Murder in Cormyr

by Chet Williamson

  35

  “There was a bond between the two,” Benelaius said, “far deeper than that of master and student. They were both familiar with disgrace. You already know about Grodoveth’s displeasing the king with his lechery in Suzail, but did it never occur to you that Tobald’s leaving the university when he did was mildly suspicious?

  “Most university masters remain there for their whole lives, writing when they tire of teaching. But Tobald left in what one would imagine to be the prime of his academic life, at an age when others would not only be highly acclaimed professors but would also have established themselves as scholars in their fields, beginning to create bodies of literary work. Yet Tobald left Suzail and came to little Ghars, where he immediately became a large fish in a tiny pond.

  “We may never know what exactly it was that caused the university to dismiss him. It might have been something as simple as sloth. But it really doesn’t matter. What matters is his response, which was the same as Grodoveth’s. They felt no disgrace, only dishonor. In their own eyes, they had not done wrong; the wrongs had been done to them by those more powerful than they. In Tobald’s case, the university, and in Grodoveth’s, King Azoun himself. And so?” Benelaius said, suggesting that I continue.

  “And so they brooded,” I said, trying to imagine what went on in these two men’s minds. “They grew angry, and eventually they wanted revenge.”

  “Mmm. Revenge on the universities, on their king, on their country itself. Enough of a motive for the overthrow of Cormyr, by military … or economic means.”

  “So when someone from the Iron Throne approached Grodoveth,” I ventured, “he was ripe for the picking. He had probably found a sympathetic ear in Tobald from the start, and shared the plot with him.” I looked sharply at Benelaius. “What do you think the Iron Throne promised them in exchange for their betrayal of their country?”

  My master shrugged. “Riches, undoubtedly. The Iron Throne and Sembia would realize great wealth as a result of Cormyr’s economic woes. Perhaps Grodoveth and Tobald even looked forward to the possibility of an eventual Sembian invasion of Cormyr, depending on how much damage was done to the kingdom. Then—a puppet throne for Grodoveth, and Tobald’s revenge on those in the university system who he felt had wronged him. We’ll never know what they had in mind, but we can be grateful it did not come to fruition.”

  By now, we were passing the Swamp Rat, and Benelaius nodded toward it. “Feel a need to take the damp out of your bones?”

  “Not in there,” I said, thinking of the weak ale and the pickled eggs. Then I happened to remember something. “But Grodoveth did, though, didn’t he?”

  “Did he?” the wizard asked slyly.

  “Of course. When he spent the night there, he knew exactly what room to go to without asking, because he had done so before. The Swamp Rat was their base of operations, wasn’t it?”

  Benelaius only smiled, and returned my question with another. “If it was, do you think Hesketh Pratt, the good proprietor, was apprised of the plot?”

  “No. It nearly ruined his business. An axe-swinging ghost is hardly a drawing card.” We traveled another hundred yards as I thought through the scenario. “Grodoveth or Tobald would give Dovo the information, either in town or at the Swamp Rat, and then Dovo would ride out to where the path led into the swamp, hide his horse, scare away any passersby who might have seen him, and then go off with his lantern into the swamp.” I looked at Benelaius, suddenly puzzled. “But why then did I find his cloak and hat at the Bold Bard?”

  “Why do you think? Would he have left them there?”

  “No,” I replied after a moment’s thought. “But Grodoveth or Tobald might have.”

  “And why?”

  “To throw suspicion on Shortshanks perhaps, or at any rate to draw it away from the Swamp Rat. But why the whole plot in the first place, master? Why couldn’t Grodoveth just pass the information on himself?”

  “A king’s envoy is an important person, and important people are under far greater scrutiny all the time than are mere blacksmith’s assistants. Grodoveth could disappear long enough to speak to Dovo, or perhaps the lad came to Tobald’s house after dark and received his information there. But it was necessary to have a third party. Too, if Dovo was caught, he could easily have said he was playing ghost for fun. Whatever Grodoveth and Tobald were paying him would have been worth the mild punishment he would receive. Now come.”

