Waterdeep (19 page)

Adon passed the map to Kelemvor, oblivious to the change in weather. “Look at this,” he said. “The shortest way to Hill’s Edge is through the western canyon.” The cleric pointed at the canyon on the map. “But if we build a small boat, it might be faster to float down the River Reaching.” He indicated the river leaving the small lake. “What do you think?”

Kelemvor didn’t bother with the map. Looking at the river, he said, “After the Ashaba, I thought you’d have had your fill of boats.”

Adon grimaced at the memory of the difficult journey from Shadowdale to Blackfeather Bridge, but he continued undaunted. “This might save us a week.”

Kelemvor simply shook his head. Adon might have learned something about people, but when it came to route-finding, the cleric still lacked the sense of a mule. “No raft we can build will stand up to the rough water in that canyon,” the warrior said, pointing at the rugged valley below the lake. “Even if it didn’t fall apart and drown us, we’d be killed going over some waterfall.”

Adon studied the canyon. “Of course. I see what you mean.”

Five minutes later, the sky had grown ominously dark. Midnight was only a dozen steps from the summit, and Kelemvor could barely wait until she reached it. Remembering how his own spirits had lifted when he stepped onto the saddle, the warrior was determined to take the opportunity to apologize. After that, the rest of the trip would go smoothly.

Midnight slowly plodded up those last feet and stepped onto the ridge. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that they had, at last, reached the top.

Kelemvor could not contain himself. “You’re here,” he said enthusiastically.

Midnight looked around. “I see that.” Though she could not miss Kelemvor’s cheery tone, she didn’t share his delight.

The magic-user was still too angry, though she could no longer say why. Initially, Midnight had blamed Sneakabout’s death on Kelemvor and Adon. After all, they had attacked Cyric without provocation, and everything else had followed. But she was beginning to fear their old friend might be playing her for a fool. She wished she had seen what had passed on the rope between Cyric and the halfling, whether Cyric had acted in self-defense or had killed Sneakabout in cold blood.

A driving rain of black drops began to fall. The water was so cold it should have been ice, and where it touched the companion’s skin, it left itching red circles.

From the surrounding peaks echoed a quiet wail that would not have been out of place had there been a breeze. But the wind was calm and the air still. In another time or place, they would have puzzled over the black rain and the unnatural howl, but at the moment it merely seemed another irritation.

Shrugging off the rain, Kelemvor exclaimed, “From here, it’s all downhill!”

“Then I suggest we continue downhill before this rain burns us to death.” Midnight yanked her pony’s reins and started down the trail.

The magic-user’s curtness deflated the spirits of both Kelemvor and Adon. As they scrambled to follow, Kelemvor whispered, “How much longer must we wait before she’ll let us forgive her?”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Adon responded.

It had taken them nearly two days to climb the east side of the saddle, but it took only a quarter that long to descend the west side. Cold and itching from the black rain, the three companions reached the ridge separating the lake and the forested canyon just before dusk. Kelemvor noticed a small cliff in the western basin. In a niche at its bottom, they found beds of mossy grass and a shelter from the unnatural weather. After assigning watches and gulping down a drab meal, the company settled in for a dreary night of sleep.

The first two watches passed without incident, save that it stopped raining during the second. Still, Midnight, who had the third watch, slept little and knew it was useless to try. She attempted to occupy her mind by puzzling out the reason her magic had failed against Cyric’s men. The magic-user could not understand why smoke tendrils instead of a wall of fire had appeared. She had executed the gestures and words exactly as they had come to her.

Any number of things could account for the unexpected results. Perhaps the wrong words and gestures had appeared in her mind. Or dropping the phosphorous beforehand could have altered the magic’s form. But it was just as likely the magic had simply gone awry, as magic had done so often since the night of the Arrival.

Midnight could conclude only one thing from the whole incident, her relationship to the weave was definitely different than that of a normal magic-user. Otherwise, the incantation, whether correct or incorrect, would never have come to her in the first place.

