D& D - Greyhawk - Night Watch

by Robin Wayne Bailey

  “Anyway,” he said, continuing, “I think Chancreon, the dragon who’d been living in the Halls as a human poet, sensed it, too, and it drove him crazy. Or maybe something attacked him to drive him out of town. I haven’t figured all the details yet.

  “What about the other murders?” Burge pressed quietly.

  “The murders in Old Town,” Garett continued as he ran his hand over the gates and over the huge iron locks. “I think Blossom was right. Those were part of it, too. They were sacrifices, "You yourself found the altar down there in the sewers. Whoever this wizard is, he offers blood to his deity. That brings us back to the Horned Society again, where such a thing is common practice.”

  “You talk as if Greyhawk is under attack,” Burge said.

  Garett nodded. “It is.” He moved back from the gate and drew Guardian from its sheath. A mild emerald radiance washed over the ground and the high gate. Garett held the blade up, marveling. He took a step closer to the gate, and the glow brightened perceptibly.

  “It’s reactin’ to the magical wards,” Burge observed.

  Garett stepped back, then moved closer again, testing Burge’s theory. The glow dimmed and brightened. Mor-denkainen hadn’t mentioned this aspect of the sword’s power. Apparently, there were mysteries unknown even to the Circle of Eight.

  “That bird,” he said slowly.

  Burge moved closer to his side. He held his hand close to the blade, and the light bounced against his palm, turning it green. The half-elf moved his hand through the glow, almost as if he were petting the sword, stroking it. “What bird?” he asked.

  Garett told him about the bird on his windowsill. “The sword was glowing very slightly when I turned around. I didn’t connect that until now.”

  “There’s somethin’ about the birds?” Burge asked, glancing up at the sky, where winged shapes fluttered swiftly across the bright face of Kule and across the star-speckled night. “But there are thousands of them!” Garett gazed up also as he shook his head. “One bird, or thousands,” he answered. “I don’t know. But that thing that found Prestelan wore the shape of a bird.”

  Burge nodded grimly toward the guildhall gates. “I think we’d better take a look in there.”

  Garett agreed. “Stand back,” he instructed as he approached the gates with Guardian held before him.

  He touched the point of the arcane blade to the sigil painted on the roanwood. A green-tinged fire erupted at the contact, and a startled Garett sprang back. The strange flame hissed and crackled as it traced the lines of the enchanted seal. A foul-smelling white smoke spewed into the air. Then it was not fire that revealed the lines of the sigil, but a burning white light that grew and grew in brightness.

  Abruptly the light began to ebb, turning green as it dimmed and finally fading altogether. Guardian, too, lost its glamour. Darkness returned to Wizards’ Row.

  Garett crept forward, the sword still drawn, and set his hand tentatively against the gate. Despite the fire and the light, it wasn’t even warm. The paint of the sigil, though, had blistered away, and it stood out only as a peculiar scorch mark. “What do you think?” he asked Burge, and when he got no answer, he pushed on one of the massive doors. It opened a crack.

  “Maybe they should have relied on more conventional locks,” Burge commented, coming closer. His own sword was in his hand now. He put an eye to the crack and peered inside. “Can’t see nothin’.”

  “Let me go first,” Garett said, putting his shoulder to the door and opening it wider. Then, with a major effort, he pushed it all the way back.

  The moonlight poured a frosty radiance upon the ground. Garett stepped cautiously over the gate’s threshold into the vast courtyard that surrounded the wizards’ guildhall, and immediately Guardian began to shine with a low-level glow again. Garett’s gaze swept around, searching the shadows, alert for any movement. He didn’t believe for an instant that the wards on the gate were the only protections on this place.

  “Look,” Burge said as he came up behind him. He pointed to a slumped form lying against the wall right beside the gate. Together they bent down to examine the body in the moonlight. “It’s a dwarf,” Burge noted.

  “He’s been dead for days,” Garett pointed out, straightening. He turned and stared toward the pinnacle of the broken tower, still framed by Kule’s refulgence. “Dead even before Prestelan’s battle, from the condition of his body.”

