area. He flinched at the sound of Dearlyn’s contention. “I only hope it’s not too late,” he added. He turned to face them both. “I was attacked earlier tonight,” he informed the halfling.
“What?” Wotfirr burbled in outrage.
“He wanted to come here directly,” Dearlyn told Gheevy, looking at Pryce with concern. “But I insisted on treating his wound.”
Pryce touched his head gingerly. “For which, once again, I thank you, but the injury is not as important as why I was attacked.”
“And why was that?” Gheevy inquired.
“Whoever assaulted me wanted me to lead him, her, or it to Geerling’s workshop.”
The halfling sat up straight. The wonders inherent in that statement were almost too much for him to completely comprehend. To the halfling, the man standing before him was a magicless vagabond who had discovered two corpses and had no idea where Geerling Ambersong’s workshop was. But to Dearlyn, the mage’s daughter, he was a great wizard and hero who had been given the Ambersong legacy instead of her, and a man who knew all there was to know about the workshop.
Keeping all those characters straight in the space of one burrow was going to take concentration indeedconcentration the addled halfling just couldn’t quite muster at the moment.
“Geerling… you know… but who… why…?”
Pryce waved his hands in front of his face, seemingly batting away all of Gheevy’s sputterings. “We have no time for this,” he said. “I think Teddington Fullmer set me up. I think he knocked me out, and I think that even now he’s trying to make off with Geerling Ambersong’s fortune!”
‘Trying… Geerling Ambersong’s…” Gheevy echoed. “Then what are you doing here?”
“We need your help, my friend.”
“My help?” the halfling marveled. “But”
“Please!” Pryce pleaded to the low ceiling. “No more questions! Just get on your best grotto-crawling clothes and follow me!”
“So you think the secret workshop is somewhere down here?” the halfling whispered.
The three made their cautious way down the tunnel behind Schreders’s restaurant. The halfling held aloft a small illumination orb, which gave off just enough light to keep them from tripping or stumbling into anything. A standard torch would have filled the low, narrow cave with blinding, choking smoke within seconds. The rest of the navigation came from Pryce’s memory.
Dearlyn held on to the hem of Darlington’s cloak several feet behind them, using her horsehair-topped staff as a walking stick. She was so intent on making her way and so deep in her own thoughts that Gheevy and Pryce could talk quietly at length… about very uncomfortable things.
“I’m certain of it,” Pryce whispered back. “Where else could it be?”
“Is there another entrance on the other side of the workshop somewhere outside the caves?”
Pryce shook his head. “I doubt it. With all the anxious inquisitrixes and hopeful mages searching everywhere, I think the only way to protect it was to hide it here, literally under their very noses.”
“Incredible,” Gheevy whispered in wonder. Then his voice grew very quiet. “But with all due respect, why bring her along?” he said, nodding back toward Dearlyn. “It was either that or steal her cloak.” “Steal her cloak?”
“Geerling Ambersong was a clever man. He wanted Darlington Blade and his daughter to work together as a team.”
The halfling looked up at Pryce skeptically. “Are you sure?”
Pryce fingered Darlington Blade’s cloak clasp, seemingly to relieve some of the tension now that Dearlyn was using it as a leash. “I’m sure of it.”
“How can you be?” Gheevy wondered aloud.
Pryce leaned close to whisper his explanation. ‘To prevent any other magician from entering his workshop, I believe he secured it with a mechanical lock.” He held up two fingers. “With two keys.”
‘Two? But…” The halfling got no further because Pryce was moving the cloak clasp so that it reflected light from the orb directiy into Gheevy’s eyes.
“Are you all right, Blade?” Dearlyn inquired quietly. “I’m not pulling too much, am I?”
Pryce smiled sagely and nodded his head toward the mage’s daughter. All the halfling could think of when he looked over at her was her cloak’s clasp. What Pryce was suggesting came to Wotfirr in a flash.
“No problem, Miss Ambersong,” Covington whispered back to her. “Watch your step.” He turned back to gaze into Gheevy’s perplexed, apprehensive face.
“Very well, then, but why me?” Gheevy wheezed. “Why am here?”p›
Pryce looked pained, and his reply was strained. “Come, come, Gheevy. Think! The mind behind all this is not that of a novice or apprentice. It must be a wizard of high rank.”
The truth of that statement dawned in the halfling, and suddenly his expression was infused with fear. What Pryce said next only made it worse.
“Everyone who worked with Geerling is dead. Maybe that’s why he refused to teach his daughter… because he knew that everyone who learned from him would be placed in grave danger.”
“But why?” Gheevy moaned quietly.
“I’m not sure. Maybe he took the teachings of Sante too seriously and started dabbling in forbidden arts. Only then, by the time he discovered that he had unleashed forces he couldn’t control, he was in too deep. Then all he could do was destroy himself or destroy others to cover his tracks. Who knows? All I do know is that I have to gain entrance to his workshop.”
“Blade, you must tell Dearlyn about all this.”
Pryce shook his head, happy that the gloom was too thick for her to see his tormented expression. “I can’t predict her reaction. The odds are too long.”
‘Then tell Inquisitrix Lymwich.”
“And risk her finding out who I am? No, thank you. She would have me enfeebled, or worse, disintegrated, out of pure spite.”
‘Then tell some inquisitrix!” Gheevy pleaded passionately. ‘We can’t face whoeveror whateveris in that workshop alone!’
Even though she couldn’t make out their words, Dearlyn couldn’t mistake the anxious tone of their voices any longer. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “What are you two talking about?”
Pryce stopped suddenly, and she nearly bumped into him. He took no pleasure in her proximity, however. “We’re getting close, Miss Ambersong,” he told her, refusing to acknowledge that he could also be talking about their emotional relationship as well. “And I must have your promise that, no matter what happens, you will put your faith in me.”
Her eyes seemed like bottomless pools in the light of the orb. “What… what is it you’re not telling me?” she whispered.
Pryce’s heart went out to her in her vulnerability and then sank at the depths of his deception. ‘There’s… there’s more to this than your father’s disappearance. I implore you to be ready for anything. There’s…”
But before he could go on, the huge misshapen head of a mongrelman moved into the illumination of the orb.
The halfling let out a shriek, tossed the orb into the air, then leapt behind the woman to cower behind her floor-length cloak. Dearlyn dropped her staff and began a spell. Pryce nimbly caught both the illumination orb and her staff as they fell, then used the pole to give her gesturing hands a sharp slap, disrupting her spell.
She looked up at him in surprise and numbly took back the staff he offered. She looked from it to him to the mongrelman, dumbfounded, then grasped her gardening implement tightly and assumed a defensive position, the tip pointing directly at the monster.
Pryce simply shook his head, daintily gripped the staff in two fingers, and raised it so he could step between Dearlyn and the mongrelman.
“It’s all right,” he assured the stunned woman. “He’s with me.”
Dearlyn stared at Pryce in amazement; then her expression changed to awe. Then they both realized that Gheevy was still cowering behind her, muttering.
Pryce quickly knelt down and gripped the halfling’s elbow with his free hand.
