Judging by their scales, clumps of fur, and odd limbs-talons, scales, claws and the like-most of them were mongrelmen.
A few of the bathers, including the old man, seemed different. They looked to be pureblood humans who'd been deliberately mutilated to acquire monstrous limbs and features.
The old man was quite possibly the strangest creature Beldar had ever seen. One of his eyes had been replaced with a glowing red orb. A pair of tentacles grew from his torso, which was armored with many-colored scales. A snake coiled around his forearm, seeming to grow directly out of his wrist.
There were other oddities, too, but Beldar's stunned mind could not make sense of them all, much less catalogue them.
He looked at the other bathers who'd probably been born human. Even the most normal-seeming, a youngish man with dust-colored hair, had an odd-colored glass orb where one of his eyes should have been.
A servant came into the room, bearing a tray. His words, not passed on by the scrying magic, seemed to displease the old man.
A thin bolt of crimson light flashed from his glowing eye. The servant staggered back, staring stupidly at a black-edged, smoking hole that had suddenly appeared in-or rather, through-his forearm. The other bathers glanced at the wounded man but made no comment, as if this was no unusual occurrence.
"Eye of the beholder," murmured the necromancer, awe adding richness to her papery voice. "Skin of the yuan-ti, poison of the adder…"
She went on at some length, but Beldar was no longer listening to anything but his own tumbling thoughts.
He'd sworn vengeance against a villain who, through some fell magic, had augmented himself with the powers of monsters. Beldar had heard of monster cults, and both sorcerers and clerics who worshiped strange gods, but he'd never heard of people becoming monsters, piece by living piece.
Such foes were beyond him, and Beldar Roaringhorn knew it.
His despair was short-lived, for another of the Dathran's prophecies came vividly to mind: His path to greatness would begin when he mingled with monsters.
Beldar had tried to forget those words since that night in the Luskan tavern, tried to consign them to the crypt of lost opportunities. Now they sang through his mind as he gripped the scrying bowl with white-knuckled hands, studying the fading image as if it was a missive from the gods.
Never once had he contemplated such a path, or seen this possibility in the old witch's words.
Mingling with monsters… yes.
As twilight stole across the city, the harbor horns rang out, telling all that the massive harbormouth chains were being raised. Lamplighters hastened along the streets to fill and trim lamps, and three Gemcloaks strode the streets of Sea Ward, cloaks of amber, blue and black glimmering behind them.
"You've inquired at all the houses of healing?" Starragar demanded. "All the temples?"
Korvaun nodded grimly. "Not even the Roaringhorns have seen Beldar since you two parted from him. He's not sought healing."
"Which probably means he can't. He's too vain to want a scar." Starragar sighed thoughtfully. "Have you checked the jails?"
Taeros snorted. "While you're listing rosy options, why not the corpse haulers?"
The youngest Lord Jardeth grimaced, as if chiding himself for this oversight. "Most likely he went seeking revenge; that's why I suggested the lockups, yet-"
"Such thoughts occurred to me, too," said Korvaun, "and I inquired. No, he wasn't arrested."
"Which brings us back to scouring taverns, clubs, and festhalls. For what remedy remains to him, but to get harbor-spewing drunk?"
Taeros sighed. Even the finest boots start to chafe when one pounds the cobbles all night.
Right ahead stood The Gelded Griffon, a new festhall popular with rising-coin dandies who had the wealth but not the cachet of the nobility. Ordinarily the Gemcloaks would never deign to step inside, which was precisely why Taeros had thought it should be their twenty-third place to search. They nodded to the doorkeeper, who was already bowing low, and swept inside.
Korvaun dropped a few coins into obviously delighted hands, received the news they'd all been hoping for, and the trio of Gemcloaks traded grins and headed for the indicated row of curtained booths along the back of the dimly lit hall.
A burly, stern-faced man in a Griffon-badge tunic was standing guard to ensure privacy, but when Korvaun dropped a dragon into his palm, the guard pointedly strolled away. Still watching him go with a cynical grin, Taeros gently parted the curtains of the first booth.
There sat Beldar… or what was left of him.
Bloodshot Roaringhorn eyes looked up. "Sit down," their owner ordered thickly, "before you fall down. You're weaving like saplings in a storm, all four of you."
The three sober Gemcloaks exchanged glances, and slid into the booth. "We've been looking everywhere for you," Taeros told him. "What in the Nine bloody Hells have you been doing?"
Beldar raised a tankard as large as his own head. "Seeking ovlib… libbynon…"
"Oblivion?" Starragar offered helpfully.
An emphatic, slightly wobbling Roaringhorn finger pointed at his dark-cloaked friend, as if celebrating a correct response. "And looking for the man who cut me," he added with sudden, grim clarity.
Korvaun leaned forward. "Beldar, I understand your desire to even scores, but please reconsider any hasty vengeance. This morning's trouble was no fault of ours, but if reprisals follow, the Magisters will blame us and won't be lenient in their judgments."
A sputtering snort was Beldar's only response.
Starragar rolled his eyes and refilled their friend's monstrous tankard from a tall, moisture cloaked metal ale jug. Beldar's third, judging by its two toppled companions.
"He can barely hold his eyes open," Starragar murmured, meeting Korvaun's incredulous stare. "Let him drink himself into slumber, and the night will pass without bloodshed."
After a moment, Korvaun nodded reluctantly.
The three sober Gemcloaks sat with their friend, quietly trading jests they'd heard many times before, until Beldar's sagging head dropped onto the seat-cushion Taeros had thoughtfully placed on the table. When the gentle snores began, they eased out of the booth and gave another coin to the guard with instructions that henceforth no one was to disturb the Lord Roaringhorn's privacy.
When his friends' quiet footfalls had faded, Beldar hauled himself more-or-less upright. His usual impulse was to scoffingly dismiss Korvaun's cautions, but those last words had set Beldar to thinking.
Dimly he clung to one phrase, as if it was a flaming sword in his hand on a dark night, a lone lifeline on a storm-drenched deck, a… the Hells with it! He must not forget it: hasty vengeance.
Korvaun was quite right. He, Beldar, had come to that same conclusion, right? Hadn't he spurned vengeance immediately at hand and resolved to undertake long years' work… to make real the possibilities glimpsed in the necromancer's scrying bowl?
The scrying bowl.
Memories flooded back and with them the grim path he'd seen, whereupon Beldar remembered why he'd come here to drink.
Much pain lay ahead of him: pain, and shunning from kin and the Watch and… mere shopkeepers and beggars in the street.
Yet why not walk that road, when he could gain so much?
He would never be The Roaringhorn, patriarch of the clan. If the street battle was anything to go by, he'd never even be much of a warrior. His friends no longer looked to him as their leader; their devoted gazes were shifting from him to Taeros or Korvaun. Soon he'd have nothing. Be nothing.