The Crimson Gold r-3

by Voronica Whitney-Robinson

  As suddenly as the attack began, it stopped. The juju zombies that were not completely incapacitated rose to their feet and stood at attention. Tazi turned with a wondering look at Naglatha, but the Red Wizard shook her head in denial. Likewise, the servants and Justikar also looked surprised as their battle had been paused for them as well. Beside Naglatha, the air shimmered.

  About the size of a full length mirror, a pool of radiance appeared, and a shape started to coalesce in the center. Tazi, breathing hard, her weapon still in hand, watched in fascinated interest as a man's face and shoulders became clearer. He appeared to be in his forties and had piercing black eyes. With just a touch of gray at the temples of his black mane, Tazi thought he was very vigorous looking and found something about him oddly attractive. Judging by the sour expression on Naglatha's face, Tazi realized the two were not unfamiliar to each other.

  "Ah," began the image in the pool, "Naglatha. I am so glad you were able to get a message through to me just now." The image looked at the battered zombie soldiers and Tazi could hear a 'tsk' sound escape the man's lips. "Luckily, I was able to stop my garrison before any harm could befall you."

  "I am most grateful, Zulkir," Naglatha addressed him respectfully, but Tazi could see it irked the wizard to do so.

  "I am sorry for the confusion," the image continued, "but I did not expect any of my guests to be robbing my orchards." A slow smile played about his lips, and Tazi realized that this could only be Szass Tam, the man Naglatha wanted to destroy. She tried to study him as best she could.

  "Well, don't you mean Pyras Autorian's orchards? These are still his lands, aren't they?" Naglatha asked, and Tazi could see the calculating gleam in her eyes.

  "Yes, yes," the necromancer dismissed, "his orchards."

  "Well," Naglatha told the image, "no harm's done."

  "No," Szass Tam agreed. "This matter is best forgotten. Considering how close you are, I will make sure that quarters for you, your servants, and your pet are waiting." Without warning, the image faded away.

  Tazi kept a cautious eye on the zombies, but they lined up and filed^away in the direction from which they had appeared. She tossed the staff to the ground and walked over to Naglatha. The wizard had her eyes closed and her brow furrowed. Tazi stood before her and waited until she opened them again.

  "Well?" she asked Naglatha.

  "I was making sure that no one was watching us any longer," she explained. "He is no longer scrying us."

  "Szass Tarn?" Tazi asked

  "Yes," Naglatha nodded. "You handled yourself well," she acknowledged to Tazi.

  "Not a scratch," Tazi replied.

  "That incident was no accident, though," Naglatha deduced. "I wonder how many others attending the council might meet with misfortune before this is all said and done."

  "Right this way," the elegantly dressed servant said as she led Naglatha down an elaborately carved corridor toward the other visiting dignitaries.

  "Please make sure that my servants are treated accordingly for my rank," she said as she gave Tazi a parting wink. She and Justikar stood in the hall and waited for one of the other servants to assist them. It only took a few moments for a young girl, not nearly as richly decorated as the first, to appear. She smiled easily enough, and Tazi thought she was new and her probationary job was to assist the servants of the lich's guests. Not many of them were likely to complain if their bedcovers weren't turned down, so it was not a critical assignment.

  "This way," she directed them in a high voice.

  She took Tazi and Justikar down a narrow but well-lit passageway. There were several doorways open along the corridor, and Tazi could see humans that must have been the trusted servants of the important and wealthy guests of Szass Tam. They looked a bit confused in the large, well-furnished rooms with nothing to do. Tazi saw one young man who simply sat on a huge bed and stared straight at the wall in front of him, totally lost. She shook her head sadly and kept walking.

  At the end of the passageway, the servant pointed to a room on the left. "I hope this will be satisfactory. We did not have any other rooms left, so I am afraid you and your companion must stay together." And the girl lowered her gaze. Tazi suspected she was almost embarrassed that the two of them, being of opposite sex, had to share quarters.

  "It will be fine," she told the girl.

