“If there wasn’t before, you’ve answered my question now,” Pryce assured him, moving toward the door. “All along I had to keep asking myself, ‘If all my theories are correct, why is Darlington Blade doing this?’ I thought I knew why Geerling Ambersong did itit’s in the teachings of Sante. He wanted to show the Council of Elders how wrong they could be when they restricted the teaching of magic. He thought magic would ultimately elevate all who learned it. That any need to do evil would be eliminated as they gained insight, strength, and wisdom.
“But the big problem was that the council was right! Geerling Ambersong’s fatal mistake was to think that Darlington Blade would be his ultimate triumph. Living proof that magnificent magic, kindly and wisely taught, even to a person who had a heritage that wished only to see humans sadistically killed and to pervert knowledge to its own dark desires, would triumph in the end.”
Gheevy laughed a derisive laugh. “I just love happy endings, don’t you?”
Pryce’s skin crawled. Everything he had been concerned about was true. And he was facing a Derro-halfling… one with the power of Darlington Blade. “The ending to this story is not yet written, my friend,” he reminded the killer. “So who will it be written by… Gheevy Wotfirr or Darlington Blade?”
The halfling barked out a final laugh, his look and demeanor entirely changed. He now exuded strength, and there was no uncertainty or kindness in his posture or expression. “It doesn’t make any difference!” he cried. ‘They are one and the same!” And then he started to unleash the magic Geerling Ambersong had taught him at the cost of the primary mage’s own life.
The back wall exploded outward. Bottles and liquid shattered and splashed everywhere. Pryce pulled the cloak over his head and ducked down. Glass sparkled like whirring gems in the light of the exposed window. Gheevy’s spell was interrupted, and suddenly the halfling was thrown backby the power of the mongrelman’s onslaught.
“Gurrahh!” Gheevy cried, falling to the floor. He rolled to the opposite wall and came up on one knee as the mongrelman continued to charge. He deflected Geoffrey’s attack with a scintillating sphere spell. The energy ball appeared before him and pulsed twice. The lumbering mongrelman dodged as best he could but was caught by the edge of the second pulse. It sent him crashing to the floor, shattering even more bottles, where he lay jerking in place.
“Is that his name?” Pryce demanded, jumping to his feet. “Gurrahh?”
Gheevy looked up, his face twisted in anger and his breath heaving. “I don’t know!” he barked. “I don’t care. That’s what I called him because that was the stupid noise he always made!”
“I called him ‘Geoffrey,’ because he kept saying ‘Gee-off-free,’” Pryce said with regret. “But he wasn’t trying to tell me his name, was he? With his tortured, multigenetic throat, he was trying to tell me your name!”
“And as usual, you wouldn’t listen!” Gheevy spat back. He slid through the spilled liquor and broken glass and gave the mongrelman a resounding kick on the side of his head. Pryce winced but held his position. An attack now would be sheer suicide. “Curse this useless hunk of hide, Gamor Turkal, and you as well!” Gheevy cried in frustration. “If Turkal had simply done his job without getting any stupid ideas, none of this would have happened!”
Pryce’s stratagem worked, in a small way. So intent was
Gheevy on showing off his superiority that he delayed destroying Pryce and underestimated the power of the wretched mongrelman. Gurrahh suddenly rose up, grabbing for Gheevy’s legs. The halfling was too quick for the monster, though. Nimbly he hopped up to the open window Gurrahh had jumped through, stamping on the mongrelman’s stomach as he went. He spun to leave the two with a killing spell, but instead he took a bottle full in the face.
No one could fault Pryce Covington’s deadly accurate throwing skills.
The bottle shattered, and Gheevy flew backward out the window. The mongrelman charged after him as Pryce slipped out the front door and ran around the side. He reached the adjoining field in time to see Gheevy, wet and cut but hardly the worse for wear, a good twenty yards ahead of him and ten yards ahead of the lumbering mongrelman.
No! Pryce thought. He couldn’t let the halfling escape now. Then it would only be a waiting game to see when the vengeful creature would torture and finally kill him… but not before he tortured and killed everyone Covington cared about.
Pryce ran as fast as he could, even moving ahead of the mongrelman, but Gheevy was faster. The halfling obviously had the same thought as Covington and was probably even now plotting the first sadistic move of an endless vengeance. To his horror, Pryce heard Gheevy laugh; then the halfling put on more speed, moving farther and farther ahead of the tiring human.
A furry blur sped past Pryce at a pace that outclassed even Wotfirr. In a matter of moments, the jackalwere was upon the halfling, snarling and tearing at his clothes. Pryce dived at the hairy, rolling, clawing bundle but was hurled back by a sudden circlet of pure white energy.
“Cunningham!” he screamed. Pryce could see the human-sized jackal within the circle, contorting in the air and howling unnaturally. Then the circle winked out, and the jackalwere crumpled to the ground in a twisted heap.
Pryce vaulted to his feet and sprinted forward just in time to see the halfling’s back at the very crest of the hill. As he ran, Pryce could see more and more of the ground beyond the top of the mound. To his amazement, he noted that the halfling was no longer running. In fact, he was just standing there, looking down at a patch of brown stevlyman and white bevittle trees.
Standing in front of the small forest was Devolawk, the broken one. Beside him, her arm around what constituted the tormented creature’s shoulders, was Dearlyn Ambersong.
“I saw you die!” the halfling screeched.
“You saw me fall,” she corrected vehemently. “In Halruaa, there’s quite a difference.”
Pryce took a quick glance back at Cunningham. He lay in a charred circle of ground, his fur burned and his skin flayed, yet the suffering jackalwere still moved. Pryce returned his attention to the guilty party. “I saw to it that another levitation field was created beneath the ship,” he called to the halfling, keeping his distance. ‘The Mystrans collected her in a ship that flew below ours.”
“They caught you?” the halfling sputtered, finally at a loss. “But why the charade?”
“I had to keep you at bay until the Ambersong legacy was safe,” Pryce explained tightly. “I also had to be sure. And I had to give the inquisitrixes a solution that wouldn’t threaten Dearlyn or me in the future!”
Wotfirr turned on Pryce with rancor. “Threaten? What do you mean by that?”
‘You helped me, Gheevy,” Pryce revealed. “By deceiving you, I was able to concoct a plan in which I would keep the inquisitrixes from finding out about Dearlyn’s magical abilities by accusing her of itin a melodrama designed to trap you!”
“Trap?” the halfling blurted. “You mean the authorities still don’t realize that she has… that you aren’t…?”
Pryce merely smiled and nodded knowingly. “You tricked me,” the vengeful little thing seethed. ‘You! The dupe! The gull! Once I discovered that Gamor had contacted you, I decided that you should be the one to take the blame for the deaths. But then you had to take the cloakthe cloak that would mark Geerling Ambersong as a fraud and a fooland set off this farce of mistaken identities!”
“My father?” Dearlyn choked. “A fraud?”
The halfling whirled on her. “My plan was perfect. Lymwich would find your father dead, in a youthful form, wearing the Darlington Blade cloak. What else could she think? Only that your father was trying to hold on to his power by using a youth spell and pretending he was a vital new mage named Darlington Blade! They would assume that the doddering old idiot made a mistake and died in the process.” The halfling grinned wickedly at her. “My killing spell was designed to leave behind that echo for Witterstaet to find… the masterful spell I murdered Geerling Ambersong with!”