Realms of Mystery a-6

by Elaine Cunningham

  Aidan shook his head and tried to speak. He wanted to give voice to the anger and hurt that festered inside him, to condemn this man for destroying his faith in the world, but the words were stuck in his throat as surely as if he were bespelled. All he could do was blurt out a single word.

  “Why?”

  Haldan looked at him and chuckled. “Why?” he taunted. “For the money, of course. With the gold from this sale, I’ll buy a seat on the Council, and from there my associates and I will slowly pry Tilverton out from under the thumb of Cormyrean rule.” Haldan raised his voice and began to shout. “The regent has done nothing but drain the life from this city. She is unfit to lead us. It’s time for a new rule, a new ruler, in Tilverton!”

  A light shone in the commander’s eyes as be spoke. At first, Aidan thought it madness, but soon realized it was something far worse… fanaticism.

  “I suppose that you will lead Tilverton in this new era?” he asked, hoping to divert Haldan for a few more moments. He knew that there was no hope of convincing his former friend to surrender.

  “Of course,” the commander replied. “Who else is more suited to handle the responsibility? And I will start right now by ridding Tilverton of this scum!” Without warning, his sword whistled down to Morgrim’s bleeding form… and rebounded as it met Aidan’s own blade.

  The look of betrayal that passed across Haldan’s face only angered Aidan more. Ignoring the numbness in his wrist, he slid his blade out from under the commander’s and aimed a high strike at Haldan’s head. Engaged in battle, Haldan’s sword began to glow with bright blue intensity. Faster than any weapon had a right to move, it deflected Aidan’s blade.

  Haldan grinned fiercely and sent his own sword snaking after Aidan’s blood. “It seems that you have made a choice, Alassalynn Aidan,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “So be it. Even if you kill me, there are others who won’t rest until Alassalynn and her Cormyrean lapdogs are nothing but a memory?”

  Aidan said nothing, conserving his strength for the battle ahead. Although he was still quicker than the commander, Haldan possessed greater strength and a magical blade. Even now, he could feel his muscles weakening; every parry brought the rune-encrusted sword closer to his flesh. He crouched low, hoping to find an opening in Haldan’s guard. The commander attacked high and to the right. There was his chance! Springing forward, he thrust his sword at Haldan’s exposed midsection. Too late, Aidan realized his mistake. The commander completed his feint and angled his blade at the captain’s neck. Desperately, Aidan raised his sword, hoping to deflect at least part of the blow.

  With a sickening twist, his sword flew from his hands.

  He watched helplessly as Haldan moved closer. The commander could end this at any time, and they both knew it. He braced himself for the final blow, but Haldan just stood there with a surprised look upon his face. When he pitched forward, blood frothing from his mouth, Aidan automatically moved forward to help. Forcefully, he stopped himself. Behind the fallen commander stood Morgrim, holding two bloodied knives. The priest panted heavily in the silence of the chambers and smiled at Aidan before collapsing to the ground.

  Slowly, Aidan retrieved his sword and knelt beside Haldan’s body. The commander was dead, his face frozen in a permanent rictus of surprise. Gently, and with more care than he thought possible, Aidan closed the corpse’s eyes.

  “Rest well, my friend,” he whispered. Whatever had passed between them, he would always honor the man he knew as a young Dragon.

  He sighed and moved to Morgrim’s crumpled form. The priest lived-barely. Aidan watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest and marveled at the priest’s vulnerability. Morgnim’s life was an ember smoldering beneath Aidan’s boot; a simple step would grind it into ash.

  And yet, he knew that he would not take that step.

  Though the priest served the whims of a dark god, he had more than proven himself worthy of respect. Aidan didn’t believe he possessed a heart of gold-that kind of naпvetй shattered in a dark alley late one night-but Morgrim’s actions spoke of friendship more eloquently than words.

  Aidan watched the wounded priest for a few more moments, then turned away to search for the Lirithane. He didn’t want to stay in the sewers any longer. A few minutes later, he found the familiar blade clutched in the cold hands of Morgrim’s spell-wielding opponent. Prying it loose, he discovered a disc shaped symbol-the sign of Lathander-attached to a chain around the corpse’s neck. With a curse, he tore the symbol from the chain and tossed it back down the sewer tunnel. Haldan had spoken the truth; his allies would never rest until they fulfilled their plan.

