by Mark Anthony
“I guess that will teach you to respect your elders,” Mari said with a grim laugh.
“By all the bloody gods!” the driver shouted in shock. “You’ll pay for that, you crazy old witch!” He stood up, drawing his short sword, but he never had the chance to swing it. A dark form leaped from the overhanging branch of an oak tree, landing nimbly on the roof of the wagon. The driver turned around in surprise—just as Caledan’s boot caught him square in the face, shattering his nose. The Zhent tumbled out of the wagon and rolled into the foul muck of the gutter.
“Care for a ride, old woman?” Caledan asked with a smirk. Mari smiled back. The two took a moment to strip the dead Zhents of their dark leather uniforms.
“You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you, scoundrel?” Mari hopped up into the wagon as Caledan flicked the reins.
“It never hurts to take pride in your work,” Caledan remarked as the wagon bounced along into the night.
Before guiding the horses onto the steep road that led up the face of the Tor, Caledan halted the wagon. Quickly he and Mari donned the uniforms of the dead Zhents. Then they continued up the Tor, winding through the dim streets of the Old City. Both tensed when a trio of city guards rode by on horseback, but the guards simply saluted and continued on their way.
Caledan brought the wagon to a halt at the base of a tall spire in the shadow of the city lord’s tower. Cormik’s multifarious eyes and ears had learned that this was Cutter’s primary countinghouse. The lion’s share of the money that her guards extorted from Iriaebor’s ships and caravans passed through here on its way to her coffers.
“Are you ready?” Caledan asked Mari as he brought the wagon to a stop in the courtyard.
“Worry about yourself, Caldorien, not me,” she said crisply as she stepped down from the wagon. Caledan merely shrugged, following suit. Mari opened the wagon’s rear door. Inside was a jumble of swords, shields, bolts of cloth, and pieces of ivory, but after a moment Caledan found what he was looking for—a small iron-banded casket filled with coins. He lifted, grunting with effort.
Mari’s heart was beating swiftly in her chest, but she forced herself to walk boldly alongside Caldorien to the tower’s stout wooden door. She rapped on the portal with a black-gloved hand. After a moment the door swung open. A meaty-looking guard glared out unpleasantly at them.
“We’ve got a delivery,” Caledan said.
Mari was surprised at his suddenly brisk military demeanor. It was a convincing act. She nodded, doing her best to imitate Caldorien. “It’s the caravan gold,” she added harshly. “We had a good haul today.”
“Avdis has been waiting for you,” the massive man said gruffly. Then suspicion glittered in his eyes. “Say, I don’t know you, do I?”
Caledan shrugged. “Your loss, friend. Brim got sick tonight, and his partner, too.”
“Sick?”
Caledan nodded grimly. “Plague. But it’s all right. I don’t think he coughed on me. How about you?” he asked, turning to Mari.
“Oh, not more than a couple of times,” she replied flatly. “He was almost dead, after all.”
Swiftly, the massive guard retreated several steps, his meaty hand pressed to his mouth. “Gods, get on with you!” he said, waving them past quickly.
“Thanks, friend,” Caledan said. “We’d hate to keep Avdis waiting.”
He and Mari strode past as the doorkeeper repeatedly made the sign against the evil eye. They reached the floor of a spiral staircase and proceeded upward. They passed several floors where they caught glimpses of city guards gambling, sleeping, or sharpening weapons. Mari and Caledan exchanged concerned looks. The message was clear: getting out might not be as easy as getting in had been. The stairway opened up into a circular chamber.
The chamber was lit all around with bronze oil lamps. Windows faced in all four directions. The ceiling was a high tiled dome. There was little furniture in the room besides a large table and a chair, on which sat a flabby middle-aged man with a pointed ratlike nose and beady ratlike eyes. The man was counting gold coins, muttering to himself as he piled them in neat, precise stacks. He looked like a child hoarding his favorite toys and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. After long moments, Mari cleared her throat.
“Blast it!” the rat-faced man—apparently Avdis—squealed. “You’ve made me lose my count!” He looked up, but he barely noticed Mari and Caledan. Instead his eyes locked immediately upon the small chest Caledan held. “Well, what are you standing around for?” he snapped impatiently. “Bring that over here. Hurry!”