  Benelaius turned Stubbins off the road and down the hill toward the spot where I had found Dovo’s corpse. “We are here. We’ll tie the horses and then walk in to the tomb.”

  “Can you … I mean, do you think you should, master?”

  He answered petulantly. “I did before, didn’t I? In the darkness of early dawn and followed by a traitor. I suppose I can do so now in broad daylight followed by”—his tone abruptly softened—”a friend and helper.”

  “How did you find this place?” I asked as we started back into the swamp.

  “The same way Grodoveth did. In his studies into the legend of Fastred, undertaken at first in order to provide a cover for his messenger, he learned more and more of the tales of Fastred’s tomb, and the treasure that was supposed to be there. By comparing dozens of cross-references, and by a few leaps of intellect, he was able to pinpoint not only the location of the tomb, but also how to open it.

  “When I learned from you what books he had consulted, I simply did the same reading in my own library and came to the same conclusion. I solved the riddle early in the morning of the day Grodoveth was found dead, and rode Stubbins out here, tying him where he wouldn’t be seen.”

  I remembered hearing the cottage door close that morning. “That was you then, returning about seven thirty. And out here is where Stubbins got the mud on him.”

  Benelaius nodded. “I’m afraid I’m not very adept at rubbing down horses. At any rate, as soon as it was barely light enough to see where my feet would land, I started in on the path that was visible to one who knew where to look.

  “But very shortly I began to hear footfalls behind me. At first I thought it was a creature of the swamp, and that I might have to resort to a protective spell, which would have been an admission of defeat after going all these months without using magic. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. But I’d better tell you why a bit later. As you can see, there is a thornslinger just ahead.”

  I didn’t need to be reminded. I remembered the terrible violence of the tree all too well. We passed it in near silence, the only sound the soft sucking of our boots on the muddy surface of the path. When we were a good distance away, Benelaius resumed his tale.

  “When I heard someone following me, I walked faster, naturally. In fact, I was running, not a frequent occurrence, I may tell you. Before long, I came upon the mere … ah, there it is just ahead of us. At least a half mile across, wouldn’t you say? I have a theory that we should test when we have more time. Across that mere is another path, else the Iron Throne agent never should have gotten there. I suspect it leads through the swamp to the southeast, all the way to Sembia. But we shan’t journey to that country today.”

  He turned left on the path that ringed the mere, and I followed him toward Fastred’s tomb.

  “The path led directly to the mound,” he said, “and I hid behind it, hoping against hope that my pursuer just happened to be going to the same place as I. Miraculously, such was the case. It was Grodoveth, as I saw from the brush where I was concealed. I had no choice but to lie down, and I’m afraid I got my cloak rather muddy.”

  “So that was it,” I said, remembering the last laundry I had washed. “It didn’t get muddy from just rubbing against Lindavar’s clothes.”

  “No, and my apologies for making you work so hard at your washing. Grodoveth grinned when he saw the mound, and at first I was afraid he was grinning at me, prior to playing bobbing for wizards in the quicksand. But he didn’t even know I was there. He fumbled about on top of the mound for a moment. I heard the click o
f a long-hidden latch and saw him opening a trapdoor buried by thick layers of moss and swamp slime. Then he descended the stairs into the tomb. Ah, and speak of the wicked, here it is.”

  The mound was there, sodden with the rain. The trapdoor on top was still open, just as we had left it, and I wondered if any creatures had descended to try and make a feast on Fastred’s dry corpse within. Remembering the bare bones, I knew they would find slim pickings, unless they had remained to await the advent of a corpulent wizard and his servant.

  “There is where I hid,” said Benelaius, pointing to a large, low, needle-leafed bush. “In a moment, I heard noises. There was a sharp, singing sound, then a clatter of something, but no voices, not even a groan. After waiting a bit longer and hearing only silence, I decided to investigate. At the bottom of the stairs I found Grodoveth in the same bisected condition in which you saw him later that morning, the axe precisely where you found it.” He gestured downward. “Come, let us revisit the scene.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe?” I asked him.

