“Observe,” he gasped. “I-” He threw up his hands and abandoned all explanations, to stammer out an incantation as he carefully touched the things his captor had brought, one after another: down feathers from a she-duck, the shard of glass, the flake of metal from a sword blade that had drawn blood in battle, a human hair, and a drop of elf blood. He folded his touching finger into his palm as he sliced the air with the edge of his other hand, as if swinging a sword at the distant threads.
One of them obligingly parted, the severed ends dancing in the wake of the unseen force that had sundered them.
Mreldrake watched them, breathing hard. He was determined to make himself-a living, whole Rorskryn Mreldrake-part of this magic, somehow, so his captors couldn’t simply dispose of him once he perfected the spell. Yet now, before he’d achieved that, he had to keep his intent to do so secret from them. Or they’d destroy him instantly, and find some other hapless mage to do this work for them.
That thought brought him right back to what had so puzzled him in the first place. He wasn’t much of a wizard. They must see that. So why did they want Rorskryn Mreldrake?
“I–I can’t … the magic fades swiftly with distance from the components, and I haven’t yet begun to try to extend its reach.” He panted, aware that he was drenched in sweat. He had provided the hair, and so was personally linked to the magic; would the man leaning against the wall suspect that he was deliberately trying to bind himself to the spell?
Whatever his captor knew or suspected, the man seemed pleased. “You’ve certainly been busy, Mreldrake. Keep at it, and try not to dissolve in fear at our every visit. We know more about your thinking than you’d no doubt like-and any fool can guess more of your schemes than what we can be certain of.”
As Mreldrake froze, chilled by those drawled words, the cowled man strolled to the door, adding over his shoulder, “Let us know if you feel the need for a break in this work. We’ll fill it by discussing with you details of the wizards of war, and daily life in the royal palace of Suzail.”
“W-w-why?” Mreldrake dared to ask.
The cowled man stopped, turned unhurriedly to face his captive before tendering an elaborate shrug, and replied softly, “As wizards mightier than either of us have said before, it’s always nice to learn new things.”
CHAPTER SIX
Lurth’s Trading was not a shop in which Suzail’s haughtier highnoses cared to be seen. “Squalid” was a fair description of its dingy, dusty interior, a dark labyrinth heaped with stolen, broken, and well-worn wares of all sorts, from rusty saws and cleavers to rags that had been fine gowns thirty summers ago. Trade was brisk, because “used sundry” needs always outstrip ready coin, but few patrons ventured beyond the front of the shop, where the lantern-wielding proprietor and his two scarred and leering young fetchhands met anyone who stepped through the front door.
Very few visitors ventured through the door adjacent to the front entrance of Lurth’s mercantile palace, let alone mounted the steep flight of dark and narrow stairs to reach the upper rooms of the building: the offices of Thurbrand and Arley, Wendra of the Willing Whips, and Splendors of the Shining Sea Importations.
Perhaps this was because the building was located in the poorer, rougher western part of Suzail. Or perhaps this was because Thurbrand had been dead for more than the decade that Arley had been a guest of the Crown dungeons, or because Wendra was older than many grandmothers and looked it, besides being less willing to taste her own lashes than she’d once been. Yet again, it might have had something to do with the fact that the Splendors had flourished importing illicit physics and powders that were now easily obtained at scores of Suzailan shops, and had since been reduced to selling daring scanty garments to men too embarrassed to purchase them in shops women might enter.
Wherefore business wasn’t, to be blunt, too good, and a new sign was tacked to the Splendors door at the back of the upstairs passage, informing interested Suzail that a sideroom of the Splendors now housed a new establishment. That new sign told the world crisply: “Danger For Hire.”
Judging by the looks of the two down-at-heel men lounging with their boots up on their desks, in lopsided chairs that threatened to collapse utterly and deposit them on their worn, sagging rented floor, the sign told the truth.
The more handsome of the two surviving partners in this crisp new business firm rejoiced in the name of Drounan “Doombringer” Harbrand. He was a tall man who always wore black from head to toe, and sported an eye patch that might have seemed more menacing if he hadn’t long ago fallen into the habit of switching it from one eye to the other. Harband had just returned from an interview with a new client that had-at her insistence, discretion be damned-been conducted in more savory surroundings. Upon his return, in some triumph, he had tossed her payment for the deal they’d struck onto the vacant table between the desks, where it landed with a satisfyingly weighty crash.
That feeling of exultation had ebbed as he’d begun to tell his business partner the particulars of the arrangement, and they now stared rather grimly at the heavy sack of gold coins.
That partner was shorter and uglier than Harbrand, and far less elegant in appearance. Even if his nose hadn’t been broken many times into a wreck of vaguely vertical shapelessness, the many crisscrossing scars that adorned his arms, head, torso, and knuckles told the world all too clearly that he was a brawler. A less than successful one, at that. But Andarphisk “Fists” Hawkspike did not appreciate such judgments, and most folk didn’t dare to dispense them in his presence, given the more than a dozen daggers sheathed all over his rotting, greasy, much-patched leathers.
“Hrast it!” he snarled, spitting at the floor with enough accuracy to hit it, “I knew there’d be a tail-sting in this! There always is, with nobles!”
Harbrand sighed gloomily. “At least it’s work. I’ve grown more than a bit tired of eating rats and table scraps thrown out kitchen doors.”
Their client was Lady Dawningdown, the vicious matriarch of a minor, disgraced noble family of Suzail. She had offered them far too much gold to refuse, to do a “certain task” for her-plus the tail-sting Hawkspike had been expecting: the threat that they’d be hunted down and slain if they turned down her offer, now that she’d confided in them.
“Remember that,” Harbrand added grimly. “Old Skullgrin sat there, flanked by four men who had loaded and ready crossbows trained on me. That fired poisoned bolts, she just happened to mention. If she’s so determined no one learn of our hiring-well, if we succeed in our task, her bullyblades’ll hunt us down and slay us, for that very same reason.”
“Huh. Why don’t she just send them to do it, and save her gold and our necks?”
“Because she has foes she fears, too, and doesn’t want to risk being left unguarded while they make the trip,” Harbrand explained patiently. “S’what I’d do.”
His partner gave him a dark look, and spat on the floor again.
Their task seemed simple enough. They were to journey to the remote prison stronghold of Castle Irlingstar in the Thunder Peaks on the eastern border of Cormyr. Not the prison every Cormyrean knew about, the walled Sharren-cauldron of Wheloon, but a small castle few had heard of, where King Foril Obarskyr sent his special prisoners-such as traitor nobles too dangerous to put with murderers and thugs they could buy the loyalties of, and agents of Sembia and Westgate and other hostile near neighbors who’d use more public imprisonings as a pretext for war or royal assassinations or the like.