Dougan paused, twirled his mustache. “I believe I have. The turnips.” Catching up several, he again started to leave.
“A small matter of my money,” the vendor said, blocking their way.
Usha stuffed a handful of grapes in her mouth, gulped and swallowed them hurriedly, determined to eat as much as she could in case she had to give the fruit back.
“Put it on my tab,” Dougan said airily.
“This ain’t no alehouse, Shorty,” snarled the man, crossing his arms over his chest. “Pay up.”
“I’ll tell you what, my good man,” Dougan said affably, though he appeared a bit displeased at the term “shorty,” “I’ll flip you for them.” He produced a gold coin. The vendor’s eyes lit up. “The lord’s head up two times out of three, and the fruit is mine. Agreed? Agreed.”
Dougan flipped the coin. The vendor, scowling, watched it spin in the air. The coin landed on the cart rail, the lord’s head up.
The man stared closely at it. “Hey, that ain’t no Palanthas coin. And that ain’t no lord. That head looks like yours …”
Dougan snatched up the coin hastily. “Must’ve grabbed the wrong one.” He tossed the coin before the man could protest. The head—lord or dwarf—landed up again.
“Ah, too bad,” Dougan said complacently, reaching out to pocket the coin.
The vendor was quicker, however. “Thank you,” he said, snatching it up. “That should just about cover your purchases.”
Dougan’s face flushed red. “You lost!” he roared.
The vendor, closely examining the coin, started to turn it over.
“Well, never mind,” Dougan added. Walking hurriedly away, he tugged at Usha to accompany him. “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game, I always say.”
“Hey! Dwarf!” the vendor shouted. “You tried to cheat me! This coin has two heads! And both of them look like—”
“Come along, Lass,” Dougan urged, quickening his pace. “We don’t have all day.”
“Hey!” The vendor was screaming at the top of his lungs. “The gold’s rubbing off! Stop that dwarf—”
Dougan was running now, his thick boots clomping on the cobblestone streets.
Usha, clutching her food, hastened to keep up. “They’re chasing us!”
“Turn right. Down this alley!” Dougan huffed and panted.
The two dashed into a dark alleyway. Usha, looking behind, noticed that those chasing them skidded to a halt at the alley’s entrance.
The vendor pointed, cajoling, pleading.
Shaking their heads, the men walked away.
The vendor—after shouting a few threats at Dougan—stalked off in a rage.
“They’re not coming after us,” Usha said in wonder.
“Thought better of it,” Dougan said. Slowing down, he began to fan himself with his hat. “Probably noticed I was wearing a sword.”
“You’re not,” Usha pointed out.
“Their lucky day,” the dwarf said with a sly wink.
Usha glanced around nervously. The alley was cleaner than any other she’d seen in Palanthas. It was also darker and emptier, quieter. A crow walked up, cool and confident, began pecking at a plum she’d dropped.
Usha shivered. She didn’t like this place. “Do you know where we are?”
The crow ceased its pecking, cocked its head, stared at her with beady yellow eyes.
“Yes, Lass, I do,” Dougan Redhammer said, smiling. “There’s folks live around here I want you to meet. They’re needing someone like you to do a few small jobs for them. I think you’ll suit them just fine, Lass. Just fine.”
The crow opened its beak, gave a raucous, laughing caw.
26
The laboratory.
Tasslehoff takes the initiative
(among other things).
h, my!” Tasslehoff whispered, too thrilled and awestruck to speak aloud.
“Don’t touch anything!” were Palin’s first words, uttered in stern and urgent tones.
But since these are generally the first words spoken by anyone in the presence of a kender, the warning went right in one side of Tas’s head and out the other, ending up nicely rationalized in between.
Don’t touch anything!
“Sound advice, I suppose,” Tas said to himself, “since it’s given in the laboratory of one of the greatest, most powerful Black Robes who ever lived. Touch something in here and I might end up living inside one of those jars like that poor, dead thing inside that one jar, which there couldn’t be any harm in my just taking the lid off to get a closer look …”
“Tas!” Palin removed the jar from the kender’s hand.
“I was moving it back so it wouldn’t fall,” Tas explained.
