Murder in Cormyr

by Chet Williamson

  But he showed no mercy on full-blooded humans. He lived to outbargain them, and when one left his shop dejected, having lost the best of a deal, his day was made. Apparently he had had a good day, for he greeted me cheerily and didn’t even look disappointed when I told him I had not come on business but to ask him about his recent experience with Dovo.

  He laughed merrily. “I can’t tell you a single thing about that, my boy! When I saw that man standing there with his glowing face and his swinging axe, I wasn’t going to hang around. I just booted Bupkin in the side and we tore off down the road, and I didn’t look back until I was safe in Ghars.”

  “That seems to have been the reaction of most people, including me,” I said, unashamed to admit it.

  “All but one,” Goldtooth said. “Looney Liz.”

  “Elizabeth Clawthorn? I was going to go and visit her.”

  “You do that. All us sane people light out, we see a ghost. But old Liz was too crazy to run, she was. Least that’s what she said when she come in here trying to trade a dead cat for a linen tablecloth. Needless to say, I didn’t make the trade. ‘Course maybe she didn’t run because she’s too ancient. Can you imagine that old crone going any faster than her usual creep?”

  “Did she see any more than we did?”

  “You ask her about it on your way home. Maybe it was just another one of her stories. She’s a queer one—sometimes she seems as right as rain, and other times you’d swear she’s got a turnip in her head instead of a brain. Speaking of turnips, I took half a bushel in trade today. Now I don’t know if you’re a turnip eatin’ man, but I could make you a deal.…”

  As it happened, I was not a turnip eating man, and got out after spending only three copper pieces on a two-year-old journal that happened to have an installment of a Camber Fosrick story I had never read. Unfortunately it was the third of four, so I had no idea what came before or how the mystery would end, not unlike my present situation.

  The sky was beginning to darken, so I hastened south out of Ghars. A mile’s ride brought me to the small, ramshackle cottage where Liz Clawthorn lived. Set far back from the road, the house was badly in need of paint, and greasy hides covered the window openings. Wreaths of dead flowers decorated the door and walls, their long stems twisted into eerie shapes, and a dead dog lay under a withered tree. I wondered if she would try to trade it to Bryn Goldtooth.

  There was a small garden to the side of the house, where Looney Liz grew vegetables and potatoes, but the tomatoes had died on the vines, and the lettuces were brown and sparse from the drought. How, I wondered, did she manage to live?

  I tied Jenkus to a dead apple tree and went up to the door and knocked. It was for politeness only since the door hung from one hinge like an idiot’s grin.

  “Who comes, who comes?” the woman croaked from inside. The door stuttered open, and Liz Clawthorn smiled at me from a row of teeth either yellow, blackened, or missing altogether. As short as I am, she was far shorter, nearly dwarven in size, though a human. A smock that might have been washed the winter before covered her from neck to feet, and her long, filthy hair hid all but the unpleasant features of her face.

  I had once asked Benelaius if he thought she was a witch, but he had shaken his head gently. “Nay. A poor woman with wandering wits, and that is all.” And though there were some who would disagree with him, I daresay he was right.

  But this day it appeared that Liz Clawthorn was having one of her more lucid spells. She came up to me as though she had trouble making out the details of my face, and then, to my great surprise, she actually recognized me. “Ah, ’tis Jasper,” she said. “Benelaius’s lad. Come in, come in, come out of the foul death air.” I didn’t know what she meant, for the air inside was far fouler than that outside.

  I entered and gave her the bag of vegetables and the loaf of bread I had brought for her. “A gift for you, Mother Clawthorn,” I said, and her smile grew broader.

  “A good lad you are, Jasper, and I thank you. Sit you down.” She held up a bunch of carrots. “Fine oranges,” she proclaimed, then set the bundle of produce on a worn and dirty table. “Now have ye come for truth or lies or tea? I have no tea, but I have the others.”

  “Truth, I think, Mother,” I said, playing her game.

