When the guard finished his food, he roughly pushed his plate away and stood. His chair clattered to the floor, and the inn fell deathly silent.
"What are you maggots staring at?" the guard snarled. The patrons in the room quickly averted their eyes. The guard snorted in disgust and then swaggered out the inn's doorway.
Pausing a few moments, so as not to appear as if he were following, Caledan stood and walked casually out of the door into the night beyond. He espied the guard in the distance, striding jauntily down the dimly lit street. Caledan followed, keeping to the shadows.
The guard made his way down the Street of Jewels and then turned onto the Street of Lanterns, disappearing from view. This had not been a particularly savory part of town even seven years ago, and now it was worse. Bold, red-eyed rats scurried in the refuse-lined gutters, and wicked laughter drifted down from open windows above.
Caledan turned the corner and then paused. The guard was gone. He must have entered one of the doorways that lined the street. Caledan muttered an oath, but there was nothing he could do. He turned around to make his way back toward the Wandering Wyvern.
He found himself facing the tall warrior with scarred cheeks.
"Don't you know, friend," the guard said with an evil grin, "it isn't safe to be about on the streets at night." The guard's sword glimmered dully in the dim light. "I'd best see you to Lord Cutter's dungeon. Trust me, you'll be much safer there."
Caledan started to back up, but the grating of a boot heel on the cobbles behind him brought him to a halt. He looked quickly about to see two more guards step out of a shadowed doorway a dozen paces away. He was outnumbered.
Caledan swore under his breath. This wasn't the sort of homecoming he had envisioned.
Two
The two guards advanced on Caledan from either side, short swords drawn. The captain watched with a satisfied leer, his dark eyes glittering.
"Don't worry, friend," the captain said with a coarse laugh. "I'm sure you'll find Cutter's dungeons most inviting."
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to be rude and turn down that gracious invitation," Caledan replied cheerfully. He had already developed a serious dislike for this fellow.
The captain nodded almost imperceptibly to the guards behind Caledan, but Caledan was ready. He feinted a lunge at the guard to his left, a pot-bellied fellow whose stupid grin displayed a half-dozen jagged yellow teeth. The guard swung his blade wildly with enough force to cleave Caledan in two, but Caledan dodged to one side. The force of the guard's swing carried him forward, and his companion screamed as the sword bit deeply into his side. The snaggle-toothed guard watched in confusion as his companion slumped to the street, a rivulet of dark blood trickling into the gutter to mingle with the filth.
"Kill him, you idiot!" the captain snarled. The pot-bellied guard roared in rage, rushing at Caledan and shaking his bloodied sword.
In a flash Caledan dove for the dead guard's sword, rolled, and came up standing. He thrust the blade out before him just in time to meet the guard's rush. The man's eyes went wide. He slipped backward off the sword, the blood-smeared blade making a sucking noise as it pulled from his chest. Like a felled tree, the guard toppled to the street.
The captain regarded the bodies of his fallen men dispassionately for a moment, then turned his glittering gaze toward Caledan. "You're full of surprises, friend," he said, stepping across the corpses. "It appears I'll have to deal with you myself. It will be worth it, however. Lord Cutter will be most interested to meet you, I think." He lifted his gleaming sword, his stance practiced and ready, his eyes deadly.
"I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint your master, then," Caledan said wryly. He dropped the bloodstained short sword and tensed as if to run. Victory glimmered in the captain's eyes as he lunged for Caledan, but he was far too slow.
In the space between heartbeats, Caledan reached down, drew the knife from the sheath inside his boot, and let it fly. For a frozen moment the knife spun in the air, glinting in the light of a nearby torch. Then the captain stumbled backward, his dark eyes filled with dull astonishment. He clutched weakly at the hilt of the knife buried in his chest and slumped wordlessly to the cobbles.
Caledan quickly surveyed the shadowy street around him, but it was empty. Apparently there were no more city guards nearby. He knelt beside the staring corpse of the captain and retrieved his dagger. He pulled the black leather glove from the captain's left hand and then swore softly, his suspicion confirmed. The captain was missing the tips of his last two fingers. It was an age-old sign of loyalty and devotion to cut off a fingertip and ritually present it to one's master. But Caledan knew of only one group in the Realms that still practiced that barbarous tradition.
The Zhentarim.
"I suppose they're after the caravan routes," Caledan muttered in disgust as he stood up. He had dealt with the Zhentarim before, in his days as a Harper. Those were not memories he cherished.
The Zhentarim were members of a dark, secretive society based in Zhentil Keep, a city on the edge of the Moon-sea far to the west. Made up of warriors and sorcerers, renegade clerics and thieves, the Zhentarim's goal was to bring as many of the Realms as possible under its control, and then to bleed the lands dry. Now it appeared that Iriae-bor-along with the lucrative trade routes it controlled- was the Black Network's latest prize.
This Lord Cutter was probably a Zhentarim himself. It would certainly explain the pall that had been cast over the city. The Zhentarim cared nothing for life or beauty. Only gold meant something to their black hearts-gold and power.
Caledan cleaned his dagger on the dead man's cloak and resheathed it. "It's good to be home," he said bitterly, staring at the three corpses, then he started off through the canyons of the Old City, back toward the Wandering Wyvern.
Moments later a shadow separated itself from the blackness of a doorway to slip away through the darkened city. The street was silent for a time. Then the first of the rats came upon the corpses and squealed over its grisly discovery.
"Play us another one, Anja!"
The cluttered little cottage was filled with golden candlelight and the sound of laughter. Anja, a plump woman with bright black eyes and ruddy cheeks, smiled at the small audience of coarsely clad farmers gathered about her.
"All right. One more, Garl, and then it's home with you louts." She lifted the wooden flute to her lips. It was a simple instrument, worn with long years of playing. Anja had made it herself when she was barely more than a lass, and it had been her truest companion through three husbands and a half-dozen droughts. Life was hard here on the sun-parched plains so close to the vast desert of Anauroch, but I it was not without its pleasures, and music was one of them.
Though her hands were toughened and calloused from years of toil, Anja's fingers moved nimbly over the flute. She played a carefree, lilting air, and the farmers stamped their dirty boots and clapped their hands in time to the music. But it wasn't the music alone that had brought her friends to her cottage.
Even as Anja played, the shadows cast by the candles began to dance upon the whitewashed walls.
The shadows seemed almost to bow and whirl to the music of the flute, their outlines suggesting dancers at a fancy ball. A slender shadow, hinting at a young maiden, flickered and seemed to spurn the advances of a decidedly rotund shadow. The men laughed as they watched the shadowplay.
Anja didn't quite know how she made the shadows do her bidding with the music of her flute. She had always been able to do it, even as a child. Some had told her it was magic, and while Anja didn't know about that-magic was more for wizards in their towers than for farm girls on the dusty plains-she did know she could shape the shadows on the wall however she wished with the notes of her music.