Murder in Cormyr

by Chet Williamson

  Instead of the axe striking him in the fleshy part of the neck, the blade had hit on the left shoulder and had torn through part of Grodoveth’s collarbone before taking off his head. The blow had continued downward, and the top part of Grodoveth’s right shoulder was still attached to the head and neck. The torso was equally hideous to look upon, with a huge gash that had nearly severed the right arm as well as the neck. I could see the spongy interior of the lung.

  “Has anything been touched?” Lindavar asked, and the soldiers shook their heads. “Darvik?” he asked the gnome, who was standing halfway down the steps, as though afraid to descend.

  “No, sor. I just saw the dead man and I run. Never even made it all the way down.” He gave an apologetic half smile. “Still don’t care to, sor.”

  An axe lay on the floor against the wall, several yards from the body, and Lindavar and I knelt to examine it. There was no doubt that it was the murder weapon, for it was coated with fresh blood and bits of gore. It was much larger and heavier than the one that Dovo had been carrying and that had killed him. The iron was rusty, but the blade still appeared to be very sharp. Near the top of the curved blade, there was a spot where the rust was chipped away and the blade was dulled, and I pointed it out to Lindavar.

  He nodded. “Looks as though it’s been hit against stone, or possibly strong armor,” he said, though I knew of no armor that could have turned a blow struck from that axe. “Do you see any marks of hands upon it?” he asked me, turning it over so that we could see both sides of the handle.

  I shook my head but pointed to several marks on the handle. The first was on the inner part of the handle near the blade. It was a deep gouge that had been dug into it, and recently, for the wood exposed was untouched by the grime of years. There were two other marks, one in the center of the blade, and one near the end, as though the axe had been in a wall holder for many years. But no finger marks were visible on the wood.

  “Perhaps the killer wore gloves,” said Lindavar, and I thought it highly likely.

  We straightened up and looked around the small chamber. Except for the now—extinguished torch that Darvik had mentioned, there was nothing of note save for the layers of stone. As I casually looked at the roll of years that they represented, I thought that one layer gleamed more than the others in the lantern light. Greater porosity, I fancied, and wondered how many years it had taken for that inch-wide layer to be deposited, and what creatures had walked Faerun in that bygone age.

  I was about to touch it, as though the contact would make me see in my mind’s eye the behemoths of that long-ago eon, when suddenly Captain Flim appeared from around a dark corner, startling me.

  “I think you should see this,” he said, beckoning with his blazing torch. His face looked somber, almost pale.

  We followed him down a twenty-foot tunnel that had long ago been cut by water, for its sides were smooth, with no trace of a stonemason’s tools. We had to crouch as we walked, and it was with relief that we came into a chamber larger than the first, so large in fact that Captain Flim’s torch and our lanterns only partially illuminated it.

  There seemed to be a dais of some kind at the far end, and we walked slowly toward it, the only sound the scrape of our shoes and the dripping of water from the roof of the vault onto the stone floor. I gasped as I saw what sat on that dais, in a massive chair of rotting wood and rusted iron, whose cushions and cloths had long ago moldered away.

  The skeleton of a giant seemed to look down at us from empty eye sockets. It was clad in rusted armor, bony forearms still resting on the arms of its rotting throne, fingers curled clawlike over the ends. Its jaw hung down onto the yellow shaft of its neck, and a helm sat lopsided on the bare dome of its skull. On its feet were what was left of its boots, leather strips through which the ivory toe bones peeked. The smell of death had long since vanished. Only dampness and the chill of the grave remained.

  Runes were carved on the wall above the seated skeleton, two lines and then a single word. I started to speak to Lindavar but had to clear my throat before the words would come. “Do you … can you read it?”

  The wizard nodded, and when he spoke, I heard awe in his tone. “The runes say, ‘Bought with blood. Paid for with blood.’ And then the name.

  “ ‘Fastred,’ ” Lindavar read. “This is Fastred’s tomb.”

  21

  “Fastred?” said Captain Flim. “The ancient brigand? The ghost?”

  “None other,” said Lindavar, still gazing as if hypnotized at the seated relic.