  “You always were a good son to me, Jamie,” she said, and I immediately decided not to call her mother again. “So I’ll tell ye true.” Ah. Well, in that case, ‘Mother’ would she be.

  “You saw a man dressed as the ghost of Fastred some time back, didn’t you, Mother Clawthorn? The man named Dovo?”

  “I saw the ghost itself, not some Dobo. It was the ghost of Fastred, but when I saw it, Jamie, I thought it was your father, yes, rest his soul, the ghost of your poor father. He swung an axe, yes, the way your poor father did when he cut down the tree, you know, the one with the rope that you would swing on when you were little. And I thought he was after me, I did, and I run away at first, but then I remembered that I never did tell him about that bucket and how it had a hole and to mend it before he got water, so I went back, I did, and then I saw him with his golden hand.

  “Your father, Jamie, never had a golden hand, so I knew it was a ghost. And he went on into the swamp, and I followed him, I did, and then he stopped and I stopped too because I knew if he saw me there then he would eat me, and I didn’t want to get et, so I hid and was quiet and watched him.”

  Her eyes widened, staring into the middle distance, and I knew she was seeing what she had seen on that night. “And what did he do?” I asked softly.

  “He waved his golden hand,” she said, seeing it happen again. “He waved it over and over. And far away across the swamp, another ghost waved back with his golden hand, and they waved at each other for a long time.…”

  “A golden hand?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said sharply, turning back to me so that I jumped. “I see them all the time, the golden hands. At night they glow, all golden. In the dark. It’s getting dark now,” she said, and I thought I heard menace in her tone. Maybe she was just trying to scare Jamie, wherever and whoever he was. “I’ll see the golden hands soon. They come with the moon and the stars.”

  I talked to her a bit longer, until it grew dark inside the hovel and she lit a candle, to my relief. Harmless or not, I didn’t relish sitting in the darkness with the mad old woman.

  When I saw that I could get no more out of her, I thanked her for her time and the visit, and rose to leave. “You can’t go yet, Jamie,” she said.

  “I’m Jasper,” I reminded her. “Not Jamie.”

  “Oh,” she said, a world of disappointment in the word. “All right then, you must be getting back to Benelaius, I suppose.” Her sanity was like a lantern that blinked on and off, and I rose, eager to be on my way.

  It was dark when I opened the door, and to the north I saw a wagon coming down the road, a farmer returning home from Ghars. A lantern hung from a pole, and swayed back and forth over his head, illuminating the road ahead.

  “A golden hand,” said Liz Clawthorn from behind me, and I turned and looked at her.

  “What?”

  “A golden hand,” she said. “There it waves.”

  I looked back at the wagon, then turned to her again. “Do you see the wagon?” I asked her.

  “Wagon? Nay, only the gold hand that waves and waves.”

  We watched as the wagon passed fifty yards away, and listened to the sound of its wheels, and I realized that Elizabeth Clawthorn’s old eyes must be like a cloudy lens, and thought that, to her, a lantern would look like a bright smudge, and its rays, separate golden fingers of light.

  A golden hand. A lantern. And another, far away across the swamp.

  I bade her good-bye, and she begged a kiss of her “Jamie.” I gave her one, though it gave me no pleasure, and went on my way south, toward the swamp road, thinking of the great mere within the swamp, and of lights winking back and forth across it.

  25

  Dovo must h
ave had a lantern in the swamp on those nights. But what was he looking for? And why would he brave the trek into the swamp to that inner lake near which we found Fastred’s tomb?

  And most important of all, who was carrying the other lantern?

  All these thoughts and more rushed through my head as I neared the turn-off to the left that would put me on the swamp road and take me home to Benelaius’s cottage. Indeed, my mind was rushing so that I completely forgot the horror of the night before until I reached the spot where I had seen Dovo playing Fastred’s ghost.

  Then the terrors of that night and the nightmares it had caused made me bump my heels against Jenkus’s sides and urge him to a greater speed than his easy trot provided. He complied, but with a complaining whicker, as though the previous night’s chase had never occurred. Animals forget past fears and hurts all too readily. Perhaps that is why they are able to live with our cruelty.