  Carefully, Aidan bent down and lifted Morgrim up from the dank floor. As he retraced their furtive passage through the tunnels, he thought about the events of the past tenday and smiled. He would speak to Lady Rowanmantle this very afternoon and pledge his help in rooting out the conspiracy.

  Perhaps there was a place for an old, tired soldier after all.

  Whence the Song of Steel

  J. Robert King

  In my line of work a fellow gets used to lots of things- ear-splitting screams, daggers in the shadows, leering masks, wicked smiles, wailing widows, back alleys, bodies, and blood… lots of blood. I’d just never had to endure all of them in one night.

  Opera’s what the Sembites called it. The word means “works.” Still, out of a cast of thousands, I was the only one working. Everybody else primped and bickered, pranced in patti-colored silks and grease paint, and gestured to a couple fat men who bellowed. Meanwhile, I stood there in the dark lee of a stage curtain and watched and listened.

  That was work. Real, hard work. It’s tough for a man of action to stand around and watch something happen that isn’t even happening. Still, something real was about to happen. Death was in the air that night-real death and real blood-I could smell it. Murder was only moments away. I edged closer to the stage. The two fat men there were my responsibility. Usually a person doesn’t become my responsibility until he’s lying facedown in an alley puddle. But these two stuffed sausages were still very much alive, and it was my job to keep them that way.

  I’m Bolton Quaid, watch captain-for-hire and, lately, bodyguard. I’d landed this particular job back in Waterdeep-my stomping grounds-when the opera had toured there. No sooner had it opened than death threats had started rolling in. Understandable. If I’d paid a handful of gold to hear this, I’d’ve been in a mood for murder, too. Still, the head of the company hadn’t wanted to take chances. He’d sought out the best bodyguard in the city and ended up with me. Five cities and ten months later, I was still along for the ride… and the death threats still rolled in.

  From the beginning I knew most of the threats were sent by one tenor to the other. Singers are like that, I’m told. But a few came from somebody else, somebody who could’ve been sitting in the audience even now. I looked out past the bobbing heads of the chorus, toward the dour, jewel-decked crowd. They sat in the Grand House as still as statues. The best of the best. Everything about them shone-diamond necklaces, gold earrings, silver hair, bald pates, and glassy eyes. Mostly their eyes. Boredom, resignation, sleepiness. Not the usual motives for murder. Most of the crowd couldn’t even muster up interest, let alone malice.

  Still, death was in the air. I could smell it. Somebody was planning murder.

  It could have been one of the singers. While the crowd had no passion, the singers had too much-roaring, stomping, wailing, collapsing, trembling, swaggering, staggering, leaping, sobbing, fighting, swooning, and, of course, bellowing, bellowing, bellowing… They were mad with passion, lunatics capering and drooling and howling at the moon.

  Tonias, the younger tenor, led the bedlam. He was a stout lad with golden hair and beard standing straight out in a ring around his head. The sheen of his hair was accentuated by the crown he wore, which designated him King Orpheus, conquering lord of Distalia. He wore a fat white ruff, a tunic of bright yellow silk, a stiff brown waistcoat, an ermine-lined
cloak, and a yellow stocking that showed every line of his legs. On high notes, Tonias would loft his gleaming sword, giving everyone in the front row an intimate view of the effect of his tremolo. He seemed more a puff pastry than a killer.

  The older tenor, on the other hand, seemed perfectly capable of murder. In this opera he played the villain Garragius, one-time king of Distalia. Displaced and outlawed, Garragius posed as a leprous beggar in order to sneak up to Orpheus and kill him. The animosity was not all acting, though. It was jealousy, pure and simple. While Tonias got to strut center stage, V’Torres had to lurk near stage front. The old tenor wore no finery, only black rags charred from encounters with the foot candles. His lines were full of growls, barks, and guttural threats. On low notes, he sounded like a rutting bull, on high notes like a cat in heat.

