“And in so doing eliminate the finest lover you’ve ever known?” Morik asked. “I think not.”
Bellany had no immediate answer, but after a pause, she said in all seriousness, “I don’t like that dwarf.”
“You would like his masters even less, I assure you.”
“Who are they?”
“I care too much about you to tell you. Just get what I need and get far out of the way when I tell you to.”
After another pause, Bellany nodded.
They called him “the general” because among all the mid-level battle-mages at the Hosttower, Dondom Maealik was considered the finest. His repertoire was dominated by evocations, of course, and he could throw lightning bolts and fireballs more intense than any but the overwizards and the Archmage Arcane Arklem Greeth himself. And Dondom sprinkled in just enough defensive spells—transmutations that could blink him away to safety, an abjuration to make his skin like stone, various protection auras and misdirection dweomers—so that on a battlefield, he always seemed one step ahead of any adversary. Some of his maneuvers were the stuff of growing legend at the Hosttower, like the time he executed a dimensional retreat at the last second to escape a mob of orc warriors, who were left swinging at empty air before Dondom engulfed them in a conflagration that melted them to a one.
This night, though, because of information passed through a pair of petite, dark-haired lovers, Dondom’s adversaries knew exactly what spells he had remaining in his daily repertoire, and had already put in place a plethora of countermeasures.
He came out of a tavern that dark night, after having tipped a few too many to end off a day of hard work at the Hosttower—a day when he had exhausted all but a few of his available spells.
The dwarf came out of an alleyway two doors down and fell into cadence with the walking wizard. He made no attempt to cover his heavy footsteps, and Dondom glanced back, though still he tried to hide the fact that he knew he was being followed. The wizard picked up his pace and the dwarf did likewise.
“Idiot,” Dondom muttered under his breath, for he knew that it was the same dwarf who’d been heckling him inside the tavern earlier that night. The unpleasant fellow had professed vengeance when he’d been escorted out, but Dondom was surprised—pleasantly so! — to learn that there was more than bluster to the ugly little fellow.
Dondom considered his remaining spells and nodded to himself. As he neared the next alleyway, he broke into a run, propelling himself around the corner where he pulled up fast and traced a line on the ground. He had only a few heartbeats, and his head buzzed from too much liquor, but Dondom knew the incantation well, for most of his research occurred on distant planes.
The line on the ground glowed in the darkness. Both ends of it rolled into the center, then climbed into the air, drawing a column taller than Dondom by well over a foot. That vertical slice of energy cut through the planar continuum, splitting to two and moving out from each other. In between loomed a darkness more profound than the already black shadows.
But the dwarf wouldn’t notice, Dondom knew.
The wizard settled his portal into place, and nodded as the glowing lines fast disappeared. Then Dondom ran down the alley, hoping he would hear the dwarf’s screams.
Another form came out of the shadows as soon as the wizard had departed. With equal deftness, the lithe creature created a second magical gate, right in front of Dondom’s, and dismissed the original as soon as the second was secure.
A dark hand waved on the street, motioning the dwarf to continue.
The dwarf had to take a deep breath. He trusted his boss—well, as much as anyone could trust a creature of that particular…persuasion, but traveling to the lower planes didn’t come with many assurances, no matter who was doing the assuring.
But he was a good soldier, and besides, what worse could happen to him than all that had already transpired? He picked up his pace and came around the alleyway entrance in full run, yelling so that the clever wizard would know he’d gone through the gate.
“Ruffian,” Dondom muttered as he strolled back to review his handiwork—and to dismiss the gate so that the obstinate and ugly dwarf—or one of the foul denizens of the Abyss—didn’t somehow figure out how to get back through. The last thing Dondom wanted was to feel the wrath of Arklem Greeth for loosing demons onto the streets of Luskan. Or it was the next to the last thing he wanted, Dondom realized as he walked around and waved his hand to dispel his magic.
The gate didn’t close.
The dwarf walked calmly back out onto the street and said, “Hate those places.”
“H-how did you…” Dondom stuttered.
“Just went in to get me dog,” said the dwarf. “Every dwarf’s needin’ a dog, don’t ya know.” He shoved his thumb and index finger against his lips and blew a shrill whistle.
Dondom more forcefully willed his gate to close—but it wasn’t his gate. “You fool!” he cried at the dwarf. “What have you done?”
The dwarf pointed at his own chest. “Me?”
With a strange shriek, half roar of outrage, half squeal of fear, Dondom launched into spellcasting, determined to blow the vile creature into nothingness.
He stammered, though, as a second creature came forth from the blackness of the gate. It stepped out bent way over, for that was the only way it could fit through the man-sized portal, its horned head leading the way. Even in the dark of night, the bluish hue of its skin was apparent, and when it stood to full height, some twelve feet, Dondom nearly fainted.
“A—a glabrezu,” he whispered, his gaze locked on the demon’s lower arms—it sported two sets—that ended in large pincers.
“I just call him ‘Poochie,’” said the dwarf. “We play a game.”
With a howl, Dondom spun around and ran.
“Yeah, that’s it!” cried the dwarf. To the demon, he commanded, “Fetch.”
A fine sight greeted those revelers exiting the many taverns on Whiskey Row at that moment of the evening. Out of an alleyway came a wizard of the Hosttower, flailing his arms, screaming indecipherably. With his long and voluminous sleeves he looked rather like a frantic, wounded bird.
Behind him came the dwarf’s dog, a twelve-foot, bipedal, four-armed, blue-skinned demon, taking one stride for the wizard’s three and gaining ground easily.
“Teleport! Teleport!” Dondom shrieked. “Yes I must! Or blink…phase in and out…find a way.”
That last word came out in a long, rolling syllable, covering several octaves, as one of the demon’s pincers clamped around his waist and easily lifted him off the ground. He looked like a wounded bird that had gained a bit of altitude, except that he was moving backward, back into the alley.
And into the gate.
“I could’ve just smacked him in the skull,” the dwarf said to his master’s friend, a strange one who wasn’t really a wizard but could do so many wizardly things.
“You bore me,” came the reply he always got from that one.
“Haha!”
The gate blinked out, and the lithe, dark creature moved into the shadows—and probably blinked out, too. The dwarf walked along his merry way, the heads of his glassteel morningstars bouncing at the ends of their chains behind his shoulders.
He found himself smiling more often these days. There might not have been enough bloodletting for his tastes, but life was good.
“He wasn’t a bad sort,” Morik said to Kensidan. He tried to look the man in the eye as he spoke, but he always had trouble doing that with the Crow.
Morik held a deep-seated, nagging fear that Kensidan was possessed of some magical charming power, that his gaze would set even his most determined adversary whimpering at his feet. That skinny little man with soft arms and knobby knees that he always kept crossed, that shrinking runt who had done nothing noteworthy in his entire life, held such power over all those around him…and that was a group, Morik knew, that included several notorious killers. They all served the Crow. Morik didn’t understand it, and yet he, too, found himself thoroughly intimidated every time he stood in the room, before that chair, looking down at a knobby knee.