With a loud snort, a deep voice grumbled at them. “I see you are back, lady magic user-and you have brought a fighter, too. He looks strong enough, but lazy. Lounging around on the deck-hmmf!” The minotaur captain stood over the two of them.
Koram picked himself up, touching his bare chest and searching unsucessfully to find his deep wounds.
“Are you going to sleep all day?” Hurrun put his powerful hands on his hips. “This ship has places to go-I am not running an inn at sea!”
Jisanne got to her feet and looked off the starboard bow to see the beautiful harbor city of Arkhold with its whitewashed buildings on the hills, the large marketplace down by the docks, the colorful sails of small fishing boats.
“We are glad to be here, Captain,” Jisanne said. She felt more solid now than ever before, more real in this time.
Koram was amazed. “Please let us stay.”
“All right, I won’t throw you overboard just yet.” The minotaur turned and stalked back toward the bow. “Just make yourselves useful.”
Because they had surrendered their life energy voluntarily, perhaps they had twisted the nature of the defiling magic, and the navigation crystal had incorporated them into the past, into its memory of “home.” Maybe they were really there, or maybe it was only a recorded vision that had an objective and persistent reality of its own. Either way, it didn’t matter.
“This is our permanent place now, Koram,” she said, convinced as she stood beside him. “We both made it so. This spell will never fade.” They faced the sun-the golden yellow sun.
LORD OF THE DARKWAYS
A TALE OF THE FORGOTTEN REALMS
Deadly Success
Flickering glows shaped two doors out of empty air, at either end of the large, dark room. The warrior strode through the one at the far end of the room, vanished in mid step-and reappeared stepping through the nearer glowing portal.
Where he immediately stiffened in mid stride to topple, spasming and thrashing helplessly-a strangled scream whistling through his working jaws-and crash face-first to the floor. His eyeballs burst, spattering the flagstones with a foul wetness that hissed into racing wisps of smoke, even before a larger flood spilled out of his mouth to join it.
The tall, slender man in black nodded in satisfaction. Six strong Zhentilar warriors had all found the same swift death.
Consistent results. His new spell was a success.
Smiling, he walked away.
Another Stormy Night
“My superiors at the temple? They think I’m trying to induce my brother to kiss the Holy Lash, of course. Which reminds me-you will embrace Loviatar before all other gods, won’t you, Handreth?”
The wizard across the table gave her a mirthless half smile.
“I’ll consider it,” he said dismissively-then grinned, the bright, boyish flash of teeth Ayantha had known forever. She found herself grinning back.
“So, what brings a high-spells wizard from Waterdeep to cold, uncultured, mage-hating Zhentil Keep?”
“Coins, of course. Lots of them. And by ‘mage-hating,’ I presume you mean Manshoon and his magelings don’t welcome wizards other than themselves?”
“I do. They don’t. Walk warily, Han.” She laid a long, barbed whip of many leather strands on the table, murmured a nigh-soundless prayer over it, then raised her eyes to his again and asked, “Who’s your patron?”
“A merchant hight Ambram Sarbuckho-if you don’t dissuade me from showing up at his doors, by what you tell me of him.”
Ayantha shifted in her seat, supple black leather and tight strands of chain moving in ways meant to catch the eye, and gave him another smile. “So you sought out your little sister to learn how things lie here in the keep before taking service. I like that.”
Handreth shrugged. “To rise to become a darklash of Loviatar-nay, just to survive this long, in service to the Maiden of Pain-takes wits. Wizards soon learn how hard it is to trust. You have wits, and I trust you. So here we are, in this vastly overpriced excuse for a highcoin drinking club, spending my gold. Speak.”
His sister sighed. “We’re not noble, so this is the best Zhentil Keep can offer us. Sit with your hands on the table, palms up. Please.”
“So you can…?”
“So I can lash you across your palms if someone comes into the room, to make them believe a darklash of the pain goddess is meeting alone with an outlander wizard for the right reasons.”
Handreth put his hands on the table, palms up. “I believe I paid for a private room.”
“You did. In the keep, there’s ‘private’ and then there’s ‘private.’ Again, we’re not noble. Or Zhentarim.”
Handreth nodded to signal he’d taken her point. Outside the leaded windows, the wind rose with a sudden whistle. Winter hadn’t thrust its talons into Zhentil Keep just yet, but it was fast approaching, and bringing its cold with it. A time of whirling falling leaves, chill winds, and short, violent, icy rains. Puddles would form brittle skins of thin ice by night but melt every morn, for about a tenday. Then the snows would come, long before the Year of the Blazing Brand found its end.
“Ambram Sarbuckho is one of the wealthiest keep merchants,” Ayantha told him, dropping her voice to a whisper. “He’ll be given a lordship only if he joins the Zhentarim, though, and thus far he shows no signs of doing so. He’s a glib schemer, always spinning little plots and swindles-and, I should warn you, he has hired an endless succession of serve-for-a-month wizards, rather than trying to buy the loyalty of one or two he keeps at his side for many seasons.”
“So he’s difficult?”
“All successful keep merchants are difficult, Brother. This one is open in his mistrust of everyone; he probably hires more informers than anyone in the city-after Manshoon, of course. He’s… just as untrustworthy as he judges everyone else to be.”
“I’ve done business with his factors in Sembia and Waterdeep, a time or ten. What’s he known for, here at home?”
“A dealer in sundries, and importer of curios from afar.”
“Huh.” Handreth Imbreth grunted. “Someone a city ruler’ll be suspicious of, right there.”
His sister smiled thinly. “It’s been a bare few months since Manshoon became First Lord of Zhentil Keep, his toady Lord Chess was named Watchlord of the Council, the priests of Bane started acting as if they were the watch, and we had eye tyrants lecturing us in our own streets. In Zhentil Keep, everyone’s suspicious of everyone else. Watch your back, Brother-and never stop watching it.”
“I thought Manshoon was yesterday’s tyrant,” Handreth muttered, “and some Lord Bellander or other is kinging it now, here in the keep.”
His sister shook her head. “Folk in the streets believe that, and about half the merchants; the rest of us have wits enough to know Bellander’s coup was staged by Manshoon himself. He’s enthroned Bellander to be the target of those enraged by the new taxes and what’s done by all swordsmen now making the lord’s rule-Manshoon’s rule, in truth-a thing of teeth, offering instant obedience or death. Bellander’s a handsome, lecherous fool whose brains are about up to the task of outwitting yonder bowl of flower petals.”
“Ah.” Handreth nodded. “I’m familiar with the tactic; Waterdeep has seen it work a time or three, too.”
Ayantha took up her lash, cracked it in the air, and brought it crashing down across the table. Handreth deftly plucked up his goblet before any wine could spill from it.
“We all know Manshoon’s up to something, and that he will move fast when he strikes,” she announced, lashing the table again as the door opened and an impassive servant brought more wine, unbidden. She held silence until the servant withdrew, then struck the new decanter of wine aside, to shatter on the floor untasted.
Handreth nodded approvingly, and she inclined her head and went on.
“We just don’t know yet what he’ll do. All the spies we can pay-and keep alive, once we start paying them-tell us Fzoul, who speaks for Bane in this city, is still far too furious with the First Purring Lord to aid him in any way, though they’ll end up working together eventually… and the beholders have told him bluntly, at least once, that he’s on his own for now. My thinking is that they want to see if he can really establish rule over the city before they spend any more effort backing him.”