“Intelligent, courageous, resourceful.” Medan threw crumbs to the fish. “I look forward to meeting this paragon.”
“Yes, my lord. As I said, the Knight will be with Majere in the forest, along with the kender. I can provide you with a map—”
“I am certain you can,” said Medan. He made a dismissive gesture. “Give the details to my aide. And remove your treacherous carcass from my garden. You poison the air.”
“Excuse me, sir,” the elf said boldly. “But there is the matter of payment. According to Groul, the dragon was extremely pleased with the information. That makes it worth a considerable amount. More than usual. Shall we say, double what I usually receive?”
Medan cast the elf a contemptuous glance, then reached for quill and paper.
“Give this to my aide. He will see that you are paid.” Medan wrote slowly and deliberately, taking his time. He hated this business, considered the use of spies sordid and demeaning. “What are you doing with all this money we have paid you to betray your mistress, Elf?” He would not dignify the wretch with a name. “Do you plan to enter the Senate? Perhaps take over from Prefect Palthainon, that other monument to treachery.”
The elf hovered near, his eyes on the paper and the figures the Marshal was writing, his hand waiting to pluck it away. “It is easy for you to talk, Human,” the elf said bitterly. “You were not born a servant as I was, given no chance to better myself. ‘You should be honored with your lot in life,’ they tell me. ‘After all, your father was a servant to the House Royal. Your grandfather was a servant in that household as was his grandfather before him. House Servitor is the house to which you are born. If you try to leave or raise yourself, you will bring about the downfall of elven society!’ Hah!
“Let my brother demean himself. Let him bow and scrape and grovel to the mistress. Let him fetch and carry for her. Let him wait to die with her on the day the dragon attacks and destroys them all. I mean to do something better with my life. As soon as I have saved money enough, I will leave this place and make my own way in the world.”
Medan signed the note, dripped melted wax beneath his signature, and pressed his seal ring into the wax. “Here, take this. I am pleased to be able to contribute to your departure.”
The elf snatched the note, read the amount, smiled and, bowing, departed in haste.
Medan tossed the remainder of the bread into the pond and rose to his feet. His enjoyment of the day had been ruined by that contemptible creature, who, out of greed, was now informing on the woman he served, a woman who trusted him.
At least, Medan thought, I will capture this Palin Majere outside of Qualinost. There will be no need to bring Laurana into it. Had I been forced to apprehend Majere in the queen mother’s house, I would have had to arrest the queen mother for harboring a fugitive.
He could imagine the uproar over such an arrest. The queen mother was immensely popular; her people having apparently forgiven her for marrying a half-human and for having a brother who was in exile, termed a “dark elf,” one who is cast from the light. The Senate would be in a clamor. The population, already in an excited state, would be incensed. There was even the remote possibility that news of his mother’s arrest would cause her worthless son to grow a backbone. Much better this way. Medan had been waiting for just such an opportunity. He would turn Majere and his artifact over to Beryl and be done with it.
The marshal left the garden to put his lilac slip into water, so that it would not dry out.
Chapter Seventeen
Gilthas and the Lioness
Gilthas, Laurana’s “worthless son,” was at that moment resting his quite adequate backbone against a chair in an underground room of a tavern owned and run by gully dwarves. The tavern was called the Gulp and Belch—this being, as near as the gully dwarves could ascertain, the only thing humans did in a tavern.
The Gulp and Belch was located in a small habitation of gully dwarves (one could not dignify it by terming it a “village”) located near the fortress of Pax Tharkas. The tavern was the only building in the habitation. The gully dwarves who ran the tavern lived in caves in the hills behind the tavern, caves that could be reached only by tunnels located beneath the tavern.
The gully dwarf community was located some eighty miles straight as the griffon flies from Qualinost, longer—far longer—if one traveled by road. Gilthas had flown here on the back of a griffon, one whose family was in the service of House Royal. The beast had landed the king and his guide in the forest and was now awaiting their return with less impatience than might have been expected. Kerian had made certain to provide the griffon with a freshly killed deer to make the long hours of waiting pass pleasantly and to ensure that the beast didn’t dine on any of their hosts.
The Gulp and Belch was surprisingly popular. Or perhaps not surprising, considering that the prices were the lowest in Ansalon. Two coppers could buy anything. The business had been started by the same gully dwarf who had been a cook in the household of the late Dragon Highlord, Verminaard.
People who know gully dwarves, but who have never tasted gully dwarf cooking, find it impossible to even imagine eating anything a gully dwarf might prepare. Considering that a favorite delicacy of gully dwarf is rat meat, some equate the idea of having a gully dwarf for a cook with a death wish.
Gully dwarves are the outcasts of dwarfdom. Although they are dwarves, the dwarves do not claim them and will go to great lengths to explain why gully dwarves are dwarves in name only.
Gully dwarves are extremely stupid, or so most people believe.
Gully dwarves cannot count past two, their system of numbering being “one”, “two.” The very smartest gully dwarf, a legend among gully dwarves, whose name was Bupu, actually once counted past two, coming up with the term “a whole bunch.”
Gully dwarves are not noted for their interest in higher mathematics. They are noted for their cowardice, for their filth, their love of squalor and—oddly enough—their cooking. Gully dwarves make extremely good cooks, so long as the diner sets down rules about what may and may not be served at the table and refrains from entering the kitchen to see how the food is prepared.
The Gulp and Belch served up an excellent roast haunch of venison smothered in onions and swimming in rich brown gravy. The ale was adequate—not as good as in many establishments, but the price was right. The dwarf spirits made the tavern’s reputation. They were truly remarkable. The gully dwarves distilled their own from mushrooms cultivated in their bedrooms. Those drinking the brew are advised not to dwell on that fact for too long.
The tavern was frequented mainly by humans who could afford no better, by kender who were glad to find a tavernkeeper who did not immediately toss them out into the street, and by the lawless, who were quick to discover that the Knights of Neraka rarely patrolled the wagon ruts termed a road leading to the tavern.
The Gulp and Belch was also the hideout and headquarters for the warrior known as the Lioness, a woman who was also, had anyone known it, queen of Qualinesti, secret wife of the Speaker of the Sun, Gilthas.
The elven king sat in the chair in the semidarkness of the tavern’s back room, trying to curb his impatience. Elves are never impatient. Elves, who live for hundreds of years, know that the water will boil, the bread will rise, the acorn will sprout, the oak will grow and that all the fuming and watching and attempts to hurry it make only for an upset stomach. Gilthas had inherited impatience from his half-human father, and although he did his best to hide it, his fingers drummed on the table and his foot tapped the floor.