by Ed Greenwood
He put a finger to her lips, answered her with a nod, then moved cautiously through one of the archways, turning sharply to the right and walking along a wall of the dark and empty room they’d just entered.
At the end of it was an archway giving into a larger and well-lit room. Drake made for it, moving more confidently now, but still soundlessly.
Through the archway, and Drake made a sharp turn to the left this time, to pass along the near wall of the room they’d just entered, heading for yet another archway. The far side of the room they were in was pierced by a row of doors that looked like the fronts of Waterdhavian row houses, crowded together along a South Ward street.
A spider the size of a noble matron’s lapdog scuttled across their path, just the other side of the archway they were heading for. Drake watched it expressionlessly, then took two swift steps to the arch, ducked low—Tasheene almost fell, he towed her so quickly—and peered warily through it.
He seemed reassured by what he saw, or didn’t see, and strode almost casually into what had once been a very grand room.
Cream-colored panels and moldings adorned the walls, and chandeliers hung at intervals down the long, high-vaulted ceiling, for all the world as if this was a Sea Ward nobles’ mansion. The room was perhaps three times as long as it was wide, and had tall grand archways at either end flanked by slender stone pillars. Drake turned right this time, and quickened his pace, as if briskly traversing a safe but empty street of Waterdeep, in a hurry to be elsewhere.
There were narrow arches ahead, in the side walls of this room just before its end wall and that grand pillar-guarded archway.
He was still perhaps a dozen strides shy of that grand arch when a spherical thing as large as a small cottage came drifting through it. A sphere with a huge central eye, that was hung about by a small forest of eyestalks.
Tasheene froze. She’d seen beholders before—in books, and the small stuffed one Lord Taethur Massalan had hanging in the domed ceiling of his entry hall—and this was a beholder of gigantic size.
Drifting silently and menacingly toward them.
Drake’s hand tightened around hers, and it was trembling. He was just as fearful as she was.
And then she felt him relax a little.
The beholder was dead.
And not only dead, it was wired and stitched together out of rotten scraps of what looked like several beholders of slightly different sizes and hues. Scraps that drooped lifelessly, rather than being animated in undeath.
“Look, Mordenkainen! Yonder, one of the Xanathar’s warnings!” came a voice Tasheene had heard before, through one of those narrow side archways. It was the wizard Elminster. “Something of a trophy, ye might say.”
A moment later, a mighty spell of roiling purple-white smoke roared out of that side-arch, enveloping and rending the grotesque dead beholder construct.
Chitin plates flew, eyestalks convulsed and fell into tumbling segments, and a darkened husk spun away, trailing smoke.
Through that side archway came striding a burly, hollow-eyed man with very bright, staring eyes and a dark beard. The wizard Elminster walked at his side.
“Ah,” said Mordenkainen, wisps of smoke from his hurled spell still curling up from his fingertips. “That feels better. Much better. Now, is there anything else around here I can blast?”
Tasheene fainted.
• • •
“SOMEHOW I KNEW we’d end up back here,” Mirt growled, as they reached a particularly aromatic stretch of Wharf Street.
The girls grinned at him as they headed for their chosen haunt: The Smiling Succubus festhall. Not exactly the pride of Wharf Street, but one of its most popular destinations.
Mirt tramped after them, old sea-boots flopping—only to be dragged aside from its front door when he was in the very shadow of the signboard.
“What, by a lamia’s beguiling touch—?”
“Not the front door,” Waratra hissed. “That’s for full-purse idiots from the upper wards. This way!”
There was a niche in the front wall where a downspout descended, and the girls squeezed past that discolored, pitch-sealed cylinder of fitted tiles to push on a dark and moldy section of wall behind it—that gave way to reveal an opening just wide enough for someone of Mirt’s girth to squeeze through.
He made that scraping journey and found himself in darkness, with Drella firmly steering him against a wall so Ravva could get the door closed behind him.
“Stand still,” Waratra ordered, “until you can see. Less falling down stairs that way.”
“That would be good,” Mirt agreed gravely.
