Hand of Fire

by Ed Greenwood

  “Call out if you see or hear anything suspicious,” Beldimarr added, as he turned to follow Arauntar. “Anything at all.”

  “I shall, yes,” the merchant assured him, clasping his hands as men who are well satisfied—or very nervous—do. The guard nodded and strode away.

  Haransau Olimer lifted both of his eyebrows and looked up at the starry sky. “And that, O watching gods,” he murmured in a voice so soft that even a man standing right behind him would have struggled to hear it, “is all I know about blandreths, so the special oils will stay stoppered and those pots will simply have to rust. I’d best separate them into a chest of their own ere our eagle-eyed friend next inspects my wares.”

  It had taken only one spell from his ring to set two wagons afire and immolate the real Haransau Olimer and his assistant in one of them. It had taken Marlel’s natural guile and but a few moments of pretty speech to lure the two men into one of those wagons in search of some very good deals—and he was back in Olimer’s wagon hastily donning the padded belly and one of the blandreth-dealer’s second-best robes before most of the shouting began. It was a matter of moments with face paints to give himself Olimer’s pimples and baggy eyes, and he was ready to emerge and gawk with the rest and later sorrowfully tell Voldovan that both his passenger and his assistant seemed to be among the missing.

  That passenger, paying a wagon-owner for riding-in-shelter passage from Scornubel to Waterdeep, had been a young, slender man of few words and a face hidden in a cowl. Earlier Olimer had confided a few suspicions regarding him to one of the guards—but the merchant’s customary cheerful disposition soon returned after the disaster, and he dismissed suggestions that his passenger had been involved in fell magic with the news that he’d gathered by roundabout queries that the lad was on something of a pilgrimage to a Waterdhavian temple and considered himself both unworthy to serve his god and unable to work holy magics. Just which god, the youngling had declined to say.

  Now, of course, he was beyond questioning. Marlel looked around his wagon of clanking pots and smiled. The fat merchant had terrible taste in clothes—but oh, the food and wine the man enjoyed! None of your usual over-brewed thrusk and handfuls of stale nuts but pickled rock beetles from the Tashalar, spiced firestorm wine from Elturel, and keg after keg of roast bustard marinated in zzar!

  ’Twas a good thing Waterdeep wasn’t all that far off, or Olimer’s wardrobe of voluminous robes would soon be all Marlel would be able to fit into!

  There was just time for a skewer of fried arnhake and jellied eel ere he tied the bell-cords across the wagon-flaps and took his rest for the night. Being searched was such hungry work.

  “Lady,” said the softly menacing voice behind the knife that gleamed in front of her throat, “am I glad to see you!”

  “Not half so much,” Sharantyr replied with a smile, seizing the thief’s wrist and jerking hard down and toward her, so that his deadly blade plunged hilt-deep into her breast—without sound or resistance, as if she was a ghost, or a woman made of smoke—and slipping a noose of her stonemaiden around his neck, “as I am gladdened, sirrah, to see you.”

  Startled eyes stared at her, eyes bulged, and fingers clawed at the tightening cord. A knee shot up desperately between her legs to strike her armored codpiece with numbing force. Numbing for the thief, that is. A loop of her cord captured his knife-wrist even more tightly than it held his throat, and after a moment of frenzied and futile struggle, he sagged limply in her grasp. He was helpless, and they both knew it.

  “My delight is so sharp and swift, good sir,” the lady ranger continued sweetly, “because you’re going to take me to see Belgon Bradraskor—or the Master of the Shadows, if you prefer his, ah, professional title.”

  The thief’s pleading eyes managed to convey even deeper desperation, and he clawed and wrenched at her arms in vain. This shapely woman was much stronger than she looked … and much stronger than he was.

  Sharantyr gave him another, almost impish smile and tweaked the cord she was holding to remind him wordlessly that she knew just how much air he was getting and could cut off his supply—and his life with it—at any time.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” she told the strangling man, “and I don’t want to harm Belgon. In fact, if you give him my name, I believe he’ll be pleased indeed to see me. Now, can you take me to him, or are you … expendable?”

