Elminster's Daughter

He turned his gaping face to Bezrar, who broke into a grin. "I did good, huh? I saw the note you left for your stablemaster, and he told me what it meant. So ... here we are."

For the first time in his life, Malakar Surth threw his arms around a man with love in his heart and an intent to kiss.

"Ho! Hey! No time for that, or we'll be late for your 'associate.' Your horseman gave me to understand that doing that would be a very bad thing."

"Bezrar," Surth managed to say, as he clapped the fat merchant's arms enthusiastically and lunged past him for the towels, "I shall heap special prayers on Shar's altar on your behalf for this and— and buy you something you especially want!"

"That dancing lass at the Amorous Anchor?" Bezrar asked hopefully.

"Two of her! Or her and her best friend, rather, or—luminous, Bezrar! Just. . . luminous!"

Malakar Surth was not a man given to throwing back his head at the unseen, mist-shrouded stars and cackling wildly, but he did so now—attracting a raised eyebrow from a Watch officer turning the corner in the forefront of his patrol; a brow that lifted even higher as the thin, laughing man began to wildly tear his clothes off and fling them uncaringly behind him.

The Watch patrol eyed the open door of the coach, exchanged weary glances with each other, and in unspoken accord turned down another alley. Idiot nobles . . .

Surth was whipping the horses down Tarnsar Lane toward Chancever Street, still wildly grateful to Bezrar—who sat gri

Eight

NIMBLE NAVIGATIONS IN MARSEMBER

If you'd see true villainy, look not to alleyways or dark taverns. Seek out the high and private chambers of the wealthy and the nobility, keep hidden, and watch what befalls. In matters of fell evil, practice improves performance as in all other things—and such practice is more possible than in alleys, because bored players seeking entertainment dally and dawdle before delivering their killing thrusts.

Irmar Amathander of Athkatla

Many Roads To One Ending

Year of the Bright Blade

The harbor water was no cleaner the second time around. Narnra was thankful she couldn't see all the slimy things she was disturbing as she plunged to the depths amid much evil bubbling of rotting things rolling all around her. Kicking against the bottom to start herself upward again, she drew her knees up, struggled to pass her bound arms down under her boots and up in front of her, and came gasping to the surface, just as a magnificent nearby splash a

Of course. She'd almost miss him, if ever she was out and about in Marsember by night without her doggedly pursuing Rhauligan. Almost. Why, every Waterdhavian thieving lass should have one.

With a sour smile on her lips from that thought, Narnra doubled up like a wriggling eel and swam for the other side of the canal. Even with her wrists bound together, Narnra found she could cleave the water quite quickly—and for all their stink, these oily canals were calmer and less crowded than where she'd learned to swim: the just-as-filthy waters around the docks of Waterdeep.

Still, she was used to clawing at the water when she wanted to hurry and using porpoise-wriggles only when trying to keep very, very quiet. . . and she was growing tired already.

Rhauligan would be up and quiet again to listen for her in another breath or two, and her most likely destination couldn't help but be rather obvious.

In one direction—through Rhauligan—the canal joined the wider tangle of fingerlike canals and slips that made up this end of Marsember's harbor. In the other, just ahead, it ended in a turn-basin choked with rotting nets, a scum of dead fish, and oily refuse. A lone barge, waterlogged and awash, was moored to a dock there. It looked as if only its mooring-chains were keeping it from sinking and that they—brown and crumbling with rust—might soon sigh and give up their task. The barge seemed to belong to a once-grand stone warehouse that looked every bit its rival in the race to become forgotten, abandoned, and utterly decrepit.

Narnra made for the lowest point of the barge rail where it was a good foot or so under water and rolled herself up onto the ancient vessel, scattering chittering rats and startling sleeping seabirds into complaining flight.

Rhauligan could hardly fail to miss that, but 'twasn't as if the kindly gods had left her any choice, now, had they?

Even if he was charging through the water at her now, her first task was to bide right where she was, sitting on something painful and unseen in the stinking, crab-scuttling water of this barge, and try to saw through Rhauligan's bindings with her boot-knife.

Easing her blade out without dropping and losing it was slow work. Wedging it in the rotting barge-planks took but a moment— but cutting her bindings took far too gods-bedamned long and involved a cut finger and some more cursing.

Shaking away drops of blood with a snarl, Narnra stood up and fumbled in her back pouch for the spare draw-string bag she carried—a mere scrap of leather with pierced ends gathered by a single thong—in case she ever found loot enough to need something extra to carry it away in (something that had happened exactly twice in her life thus far). Thong drawn tight, the bag made a clumsy bandage for her finger. She ran hastily along the barge toward its basin-end, where the dock looked more solid and less trash-strewn.

Behind her, blood sank like smoke into the inky water— which boiled up into a long, slender tentacle that burst forth, dripping, to stab hungrily out across the now-deserted barge . . . right in front of the furiously swimming Glarasteer Rhauligan. He glared at it and plunged right over it, snatching at the nearest mooring-chain.

His fingers closed around it at about the same time three more tentacles lanced out of the water, and his other hand closed on the hilt of one of his daggers.

One of the trio of tentacles undulated through the air over the barge, for all the world as if it could sniff and see, following the first tentacle in the direction Narnra had fled. The other two curled around to stab at Rhauligan, who decided—particularly in view of the fact that a habitual glance back over his shoulder had just shown him no less than three suspicious-looking bulges moving purposefully through the waters of the canal, straight toward the barge—that getting every inch of his well-used hide clear of the water right yesterday would be the wisest thing to accomplish in his life right now.

He let go of his dagger without drawing it and clawed his way up onto the barge, rotten planking crumbling like wet bread under his fingers. Tentacles were sliding boldly up along his legs as he heaved, kicked, and rolled for all he was worth, not caring if he ploughed through most of what little was left of the barge with his face if it got the rest of him out of the water.

Which was when he discovered that some of the tentacles were rising from the water-filled depths of the barge itself ... a bare breath before Narnra at the far end of the ramshackle wreck screamed enthusiastically.

Rhauligan saw her struggling like a suddenly animated figurehead, body wavering back and forth on the prow of the barge with tentacles spiraling around her in a small forest—then a smaller but no less energetic forest of tentacles was slapping across bis face and body, dragging him down toward the water his right cheek was already coldly kissing. . . .