Palin glared at him. “Don’t touch!” he reiterated.
“Gee, he’s in a really bad mood.” Tas continued talking to himself, wandering to another (darker) part of the laboratory. “I’ll just leave him alone for a while. He doesn’t really mean ‘don’t touch anything,’ because I’m already touching something. My feet are touching the floor, and it’s a good thing, too, or I’d be floating around like all this dust in the air. That would be quite entertaining. I wonder if I could manage it. Maybe that bottle with the blue-green gunk in it is some type of levitation potion. I’ll …”
Palin—his face grim—snatched the bottle from Tas’s hand and prevented him from pulling out the stopper. After removing several objects: a stub of a dust-covered candle, a small stone carved in the shape of a beetle, and a spool of black thread, from the kender’s pouches, Palin marched Tas over to a dimly lit, empty corner and told him, in the most angry tone Tas had ever heard almost anyone use, to “STAY PUT AND DON’T MOVE!
“Or I will send you out of here,” Palin finished.
Tas was well aware that this threat was empty, because, while he’d been poking around the laboratory, he’d been vaguely aware of the fact that Palin was beating on the door with his fists, attempting to pull it open, and had once even struck at it with his staff, to no avail. The door wouldn’t budge.
The knight had also banged on the door for a while, but on the other side. Now the outraged thunderings of Steel Brightblade could no longer be heard.
“He must have left,” Tas said. “Either that or the specter got him.”
This would have been an interesting sight and one Tas was disappointed to have missed. Still, a kender can’t be everywhere at once, and Tasslehoff wouldn’t have lost this opportunity for all the specters in the world, with maybe a banshee or two thrown in.
“Palin doesn’t mean to be a grouch. He’s just frightened,” Tas remarked, sympathy in his voice. The kender was not personally familiar with that particularly uncomfortable emotion himself, but he had known it to afflict many of his friends, and so he decided—out of compassion for his young companion—to do as Palin asked him to do.
Tas stood in the corner, feeling virtuous and wondering how long such a feeling would last. Probably not long, virtuousness bordering on boredom. Still, it would do for a while. Tas couldn’t touch anything, but he could look, and so he looked with all his might and main.
Palin walked slowly around the laboratory. The Staff of Magius shed a bright light over everything in the room, as if it were pleased to be back home.
The room was enormous, certainly far bigger than anyone could have reasonably expected it to be, considering its location and the size of all the other rooms in the tower. Tas had the eerie and exciting impression that the room had grown when he stepped inside and, even more exciting, that the room was still growing! It was an impression received from the fact that no matter where in the room he looked, whenever he took his eyes away and then looked back, he saw something that he was positive hadn’t been there before.
The biggest object in the laboratory was a gigantic table. Carved of stone, it took up almost the whole middle of the room. Tasslehoff could have lain end to end about three times and have had room left for his topknot. Not that he would ha
ve wanted to lie in all that dust, which was extremely thick and covered everything. The only tracks Tas could see across the dusty floor were his own and Palin’s, not even little mice skitterings. There were no cobwebs either.
“We are the first living beings to set foot inside this chamber in years,” Palin said softly, unknowingly echoing the kender’s thoughts.
The young mage passed a worktable, shone the staff’s light on innumerable shelves filled with books and scrolls. Some of the books, bound in night-blue bindings, Tasslehoff recognized as the spellbooks belonging to the infamous mage Fistandantilus. Other books, in black bindings with silver engraving or red bindings with gold lettering, might have been Raistlin’s own, or were perhaps left here by the tower’s previous inhabitants.
Palin stopped in front of these spellbooks, gazed at them with eager, hungry eyes. He reached out a hand to one, then abruptly pulled it back.
“Who am I kidding?” he said bitterly. “If I were to even look at the flyleaf, I’d probably go mad.”
Having been a traveling companion of Raistlin’s, Tas knew enough about magic-users to know that a mage of low rank attempting to read a spell that wasn’t meant for him would go instantly insane.
