“Did no one think to look for me?” Jack asked.
“Oh, we checked your usual haunts. Anders looked for you for some time, because he was of the opinion that you owed him a great deal of coin. But naught ever came of it.”
Seila regarded Jack with a raised eyebrow. “It seems you had some interesting associations in your earlier life, Jack,” she observed.
“I was the victim of jealousy, misunderstandings, and false accusations, dear Seila. All would naturally have been answered in due course, clearing my good name and confounding my enemies, if only a lost century had not intervened.” Jack returned his attention to Tharzon. “Where was I last seen? In whose company? Were there any noted villains or malefactors in town who seemed especially pleased by my disappearance?”
“It’s been a long time, Jack.” The old dwarf frowned, thinking hard on the question. “I seem to remember that the Knights of the Hawk were looking for you, but then again, that wasn’t terribly unusual. There was a ball at some noble manor where you made some sort of scene, and as far as anyone could tell, you never came home.”
“Which manor?”
“You would know better than I,” Tharzon replied, but seeing that Jack was serious about the question, he fixed his gaze on the taproom’s great stone hearth, his brow knotting as he delved deeper and deeper into his memories. Jack began to wonder if his old friend had actually fallen asleep with his eyes open, but then the dwarf grunted. “Ah, there it is,” he muttered at last. “Sevencrown Keep. You certainly indulged your ambitions in those days, Jack.”
“The Leorduins? What business did I have with them?” Jack wondered aloud. The Leorduins were a very rich and very prickly family, indeed. Had they caught him in some scheme? If so, what scheme was it? Or had he simply gone to the Leorduin affair, whatever it was, to maneuver toward some other noble mark?
“How did you finally escape from your magical prison?” Tharzon’s son Kurzen asked. “You’d already been there a hundred years or so. What broke the spell?”
“Ah, that I think was an accident,” said Jack. “The drow had no idea that someone had been entombed within their old mythal stone. They were at work restoring its old spells, and their magic interfered with the encystment in which I slept, releasing me. They asked me how I’d come to be in their mythal, heard me out, agreed that my story was fascinating, and promptly condemned me to slavery once they’d decided they had no other use for me.”
“A black-hearted race, and that’s no lie,” Tharzon agreed. He looked over to Seila. “Is that where you come into the tale, my lady?”
Seila nodded. “I was traveling on the Tantras Road with one of my father’s caravans when a large party of brigands ambushed us. They took me and most of our people captive, and sold us to the dark elves. I was sent to the tower kitchens, and met Jack a tenday or so later. It took a long time, but eventually he managed to arrange our escape.”
“That’s a tale I’d like to hear,” Tharzon said. “How did you do it?”
“I’m glad you asked, friend Tharzon,” Jack replied. He immediately launched into a recounting of his toils among the drow, his befriending of Seila, and his daring escape. If his telling of the tale perhaps overemphasized his own cleverness, stoicism, and personal bravery, well, that was merely a bit of artistic license. After all, it was his story to tell, and he ought to be able to tell it as he liked, as long as he avoided embellishing the parts Seila could corroborate. Half an hour passed as Jack lingered on every detail and described every perilous development, during which he finished his first lager and embarked on a second, until finally he concluded with their arrival in the alley in Sindlecross. Even Kurzen left his work to listen to the story, caught up despite himself.
“Well done, Jack, well done,” Tharzon said in approval when Jack finished. “You always had a daring streak in you.”
“It was nothing,” Jack replied with false modesty, waving away Tharzon’s praise.
“You can bet that the drow won’t believe it to be nothing,” Kurzen warned. “The dark elves have long memories, and they never let a slight pass without answer. You’d best watch your back, Jack Ravenwild.”
“I am not concerned,” Jack answered. “The drow do not frighten me; I have their measure now.”
Kurzen shook his head at Jack’s reply. “They have their eyes and ears in the city. I would not be so quick to dismiss them. If I were you, I’d lay low for a time.” The young dwarf rose and returned to his work at the bar.
Jack took a long pull from his mug, and then he looked back to Tharzon. “There’s one other thing you should know. I think the drow released Myrkyssa Jelan, too.”
Tharzon sat up straight. “The Warlord herself? No!”
“I see that you remember her as fondly as I do,” said Jack. “I actually saw her down in the mythal-plaza, which is no longer under a lake, by the way. She emerged from the mythal as a very lifelike statue, and still managed to scare me half to death in that condition.” He grinned crookedly. “Apparently she didn’t stay that way for long, and the drow made the mistake of trying to enslave her. She cut her way out of Chumavhraele and vanished into the Underdark.”
The dwarf shook his head. “If Myrkyssa Jelan is at liberty again, trouble’s sure to follow. I wouldn’t be surprised …” Tharzon’s voice trailed away, and his eyes took on a thoughtful expression. “Hmmph. I wonder? Is it possible?”
“Is what possible, friend Tharzon?”
“A new gang moved into the Skymbles a couple of tendays ago. They call themselves the Moon Daggers, and they’ve already put a couple of local street gangs in their place. I’ve heard that the Moon Daggers aren’t just guttersnipes and street rats; skilled adventurers run the gang, with a dark-haired swordswoman at their head. Do you think it’s the Warlord?”
“I deem it unlikely. Street gangs come and go, and for that matter so do adventurers. All of Jelan’s plots and designs are a hundred years out of date; even she couldn’t easily recover from such a setback.” Jack considered the question again, and decided that he was well satisfied with that answer. He winked at Seila. “Now on to more important matters: I promised you three days ago that I’d tell you the tale of the Guilder’s Vault. Well, here sits one of my comrades in that harrowing adventure, and between the two of us I think we can do it justice.
“The tale begins in the disorderly library of a disreputable old sot of a sage by the name of Ontrodes, whose counsel I’d sought on the matter of a missing arcane tome known as the Sarkonagael …”
The telling of the story of the Guilder’s Vault took up the rest of the morning. Jack counted it as time well spent, because Seila was completely enthralled by the story, all the more so because old Tharzon was able to reinforce the telling of the tale with his own recollections. After that, Jack and Tharzon traded news of old comrades for a little longer-most of whom, as one might expect, were long since dead-until Jack finally held up his hand. “I could spend the rest of the day talking with you, friend Tharzon, but I’ve a lot of city still to see, and it would be a pity to bore my lovely companion, here. I promise that I will return soon to resume our conversation.”
“Fair enough,” Tharzon replied. He snorted in bemusement, and shook his head. “Jack Ravenwild, here under my beams again. Who could have thought it?”
With another round of handclasps, Jack and Seila said their goodbyes and returned to the sunny streets outside. They climbed back into the carriage, and Seila leaned close to Jack. “He seems a very pleasant fellow,” she remarked. “And what stories, too. I think you were not as much of a gentleman back in those days, Jack.”
“Rather like a good brandy, Tharzon’s mellowed with age,” Jack replied. “He was a very fierce fellow a century ago, and in fact once swore a blood oath to hack me to pieces if he ever saw me again. Fortunately, that little misunderstanding was cleared up! But I never would have thought him to be so sentimental.”