  By a swift and rising series of panting sobs and nods the thief managed to convey his ability and deeply earnest willingness to guide this woman, whom blades couldn’t touch, anywhere she pleased, this very moment, and to any number of Masters of Shadows she might care to see.

  Sharantyr smiled still more broadly and did something to his wrist that made his fingers burn and his knife clatter to the ground. “Remember,” she purred, making it clink on the cobblestones with the toe of her boot, “that I could have slain you and did not. I want no further unpleasantness between us. Consider me a mistake who decided to be merciful to you.”

  He nodded, eyes very wide, and she slipped around behind him like a graceful ghost and tightened the stonemaiden around his throat in a slip-knot, so that it made a leash. She slipped another of its cords around one of his legs below the knee and let it hang loose. If he tried to run, it could be pulled tight to trip him in an instant.

  “My name is Tessaril Winter,” she purred. “What’s yours?”

  “Ta—Taber, l-lady.”

  The cord around his neck tightened suddenly, leaving him with no air at all. He sobbed, reeled as the night grew darker around him … then the cord loosened, and he could breathe again.

  “No, no,” that gentle voice said, deep with sadness and disappointment, “I want your real name.”

  “B-Besmer, lady.”

  “Lady—?” The cord twitched, warningly.

  “Lady Winter!” he said hastily. “Lady Tessaril Winter.”

  “That’s much better, Besmer,” the lady behind him said approvingly. “We both grow older, though, and so doth the night—a night I could be spending with my friend Belgon.”

  “Y-yes?”

  “Guide me,” she breathed into his ear, and the thief shivered, swallowed, then started to walk, slowly and carefully, down the alley—only to be brought to choking heel.

  “No,” the purring voice of the ghost-lady said into his ear, “take me another way. I don’t fancy this particular alley.”

  Slowly and very carefully, Besmer turned around, his captor turning with him like a soft-footed shadow, and asked in a tremulous voice, “Did you want to go by Rat Stair, Lady Winter, or Baluth’s Hole—or do you know some other way?”

  “The Hole, I think,” Sharantyr told him pleasantly. “Rat Stair reminds me of all the rats I’ve eaten, some of them alive and uncooked, and almost all of them without sauce.”

  The thief caught in her cords shivered again, and started to walk very slowly and carefully across Scornubel.

  8

  SEEING FOLK WHO ARE HARD TO GET TO SEE

  When dealing with trade-rivals or slaughtering ruling dynasties, start at the top. ’Tis more dangerous, but a lot more entertaining for bystanders—and will earn you an enviable reputation. Remember: Men stand back to gaze at those they admire but leap forward to aid those they respect (or, to use a more blunt word, those they fear).

  Brathmur Engelstone, Sage of Saerloon

  One Trail Chosen: A Path Through Life

  Year of the Highmantle

  “S-she wants to see the Master,” Besmer quavered to the man who’d stepped suddenly into their path with a drawn sword in his hand, in this narrowest of dark and dripping passages. Most of Scornubel was dusty and dry, above and below ground, but this underway ran very deep, doubtless skirting an underground spring. Sharantyr had begun to think her unwilling guide just might be leading her on a needlessly extended tour of Scornubel’s darker ways—but the smell of fear was strong on him, and he seemed almost as terrified of the man now standing in front of him as of the lady beh
ind who could strangle him in a moment or on a whim.

  The sentinel said nothing and evidently needed no light to see. His response to Besmer’s words was to thrust his blade, lightning-swift, under the thief’s arm—straight into the woman standing behind him, who presumably held the other end of the strangling-cord that was around Besmer’s throat.

  Into and through her it went, as if she was made of smoke. The sentinel uttered a startled grunt and slashed about in her with his steel, just to make sure, but he might have been cleaving empty air.

  “When you’re finished,” Sharantyr told him pleasantly, “I’d like to see Belgon. Perhaps I’ll have time to play at blades with you later.”

  The man with the sword frowned at her over Besmer’s shoulder, then asked, in a voice rough with disuse, “You know him?”

  “For an answer to that, why don’t you give him my name and see his reaction?”

  “And what,” that rough voice asked heavily, “might that name be?”

  The cord twitched around Besmer’s neck, and he squeaked hastily, “Winter! The Lady Tessaril Winter!”

