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6
Madness and a Timely Flagon
Though I do what lovely ladies say, this will get me killed some day,' " Craer Delnbone sang softly and mockingly as he plunged down an unfamiliar passage, the groans of the guard he'd just kicked in the crotch fading behind him.
Bebolt that overenthusiastic cortahar, anyway! He'd delayed Craer just long enough to let the chamber knave he was chasing whirl into this side passage, and through one of these nigh-dozen doors. At least the fool had slammed it, marking his trail that much. Graul and bebolt all!
"Now, if I was a foolishly avid and attentive guard, I'd wait about here…" Craer murmured, springing high to catch hold of an old torch-bracket as he came to a corner. He grasped it for just the instant he needed to swing himself high and hard-
Yes! A blade slashed at where his face and throat should have been, the cortahar behind it snarling in cruel exultation. That snarl became a growl of surprise as Craer flashed past overhead, kicked off the far wall, and flung himself back in a twisting turn that brought his hand down hard on the guard's neck.
The cortahar grunted in pain-a grunt that rose into a whistle of alarm as Craer's waxed cord slapped across his throat. The procurer caught the garotte's far end, deftly pulled and jerked-and the gurgling, strangling guard's head was driven into the passage wall.
The man reeled, shaking his head and clawing at the air rather dazedly, so Craer bounced as he landed, bounding high to slam the cortahar's head into the wall once more.
This time the guard only managed to pull his face off the stone far enough to blink-before he went down in a limp, untidy heap.
"No, don't thank me," Craer told the senseless cortahar, retrieving his garotte. 'Just enjoy your slumber. The Three know if you deserve it. Me, I just know what I deserve."
He ran on, sprinting hard but almost soundlessly in his soft leather boots. Their pointed toes were hard and sharp-sporting little crescentiform knife blades of which Craer, their maker, was quite proud-but the soles were as soft and supple as a high lady's boudoir slippers.
Behind any of these doors, Three take him, the chamber knave could be hiding. Well, a procurer's life wasn't for the peaceloving…
Craer snatched at the latch of the first door, but it wouldn't budge. He shook it, whirling away without pause to another door a pace farther on and across the passage. The first door yielded not a whit, and no sound of alarm came from beyond it-but the second door opened.
Dust, darkness, and linens: a closet. Craer snapped his garotte into the gloom like a whip, encountering nothing. The moment he could see it was empty of cowering chamber knaves, he rebounded across the passage again to the third door.
This one crashed open to reveal three startled needle-wielding maids bent over a sewing frame. They screamed in unison, so Craer gave them a rakish grin, slammed the door on them, and sprang to the fourth door.
It was bolted, and shuddered under his attack. From behind it came a feminine gasp of alarm and a low, furious man's voice: "Notjyrf, Thalas! You promised this room until candletrimming, graul you!"
Craer gri
His plunge took him to the very toes of his attacker, so he snapped his garotte around handy ankles, jerked, and then shoved.
The man cursed, flailed his arms for balance, and caught at someone else to keep from falling. By then Craer was up the man's legs and stabbing hard with one of his handy knives.
The Serpent-priest shrieked and snatched out his own dagger-only to really scream and come to a shuddering, quivering halt, as Craer's knife transfixed his other hand. The dagger clattered to the floor.
Craer twisted his blade, sending the priest to his knees in a sobbing howl. With his free hand the procurer grabbed the throat of the other man: the chamber knave he'd been chasing.
"Is this the man who cast the spell on you?" Craer hissed, shaking his knife so the priest's bleeding hand was dragged cruelly through the air, trailing its weeping owner. "Aye?"
"Y-yes," the servant choked, trying to shrink back through a wall to get away from the procurer… and failing miserably.
"You know him?" Craer snapped, his hand tightening.
"N-no, Lord, truly! H-he only arrived… castle… two days ago. I don't even know his name!"
Craer shoved the chamber knave, sending the man stumbling in search of balance. The procurer used that time to pluck up the priest's fallen dagger-a wavy blade with an open-jawed fanged serpent-pommel-and menace the servant with it, to make sure the man had no weapon and no chance to draw it if he did.
The knave shrank back, paling. "N-no! Mercy! 'Tis poisoned!"
Craer shook his own knife to keep the pain-wracked priest helpless, and held the snake-dagger up to the light. A stain that should not have been there-a deep greenish-purple distincdy different from blood, fresh or old-covered its keen point.
Craer thrust it at the chamber knave. As the servant screamed and tried to claw his way up the wall away from it, Craer reversed it and brought the rearing serpent-head down hard on a cringing skull. The servant collapsed without a sound, blood trickling from his nose.
Craer nodded approvingly-and then turned and drove the poisoned blade hilt-deep into the belly of its owner, point-first this time.
The Serpent-priest didn't even have time to scream ere he pitched forward on his face and bade farewell to all pain, forever…
"Well, Craer, you're the best," the procurer exclaimed-and then mockingly replied to himself: "Why, thank you. I hope they haven't eaten everything that's free of poison before I get back."
Jerking his knife free, he strode back the way he'd come, pausing only to rap on a door and growl, "Thalas. Come out, or by the Three, I'm coming in!"
"Thalas, you bastard!. You black-pizzled, lice-dripping, misbegotten son of a she-boar!" came the muffled but frantic reply, amid wordless feminine wails of alarm.
Craer gri
He paused a swift step later, thinking of the first guard, who must have recovered by now. "I hope."
In a palatial chamber of high dark bookshelves, blood-red walls, and many gilded wyvern-head carvings, a black-bearded man sat alone at feast.
The wine in his golden goblet was a shade darker than his crimson robes-and much darker than the flames of hot anger in his eyes.
The servants knew better than to tarry once they'd set his steaming platter before Multhas Bowdragon; the "Blackheart" (a name known across Arlund, though never uttered in its unwilling owner's hearing) possessed both a hot temper and a cruel, violent streak.
Multhas dined alone by choice, for it was his practice as he lingered over favorite dishes to gaze into saying-crystals and see what was unfolding across Asmarand. Their shifting glows lit a sharp-nosed, thin, and handsome face that might have belonged to a king or a high priest, if not to a mighty wizard-but to no softer man.
Multhas the Blackheart often brooded over real and imagined slights that both men and gods sent his way. He was brooding now. Why was his elder brother Dolmur the more powerful? Dolmur the quiet, who wasted so much time on fripperies like flowers and kindnesses and the cares of others. How was it that such a one commanded so much more respect than his brothers without ever resorting to open threats?
Oh, men respected Multhas Bowdragon well enough. They just all seemed to want to do it without ever meeting his eyes or dealing as friends or even coming within his sight if they didn't absolutely have to. They treated him with careful, wary courtesy, no trace of love-yet not the abject, terror-driven haste a mighty wizard should command by his very presence, either.