'And they told you?'
'That you were the best, bar none. One or two of the ladies went so far as to underscore that their testimonial applied in several ways.'
Marlel gave the Cult warrior his crooked smile again and said, 'But of course.'
Thoadrin cleared his throat. 'You've probably guessed why I'm here.'
Marlel shrugged. 'I try never to guess. I'm, here because the Cult of the Dragon pays me a retainer of far too many gems each month for me to ignore a summons from anyone claiming to be a member of the Cult. Moreover, my keep-confidence Scornubrian sources tell me you're highly placed in. the ranks of the practical side of the Cult-the men who invest coins and watch and deal with the passing world, rather than the raving spellhurlers and those who writhe about in dragonbones, lost in raptures. So here I am, confident that you've a task of importance for me.'
The Dark Blade of Doom glanced around the tiny turret room and out its lone door past the crossed glaives of the impassive guards standing to each side of that entry, past the second pair of glaives held by the matching pair of guards on the other side of the door-and into the hard stare of the guard with the loaded crossbow, who stood beyond the glaive-bearers, facing into the room. 'Unless all this tavern-tale stuff, to borrow a phrase,' he added lightly, 'is your habitual style when meeting slayers-for-hire, Thoadrin.'
The Cult warrior sighed, raised his large and ornate goblet to his lips, and said, 'Say that it isn't, so that you have made a judgment-a guess, if you will. Say further that you're in a strange mood and desire to try to guess, for once, at what task I've come so far to hire you for. What would your guess be?'
Marlel regarded Thoadrin impassively for a very short moment of silence ere he said firmly, 'Spellfire.'
The Cult warrior nodded but said nothing.
The Dark Blade of Doom smiled thinly, then leaned back in his chair, brought languid booted legs up onto the tabletop, crossed them, and said softly, 'The lass who has it is coming this way. You want me to capture her for you sometime while she's passing within reach. You're going to offer me a staggering amount in gems for delivering this Shandril Shessair into your hands-bound and senseless or spell-thralled.'
Thoadrin lifted his eyebrows. 'For someone who tries never to guess, you do it very well.'
Marlel shrugged. 'I do everything very well.'
Thoadrin of the Cult made a face, but it might have been the wine. He set his goblet back down and asked, 'Do you accept this task?'
'Of course. However, feel free to awe me with your offer of payment.'
Thoadrin lifted his fingers in a signal to the guard with the crossbow, who relayed it to someone unseen without taking his eyes off the two men at the table for a moment.
Overhead, there was a sudden rattling sound-that became a clacking of wooden things in motion.
'Try,' Thoadrin told the slayer-for-hire, 'to avoid any tavern-tale remarks for the next few breaths, hey?'
The Dark Blade of Doom waved a hand in agreement. 'You're paying,' he said simply-as the winch let go in earnest and the bundle from the next floor came down at their heads like hail being hurled in a storm.
It bounced in its net of ropes, just above the tabletop- Thoadrin hastily rescued his goblet-and came to a stop in the air between their eyes: a coffer of ornate, chased electrum, a trio of keys projecting from its row of tiny locks.
Thoadrin waved at it, but Marlel shook his head and gestured to the Cult warrior to fetch it out of the ropes himself. 'I never meddle with another man's traps,' he explained.
The Cult warrior frowned and lifted the coffer out onto the table. With a flourish he threw back the lid and turned the coffer until the slayer could see the gleaming heap of cold crimson fire within.
'Calishite rubies of the finest cut and clarity,' he explained, for all the world as if he was a jeweler hawking stones from a market stall. 'A thousand of them in this coffer.'
'Tis but half, yes? The balance to come when the task is done?'
Thoadrin smiled a little weakly. 'Of course. As is standard in… matters like this.'
Marlel smiled his crooked smile. “You can omit the other standard feature of such payments: the attempt to slay the man collecting them. I'm sure you had no such intention, but just as fair warning: don't. Ever. For I am the Dark Blade of Doom.'
Thoadrin of the Cult inclined his head and said simply, 'No such treachery is contemplated, or will be.'
'And the other practice I regard as treachery?' Marlel asked. 'Hiring someone else to attempt the same task while I'm under hire? Or to cut me down after I make capture but before I can bring the captive to you?'
The Cult warrior scowled. 'I'm not accustomed to enacting such fool-headed business practices. They might work for someone who knows he'll be dead on the morrow-but not for me. I intend to be spinning coins for the Followers thirty years from now.'
'Understood.' Marlel slid a folded armorweave sack out of one leg-pouch, and tipped the coffer until its shining flood of rubies began to flow into the sack. 'I hope you'll not take offense if I leave you your valuable coffer and take the rubies away in this.'
'None taken,' Thoadrin replied, raising his goblet again in smoothly steady hands. 'I do have one professional question, though.'
Marlel raised his eyebrows in silent query.
'How do you plan to… get the deed done?'
The Cult warrior sounded genuinely curious. The Dark Blade of Doom smiled his crooked smile and answered, 'With, among other things, this.'
He held out one lazy, long-fingered hand. In it gleamed something small, curved, and silver: a Harper badge.
There was a moment of chill blue mists, with nothing beneath their boots and the sensation of softly, endlessly falling… then the light changed around them, and small stones scraped solidly under their boots amid scrub grass. They were standing in unfamiliar wilderlands, gazing out from a hilltop across rolling hills beyond number, those ahead and to the right crowned by ragged forests.
'You're looking north,' Tessaril murmured from beside Shandril's shoulder. 'If you go north, on that road down there-' she pointed off to the left with her drawn sword at a distant ribbon of ruts, whereon a line of wagons could be seen crawling, like so many fat white ants '-the ferry to Scornubel is less than half a day from here.' She turned and pointed in another direction with her blade. 'If you go down from these heights that way, following the brook, you won't be seen from afar. Stay on this side of the water, and it'll take you right down to the ditch beside the road.'
The two fat priestesses of Chauntea who stood with the Lord of Eveningstar exchanged glances, then looked back at Tessaril and nodded in unison.
'Take the ferry,' one of them murmured, 'and find The Stormy Tankard on Hethbridle Street. Ask there for Orthil Voldovan and join his caravan to Waterdeep. In Waterdeep, go to Altarea's Needles, a waterproofing and seamstress shop in Dock Ward, and ask for 'the old Lady who does the pearls.''
Tessaril nodded. 'Right, Thaerla.'
'Uh, 'tis me, Narm, an-'
'Thaerla. Until your disguise is gone, 'Thaerla.' You don't answer to Narm, and if someone calls 'Narm' in the street, you don't answer or turn to look. Got that?'
'Y-yes, of course, Lady.'
'Good. Now, there's one other thin-oh, Narm!”
'Yes?'
'Thaerla, you idiot wizard. You're a priestess from Eveningstar called Thaerla, and you've never heard the name 'Narm' before.' Tessaril turned. 'Olarla?'
'That would be me,' Shandril said in amused tones. 'Is it you, Lady Lord of Eveningstar? Here to see the Sword Coast lands, after all these years? Right here on…' she turned to survey the tall, dark standing stones all around them on the grassy hilltop and dropped her mocking tone to ask curiously, 'What is this place, anyway?'
'Tsarn Tombs,' Tessaril told her, 'or Sarn Tombs, to some. An old burial place that serves as a landmark and sometimes a lookout when caravans come through with outriders to spare for the scramble up here.'
'What trouble would they be looking out for?'
