The City of Splendors

by Ed Greenwood

  “I can’t believe this,” Naoni murmured. “Never once has Lark stolen from us—not so much as a honey cake! Why would she lie about Lord Hawkwinter’s charm?”

  “She spoke truth, just not the whole truth. Betimes what’s left unsaid means more than what’s uttered.”

  Naoni gnawed on her lip. “I know of some suitable halflings. If you’ve coin enough, let’s go hire them right now—one to follow Lark, the other Beldar.”

  “I do, and thank you. ’Tis vital we retrieve the slipshield before anyone learns its secrets.”

  Naoni set off at a brisk pace, and Korvaun fell into step beside her. After a few strides, she said wistfully, “I hope you’re wrong about Lark.”

  “So do I,” he replied.

  And while we’re hoping, he thought grimly, let’s hope all of Waterdeep’s wrong about Elaith Craulnober.

  Returning to The High House of Roaringhorn in his dirty, bloodied state had been surprisingly easy, once Beldar decided to swagger along with his sword half-drawn and his hand on its hilt. He’d greeted the curious stares of Watchmen and Roaringhorn servants alike with nods and grimly satisfied smiles, and passed on his way leaving them whispering and wondering.

  In fact, life was surprisingly easy, he concluded grimly, when expectations were low. Men like him were a source of gossip and inconvenience. Fortunately, it was the nature of humankind that folk enjoyed the former sufficiently to consider the latter a fair price for their entertainment. The Watch would make inquiries into duels fought that night, and the House servants would inform the steward that some sort of financial amends would likely need to be made on the morrow. In short, business as bloody usual.

  By the time Beldar reached his room, his head was throbbing, and the burning in his new eye made him long to tear it from his head. He ached all over, and no wonder. Each garment he shed revealed new bruises.

  Gazing regretfully at his ever-handy decanters, Beldar went to one end of the sideboard, unlocked the hidden compartment there, and downed a healing potion.

  It snatched away his headache in the time it took him to pad to his waiting bath. Ah, a long, warm soak! Sorbras was worth every last shiny dragon the Roaringhorns paid him …

  The waters did nothing to ease his mind nor banish his restlessness, and Beldar lingered only long enough to scrub himself clean. Dripping his way back to his bedchamber, he found his bed far less inviting than he’d expected.

  Bone-deep exhausted he might be, but something within him was driving him on; he had to be out there again, in the night.

  Seeking … danger, perhaps. Well, hadn’t Roaringhorns been famous battle-lions of old, and was he not a Roaringhorn? No battle was ever won, and no lands ruled, by a man languidly counting his bruises in a scented bath.

  He’d need boots on his feet for the streets and something above them more suitable than an open-fronted, swirling chamber-robe. Beldar padded barefoot to his robing-rooms.

  He had no spell-spurning talisman to replace the one the half-dragon had destroyed, but he refilled his gem-pouch and selected his grandest “dashing yet refined bladesman of action” garb. Crimson shirt, breeches fashioned of red and black, black tunic … the eyepatches he’d ordered had been delivered, and Beldar selected one that bore a stylized lightning bolt across its darkness. Dashingly overbold, but it suited his mood.

  His gemcloak was as bright and unwrinkled as if he’d never worn it. Beldar settled it around his shoulders in all its ruby splendor. Folk were beginning to know him in the streets by its striking hue; the notoriety he’d long sought was his at last.

  Yet notoriety was a poor substitute for destiny. Small wonder he’d snatched so eagerly at the first chance at fulfilling the Dathran’s prophecy. He touched his eyepatch lightly; yes, he’d quite literally ‘mingled himself with monsters.’ The Dathran had promised such a mingling would be the beginning of his path to greatness. She’d also said he’d be a deathless warrior and a leader of men.

  Beldar smiled grimly at his reflection in the tall robing room mirrors—a smile that froze when a grim thought smote him: The Dathran had said nothing about the sort of men he’d lead nor the nature of his great and unknown destiny. Did not scoundrels require leaders more than honest men? Had he taken his first step to lordship over rogues and villains?