  “Gods save us,” muttered Flim. “Maybe Mayor Tobald was right. Maybe the ghost did it—did for both of them.”

  “Why hasn’t he done for us then?” I said, glad that my voice didn’t break. In truth, I was scared. I expected to see the skeleton leap up any second, run down the passageway for his axe, and behead all of us tomb despoilers. “He looks like he hasn’t gone anywhere for, oh, at least five hundred years. Give or take a decade,” I added lightly to try to keep my fear at bay.

  “That is true,” said Lindavar. “We’re dealing with some physical body here. Among the undead, a ghost might madden its victim or age him ten years; a lich might paralyze his victim; and I have never heard of a wight using a weapon. So wherever this one’s spirit now dwells, I greatly doubt that it lies within anything that swings an axe, in spite of its habits in life.”

  That made me think of something. “Lindavar,” I said, “why wouldn’t Fastred’s axe be with him? Wasn’t it the custom in the old times for warriors to be put to rest with their weapons in hand for the next world?”

  “So one might think,” said Lindavar. He stepped toward the dais then and stopped a foot away, examining the skeleton’s hands. “But that appears not to be the case with this burial. I see no sign that any axe has ever rested here.”

  “I’ve got another question,” said Captain Flim. “What I want to know is, there’s supposed to be a treasure here, and what those runes said makes me think that even more. So where is it?”

  Lindavar looked at a spot by Fastred’s bony feet, just off the dais. There was a square approximately one foot deep by a foot and a half wide that was free of the dark dampness that clung to the rest of the stone floor. “It was there, I expect. I also expect that whoever killed Grodoveth also helped himself to the treasure.”

  Captain Flim dubiously eyed the small bare space where a box had sat. “That’s all the bigger it was? I thought Fastred’s treasure was supposed to be more, somehow.”

  “Perhaps he had it all changed to precious gems,” I suggested. “You can hold a king’s ransom in the palm of your hand that way. Besides, Fastred doesn’t seem to have been the showy type. I mean, look at this place—a chair, a brief message, and possibly a treasure. The soul of efficiency. Makes sense to boil all the gold and silver down to a box of jewels.”

  “Maybe the gnome took it,” Flim said frowning. “Took it and hid it before he came and got us. Maybe he even killed Grodoveth and made up his story when he saw us.”

  “I doubt if there is a gnome in all of Faerun,” said Lindavar, “capable of beheading a chap the size of Grodoveth. And if you had caught him, why wouldn’t he have had the jewel box with him?”

  While Lindavar was giving Darvik an alibi, I was examining the floor. “There’s another thing,” I said, straightening up. “I believe Darvik when he says he never went any farther than the stairs. The footprints are messed up, since your two soldiers were blundering around in here first, Captain, but there’s enough for me to see no prints of shoes the size of Darvik’s. He’s got a much smaller foot than any of us, you know.”

  “Can you see the footprints of the killer? The one who stole the treasure?” Captain Flim asked. I think he seemed more concerned about the missing cash than the murder of the king’s envoy.

  “Lindavar’s and my footprints are the only ones here, but there is another … blurred though …” Then I saw a depression in one of the puddles of loamy clay. It was deep, and thou
gh it had retained none of the details of the shoe that had trodden in it, not even the size, I thought it might have marked the man’s general weight. But the only way to know for sure was to tread in it myself and see how far down my foot went. I sighed and stepped into it.

  It went perhaps only half as deep as the previous foot that had stepped into it. “It was a large man,” I said.

  “Or woman,” Lindavar corrected, and I nodded.

  “Or woman. And that’s about all.” But that wasn’t all. As I looked down at the indentation, I glimpsed a bit of white on the floor nearby. Kneeling, I saw that it was a small amount of chalky powder. Some granules were larger than others, though none were greater than one-sixteenth of an inch. I touched my finger to it, tasted it, and spat it out. It was neither sugar nor salt but tasted bitter. I swept it onto a piece of paper I had brought for making notes, folded it tightly, and put it back into my pocket.

  “Find something?” Lindavar asked.

  “Powder. Benelaius might want to examine it.”

