A ruby beam spat out from the tip of the staff and splashed against the empty space between the walls of the hallway. The beam formed a thin crescent at first, finally flaring out into a full circle that rapidly expanded and filled with swirling rainbows. In heartbeats, it filled the hallway.
Once the dimensional door was secure, the beam faded away.
'Kill the ranger, Baylee Arnvold,' she said. 'And kill any who are with him.' The drow warrior leaped into the dimensional door in front of her. The familiar chill wrapped around her, then took her away.
'When did Golsway die?'
Cordyan Tsald stared into the jade gaze of Baylee Arnvold. 'A tenday and two days ago.' Her heart went out to the ranger, and she wasn't used to it doing that so easily. In her trade, she worked with thieves and liars on a continual basis. And men motivated by a need for power or wealth. There were few whom she respected.
Hurt flickered in his eyes, scarcely under control. He had not known about the old mage's death. Cordyan would have wagered anything on that.
No, child, he did not know. Nor did he realize how hurt and confused he would be by such an act.
Cordyan looked at the woman standing beside Baylee who gently put a hand to his shoulder. She was surely too young to have been the one to touch her mind. The voice that she had heard carried more age than the young woman beside the ranger.
My name is Xuxa. I am in the tree above you.
Cordyan kept her off hand on her sword pommel as she glanced up. She saw the bat hanging from a branch above her, spreading its wings to further draw her attention.
He must know the rest of it. There will be no easy way to tell him.
'What happened?' Baylee asked.
With practiced neutrality, the watch lieutenant relayed all she had learned of the old mage's murder. She had worked the night patrol in Waterdeep long enough to know there was no proper way to tell anyone a loved one would not be returning home. Each word seemed to weigh the ranger down. The easy, light-hearted and challenging smile had dropped from his face from the beginning, and grimness hammered his features into tight, hard lines.
'Someone sent you out here to tell me about this?' Baylee asked.
The elf at Baylee's side shook his head slowly. 'They suspected you of the old mage's death, my friend. Isn't that right, lieutenant?'
Cordyan didn't flinch from the question. Hiding wasn't her way. 'There has been some consideration.'
The words reached through the confusion and hurt that had surrounded Baylee. The ranger's emotions were immediately apparent to Cordyan, as were the real concerns of his friends around him. As she watched, a portly bald man in priest's robes materialized at his side as well, offering his sympathies.
'I am your only suspect then?' the ranger asked.
'I don't know,' Cordyan answered. 'I was given only to find you and question you. Then find out if you would be willing to accompany me back to Waterdeep. Even without the matter of the assassination, there remains the estate to be administered.'
'The estate?' Baylee looked at her, clearly puzzled.
'Yes. He had his will filed with a law-reader. The house and the surrounding grounds in Waterdeep are all yours. Most of his other belongings as well, except for a few items that are to be disbursed among other friends.'
Baylee shook his head. 'When will you be ready to leave?'
'As soon as you are.'
'I would be willing to start riding tonight.'
Calebaan Lahjir shifted at the table. 'My sympathies for your loss, Baylee Arnvold, but after morningfeast would be more logical.'
'Of course. I shall be ready.' Baylee looked into Cordyan's eyes. 'If there isn't anything else, I'd like to be alone with my friends now.'
Cordyan nodded and watched the ranger walk away. She cursed the luck that she should have to tell him the old mage was dead. It would have almost been better had he been Golsway's killer. That way her own heart wouldn't be filled with sadness. Movement broke away from the branch overhead. She glanced up and watched as the bat flew after the ranger in a flutter of leathery wings. She signaled across the way to two of her best trackers, setting them on Baylee and his party. Even though she believed the ranger, there was a possibility other information could be gleaned from watching him.
Cordyan sat at the table, suddenly overcome from all the fatigue of the travels that had brought them to the Glass Eye Concourse. She had no stomach for the remnants of the meal she'd been enjoying only moments ago. 'Some days I hate the employment I have.'
'You like him.' Calebaan seemed genuinely surprised by the announcement even though he'd uttered it.
'I feel for him,' Cordyan said. 'His pain is real.'
'Yes, and I have the feeling that if we don't leave after morningfeast, we're going to be chasing him all the way home, hoping to catch up.'
'Captain Closl and Lord Piergeiron are not going to be happy about Baylee's arrival there,' Cordyan prophesied. 'When I first heard the stories about him, I thought perhaps they were tall tales, made up because he walked for so long in Golsway's shadow. But now that I get the measure of the man, I don't think that is the case at all.' She looked after the ranger, watching him disappear in the darkness between the campfires spread out across the forgathering.
'No,' Calebaan agreed. 'Baylee will bear watching even after he returns to Waterdeep. I don't think he will let-' Calebaan sat up, suddenly more straight. 'Do you feel it?'
Cordyan looked at her friend. 'Feel what?'
Calebaan pointed toward the east, in the direction Baylee had walked. 'The cold breath of death itself.'
Knowing her friend was sometimes given to poetic expression, Cordyan turned her head. Only darkness met her gaze. Then she felt the chill, like a high wind coming across Icewind Dale. The sensation came to her sharply, bringing with it the memory of two tendays the circus had spent playing Ten Towns when she'd been yet a girl, not then allowed to swing from the high wires with her brothers and sister.
But suddenly that dark space seemed to fold in on itself. Ruby light spilled from the corners of those folds in the next moment. Then the center of that fold collapsed, opening onto a hole.
Four figures stepped through that ruby hole into the midst of approaching rangers and a horde of animals.
'Something's wrong.' Cordyan said. She stood and loosened her sword in its sheath. The copper and gold Shandaularan coin mounted in the hilt sparked a yellow light and felt warm to the touch. The sword was the watch lieutenant's as a reward from Khelben Arunsun for work she had done as a Harper while she was sixteen years old. The sword, Khelben had assured her, came from the renowned collection of Azoun, King of Cormyr for a bit of business the archmage had performed for the king.
The enchantment on the blade made it move lightly in her grasp, and it cleaved more surely through armor than any edged weapon she had ever owned. But the Shandaularan coin had an even further enchantment laid upon it. In the presence of drow, the coin would spark yellow.
Cordyan knew the enchantment was true because she'd seen it spark twice before. Both times, drow had been around. Once, the sword's warning had been enough to save her from a drow down in the warrens under the Waterdhavian docks.
The Shandaularan sparked again as she studied it. 'Drow,' she told Calebaan. She looked up at the glowing red hole to see the first of them step through. Her hand covered the Shandaularan coin as she bared her weapon.
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