  Burge frowned as he stood, but he continued to stare at the dead dwarf. “Then why doesn’t he smell, Cap’n? A body like that ought to be quite potent by now.”

  Garett shook his head. He didn’t pretend to understand all the workings of sorcery, and clearly there was some magic at work because Guardian gave off a minutely brighter glow when he passed it near the corpse.

  “Touch it with the point,” Burge suggested. “See if anything happens.”

  But Garett refused. “We don’t know what’s at work here,” he explained as he turned away from the body and started walking across the courtyard. “When you visit a wizard’s house, you have to expect to see some strange things. And at last count, twelve wizards lived here. If we have to defend ourselves, we will, but let’s not disturb anything we don’t have to.”

  Halfway to the entrance, a pair of statues stood on either side of the walkway. Half human and half lion, they looked ferocious and frightening as the moon shone down upon their marble forms. As Garett and Burge approached, Guardian began to brighten.

  “Are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Burge whispered as they crept down the walkway.

  “I’m thinking let’s cut a wide circle around them,” Garett answered quietly, stepping off the walkway. But the sound of stone grating on stone made them stop. The statues rotated on their bases, turning to face them. Rigid arms and shoulders suddenly relaxed, became supple. The creatures stepped down from the bases and settled into a crouch as they eyed the intruders. One of them gave an animal growl. The moon glinted on long fangs as it shook back its mane and raised mighty taloned hands.

  “Maybe you should have gone with Blossom to The Tomb tonight,” Garett muttered as he raised Guardian defensively. The blade burned with a beautiful fire.

  Burge lifted his own plain sword and prepared to fight. “Some fates are worse than death,” he rejoined.

  The lion-men rushed them suddenly, raking the air with their deadly claws. Garett gripped Guardian tightly with both hands and leaped in front of Burge to meet both attackers. The sword fairly exploded with light as he swung through the middle of his first foe and chopped with a short stroke at the second. To his surprise, he encountered no resistance as the blade made contact. It passed through both creatures as if they weren’t there at all, but immediately they reverted to stone again, frozen in their attack postures. One of them fell over awkwardly on its side, snapping off an arm.

  Burge came around Garett and gave the other an easy push. It, too, toppled sideways. “Now they’re lyin’ men,” he said with a smirk.

  They moved across the lawn toward the rubble surrounding the broken tower. On the way, they noticed a grove of trees growing near the wall. The moonlight fashioned strange shadows from the limbs and branches and from the thick trunks, but two shadows seemed out of place. Garett motioned to Burge, and they crept nearer. As it had when they approached the stone statues. Guardian began to give a warning glow, and they stopped well back from the grove’s edge.

  Two black-clad men hung, swaying, from branches that had coiled unnaturally about their throats. The bloated faces still wore wide-eyed looks of terror. One had lost a boot. It lay on the ground under him, as if he had been snatched out of it.

  Burge took a step forward, but Garett caught his arm and jerked him back. “Watch,” he whispered. He took a couple of steps toward the nearest tree, the sword glowing brighter as he did so. When the lowest limb came alive and snaked down to grab him, he brushed it with the blade. An emerald light flared, and Guardian passed harmlessly through the slender branch. Neither
the branch nor any part of the tree moved again.

  “Now we know what happened to Sorvesh Kharn’s two burglars,” Garett said, returning to Burge’s side.

  Large chunks of brick and stone dotted the lawn as they approached the ruined tower. They climbed over and around the rubble with only the eerie moons to light their way. The tower tilted at a crazy angle on its foundation, testament to the power that had struck it. A gaping fissure showed darkly down one side. Another side had been blown completely away, revealing patches of the shattered interior.

  “Over here,” Burge said quietly, his voice thick as he pointed at something. Garett hurried to join him.

  Prestelan Sun lay crushed under a huge chunk of scorched masonry. Blood covered the right side of his head, where the scalp had been ripped away, and had seeped down to profusely stain the neck of his once fine white robe. The ribs on the right side of his chest simply didn’t seem to exist anymore, and his left foot was completely

  twisted backward at the joint.

