"I thought blandreths hung above fires on chains-from tripods, like we see in camps," Beldimarr rumbled, his eyes never leaving the cautiously stalking figure of Arauntar.
"Ah, good warrior, those cauldrons of the tripods are 'great blandreths.' My beauties stand right in thy coals or thy fire but are raised on their legs above the burning!" The merchant spread his hands. "Would you like to buy one? They're just the thing for warriors who must dine by night over fires and move on again with the new day! Why, I believe-"
"I believe there're no lurking brigands here, and we've more than a score of other wagons still to check," Arauntar growled. "Another time, perhaps, Olimer. Oh, mind out: The three pots in that corner are a-crawl with rust. I'd cover these chests at dewfall, if yer wagonflaps are open."
The blandreth-dealer gave him a sickly smile. "I thank you," he said with a little bow. "I–I'll bear that in mind."
Arauntar gave him a cheery wave and swung down from the wagon. The other guard straightened slowly with the lantern in his hand, his eyes never leaving the face of the merchant.
"Call out if you see or hear anything suspicious," Beldimarr added, as he turned to follow Arauntar. "Anything at all."
"I shall, yes," the merchant assured him, clasping his hands as men who are well satisfied-or very nervous-do. The guard nodded and strode away.
Haransau Olimer lifted both of his eyebrows and looked up at the starry sky. "And that, O watching gods," he murmured in a voice so soft that even a man standing right — behind him would have struggled to hear it, "is all I know about blandreths, so the special oils wilt stay stoppered and those pots will simply have to rust. I'd best separate them into a chest of their own ere our eagle-eyed friend next inspects my wares."
It had taken only one spell from his ring to set two wagons afire and immolate the real Haransau Olimer and his assistant in one of them. It had taken Marlel's natural guile and but a few moments of pretty speech to lure the two men into one of those wagons in search of some very good deals-and he was back in Olimer's wagon hastily donning the padded belly and one of the blandreth-dealer's second-best robes before most of the shouting began. It was a matter of moments with face paints to give himself Olimer's pimples and baggy eyes, and he was ready to emerge and gawk with the rest and later sorrowfully tell Voldovan that both his passenger and his assistant seemed to be among the missing.
That passenger, paying a wagon-owner for riding-in-shelter passage from Scornubel to Waterdeep, had been a young, slender man of few words and a face hidden in a cowl. Earlier Olimer had confided a few suspicions regarding him to one of the guards-but the merchant's customary cheerful disposition soon returned after the disaster, and he dismissed suggestions that his passenger had been involved in fell magic with the news that he'd gathered by roundabout queries that the lad was on something of a pilgrimage to a Waterdhavian temple and considered himself both unworthy to serve his god and unable to work holy magics. Just which god, the youngling had declined to say.
Now, of course, he was beyond questioning. Marlel looked around his wagon of clanking pots and smiled. The fat merchant had terrible taste in clothes-but oh, the food and wine the man enjoyed! None of your usual overbrewed thrusk and handfuls of stale nuts but pickled rock beetles from the Tashalar, spiced firestorm wine from Elturel, and keg after keg of roast bustard marinated in zzar!
'Twas a good thing Waterdeep wasn't all that far off, or Olimer's wardrobe of voluminous robes would soon be all Marlel would be able to fit into!
There was just time for a skewer of fried arnhake and jellied eel ere he tied the bell-cords across the wagon-flaps and took his rest for the night. Being searched was such hungry work.
"Lady," said the softly menacing voice behind the knife that gleamed in front of her throat, "am I glad to see you!"
"Not half so much," Sharantyr replied with a smile, seizing the thief's wrist and jerking hard down and toward her, so that his deadly blade plunged hilt-deep into her breast-without sound or resistance, as if she was a ghost, or a woman made of smoke-and slipping a noose of her stonemaiden around his neck, "as I am gladdened, sirrah, to see you".
Startled eyes stared at her, eyes bulged, and lingers clawed at the tightening cord. A knee shot up desperately between her legs to strike her armored codpiece with numbing force. Numbing for the thief, that is. A loop of her cord captured his knife-wrist even more tightly than it held his throat, and after a moment of frenzied and futile struggle, he sagged limply in her grasp. He was helpless, and they both knew it.
"My delight is so sharp and swift, good sir," the lady ranger continued sweetly, "because you're going to take me to see Belgon Bradraskor-or the Master of the Shadows, if you prefer his, ah, professional title."
The thief s pleading eyes managed to convey even deeper desperation, and he clawed and wrenched at her arms in vain. This shapely woman was much stronger than she looked… and much stronger than he was.
Sharantyr gave him another, almost impish smile and tweaked the cord she was holding to remind him wordlessly that she knew just how much air he was getting and could cut off his supply-and his life with it-at any time.
"I don't want to hurt you," she told the strangling man, "and I don't want to harm Belgon. In fact, if you give him my name, I believe he'll be pleased indeed to see me. Now, can you take me to him, or are you… expendable?"
By a swift and rising series of panting sobs and nods the thief managed to convey his ability and deeply earnest willingness to guide this woman, whom blades couldn't touch, anywhere she pleased, this very moment, and to any number of Masters of Shadows she might care to see.
Sharantyr smiled still more broadly and did something to his wrist that made his fingers burn and his knife clatter to the ground. "Remember," she purred, making it clink on the cobblestones with the toe of her boot, "that I could have slain you and did not. I want no further unpleasantness between us. Consider me a mistake who decided to be merciful to you."
He nodded, eyes very wide, and she slipped around behind him like a graceful ghost and tightened the stonemaiden around his throat in a slip-knot, so that it made a leash. She slipped another of its cords around one of his legs below the knee and let it hang loose. If he tried to run, it could be pulled tight to trip him in an instant.
"My name is Tessaril Winter," she purred. "What's yours?"
"Ta-Taber, 1-lady."
The cord around his neck tightened suddenly, leaving him with no air at all. He sobbed, reeled as the night grew darker around him… then the cord loosened, and he could breathe again.
"No, no," that gentle voice said, deep with sadness and disappointment, "I want your real name."
"B-Besmer, lady."
"Lady-?"The cord twitched, warningly.
"Lady Winter!" he said hastily. "Lady Tessaril Winter."
"That's much better, Besmer," the lady behind him said approvingly. "We both grow older, though, and so doth the night-a night I could be spending with my friend Belgon."
"Y-yes?"
"Guide me," she breathed into his ear, and the thief shivered, swallowed, then started to walk, slowly and carefully, down the alley-only to be brought to choking heel.
"No," the purring voice of the ghost-lady said into his ear, "take me another way. I don't fancy this particular alley."
Slowly and very carefully, Besmer turned around, his captor turning with him like a soft-footed shadow, and asked in a tremulous voice, "Did you want to go by Rat Stair, Lady Winter, or Baluth's Hole-or do you know some other way?"
"The Hole, I think," Sharantyr told him pleasantly. "Rat Stair reminds me of all the rats I've eaten, some of them alive and uncooked, and almost all of them without sauce."