  That hadn’t always been the case. He’d once been a young tenor sensation, the toast of Sembia. Then, he’d had the voice of a hero-high, pure, and crystalline. Bold but tender. Powerful but tragic. Especially tragic. His career had ended at its height, turning on itself like a snake swallowing its own tail. To escape ever-present fans, V’Torres had begun to drink himself unconscious. The problem was he would invariably wake up beside one of those fans. Eventually, drink rotted his liver, and pox rotted his brain. By the time he got dry on both ends he was empty in the middle, and had no voice left. V’Torres, now, was next to nothing, and jealousy consumed him.

  Perhaps murderous jealousy.

  Tonias was worthy of it. Occasionally, he would stop bellowing and actually sing something soaring and sweet. Then, even I could tell he was good. In those moments his voice held all of hope and fear, desire and devotion. The sound struck me in the breastbone and moved in waves through my ribs, into my spine, and up to buzz in the base of my brain. It was like my ears heard only the smallest part of that sound, most of it resounding directly in my bones. Even now he sang such a passage. Among a rapt and adoring throng of choristers, King Orpheus stood, belly thrust outward, head thrown back, and battle sword lifted high:

  “I rise. I rise upon the dawning hope of Distalia,

  Like pollen in the teaming air of Spring.

  I rise. I rise as all life rises, green and soft

  Through iron-hard ground to daylight gleam.

  I rise. I rise from roots that turn your dark decay

  To golden finery, turn grave soil to wind-borne seed.

  I rise, as all of life, I rise!”

  While King Orpheus sang, Garragius growled out a counterpoint. Tattered black rags swayed around his twisted frame. Within the cloth, a wickedly curved dagger glinted with little flame teeth from the foot candles. Clutching the blade, Garragius made his way toward the king.

  “Death also rises,

  Or didn’t you know?

  In every blossom, every fruit,

  The worm will also grow.

  The worm that eats away the home.

  The worm that winnows flesh from bone.

  The worm, implacable, alone

  Eternal, worm. Eternal worm!”

  Garragius groveled his way to the foot of the singing king and lifted the dagger in tremulous hands. King Orpheus sang on, oblivious, as his foe rose from the shadows to slay him. Giving a final shriek of animal fury, Garragius rammed the curved dagger into the King’s bulging gut. A gout of blood sprayed forth.

  I was impressed with this bit of stage magic, more realistic than in the fifty-some last performances. The blood even steamed in the cool air.

  Tonias’s song turned into a shriek of agony and he stared in horror and shock at the knife jutting from his stomach. “He’s killed me!” Tonias cried out unmusically. The pit orchestra ground to a halt. The lead rebec player-a thin, pale woman-rose to stare, aghast.

  Tonias lifted a crimson hand from his belly. “V’Torres has killed me!”

  V’Torres? I flung back the curtain and rushed onstage. Too late. Tonias’s whole body shuddered. His sword arm went limp and dropped, blade still in hand. The steel flashed in an orange arc and struck V’Torres in the neck, bringing an instant spray of gore.

  V’Torres’s scream was taken up by many members of the crowd. The audience recoiled from the stage, clambering over seats and bustles and miles of satin to get away from the blood. I was drawn to it. I reached the scene in time to catch Tonias, slumping unconscious to the floor. The dead weight of the man bore me down in a heap beneath him. Next moment, V’Torres added his body to the pile, hand falling from his spurting neck.

  That’s when I began bellowing. Hot blood soaked my clothes, and three hundred pounds of tenor crushed me. But mainly I bellowed because the men I’d been hired to protect had, in front of thousands of elite witnesses, killed each other dead.

  Well, not exactly dead, thanks to the priests of Lathander in the front row. I commandeered the healers, who accompanied body-bearing guardsmen to separate dressing rooms where ministrations began. After issuing orders for crowd control, I got the blood cleaned off me and headed for Tonias’s dressing room.

  I knocked on the door. The lead rebec player answered. She blinked big moon eyes at me. Her hair bristled in a brown, unkempt mat and her mannish tunic and trousers were stained in blood. “What?”

  “I’m Bolton Quaid, the bodyguard.”

  “A little late, aren’t you?” she asked caustically. She stepped back and let me in.

