by Ed Greenwood
Before serving the Watch guards the same way, so every last body could be whisked away, beyond the reach of priests and any chance of speaking with the dead.
Farruk, indeed.
• • •
“IT GETS COLD out here at this time of night.”
Dunblade was stating the obvious, but Jalester wasn’t irked. He was cold, too, and just as bored.
“Easy coin,” he reminded, “and he paid us half in advance.”
“Huh. Easy coin until the trouble starts,” his closest friend in the world grunted, peering again at the Palace door guards watching them—and at the newest Watch patrol to stride through the plaza, giving the two adventurers from Shadowdale hard and searching looks as they strode past. Jalester gave them a tight smile in return, but they seemed far less than impressed.
“Magnificent stars,” he murmured, looking up above the great dark bulk of Mount Waterdeep, that rose above the Palace and made it seem small and toylike.
“Their shine is perfect,” Dunblade agreed.
“For what?”
“Kissing you,” he replied, and demonstrated.
“Faer, we’re on duty,” Jalester protested, when he could breathe again.
“So we are. And I’m warmer and less bored and a whole lot more alert and attentive already. Give me your mouth again.”
“Clevertongue,” Jalester snorted, and did.
• • •
DRAKE HADN’T GONE in with them. As arranged, he’d moved to a nearby rooftop to sit lookout, while Tasheene, Cuthbarrel, and Zaraela had slipped into what had turned out to be a drapery storage room. Endless shrouds, still air, and dust.
They found the stair at the end wall where the plans had shown it would be. It was faintly lit by an old and failing driftglobe in a cage, and in that dimness, they descended as stealthily as they could.
Which was, Tasheene judged, pretty stlarning stealthy.
The stair ended on the floor below, in a room that was full. Dark and silent, hung with scores and scores of … tapestries. Hanging from bars depending from the ceiling on cords, ornate cloth filled the room in rows, with passages barely the width of a person between them.
Tasheene had never seen so many ranks and ranks of tapestries in one place. To get to the workshop, they would have to cross this room; the stair to the next floor was along its far wall.
She started forward, but Cuthbarrel dropped a hand onto her shoulder, shook his head, and stepped to the fore.
The guildmaster stalked along slowly and warily. Trying to make as little noise as possible. Somewhere ahead and below them was a sorceress.
Tasheene was right behind him, so she caught a glimpse of it.
The slender blade that thrust out without warning between two tapestries—and deep into Cuthbarrel.
CHAPTER 12
We Touch Again At Last
So now we’re truly parted, with half the wide world between
Past fury nigh forgotten, our fallen tears dried and past
And my heart turns as I hunt, finding only where you’ve been
Until that blesséd moment, when we touch again at last.
—To Find You, a ballad by the minstrel “Ironhand” Jakh, published in the Year of the Ring
CUTHBARREL ROARED IN PAIN AND CLAWED AT TAPESTRIES AS HE fell. In the next instant, light flashed, so sudden and bright that in its white, white wake Tasheene could see nothing at all.
Behind her, Zaraela gasped in pain.
“Back!” Tasheene hissed at her, and heard her turn and run. They sprinted, not trying for quiet but just running, blindly back along between the tapestries. Tasheene thrust out her arms so her fingers trailed along cloth after cloth, keeping her from blundering into any of the hangings.
Back to the stair, they had to get back to—
Zaraela let out a horrible gurgle, ahead. A moment later, Tasheene stumbled over her falling body, and fell hard to hands and knees, but didn’t stop. Clawing her way hastily over her unseen fellow conspirator, Tasheene clambered back up to her feet, and kept on running. Blindly.
Drawing her longest and most slender dagger, she hacked high and to one side with it as she ran. Thrice it struck tapestries and rebounded, but her fourth slash caught on a cord—and she twisted and put all her grunting momentum into slicing.
Severing the unseen cord and causing a heavy thudding of tapestries to the floor, a floor-juddering collapse of cloth that brought a startled “Murrumph!” from someone Tasheene couldn’t see.
