed and sliced into unnatural blocks with unforgiving edges, hauled down into another pit, stacked, mortared, compressed, compelled into walls designed to hold living flesh until it died, if need be. Something similar had happened to him. It had begun a month ago, on the wedding night, when Noph had stayed in this very cell and been called ‘assassin.’
Noph peered again through the bars of Entreri’s cell. The small man was still sprawled motionless on a pile of old straw; a man he’d once followed, once wanted to emulate. An assassin.
Was a man an assassin when he sought to kill a shapeshifting monster? That’s what Eidola was, after all. Of course, Entreri hadn’t known that. He’d have tried to kill her even if she’d been Piergeiron’s true bride. Was a man an assassin when he didn’t kill the person he’d intended to? How could Waterdeep execute a man for not assassinating someone? How could it be justice when a man was tried and convicted by a mob? Was it enough that Entreri was known to be an assassin? Should a man be executed on the basis of his reputation?
And what of Trandon? He’d fought bravely. He’d faced down death, and been a loyal trail companion. What did it matter if he fought for Waterdeep or Cormyr? He’d risked his life. And what had his grit and courage won him? Execution?
What does grit and courage get anyone? Noph wondered sourly.
“Ah, there you are,” a snide voice said, down the corridor. Lasker Nesher approached, proud self-satisfaction oozing from his wet smile. “I almost said, ‘There you are, Son,’ but of course you aren’t my son anymore.”
“A fact that pleases us both,” Noph replied coolly, as his father stopped before him. The man s
ettled into place like a post sinking into a hole, about a handspan too close to Noph, who could not back up with the wall at his back. He raised his head as if flinging off rain, and asked briskly, “What brings you here, Lord Nesher? Or is it Open Lord Nesher yet?”
Hunger crawled across the noble’s face, avarice he did not trouble to conceal. “Not yet. But you heard how the people respond to me.”
Noph did not quite smile. “Wait till they get to know you.”
Lasker ignored this, choosing instead to smooth back an errant strand of his thinning hair. “I come with a proposition for you. Isn’t there somewhere more private we can talk?”
“A couple of cells around the corner stand empty. You’ll feel right at home.”
The noble blinked at this sally, measuring his son, and then came to some sort of decision. “We’ve much to discuss,” he said in an almost pleading tone. “Come, grant your father one audience?”
Noph nodded despite himself. No matter how despicable and grasping Lasker’s deeds, he thought, the man was still his father.
Lasker led the way, small and fidgety, muttering along the line of lanterns. Noph, catching fragments here and there, realized his parent was rehearsing the speech he was about to give. A ragged string hung from the older man’s coat, waggling behind him like some sort of limp tail. Noph watched it droop.
They rounded a corner. In the shadows cast by distant, flickering lantern light, the door of one cell stood ajar, three inches of solid oak banded with oiled iron. Dust swirled up behind Noph’s and Lasker’s boots—no, not dust. Ash.
The walls, ceiling, and floor of the cell were coated with soot, and two perfect cones of ash stood like sentinels at its far end. Above, the back wall sloped down, gnarled and ancient bedrock that seemed like a giant hand pressing the space closed.
Lasker turned. “Let’s get to business. You’ve no doubt recognized that I’ve changed since you left. My influence expands; I’m seeking high public office at last. You said I’d be at home in this cell. Well, if things run according to plan, not only this cell but this whole palace will be mine.”
Forgotten Realms - [Double Diamond Triangle Saga 09] - The Diamond Page 2