“And keep quiet. You hear the best stuff when no one knows you’re there.”
As if that had been a cue, a door grated open, not far away—but no one came through it. The girls froze into statues, so Mirt did his best to muffle his breathing by sipping air and letting it out again in polite little amounts, as he listened.
After what seemed like an eternity, there came a hoarse whisper: “Well?”
“Nothing. There’s no one.”
“Good, then hurry. Old Vasty wanted this done quick and quiet, not have his wine brought to his gate in the bright morning light!”
“I have to lug the stiff all the way to the bottom?”
“All the way. This has to look good.”
“We can’t just toss him? Things fall down, you know.”
“And make enough noise to deafen the gods, dolt! Dock Ward festhalls have house guards and spies, you know!”
“Oh, gods!”
“You didn’t know? You idiot! Now get it done, and don’t let his boot heels bump on the steps all the way down!”
“All right, all right, though I don’t know why you couldn’t just have bashed his brains in down in the cellar, and saved me all—”
“Because Lord-High-And-Mighty Daerrask Querreth wouldn’t agree to go down to the cellar with us, that’s why! Said he’d heard that one before! Said he wasn’t born bloody yesterday, like you were! Now shut your jaws and get—him—down there! It’s not you as is going to be smearing his brains all over the steps and the railings, now, is it? You’ve got the easy job!” A bumping and dragging sound arose, and Mirt promptly felt a small but firm hand take hold of his wrist and tug insistently. Cautiously he took a step in the indicated direction. Drella—he thought it was Drella—kept on towing, and he went with her, and all too soon struck his arm on an unseen doorframe, swallowed a curse, and three steps farther heard a floorboard creak under him. He was in a room now, not the stairwell and Ravva was murmuring, “Door closed again; we’re clear.”
“No other way out of here,” Waratra decided, her voice a mere soft ghost of a whisper. “we’ll just have to wait ’til they’re done.”
“Who are they?” Mirt dared to ask, as quietly as he could.
He felt Drella’s shrug; it seemed she was pressed up against him. “Amateurs. Talking free like that, where anyone could hear!”
“I need you three to follow them,” Mirt whispered.
“And arrange for a little ‘accident’ or three?” Ravva’s mutter sounded gleeful.
“No, follow them, mark their faces and how many they are, find out where they live—and don’t let them see you.”
“Oooh, we’re spies good-an’-proper now!”
A moment later, a door opened noisily in the darkness, and something hard and heavy—the largest sort of docker’s crate-bar, by the heavy clatter it made—was tossed to the floor right beside them.
“I’ll get it later,” a man whispered hoarsely.
“See that you do. A man who dies falling down stairs doesn’t have time to hit himself over the head with an iron bar, open a handy door, and throw it into the room behind that door. While he’s tumbling past getting his brains all over everything, mind. Even Watchdolts will find that suspicious.”
The door closed again.
“You know what’s going on, old man.” Waratra’s whisper was quieter than ever,
and it was not a question.
“I think I might,” Mirt whispered back. “ ‘Old Vasty’ is Lord Felhaerond Ilvastarr. Lives in North War—”
“Ilvastarrgates,” Ravva hissed. “Fronts on Nindabar Street but its walls are bounded on the north by Suldown Street, on the south by Nezgalar’s Ride, and on the east by Saerdoun Street.”
“Er, aye,” Mirt blurted out, a little taken aback.
“Have to know where places are if you want to get back home from them without the Watch collaring you,” Drella explained with a sigh, as if exasperated at having to make explanations to a simpleton.
“They’re Ilvastarr’s hired adventurers,” someone else whispered, “and they’ll be headed to Telvar’s Tipples for his cask. Only all-night wine shop in South Ward.” It was a low, confident woman’s voice.
“Westfront Buckle Street,” Ravva supplied automatically.
“Who are you?” Waratra snarled into the darkness.
“I’m sometimes called Laeral—and sometimes called worse.”
CHAPTER 17
Little Secrets Kept
Too much forbearing mercy is a failing in kings
And so is too long a count of little secrets kept.