  “No one would go down there without a light,” Benelaius said, “and it seems quite dark.”

  “I wasn’t necessarily thinking about humans,” I said.

  Benelaius only laughed and lit one of the lanterns, while I lit the other. Then he began to walk down the slippery, moss-covered steps. I followed.

  36

  At the bottom were two dried areas of blood, the larger one where Grodoveth’s body had fallen, and the smaller one where his head and shoulder had lain. A passageway led into the dark room where Fastred’s bones sat upright.

  “There lay the body, there lay the axe, and there”—he pointed at the passageway—“was darkness. I entered that room, and found only the body of Fastred, with a small box at his feet. There was no one else. No possible killer.”

  “Not Tobald.”

  “No. But what I saw, and what you might have seen, told me that the same person had killed both Dovo and Grodoveth. Look, Jasper, and observe.”

  Frustrated beyond words, I did as he asked, and covered the floor even more carefully than I had before. “Cold …” he muttered. “Colder … a bit warmer … warmer …”

  “Master, there is nothing on the floor!” I blurted out.

  “Then look up, Jasper. Behold what is right before your eyes.”

  I examined the wall, and my attention was once again captured by what I had taken to be a line of striation in the rock. Since it was the only thing I saw on the wall, I touched it and discovered that what I had thought a thin layer of rock was actually damp clay. “Very hot now,” said Benelaius as I dug the clay away from the rock.

  When I had finished, I had discovered a concealed trap. It was horizontal, an inch high, two feet deep, and five feet long. When I held my lantern to one end, I could make out a heavy metal spring that pointed toward me.

  “There’s more to it than it appears,” said Benelaius. “A rather clever contraption for being five hundred years old. And it did what it was set to do. It killed the first intruder to enter Fastred’s tomb.”

  “But … but I thought you said the same person who killed Dovo killed Grodoveth.”

  “And so he did. After all, it was Grodoveth whose foot snapped the cord that sprung the trap that beheaded him, much the same way that he beheaded Dovo after he and Tobald heard the man bragging in the Bold Bard. The motive was what I stated last night, though the perpetrator was the one with the military training. Tobald would have made a botch of beheading.

  “And Grodoveth’s own beheading was less than clean. The axe came out of the wall before he had time to react and, well, you saw the results.”

  “Yes,” I said, “and I saw other things, too, things that I didn’t recognize at the time. The axe was chipped where it hit the stone floor after passing through Grodoveth’s body, and the two gouges on the handle were from where it had lain in its holder all those centuries, the pressure of the spring cutting into the wood. And when the spring was released, it cut into the handle even more deeply, exposing the wood underneath.” I shook my head, angry at myself. “I wondered at the time why Fastred’s axe wasn’t buried with him. I should have realized that it was, that it guarded his tomb. I should have seen it.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You entered with presuppositions in mind. I was fortunate enough to enter seeing precisely what happened. I must confess that my curiosity got the better of me then, and I searched Grodoveth’s garments. In them I found a vial of poison identical to the one I later found in Tobald’s cloak while I was examining him. It seems the Iron Throne was taking no chances. Oh, I didn’t need to analyze it, since blackweed has a very distinctive odor when found in such a concentrated dose. And when I found the Iron Throne sigil as well, it all fell together.”

  “Grodoveth had a sigil, too?”

  “Not too. Tobald didn’t have one, at least not on him. As you recall, I stated only that the sigil was found with the vial of poison, and that was true.”

  I suddenly remembered another fancy bit of wordplay. “The same way you said you ‘extracted’ the poison, not from Tobald’s blood but from his cloak. And when we learned that it was poison, and you said that you ‘gave him something for it,’ you meant you replaced it with the crystal.”

  “Precisely. Well done, Jasper. Camber Fosrick would be proud of you.”

  “But why didn’t Tobald have a sigil if he was working with the Iron Throne?” I asked.

  “Oh, I suspect he did, but Tobald was never as bold as Grodoveth, who logically never expected to be searched. I imagine the Purple Dragons will find a similar sigil among Tobald’s possessions in his home, carefully hidden away somewhere.”