  Garett turned away, feeling slightly ill. “Let’s look around,” he said, steering them toward the main guildhall, a pyramid-shaped structure at the center of the grounds. Its smooth marble sides gleamed under Kule’s light. Though they found several narrow, metal-faced doors, Garett insisted they try the main entrance.

  To his surprise, he found it already open. The great doors hung slackly on broken hinges, as if a great force had struck them. The wind had carried leaves into the main hallway; they rusded and rattled on the tiles as the breeze stirred them. If there had been a magical ward on the door, someone or something had tripped it, because Guardian gave no warning.

  “The elves have a sayin’,” Burge muttered, peering over the threshold. “ ‘Never enter a room if it’s blacker than your own heart.’ ”

  “Humans have a saying, too,” Garett answered, nudging his friend’s elbow. “After you.”

  “Hey! ” Burge protested, giving him a look. “You’ve got the sword.”

  Garett grinned, then shrugged and stepped inside. Immediately, a small globe mounted on the wall just above their heads began to give off a soft white light. “Just like the street lamps,” Garett observed aloud, beckoning Burge to come in. He glanced around the hallway. It was empty of furniture. A slender pedestal stood in the center of the room. When they approached it, they found that it contained a basin of water. Their reflections peered back at them for an instant, then dissolved to reveal the walkway and the moonlit view just beyond the entrance.

  “Wizards!” Burge sneered as he discerned the water’s purpose, “’You’d think they could use an ordinary peephole, like normal folks.”

  They passed through a doorway, deeper into the bowels of the guildhall. In each room or corridor they found a magic globe, but sometimes the light it gave off was dim, and a few were dark and lightless, as if the enchantment that powered them had faded away. Just like on the streets, Garett thought, taking it as a sign that the wizards had not walked these halls for days.

  The library established and maintained by Greyhawk’s wizards was reputed to be the finest collection of tomes on magic and religion and philosophy anywhere in the Flanaess, but Garett was unprepared for the sight that greeted him when he pushed back an innocuous pair of hornwood double doors. The far end of the room could not be seen, and row after row of shelves formed a maze that made it impossible to judge the chamber’s true size. Nor did there seem to be space anywhere on any of the shelves. They were crammed with books and scrolls and loose-bound manuscripts.

  “It’s a trick,” Burge asserted as he walked past Garett into the library. “There aren’t this many books in the world.”

  Garett shook his head. It was no trick. He ran a finger along the spines of the closest shelf. They were real. He could feel them. He could smell the paper and the glue of the bindings. He could smell the dust that rose at his touch. He drifted into the maze, scanning titles. Some were written in languages he didn’t recognize; those he did sounded foreboding.

  In one corner, he found a table. A small white globe, resting on a delicate crystal base, shed a pale illumination onto the pages of an open book. Another sheet of paper lay beside the book, half-covered with handwritten notes. Garett bent closer, then called to Burge.

  “Look here,” he said when his friend finally joined him. “They knew something was up. Someone was doing his research.”

  Revealed on the left side of the open book, drawn in bright red ink, was the horned-skull-and-serpent symbol that was the blazon of the Hierarchs of the Horned Society. On the opposite page, in the lower corner under a lot of writing, was the winged version they had found painted on the walls of the sewers.

  “Can you read that?” Garett asked Burge. The half-elf was as well traveled as he. It was possible he might have encountered the language before.

  “Not a word,” Burge answered. “But whoever was writin’ this could.” He picked up the single sheet of paper and held it closer to the light. The notes, though handwritten, were in the same language as the book.

  “It also looks as if our scholar left in a rush,” Garett observed. He pointed to the final word on the notepaper. “The ink trails off suddenly, as if his hand slipped, and the word looks unfinished.” He looked the desk over and pointed again. “See here. The ink jar has been left unsealed. Who would allow precious ink to simply evaporate? And see here.” He bent down suddenly and picked up a stylus from the floor. “He dropped this and didn’t take time to retrieve it.”