—Dorvreth The Doomed, in Chapter 7 of The Sorrowful Saga of the Doomed King by Amarrhra Imdeth of Memnon, published in the Year of the Turret
“FOOTSORE AND WEARY,” DUNBLADE ANSWERED HIM. “AND YOU?”
Jalester yawned. “I never thought I’d hold the gnawing uncertainty of being an unemployed adventurer superior to anything … but it beats the mind-rotting boredom of walking this city for hours and hours and more stlarning hours, it doth!”
“Better that than the utterly farruking brain death of standing guard in one cold wet or sun-baked spot for even longer,” Dunblade pointed out. “Give me danger any day.”
“That,” Jalester replied, sitting down on the sagging bed and dragging off one boot with a groan, “is a preference I’m afraid our new employer will oblige us in. All too often.”
“Hearken to the bold adventurer,” Dunblade teased.
Jalester searched for a dirty word to reply with, then gave up. “Too tired,” he muttered, flexing his toes. “Gods, but this city is big.”
“Not the bit of it we can afford,” Dunblade replied, tossing his own boots to the far side of their rented room. It was big enough to hold a stool, a bed, a chamberpot (under the bed), and a built-in closet that took up the entire back wall—because there wasn’t room for a wardrobe. A window above the bed head was matched by a dented and rust-splotched metal plate mirror on the facing wall, and the rat-gnawed door sported three cloak hooks on its inside surface.
At least the door had a lock and a bolt that were sturdy, that worked, and that were both in use now, to shut the wider world out. Or rather, that part of the wider world that intended to get at them through their door. There was also a little spy hole in the door covered with a swiveling metal plate on their side, which they’d firmly closed.
“We’re pampered travelers, remember,” Jalester reminded him mockingly. Their room was one floor beneath the attics of The Pampered Traveler inn, which meant their window commanded a view of the busy moot of The Street of Bells and Selduth Street, an intersection it seemed all of Castle Ward delighted in traversing day and night with the utmost of noise. The inn stood on the northeast corner, leaning slightly into the intersection, and Dunblade had already observed that given a few more years of neglect, it would quite likely slide gracefully southwestward, to fill the entire open space where the streets met in a welter of rotten timbers, disintegrating roof-tiles, and the desiccated remains of long-forgotten renters.
Service on the upper two floors of the Traveler was, to put it succinctly, nonexistent. Not that the two newest Watch guards of Waterdeep had managed a chance to request any, yet. They were, as Dunblade had honestly reported, footsore and weary after downing a good hearty meal and some zzar some doors down from the inn, a repast that had capped a night of trudging around the city checking where every last lord on their list lived. A night that had been largely spent submitting to the suspicious questioning of Watch patrol after Watch patrol as to their identities, their mission, and the sanity of an Open Lord of the city sending Watch guards out into the streets with lists. Surely that was a task for the useless likes of courtiers?
Perhaps so, but even in as small a place as Shadowdale, younglings soon learned the pitfalls of engaging full-tilt in politics, and mastered the wordless shrug. The Watch of Waterdeep, they were pleased to learn, had added a firmer dismissal. One merely said, “Orders,” in a voice heavy with an unshed sign of resignation, and left it at that.
“So,” Dunblade said with a yawn, as he flung garment after garment at the wall beside the mirror, settling deeper onto the bed with each removal, “which lord do we check on first? And when?”
Jalester freed his other foot, flexed it with a wince, and let it join its fellow, propped halfway up the nearest wall. “Faerrel, we don’t even know the routines of any of them yet.”
“If they have routines,” Dunblade pointed out. “High and mighty wealthy folks can do as they please—revels and meetings and going on hunts and flying falcons and all of that. Most of them probably don’t have jobs that mean ‘stand behind this counter or anvil from dawn to dusk.’ ”
Jalester sighed. “Right, and we were supposed to be doing this with Elminster, who has to know them better than we do. But the gods alone know where he’s gotten to.”
