Lanterns and candles had crashed down everywhere to start little leaping fires, and their flickering glows showed Lord Hawkwinter a swaying, swinging chaos of ropes and beams. Smoke was rolling and eddying energetically-and all around him wood was screaming.
Taeros wouldn't have believed splintering, rending wood could scream, but then, he hadn't known it could groan, either.
It was doing both right now, even more loudly than the frantic, sobbing screams of women blundering about in the alarmingly leaning labyrinth of pillars and sagging balconies. Men were shouting and coughing, and at least one fool had drawn a sword and was slashing wildly as he came staggering through the dusty gloom, as if sharp steel could slaughter dust.
As Taeros struggled to his feet, the remains of someone's chair and table falling away from his bruised shoulders, a balcony tore free and plunged to the stage with a thunderous crash. In an instant, the man waving the sword was smashed into a bloody smear on those shattered, bouncing boards.
Taeros saw that sword, still clutched by the severed ruin of a forearm, clatter to the floor near Malark, who was having troubles of his own amid much splintered furniture. Then roiling dust hid Lord Kothont again.
Curses and thuds heralded someone wearing a splendid scarlet-and-gold tunic, not Malark's emerald gemfire, who came stumbling out of the dust. The man clawed his way past Taeros, trailing a stream of curses and half- dragging someone long-haired and presumably feminine whose slender shoulder slammed into Beldar with force enough to stop a Roaringhorn bellow in mid-roar, and leave Beldar retching on his knees.
Well, at least Taeros now knew where that friend was. He turned toward Beldar, but Another balcony fell, with a splintering, floor-shaking crash. And then another.
Taeros fought for balance on floorboards that were suddenly rising and falling like waves rolling into the harbor.
The next crash was a long, rolling, ear-hammering chaos, and Taeros saw a ceiling-beam, wreathed in flames, plunge to the floor. Dust rose like a wall.
As the echoes of its rolling faded, he became aware that someone was shouting-someone familiar. Beldar had found his breath again.
'Get out! Come on! We've got to get out!'
Taeros turned, staggering as loose boards shifted under his boots, and then glanced back. Had Malark-?
Other patrons were thundering past, running blindly. Some slammed into already trembling pillars and reeled sideways or fell senseless.
Flames flared as a fallen curtain ignited, and Taeros could suddenly see the stage again, where blood lay in pools and still, huddled forms were sprawled under tangles of jagged wood.
'Malark?' Taeros shouted, peering at where his friend had been. Dust swirled thickly there, but he thought he saw a glimmer of green.
He started forward-and fell hard as something else collapsed, far off in the gloom, and the floor bounced and rippled again.
More grandly garbed folk came running out of the smoke and dust, wild-eyed and staggering. Among them, a woman who wore a tiara and dripped with jewels was cursing like a sailor as she tried to twist and tear free of three or four terrified serving-girls who were clinging to her long sleeves and trailing gown.
'Let go!' the woman spat. Cloth tore with a long snarl of protest, baring her legs, and a mewling trio of maids crashed to their knees in the wreckage.
Weeping with fear and rage, the woman ran on, spraying jewels in her wake like hailstones. Across much dust and chaos, Taeros finally caught sight of Malark's familiar grin-directed not at him, but at a servant-lass who was clinging to him, sobbing and trembling.
As they emerged fully from the dense smoke, Lord Kothont put her gently away from him and gave her a little shove in the direction of the door. She stumbled, then caught herself and darted toward safety. Malark nodded in satisfaction, then reached down to pluck up one of the three terrified maids.
And then, with a crash like the hammer of Gond coming down on his Greatforge, three or four ceiling-beams came down right in front of Taeros, hurling him helplessly back, arms flailing, into-something hard yet yielding that cursed as it collapsed under him.
'Hawkwinter?' whoever it was snarled. 'That you?'
'Beldar!' Taeros gasped, fighting for breath. His arm was numb, one of his knees was burning as if afire, and 'Up, and out of this!' Beldar growled, rising up under Taeros like a harbor wave. His snarling strength hauled them both to their feet, and they swayed together as more beams fell. Then the young flower of House Roaringhorn snatched, heaved, and broke into a stumbling run, Taeros Hawkwinter bobbing along on his shoulder like a sack of meal.
'Malark-'
'Can fend for his bloody self,' Beldar panted. 'Much good we'll be… to him… flat as… fish-heads underfoot… on the docks. 'Sides, have you ever known Malark not slide out of anything?'
Taeros couldn't find breath for a reply as he was hustled along, bouncing jaw biting his own tongue repeatedly, but he didn't have to. Malark would come out unscathed. Malark always did.
He couldn't stop coughing.
On his knees on the dirty cobbles, Taeros hacked and spat and heaved, shoulders shaking, until a grim-jawed Beldar slapped his back hard enough to drive him nose down onto the stones, which promptly rattled and shook hard enough to numb a Hawkwinter chin and send its owner rolling helplessly over onto his side, still coughing.
'What was-?' he managed to ask.
'The last of the Slow Cheese,' Beldar Roaringhorn snapped, in a voice that promised brutal death to someone, and soon. 'Going down flat.'
'M-Malark?'
'Under it, somewhere.' Beldar thrust something under his friend's nose.
Taeros blinked at it, fighting for breath.
'This,' Beldar growled, 'was stuck to a spar that was flung into the air just after I carried you over here-and damned near skewered me coming down. It was stuck there with blood.'
Taeros stared at what his friend was holding: A blood-smeared scrap of emerald green gemweave, cloth that in all Waterdeep, only Malark Kothont could have been wearing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The first rumble and roar brought Golskyn from his bed, coverlets flying. He hurried to the window of their upper room and gazed up into the midnight sky, his uncovered eye searching the stars with open longing.
'A dragon's heart,' he said wistfully. 'Now that would be a true test of a man's strength!'
Mrelder stumbled to his father's side, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His thoughts were not of dragon flight, nor the wondrous challenge of capturing, dismembering, and incorporating that greatest of creatures. He thought instead of the city all around and the folk who dwelt in it. Fresh rumblings drew his gaze.
'A building's fallen!' He pointed. 'Look, there: Dust rising. Flames now, too.'
Golskyn peered. 'Dragonfire?' he asked hopefully, not ready to relinquish his fond hope.
'No dragons,' his son murmured.
Mrelder thought he might know the cause of the collapse. The mongrelmen had tunneled thereabouts to link to the cellars of another of Golskyn's buildings. Lord Unity wasn't the only priest of monstrous gods in Waterdeep, but he was new to Waterdhavians, and undeniably impressive. Folk were flocking to his hidden rituals, and the traffic beneath Waterdeep's streets was rapidly increasing. If one foundation had been so weakened, what else might soon fall?
Once the rubble was cleared, that tunnel would be discovered, and then The sharp, suspicious glare of his father's uncovered eye suddenly blocked Mrelder's view.