Caledan did as he was bid. Avdis pulled out a silver key he wore on a chain around his neck and unlocked the chest. He eagerly flipped back the lid, then let out a sigh of delight at the gold and silver within. He reached out with eager fingers to scoop up some of the precious metal, but a black-gloved hand on his wrist stopped him.
“Not so fast, friend,” Caledan said. He smiled nastily. Avdis stared at him in dull confusion, then his eyes widened in comprehending horror.
“Not my gold!” he gasped. Caledan nodded solemnly. The little man drew in a deep breath as if to scream, but when he saw the threatening glimmer of Mari’s knife he stifled the impulse.
Caledan picked up some of the gold and let it tumble though his fingers as Avdis watched, licking his rubbery lips. “You know,” Caledan mused, “gold and silver are so heavy. Why don’t you show us something a bit lighter, Avdis?” Avdis groaned. “Something in jewels, perhaps?”
Within minutes the sacks Mari and Caledan had tucked inside their uniforms were bulging with jewels. It represented at least a half-month’s income for Ravendas, Mari was certain. There had been no need to tie up Avdis. He had slumped to the floor, quivering there as Mari and Caledan riffled through various chests and boxes, relieving them of their valuable contents. Concealing their burdens as best they could, they started down the stairs.
“I hope no one notices we’ve put on a little weight all of a sudden,” Caledan commented wryly.
They were halfway down the staircase when suddenly a small, unnoticed rip in one of Caledan’s sacks opened wider. A single, brilliant emerald slipped out of his jerkin and tumbled down the stairs. The gem bounced brightly down the stairwell and came to rest on a stone step, right at the foot of a Zhentarim warrior who had been walking in their direction.
Mari and Caledan froze. The Zhentarim was a grizzled fellow, an officer of some sort. Slowly he bent down and picked up the shining emerald. He stared at it thoughtfully for a moment, then looked up at Mari and Caledan, baring his yellowed teeth in a grin. The two grinned back weakly.
“Robbers in the tower!” the Zhent shouted. “To arms! To arms!” The thunder of booted feet and the ringing of drawn swords echoed up the stairwell. The Zhentarim officer lunged at Caledan, managing to grab his leg out from under him. Caledan fell, trying to kick away the soldier’s tenacious hold. Mari grabbed a torch from an iron sconce on the wall and brought it down hard on the Zhent’s head. He groaned and fell backward, bowling over the first of the guards who had come dashing to the scene.
Mari pulled Caledan to his feet, and the two scrambled back up the stairwell. “Now what?” she shouted.
“I was just about to ask you that,” Caledan returned.
Once again they burst back into the topmost chamber. Avdis, who had just managed to gain his feet, stared at them in renewed horror and then promptly slumped back to the floor. They slammed the chamber’s door shut and slid home the bolt just as the first guards reached the landing. Immediately the door resounded with forceful blows.
“That’s not going to hold them for very long,” Mari said, eyeing the door nervously.
“Then you’d better think of something fast.”
“Me? This was all your idea,” she retorted hotly.
The door shook under additional pounding.
Mari glared at him angrily. “A window, Caldorien,” she said flatly. “Try a window.”
Unfortunately, the outside walls
of the tower offered only a sheer drop to the ground far below. The only chance lay with the west window, where there was a decidedly crumbly-looking bridge about twenty feet down, spanning the gap from this tower to the next.
“We’ll never make it to the bridge,” Caledan said after peering out the window. “Even if we don’t break our legs, the impact would probably destroy that rickety thing.”
“What’s the alternative?” Mari asked in exasperation.
The door shuddered violently. One more blow and it would fly apart.
“All right, let’s try it,” Caledan snapped.
Mari threw her arms tightly around his neck. The door burst open in a spray of splintering wood, and a dozen guards charged into the room, swords drawn. Gripping Mari tightly, Caledan jumped out of the window. With one hand, he grabbed a handful of the tangled ivy that snaked up the west face of the tower. The tendrils could not support both his and Mari’s weight, and the vines ripped from the wall as the two fell.