  I looked at our footprints on the floor, and the opening in the wall from which the axe had come flying out. “Then the footprints that I saw here of the heavy man were yours. But I don’t understand why you hid the trap with clay.”

  “Because once I found incriminating evidence on Grodoveth’s body,” Benelaius said, “I immediately suspected that Tobald might be in league with him. They were, after all, inseparable when Grodoveth visited Ghars, and my assumption did prove correct. I suppose the plot to make it look like Tobald was solely responsible was forming itself in my brain even then.”

  “Then that was why you left the pills on the floor.”

  “The pills?” He looked up absentmindedly. “Oh, yes, even I lose things from time to time.”

  “Crushing them was a nice touch,” I said with a smirk.

  “Indeed. Too obvious otherwise. It was necessary, you see, that Tobald was believed to be the killer and no one else. After all, Grodoveth had already paid for his crimes with his life, and it would be a great disgrace to the throne were the king’s cousin-by-marriage to be proven a traitor. But this way he can be remembered as a loyal servant of the king. It was necessary that Tobald, who was equally as great a traitor, and had every intention of destroying his own town in order to kill the merchants, pay for Grodoveth’s crimes as well.”

  “But why was Tobald so anxious to have the killer found, particularly since the orders were instant death?”

  “That was especially why he wanted him found. Tobald didn’t know how Grodoveth was killed. He probably thought that someone had learned about their plot, followed Grodoveth to Fastred’s tomb, and killed him. Speaking of which, the tomb must have come as quite a surprise to Tobald, since I doubt that Grodoveth shared that particular information with him. He sought the tomb for the reputed treasure, and I’m certain his partnership with Tobald would not have extended to sharing the gems.”

  “So for all Tobald knew,” I said, “whoever killed Grodoveth might be targeting him next.”

  Benelaius nodded. “And the faster that person was executed, the less he would be able to reveal about Tobald and Grodoveth’s connection with the Iron Throne, assuming he knew about it. No, Vangerdahast’s order played right into Tobald’s hands, or so he thought.”

  “Because,” I went on, “the l
ast thing he expected was to be accused himself, especially with the wealth of evidence that you provided.” I gave a dry laugh. “He must have been doubly furious at you, for he knew that you had manufactured much of it.”

  “But I did not manufacture his intent, nor his treachery. I feel no guilt for what I did, Jasper. Justice triumphed. ‘Bought with blood, paid for with blood.’ That is the legend in this tomb, and it provides an apt epitaph for Grodoveth and Tobald.”

  I eyed Benelaius thoughtfully. “You talk a good talk, master, but you’re not as bloodthirsty as you let on. You wanted Tobald to escape.”

  That produced an elevation of his bushy eyebrows. “And what makes you say that?”

  “That eight cats would accidentally overturn four braziers at once strains the limits of credulity. You had them do it on purpose, signaling them in some way. That was why you had Tobald sit by the opening off the piazza.”

  Benelaius’s face grew wistful. “I dislike bloodshed, Jasper. I would have particularly disliked the sight of a man—any man—hanging from a tree near my cottage. Yes, I would have preferred Tobald to escape, for to whom would he have fled? The Iron Throne? Even if he could have gotten through the swamp, he would have been of no further use to them. On the contrary, he would have been a failure, and they might have killed him because of it. In truth, I expected him to flee into the swamp, where he would eventually be pulled down by the mire. That it happened the way it did was, I must confess, a surprise to me.”

  The memory of Fastred’s ghost made me think once again of the tomb in which we stood, and I realized that there was still one more unanswered question. “The treasure,” I said. “You took it, didn’t you?”

  Benelaius waved a dismissive hand and smiled beatifically. “Put the treasure from your mind as I have from mine. You need know only that Dovo’s long-suffering family will suffer no longer. They will shortly receive an extremely generous inheritance from a distant relative of whose existence they were not even aware. And to add to their happy ending, two traitors have been punished, a plot against Cormyr scuttled, and the haunting of the swamp at an end … at least from Fastred.”