The Emerald Scepter soa-3

by Thomas M. Reid

  Rodolpho Wianar barely gave the newcomer a cursory glance.

  Darvin, known to most of Chondath as the assassin Junce Roundface, strode over to where Rodolpho rested against the crenellations of the tower, looking out over the city. Far below, the orange glow of several fires shone in the evening darkness. Darvin realized the fires were burning buildings, and that dismayed him.

  "What is happening down there?" he inquired, peering across the landscape and counting conflagrations. "Why is the city burning?"

  Rodolpho began to chuckle, but it was not a merry laugh. It sent a shiver up Darvin's spine with the insanity of it. "Yes," the man said, not looking at Darvin. "It burns. It is a beautiful sight, isn't it?"

  "No," Darvin rebuked, turning to look at his counterpart. "Eles isn't going to be very happy to see Reth in flames. Why are you allowing this?"

  Rodolpho snorted. "Allow? I'm not allowing anything. Events are simply taking their natural course. The plague has begun to spread outward from the sewers. The people are panicking, fleeing into the night, and some among them who most fear the disease have set fires in hopes of containing its spread. But they will fail," he said, finishing with another chuckle.

  "How is it possible for them to become so panicked so quickly?" Darvin demanded, grabbing Rodolpho by the shoulders and turning him so they were face to face. "What did you do?"

  "I did what my cousin demanded," Rodolpho snapped back. "I created the plague for him, just as he ordered! And now, it's taken on a life of its own! Now my creation will thrive, and you and Wianar can rot with it!" he said, cackling.

  "By the gods," Darvin muttered, staring back down on the city. "You've made it too virulent. It'll kill them all."

  "And what if it does?" Rodolpho cried out. "What if all of Reth burns to ash? What do I care? I did not choose this course. I did not ask to be here, hiding for twelve years, just so my dear, beloved cousin could stake his claim to another piece of land."

  "You made your choice back then," Darvin said. "You agreed to his terms."

  "I was given no choice!" Rodolpho screamed, jabbing a single finger into Darvin's chest. "You sent me to my grave, you craven worm, and I was dead!" The veins in the man's neck bulged in his fury, and spittle flecked his lips as he shouted. "Oh, certainly, my dear cousin called me back from the grave, gave me a chance at life again, but only if I agreed to his plans. Only if I took a new identity, came here to this gods-forsaken city, and did his dirty work for him. Yes, there was a fine choice." He spun away from Darvin and again stared down at the city.

  "That's between you and Eles," Darvin said after a moment, not wishing to debate with the man any longer. "We're well beyond that, and it's time to put the last part of the plan in motion." He waited, but when Rodolpho did not answer him, he asked, "So, do you have it?"

  Rodolpho didn't answer.

  "Rodolpho, do you have the formula?"

  Rodolpho Wianar glanced up at Darvin, smirked, and said, "There is no formula. The plague cannot be stopped."

  Darvin reeled. He suddenly wanted to be far away from there, to call on his magical boots to take him away from Reth, away from Chondath, to some distant corner of Faerun where the disease could not reach him. He wanted to throw Rodolpho from the tower.

  He dared not, not while there was a chance that the man was lying.

  "You're insane," Darvin said. "Eles will kill you again."

  "Let him try," Rodolpho snarled. "Rodolpho Wianar disappeared a dozen years ago, assumed dead, and no one was the wiser that I became Dwonlar Aphorio, Senator of Defense in the city of Reth. I'll simply die again, disappear again, and Eles will never find me." Then the man turned back to Darvin, and he smiled a cold, chilling smile. "And you can tell him I said so."

  Again, Darvin had to fight the urge to shove the figure before him backward, to send him teetering over the edge of the tower to plummet to his death. But he knew Eles would not be happy with that, would not accept Darvin's measure of justice.

  "I'm sure I'll be seeing you again," Darvin said at last. "Eles may still have something to say about your betrayal."

  "Get off my tower," Rodolpho said.

