Realms of the Dragons vol.1 a-9

by Коллектив Авторов

  "You have moved quickly and so you are deserving of similar effort on my part," the woman said.

  "You have heard of us and wish to hire us," said Jarlaxle.

  "Of course."

  "You do not look like one who would wish another killed."

  The woman blanched at the drow's suggestion, Entreri noted. For that was Entreri's role whenever they met a new prospective employer and Jarlaxle posed that very same question. Jarlaxle always liked to start such interviews in a blunt manner.

  "I was told that you two were skilled in. . procurement."

  "You seem to do well in that area yourself, Lady Taz…" Jarlaxle stopped short, looking for cues.

  "Tazmikelldl she confirmed. "And yes, I do, and thank you for noticing. But you may have also noticed that I am not alone in my endeavors in the fine city of Heliogabalus."

  "Ilnezhara's Gold Coins," said Entreri.

  "It is a name I cannot speak without an accompanying curse," the woman admitted. "My rival, once my friend. And alas, she has done it again."

  "It?" the two asked together.

  "Procured a piece for which she is not worthy," said Tazmikella, and when doubting expressions came at her, she sat back in her chair and held up her hands to stop any forthcoming inquiries. "Allow me to explain."

  The woman closed her eyes and remained silent for a long while.

  "Not so long ago," she began tentatively, as if she wasn't sure if they would get her point, "I happened across a woman sitting on a rock in a field. She did not see me, for she was wrapped in memories. At least, it seemed that way. She was singing, her eyes closed, her mind looking far away-to one she had lost, from what I could tell from the few words I could decipher. Never have I heard such passion and pain in a voice, as if every note carried her heart and soul. She touched me deeply with the beauty of her art and song.

  "For me, there was simple appreciation, but my counterpart-"

  "Ilnezhara," Jarlaxle reasoned, and Tazmikella nodded.

  "Ilnezhara would never have understood the beauty of that woman's song. She would have cited how the words strained to rhyme, or the lack of proper technique and the occasional warbling in that untrained voice. It was just those imperfect warbles that pulled at my heart."

  "Because they were honest," said Jarlaxle.

  "And thus practical," added Entreri, bringing it back to the verse that had brought them there.

  "Not pretty enough for Ilnezhara, perhaps," Jarlaxle said, building upon the thought. "But the prettiness of perfection would have tethered the honesty of emotion."

  "Exactly!" said Tazmikella. "Oh, this is a battle we have long waged. Over everything and anything, it seems. Over painting and sculpture, tapestries, song, and story. I have listened to bards, have watched them sweep away entire common rooms in tales of bold adventure, enrapturing all who would listen. And only to hear Ilnezhara, once my partner, tell me that the structure of the tale was all wrong because it did not follow some formula decided by scholars far removed from those folk in the tavern.

  "We battled at auction recently, or we thought to, except that I held no interest in the painting presented. It was no more than a scribbling of lines that evoked nothing more than simple curiosity in me-the curiosity of how it could be proclaimed as art, you see."

  "Your counterpart saw it differently?" asked the drow.

  "Not at first, perhaps, but when the artist explained the inner meaning, Ilnezhara's eyes glowed. Never mind that no such meaning could be elicited through viewing the work itself. That did not matter. The piece followed the prescribed form, and so the conclusions of the artist seemed self-evident, after they were fully explained. That is the way with people like her, you see. They exist within their critical sphere of all that is culture, not to appreciate the warble in a wounded woman's song, but to stratify all that is around them, to tighten the limits of that which meets approval and dismiss all that is accessible to the common man."

  "They make themselves feel better," Jarlaxle explained to Entreri, who realized that he was either bored or lost.

  "So, you would have us steal this painting that you did not want in the first place?" Entreri asked.

  Tazmikella scoffed at the notion.

  "Hardly! Cut it with your fine sword for all I care. No, there is another piece, a piece Ilnezhara came upon purely by accident, and one which she will never even try to appreciate. No, she keeps it only because she knows it would be precious to me!"

  The mercenaries looked at each other.

