by Mark Anthony
The fat moneylender's hairy fingers plucked at the battered wood as it whistled past, and pulled. Overbalanced, the startled man had barely time for an apprehensive grunt as the pommel of Mirt's dagger came up under his chin. The blow sent him swiftly into the arms of the ladies who whisper softly to warriors in slumber: he crashed over like a felled tree, spitting teeth from his shattered jaw, eyes already dark.
The second man had to dance around the falling body, and met Mirt's roundhouse left while still trying to raise his cudgel. Mirt let his knuckles take the man's head into the nearest wall, hard, and felt something break under them before he spun away to follow the drifting lights again, wheezing along patiently as if nothing had befallen. The two slumped forms in the alley did not rise to follow.
Another dagger flashed out of the darkness, and a bucketful of stones plummetted from the air as Mirt trudged under one of the many catwalks that crisscrossed the emptiness above most streets and passages of Skullport. His shields sent both offerings back whence they'd come, journeys marked by strangled, gurgling cries.
Mirt sighed in reply-Faerun certainly seemed to breed no pressing shortage of fools these days-and hunched his shoulders to pass under a particularly low catwalk.
A garotte slipped down and around his throat as he emerged into the torchlight beyond-but the fat old lord paid it no apparent heed, striding deliberately on. Only the corded muscles rising into view on his thick neck betrayed the effort it took to walk on without slowing, as the waxed cord skittered over the hard, smooth steel of the gorget that covered his grizzled throat.
It took less than a breath before the wheezing merchant reached the full stretch of the deadly cord and the skilled arms that wielded it. With a startled oath, their leather-clad owner pitched forward out of the darkness above, hauled down into the street like a grain-sack from a loft. A casual swing of one thick arm brought a belt dagger solidly into the masked man's temple, and the garotte fell to the cobbles alongside its limp and crumpled owner. Mirt did not even bother to look down, this was Skullport, after all. Moreover, business awaited him ahead… and if he knew Durnan, 'twould be hasty business.
Three masked figures stepped out of a side alley, down the passage ahead of him, but Mirt showed no sign of slowing or drawing the stout sword at his belt. He forged on steadily into waiting death, and after a tense moment one of the three stepped back and waved at his fellows to do likewise.
"Your pardon, Mirt," he growled. "You're looking so well, I almost didn't know you."
"Prettily said, Ilbarth," Mirt grunted, turning suddenly to glare at one of the others, who'd sidled just a step too close to the fat old man's back. "So ye can live, all of ye."
"Generous, White-Whiskers," that man said softly, "when it's three to one."
"I'm known for my open-handed generosity," Mirt said, baring his teeth in a grin without slowing, "so I'll let ye live a second time, Aldon. Take care ye don't use up all thy luck and my patience, now."
Aldon took one uncertain step in pursuit of the wheezing man. "How'd you know my name?"
"He knows everyone in Skullport," Ilbarth said with a nervous grin. "Isn't that right, Mirt? I'll bet cold coin you've lived all your life down here."
"Not yet," Mirt grunted, turning to fix him with one cold and level gray-blue eye. "Not quite yet."
He turned away from them and went on down the alley without looking back, but the three men did not follow. They stood watching him for a time, and soon had cause to be very glad they'd not proceeded with more violent activities.
The old moneylender strode past a tentacle that slid down from an upper window to pluck aloft a man who'd summoned it, stepped around an ore sprawled on its face in a pool of blood, a spear standing up in its back- and found his way suddenly blocked by a dozen or more lithe, slim black figures, whose skin was as jet black as the soft leathers they wore. Almost mockingly, the guiding motes of light winked and sparkled in the distance beyond them.
"How now, old man?" one of the drow hissed. "Care to buy your life with a careful and verbose listing of all your wealth, where it can be found, and just how it's guarded?"
"No," Mirt growled, "I'm in a hurry. So stand aside, and I'll let all of ye live."
Cold, mocking laughter gave him reply, and one of the dark elves sneered, "Kind of you, indeed."
"Indeed, but I won't tarry," Mirt growled. "Stand aside, now!"
"Giving us orders, old man?" the drow who'd first spoken responded tartly. "For that, you'll taste a whip!" Slim gloved fingers went eagerly to a thigh sheath.