“That’s a safety feature,” Tasslehoff pointed out, in case Palin didn’t know. “Raistlin explained it to me once, the time he took the spellbook away from me. He was quite nice about it, saying he didn’t want to have an insane kender on his hands. I said it was awfully kind of him to be so considerate, but that I wouldn’t mind being insane, and he said yes, but he would, and I think he added something to the effect that he’d rather have twenty ogres with twenty sticks beating him about the head and shoulders, but I could be mistaken on that point.”
“Uncle Tas,” said Palin in a nervous, half-suffocated, smothered kind of voice, “I don’t mean to be rude, especially to someone your age, but would you please shut up!”
He continued walking around the room, shining the light of the staff more closely on this item or that, not handling, not touching anything. He covered the entire laboratory twice, with the exception of one little part.
He didn’t go into the back of the chamber, located almost directly across from where Tasslehoff was standing. That part was very dark and, Tas began to suspect, Palin was deliberately keeping the light away from it.
Tas knew what was in that part of the laboratory, though. Both Caramon and Tanis had told him the story.
Palin kept glancing that direction, then looking back at Tas, as if confused about what he was supposed to do.
Well, Tas knew exactly what they were supposed to do.
“But he’s still frightened,” Tas commented with a shake of his topknot. “That has to be it. I can’t imagine why else he’s wandering around here, when we should be getting on with things. I could tell him what to do.
“No, that wouldn’t be a good idea. As I recall from when I was a mere kender lad, advice from an older person, such as myself, to a younger person, such as Palin, is generally not well received. Perhaps I could give him a hint, nudge him along, so to speak. After all, we haven’t got all day. It’s getting along about supper time and, as I recall, the meals in the Abyss, while perhaps being nutritious, were distinctly lacking in flavor. So. Now—wait until he’s not looking.”
Palin was inspecting the scrolls in a desultory manner, interested in them, but obviously having something more important on his mind. He glanced at them, sighed, and put them back with obvious reluctance.
“Come on—find one that you can use!” Tasslehoff muttered.
And suddenly Palin apparently did so. He examined the wax seal that had been stamped on the ribbon binding the scroll, brightened considerably, and, breaking the seal open, began to scan the contents.
Tasslehoff Burrfoot, moving as silently as kender can, which meant that the dust drifting to the floor made as much noise as he did, left his place in the corner, stole stealthily across the room, and boldly mounted the stone dais on which stood the Portal to the Abyss.
“This is interesting, Tas,” Palin said, turning to look at where the kender had been. A note of concern crept into his voice when he noticed the kender wasn’t there anymore. “Tas!”
“Look what I found, Palin,” Tas said proudly.
Grasping hold of a golden silk rope hanging at the side of purple velvet curtains, he gave the rope a pull.
“No, Tas!” Palin cried, dropping the scroll and leaping forward. “Don’t! You could get us—”
Too late.
The curtain lifted, dust shaking down off its folds in a cloud that nearly choked the kender.
And then Palin heard that ominous word—generally the last word those who have the misfortune to travel with a kender ever hear in this life.
“Oops!”
27
The thieves’ guild.
The new apprentice.
he Thieves’ Guild in Palanthas could boast—and usually did, with some pride—that it was the oldest guild in the city. Although no official date marked the guild’s founding, its members were probably not far wrong in their reckoning. Certainly there were thieves in Palanthas long before there were silversmiths or tailors or perfumers or any of the number of other guilds that now flourished.
The Thieves’ Guild traced its roots back to ancient times, to a gentleman known as Cat Pete, who had led a band of brigands in the wilds of Solamnia. His band preyed on highway travelers. Cat Pete (his name was not given him because he was silent and catlike in his grace, but because he had once been soundly whipped with a cat-o’-nine-tails) was very selective of his victims. He avoided lords who traveled with armed escorts, all mages, mercenaries, and anyone wearing a sword. Cat Pete maintained that he was extremely loathe to shed blood. So he was—especially his own.
He chose to rob the lone and unarmed traveler—the itinerant tinker, the wandering minstrel, the hardworking peddler, the impoverished student, the poor cleric. Needless to say, Cat Pete and his band found it rather difficult to make ends meet. Pete was always hopeful that someday he would accost a tinker who happened to be hiding a load of jewels on his person, but this never happened.
