Cunning, shrewd, the old woman peered into the dark shadows. “Is it a bet?” A soft knock fell on the door. Ciang chuckled to herself, half-mocking, half-serious. “Enter.”
The Ancient thrust the door open, hobbled inside.
“Ah, me,” he said sadly when he saw Hugh the Hand. He looked questioningly at Ciang. “Do we leave him here?”
“We are neither of us strong enough to move him, my old friend. He will do well enough where he is until morning.”
She extended her arm. The Ancient took it. Together—his failing strength supporting her faltering steps—they walked slowly the few paces across the dark hall to Ciang’s sleeping chambers.
“Light the lamp, Ancient. I will be reading late this night.” He did as she instructed, lighting the glow lamp and placing it on the stand beside her bed.
“Go into the library.[10] Bring me any books you find written on the Sartan. And bring me the key to the Black Coffer. Then you may retire.”
“Very good, madam. And I’ll just get a blanket to cover Hugh the Hand.” The Ancient was bobbing his way out when Ciang stopped him.
“My friend, do you ever think about death? Your own, I mean.” The Ancient didn’t even blink. “Only when I have nothing better to do, madam. Will that be all?”
7
Hugh slept late the next morning, the wine dulling his mind, permitting exhaustion to lay claim to the body. But it was the heavy, unrefreshing sleep of the grape, which causes one to wake with the brain sodden and aching, the stomach queasy. Knowing that he would be groggy and disoriented, the Ancient was there to guide Hugh’s stumbling steps to a large water barrel placed outside the fortress for the refreshment of the lookouts.[11] The Ancient dipped in a bucket, handed it to Hugh. The Hand dumped the contents over his head and shoulders, clothes and all. Wiping his dripping face, he felt somewhat better.
“Ciang will see you this morning,” said the Ancient when he deemed Hugh capable of understanding his words.
Hugh nodded, not quite capable yet of replying.
“You will have audience in her chambers,” the Ancient added. Hugh’s eyebrows rose. This was an honor accorded to few. He glanced down ruefully at his wet and slept-in clothes. The Ancient, understanding, offered to provide a clean shirt. The old man hinted at breakfast, but Hugh shook his head emphatically.
Washed and dressed, the throbbing in his temples receding to an ache behind his eyeballs, Hugh presented himself once again to Ciang, the Brotherhood’s “arm.”
Ciang’s chambers were enormous, sumptuously and fancifully decorated in the style elves admire and humans find ostentatious. All the furniture was of carved wood, extremely rare in the Mid Realms. The elven emperor Agah’rahn would have opened his painted eyelids wide with envy at the sight of so many valuable and beautiful pieces. The massive bed was a work of art. Four posts, carved in the shapes of mythological beasts, each perched on the head of another, supported a canopy of wood decorated with the same beasts lying outstretched, paws extended. From each paw dangled a golden ring. Suspended from the rings was a silken curtain of fabulous weave, color, and design. It was whispered that the curtain had magical properties, that it accounted for the elven woman’s longer than normal life span.
Whether or not that was true, the curtain was marvelously lovely to look on and seemed to invite admiration. Hugh had never before been inside Ciang’s personal quarters. He stared at the shimmering multicolored curtain in awe, lifted his hand and reached out to it before it occurred to him what he was doing. Flushing, he started to snatch his hand back, but Ciang, seated in a high-backed monstrosity of a chair, gestured.
“You may touch it, my friend. It will do you some good.” Hugh, recalling the rumors, wasn’t certain that he wanted to touch the curtain, but to do otherwise would offend Ciang. He ran his fingers over it gingerly and was startled to feel a pleasurable exhilaration tingle through his body. At this he did snatch his fingers back, but the feeling lasted and he found his head clear, the pain gone.
Ciang was seated on the opposite side of the large room. Diamond-paned windows, which stretched from ceiling to floor, admitted a flood of sunlight. Hugh walked across the bright bands of light spanning the ornate rugs to stand before the high-backed wooden chair.
