Mrelder shut his gaping jaw with an audible click.
Later, he'd worry about how this young noble had so swiftly discovered what and where the Amalgamation was. Yes, he'd worry very much indeed, but just now…
"Lord Unity," he said grandly, "may I present Beldar Roaringhorn, a Lord of Waterdeep."
Lord Roaringhorn inclined his head to Golskyn in a small but adequately respectful bow. "I'm honored to meet so great a necromancer."
"I'm only a sorcerer, and a minor one at that," Mrelder said hastily, seeing his father's face turn stormy. Nothing angered Golskyn of the Gods more than being mistaken for a wizard of any sort. "Yet I'm often mistaken for a necromancer because folk misunderstand the natures of those with whom I associate. My father, Lord Unity of the Amalgamation Temple, is a great and holy man, a priest who speaks for gods whose names cannot be shaped by human tongues. The mongrelmen and those granted monstrous enhancements through the grace of these gods revere and follow Lord Unity."
Beldar Roaringhorn bowed again. "An honor. I hope you'll not think me irreverent when I say I'm willing to pay a small fortune to receive a graft similar to the one beneath Lord Unity's eyepatch."
Golskyn greeted these words with a dry, grating chuckle that might have held derision, admiration, genuine humor, or all three.
"Incorporating any graft is difficult," Mrelder warned, "and if your first graft is a beholder's eye, you'll have little chance of surviving."
Golskyn raised a hand. "Let us not judge hastily. The request is not unreasonable. A great lord's heir should prove himself strong."
"Then let me prove myself indeed," Beldar replied, saying nothing of his distance from ever becoming the Lord Roaringhorn. "Am I correct in assuming a graft must come from a living creature?"
"You are," said Golskyn, acquiring a small and approving smile.
"I'll bring you a living beholder. Let it be both proof and payment."
'Agreed."
Beldar Roaringhorn bowed again, more deeply, and then turned and strode from the room.
"Capturing a beholder alive's no easy thing," Golskyn murmured, staring at the empty-of-noble doorway. "If he succeeds, we'll know Lord Piergeiron chose well."
"And if he fails," Mrelder added hastily, "I know who the second successor is!"
It would seem Korvaun Helmfast was destined for greatness after all!
"Lord Roaringhorn!" Old Dandalus was as jovial as ever. "It's been some time, aye? Be welcome!"
Beldar gave the shopkeeper a wry smile. All noble lads flirted with disgusting monstrous trophies-taloned this and tentacled that-at a certain age, if only to make young noble lasses shriek at revels, wherefore Beldar Roaringhorn had been to the Old Xoblob Shop many times before. At every visit Dandalus greeted him with the same words, even if his previous visit had been but a tenday earlier.
Dandalus 'Fire-Eye' Ruell was bearded, balding, big-nosed, and bigger-bellied. He looked no different than he had the first time Beldar had wandered into this shop as a boy, eyes shining with the wonder of the Dathran's vision.
Beldar's gaze wandered around the shop, which was both familiar and ever-changing. The shelves were crammed with greenish jars of pickled, staring eyes and less identifiable remains, and hung with a scaly forest of tentacles and serpentine bodies spell-treated to keep them supple. All around Beldar were thousands upon thousands of strange "monster bits." Twenty men could be hiding in all this carrion-tangle and him none the wiser.
No. Dandalus had his smallest finger raised in the signal that meant "We are alone." Beldar glanced quickly up at the shop's infamous beholder, looming over him like a watchful shadow, and then looked away, managing not to shudder.
"Thanks for your good cheer, Dandalus," he said, choosing his words carefully, "and your discretion."
The proprietor of the Old Xoblob Shop leaned forward over his glass countertop, ignoring the tray of jutting fangs just beneath it, and murmured, "In that, Lord Beldar, you can trust absolutely. I hold my tongue, and not even the Blackstaff himself can pry secrets from me. As for why he can't, well, that's one of the very secrets I guard. There's no profit in this line of business if I flap my jaws, nor much of a personal future, if you take my meaning."
Beldar nodded. "Straight to it, then: I need directions to the nearest beholders' den you know of and advice on how to enter it without swiftly greeting my own death." He tapped his chest to let Dandalus hear the stony jostling of gems in his innermost purse, to signify that he could pay well.
"A moonstone for my words," the shopkeeper murmured, "and two more for this."
Reaching several layers down under the counter, he drew forth something that almost fit his palm: a brooch of smooth-polished hemispheres of unfamiliar gemstone, each cut to display a staring-eye image: a large central orb surrounded by ten smaller ones. This signified a beholder, obviously, but "A safe passage token," Dandalus explained. "Worn at throat or brow, it tells eye tyrants you're a willing minion of one of their kind-an agent of proven loyalty."
"Ah. Wear it or die?"
"Indeed. Beholders, plural, you said; is this what you truly meant? A 'wild' den, or the lair of just one?"
Beldar swallowed, nightmarish images flooding his mind, and then pulled firmly on the fine chain that brought his gem-purse into view and started shaking out moonstones. "A wild den shared by several beholders. Is it far?"
"In the Rat Hills," Dandalus said merrily, waving southwards. "Now heed: Despite what the sages and all their books tell you, the powers of their eyes vary from beholder to beholder-you'll not always be facing the same magics. That goes double for beholder-kin, and that's what this particular lair is full of: there're gauth and some of the little floating ones about as big as our heads, too. You'll not be finding many pureblood eye tyrants sharing lairs-and none at all that I know the way to, no matter how many moonstones you throw at me."
Beldar looked up and saw the glint in the old shopkeeper's eyes.
Clearly the thought of a ruby-cloaked noble tramping about the Rat Hills-small peaks made up of centuries of Waterdhavian garbage-was vastly amusing to him. Likewise the vision of a lone swordsman in a den of beholder-kin.
Well, perhaps there was some grim humor in it, but didn't most adventures have far more to do with grime than glory? Even a paladin in shining armor betimes must dash into bushes and hastily unbuckle to answer needs of the body; did that make his quest any less noble?
This was his quest, a firm stride closer to seizing his destiny. If it took him into the Rat Hills, then by the gods, to the Rat Hills he'd go.
"Problems, lad?"
"This is all one huge jest for you, isn't it?"
Dandalus leaned close. "Beldar, my lad," he replied, as if he was a god or a king or the Lord of the oldest, haughtiest noble house of Waterdeep, "life is one huge jest."
Beldar smiled in reply. 'Twould be the act of a fool to dispute with Dandalus. Rumor insisted the beast parts filling the shop around him would, upon the old man's command, animate and combine into horrors hitherto unknown to Faerun. The Roaringhorn might be preparing to walk into a beholders' den, but he wasn't entirely moon-mad!
Golskyn reached for a decanter. "Will you scry young Lord Roaringhorn to learn where he finds his eye tyrant-or how he knows of one?"
"Certainly, if I can do so without drawing the attention of the Palace wizards who often scry him," Mrelder lied. Roaringhorn was doomed; his time would be far better spent learning all about Korvaun Helmfast.