“Well, easy now! Lady Laeral did say we could do nothing for a night or two.”
“While lord after lord gets assassinated? I don’t think that’s quite what she meant, but—”
And at that moment, they were both startled into frantic grabs for their belt-knives, as their closet slid open in well-oiled soundlessness, and Elminster strode out of it.
“Ah,” he greeted them, “there ye are. Good, good! I trust ye’re rested and ready for a night of derring-do?”
Jalester gaped at him. “What? Gods, no!” He indicated his feet, halfway up the wall, and informed their unexpected visitor, “My feet are killing me.”
Dunblade frowned. “How’d you know where to find us?”
“Wizard,” Elminster explained merrily.
“And reach us?” Jalester asked pointedly, waving at the open closet.
“Ye think ye were given this room by accident?”
Jalester sighed. “No, of course we weren’t; I should have known. Does it have spy-holes, too?”
Elminster shrugged. “Probably. It is in Waterdeep.”
“And what,” Dunblade asked, “is derring-do? It sounds … naughty.”
“It usually is,” Elminster assured him with a grin. “Well, now, as I can see ye younglings are weak reeds and not the enduring grim iron lads of my generation, I’ll just have to go it alone tonight. Mind ye don’t rut all night; I expect ye ready for battle by highsun tomorrow.”
“Rut all night?” Jalester repeated indignantly. “Old man, not only is there all too little of the night left, what do you take me for?”
“ ’Tis not what I take ye for,” El replied, “ ’tis what he takes ye for.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of Dunblade, backed into the closet—and slid the door shut.
“I’m not—” Dunblade started to protest, but found himself lacking a wizard to deliver his words to. He looked at Jalester, traded grins, and then he rolled off the bed, fetched the stool to beside the bed, and sat on it where he could easily reach to rub Jalester’s aching feet.
Jalester groaned, but those bleats of pain soon became sighs of pleasure as he relaxed.
“Thank you,” he muttered. “Gods, I have feet again.” And about that time, he became aware that Dunblade was giving him a rather impish smile.
“Well … how about it?”
Jalester looked at his friend. “How about what?”
“Rutting. Doesn’t have to be all night, mind you—”
Jalester’s h
urled boots caught Dunblade square in the face, first one and then the other.
He fell over backward off the stool, laughing.
So the heavy crossbow bolt that thrummed through the open window then and buried itself in the wall with a thud that rocked the room, missed him entirely.
• • •
TASHEENE BECAME AWARE that she was lying on her back on cold, damp stone, somewhere that smelled like it was underground, staring up at a stone ceiling that glowed very faintly, the same pearly-gray light as the city harbor shrouded in dawn mists. Someone was standing near—Darleth Drake. She caught the gleam of moving steel, and turned her head quickly.
The room was small. He was standing guard over her, weapons drawn, all of his attention on the lone door.
She hadn’t thought she’d made a sound, but he turned his head sharply, met her gaze, and hastened close to bend down and whisper, “Make no noise! We can’t stay here. All sorts of armed bullyblades—and out-and-out monsters—are creeping about.”
“Where’s ‘here’?” she whispered back.
“We’re still in Downshadow.”
“What about the plague?” she hissed.
“The plague of monsters is our pressing peril,” he muttered. “Can you stand?”
“Of course I can—”
“You fainted. You don’t faint. So ‘of course’ blew away on the harbor winds,” he whispered tersely. “We may have to fight and run and fight some more, so be very sure you’re ready to move.”
“Darleth,” she murmured, “thank you.” She reached up a hand, drew him down, and kissed him.
He pulled away after a moment, and said, “Later.”
“What?”
“Save skin now, enjoy skin later,” he explained, his attention again bent on what was outside the door.
A moment later, he suddenly yanked the door open, drove his sword into something beyond it, then set his teeth and hauled on his blade, using it like a handle. That “something”—slender, jet-black skinned and with a head of long white hair, hanging limply over the blade it was impaled on, and Darleth poisoned his blades—sagged into the room with them, where it promptly crashed onto its face on the floor, dead.