  "You are welcome to maneuver through this corridor and you have access to a few of the work spaces along the next set of passageways. But that is all," she warned them.

  "And how will we know when we've reached our boundaries?" Tazi asked.

  The plump girl lost her timid smile. "Oh," she said gravely, "you'll know." She bowed and left them alone.

  Tazi stepped into the room and was surprised at how well it was furnished, considering it was being used to house slaves. She figured that these wizards went out of their way to outshine each other, so some of the opulence had to spill over to the servants' quarters. While the girl who had led them to their room had been dressed well enough, Tazi wagered she didn't have a chamber nearly as fine as this one. Tazi padded over to one of the large beds and sank down gratefully with a huge sigh. She looked tiredly at the dwarf and could see he was furious.

  "What?" she asked him, but her heart was not in it, and she was in no mood for a verbal fencing match.

  "Is this worth it?" he demanded. "Is your crimson gold worth all the misery that this adventure of yours is going to cause? Will you be satisfied only when everything crumbles around you?"

  Tazi jumped to her feet and prowled around the stylish furnishings. She was tired and sore and didn't want to fight with the duergar on top of everything else. But, most importantly, his words had struck a nerve. What had started out as a simple enough undertaking had rapidly turned on her, and Tazi didn't know for sure what she had mired herself into and what the final cost was going to be. She eventually returned to the bed and sat on the end of it. She rested her elbows on her knees and laced her fingers together.

  "I don't know," she answered quietly. "Maybe you can tell me."

  The dwarf appeared surprised by her response, perhaps because he expected more bravado from her. He searched the room until he found a stool the right size, and he pulled it up to her, but not too close.

  "Why are you doing this?" he asked again, but in a softer tone, as he sat down.

  Tazi looked at the dwarf and pursed her lips for a few moments, weighing things in her mind. Finally, she started, "When I was very young, I took it upon myself to learn how to steal. Why I did it is none of your business, nor do I think you'd even care," she said. "But I did. And the easiest place for me to start was in my home."

  Tazi got up and moved around again. "I lived in a big house," she explained, "with lots of rooms. There were my parents and my two brothers and more than a handful of servants, so there was a lot for me to choose from.

  "Mostly, I would take little trinkets from my mother or brothers. For a while, no one suspected me. After all," she paused to glance at the dwarf with a sideways grin, "I was just a little girl. And, as we always had some help coming or going, the servants took the brunt of the blame."

  "You mean your slaves took the blame," Justikar corrected her.

  Tazi winced at the implied accusation. "No," she said vehemently, "we did not own those people. They could come and go as they wanted. My family simply hired them to perform household duties for us. They always had a choice."

  "Were there other jobs some of them could've taken instead of cleaning up after you? Did they have a vast skill set that allowed them to pick and choose their lot in life? Do you think they all had a real choice, Thazi-enne Uskevren?" Jo'stikar asked her.

  His accusations did not sit easily with Tazi. "Did you want to hear my reasons or not?" she snapped, irritated that there wasn't a single window to look out of and avoid the duergar's shrewd gaze.

  "Go on," he told her.

  "The servants took the blame," she continued, "but I always managed to get the various b
aubles back to their rightful owners eventually. All right," Tazi admitted as she sat on the bed again, "returning the things took a bit of convincing by a trusted family…friend," she tripped over the word. "He taught me more than a few lessons.

  "The last thing I planned to steal belonged to my father. I had pilfered something from everyone else and considered an item of my father's to be my crowning glory. He is-was," she corrected herself self-consciously and lowered her eyes, "a very powerful man. Sometimes I used to think he was cold to me, but now, I suspect he was simply afraid to show me how he felt about me.

  "He was a great collector of the beautiful and the unusual. Most of the things he treasured were fairly large pieces of artwork, and I was a bit daunted by how I might hide a painting or some such," she told the dwarf. "I snuck into his study and started to look around and see what I might be able to lift. As I prowled around the room I had only been invited into on a few occasions at that point, something glowed softly from his desk and caught my attention." Tazi became somewhat lost in her memory and did not notice how closely the duergar watched her face.