During one particularly hard winter, when the band was reduced to such extremes that members were eating their own shoes and starting to look hungrily at each other, Cat Pete decided to better himself. He sneaked out of camp, determined to seek his fortune—or at least a crust of bread—in the newfound city of Palanthas. He was crawling over the walls in the dead of night when he stumbled across a city guard. Those who view Cat Pete in a romantic light say that he and the guard engaged in a vicious battle, that Pete hurled the guard from the top of the wall to the ground below, that the highwayman then entered the city triumphant.
Those who have bothered to read the true history of Cat Pete will find the true version of the tale. Upon being accosted on the wall by the guard and threatened with imminent demise, the bold Cat Pete fell to his knees, clasped the guard about the legs, and begged for mercy. The guard at this moment slipped on a patch of ice. Due to the fact that Pete’s arms were locked firmly around his knees, the guard could not catch his balance. Arms flailing, he tumbled off the wall.
Cat Pete, who’d had sense enough to let go at the last moment, continued to retain his cool presence of mind. He descended to the ground by more conventional means, robbed the body of the dead man, and sneaked into the city, where he took up residence in a cow shed.
One could say the guild rose from the cow droppings.
Pete always claimed he started the Thieves’ Guild, but it was really his lover—a dwarven woman by the name of Quick-hand Bet—who is credited with being the founder. “Thieves fall out” is an old saying and, as the city grew larger and wealthier, the thieves in Palanthas were falling out on a regular basis. They would often find themselves ransacking a house that had been ransacked the night previous or, as happened on one noteworthy occasion, three separate groups of burglars showed up to burgle the same lord’s mansion at t
he same time. This resulted in a brawl among the thieves, which roused the household. The lord and his servants captured the lot, shut them in the wine cellar, and hanged them the next morning. Cat Pete was, unfortunately, among their number and is said to have fought like a fiend before his end, though records indicate he collapsed in a blubbering heap at the foot of the scaffold and had to be hauled up the stairs by the scruff of his neck.
Following this disaster, Quick-hand Bet called together as many cut-purses, cut-throats, and pickpockets as she could persuade to come out of hiding and gave them a rousing speech. It would be far better, she said, for them to pool their talents, stake out territory, divide the spoils, and not tread on each other’s toes. They had all seen the bodies of their comrades swinging on the gibbets. The thieves agreed, and they were never sorry.
The Thieves’ Guild proved such a success that more and better talent made its way to Palanthas. Through intelligent leadership, the guild prospered. Its members established bylaws and codes of conduct, to which all who joined the guild ascribed. The guild received a share of every thief’s spoils and, in return, offered training, alibis that would occasionally stand up in court, and hiding places when the lord’s men were on the prowl.
The guild’s current headquarters was an abandoned warehouse inside the city wall, near the docks. Here the thieves had thrived for years with impunity. The Lord of Palanthas would make, on a regular basis, a promise to the citizenry that he would shut down the Thieves’ Guild. On periodic occasions throughout the year, the city guards would raid the warehouse. The guild’s spies always knew when the guard would be coming. The guard always found an empty warehouse on its arrival. The lord would tell the citizens that the Thieves’ Guild was out of business. The citizens, accustomed to this, continued to bolt and lock their doors at night and stoically count their losses the next morning.
Truth be told, the citizens of Palanthas—though they detested the thieves—were rather proud of their Thieves’ Guild. The ordinary money-grubbing burgher, whose inflated prices robbed people on a much smaller scale, could complain about it loudly. Young girls dreamed of the handsome, daring highwayman they would rescue, with their love, from a life of crime. The Palanthas citizenry looked down upon lesser towns that had no Thieves’ Guild. They spoke with disdain of such cities as Flotsam, whose thieves were unorganized and—it was felt—of generally a much lower class than the Palanthas thieves. The Palanthians were fond of recounting stories of the noble burglar who, upon entering the house of the poor widow to rob her, was so struck by her woeful plight that he actually left money behind. Poor widows of Palanthas would have had occasion to dispute this tale, but no one asked them.
Dragons of Summer Flame Page 32