Stopping, and squatting down over it, he peered all around, listening long and hard.
Silence. Stars glimmered, no breeze stirred… here on the edge of the high pasture overlooking the mouth of Starwater Gorge, high above Eveningstar, the night continued to pass, uncaring.
Abruptly Malbrand turned back to the rock, pushed it aside with his dagger, and sprang away to avoid any eruption, striking snake, or The stone rolled over, revealing more glowing writing: also nonsense, but small and close-packed, intricate nonsense. The war wizard peered at it, then picked it up to look at it more closely.
Still holding his breath, Maglor smiled in relief and satisfaction. The man had doomed himself.
Malbrand took up the parchment in his other hand and turned it over.
Which meant he was now, in the glow of the rock still in his other hand, reading the words Maglor had written there:
Die at the hands of one who has outwitted you all along, War Wizard fool. Maglor murders you.
The war wizard’s head came up sharply. Then he got to his feet-or tried to. Halfway up his limbs started to tremble and failed him, leaving Marbrand to topple helplessly onto his face in the trodden earth and old ashes.
The same poison was thick on the rock and on the parchment, and to someone who hadn’t imbibed the antidote, touching either meant death.
There was enough hardiclaw on either to slay a dozen war wizards.
The paralysis would have reached Malbrand’s lungs already, slowly suffocating him-but Maglor had gathered the stones to hurl, and he wanted to use them.
They thudded into the helpless mage’s head and shoulders with satisfying force; when he was done, the back of Malbrand’s head was far less shapely than before.
Chuckling, Maglor bent to pick up his satchel and the largest basin he owned.
It would take a lot of the concoction he’d have to mix now to dissolve the wizard’s body, and he might as well get started.
Just as soon as he’d harvested the eyes, tongue, brain, and heart, of course.
The door banged shut behind Doust, and Pennae reached out of the gloom by the wall to hand him the door- bar. He helped her to settle it into its cradles, puffing from the haste of his run, and look up at her to gasp, “What I… want to know… is how you knew to look for a second killer.”
“Good hired slayers work in pairs,” Pennae gasped in reply as they clung to the railings in Rhalseer’s unlit back stairwell together, trying to catch their breath.
“Oh?” Semoor looked shaken. “And how is it you know that?”
Pennae, still panting hard, stared at him without saying a word.
All around her, hard-breathing Swords waited.
For a reply that never came.
When it became clear she would say no more, Florin observed, from beside her, “I don’t believe you’ve ever told us anything specific about what you’ve done in your life, up until we met in Waymoot.”
She gave him a level look and said flatly, “No. I don’t believe I have.”
“It’s been a full tenday since Indar Crauldreth tried for them and failed. Are these Swords still looking for hired slayers around every corner and inside every shadow?”
“No,” the best of Varandrar’s spies replied. “They did for five or six nights, yes, but they’re young, and still think themselves nigh-invincible. Even the gravest of warnings fades fast at that age.”
“I remember,” Varandrar said. “My youth wasn’t all that many years ago, whitebeard!”
“Your words are heard and heeded, Lord,” Drathar replied.
Varandrar almost chuckled. Most Brotherhood mages he’d met were cruel, humorless men, only too eager to slay or maim underlings who so much as looked at them askance. They’d not have been able to coax a tenth of the loyalty out of any band of spies that Varandrar had managed to foster in his men.
For that reason, Varandrar, lacking the slightest ability to craft spells or even feel most magic, made money fist-over-gauntlet for the Zhentarim in Arabel, where wizards of higher rank and much higher opinions of themselves had met with swift disaster.
“Does anyone know who hired Crauldeth, anyhail?”
“No, Lord. Or rather, there are the usual twoscore wild rumors, none of them backed by much of anything.”
“And have the Swords crossed any of our men or doings?”
“No, Lord. The one called Florin-with the aid of the woman Islif Lurelake and the novice of Tymora, Doust Sulwood-is keeping them well-behaved and seeking work. Not that they’ve found any, yet. A few merchants need warehouses or their own bodies guarded, but they haven’t happened to meet with these adventurers yet. The Dragons are suspicious of them, of course, and the regular patrols are watching them, but the stalwarts have put only a few coin-hire lads to tailing the Swords thus far, rather than raising an alarm. They’re mindful of the fresh ink on the royal charter, I’d say; no one wants to be too quick to show the king he’s been a fool.”
Varandrar did chuckle, this time. “You say this Florin is keeping his fellow Swords in line; what then of the overbold thieving that drew your eye in the first place? Are these Swords learning caution, or-?”
“Ah. Aye. The lone exception to their good behavior is a lass hight Alura Durshavin, whom they call ‘Pennae.’ A thief of some daring, who’s thus far confined herself to emptying merchants’ bedchamber coffers and snatching the occasional haunch of roast boar, but seems to have an eye for larger and larger prizes as the days pass. So circumspect are the Swords that the Dragons haven’t yet connected them with the thefts-but if she goes on snatching like this, half Arabel is going to be looking for her, and when uproars start, outlanders tend to get blamed.”
“True. Well enough. It seems you have this well in hand, an-”
Varandrar stiffened, and as his speech faltered, his eyes momentarily rolled up in his head.
Drathar drew back in alarm, making the swift ‘Mask be with me’ gesture to ward off fell magic or peril-but by the time he’d done it, Varandrar had reeled and relaxed again, his eyes his own and his voice as steady as before.
“-and I’d caution you in only one matter: pay no attention to the Swords Agannor Wildsilver or Bey Freemantle. You are to watch only the others.”
In the bright depths of the scrying orb, the last of the spies could be seen filing out. Varandrar waved a friendly farewell to Drathar, who closed the door.
Leaving Varandrar alone again.
Horaundoon smiled and ended his spell.
The orb showed the Zhentarim trading lord reeling again, and looking bewildered.
Hmm. Not a mage at all, yet the man had a more sensitive mind than most. Merely withdrawing from it left him like that, hey?
Perhaps Horaundoon of the Zhentarim needed to recruit a dozen Varandrars of his own.
The figure came out of the night like a flitting shadow, landing on the moonlit roof of Rhalseer’s rooming house with the softest of footfalls.
Florin let her gain her balance and draw in a calming breath or two before he uncoiled himself from the shadow of the tumbledown wreck of Rhalseer’s cluster of aging chimneys.
Her knife came out in less time than it took her to hiss and back into a crouch, ready for battle.
“Pennae,” he said, “ ’tis me. Put the blade away; I mean no harm. I only want to talk.”
“You waited up here for me?”
“It seems so.”
“Why?”
“I very much need to know some things. Before ’tis too late, and the questions I’ll ask gently will be roared at you-at us all-by many furious Purple Dragons, as we hang in chains in the darkest cell they have.”
Pennae sighed. “You want to know all about my lurid past.”
“Just the jailings, and the crimes you’re still sought for. If any, of course. Oh, and what folk say about you. And where they say it: the realms, the cities…”
“Of my notoriety?” Pennae sounded amused. Sheathing her blade, she went to the three-board-wide walkway that crowned the peak of the roof, hard by the chimneys, and sat down, beckoning Florin to sit beside her.
He did, and they stared at each other in the moonlight for a breath or two, arms clasped around knees, elbows touching.