  "I crept over, careful not to disturb anything, and saw this odd lump of metal no bigger than my fist. It sat, carefully nestled in a chamois cloth on his big desk, amidst stacks of papers and quills. I had never seen anything like it before. As far as I knew, it was a piece of gold, but I had never seen gold that red before." Tazi paused to tug at her lower lip as though she was contemplating the theft right then and there.

  "Whatever kind of gold it was," she told Justikar, "it was perfect for my plans. I pocketed the treasure and was gone like a shot. My father was livid when he discovered the crimson gold was gone," she ducked her shoulders and smiled sheepishly. "I had never seen him so furious before. He went on and on about how hard it had been to obtain and what he was going to do with the thief when he got his hands on him " she trailed away, lost in thought.

  "So," Justikar asked, "what did your father do when he found out it was you?"

  "He never found out, as far as I know," she replied. "My older brother discovered I had the stuff, and he played a 'prank' on me. After it was over, my left arm was broken, and my father's gold was lost forever. I was never able to return it to him.

  "That was years ago," Tazi added after a long pause. "And now my father is dead, much too soon. There were things I still wanted to tell him, but that opportunity is gone now." Tazi chewed her lower lip, unaware that her eyes were brimming with unshed tears. She jumped up and wanted over to a painting and appeared to study it.

  "The house was too quiet, and my mother was desolate for a while after his death. When she was unhappy, I was all right as if somehow I could mourn my father through her. But a few tendays ago, I saw her smile again. I knew it was time for her to start to put away her grief. But that's when I became somewhat lost," she said softly.

  "I didn't know how to let him go, I realized. And it came to me. I could bring back the only thing I ever stole from him, the only thing I ever ruined between us as an offering. I could say good-bye finally. That was what was worth coming to this forsaken place for and still is " her voice trailed away. She rubbed at her face and turned back to the dwarf.

  "Foolish, wasn't I, all things considered?" she asked, prepared for the duergar's snide remarks and ridicule.

  "No," he said with a dignity she didn't imagine he would ever show her. "No."

  She was nonplussed and simply stared at him for a while. In due course, she walked back over to the bed and sat down, studying him.

  "All right," she said finally, "now you. Why are you here?"

  "I'm a prisoner, in the wrong place at the wrong time," he replied.

  "Look," Tazi shot back at him, "I'm too tired for this. I admit, I don't know much about duergar, but I do know you are a long way from home. And people don't normally stray too far away without a good reason. I'd honestly like to know, if you would be willing to tell me. We are stuck in here together."

  The dwarf turned his head slightly and stared at her. Eventually Tazi became ill at ease and cast her eyes downward.

  "What are you doing?" she asked and felt the heat rush to her cheeks.

  "Faces are like stones," he answered enigmatically. "Their history, their character is written there plainly if one knows how to read it." He sighed deeply, as though he had come to a decision.

  "Fair enough," he said after a pause, "a truth for a truth. I came here for family, too." Tazi watched him encouragingly but didn't want to interrupt him if he was willing to tell her about himself.

  "My brother left our home several months ago and traveled here to Thay. You don't need to know where 'home' is, either," he shot at her in anticipation of her question, but Tazi just nodded in agreement. "He is the dreamer in the family, not me. You say you know something of dwarves. I'd wager not too much. Most humans don't bother. Did you know, for example, that up until a few years ago, our numbers were dwindling? And when I say 'our' I mean all races of dwarves."

  "I didn't know that," Tazi acknowledged honestly, "but I always suspected that there were not great numbers of you."

  "Great numbers," Justikar snorted. "You have no idea. And I'm not going to tell you, either. But a few years ago, the dwarven people received the Thunder Blessing, and suddenly we can't stop making whelps," he explained, and Tazi couldn't understand why he sounded disgusted. "All of the dwarves except us-except the Duergar." There was no mistaking the bitterness that edged his words.