But through most of the night, Midnight could not keep her thoughts from returning to the battle on top of the cliff. Over and over, she heard Kelemvor asking her to keep Cyric’s men at bay so he could kill the thief, and heard herself flatly refusing. Then the image returned of Sneakabout sliding down the rope after Cyric, and time after time she saw his silhouette plunging to the ground. Then she would hear Kelemvor blaming her for the halfling’s death.

By the time her watch came, Midnight had decided to leave the company. Back in Eveningstar, Cyric had said she was endangering her friends’ lives. The thief had been trying to persuade her to join him instead of staying with Kelemvor and Adon. But Sneakabout’s death had convinced her that Cyric was right. As long as she remained with the fighter and the cleric, they were in danger - from Cyric, the Zhentilar, and Bhaal.

An hour before dawn, Midnight judged it would be safe to leave her companions unguarded. The night had passed without incident, and the two of them were hidden beneath the cliff. The mage saddled all the ponies, then slipped the tablet from its resting place next to Adon and tied it on to her own mount’s saddle.

Finally, she bade a silent farewell to her friends and led all three ponies away. She would leave Kelemvor’s and Adon’s mounts somewhere down the trail, after she had ridden far enough to insure they would find it difficult to catch her.

DAOGEPTOAS?????

Midnight kneeled behind the twisted trunk of a shagbark tree. A small expanse of grassland lay at her back. Beyond the prairie stood the rosy crags of the Sunset Mountains, where she had abandoned Kelemvor and Adon just four days ago. The morning was a dreary and gray one, but behind the peaks, the sun had bleached the clouds to bright white.

The scrawny shagbark stood atop a bluff overlooking the River Reaching. A narrow flood plain separated the river’s eastern shore from the embankment. Both the plain and the slope were covered with tall scraggly brush. A well-used trail led down the bluff to an inn and livery stable that sat in a small clearing at the river’s edge.

Built from river rock and mortar, the inn was a one-story structure. The stable had been constructed with twisted planks hewn from gnarled shagbark trees. Currently, over thirty ponies and horses stood crowded within its confines. One end of the corral protruded a short distance into the River Reaching so that the animals had a constant supply of water.

Outside the inn, two Zhentilar sentries lay dead with short spears protruding from their chests. Another sentry had fallen in the doorway. Thirty halflings lay scattered throughout the clearing, black arrows in their breasts. A handful of the small warriors had reached the inn and hacked eight window shutters off their hinges. Beneath three sills, bloodstains darkened the stone walls, and halfling bodies lay beneath two more windows.

With a sad heart, Midnight realized that she had stumbled across the men from Black Oaks, Sneakabout’s village.

Sleeping only four hours a day, the halflings had marched straight through Yellow Snake Pass. Two nights ago, they had slipped past Adon and Kelemvor, finally catching up to their prey the previous evening. The war party had attacked just before dawn, surprising the sentries with a vicious volley of woomera-launched spears.

If they had stopped there, the halflings might have returned to Black Oaks with their pride and their bodies intact. But they had foolishly rushed the stone building. The Zhentilar inside, well trained and disciplined, had awakened the instant the sentries screamed. The soldiers had fired several volleys of arrows out the windows. Most of the short fighters had fallen before reaching the inn.

Midnight found herself curiously angry at the halflings. Over thirty of them had died, and they had gained nothing. The foolhardy attack against the inn had wiped out their company, and the survivors would have been no match for the strength of full-sized men in hand-to-hand combat.

Though it was clear the halflings had lost the battle, Midnight realized that there might be survivors. If so, the mage had to aid them. Part of her conviction was due to guilty feelings about Sneakabout’s death, but the magic-user was also a compassionate woman who despised needless suffering. She simply couldn’t bear the thought of leaving any halflings in merciless Zhentish hands.

Midnight also wanted to sneak down to the inn for another reason. She had long suspected Cyric’s Zhentilar were the ones who had raided Sneakabout’s village, and the halfling’s crazed attack on the thief had gone a long way toward confirming that suspicion. If so, then Cyric would be at the inn, and his presence would mean that he had violated his promise not to follow her. The magic-user had to see if her suspicions were true.

Midnight crawled away from the shagbark tree and retreated to the gully where her pony was tied. As the raven-haired magic-user approached, the pony stomped its hooves and snorted.