They landed hard on the narrow stone bridge that arched between the two towers. Mari felt the stones shift beneath them with the impact, but the derelict old bridge withstood the shock. Though winded and bruised, the two scrambled to their feet. Guards shouted angrily from the window above, but Mari and Caledan dashed across the bridge.
They froze in midstep.
The door in the next tower flew open. A half-dozen guards stood in the opening. Mari and Caledan spun around, only to view a similar obstacle behind them. They were trapped.
Something hissed past Mari’s ear. She looked up to see one of the Zhent officers above, reloading a crossbow. From both directions the guards began to edge their way carefully onto the bridge. Mari felt the stones shudder beneath her.
“This thing is about to collapse,” she whispered to Caledan.
He nodded. “Do you see what I see?” he asked, not daring to point.
She peered down into the moonlit dimness. At first she could see nothing, but then her eyes adjusted, and she nodded jerkily.
“When I give the signal,” Caledan whispered, reaching down and gripping her hand. She squeezed back tightly. She supposed it wouldn’t hurt to be nice to the scoundrel. They were going to die together, after all.
Another crossbow bolt whistled by, this one putting a hole in Caledan’s stolen cloak. The guards drew closer. When perhaps a dozen stood upon the bridge, Mari heard a low groan and felt the bridge lurch beneath her feet.
“Now!” Caledan shouted. Without hesitation they both ran and leaped off the bridge. The guards stared after them in dumb amazement. Then the bridge broke apart, and the guards went crashing to the street below along with several tons of bone-crushing rock.
For a moment Mari felt as if she were flying. She heard the noise of the crumbling bridge behind her, but their leap had carried her and Caledan clear. They landed, hand-in-hand, in a cloud of dust and chaff.
“You couldn’t have picked a wagon with clean straw, could you, scoundrel?” Mari said in disgust, spitting out an unpleasant mouthful. Her sore shoulder throbbed painfully. The two quickly slid off the back of the wagon that had been passing under the bridge.
“I wouldn’t complain,” Caledan countered, eyeing the rubble of the stone bridge and the bodies buried beneath it.
They started off swiftly through the city’s shadowed streets and were nearly back to the inn before they remembered to argue about whose fault this had all been.
Six
The priceless statuette shattered into a thousand pieces as it struck the dark marble wall of the tower’s topmost chamber.
“I want them strung up by their necks!” Ravendas, Zhentarim lord and ruler of Iriaebor, demanded through clenched teeth. She was pale and lovely despite her rage, or perhaps because of it. “No, I want them run through, left to the rats, then strung up!”
A young boy sat in a chair before the fireplace, a dulcimer lying in his small hands. Ravendas’s son. His green eyes were focused on the fireplace, watching the flames, as if he were oblivious to his mother’s fury. The lord steward, Snake, stood serenely by the door, watching his mistress’s tantrum. “You’re being unreasonable, my Lord Ravendas,” he said in his low, almost droning voice.
“I’m being unreasonable?” she thundered, turning upon Snake, her deep blue eyes flashing like lightning. “First two intruders raid my countinghouse and make off with a fortune in jewels, not to mention managing to kill a half-dozen of my guards. Then one of my best warships catches fire and burns to the water. Now I learn that—despite my orders against drinking—someone has been selling cheap casks of tainted wine to my guards and poisoning them sick in the bargain. More ships and caravans are passing through the city every day as the weather warms, and a quarter of my soldiers are flat on their backs puking their guts up.”
Ravendas’s golden hair glimmered in the torchlight. Her beautiful face was as hard as marble. “Did you not tell me that a sorcerer had been sent to deal with the Harper in my city, my lord steward?” The honorific was twisted into a sneering insult. “Did you not tell me that Caldorien was run out of Iriaebor by some underworld filth he had made an enemy of? Tell me, Snake, am I imagining these reports?”
“No, my lord, you are not,” Snake replied deferentially.
This time it was a crystal vase that succumbed to Ravendas’s wrath. “Then who is to blame for these outrages against me?” Snake started to speak, but Ravendas lifted a hand, silencing him. “No, I will hear no more excuses. Inform my captains that I want the perpetrators of these offenses found. Otherwise, it will be my captains’ heads I will have. Is this perfectly clear, Snake?”