  "Eat horse dung," Darvin countered. Then he muttered an arcane phrase and vanished.

  Darvin blinked when he arrived in the camp of Captain Beltrim Havalla, leader of the Silver Raven Company, for the place was alive with activity. In the darkness, numerous cook fires burned, enabling the assassin to see soldiers hustling in every direction. It appeared the mercenaries were preparing to ship out.

  A soldier spotted Darvin appearing out of nowhere and leveled a crossbow at the man, challenging him. "Who in Tempus's name are you?" he called out.

  For a moment, Darvin just stood there, trembling in rage. He needed to hit something. The assassin drew several long, deep breaths, calming himself. Damn him, he thought. I should have pushed him.

  "Answer me, or I'll spit you!" the soldier shouted, taking a single wary step toward the intruder.

  "I've come to speak with Captain Havalla," Darvin replied. "Tell him that Junce Roundface is here."

  "Tell him yourself," came another voice, older and gruffer than the soldier's. It was the captain, striding through camp with a cluster of aides gathered around him. "What in the Nine Hells are you doing here? I've got a war to fight."

  "That's what I've come to talk to you about," Darvin replied, stepping over to fall in with the man. "A few adjustments need to be made."

  Beltrim Havalla swore. "I knew it," he muttered as they reached his command tent and ducked inside together. "It never fails. I don't care how much gold you promise, I always end up regretting fighting for you city folk and your wars. What is it this time?"

  Darvin made a point of peering around the inside of the tent, examining the various tapestries that had been hung up for decoration, in order to hide his grimace at the captain's words. He turned back and pointed at a map on the table in the center of the tent. "Captain Havalla, it's imperative that you take your mercenaries to Reth and establish martial law there. No, wait," he said, correcting himself. "Surround it and establish a quarantine."

  Beltrim eyed Darvin suspiciously. "What for?" he asked. "I thought Reth was your own city. Why do you want me to lay siege to it?"

  Darvin sighed. "I can't explain it right now, but please do this now, tonight. I'll give you half again as much gold as we've already agreed upon if you can have the city surrounded and sealed off by sunrise."

  Beltrim swore again, but that time, Darvin knew it was greed that overwhelmed him. "You make an offer I shouldn't refuse," he said at last, "but I've already got half my army in the field, keeping the druids at bay while the Rethite regulars hit the Hlathians. Something stirred up the Enclave but good, and they're fighting mad. Just keeping them out of the way of the main battle is going to be a trick, and I can't easily extract my forces without winding up in a nasty pinch when the Enclave counterattacks-and they most certainly will try."

  Darvin threw up his hands in exasperation. "There's nothing you can do? What about reserves? Two days ago, you had nothing but time on your hands and lots of antsy troops being held in reserve."

  "Aye, I did," Captain Havalla admitted. "And I still have a reserve force, but those men are tired after chasing down your Crescents and hauling them off to Reth. Besides, I need them to plug gaps in my lines for this fight."

  "I think," Darvin said with an edge to his voice, "you could push them a little harder than usual in exchange for the additional gold I mentioned. It really is necessary."

  "If it's so necessary, why don't you tell me what it's all about?"

  Darvin grimaced again, not caring if the captain saw him or not. "There's a problem," he began. He then explained that the plague had erupted in Reth and had to be contained, lest the disease spread beyond the city's walls and into the countryside-into the midst of the various armies on the field of battle. When he was finished, he eyed Beltrim Havalla, wondering if the man would be willing to put his forces at ris
k by getting so near to the disease-ridden city.

  After a long and rather uncomfortable silence, Havalla asked, "Do I have permission to cut down any man, woman, or child trying to leave the city?"

  Darvin nodded without hesitation.

  "What about the Reach? How are you going to keep ship traffic from coming and going?"

  Darvin had considered that already. "I know someone who has enough ships at his disposal to keep them hemmed in," he said. He made a note to talk to Falagh about that as soon as he returned to Arrabar. "So what do you say?"