  "Once again, the gray dwarves were cheated out of what every other dwarf benefited from. That seems to be our lot in life, though we don't deserve it. I expected no less. But, as I said, my brother is a dreamer and a scholar. He wanted more. He was always searching for evidence, proof that there was more to it than just us. Adnama came across some parchments some months ago that led him to believe that there might be an offshoot of our kind located here."

  "Here?" Tazi asked and pointed to the floor of their room. "Is that why you lit up when I mentioned the Citadel the night you were wounded?"

  "Somewhere in the depths below the Citadel," the duergar nodded, "and here he came. I know he made it as far as some of the tunnels below, but that's when I lost track of him."

  "So you're here to find him," Tazi finished, "and reunite your people."

  "If there is another vein of duergar, if we were to combine numbers, we could become an unstoppable force," he informed her.

  Tazi frowned. "And here I thought you just wanted your brother back and maybe what was best for your people. How are you any different from Naglatha or any of these other Red Wizards?" She shook her head and climbed all the way onto the bed. As she stretched out, she looked at him again.

  "Get some rest," she told him, suddenly exhausted, "so we're ready for tomorrow. I think I understand you better now." She closed her eyes and was asleep in mere moments.

  Justikar watched the woman sleep for a while. When he was sure it was a deep slumber, he moved silently to her side and deftly removed her worn sack without jostling her or it at all. He swung the leather sack in his grip twice and smiled.

  "I came here for family, too," he whispered to the sleeping Tazi and slunk out of their chamber into the darkened hallway beyond.

  CHAPTER NINE

  3 Kythorn, 1373 DR

  When she heard the light footsteps in the room, Tazi opened her eyes and instinctively reached for the knife she had secreted in her night table. As she fumbled around for it, and came up empty handed, Tazi remembered that she was not in her bed in Stormweather Towers, though it was as comfortable as hers, but in the depths of the Citadel. While her eyes focused on the source of the noise, she realized it was not some unknown intruder, but the duergar that had roused her. She sat bolt upright when she saw he was standing in the doorway to their room with her sack in his strong hands.

  "What do you think you're doing?" she demanded and jumped from the bed to pull her bag from his unresisting fingers.

  "Take a look inside," the dwarf directed h
er,and Tazi saw he had a pleased expression on his face. She peered into the sack and looked back down at him incredulously.

  "What have you done?" she whispered.

  "While you slept, I did some exploring. Since that fat, pasty-faced girl said there were some workshops available to us, I thought it best to see for myself if that were true. There is a passable forge and bellows, so I made use of them during the night," he told her smugly.

  Tazi could see that the dwarf was watching her closely. She pulled the drawstrings farther open and extracted a small, razor sharp dagger that radiated with a deep red shine from the bag. She would have described the piece as delicate if she hadn't seen the evil glint to its edge.

  "That metal was a little tough to work with and I had to use almost all of it. It's not nearly as malleable as regular gold. In fact, it appeared to be even harder than steel. And there's something else about it," he added quietly, "a quality I can't put my finger on. It's not something I have ever run across before. I wouldn't mind having some of it myself."

  Tazi relit one of their lamps and inspected the dagger in its ruddy glow. The blade felt like a natural extension of her hand. The weight and balance were perfect. And she wasn't able to deny that the workmanship was some of the best she had ever beheld. And Tazi was a woman who had seen and could afford the finest. When she gazed at the dwarf again, she could see he enjoyed her pleasure in his skill.

  "But, Justikar," she asked in a curious voice, "why did you do it? I know it's a good idea to have a weapon, but why did you do it to my gold?"

  "I thought about what you told me last night," he explained to her seriously, "and I think this will make a more fitting offering to the spirit of your father."

  "How is that?" she wondered.

  "Because this," he nodded to the dagger she held expertly in her white hand, "is what you have become, Thazienne Uskevren. If you think long and honestly, you will know I am right about that. And to make peace with your sire, you will have to make peace with yourself."