  Frowning, he swept down the back stairs and out into the street. He knew not what he sought, aside from trouble. He’d welcome another chance at that half-dragon—or Hoth, for that matter. And this time, he’d fight his own battle!

  “I am Beldar Roaringhorn,” he proclaimed in a self-mocking murmur as he turned a corner, hand on hilt, “and ’twere best, m’lord, if you feared me.”

  A Watchman lounging in the lee of a greathouse gate-pillar waiting for a certain personage to obligingly step out of that gate to be arrested, overheard that murmur, and rolled his eyes before carefully not smiling. Young idiot.

  He would have been more than surprised to know that for all his grandly carefree air, Beldar Roaringhorn agreed with his assessment.

  Not knowing this, the Watchman had to settle for being surprised to notice a halfling in leathers the hue of mottled gray stone—and with hair to match—stroll along the street after Beldar, pausing briefly here and there to admire carved faces on pillars and grand ornaments on iron gates, but glancing repeatedly at the young noble.

  A bit old and small for a cudgel-thief. Ah, but perhaps the elder Roaringhorns had hired a “vigilant eye” to see where their young lance went and what he got up to … yes, that must be it.

  It must be pleasant to have coins to waste on such matters. Heh, if he came into gold, he’d find better uses for it! Fine horses, hunting hounds, perhaps a lodge on the verges of Ardeepforest where he’d guest friends for days a-hunt and nights of loud, laughing revelry. Warm fires, games of dice and cards, plenty of sizzling roasts and cold ale to wash them down with—and pretty lasses to serve it all, aye!

  He went on thinking such thoughts long after his memories of Beldar Roaringhorn’s passage faded.

  Sun or starlight, Waterdeep never slept. Beldar’s aimless stroll had taken him into Castle Ward and past the Palace, where the hurrying throngs were always thickest. The streets were busier than usual, but as he turned into Sea Ward, he looked back, as was his wont, to admire the lamplit Palace, standing forth proudly from the rocky flank of Mount Waterdeep.

  Descending its magnificent stone, his gaze fell upon a small, gray-clad figure. Nothing unusual about an aging halfling walking a street in Waterdeep; as Taeros never failed to observe, they were scarcely in short supply.

  Ha ha. Yet when he turned a corner nigh Myarvan the Minstrel’s gaudy mansion, glanced idly back again, and saw the same halfling, Beldar grew thoughtful.

  He knew no hin personally—not beyond nodding and handing coins to those who worked in shops he frequented. Beldar was obviously armed and just as obviously young and strong, so no skulk-thief would think him easy prey.

  Easily spotted, yes, and thus easily known. Moreover, known to the gossips of Waterdeep as an idle young blade, not the Roaringhorn heir, and hence worth no ransom, nor likely to be carrying serious coin. So this was a spy rather than a thief … but for whom? Who had reason to follow Beldar Roaringhorn?

  Who but Golskyn of the Gods and his surly son?

  Hmmm. The most likely culprits, yes, but they’d hire no halfling. Their sneak-eyes would be a human with some beast claw or tail hidden under-cloak.

  Well, he’d take an unusual route and so make certain this was a spy.

  Beldar turned onto one of the paths—stairs, actually—cut into the flank of the mountain, ascending to the City wall. Too narrow and windswept to be used by the Guard, who had their own tunnels inside the mountain, safe from winter sleet and summer storms, this sparsely lamplit way was mostly used by folk desiring to hold long conversations in relative privacy, such as shady traders and lovers. Thankfully, there seemed to be a shortage of both at the moment.

  Perhaps a hundred
steps up, Beldar stopped and looked back. The small gray figure was right behind him, hurrying now that concealment was impossible.

  Beldar came back down the steps to meet his shadow. “You have business with me?”

  The halfling’s reply was to hurl a small cloth bag at Beldar’s face—a bag that flew open as it came, spilling sand in a flurry intended to blind. Beldar leaped up and back, catching his heel on the next step and almost falling as he came down hard.

  A second bag was already bursting blindingly across his gaze, its onrushing hurler behind it.

  Beldar raced a few steps higher, whirled as he snatched down his eyepatch—and glared at the hin.

