'We can hide in the globe,' Artus said as bravely as he could, though pain and fright made his voice crack pitiably. 'You've lost. Sooner or later, the royal wizards will come looking for the prince. Until then, we'll be safe in here.'
The last was pure bluff, but it set the groundling digging around the magical globe. Dirt and stones rained down on the shell, the clatter underscored by the assassin's unearthly wailing. Then, all at once, the creature ceased its frightening tantrum and sidled up to the globe. It glared at the magical bubble, the pale light nearly blinding it, and said, 'They'll find a corpse here just the same. I have the one who was with you, boy.' The groundling paused and licked its snout with a long black tongue. 'I'll leave his bare bones around you like a picket fence if you keep my prize from me.'
'But the guild rules-'
'Mean nothing if I lose the prince,' the groundling snapped. 'So they take away my guild badge for killing the wrong man. So what?'
Artus's shoulders slumped. There was really no choice if the assassin threatened his father. Besides, what was Azoun to him?
'A trade, then,' the boy called. 'I'll hand over Prince Azoun, but you've got to bring the other man back here.'
'What about the magic wall?' the groundling shrieked. 'You'll take the other and hide him there with you and never give me the prince!'
'And you'll just kill me as soon as you have Azoun!' Artus snapped.
There was an uncomfortable pause as the boy and the dwarf-thing considered their rather limited options. It was Artus who finally suggested a plan. In it, there was just the slightest chance he and the Shadowhawk would survive this nightmarish ordeal-and maybe even rescue the prince, too.
'I'm a thief, so we're brothers in trade, right?' Artus began tentatively. In truth the groundling did rather remind Artus of his brother Oric. 'So we should be able to make a fair bargain. If, uh, I promise to put the magic gem away and not use it until you have the prince, the trade should be easy. Is that all right with you? I mean, once you have Azoun, you've got no reason to harm us, so we can all get what we want out of this.'
It took a few moments for the groundling to wrap its limited intellect around that complicated arrangement, but at last it agreed to the plan. In a flurry of gravel and dirt, the assassin disappeared into its burrow. As soon as the thing was gone, the globe vanished. Artus unslung his ragged pack and prepared Prince Azoun for the groundling's return.
The Shadowhawk was bound hand and foot when the assassin dragged him to the surface. His cloak hung in tatters on his back, and his hood lay in useless strips around his shoulders. Fear filled his wide, staring eyes. Dirt and grime clung to his hair, transformed into clinging mud by blood and sweat. A gag pulled his mouth into a frightful rictus grin.
In silence, Artus stood over the unconscious form of Prince Azoun, who now lay with his head propped up on the boy's pack. Stepping away from the nobleman, he walked slowly toward his father. He could see the surprise in the Shadowhawk's usually cold green eyes, but that didn't concern him as much as the look of reckless triumph twisting the groundling's already horrific features.
The assassin swam through the ground at the surface, paddling straight toward Azoun. It paused at the prince's side, then reached out with a single claw. Perhaps the groundling assumed Azoun would turn out to be a phantasm, despite what its keen senses reported. Whatever the reason, the assassin started when it touched the prince's warm flesh. This was even more than it had hoped for bringing Azoun back to Darkhold alive would quadruple the reward, perhaps even purchase a transformation back to its original dwarven form.
Carefully the creature encircled the prince's legs and started to pull him into the burrow. As Azoun slid, the bed of pine boughs and the small pack that was his pillow slid with him. The groundling didn't seem to notice the branches falling into the burrow, but it stopped dead when the sack's contents rolled onto him-a few sticks of greasepaint used for disguises, a small length of thin black cord, and the stale loaf of bread that was to have been Artus's sustenance on the long trek home. It was this last item that caught the attention of the groundling's twitching nose.
'Hey,' Artus called halfheartedly, 'that's mine!'
The assassin snorted and scooped the loaf into its maw. Chewing only enough to break the bread into chunks, it gulped the prize down. The groundling then turned its weak eyes back to Artus, a snide comment on the tip of its black tongue, but found the boy standing very close to the burrow's edge.
'Leave the prince alone,' Artus said coldly. He planted his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest in what he assumed to be a heroic pose. 'If you go now, I'll let you live.'
The groundling snarled and tensed its legs to spring, but an odd feeling in its gut made it pause. It groaned and looked down at its suddenly burning stomach. Was the boy using magic? The glowing stone, perhaps? The assassin cursed itself for trusting the human child, especially since it intended to break its vow once the prince was bound securely for the trek back to Darkhold.
'Really,' Artus said, 'you'd be better off to give up right now. You're beaten.'
That was enough for the groundling. It threw back its head and howled, then lunged at the boy.
Artus calmly curled one small hand into a fist and raised it to strike the charging monster. But the groundling never got close enough to harm the boy. The gem it had swallowed with the bread responded to the raised fist by throwing out its protective shell. The magical wall mindlessly and methodically expanded, trying to encase its new master.
The groundling clutched its swelling gut and fell face-first into the dirt. Artus limped another step closer to the creature. 'I warned you,' he said.
In reply, the assassin belched as defiantly as possible, then burst like an overripe melon dropped onto a cobblestone street.
The silence that followed was quickly filled by the mundane sounds of an Uktar night-hooting owls, the distant barking of dogs, and the chill wind rustling through the trees. Artus stood still for a time, reveling in that normalcy, then set to work untying his father. The Shadowhawk said nothing-no exclamations of pride, no cries of relief, no words of gratitude. He merely rubbed his sore limbs and watched his son without comment as he pulled the prince out of the burrow, bandaged his head again, and moved him out of the road to the safety of the hedgerow. Scoril Cimber could see there was something different about the boy now, but he couldn't quite figure out what.
When he finished with Azoun, Artus turned back to the Shadowhawk, who still sat amidst the piles of earth and gaping holes covering the trade road. 'Father,' he said flatly, 'there's a rider coming.'
If the highwayman was surprised his son had heard the faraway rumble of hooves before him, he never let on.
The rider turned out to be the vanguard of a large patrol, scouring the countryside for the lost prince. When the soldiers paused to search the destruction, Artus threw a few stones to draw their attention to the hedgerow and the unconscious royal. Even with his sprained knee it proved simple for the boy and his father to elude the mounted and heavily armored patrol on the wooded hill. The Shadow-hawk was a wanted man, after all, and capture by the king's Purple Dragons was something he had avoided many times before.
In the days that followed, Scoril Cimber cemented his place at the cynosure of the weblike Cormyrian underworld with wild tales of his role in the rescue of Prince Azoun. Artus did nothing to counter these yarns. In fact, the boy often lent quiet support to the Shadowhawk's claim that he'd killed all three Zhentarim thugs and single-handedly protected the heir to the throne of House Obarskyr. And since the palace never commented on assassination rumors, for such things tended to upset the commoners, the Shadowhawk rose unopposed to the height of scamp notoriety.
Such fame always proved fleeting in the back alleys of Suzail, though, and other topics soon supplanted the daring rescue and the molelike killers-foremost among them the oft-repeated rumor that the withering sickness would surely claim King Rhigaerd before the year was out Young Prince Azoun would soon be King Azoun IV. No one seemed pleased to hear this.
'Look,' a grizzled thief said, just loudly enough to overwhelm the ten or so voices vying for dominance in the Thieves Guild common room. 'Rhigaerd was a bully. No one's arguing with that. All I'm saying is we knew what to expect from him.'
'Yeah,' someone chimed in, 'a quick hanging if we got caught on the road with five silver falcons we couldn't