"Or three," another of the drow agreed, as other hands made the same movement, and slim black cords curled and cracked.
Mirt sighed, opened his cupped hand to reveal the thing he'd taken from his pouch in the House of the Long Slow Kiss, and murmured a word.
The battered metal chevron in his palm erupted in a ringing, leaping sparkle of steel-and the old moneylender stood, calmly watching, as the magic he'd unleashed became a hundred slashing, darting swords that flew about the alley in front of him in a deadly whirlwind. Drow leapt desperately for safety, anywhere it might lie… but died anyway, amid screams from open windows above. Someone paused on a catwalk to watch-and someone else smote that watcher from behind, contributing a helplessly plunging, senseless body to the flashing carnage below.
"Enough!" Mirt growled, as he watched the unfortunate falling man get cut to ribbons. The moneylender spat a second strange word, and the blades obediently melted away, leaving the alley empty of menacing forms in his path. He strode on.
His next few steps were in slippery black blood, but the motes were still twinkling in the gloom ahead, heading for a sudden, distant flash of spell light. In its flare, Mirt saw many folk gathered to watch something off to the left, crowded together to enjoy-a fight? a duel? Bets were being placed, and the more belligerent were jostling for a better view.
There was another flash-which resolved itself into the blue pinwheel that marked the appearance of someone using an old catch-teleport spell-and out of its heart stumbled Durnan, moving fast. Mirt's old friend was in some sort of ruin, caught in the midst of a spell duel between-gods blast all! — a beholder, and someone… a mage? Nay, mauve skin, that could only mean a mind flayer. Ye gods. Hasty business indeed!
"Idiot!" Mirt described Durnan fervently, and broke into a trot, feeling in his pouch for some handy small salvation or other.
"Hearken, all!" he panted, to the uneven stones ahead of him as his shaggy bulk gathered speed, "and take note: 'tis the Wheezing Warrior to the rescue- again!"
Something cold struck the back of his neck, and clung. Durnan snarled and chopped at it, even as a pair of black tentacles twined about his blade and pulled, trying to drag it down.
Durnan slashed out with the dagger in his other hand, seeking to free his sword. The chill at the back of his neck was spreading, cold caressing fingers spreading along his shoulders. "What, by the bones of the cursed-?" he snarled.
The beholder smiled down at him. "Your memories will be mine first… before I take the tiny candle that you call a mind-and blow it out!"
Durnan rolled his eyes. "You sound like a bad actor trying to impress gawping nobles in North Ward!" And then the point of his dagger found the pommel of his sword. He pressed down firmly, and hissed a certain word.
The gem in the pommel burst with a tiny blaze of its own-and slowly, in impressive silence, all of the black tentacles faded away. "So much for your spell," the tavernmaster grunted, throwing the dagger hard into the beholder's large, staring central eye.
The world erupted in a roar of pain and fury. The eye tyrant bucked in midair like a wild stallion trying to shake off ropes, shuddered, and then rolled over with terrible speed, eyestalks reaching out to transfix Durnan in many fell gazes.
Nothing happened.
"Mystra grant that this my spellshatter last just a trifle longer," Durnan prayed aloud, hands stabbing down to his boots for more daggers. That great mouth was very clo
se now, and the roaring coming from it was shaking the tavernmaster's body. Teeth chattering helplessly, Durnan watched those fangs gape wide.…
Not far away, a black cobweb quivered and seemed to stiffen. Then a hoarse, dusty voice issued from it-a voice that squeaked and hissed from long disuse. "Someone is using a spellshatter," it told the empty darkness of the crypt around it.
Not surprisingly, there was no reply.
After a moment's pause, the cobweb shot forth an arm like the tentacle of a black octopus, and plunged it into the stone of the far wall-as if the tentacle were a mere shadow, able to freely drift through solid things. Then the entire cobweb shifted like a gigantic, ungainly spider and followed the tentacle, sliding into the stones of the crypt wall.
A breath later, the black tentacle emerged from a solid wall in Skullport, wriggled out across an alley, and turned to probe up and down the narrow, reeking way. A rat paused in its gnawings and scuttlings to watch this new, probably edible worm or snake-but sank back down behind a pile of refuse when the tentacle grew swiftly into a spiderlike growth that covered most of the wall. This spiderlike thing then became a flapping black cloak… from which grew the shuffling figure of a robed, cowled man, whose eyes gleamed in the darkness as brightly as the rat's own orbs.