The sorceress.
Tasheene turned and stabbed blindly and repeatedly at where that exclamation had come from, in a desperate, panting frenzy.
Until something covered under cloth went down in a heap. A heap she circled by feel, a hand planted on what was probably—under the tapestry—Meiril’s head, stabbing and stabbing as she went.
Every thrust brought a muffled shriek or sob, until she trod on what was probably a leg and fell hard to the floor, banging her elbow. Her fingers burned as her dagger cartwheeled and clattered—and the same slender sword that had killed Cuthbarrel burst out of the tapestry bundle and hissed at her, lancing past so close that it passed between Tasheene’s flank and her bicep, slicing open the leathers on both and drawing blood.
She twisted away as that blade sought her life again, flung herself to where she could snatch up her dagger, then whirled on one knee and lunged, stabbing ruthlessly into the tapestry heap right beside the jutting slender sword, hurling her weight onto the bundle so as to win through it with her shorter blade and to prevent the sorceress beneath having room enough to draw back her blade to stab forth again.
Snarling, Tasheene bore down, kicking at the floor to shove her dagger farther in, and in, and in …
There were horrid wet sounds from beneath her, and the tapestry sagged and what was beneath it stopped moving.
Panting, Tasheene staggered up from it, slipping in stickiness that must be blood leaking out from under it. She made certain by tugging tapestry aside until she’d exposed something she could stab.
So she stabbed it, again and again.
By the time her arm was too tired to go on stabbing, she could see again—a little.
She staggered back to Cuthbarrel’s body, because the guildmaster was carrying a tiny, sturdy metal night-lantern at his belt, and a slender, stylish striker-box.
She could light a lantern that simple by feel.
When its flame was hot, she left its shutter open, went back to the bloody tapestry she’d clawed off the sorceress, patiently set the cloth alight, then used the point of her dagger to drag the tapestry back over what was left of the sorceress. She watched the smoldering rise into little licking flames before lifting the lantern on her dagger point to set alight tapestry after tapestry hanging around her.
By the time half a dozen were afire, and smoke was beginning to billow, Tasheene could see well enough by their light to make out the room. She found the stair down, stumbled down it to the workshop, crossed that maze of trestles and glass and tables strewn with glass to the nearest door, and let herself out.
The night air was sweet and cool, and she left the door open so it could slide freely in and feed the blaze on the floor of tapestries.
And then Tasheene drew in a deep breath and slipped away, hurrying as swiftly as she could without running, hastening along expecting a crossbow bolt to thud through her between her shoulder blades before she got halfway home.
She knew of two revels going on tonight, both nearby. The Hiilgauntlets were hosting at their city mansion, Hiilgauntlet House, barely a block west on Ivory Street, and the other affair was being thrown by some wannabe noble called Ivepyke Waraspur, at his expensive new house at the Ivory Street end of Flint Street. Tasheene looked down at herself and decided her dishevelment and blood would be too remarked upon to make a public appearance at either—but if she could get into the Hiilgauntlet gardens, dive into the pond there to get some of the blood off and to explain her bedraggled state, s
he could wait for the rain to come, and under cover of the downpour walk the rest of the way home with a ready reason for looking like a drowned rat. If she ran into a Watch patrol, she could simply say she was attacked by ruffians but got away.
As it happened, the rain got there first.
It was falling in clinging sheets by the time she reached the tree-overhung and ivy-cloaked walls of the Hiilgauntlet grounds. Where the tall many-barred garden gates were standing open from earlier in the evening, when the gardens had been full of chattering, drinking revelers.
All gone now, driven indoors or home by the quickening rain. Tasheene made for the pool—only to stop and draw back as lights from inside the mansion reflecting back off a wet burnished copper sculpture showed her movement amid the pillars of the open summerhouse.
Two amorous silhouettes busily becoming one. Smiling mirthlessly, she circled around behind drenched shrubberies until she could get close enough to be sure.