  "A flute," Tazmikella said. "A flute carved of a single piece of gray, dry driftwood. It was fashioned long ago by a wandering monk, Idalia of the Yellow Rose was his name. He took this single piece of ugly, castoff driftwood and worked it with impeccable care, day after day. It became the focus of his very existence. He nearly died of starvation as he tried to complete his wonderful flute. And complete it he did. Oh, and from it came the most beautiful music, notes as clear as the wind through ravines of unspoiled stone."

  "And your counterpart got it from this monk?"

  "Idalia has been dead for centuries," Tazmikella explained. "And the flute thought lost. But somehow, she found it."

  "Could you not just buy it from her?" asked the drow. "It is not for sale."

  "But you said she would not appreciate it."

  Again the woman scoffed and said, "She sets it aside, sets it away without a thought to it. It is valuable to her only because of the pain she knows I endure in not having it."

  The two mercenaries looked at each other again.

  "And not just because I do not have it," Tazmikella went on, somewhat frantically, it seemed. "She knows the pain that I and others of my humor feel because no breath will flow through the work of Idalia. Don't you see? She is reveling in her ability to steal true beauty from the common man."

  "I do not-" Entreri began, but Jarlaxle cut him off.

  "It is a travesty," the drow said. "One that you wish us to correct."

  Tazmikella rose from the table and moved to a drawer in one of the dry sinks, returning a moment later with a small parchment in hand.

  "Ilnezhara plans a showing at her place of business," she explained, handing the notice to Jarlaxle.

  "The flute is not there," Entreri wondered aloud.

  "It is at her personal abode, a singular tower northeast of the city."

  "So while Ilnezhara is at her showing, you would have us visit her home?" Jarlaxle asked.

  "Or you, you alone, could go to the showing," Tazmikella explained, indicating the drow. "Ilnezhara will find one of your … beauty, quite interesting. It should not be difficult for you to elicit an invitation to her private home."

  Jarlaxle looked at her skeptically.

  "Easier than breaking into her tower," Tazmikella explained. "She is a woman of no small means, rich enough, as am I, to buy the finest of pieces, to hire the most skilled of guards, and to create the most deadly of constructs."

  "Promising," Entreri noted, but though he was being sarcastic with his tone, his eyes glowed at the presented challenge.

  "Get that flute," Tazmikella said, turning to face Entreri directly, "and I will reward you beyond your grandest dreams. A hundred bags of silver, perhaps?"

  "And if I prefer gold?"

  As soon as the words left his mouth and Tazmikella's face went tight with a fierce scowl, the assassin figured he might have crossed over the line. He offered a quick apology in the form of a tip of his hat, then looked at Jarlaxle and nodded his agreement.

  Artemis Entreri never could resist a challenge. He was supposed to hide outside the singular stone tower and await Jarlaxle's appearance beside Ilnezhara, if the drow mercenary could manage an invitation there, as Tazmikella had hinted.

  The front of the thirty-foot gray stone tower had a wide awning of polished stone, supported by four delicate white columns, two carved with the likenesses of athletic men, and two with shapely women. The tower door beneath that awning was of heavy wood, carved in its ce
nter to resemble a blooming flower-a rose, the assassin thought.

  Both the pull ring and the lock were gilded, and Entreri couldn't help but notice the stark contrast between that place and the modest house of Tazmikella.

  Entreri knew that the door would be locked and probably set with devilish traps, perhaps even magical wards. He saw no guards around, however, and so he moved under cover of the waning daylight to the side of the tower, then inched his way around. At one point, he noticed the sill of a narrow window about halfway up, and his fingers instinctively felt at the stone blocks. He knew he could climb up, and easily.

  Realizing that, he went instead for the door.!

  In short order, Entreri found a trap: a pressure plate in front of the handle. Following the logical line to the front left column, he easily disarmed that one. Then he discovered a second: a spring needle set within the lock's tumblers. He took a block of wood from his pouch, an item he had designed precisely for that type of trap. The center was cut out, just enough to allow him to slide his lock-pick through with a bit of play room. He slipped it in, wriggled it a few times, then nodded his satisfaction as he heard the expected thump against the block of wood. Retracting the block, he saw the dart, and saw that it was shiny with poison. Ilnezhara played seriously.