  We searched the floor of the chamber but found nothing else. Back at the bottom of the stairs, Captain Flim turned to Lindavar. “Is there anything else you want to do, or can we bundle up the body?”

  Lindavar glanced at me and I shrugged. “I think we’ve seen enough, Captain,” Lindavar said.

  “All right then, well take it back to Suzail for burial. Shall we take that axe along too?”

  “Please, and lock it up as evidence.”

  The soldiers wrapped Grodoveth’s corpse in a thin but strong canvas. I didn’t envy their toting that dead weight back through the swamp to the road. As we went up the stairs, I looked curiously at the trapdoor, wondering about the mechanism of it.

  When we investigated it, we found it to be quite simple, really. One dug one’s hand down through the moss, and there, two inches below, was a latch. You just lifted it, and the door would open. No lock was necessary, for I (and probably Fastred) could not imagine anyone stumbling upon the place, unless he knew precisely where to go.

  And that posed another question. How did Grodoveth know where to go in the first place? How did he end up at the tomb, and at the mercy of the killer?

  The trek back through the swamp was even longer than the march in. We had to move more slowly so that we wouldn’t leave the corpse-bearing soldiers behind. And I finally learned how the thornslinger got its name.

  It happened when one of the soldiers slipped in the muck. We had all been walking as quietly as possible, but when the soldier slid off the path, going up to his knees in vile black swamp water, he cursed. Not loudly, and certainly not the worst curse I had ever heard, but enough so that the rest of us turned to see what was wrong, and saw the low-lying tree nearby shiver. One of the limbs twitched violently, like a hand flicking off some unwanted liquid.

  But instead of liquid, a dozen foot-long thorns came flying toward the soldiers. Most of them whizzed by, one coming within inches of the second man. But one thorn, with a wet, ugly sound, sank its entire length into the body of Grodoveth. The two soldiers just stared at it, and the one who had fallen scuttled back onto the path and picked up his end of the dropped burden. Both of them shuffled through the muck as quickly as they could, heeding Darvik’s frantic but silent gestures.

  When our party was far enough away, Darvik halted. “I think yore men had better pull that thorn out the body, sor,” he said to Captain Flim.

  “Pull it out? Now?” Flim said, no doubt wondering why it could not be done later.

  “Aye, sor. Else there won’t be a great much of the body to send to Suzail, sor.”

  Captain Flim raised his eyebrows at that, and ordered the soldiers to unwrap the corpse. Sure enough, the flesh had started to blacken and putrefy around the spot where the thorn had gone in. “Take it out!” Flim ordered, and the soldiers hopped to.

  “Try not to get it against yer skin, sors,” the gnome cautioned, and the soldiers’ haste slackened considerably.

  Soon the thorn was out and thrown off the path. As it sank into the bog, I wondered what effect it might have on a living man, and decided I was lucky not to know. When the corpse was wrapped again, we went on.

  I don’t recall ever being as glad to set foot on dry land again, even if that land was parched by drought. The contrast between the swamp and the hard, moistureless soil of the rest of the land around Ghars was extraordinary. Some had suggested diverting moisture from the swamp to the surrounding farmlands, but when those budding engineers were asked if they would want to eat grain and vegetables that had been irrigated with water from the Vast Swamp, their faces told the story clearly enough. At the very least, it was felt the swamp water was poisonous, and at the worst, it would turn any drinker reptilian within days, though that’s a bit exaggerated. I suspect it would take at least a month.

  Captain Flim and the soldiers headed back to town with the body, Darvik started back to his holdings on foot, and Lindavar and I returned to Benelaius’s cottage. We discussed the situation as we rode but kept most of our thoughts to ourselves, waiting to share them with Benelaius.

  22

  As my master opened the door for us, he called up the stairs, “You may get dressed now, Lord Mayor. Your clothes are hanging on the hook just outside the door.” He looked at us and gave a tolerant smile. “Mayor Tobald, though usually a jolly sort, doesn’t care at all for my examinations. But when someone is in the state he is in, I feel I must be thorough. But come, sit, and tell me what you’ve seen in the swamp.”