Yes, one amorous couple who were evidently quite happy to taste each other’s charms in unwalled privacy, shielded from the wet by the summerhouse roof. They hadn’t noticed her, and were too lost in lust for that to change as Tasheene approached to where she could stand right over them.
Then she took a step back, doffed her soaked and clinging jerkin, and flung it down like a shroud over both their heads, following its arrival with hard and vicious punches. She rained down blows as hard as she could, to bounce those shrouded heads many times against the marble summerhouse bench they were lying together on.
And when she had to stop for breath, the couple lay still and silent. The female had already disrobed, or been disrobed, so Tasheene only had to tug her natty gown out from under the woman’s hip and shrug it on.
Too tight. Hmmph. Would nothing go right, tonight? Bundling up her jerkin to take with her, she departed the gardens, vanishing into the teeming night.
The window of her bedchamber in Melshimber House would afford her a view of Dathanscza Meiril’s workshop.
By the time she reached her room and looked out the window, flames were leaping high from the uppermost windows of the building in Flint Street, and the air flashed with purple and orange radiances as Watchful Order mages hurled fire quench spells.
They were in time to save the stone structure, if Tymora was with them, but as for the bodies, in with all those tapestries …
• • •
THE SENESCHAL HAD been insistent, but Laeral had dealt with insistent men a time or ten thousand before.
“Increased Watch patrols, of course,” she told him firmly, “but we shall not be closing the doors and turning this place into a fortress. This Palace belongs to the people of Waterdeep. I shall become neither a cowerer or a tyrant—nor let anyone turn this building into my cage.”
And now that interview was done, and she was alone again and pacing.
Not that it seemed to help all that much. No matter how many times she walked through her rooms in the Palace and back again, the problems she was mulling over remained the same. She had her suspicions, but were a handful of Masked Lords merely the most visible members of a conspiracy? Or was she wronging them, and they were mere opportunists, not behind these killings at all? And just what were the killers, whoever they really were, trying to achieve?
“Lady,” the voice greeted her, soft and low, from one of the darker corners of the bedchamber she didn’t use.
Ah, yes. The all-too-busy secret passage behind the bedhead. One of several in that room, which made one wonder about Piergeiron’s saintly reputation …
It was a voice she knew, but Laeral put a hand to her rings anyway. Just in case.
Her visitor came forward into the light, empty hands spread, palms out, in a reassuring “I’m not ready-armed” signal, and murmured, “We touch again at last.” The current pass phrase.
“Half the wide world between,” Laeral answered, then greeted the dark-haired and graceful Harper less formally. “Relvelarra, what news?”
“The matter you asked us about,” Relvelarra said gravely. “Lady, so far as we can tell, and of course not including possible spellwork, Lord Neverember has had no contact with anyone in Waterdeep this last tenday. Whoever’s killing Hidden Lords, they’re not conversing with him about it, at least during the time these slayings have unfolded.”
Laeral nodded. “I think we must seek nearer at hand for our slayers,” she said softly.
Relvelarra nodded back, raised a hand in farewell, slipped back through the panel again, and was gone.
Laeral had turned and paced halfway across the next room before another voice she knew said quietly from behind her, “I think so, too.”
Vajra. The Blackstaff.
Laeral whirled around.
“How long have you been here?” she asked softly, trying to conceal how alarmed she was. How was it that she’d felt no hint of Vajra’s approach through the Weave?
And then she saw gems winking in awakened life behind Vajra’s back, and knew why. Those stones were mounted on the head of the Blackstaff. Which was part of the fragment of the staff Vajra bore.
Vajra did not reply, but merely gazed at Laeral, her face set and expressionless.
Laeral studied her—and reached for the Weave as imperceptibly as she knew how. And then she saw Elminster coming silently up behind Vajra, looking grim, his gaze fixed on Vajra. Ready to slay.
“Well,” Laeral asked wearily, “if you won’t answer that, Vajra, how about giving me an answer to this: why are you here?”
Still silent, Vajra stepped slowly closer.
Elminster moved in unison with her, the Weave rising to shine in his eyes.