The man's robe swished past the cowering rodent. He stepped out of the alley, looked out across a blackened, tumbled area of devastation where a building had burned or been blasted apart, and said clearly, "Hmmm."
A beholder was bobbing above a lone human, the magelight of carelessly crafted spells streaming around it, but was constrained from reaching its human by some invisible shield or other. The spellshatter, no doubt.
"Hmmm," the man said again, and stepped backward into the wall, sinking smoothly into the solid stone until only two dark, watchful patches remained to mark where his eyes must be.
Wisely, the rat scuttled silently away. With archwizards, one can never be sure. Halaster Blackcloak was known to be both one of the most powerful arch wizards of all, and more than a little… erratic in his behavior. He seemed to be settling into the wall to watch whatever was going on in the ruins, but-if one could ever be safe in Skullport-it was better to be safely away from him… far away from him.
Asper slid to a stop on a high catwalk and clutched its rail for a moment to catch her breath. It had been a long, hard run, and more than one foolish beast had tried to make her its supper along the way. The blade in her hand was still dark and wet from her last encounter. The leap from the end of a little-known tunnel-which wound down through the heart of Mount Waterdeep to end in a sheer drop, high in the ceiling of the cavern that held most of Skullport-down to the dark roofs below was always a throat-tightening thing.
Gasping for air, Mirt's lady tossed her head. Sweat streamed down her face despite her frequent wipes at it, plastering ash-blonde tresses to her forehead and dripping from the end of her nose. Asper sighed air deep into her lungs, shook her head to hurl away more sweat, clipped the ring on her sword-pommel to the matching one at her throat, spun the ribbon around so the still-gory blade would bounce along at her back as she traveled on, and peered out over Skullport, waiting for her breathing to slow.
The often-deadly place seemed somehow quiet tonight. The mysterious guardian skulls-or whatever they truly were-drifted here and there through the gloom high above the streets, where the stone fangs of the cavern ceiling made a silent forest close overhead. Asper loved this world of flitting bats, occasional screams, and muttered conspiracies. She enjoyed a leisurely prowl among the crumbling roof gargoyles, silently glowing wards, and wrought iron climb-nots, where crossbows waited for sneak thieves to trip their lines and folk seldom opened shutters covered with rusting crazy quilts of overlapping, battered old shields, whose owners no longer needed them-or anything.
But this journey had been anything but leisurely. Asper clung to the rail as if it were a lover, and peered north. There had been something… a flicker… there!
Spell light flashed in a place of darkness-some sort of ruin, it seemed, liberally endowed with rough heaps and pillars of blackened stone. In this second flash, Asper saw the unmistakable sphere of a beholder, eye-stalks writhing in pain or rage, quivering in the air low over some sort of foe… probably a man. It was the sort of trouble Durnan or her beloved were almost sure to be drawn into.
Asper vaulted lightly over the rail and fell through the cool air, ignoring the oath uttered by a startled face at a window as she passed. Her boots found a second catwalk, slipped for a moment on damp boards that danced back up under the weight of her landing, and then held firm. Asper crouched low as the catwalk's tremblings grew gentler, the fingertips of one hand just touching the boards in front of her, and looked again at the beholder. The problem was, Skullport was all too apt to be crawling with this sort of thing: the kind of strife Mirt and Durnan would get caught up in… but had they chosen this particular strife, or found amusement elsewhere?
Then her eyes fell on what she'd been searching for- far ahead of her, along the narrow alley that ran from beneath her catwalk to the ruins where the beholder danced. A familiar lurching form, portly where he wasn't burly, shambled and wheezed along with that bluff, fearless unconcern she loved so well. Mirt the Moneylender, the man whose heart drove and carried the Lords of Waterdeep, was lumbering like a hopping hippo over the heaped rubble where the alleyway emptied into the chaos of the ruin-trotting up to an enraged beholder to rescue his friend.
This was their fight, then. Asper frowned. She quickly undid her belt, plucked something from behind its buckle, and set it down carefully on the boards beside her. It would not do to be touched by the sort of magic a beholder's eyes could hurl while carrying that little bauble.