The chair was said to have been carved by an admirer of Ciang’s, given to her as a present. It was certainly grotesque. A skull leered at the top. The blood-red cushions that supported Ciang’s frail form were surrounded by various ghostly spirits twining their way upward. Her feet rested on a footstool formed of crouching, cringing naked bodies. She waved a hand in a gracious gesture to a chair opposite hers, a chair which Hugh was relieved to see was perfectly ordinary in appearance.
Ciang dispensed with meaningless pleasantries and struck, arrow-like, at the heart of their business.
“I have spent the night in study.” She rested her hand, gnarled and almost fleshless but elegant in its movement and grace, on the dusty leather cover of a book in her lap.
“I am sorry to have disturbed your sleep,” Hugh began to apologize. Ciang cut him off. “To be honest, I could not have slept otherwise. You are a disturbing influence, Hugh the Hand,” she added, looking at him with narrowed eyes. “I will not be sorry to see you go. I have done what I could to speed you on your way.” The eyelids—lashless, as the head was hairless—blinked once.
“When you are gone, do not come back.”
Hugh understood. The next time there would be no hesitation. The archer would have his orders. Hugh’s face set hard and grim. “I would not have come back in any case,” he said softly, staring at the cringing bodies, bent to hold Ciang’s small and delicate-boned feet. “If Haplo doesn’t kill me then I must find—”
“What did you say?” Ciang demanded sharply.
Hugh, startled, glanced up at her. He frowned. “I said that if I don’t kill Haplo—”
“No!” Ciang’s fist clenched. “You said ‘If Haplo doesn’t kill me... !’ Do you go to this man seeking his death or your own?”
Hugh put his hand to his head. “I... was confused. That’s all.” His voice was gruff. “The wine...”
“...speaks the truth, as the saying goes.” Ciang shook her head. “No, Hugh the Hand. You will not come back to us.”
“Will you send the knife around on me?” he asked harshly. Ciang considered. “Not until after you have fulfilled the contract. Our honor is at stake. And therefore, the Brotherhood will help you, if we can.” She glanced at him and there was an odd glint in her eye. “If you want...” Carefully she closed the book and placed it on a table beside the chair. From the table she lifted an iron key, which hung from a black ribbon. Extending her hand to Hugh, she allowed him the privilege of helping her to stand. She refused his assistance in walking, making her way slowly and with dignity to a door on a far wall.
“You will find what you seek in the Black Coffer,” she told him. The Black Coffer was not a coffer at all but a vault, a repository for weapons—magical or otherwise. Magical weapons are, of course, highly prized, and the Brotherhood’s laws governing them are strict and rigorously enforced. A member who acquires or makes such a weapon may consider it his or her own personal possession, but must apprise the Brotherhood of its existence and how it works. The information is kept in a file in the Brotherhood’s library, a file which may be consulted by any member at any time.
A member needing such a weapon as he finds described may apply to the owner and request the weapon’s loan. The owner is free to refuse, but this almost never happens, since it is quite likely that the owner himself will need to borrow a weapon someday. If the weapon is not returned—something else that almost never happens—the thief is marked, the knife sent around. On the owner’s death, the weapon becomes the property of the Brotherhood. In the case of elderly members, such as the Ancient, who come back to the fortress to spend their remaining years in comfort, the deliverance of any magical weapons is easily facilitated. For those members who meet the sudden and violent end considered an occupational hazard, collecting the weapons of the deceased can present a problem.
10
The library of the Brotherhood is quite extensive, according to Haplo’s notes on the subject. As one might expect, there are the volumes devoted to the making and use of almost any weapon imaginable—human and elven and dwarven, mundane and magical. Innumerable volumes concern botany and herb lore, particularly as they relate to poisons and antidotes. There are books on venomous snakes and the deadlier types of spiders, books on snares and traps, books on the care and handling of dragons.
There are also books of an unexpected nature: books on the inner workings of the hearts and minds of humans, elves, dwarves, and even those earlier beings—the Sartan. Philosophical treatises in an assassins’ guild? Odd. Or perhaps not. As the saying goes, “When tracking a victim, you should try to fit your feet into his footprints.”
11
A measure of the Brotherhood’s wealth. Nowhere else in the Mid Realms would one find a water barrel sitting out in the open, unguarded, its precious contents free to all takers.