"Orthil," one of the guards snarled from right behind Narm. "What shall we do with these two?"
Voldovan waved a dismissive hand the size of a shovel. "Nothing," he snapped, "for now."
Wild Rides
After the bear and the behir we come to the brigand. Vermin, the lot of them! Almost as black and strangling a plague upon honest trade as marauding ores in summer, or wolves in winter-or caravan-masters any day of the year.
"One wizard I know about," Orthil Voldovan snapped, "but he was with me-with all of us, and plenty of us watching him suspiciously, too. I ask all of my clients if anyone knows spells or has a wand along, and they all stare at me like so many moon-faced, innocent sheep, and I know three or four of them at least are lying. Mayhap a dozen-or all of them! We've no time to spare for searches and hot words and beating truth out of anyone, but if this goes on, we'll make time. Right now, we must be at Face Crag by nightfall, or the dark'll catch us strung out along the road in the Blackrocks, and it won't matter who slaughtered who in a wagon, because we'll have ores and goblins and probably ghouls, too, clawing and hacking and stabbing at us as they please, up and down the wagon line! Move, you motherless jacks! Whip the beasts, and if any wagon lags, pass it by and keep on!"
The caravan master waved at the road ahead, his gesture vicious with anger, and guards spurred away obediently. Voldovan raised his eyes to Shandril and said grimly, "I didn't gather the lads here because ye needed to hear, but because I wanted them all to know ye heard. Take great care, for thy own safety, that this wagon slows not and that nothing ill befalls Thorst here."
"Voldovan," Shandril said with a sigh, "I want to go on living as much as you do. I mean no one in the world any ill, so long as they leave me alone. I get so tired of folk not believing that."
"Tired enough to cook them where they stand, hey? Well, we may need ye to do just that to someone ere we make Waterdeep-but mind ye warn me first, and don't go blasting folk down whenever I'm looking elsewhere." The caravan master turned his own horse away, and Shandril sighed, felt the weight of someone else's cold gaze, and looked down-right into the eyes of Thorst.
"The Master told us you were some sort of fire-mage," he whispered, his glare dark with anger, "and you look like a little lass who should be in a kitchen somewhere, or washing out chambers in an inn. You've no spellbooks along, no wand I've seen, so what are you, really?"
He shifted his hand on the reins so the cloak on his lap fell away-to reveal what he held in his other hand: another small bowgun, loaded with a wicked bolt that was pointed right into her face.
"I'm not trying to slay you," he added, "yet. I'm trying to stop you doing to me what happened to Storstil."
Shandril kept very still. "I," she said, more calmly than she felt, "can call up a very powerful fire-magic that I can't quite control. I can't tell you much more than that, because I don't know much more than that. I'm on my way to Water-deep to try to find out. The Zhentarim and some other folk are after me because they want this magic, but so far as I know, none of them know I'm here, along on this caravan. I don't want to use any magic that I don't have to, in case someone recognizes it and thereby learns that I'm here- and I certainly haven't used any of my fire on that wagon or on Storstil or anyone else since I made that deal with Orthil in the Tankard in front of all of you."
Thorst frowned. "That makes me suspicious, too," he said. "Why did he settle for the paltry passage fee you offered?"
"If I answered that," Shandril said, "I'd be guessing. You'd best ask Orthil himself." She looked up at the sky, and added innocently, "Perhaps he was overwhelmed by my beauty."
Thorst snorted, and gave her an unlovely grin. "I like you, Lady Mysterious. At least you don't shriek or come the high-and-mighty indignance, like most of the wenches who buy passage with us." He turned the little crossbow away from her, carefully unloaded its dart, and added, "Right, then. Just don't be sending any scorching my way."
"You have my promise on that, Thorst," the unlikely looking guard replied formally, startling the drover into peering up at her again.
"I hope we make this camping place Voldovan's so frantic to reach, in time," she added, as the wagon crashed over a particularly violent array of bumps and potholes.
"Lady," he agreed from beside her feet, "so do I!"
Blue radiance whirled and flashed around her. Sharantyr calmly crouched, and stepped forward with blade raised and ready, all in one smooth motion.
Then the blue light was gone, and the paler light of normal day was around her. The woman in leathers whom Torm was pleased to call "our lady ranger" was standing in wild, trampled grass on an unfamiliar hilltop.
A height crowded with tall, dark standing stones. She swiftly drew close to one and froze to listen and peer intently, letting a long time pass as she made sure of her surroundings.
Then Sharantyr glided softly forward to where she could look around her sheltering stone, and froze again, only her eyes moving. This shadow, and that… no. Nothing.
Thankfully-unless someone or something was managing to keep very quiet and still amid this faintest ghost of a breeze-the hilltop seemed free of lurking folk or beasts. Save for one, of course: one Knight of Myth Drannor, her blade in her hand and a tiny carved skull still clutched in her fingertips.
Sharantyr stowed the carving in a belt-pouch, but kept her war-steel ready as she looked about, studying the ground now, for tracks. This might be Tsarn Tombs, if she was nigh Scornubel… or then again, it might be some place she'd never heard of, north of that lawless caravan city.
Probably Tsarn, though; it seemed right. On all sides rose wilderland hills beyond number, those to the north-she always knew when she was looking north-crowned by trees. Mountains rose in the far distance, most to the northeast but a few peaks even farther off to the northwest. A wagon road ran close by her hilltop, on the west, running slightly west of north to east of south. A river, probably the Chionthar, glimmered back sunlight in the distant northwest, beyond the road.
Small rocks and pebbles underfoot had been scuffed by boots recently. There was much trampling in the grass around the larger stones, some of it fresh, and… she peered about at old, broken tombs that lay open in the tall grass, and smiled thinly at the painted message borne by one tall, leaning marker stone: "Beware: The Dead Walk."
They do, indeed, all too often… ah!
She'd found what she'd been seeking: the trail of two humans afoot, walking side by side and passing this way recently. They'd departed the hilltop northward, down into a little valley carved by a brook… and unless her land-reading had quite departed her, that brook probably found its way down to the road.
If anything was hunting lone lady rangers in these back-lands, it'd probably seen her on the heights for more than long enough to decide how best to stalk her. Sharantyr kept her blade out and her other hand hovering above the little pouch of spell-gems Lhaeo had given her as she went.
The Scribe of Shadowdale had given her something else, too. He'd evidently spent his time well over tea with Tessaril, during her rare visits to acquaint Shaerl and Mourngrym of Cormyrean news and policies. His instructions on whom to speak with in Scornubel and how to contact them had been quite specific.
His warnings about the dangers of the City on the Chionthar had been just as blunt and exhaustive-and far, far more numerous. Sharantyr was almost looking forward to viewing a city-sized den of energetic thieves and trying to figure out why they hadn't erupted with knives in alleys some night and all slain each other, years ago Up from behind a boulder ahead of her a figure rose. A crossbow cracked, and the figure ducked down again-just as a second man sprouted from behind another rock, farther off, and did the same thing. Sharantyr let fall her blade and put her finger through the slit in the outside of Lhaeo's little pouch to awaken the lone gem that rode in the outer compartment there.