“Of course, my lord,” Snake said, bowing deeply.
Ravendas lowered herself onto a silk-draped lounge and lifted a glass of wine. She drank deeply, and gradually the livid rage melted away. “Come, Kellen,” she crooned to the boy. “Come play for your mother.”
Without a word the boy slipped from the chair and sat at Ravendas’s feet. His small fingers plucked at the dulcimer, and a sweet, sorrowful music filled the air. Ravendas closed her eyes for a moment, drifting with the music.
It would be a pity if Caldorien truly has fled Iriaebor, she thought. I would like to give him a taste of my power. He spurned me once. But no one, not the Harpers, not even those fools in Zhentil Keep, can stand against me now.
Her eyes opened and she regarded Snake, still standing subserviently near the ornately carved door. “How fare the excavations?” she asked him, her voice languid now.
“Very well, my lord. Soon you shall have what you desire. Every soul in Iriaebor will belong to you, and even those beyond.”
“Excellent.” A small black kitten crawled into Ravendas’s lap, and she stroked its soft fur absently. Her cheeks were flushed with the wine, with thoughts of power. And of Caldorien.
The boy’s music had stopped. The chamber was silent. Ravendas ran a hand over his dark, glossy hair—hair as dark as shadows, such a striking contrast to her own golden tresses. “Go with the lord steward, my son,” she said to him. “It is late.”
The boy nodded silently and stood, kissing her once upon each cheek. Snake turned to leave, and the small boy padded after him. They left Ravendas alone in her chamber, petting the black kitten, a smile curled about the corners of her deep red lips.
“Do you require anything, Kellen?” Snake asked when they reached the boy’s room. The boy shook his head, clutching his dulcimer tightly.
“Do you think she will keep me when she is done with me?” Kellen asked then, with the utter seriousness of which only a child is capable. “Or will she break me when she is through?”
Snake regarded the child for a long moment. The boy was just eight years old, but he always struck Snake as being older than his years. There was a wisdom about him that was odd in one so young. But then, with a mother such as Ravendas, there were many sights this child had witnessed which other children never dreamed of, not in their most terrible nightmares.
“Go to sle
ep, Kellen,” he said finally. The boy shrugged and stepped into his room, shutting the door behind him.
Snake turned and descended the tower’s central stairwell. He had orders to give.
* * * * *
Caledan and Mari sat at a table in the Dreaming Dragon’s private dining chamber. A map of the city lay unrolled before them, its corners weighted down by mugs of ale. The two of them were arguing, as usual, this time about a possible raid on a weapons warehouse in the New City.
“Either you’re feebleminded or you’re mad, Harper,” Caledan barked, thrusting a finger at the map. Disagreeing with Mari was getting to be a habit. “There’s no route of escape. Ravendas’s guards would have our backs to the wall and their swords at our throats in a second.”
Mari opened her mouth to say something, but suddenly Estah hurried into the room, slamming the door behind her. Her brown eyes were wide with fear.
“Estah, what is it?” Mari asked in concern.
“City guards!” the halfling healer managed to gasp. “They’re searching every house and business on the lane. And they’re headed this way.”
Mari shot a worried look at Caledan. “Do you think we can slip out the garden and into the alley without being seen?”
Caledan laughed grimly. The Harper’s inexperience was showing again. “You don’t have a clue how the Zhentarim work, do you, Harper? They’ll have someone keeping watch on the back door of every place they search.”
He stood and pushed the heavy oaken table aside. “It’s still here, isn’t it, Estah?” He stuck a finger through a knothole and pulled. A small panel opened up in the floor. This part of the inn jutted precariously out over the edge of the Tor. Through the trapdoor Caledan could see the mazework of beams that supported the structure and beneath them nothing but air and space until the jagged bottom of the Tor three hundred feet below.
Jolle hurried into the room. “You’d better hurry. They’re nearly here.”
“Let’s go, Harper,” Caledan said. He didn’t wait for a reply but lowered himself quickly through the trapdoor, clambering onto one of the beams below the inn. Mari’s eyes widened as she stared at the dizzying drop. She started to protest