  We cantered down the road and past the Swamp Rat, which had only a few horses tied in front of it. I suspected the farmers who patronized it were staying home. What with two savage murders in as many days, I didn’t blame them.

  Two hundred yards past the Swamp Rat, I thought I heard the pursuing footsteps once again. At first I told myself it was only my imagination, so terrified had I been the night before. But as I listened, trying to transform the sounds into wind through swamp grass or the croaking of bullfrogs, I knew the sound was real, and familiar, and chilling.

  da-da-boom …

  da-da-Boom …

  da-da BOOM!

  Whatever the monstrous thing (or things) was, it was behind me again. But if Jenkus and I had outrun it once, we could outrun it twice.

  “Hyah!” I shouted, and Jenkus was off like a shot. I nearly laughed in relief as the menacing sounds fell farther behind. Soon we would be home and safe.

  And then Jenkus lost a shoe.

  I heard the rattle as it came off. He stumbled, caught himself, and staggered again. Unprepared for the drastic change in speed, I slewed to the left and fell, automatically kicking my feet free of the stirrups so that I would not be dragged. I rolled several feet before coming to a stop. In the darkness, I could not see Jenkus, but what I could see as it approached was the thing that had pursued me.

  My dream about four riders on four horses had not been very accurate. There were five heads approaching me, but they didn’t belong to five separate riders. Instead, every reptilian, dagger-toothed head belonged to the single massive body of a hydra, the dragonlike behemoth that slowly but inexorably advanced toward me on four massive and clawed legs, the claws clacking against the ground to be followed a moment later by the impact of the huge leg upon the earth.…

  da-da-BOOM …

  I pushed myself to my feet, but Jenkus, coward that he was, was already limping down the road toward home. The monster was less than twenty feet away, and I knew that I could not hope to outrun it. No weapon, no speed, and no future to speak of. If I’d had a mirror, I would have kissed myself good-bye.

  Then, behind me, I heard the sound of hoofbeats and thought that perhaps Jenkus was coming back in an equine act of heroism. When I turned to look, I beheld not Jenkus but a lone rider bearing down on me, long sword raised. And then I heard her scream.

  Yes, her. It was a woman’s voice crying out in berserker rage, and I knew it could be none other than Kendra. For an instant that felt like forever I stood there, a frenzied swordswoman attacking on one side, a savage monster thundering up on the other.

  Kendra reached me first, but her sword did not descend. Instead, she swept on by me. As I whirled to look, she reined up just as she came abreast of the hydra, and with a single stroke sheared off its closest head.

  The other four heads howled as their comrade bounced across the road and over the embankment Kendra followed her stroke with an instant back-swing, and a second head bounded away, separated from a thick, serpentine neck. But before she could prepare for another blow, one of the ghastly heads came down and struck her on the left leg.

  Her armor cushioned the blow, but from her grunt of pain and anger, I could tell she had been hurt. The offending head was quickly chastised with another swipe of her sword that nearly separated it from its neck. It hung from an inch-thick strand of leathery flesh, the jaws still snapping impotently.

  I would have run to help her but for two things. First, I didn’t have a sword, and second, even if I did have one, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. I had no doubt that while I was working on getting the correct grip, one of the remaining heads would have grabbed and held me while the other would have begun to nibble daintily at my tasty flesh.

  So I did the next best thing. I picked up whatever rocks I could find in the roadway and started flinging them at the hydra from a safe distance. Admittedly, it was not my most heroic moment, but I blush to admit that it comes close. I think I actually hit one of the heads on my third throw. I might have made it blink.

  But Kendra was doing quite nicely without my help. She had by this time closed with the monster’s body, and now, batting away the two heads that roared at her like bothersome flies, she sank her sword up to the hilt into the scaly chest.