  "I say, it doesn't look like we have much of a choice, do we?" Havalla answered. "If we don't hold it back, it'll chew right through my armies, and everyone else's. It'll be the Battle of Nun all over again."

  "It really is necessary," Darvin said again, rising. "Remember, by sunrise, if at all possible."

  Beltrim sighed. "I'll have to march them all night, and they will be in fine humor by morning, but I think we can do it."

  "Excellent," Darvin said. "I'll make sure the gold is on its way immediately."

  As he began to put his magical boots to use once more, Darvin heard Beltrim say, "You do that." Then he was gone, teleporting back to the Generon.

  Everything was nothingness around Emriana.

  The girl feared that she was becoming nothingness, too. Only her thoughts seemed to hover there, letting her cling to the notion that she still existed. She had to concentrate to keep everything else.

  The sensation of being totally blind, of not having her eyes adjust to even the tiniest bit of light, had at some point begun to terrify the girl. And though she could feel her own body, could touch naked skin in that nothingness, it was horrific not to be able to see her fingers wiggling in front of her face. She had to fight to convince herself that not being able to see them did not make them any less real.

  Emriana was neither cold nor hungry, nor could she feel any air move when she breathed. Her buttocks never became numb or sore from sitting. Time did not seem to pass for her, except for her thoughts. Something told her that she could remain like that forever, just thinking. And the longer her thinking went on, the less substantial the rest of her might become. She might altogether cease to exist physically, just floating in the black void, a consciousness trapped.

  Emriana fought against that image. She needed to remind her senses to work, needed to keep moving, functioning. She had tried singing-when? how long ago? — thinking that hearing herself would help, but she was unnerved by the way her voice sounded in that place. Instead she reached out around herself.

  The walls imprisoning the girl were certainly real enough. She could feel them when she pushed out with her hands. Beyond that sensation, though, they had no substance, no qualities. They were neither hot nor cold, smooth nor rough. They simply held her in the midst of the nothingness. She could follow the surface with her hands, rising to her knees and finding eight corners. She could not quite stand, for the ceiling was too low. And she could not quite lie down, either. It was a box just big enough for her to sit, to draw her knees up to herself protectively, to waste away.

  Junce Roundface had not been lying when he had told her she would spend a long, long time in there. That thought nearly made her start screaming again.

  "Please," the girl pleaded, her voice resounding in her skull but nowhere else. "I want to get out." She waited, listening, but there was nothing. No sounds, not even the roaring in her ears. "Please!" she screamed.

  Nothing.

  Emriana curled up into a ball and lay on her side. She would have liked to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. She was simply left with her thoughts.

  Later-an hour? a year? — Emriana became aware of something. It was not clear what she had noticed, but just the fact that she was noticing anything at all snapped her out of a sort of stupor. She rose up onto her knees, turned her head, tried to determine which sense had detected something.

  It was light.

  Very faint, above her, a pinprick of light had appeared. The light grew, became a window, grew still more, dazzlingly bright, making the girl cringe. It became one whole side of her prison. It burned her eyes with its brightness, but she was oh, so thankful just to feel pain in her eyes.

  Emriana blinked repeatedly and managed to focus on the scene beyond her prison, through that window.

  She spied a room, one that she vaguely remembered from another time. A large bed stood against a distant wall, with a couch to one side and a dressing table beside that. It was a woman's room, draped with bright, colorful tapestries and illuminated by numerous pierced lanterns hanging from the walls and ceiling. Textures, temperature, length, and form all seemed wonderfully welcome right then, even if a recollection nudging at the edge of her memory was vaguely unsettling. Emriana knew that if she could just think hard enough, it would come to her.

  At that moment, a woman dressed in a formal gown stepped into view in front of her precious window, blocking out the rest of the world. The owner of the room, triggering all of those memories.

  Lobra Pharaboldi.

  Denrick's sister.

  Emriana gasped and shrank back. The look on the woman's face told Emriana that she was not being rescued.

  "Hello, Emriana Matrell."