  The man gave the thief a hard look and the woman behind him an even harder one. Then he stepped back into the side-passage he’d erupted from. Behind he left the flat words, “Wait here—or die.”

  “Well, Besmer,” Sharantyr said brightly, “we’ve been left with a choice. Would you prefer to tarry? Or choose death?”

  “Arauntar,” Shandril murmured as a familiar form stalked past her wagon, “where’s Narm?” The much-scarred veteran guard cast a look at Sarlor, Tarth, and Mulgar—who’d turned suspiciously to watch and listen, their hands going to their swordhilts—then looked back at Shandril and said, “He hit his head. Narbuth’s tending him.”

  “No,” the maid from Highmoon said flatly, lifting one of the coffers with flasks painted on it. “I’m tending him. Take me to him now or bring him to me.”

  The three guards stepped menacingly nearer, and she turned her fierce look on them and asked, “Well? What are you waiting for? Bring me my husband!”

  “We don’t take orders from you, fire-witch,” Sarlor snapped, drawing his sword slowly and holding it up so she could see the torchlight glimmer along its edge. “You do as Orthil told you to, or—”

  He was suddenly gazing into two eyes that blazed with tiny flames. “Or you’ll do what, sir?” Shandril asked softly. “The man who stands between me and my Narm can expect to be ashes in a very short time. If none of you swaggering blades will bring me my Narm, go and get Orthil Voldovan, and I’ll see if I can make him more reasonable. Or I could just go do a little wagon-searching of my own, gentle sirs—and any man who tried to stop me wouldn’t have to worry about brigands on the morrow … or ever again.”

  “Keep back, witch!” Mulgar snarled. The three guards hastily retreated, swords flashing up to menace her, and glanced this way and that for shields—or any handy cover.

  “Sit you here, lass,” Arauntar growled. “I’ll go fetch Narm or Orthil for you. There’s no need for flames or anyone hurt.”

  Shandril sighed and sat down on her wagon-perch, seeming suddenly small, young, and very close to tears. “Arauntar, you’ve no idea how many times I’ve said that these past few months—and how many folk have refused to listen to me and died.” She waved a hand at Sarlor, Tarth, and Mulgar and added, “Don’t make me add these three fools to my bone-reckoning. Please.”

  Strangely, no one laughed or scoffed. Arauntar merely nodded and strode hastily off into the night. The three guards lowered their swords and stared expressionlessly at Shandril, who sighed again and idly shaped a sword of flame from her fingertips.

  Sarlor eyed it and started to curse softly, but Tarth slapped him to silence. Mulgar deliberately sheathed his own sword, made the downward, spreading gesture of flat, open hands that means “Enough. Let there be peace here between us,” and slowly turned around to watch the night again. After a moment, Tarth also turned to take up that watch, but it was a long and wary time ere Sarlor reluctantly took his eyes off the fire-witch.

  He looked swiftly back over his shoulder at her twice, thereafter, but she never moved from where she sat on the wagon-perch, head resting morosely on arms clasped around her knees … like many a young girl he’d seen brooding by firelight.

  “Well?”

  Besmer emitted a little moan and whispered, “Please, Lady, don’t … don’t toy with me. We must wait here.”

  “Besmer,” the soft voice in his ear asked calmly, “what did you intend to do to me, when we first met? Rob me … or something more?”

  The thief started to shake. “Uh—I—just rob you, Lady! Truly!”

  “Besmer, you’re a terrible liar. What if I’d been ugly, and a man, armored so heavily that your blade couldn’t touch me but so trammeled that you could snatch my purse at will? Is stealing coins how you eat?”

  “M-mostly, Lady. That and … jobs for the Master.”

  “How much does such work win you, in a tenday?”

  “Sometimes much.” She waited, and reluctantly he added, “Sometimes little: a few coppers, a silver falcon.”

  A slender hand came around in front of his face. Between its fingers were four gold coins. “I pay well for good guides,” his captor said calmly, “if they give me no trouble and offer me no treachery. Remember that.” The hand vanished again.