  After that, no more heads needed to be separated from necks. The beast bellowed once (twice, if you count each head as a separate bellow) and fell straight down, its heart pierced. Kendra narrowly escaped being crushed by the beast’s descent, but her horse was well trained and had backed off as soon as she had withdrawn her sword.

  The thud when the hydra hit the dirt sent up a dust cloud that made the night even darker. The two remaining heads continued to gibber and moan and snap for a while, but by the time the dust settled, they were still, and Kendra was next to me, still mounted, blood dripping from her left thigh.

  “So who have I risked my life to save?” she said, looking down at me.

  “I’m Jasper,” I said. “Benelaius’s servant I saw you the other day in the swamp.”

  “And,” she said, “at the tavern the night before. You were one of the shy ones, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Well, if you mean I didn’t make any unwanted advances, then yes, I suppose I was indeed one of the shy ones.”

  “Lucky for you,” she said. “If you’d acted like most of your rude sex, I might have let you die.”

  At first I was about to say, “Oh, you wouldn’t have done that,” but then I realized she might have done worse than that I had no proof that she had not been the slayer of both Dovo and Grodoveth. Perhaps this meeting was doubly lucky, not only saving my life, but also giving me the opportunity to question further this beautiful warrior.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You most definitely saved my life. But you’ve been wounded. Why not come with me to Benelaius’s cottage? He’s very skilled at healing, and you can’t ride far, bleeding like that.”

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you have to walk back, would it?”

  “Milady, I will still walk back next to your horse, if it please you. You’ve saved my life, and I wish you only the best.”

  She gave a half-laugh and patted the saddle behind her. “Come up and ride behind me,” she said. “Darrun can easily bear us both to your master’s house.”

  Triple good fortune, I thought as I climbed up behind her and she took my hands and placed them around her slim waist so that I would not fall. “Hold tight,” she said, “but put your hands only where I placed them if you wish your fingers to remain unbroken. And try not to bump my injured leg.”

  In spite of holding myself like a statue, I still enjoyed the ride. So tall she was that my face was against her back, and some of her red hair spilled out the back of her helmet so that it brushed my cheek. It was very soft and smelled of spices. But she had been fighting hard, and the scent of her body was musky, though I found it not at all unpleasant. Indeed, I would have been happy to ride on forever with her. Finally she spoke to me.

  “You’re brave to be riding with me, aren’t you? Especially
after what Captain Flim thinks of me.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That I killed Dovo for insulting me the other night. And that I probably killed the king’s envoy Grodoveth as well, since he was insulting too. And there’s further evidence against me.”

  What was she doing, confessing? “And that is?”

  “I was searching for treasure in the Vast Swamp. Grodoveth was killed in Fastred’s tomb, and now the treasure is gone. Suspicion should naturally fall on me.”

  “Do you mind my asking how you heard all this? I mean, assuming of course that you didn’t actually kill Grodoveth.”

  “An adventurer hears nearly everything. And it’s my business to know about the things that concern me. Besides, just because the treasure’s stolen doesn’t mean it’s gone. To my way of thinking, it’s no crime to steal from a thief.”

  “Assuming that you didn’t take it to begin with, and aren’t just saying this to divert suspicion from yourself.”

  “A possibility. But if I wanted to divert your suspicions from me, there’s a far easier way to do it.”

  “And that is?”

  “Kill you the way I killed Dovo and Grodoveth. If I killed them in the first place.”

  I swallowed heavily. “Very true,” I said. “My death would very efficiently end my suspicions of you. But if you wanted me dead, I doubt you would have saved my life.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “one does foolhardy things just for the sheer joy of doing them. Frankly, it’s fun to kill monsters.”

  “And is it fun to get wounded in the process?”

  “Perhaps. If you’re riding with someone who thinks you capable of killing them. I enjoy that somehow. I suppose it’s the bully in me.”

  “I don’t think you would kill me,” I said with more bravado than I felt.

  “We’re not at your home yet, are we?” she said, and I had no answer. I simply clung to her waist, figuring that if she did kill me on the way, I at least had the consolation of embracing her until she did the deed.