  Lindavar looked down at our swamp-saturated selves. “May we change first, Benelaius?”

  “Oh, of course, of course! Silly of me not to notice. That must be quite uncomfortable, all that squishing around inside your trousers. Yes, do change, and put your dirty clothing down the chute in the hall. But let’s just wait a moment until Tobald comes down.”

  In a few minutes, a miserable Mayor Tobald descended our stairs, cats scurrying from beneath his limping feet. He looked as though he had lost his best friend and a great deal of sleep besides. I decided then that I would never seek public office, no doubt relieving the populace, had they but known.

  “Lord Mayor, I regret the comprehensiveness of my examination of you, but I am pleased to say that everything seems to be in order save for your gout. The proper palliative will take a day for me to make, but I shall send Jasper into town first thing tomorrow morning with the tablets to relieve your suffering.”

  “Thank you, Benelaius,” Tobald said. Then he impatiently turned to Lindavar and me. “And out there—did you find anything? Anything to tell us who did this monstrous crime?”

  “Two things we know for sure,” Lindavar said. “The first is that Grodoveth was beheaded in the same manner as Dovo, and the second is that no one will ever have to seek the tomb of Fastred again.”

  For a moment, Tobald seemed stricken dumb. Then he said, “Fastred’s tomb? You found Fastred’s tomb?”

  “Grodoveth did,” I said. “Or maybe his killer did. At any rate, whatever treasure was there is gone.”

  “Quite fascinating,” said Benelaius briskly. “I shall have to visit it sometime. Now, Tobald, I think it would be best were you to ride home and rest that foot.”

  “No rest, no rest,” said Tobald. “Too much to do for tomorrow.”

  “Give yourself some time at least,” said my master, “before throwing yourself back into your work. And retire early tonight. No drinking at the Bold Bard.”

  “Very well, Benelaius.” Tobald looked at the wizard with pleading eyes. “You will find this killer, won’t you? Just to know that this fiend is still at large …”

  “We shall certainly do our best. Now let Jasper assist you in mounting your horse.” I raised my eyebrows, but no one noticed.

  Tobald was not an easy man to fling into the saddle, but I got it accomplished. We stood and watched him ride away, his shoulders hunched, his head down. I felt sorry for him, losing a friend, seeing his town dishonored by allowing an envoy of
the king to get murdered, and of course, having to put on a cheery countenance for the arrival of the guild bigwigs the next day. Even though the job was primarily ceremonial, a mayor’s lot was not always a happy one.

  “I am very concerned about Mayor Tobald,” said Benelaius quietly, when Tobald had ridden out of earshot “He is quite naturally upset, but I fear there is more to it than that I even tested his blood, and extracted … this.”

  From the folds of his robe he produced a small vial that contained a few drops of a pale yellow liquid. “I have already analyzed a small amount, but I should like you to confirm my findings, Lindavar. First, however, you and Jasper should get out of those wet things.”

  Lindavar and I went upstairs and changed, putting our muddy clothes down the chute that dropped them into a basket in the kitchen. Back downstairs, Benelaius led the way into his study, where a long and wide bench held a number of wizardly and scientific instruments. Lindavar, in spite of the unfamiliar surroundings, performed the procedure unerringly. I suppose one alembic’s pretty much like another when you know what to do with it.

  The younger mage added a drop of some reagent from the rows of multicolored vials on shelves above the bench, then fitted the vial securely into a centrifuge. He pumped the foot pedals to spin the device for several minutes, then drew a precipitate out of the vial and placed it on a glass slide. To it he added several drops of other chemicals, under whose influence it turned a variety of unpleasant shades. Finally Lindavar straightened up and looked grimly at Benelaius.

  “Blackweed,” he said, and Benelaius nodded. “When this enters the system,” Lindavar went on, “it will kill in twenty-four hours.”

  “Don’t worry,” Benelaius said. “We’re in time. I … gave him something for it. He doesn’t know.”

  “But who would want to poison Mayor Tobald?” I asked. As far as I was concerned, the mayor was inoffensive and ineffectual. What threat could he be to anyone?