  Besmer swallowed, and—his mind a-whirl—saw many possible treacheries. He also saw vividly the perils the Master of the Shadows could visit upon him for his guiding this night, or being bested by this mysterious woman, or just on a whim …

  “You’re thinking of whether you’ll survive to spend any coins I give you, after bringing me here,” the Lady’s soft voice said from behind him. “You’re wondering if you can hide those coins and somehow live to spend them—if you can flee Scornubel at all. You’re wondering what you can do to me if this damned cord is ever not around your neck. All of these things are as plain as the light of highsun. What I don’t know is whether you want to leave Scornubel … or if it’s just too much a part of Besmer for you to dare.”

  Her words hung in the silence between them.

  He licked his lips, swallowed—so much sweat was pouring down his face that it was dripping off his nose and chin—and whispered, “I don’t want to, but now I’ll have to or die. I can see that.”

  After another silence, he added, in a voice so low she had to almost rest her chin on the back of his neck to hear him, “Will you—take me with you, Lady? I’ll do anything.…”

  “I don’t doubt that,” she whispered back. “Think on this before you ask again, Besmer: We’re almost certainly being listened to, right now—and where I’m going, death will be well-nigh inevitable. In truth, it might be safer for you to throw yourself onto Bradraskor’s mercies.”

  There was another silence before he whispered, “Lady, what are you?”

  As if his words had been a cue, the sentinel with the sword stepped back into the passage, said curtly, “Come,” and whirled back into his side-passage again.

  “Lead on, guide,” the soft voice said gently in Besmer’s ear, and the trembling thief reluctantly stepped into the side-passage.

  They’d gone barely six paces before a sword thrust through Sharantyr again. She regarded the sentinel with a raised eyebrow, and he put out his other hand to snatch the cords of her stonemaiden and snapped, “From here on, you go to see the Master alone. Leave me your sword—and your dagger, and every other weapon you have.”

  Sharantyr’s strength held the cords immobile despite his strong tug, keeping the suddenly gargling Besmer alive. She looked straight into the sentinel’s stony face and said in exact mimicry of his flat tones, “Let go of my cords—or die.”

  For a long moment they stared at each other, strength straining against strength and the thief staggering and clawing for air, trying desperately to turn around. Sharantyr raised one eyebrow, and the sentinel let go of the stonemaiden, stepped back a pace, and growled, �
��Surrender your weapons now!”

  “I hired this man as a guide,” Sharantyr told him calmly, taking her cord from around Besmer’s neck and dropping a handful of coins into his hand. Out of habit the thief looked down at them, and she said to him, “I hope those few coins will suffice. If I need a guide again in Scornubel, I know what alley to expect you in.”

  Besmer stared at her, clenched his hand around the small mound of gold coins that filled his palm—then turned and ran, rubbing at his throat.

  The sentinel repeated his demand, and Sharantyr turned back to him, lifted her eyebrow again, and said, “You seem slow to grasp the fact that I take no orders from you or from the Master. To borrow again the phrasing you seem to love so much, stand aside—or die.”

  The man’s face tightened, and he lunged like a trained swordmaster, thrusting his blade—through her harmlessly, as before.

  Almost lazily Sharantyr swung the stonemaiden. The sentinel’s hand darted up to prevent the cords from being looped around his neck, and both stones struck his head from behind, one on either side.

  Limply he sagged to the floor of the passage. Sharantyr sprang over him and walked on.

  The passage took a sharp bend, where rusty blades thrust out of the wall to transfix her. She walked through them unscathed, shaking her head, and found herself locking gazes with another man, this one a grim, armored giant. He was more than a head taller than she was, though she overtopped many a man, and almost filled the small, square room the passage emptied into. The passage almost filled one wall of the giant’s room, and the other three walls were similarly dominated by doors—all of rusting scraps of salvaged armor, nailed to wood beneath. The two to either side were closed, but the one straight ahead, beyond the giant, stood invitingly open, onto a passage that turned right to lamplight in the distance.

  This hulking guard wore an open-faced helm. What Sharantyr could see of his face was a grotesque, fleshy mask of crisscrossing scars.

  She smiled at him and said grandly, “You may introduce me: the Lady Tessaril Winter, here to see the Master of the Shadows.”