  Burge backed away from the table, his eyes searching the desk, the floor, the nearest shelves for other clues. “But where did he go?” he asked. “Where did they all go?”

  Garett didn’t answer. He bent down to the floor again and rose, clutching something between his thumb and forefinger. He wore a puzzled expression on his face as he turned toward Burge and held up a fine black feather.

  NINETEEN

  Upon leaving the guildhall, Garett and Burge went straight to the High Quarter watch house on High Street. Although Garett was no longer the night shift commander, the officer in charge there accepted his advice and sent a patrol to guard the guildhall entrance now that it was unlocked. It would not have been wise to leave such a place, with its secrets, unprotected.

  After that, the two friends returned to the River Quarter and eventually pushed and eibowed their way through the impossible crowds to Moonshadow Lane, where they purchased a bottle of wine from Almi. The old woman was awake and at work again, but her cheeks reddened and she glanced shamefacedly away from Garett when he entered her busy tavern. She muttered something incoherent as she placed the bottle in Garett’s hands. When Garett offered his coins, she refused them, shook her head again, and returned to her customers.

  Upstairs in his room, Garett found two relatively clean cups and poured wine. Burge accepted his as he settled into the only chair. Garett carried his to the foot of his bed and sat down. The oil cresset above their heads gave off a warm amber light. Apparently, Almi had come up while he was gone and lit it for him, as she sometimes did.

  They had only taken their first sips when a knock sounded on the door and it opened. Almi’s oldest daughter, Bestra, a plump widow with pleasant eyes and dark hair that was just beginning to gray, entered with a tray containing slender strips of smoked chicken and steaming chunks of fish. There also was a pair of apples, a loaf of bread, a dish of soft, creamy butter, and the appropriate dining utensils.

  “Mum’s pretty embarrassed about today,” Bestra announced wearily as she set the tray on Garett’s table and backed toward the door again. “"You can probably expect this kind of treatment for a couple of days.”

  Garett couldn’t suppress a grin. “Please, assure her there’s no need for embarrassment. Did she find the bag of coins under her bed?”

  Bestra bit her lower lip in her effort not to match his grin. “Yes,” she said at last, “though there was a brief, but very amusing, moment of hysteria when she woke and discovered her cash box was empt
y.”

  She left them alone, closing the door as she departed, and the two men reached toward the tray. Before they could eat anything, though, another knock sounded. Garett turned toward the door with a strip of chicken halfway to his mouth.

  It was Blossom.

  “Morning, Captain,” she said with a suspiciously pleasant tone. There was a moist gleam in her eye, too. Garett assumed she’d been drinking. Burge had said she’d gone to celebrate at The Tomb, and it wasn’t that close to morning. Then she spied the tray on the table and charged toward it. “Oh, great!” she exclaimed. “Food!”

  “I hadn’t really planned for a party,” Garett mumbled as she rushed past him, seized a piece of fish, and shoved it

  into her mouth. “I don’t even have a third cup.”

  She waved a hand at him as she chewed and swallowed. “That’s all right,” she assured. She picked up the bottle, upended it, and took a deep draft. She smiled as she wiped her lips with the back of one hand. Then, one-handed, she unbuckled her sword belt, set it aside, and went to sit on the foot of the bed with the bottle between her knees. “This’ll do fine.”

  Burge took a sip from his cup as he watched the tall blond. His eyes sparkled with amusement. “You must have had a good time at The Tomb with ol’ Kestertrot,” he said.

  “Oh, I did!” Blossom admitted, nodding her head vigorously. She paused to take another swig from the bottle before continuing. “The tavern was packed, and I heard the best news. Kestertrot’s gone, by the way. Got an assistant running the place while he takes a vacation up in the Cairn Hills.” She raised up long enough to snatch another piece of fish from the tray. “Can you imagine? A vacation, with the investiture coming up and the whole city celebrating?” Standing beside the table, Garett exchanged looks with Burge at the news about The Tomb’s half-orc owner. “Is that what you came to tell us?” Garett asked uncertainly.