They crashed to the cobbles together, right in front of the astonished Swords, and Pennae, feeling bones break under her, slit the man’s throat out of sheer habit ere she rolled to her feet, looking wildly around at the rooftops.
“Scatter!” she spat at her fellow adventurers. “There’s sure to be-”
Even as the words left her lips, she caught sight of what she was seeking: a small man in the shadows behind the Barrel, balancing a full-sized crossbow on some crates, aiming Pennae shouted wordless alarm as she raised her handbow and fired.
Fired nothing. The string hummed and writhed uselessly; the bolt had fallen out during her tumble.
The second slayer’s crossbow cracked, deep and loud, and a war-quarrel capable of tearing a hole through a man came humming hungrily at the Swords.
Pennae was already sprinting at the man, knowing she was too late, and hoping There was only one Sword anywhere near the path of the quarrel, and he was a tired forester who’d recently downed two large drinks. A forester who seldom hesitated in battle, and thought nothing of hurling himself face-first at hard, dirty cobbles.
Florin dived and rolled. The quarrel passed harmlessly through where he’d been, streaking across the street to smack deep into one of the ornate window frames adorning the turreted mansion of the wealthy local landlord and sundries merchant Kraliqh.
Whose servants heard nothing-or affected not to-as Swords shouted, weapons singing out of their sheaths and scabbards and into their hands, and a hard-running Pennae saw the hired slayer let the bow fall as he turned to flee.
Bey’s hurled dagger flashed past her to bite deep into the back of the man’s neck. He fell, as heavily as a full, wet grainsack, groaned once, and lay still.
When they turned him over, his eyes were staring at nothing, and the dagger was protruding bloodily from his throat.
“Let’s get gone,” Bey snarled, jerking his blade free. “I don’t want to spend all night explaining to suspicious Dragons why we butchered two fine upstanding citizens of Arabel in the street.”
Pennae whirled and called, “ Move! To our rooms, like the very wind!”
The Swords moved.
The war wizard came up the trail stealthily, wand ready in one hand and dagger in the other-and at his every move tiny motes of light winked, sparkled, and faded.
Maglor’s lip curled. A shielding spell of some sort, to keep the mage oh-so-safe against spells, arrows-and swords, too, no doubt.
Brave men, wizards were, these days.
The cleft between the two rocks gave the apothecary a limited view, but he could see his trap well enough. Three of his mixing bowls, the cups that had held the two powders and the third he’d combined them in… and the glowing symbol he’d made, once the mixed powders had begun their glow.
Wizards can never resist magical-looking symbols.
This one came cautiously to the edge of the old campsite and peered warily around into the deepening night-gloom. The symbol-a thing of circles, arcs, squiggles that looked like writing, and similar nonsense, a mere fancy Maglor had gone on drawing until the powder had run out-glowed at the mage’s feet, bright and impressive.
Scarcely daring to breathe, Maglor crouched, watching.
The wizard looked around, long and hard-and his eyes fixed on the trap itself: a rock, six or so paces from the symbol, lying on the ground. It was covered in glowing fingerprints, where Maglor had picked it up with the glow-powder still thick on his hands, and set it down again. Atop a piece of parchment.
Wizards can never resist pieces of parchment.
The war wizard stalked forward, carefully keeping to the edge of the trees, looking around often for signs of movement, and peering the rest of the time at the ground in front of his boots.
The night was almost still, and Maglor kept his breathing as shallow and quiet as possible, the six large, sharp stones arrayed in front of him for throwing. He hoped he’d not have to face this hound’s spells.
The war wizard had been snooping around Eveningstar for days now, obviously under orders to seek out lawbreakers and conspirators. Zhentarim, for instance. And suspicious local apothecaries, who might well concoct poisons. Malbrand-that was his name-had spent the better part of a day poking into simmering concoctions and peering at the fading labels on Maglor’s vials, asking oh-so-casual questions about the uses of this and who’d ordered that.
He’d hinted heavily that Vangerdahast and every mage who worked with him knew all about Maglor’s Zhent loyalties, and were just waiting for some Brotherhood mage of importance to visit before swooping down to capture, torture, maim, and slay the apothecary of Eveningstar and his guest. For why butcher one, when two could be had by using the one as bait?
Why, indeed? But let us see, now, what bait tastes best…
Maglor held his breath. The wizard was much nearer, only a few paces from the rocks where Maglor was hiding. And he was stopping just above the rock pinning down the parchment.
Stopping, and squatting down over it, he peered all around, listening long and hard.
Silence. Stars glimmered, no breeze stirred… here on the edge of the high pasture overlooking the mouth of Starwater Gorge, high above Eveningstar, the night continued to pass, uncaring.
Abruptly Malbrand turned back to the rock, pushed it aside with his dagger, and sprang away to avoid any eruption, striking snake, or The stone rolled over, revealing more glowing writing: also nonsense, but small and close-packed, intricate nonsense. The war wizard peered at it, then picked it up to look at it more closely.
Still holding his breath, Maglor smiled in relief and satisfaction. The man had doomed himself.
Malbrand took up the parchment in his other hand and turned it over.
Which meant he was now, in the glow of the rock still in his other hand, reading the words Maglor had written there:
Die at the hands of one who has outwitted you all along, War Wizard fool. Maglor murders you.
The war wizard’s head came up sharply. Then he got to his feet-or tried to. Halfway up his limbs started to tremble and failed him, leaving Marbrand to topple helplessly onto his face in the trodden earth and old ashes.
The same poison was thick on the rock and on the parchment, and to someone who hadn’t imbibed the antidote, touching either meant death.
There was enough hardiclaw on either to slay a dozen war wizards.
The paralysis would have reached Malbrand’s lungs already, slowly suffocating him-but Maglor had gathered the stones to hurl, and he wanted to use them.
They thudded into the helpless mage’s head and shoulders with satisfying force; when he was done, the back of Malbrand’s head was far less shapely than before.
Chuckling, Maglor bent to pick up his satchel and the largest basin he owned.
It would take a lot of the concoction he’d have to mix now to dissolve the wizard’s body, and he might as well get started.
Just as soon as he’d harvested the eyes, tongue, brain, and heart, of course.
The door banged shut behind Doust, and Pennae reached out of the gloom by the wall to hand him the door-bar. He helped her to settle it into its cradles, puffing from the haste of his run, and look up at her to gasp, “What I… want to know… is how you knew to look for a second killer.”
“Good hired slayers work in pairs,” Pennae gasped in reply as they clung to the railings in Rhalseer’s unlit back stairwell together, trying to catch their breath.
“Oh?” Semoor looked shaken. “And how is it you know that?”
Pennae, still panting hard, stared at him without saying a word.
All around her, hard-breathing Swords waited.
For a reply that never came.
When it became clear she would say no more, Florin observed, from beside her, “I don’t believe you’ve ever told us anything specific about what you’ve done in your life, up until we met in Waymoot.”