  And so Entreri played seriously for the next few moments too, scouring every inch of that door then rechecking. Satisfied that he had removed all of the mechanical traps, at least (for magical ones were much harder to detect), he went to work on the lock.

  The door clicked open.

  Entreri leaped back, rushing to the column to reset the pressure plate. He moved fast and sprang to the threshold, moving through suddenly and pushing the door closed behind him, thinking to relock it.

  But as he bent with his lockpicks to reset the tumblers, the door burst in, forcing him to dive aside.

  "Oh, for the love of drow," he cursed, continuing his roll off to the side as the carvings from the columns strode through, slender stone swords in hand.

  Out came Charon's Claw, Entreri's deadly sword, his jeweled dagger appearing in his other hand. With little regard for those formidable weapons, the two closest of the stone constructs charged in, side by side. Charon's Claw went out to meet that charge, Entreri snapping the sword left and right to force an opening. He shifted sidelong and rushed ahead, between the stone swords, between the statues, and he managed to snap off a quick slash at one with his sword, and stabbed hard at the other. Both blades bit, and for any mortal creature, either might have proved a fatal strike. But the constructs had no life energy for Entreri's vampiric dagger to siphon, and no soul for Charon's Claw to melt.

  They were not his preferred opponents, Entreri knew, and he lamented that no one seemed to hire flesh and blood guards anymore.

  He didn't dwell on it, though, and pressed past the two male statues.

  The two females came at Entreri fast and hard, leaping at him and clawing the air with stony fingers.

  Entreri hit the floor in a sidelong roll. He got kicked by both, but accepted the heavy hits so that he could send both tumbling forward, off-balance, to smash into their male counterparts. Stone crumbled and dust flew in the heavy collision, and Entreri was fast to his feet, wading in from behind and bashing hard with his powerful sword.

  As the statues unwound and turned on him in force, Entreri called upon another of Charon's Claw's tricks, waving the blade in a wide arc and summoning forth a black wall of ash as he did. Behind that optical barrier, the assassin went out to the side, then reversed and charged right back in as the lead statues crashed through the opaque screen.

  Again his sword went to work ferociously, chopping at the stone. And again, Entreri waved a wall of clouding ash and rushed away.

  In the temporary reprieve, he noted that two of the statues were down and crumbled, and a third, one of the women, was hopping toward him on one leg, its other lying on the floor. Beside it came one of the males, seemingly unscathed.

  Entreri rushed ahead to meet that charge before the male could get far out in front of the crippled female. In came the stone sword, and Entreri hooked it expertly with his dagger and turned it out, then jerked it back in as he went out, slipping past the male and going low, then cutting across with his sword, taking the remaining leg from the hopping female. She crashed down hard and Entreri came up fast, planting his foot on her face and springing away just in front of a mighty downward chop from the male's sword.

  A downward chop that split the female's head in half.

  Entreri hit the ground in a spin and came right back in, one against one. He slipped Charon's Claw inside the blade of the thrusting stone sword, then lifted as he turned to drive the weapon and weapon arm up high. He stepped forward and jabbed his dagger hard into the armpit of the statue, then disengaged Charon's Claw at such an angle that he was able to crack it down across the statue's face as he moved off to the side. The statue turned to pursue, but Entreri was already reversing his direction, moving with perfect balance and sudden speed.

  He hit the statue across the face again as he passed, but that was merely the feint, for as the statue threw its sword arm up to block, Entreri turned and rushed under that arm, coming out the other way in perfect balance and position to slam Charon's Claw against the upper arm of the already damaged sword arm.

  That arm fell to the floor.

  The statue came on, clawing at him with its one hand. Entreri's blades worked in a blur, expertly taking the fingers from the statue's hand one at a time.

  Then he whittled the hand to a stump in short order. The statue tried to head butt him, but its head fell to the floor.