  "Please let me out," the girl began, crawling right up against the window, pressing her face as close as she could, hoping she looked sufficiently anxious that Lobra would take pity on her and not blame her for what had happened to Denrick. "I don't know how I got in here, but if you could ask someone, or have a wizard perform a divination, I'm sure you could let me out, and-"

  "Hush," Lobra said, her voice soft and yet commanding. "Not just yet."

  Emriana felt tears on her cheeks. "Please?" she begged, and she thought she sounded rather pitiful, like a child. "Please?" she repeated.

  "Oh, I will let you out in a moment," Lobra said, smiling just a bit. "To serve your penance for the crimes you and your family have inflicted upon me."

  "I didn't mean to do anything," Emriana began, feeling frantic to convey remorse, anything to win Lobra over. "It was an accident, a big misunderstanding, and I'm sorry for that. It would never, ever happen again," and she went on, babbling anything she could think of to convince Lobra that she should be allowed to get out of the mirror.

  "Hush," Lobra repeated. "There is someone here who would like to see you," she said, looking up, past Emriana, to some place out of the girl's field of view.

  Denrick Pharaboldi strolled around the side of the window, stepped right up and knelt down, that familiar, terrible, wolfish grin spreading wide. "Hello, Emriana," he said. "It's good to see you again."

  CHAPTER 4

  "Lavant knows we're watching him," Falagh said, sounding impatient. "He must. He hasn't said anything of consequence to Lord Wianar since we began."

  "Perhaps," Grozier replied, leaning over Bartimus's shoulder and watching the scene displayed on the wizard's mirror.

  The glass was smaller than the one in Bartimus's chambers at House Talricci, handy for travel, but it made viewing the images more difficult. Since they were performing the viewing in the sitting room of House Pharaboldi, it was a necessary inconvenience. He would have liked to use the larger one, the exquisite glass he had been ordered to fetch from the dungeons of the Generon, for it was much more suitable for scrying. But the woman Lobra had it in another room, along with one of the shapeshifters, who had taken the form of her dead brother.

  Bartimus wondered if she had some ability at magical scrying, too.

  "Stop shaking it!" Grozier ordered. "It's hard enough to see what's going on."

  The wizard sighed and held the small mirror still, wishing his employer would stop putting so much weight on him. Grozier's breath stank of salted fish roe, a delicacy served at the celebration and something Bartimus knew the man enjoyed.

  "He doesn't seem to be paying any attention to our spy, though," Grozier continued. "I think Lavant would have taken action if he suspected something."

/>   "Well, if the two of them try to wander off alone and put some distance between themselves and our planted guard again, that might be a good clue that they sense trouble," Falagh replied. "Maybe he and the Shining Lord just aren't willing to discuss their private matters with guards standing about, and if your doppelganger insinuates himself into their midst one more time, they are bound to realize he's shadowing them."

  "Perhaps," Grozier said again, sounding doubtful, still peering into the mirror. "Give it a little more time."

  Bartimus thought Falagh's initial plan had seemed promising. After Junce had shown the lot of them where the magic mirror was stored and then vanished to deal with other issues, the scion of House Mestel had suggested that their duplicate Pilos wait a bit before carrying out his ruse with the Darowdryn family. Instead, Falagh had suggested, they should have him transform into the likeness of a Generon guard and get near Lavant. He reasoned that attempting to use Bartimus's magic to scry directly on either Lavant or Lord Wianar might trigger some magical defenses one of the men had in place, but focusing the magic on another figure who could get close to them might let them overhear a conversation with little chance of getting noticed.

  Thus far, the high priest and the ruler of Chondath had done nothing but make small talk, and frankly, the wizard was growing bored. He didn't much care to return to the party, not so much because he would rather be somewhere else, but because he so often got lost in the middle of conversations. He always found himself mulling problems in his head, letting his mind wander over spells he was developing. Being drawn back into a discussion in which someone was waiting for him to reply to a missed question made him uncomfortable, so he tended to keep to himself at public events, standing off in the corner and avoiding groups. That wasn't much fun, either.