“What do you want?” Midnight asked. “We left Hill’s Edge an hour ago. You can’t be hungry again.”

Of course, the pony said nothing. Midnight shook her head and sighed heavily, feeling silly for addressing a dumb animal as if it could respond. The magic-user had grown so lonely she thought of the beast in human terms. Midnight missed Adon and, especially, Kelemvor. Sneaking out of camp, she had felt no special need to make amends with her friends. Now, she ached to take back the anger between them.

But it was too late. The magic-user had a mission to accomplish, and she knew that it would be better to forget Kelemvor and Adon for now. Perhaps that was why she had begun thinking of the pony as a companion.

At least this newfound empathy had served Midnight well. Twice, the pony had smelled something that frightened it. If the magic-user had not been attuned to her mount’s moods, she would have missed the pony’s skittishness and pressed forward into disaster. The first time, Midnight would have stumbled into a goblin patrol. Though it might have been easy to escape using her magic, Midnight was just as glad she had not needed to try.

The second time, the pony had smelled something that frightened it badly. When the mage had investigated, she found one of the few patrols Darkhold had kept in Yellow Snake Pass. Midnight’s magic might have handled the Zhentilar, too, but the patrol had been escorting a humanoid stone statue standing ten feet tall. As soon as she had looked into its vacant eyes and had seen it walking under its own power, Midnight had recognized the statue as a stone golem and hurried away. By their very natures, stone golems were almost immune to magic.

Other than that, her journey down Yellow Snake Pass had been uneventful. Last night, she had stayed in a small hostel in Hill’s Edge. Though most residents of the town had been cold and distant, the innkeeper was a warm man not averse to offering good advice to his customers. When Midnight had asked where she could discreetly buy a fast horse, he had suggested the livery before which the mage now stood. Fortunately, Midnight had approached it cautiously, for Hill’s Edge had been crawling with Zhentilar, and she had correctly suspected there might be more at the stable.

The pony nuzzled Midnight under the arm, looking for something to eat. The mage ignored it and took the saddlebags off its back. Without Adon and Kelemvor to help guard the tablet, she didn’t want to leave the saddlebag containing the artifact unattended.

She started to pick her way down the slope, being careful to stay well hidden in the heavy brush and not to kick loose rocks or snap twigs. When the mage reached the bottom of the bluff, a cold drizzle began. The rain smelled foul and rotten, as though something in the clouds had died. The inn remained dark and still.

Midnight paused to search for signs of a sentry. Then she heard a faint chorus of deep laughter behind the inn. A high-pitched voice cried, “Not again, I beg-aaaaghh!”

Taking care to remain concealed in the brush, the magic-user circled around to the southern side of the building. The high-pitched voice screamed again then fell silent. A few seconds later, the foul drizzle changed to a shower, and Midnight reached the edge of the clearing. She stopped a hundred feet away from the building, where she had a clear view of the area between the inn and the river.

Standing up to their chests in water, four Zhentilar held a ten-foot long log in place against the current. They had carved a deep groove in the center of the wood, and in this groove rested the joint of two long poles lashed together at right angles. The Zhentilar had tied a halfling to the far end of each pole, leaving his arms free so that he could swim and hold himself above water.

The diabolic result of this construction was that a prisoner could not hold himself above the surface without forcing his comrade at the other end beneath the water. Two wet halflings already lay on shore, one dead, the other coughing weakly.

Four more Zhentish soldiers stood at the river’s edge, chuckling quietly and betting on which prisoner would survive. Another man stood apart from them, evidently uninterested in the cruel sport. He was a large man with black braided hair, a bushy beard, and gleaming blue-black chain mail.

A cloak-shrouded figure left the four wagering Zhentilar and walked toward the lone black-haired man, pulling his cape tight over his shoulders. Midnight immediately recognized Cyric.

“Come on, Dalzhel, join the fun!” the hawk-nosed thief cried.

“You’re wasting time, sir.”

Cyric looked back to the water torture. “Nonsense. The men are enjoying themselves.” He did not add that he found the diversion entertaining, too.