  The running halfling faltered. Beldar drew his sword from its scabbard and took another careful step up and back, his eyes never leaving the halfling’s face.

  That face wore a deepening horror now, staring back at him with eyes going wild. Suddenly, the hin whirled to flee.

  Beldar flung his sword under the blur of gray boots, and the little spy crashed to the steps, bouncing with a loud gasp.

  Beldar sprang down the stair like a hungry wind. Before the hin could roll to its feet, the Roaringhorn seized a gray shoulder, clawed the winded spy over, and glared into the sharp-nosed, paling face.

  A small hand tried to snatch at a belt-dagger, but Beldar was ready for that and slapped it away, hard.

  Winds rose around them as the man and the halfling stared into each other’s eyes—Beldar smiling grimly as the hungry warmth arose in him … and the halfling sagging into slack-jawed darkness as Beldar’s beholder eye worked its wounding magic.

  “Who are you working for?” Beldar snarled, pinning the spy against the steps and thrusting his head forward until their noses were almost touching. “What were you after? My life?”

  “N-nay,” the dying halfling whispered. “Something you stole, high and mighty lorrrr …”

  That last word became a gurgling rattle, and the flickering light in those doomed eyes faded.

  Leaving Beldar Roaringhorn holding a dead halfling on the side of Mount Waterdeep in a cold, rising breeze—and uncomfortably aware of the City Guard lookouts somewhere above and behind him and the watching city spread out below.

  Stunned, Beldar cradled the body of the hin as if comforting a chilled friend.

  He’d just murdered someone. In the space of a few breaths. A stranger, who didn’t seem to be carrying anything more than two daggers—just small knives, for all their wicked sharpness. Someone trying to recover something he, Beldar, had stolen?

  That made no sense. The gauth whose eye he now possessed was dead, sliced into dozens of bloody cantels to yield up eyes and innards to the Amalgamation. Beyond that, Beldar couldn’t think of anything he’d taken, beyond a few kisses at the Slow Cheese, before …

  Before everything had fallen, and Malark had died.

  Beldar shivered and thrust the halfling away from him. Head lolling, the body started to topple. In sudden horror Beldar caught hold of it and arranged it hastily in a lounging position on the steps. The head lolled over again.

  He put it back in a reasonably lifelike pose, and it slowly lolled to one side. Again.

  Sickened, Beldar stood up, fetched his fallen sword, and hurried on up the steps, trembling in revulsion. He’d just done murder.

  So swiftly, so easily.

  “Gods,” he whispered aloud to the wind, “what have I become?”

  Behind and below him was a city full of mages and priests who could snatch secrets from the newly dead, Watchmen who arrested murdering young lords, and black-robed Magisters who pronounced sentence with the full force of Waterdeep’s laws …

  As he came up onto the City wall—deserted here, with no guardpost near—Beldar realized he’d been whispering his question over and over.

  He clapped a hand to his beholder eye. It was magical—and all too powerful: Its wounding magic could slay. An appendage of his, now, and not the other way around.

  Right?

  It felt warm, and—though he knew this was impossible—larger than his entire head. Hastily Beldar slipped his eyepatch up into place.

  The world seemed to shift slightly, some of the color going out of it. Beldar stumbled, reeled, and muttered, “What in the name of all the Watching Gods is happening to me?”

  He strode a few paces, passing a dark dome beyond the battlements: the top of the great stone head of one of the Walking Statues of Waterdeep. It stood in its niche below the wall-walk, staring blindly out to sea.

  Staring blindly. Beldar almost envied it.

  Something warm and dangerous stirred behind his eyepatch. The dead hin would soon be found; he must get down off this wall in all haste.

  No, that was craven … unworthy. He’d done what he’d done, and must face the consequences.

  But a fierce voice rose within him, filling his head and spilling out of his mouth. “Move,” Beldar muttered. “Get you gone, idiot! Move!”

  Just ahead, the next Walking Statue stirred.

  Beldar’s heart jumped. The Guard had seen his crime! They were causing the Statue to turn and smash him, right here!