She buckled up her belt again, bit her lip in thought, turned smoothly, and ran a little way along the catwalk. There, someone bolder than most had strung a line of washing from the high, hanging way to a balcony. Though the cord was old and soft where glowmold had been washed away many times, it held one hurrying, catlike woman in leathers long enough for her to reach the balcony. Asper got one boot on the balcony rail and kicked hard, the aging iron squealed in protest as she leapt away into darkness, fingers straining for the lantern line she sought.
It was barbed to keep unscrupulous folk from winching down the iron basket of glowworms that served some fearful merchant as a back door lantern. The gloves Asper wore ended in middle-finger rings, leaving her fingers and most of her palms bare to grip things unhampered-but she shed only a little blood as she caught hold, swung, and let go again, heading feetfirst for another catwalk.
Her eyes were on the battle ahead. The eye tyrant seemed to be trying to bite Durnan, who was ducking and rolling among stubby fingers of stone wall. As Asper's feet found the boards of the catwalk, slid in something unpleasant, and shot her right across it into empty air beyond, she saw the beholder bite down. Blocks of stone crumbled, and Durnan dived away, a dagger flashing in his hand. Mirt was getting close now, and beyond them all-as she brought her feet together to crash down through the rotting roof of a bone-cart-Asper could see a few warily watching creatures. A minotaur and a kenku were among them, pointing at Mirt disgustedly and shouting to each other. Wagers were being changed, it seemed.
Then Asper's feet plunged through silk that was gray with age, and into brittle bones beyond. She shut her eyes against flying shards as she sank into a crouch, letting her legs take the force of her landing.
A rough male ore's voice snarled, "What, by all the brain-boring tentacles of dripping Ilsenine's sycophants, was that?"
"Special delivery," Asper told the unseen merchant, as her sword flashed out. Silk fell away like cobwebs, and she sprang past startled, furious eyes and gleaming tusks onto the street beyond.
"Grrrenarrr!" The ore's roar of rage echoed off the buildings around, and Asper dodged sharply toward one side of the alley, bringing her sword up and back behind her without looking or slowing. A heavy hand axe rang off its tip a
nd rattled along an iron gate beside her. Asper ran on into the darkness, calling back, "Pleasant meeting, bloodtusks!"
The ore term of respect was unlikely to mollify a merchant whose cart-top had just been ruined, but she was in a hurry. Up ahead, the beholder shook the air in a roaring frenzy that far outmatched the snarls of the ore behind her. Rays lashed out in all directions from its writhing, coiling eyestalks. Those that stabbed down met some sort of shield and faded away, and one that lashed out toward Mirt had a similar fate. The others were causing spectacular explosions, bursts of flame and lightning-and in one spot, the stone was melting like syrup and slumping down upon itself in a slow flood.
Magelight flashed and curled around the eye tyrant as it poured forth spells in a display that had the audience scrambling for cover. The shouted adjustments to wagers rang back hollowly from windows, balconies, and corners all around as the ground shook, stone shrieked, and the last of the ruin's blackened walls toppled, with slow majesty, down atop the struggling tavernmaster.
Dust rose slowly, the heaving underfoot subsided, and the ringing that had risen in Asper's ears was not enough to drown out Mirt's roar of challenge.
"About! Turn about, ye blasted lump of floating suet! I'll look ye in all yer eyes and stare ye down, and there'll be a blade-thrust into every one of 'em before ye'll have time to flee! Turn about, I say!"
Asper winced at her lord's imprudence, even as a rueful smile twisted her lips. This was her Mirt, all right.
Winded by his shouting, the fat old Lord of Waterdeep puffed and wheezed straight at the beholder. His old boots flopped as he scrambled up a shifting pile of rubble. At its top, he made a show of drawing his stout old sword and raising it in challenge. "Do ye hear me, ball of offal? I-"
"Hear you quite well enough," the beholder said with menacing silence, "Be silent forever, fat man." Beams of deadly radiance flashed from its eyes.
Something unseen in the air blocked the rays, which struck with such savage force that the very emptiness darkened. The fat moneylender staggered to keep his footing, thrust back under the weight of the magic that clawed and tore at his shields.
