This person was bringing lots of these new gunnes into Waterdeep. The Yellow Mage was hunting for one of these devices. We were willing to pay anything for it.'
He reached down and, after a moment's hesitation, picked up the overturned plaque. 'He could create or remove the fish illusion with a word, am I correct? After the gunne was mounted here?'
I nodded. 'I enspelled eight plaques for him. He paid for them in advance, two years ago. This would be the last of them.'
'He was going to buy more from you,' Ardrum said, staring at the plaque. 'He liked your work. Talked about you all the time.'
I looked away, aware again of the smell of roasting boar-and an empty place inside me. Leaving the civilar alone for a while, I went into the tiny kitchen Snorri kept, found his crate-sized magical oven, and waved a hand over the amber light on top. The light went off. It would cool down on its own.
I looked around the kitchen and back rooms, saw nothing of interest, quietly cast spells to detect everything from hidden enemies to magical auras, saw nothing else of interest. The living room was similarly bare of clues. Ardrum was now kneeling at the dark pool and holding the bloodstained gunne in the fingers of his left hand. His eyes were closed. I noted that magic radiated from a ring on the civilar's right hand. No doubt the ring had a practical use; the civilar was a practical sort. It couldn't be as good as my Unfailing Missile Deflector, though.
Ardrum's eyes abruptly opened as I watched. He put down the gunne as if caught taking coins from a blind man's cup.
'What did you find out?' The question was based on a guess-a guess that the civilar had just performed some supernatural act, likely a divination.
The halfling sighed. 'Clever. Very clever of you, of course, but clever of the killer. This gunne was never fired. A gnome made it in Lantan, a compulsive little gnome who always worried about his mother. Nothing interesting has ever happened to this weapon, and no one interesting has ever handled it. It is not the gunne that was used to kill your friend. It's a mirage, a false lead. I would guess the killer unwrapped it and left it here after the murder.' Ardrum looked up. For the first time since I'd seen him, he was smiling-not by much, but it was a smile. 'How was that for a wild guess?'
'A psychic,' I said. 'You amaze me.' The truth was that little would amaze me now with Snorri dead, even a psychic watchman. The Lords of Waterdeep no doubt recruited trustworthy psychics at every turn, though such had to be as rare as cockatrice teeth.
'A birth talent, and a limited one,' said Ardrum in dismissal. The smile vanished. 'I'm sensitive to the emotional impressions left behind when someone touches something. I feel what was felt, see what was seen. Like your early training in burglary, it has served me well in my line of work. And like you, I do not like to discuss my talent. People would find it unnerving to know that I could read their personal life with just a touch. I put my trust in your goodwill to keep my secret. I would not discuss it except that time is short and your wits are acute.'
Ardrum pulled the gloves from his belt and carefully put them on. I recalled that he had not shaken my hand, and he had used his dagger blade to examine things on the desk. His control over his special talent was likely poor, then, and likely it was too that he did not relish peering into other people's lives-particularly if those people had just been violently killed.
I wondered what Ardrum saw in his mind when he picked up a bloody dagger or garrote, checking for clues to a murder. I quickly shook off the thought.
'It is late, but we must be off to the market,' Ardrum said, collecting his watchman's rod and light-casting sticks. He wrapped the sticks up as he put them away. The room gradually fell into near-total darkness. 'We must pick up a package there, and speak with this Gulner named on the plaque. I think he came back for his merchandise, given that the Yellow Mage said he'd received the wrong item, and left a substitute instead. Are you ready, good Formathio?'
A tiny shaft of light from a crack in a shuttered window fell on the back of Civilar Ardrum's head, revealing every loose strand of his hair like a halo around his shadowed face. And an obvious thing came to mind. Something I could do.
'Almost ready,' I said. 'I am going to cast a spell. Please stay back, and do not be alarmed at whatever you see or hear.'
I recalled the proper procedure, then passed my arms, palms out, through the darkness before me. I whispered words into the air, then reached into one of the many pockets in my clothes. Pulling out a pinch of dust, I pitched it into the air before me and spoke a final word.
The room rapidly grew cold. Civilar Ardrum's boots scraped the wooden floor as he stepped back a pace. He had infravision, I guessed, the ability to see heat sources. Most halflings had it. He would now see a black column between us, about the size of a human like me.
'Shadow,' I said to the black thing. 'You see all that casts a shadow of its own. I demand one answer from you, then will release you to go your dark way.'
A whisper reached my ears, so faint it could have been a sigh from a distant child. 'Yes.'
'A man was murdered here during the daylight.' My voice almost failed me. I shoved aside the memory of Snorri, bloody and dead on the stretcher. 'I command you, shadow, to reveal who murdered this man.'
This was my own special spell, and no other living per son had seen me use it. My control over the shadow was good, so it posed no danger to me or to the civilar. In other circumstances, however, the shadow could have left us both frozen and dead on the ground, our spirits cursed to join it in endless roving of shadows and night.
Nonetheless, when I felt the shadow draw so close that the skin on my face burned and stung from its bitter cold, when I shivered from the absolute emptiness of it, I was in fear that my control over it was no more.
The shadow sighed once again. I imagined its words were spoken with a touch of glee.
'/ saw no one murder him,' said the shadow, and was gone.
The air at last grew warmer on my face. My arms fell to my sides. No one? No one had killed my friend? Shadows had a way with their words; they loved to mislead with the truth. I wrestled briefly with the answer, then admitted defeat-for now.
'Let us go,' I said to the civilar.
Outside, it was late twilight. The three watchmen had returned to wait there for their captain, guarding the doorway and keeping away onlookers. With their permission, I put a locking spell on the door and windows to keep the curious away; only the watch or a major wizard would have the resources to take the spell off at leisure.
Civilar Ardrum and I arrived at the market after a short and rapid walk. The other watchmen were summoning more of their fellows to meet us at our destination. We said nothing to each other along the trip, even as we came into view of the great, torch-lit market of Waterdeep.
We crossed Traders' Way and entered the long ellipse of booths that made up the market. Even now, after sunfall, vendors called out praises of their wares to passersby. Few shoppers were out this evening. I saw faint candlelight from the upper windows of the Singing Sword off to our left, on the market's far side, and we made our way there at an easy, steady pace.
'I thought I heard the dark thing you conjured up say that no one killed the Yellow Mage,' said Ardrum in a low, conversational tone as we walked.:
I glanced around, saw no one close enough to listen in, then took a deep breath. 'The shadow said that it saw no one murder him. It meant it saw no shadow of the murderer, so possibly the murderer threw no shadow.'
There was a pause the length of a heartbeat.
'Invisible,' we both said at the same moment.
'But the murderer would have become visible the moment he attacked the Yellow Mage,' said Ardrum quickly. 'A spell of invisibility is canceled the moment-'
'There are more powerful spells that would not be broken by physical violence,' I interrupted. 'And some devices will do the same. He could have stalked Snorri and… shot him. He would not have become visible.'
The halfling almost came to a stop. 'He could still be in the house, then.'
'No,' I said. 'I checked. I used some of my spells and saw nothing.'
Civilar Ardrum frowned and took up the pace again. Ahead, I could see the buildings to either side of the Singing Sword. Two doors to the west would be… the old Full Sails. In the darkness I could barely see the bare mast of the pinnace mounted on the flat roof of the two-story building. Fine liquors were once sold in bulk there to caravans, ship crews, and adventurers who wanted something, and plenty of it, to warm them on their voyages.