  The room was as sumptuous as it was crowded-wool rugs, glazed windows, silvered mirrors, embroidered chairs… Tonias lay, huge and sweating, on a too-small fainting couch, midsection covered by a rumpled yellow shirt. At his head stood one gray-garbed guardsman. Another stood at his foot. The rebec player drifted quickly in to kneel beside the couch on a lush Shou Lung carpet. Her knees settled just beside the bloody sword that had almost killed V’Torres. I made my way past red-and yellow-robed priests and stood over the tenor.

  Tonias groaned to see me. “There’s the man. There’s the man whom I was told would ensure my safety, my very life. There he is, Waterdhavian sewer rat, keeping track of his pay but not his responsibilities…“

  “That’s why I’m here, actually,” I said, dragging a notebook and a fat-nibbed hunk of lead from my pocket, “my responsibility. It’s not just guarding you. It’s also convicting anybody that attacks you-or V’Torres.”

  Tonias’s face grew a fiery red beneath his crown of gold hair. “Why aren’t you questioning him?”

  “Hard to question an unconscious man.” I shoved a couple music scores off a chair, drew it up beside the bed, and straddled it. “Besides, he’s looks guilty enough. Everybody saw him stab you. That was no accident. That was attempted murder. The real question is, what happened with this sword of yours? Was that an accident, or…”

  The flush of Tonias’s face waned the moment I’d pronounced V’Torres’s guilt, but his eyes still blazed as he said, “I wish to the gods I’d killed him. I wish to the gods the sword had cut his head clear off. I assure you, if I’d done it on purpose, it would have killed him. I hate the man. But the blow of my sword was completely accidental.”

  I made a line of nonsense scribbles on my pad of paper. I never write real notes, but scribbling keeps people off balance. “That’s a funny kind of argument. You’re saying you had motive, means, and opportunity, and yet you didn’t try to kill him? That’ll be hard to prove.”

  He glanced down. His jowls rippled as he chewed over a decision. At last, he said, “It’s easy to prove. It’s the easiest thing in the world to prove, only I won’t do it with all these people here.”

  I glanced up. The priests of Lathander returned my questioning gaze, most of them young, clean-shaven, and naпve.

  I gestured toward the man’s belly. “What’s the prognosis? He well enough for you folks to step outside?”

  The chief healer nodded and smiled-even his eyes smiled. “The Morninglord has been generous, indeed. The wound closed with the first prayers uttered, and the patient is resting comfortably-”

  “That’ll be the day,�
�� sniped Tonias.

  “…so I suppose we could step outside and see how V’Torres is doing.”

  “Fine,” I said, dismissing them.

  The priests filtered out, robes rustling in the stale air, and I closed the door behind them. Tonias glanced meaningfully at the guards at the head and foot of his bed.

  “Not a chance,” I said. “They’re working with me.”

  Grimacing reluctantly, Tonias said, “I had the motive and opportunity, but not the means. I would have loved to kill V’Torres, but I never would have tried to kill him with that sword.” He nodded down to the blood-crusted blade beside the couch.

  I reached down and lifted the thing, amazed at its heft. This was no mere stage sword. The blade was broad and balanced, its hilt expertly wound.

  “Look at it, Quaid. This is the real murder victim tonight,” said Tonias cryptically. The blade certainly was bloody enough to be a murder victim. V’Torres’s gore was drying all across its fine etching. “Do you have any idea what… whom you hold in your hand?”

  “Whom?”

  “That is… was Ranjir, an ancient elven singing sword. An intelligent weapon,” said Tonias sadly. “It was forged before the time of Myth Drannor. It fought in thousands of battles, many for the elven homelands they still hold today. It has changed the course of Faeruin. And now, it is dead.”

  “Dead?” I glanced up and down the blade. “How can you tell?”

  “Look at the ruby in its hilt. It once shone with an inner light. Now look at it,” he urged. “Look at it!”

  I turned the sword over, gazing into an eye-sized gemstone set in the silver filigree of the basket handle. The stone was cracked, shot through with sooty blackness. I tried to keep the humor from my voice as I asked, “How did it die?”

  “Blood,” Tonias responded, miserable. He folded his arms over his chest. “The sword was forged so that if ever in battle it was touched with blood, it would be slain.”

  I was still studying the blown-out stone. “How did the sword fight in thousands of battles and change the face of Faerвn if it never drew blood?”