Narantha believed in him, and had been happily spreading mindworms to nobles of his choosing far faster than Horaundoon could ever have ah, wormed his way into their towers, mansions, and the shapes of their most trusted servants or mistresses.
Creth, Huntinghorn, Ammaeth, and now Blacksilver-this was almost too easy.
The stink of rotting fish was sickening.
Lord Crownsilver thrust the lantern forward to almost touch the worn, much-pitted stone. The paint was both faint and flaking, but in the lanternlight they could clearly see the curl-tailed hippogriff sigil.
“This is the place,” he grunted. Passing the lantern to the cloaked and hooded figure who stood in the midst of their three hulking bodyguards, he nodded curtly to the nearest boldblade.
That brute was a bald and much-scarred warrior whose name Maniol had forgotten for the moment. A head taller than his lord and master, he strode silently forward, his plain black war-harness bristling with blades, spikes, and skull-shatter knobs, and thrust the closed door open.
His two fellows had already stepped swiftly in front of their noble charges, but nothing erupted out of the revealed darkness beyond the door, or fell or fired at the boldblade who’d opened it.
Lord and Lady Crownsilver would have chosen safer and more pleasant surroundings than the Scaletail Door- if they’d had any say in the choosing. Swallowing, Maniol Crownsilver reclaimed the lantern and trudged reluctantly forward, seeing stone walls slick with wet slime ahead. The way was narrow, and after a few paces ended in worn steps descending into dripping, noisome darkness with crude handholds scooped out of the rock.
“You will wait for us,” Lady Crownsilver reminded the boldblades icily, “until dawn. Then one of you will remain to watch this door, and the other two bring back all of our house blades to forthwith go down yon stair and find us, slaying everyone who stands in your way. Everyone. ”
She glared at them until she’d collected slow nods from all three, and only then stepped forward into the passage, unhooding as she went.
“I am less than pleased with this, Maniol,” she hissed.
Her lord stood waiting at the head of the stairs, hand on sword hilt. “The slayer’s of your choosing,” he muttered. “Blame me not for this place of his choosing.”
“Take your hand off your sword,” Jalassa Crownsilver snapped, the bite in her voice warning him to say no more about choices of her making. “ ’Tis useless in so close-confined a way. Draw your dagger.”
Her husband obeyed with an angry flourish and set off cautiously down the stair. “Take care, wife,” he commented. Maniol only dared address her thus when he was too angry-or afraid-to care about consequences. “The way is wet.”
Seething in silence, Lady Crownsilver followed her lord, down into unknown cellars, somewhere in Marsember. With every step the air grew colder and the smell of dead fish faded, being replaced by a strange seaweed smell: a smell of living weed rather than the rotting shore-tang she was familiar with. With every reluctant step, Jalassa liked her decision less and less.
Indar Crauldreth might be the best assassin in Marsember, and might have lived to acquire that reputation by such one-sided precautions, but she hated to be groping in the unknown, bodyguards and magic left behind her. Crauldreth insisted on much. Why could he not deal with a Crownsilver agent? After all, lawful or not, this was still business…
The narrow stair ended in a much larger, many-pillared place, everything black-green and glistening. An old storage cellar, that flooded too often for anyone sensible to use it for storage.
The rusty ends of many ladders protruded down into it, here and there, descending through narrow chutes from unseen buildings above. There were ends of pipes, too, dozens of them, gaping ovals like so many hungry maws of eels.
Lord Crownsilver came to an uneasy halt. “I see no red shield.”
“The floor, Maniol, shine the lantern on the floor. D’you expect it to be hanging from a pillar in front of your nose?”
Her husband let out an angry hiss and took a few reluctant steps off to his right, then returned to head left about the same distance. Then, with a shrug that set the lantern swinging crazily, he forged on ahead another dozen paces or so and repeated his side forays. This time, they ended in a bark of: “Aha!”
Lady Crownsilver hurried to stand with him, and gazed down at a red shield, about the size of her smallest personal carriage, painted on the floor. Someone had washed the slime and mold away from it, to leave its worn paint standing forth clearly from the surrounding “Put the lantern on the floor,” a cold voice came to them, sounding as if it came from right at their elbows; both Crownsilvers jumped. “And put your dagger away, Maniol Crownsilver. I don’t want you to cut yourself and bleed to death before you can pay my fee.”
Lord Crownsilver fumbled to obey, almost dropping the lantern. His lady went cold as she realized that if darkness descended, she had no way of finding the steps back up. She whirled around, found them, and planted herself facing them, hissing, “Get well back from the lantern, Maniol.”
“I’m a busy man,” the voice told them. “So who am I to kill for you?”
It could be coming down any of these pipes-which weren’t for water or pouring grain at all, Lady Crownsilver realized: they were speaking tubes that had once carried orders from the buildings above down into this place, where cargo was stored.
“One Florin Falconhand, of the Swords of Eveningstar chartered company.” Lord Crownsilver, to his lady’s disgust, was unable to keep a quaver of fear out of his voice.
“An adventurer,” the unseen assassin said. “This will be expensive.”
“How much, Crauldreth?” Lady Crownsilver snapped.
“About three times as much as I’d accept for killing either of you, ” came the cold reply.
Lord Maniol Crownsilver went pale and started to shake.
Lady Jalassa caught sight of his movements as he started to peer this way and that, darting swift and futile glances into the gloom all around.
Without turning her head to look at her husband, Lady Jalassa slapped him and snapped crisply, “Stop that.”
Then she lifted her head and asked the unseen Crauldreth, “How much?”
Sarhthor of the Zhentarim hadn’t lived this long by being stupid. He often walked the Stonelands north of Starwater Gorge to choose spots to teleport to in future-and he brought himself to one of those locales now, rather than to the chamber where the most successful of his underlings should be waiting for him.
Whisper was becoming just a bit too ambitious to be trusted. In the slightest.
Standing on the flat rock he’d remembered, surrounded on three sides by a natural rampart of taller boulders, Sarhthor gazed south into Cormyr.
Not far away, under the sharp-edged rock ridges in front of him, lay the ancient and undead-haunted burial catacombs long known as Whisper’s Crypt; the wizard Whisper had taken his Zhentarim name from them, rather than what was now his lair being named after him.
Whisper was an energetic sort. He’d done far more than taming a part of the perilous crypt to be his abode. He’d found some of the ancient automatons, constructs, and colossi in those tombs and other Netherese crypts of the Stonelands, and awakened them to walk, fly, and slay at his bidding.
Yes, Whisper was becoming formidable, with schemes of his own and an increasing ability to enact them.
Sarhthor took the time to cast not one but two snatch-fetch spells to shimmer and spin about himself before teleporting himself into the crypt. Any metal seeking to pierce or fall through those fields would be vaporized, and almost any spell striking it would be twisted into making the fields stronger. Moreover, either snatch-fetch could be commanded to snatch Sarhthor back from the crypt to this rock.
Sarhthor carefully wedged a vial between two of the great rampart rocks, covering it with a small stone shard. If he should need healing in a hurry…
He cast the teleport, knew the usual eerie moment of falling through endless vivid blue mists, and found himself standing in the spot he’d chosen last time: at the head of three shallow steps, in the passage Whisper liked to use to descend into his spellcasting chamber.
Whisper’s back was just ahead of him, and Sarhthor permitted himself a tight smile as he padded down the passage in his underling’s wake. He let Whisper take one stride out into the spellcasting chamber and look toward the cleared area where Sarhthor of the Zhentarim was supposed to appear-an area, he noted, where Whisper
