Amid his spattering blood the feebly-glowing, snakelike thing wavered upright in that chamber of death and became the Simbul once more. She was bleeding from many small wounds, and reeled as she stumbled to a wall, leaning against it for support.
'Elminster,' she murmured, throwing back her head to gasp out the words she needed to say. 'Come. Please.'
Storm
It was that evening-time when the shops of Shadowdale had closed, and the lowering sun told every eye that the long, slow slide into dusk had begun. Farm shy;ers were still hard at work because there was still ample light to work by, but most other dalefolk were sitting down to a hearty evenfeast, weary from another good day's work. The lanes of Shadowdale were well-nigh deserted. Fitting for the loneliest walk of all.
Maervidal Iloster walked past the Old Skull Inn quite alone, sighing as he turned onto the Northriver Road in front of the temple of Chauntea. He was dressed well, in a black leather vest and breeches, with a mauve silk shirt a Sembian dandy would not have been sorry to be seen in, and knee-high boots as dashing as anything a Cormyrean noble could boast. Yet his face was grim and his pace slow, almost dawdling. He knew he was walking to the place where he was going to die.
They'd found him out. Just how, he knew not, but it no longer mattered. They knew.
All day the Zhentarim who normally contacted him-Oleir and Rostin-had taken turns oh-so-casually dropping into his shop, giving him cold smiles and gentle reminders of the revel to which he'd been invited three days ago.
Just before closing, their superior-Samshin, whom he usually saw but once or twice a year-had strolled in to loom over the counter and huskily bid him well met, and to express the fond hope that they'd be able to share drinks together at Warmfires when the sun was fallen from the sky. Oh, they knew.
Since the day-three sunrises back, now-Oleir had leaned on the same counter to deliver the invitation, he'd felt cold, unseen eyes watching him. Waiting to see where he'd run to, and who he'd contact. Everyone who stepped into Crown amp; Raven Scriveners to order a sign or browse the stock was under suspicion.
What would become of his shop, after he was gone? They'd plunder it, to be sure. For all that it stood within easy view of the Twisted Tower itself, an easy trot for the guards on the Ashaba bridge, it had a back door none could see from the road. After a spell-fed fire blazed up and devoured it, who would check in the ruins for the writing paper, framed and mounted poems and illustra shy;tions, signs, heraldry, pens, inks, and portraits that should have been there? And what of Rindee?
A pretty lass she was-too pretty to escape grasping hands, if the Zhents felt so inclined. Maervidal had taken her on as his assistant for her skilled hands with the brush, not for her face and figure, but he doubted any Zhentarim would care for a finely-curved letter or a superbly-rendered coat of arms. She was a local, and didn't have to be shrewd to know something was amiss, but he'd told her nothing. He should have warned her, but she lived on a farm too far in the wrong direction-west of his shop, well over the river in the newly-cleared lands-to turn back now. But if the Zhents caught her..
He felt sick, but what could he do? They were watching his house even now, on this clear, warm evening. All it would take was one man with a crossbow, back in the woods, who might shoot even if he turned back just to leave a note. They were all around him, hidden but watch shy;ful.
He should have been ready for this, with letters written out and left in safe hands. After all, only a fool could expect to watch and whisper for the Zhents and beneath it all do the same for the Harpers, and not get caught at it eventually. Somehow, though, he'd thought 'eventually' would take longer to arrive.
'We'll be expecting you,' Oleir had said with a crooked grin, his eyes as cold as winter, 'at Warmfires House, by dusk. Don't be late.'
Oleir was tall and broad-shouldered, yet moved with uncanny silence. A forester who could crush half a dozen Maervidal Ilosters in his bare hands, he was probably out there in the trees now, watching the doomed scrivener trudge up the road. The Zhents could muster twenty like him.
'Stand and face it, Maervidal,' he whispered aloud. 'You're doomed.'
Warmfires House was a Sembian venture that stood on the new northern edge of central Shadowdale, in a bend of the Ashaba. It was a huge, rambling farmhouse that could be rented by the day, two days, or a tenday at a time. Maervidal had been in it only once, on a gawking tour with other dalefolk when it was not quite finished. He'd been brought in to see the dance floor in the feast hall, the meeting rooms above it, the bathing pool rooms, and the luxurious bedchambers. It hadn't been quite the success the greedy Sembians had hoped, but the Lord Mourngrym had built a guard post nearby, and considered it the anchor of the new cluster of homes and shops folk had taken to calling 'Northend.'
It was a good long walk from Twisted Bridge to Northend, but to Maervidal it was seeming all too short, now. His last walk in the clear air-gods blast it all, his last walk anywhere!
How had they found out? Oleir, a tall, blond forester, as strong and as stupid as the trees he cut down and the bears he trapped, was vicious enough, but too slow-witted to put two ends of a broken blade together and see that they matched. Rostin was sly and quiet enough to over shy;hear things, but he was a scribe-for-hire staying at the Old Skull only for a tenday to write letters, contracts, and records for hire, before walking on to Tilverton then back and down to Ashabenford. Samshin was in the dale even less. Just now, he was posing as a farm laborer looking for work. He'd talked idly, as he turned to go, of how when a fugitive gets hunted across a quiet dale, all sorts of inno shy;cent people get knifed by mistake. In other words, if Maervidal tried to run, they'll murder a lot of dalefolk, and blame it on him, branding him an outlaw forever.
The scrivener sighed again. It really didn't matter how they'd found out, did it?
He glanced at the dark, wooded bulk of Fox Ridge ahead on his right, and shrugged. Perhaps it was full of Oleir and a dozen Zhent comrades, perhaps not. It didn't matter now. None of it mattered now.
A figure turned into the road ahead, and his heart leaped in sudden hope. A woman had stepped out of the mouth of her own farm lane. The woman drew every male eye in an instant, even when dressed in an old leather jerkin and breeches, stained from farm work and accom shy;panied by floppy old knee boots that had gone the color of the dust and old mud that had so often caked them.
Maervidal swallowed. It wasn't just her height-she was taller than most knights and smiths he'd seen, the sort of height and shoulders that seemed to fill a doorway-but the silver hair that cascaded down almost to her ankles. It was tied back like a horsetail, with a scarf that looked like an old scrap of black silk-a scarf that every man who'd hoisted a tankard at the Old Skull knew was a dancer's costume that covered so little that Storm rarely bothered to put it on. Maervidal closed his eyes for a moment, his mouth suddenly dry, at the memory of the last time she'd shed her farm leathers to spring up onto a table in that costume-and of the dance and song she'd given them all then.
It wasn't just her dancing, though, it was her walk. All fluid, sensual grace-not the proud strut of a cat that knows it's beautiful, and flaunts it, but the calm, confident lilt of a creature who knows she is stunning to the eyes, but cares not-and it was her
Common folk knew her skill with the harp, but true Harpers knew just how much they, and all Faerun around them, owed the Bard of Shadowdale.
'Tymora and Mystra, smile upon me together now,' Maervidal whispered hoarsely to the air. He'd never uttered a prayer so fervently in all his life.
Storm Silverhand had been absent from the dale a lot this winter-down Senibia way playing ballads for rich nobles and stacking up the gold coins they tossed her, some said-and he'd hardly traded six words with her yet this spring. It had been too much to hope for her to be around now, but she knew who he was. 'Oh, great gods above, save me now!' he whispered, finding himself very close to tears, and made himself stroll toward her without calling out or breaking into a run.