Laeral’s hair began to stir around her shoulders involuntarily as she called on the Weave, too. For so long she had been a creature of spells, spells and diplomacy, not raw Weave-work, and she hadn’t Elminster’s skill at keeping what she did subtle.
Yet the alternative to warning a potential foe what she was up to was to leave herself standing undefended.
And very likely die, here and now, if—
Vajra’s gaze went to Laeral’s restlessly coiling hair, and then back to meet Laeral’s eyes.
As she went slowly to her knees.
Whispering, as she gazed up at Laeral and slowly extended the fragment of the Blackstaff, holding its gem-adorned upper end up to be grasped, “I come not as any peril to you, Lady Laeral. I come to you on behalf of one who loves you very much.”
Her lips were trembling, and unshed tears were rising to glimmer in her eyes.
Laeral cloaked herself in the Weave, letting its rush of energy crackle and glow unhidden around her. She would need all she could summon, if hostile spells had been cast into the Blackstaff and held ready to discharge into her at a touch.
Then she reached out, slowly but firmly, and took hold of the proffered head of the staff.
Beloved. We touch again, at last.
That mind-voice thundering into her out of the staff made her weak in the knees and drove her to the edge of tears in the briefest of instants.
It was Khelben, her Khelben, as strong and confident as ever.
And yet it was not. It was a cold, dead echo, a vestige of Khelben enshrined in what was left of the staff.
A remnant in a remnant. Yet strong enough to control Vajra, and trying now to seduce Laeral, playing on her yearning for him, for what they’d had together … playing to gain her vitality, her living energy …
“He … he is gone, and so is what we shared,” she whispered aloud, voice quavering on the husky edge of grief, as Elminster stepped around Vajra and came up to stand with Laeral and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“Why?” she asked him, almost pleading. “Why so much hunger?”
“The echo of Khelben that remains in that stick yearns for life,” El told her gravely, “and thine is strong. It needs to feed on ye, as it has on this poor innocent here—”
Vajra stared up at the Sage of Shadowdale, fear and dawning indig
nation at being called an innocent clear on her face.
Sudden but silent tears burst forth and rained down from Laeral as she took what was left of the Blackstaff, gazed into it for a moment that made its gems flash and wink into hopeful life—and then firmly handed it back to the woman kneeling at her feet.
“This is yours now,” she said. “What it holds is mine no longer, and has no hold over me.”
Vajra stared up at her, and then silently offered the staff again.
Laeral bent down as if to take it, but instead shook her head and whispered fiercely into Vajra’s face, “Go, child. Go before I give in to my grief and anger, and you get hurt!”
And the Weave flared up around her and streamed out of her eyes like sudden cold and crackling flames, bright silver and terrible, as Laeral’s hair stood out straight all around her in a great silver halo of spikes—and Vajra whimpered, fell back, and then sprang to her feet, turning and running all at once, and fled.
Racing wildly, the Blackstaff in her hand spitting forth fitful silver sparks.
Laeral stared after her, tall and terrible in the silver-filled room, seeming to loom taller … and taller …
Until she gave out a great sigh, and—
Shrank back down into herself again and started to cry in earnest, her wracking sobs silent as she shuddered out great helpless tears.
And Elminster put his arms around her from behind and held her close, his head against hers as he rocked her gently back and forth, seeking to comfort her. “There, there, lass … there, there …”
The old mage’s crooning was interrupted by a loud and boar-like grunt from under the desk nearby. It was followed by another, and the thumping of someone banging a knee or elbow against heavy old wood as they started to move. Then the grunts became one long ursine growl, a bestial roar that brought Mirt the Moneylender rolling into view, drawn sword in hand.
“Will you stop crying, woman?” he snapped. “You’re fair drowning me down here, you are! And after all that silver flame and so much power gathered that the air is full of silent thunder and my every last hair is standing on end, I think the ghosts of yer sisters Dove and Syluné were wrong! I don’t think you need a hidden helpful bodyguard at all!”