  “Turn around, blast it all!” he snarled. Must run …

  The Statue turned and settled back into its niche.

  Beldar gaped.

  Staring at it in bewilderment, he found himself wondering just what it was that looked different about this Statue.

  Oh. This was the Sahuagin Statue.

  He’d see its cruel, monstrous stone face more clearly if it turned a bit that way …

  Obediently, with a few grating sounds as it brushed against the mountainside, the titanic stone sahuagin turned to show him its profile.

  For a long time Beldar Roaringhorn stood as still as the Statues along the wall he stood on, as the wind whistled past and chilled him thoroughly.

  He’d become someone important, after all. The voice commanding the Walking Statues of Waterdeep was coming from his own mind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The sky was fading from black to sapphire as Elaith Craulnober strode up the mountainside, his mood as foul as the cold, damp seawind blowing into his face.

  He was in Waterdeep, gods cry all! Not Evermeet, not even Suldanessellar. He should have no lord’s duties here, not in this noisy, stinking pile of humans and their coins!

  Yes, he’d been born noble and raised as a royal ward. Yes, he’d honed skills bright enough to merit command in the royal guard. Yes, he’d been betrothed to a princess of Evermeet—and yes, he was heir to the Craulnober moonblade.

  There it all ended. Hadn’t he done enough dark work by now to break with all of that?

  It must be bred into his bones, this sense of duty. Why else would the slipshields trouble him? Amnestria’s ring told him when and where they were used, and slipshield magic—elven magic—had recently been flitting about Waterdeep like starving will o’ the wisps rushing to mass drowning.

  Though it irked, a few humans could be trusted with such power: oh-so-noble Piergeiron, and even that fat blusterer Mirt. The moneylender might resemble a walrus and outmass a boar, but his wits were almost elder-elf shrewd. Almost.

  But now the latest litter of untrained noble whelps held not one, but two slipshields. This was intolerable.

  It was also dangerous. They were empty-wits, a flock of bright-feathered, squawking goslings, prancing about blithely and brainlessly unaware that one among them was running with foxes.

  How such a reckless fool as Beldar Roaringhorn had managed to acquire a beholder’s eye of wounding was bewildering, but whoever was behind that transformation had sent slayers to defend the witless Roaringhorn against the fangs of the Serpent.

  That was more than intolerable. Tincheron had gone missing in that battle in Elaith’s service, and half-dragons grew not on trees.

  Some Craulnobers had been dragon-riders. Matings of dragon and rider brought instant shame, and any offspring were outcast. Elaith had only ever heard of one during his lifetime�
��the one he’d sought out and befriended, Tincheron. Their long seasons of working together had built Elaith’s greatest treasure: trust.

  Tincheron would be found, or avenged.

  The young noble stood on the city wall gawking down at the Walking Statues like a raw country dullard seeing something larger than his own barn for the very first time.

  Marvelous. Not only was young Roaringhorn a fool and a careless waster of magic—really, dispatching an aging halfling with wounding magic when a knife-thrust would do—but, judging by his slack-jawed stupor, he was also a drunkard.

  “Lord Beldar,” he snapped.

  The human spun around. His uncovered left eye—the remaining human one—stared at Elaith alertly enough.

  Good. Not drunk, and judging by his expression, sober enough to be insulted by anyone not a close friend using his title and his first name together.

  “I am Lord Beldar Roaringhorn,” the lordling replied with dignity, putting hand to hilt.

  Another insult, but at least the lad had sense enough to know when he faced a foe. Elaith smiled. “Men of your birth are, in Waterdeep, necessarily men of business. I’ve a shared venture to propose.”

  Roaringhorn’s visible eye narrowed. “I think not,” he replied flatly. “Roaringhorn interests couldn’t possibly coincide with your affairs.”

  “Words a trifle grand for one five generations removed from reavers and horse thieves, but let it pass. You’ve a problem, Beldar Roaringhorn, and I a solution. In exchange for it, there’s a small service you could do me.”

  Remarkably, the noble was managing to school his face into unreadable calm. “What problem might that be?”

  “Dead halflings litter the streets so, don’t they?”