  "Stubborn rock," Entreri remarked and he lifted his foot up, braced it against the torso, and shoved the lifeless thing away and to the floor.

  His weapons went away in the flash of an eye, and he turned to regard the room, taking in the sight of treasure after treasure.

  "I'm working for the wrong person," he mumbled, awestricken.

  He shrugged and began his search for the driftwood flute of Idalia. Before long, he realized that the destroyed statues were deconstructing, their essence and materials drifting back out the open door to the columns-as he'd expected they would.

  When they were finally back in place outside on the columns, magically repairing as if nothing had happened, Entreri closed and locked the door. Anyone approaching would think all was as it had been, or so he hoped.

  As soon as the couple walked through the tower door and he got a good look at the infamous Ilnezhara, Entreri wondered if there might not be more to Tazmikella's antipathy toward her former friend than simple merchant rivalry. For Ilnezhara seemed everything that Tazmikella was not. Her hair hung long and lustrous, and so rich in hue that Entreri couldn't decide if it was reddish-blond or reddish-brown, or even copper-colored, perhaps. Her eyes were blue and big-enormous, actually, but they did not unbalance her bright face. Though her nose was thin and straight, and her cheekbones high and pronounced, her lips were as thick and delicious as any Entreri had ever seen. She was taller than the five-and-a-half foot Jarlaxle by several inches, and moved her slender form with as much grace as the nimble drow.

  "I do find you entertaining," she said to the drow, and she tossed her thick hair.

  Entreri knew that he was well-hidden, tucked in a cranny partly covered by a tapestry and concealed by a many-armed rack holding bowls of many colors. There was no way that Ilnezhara could see him, but when she tossed her hair and her face flashed his way, he felt the intensity of her gaze upon him.

  She went right back to her conversation with Jarlaxle, and Entreri silently scolded himself. When had he ever so questioned his abilities? Had he been taken in by the woman's beauty? He shook the thought away and concentrated on the conversation playing out before him. The couple were seated on a divan then, with Ilnezhara curled up beside the charming drow, her finger delicately tracing circles on his chest, for she had opened the top two buttons of his fine white shirt. She was s
peaking of entertainment, still.

  "It is my way," Jarlaxle replied. "I have traveled so many of the surface lands, from tavern to tavern and palace to palace, entertaining peasants and kings alike. I find my charms my only defense against the inevitable impressions offered by my black skin."

  "With song? Will you sing to me, Jarlaxle?"

  "Song, yes, but my talents are more musical."

  "With instruments? I have a fine collection, of course."

  She pulled herself from the divan and began striding toward the back of the room. There were indeed many instruments back there, Entreri knew, for of course he had searched much of the tower already. Several lutes and a magnificent harp, all of exceeding quality and workmanship graced the back area of this first floor.

  "Your wonderful fingers must trace delicate sounds about the strings of a lute," Ilnezhara said-rather lewdly, Entreri thought-as she lifted a lute from a soft case to show to Jarlaxle.

  "In truth, it is my kiss," said the drow. Entreri tried not to let his disgusted sigh be heard. "My breath. I favor the flute above all."

  "The flute?" echoed Ilnezhara. "Why, indeed, I have one of amazing timbre, though it is not much to view."

  Jarlaxle leaned toward her. Entreri held his breath, not even realizing that it all seemed too easy.

  Ilnezhara continued toward the back of the room.

  "Would you like to see it?" she asked coyly. "Or rather, would you like to see where I keep it?"

  Jarlaxle's smile melted into a look of confusion.

  "Or are you hoping, perhaps, that your sneaky friend has already found it, and so when I open its case, it will not be there?" the woman went on.

  "My lady…"

  "He is still here. Why do you not ask him?" Ilnezhara stated, and she turned her gaze over the cranny at the side, staring directly at the hidden Entreri.

  "Play with my friends!" Ilnezhara cried suddenly and she lifted her hand and waved it in a circle. Immediately, several statuettes-a pair of gargoyles, a lizard and a bear-began to grow and twist.

  "Not more constructs!" Entreri growled, bursting from his concealing cubby.