Which meant he might as well keep on as if he was going to live, until the gods showed him otherwise.
So he was looking like a monster already and very soon would be a monster to most folk of Faerun. Which meant the life of a lurking, forest-dwelling outlaw would be all he could hope for.
Well, the northern Dales were the best place he could think of to try to do that. All the vast forest to lurk in, good farms to plunder crops from…
There was nothing left fot him in Cormyr, unless he could get the Pendant of Ashaba.
It would be useless to him in Shadowdale. No simple farmers would accept a walking skeleton as their ruling lord.
Yet if he could get it back to, say, Arabel and see the Lady Lord there, he could bargain with it and perhaps get a war wizard to banish this bone armor and turn him back the way he'd looked before.
To get the Pendant, of course, he'd have to kill some Knights of Myth Drannor. No great crime, that, in the eyes of the Cormyrean authorities. At least from what he'd seen and heard. That ornrion had looked to be itching to butcher some Knights himself.
Moreover, Brorn Hallomond had a sworn score to settle. Lord Yellander must be avenged.
Something shifted in his groin. Gods, it had covered him there. Well, that was it. He was a monster.
Could he get work in Sembia in one of the festhalls? The Man of Bone, now onstage, dancing with the highcoin lasses? Say, now…
No. Try for the lordship first. Noble lords in Cormyr were all far richer than dancers in clubs, and with coin enough he could buy all the lasses he wanted to dance with.
He had to have that Pendant.
Knights of Myth Drannor had to die.
Telgarth Boatblade leaned forward over the table, the better to murmur to the four conspirators Ruldroun had sent here. "See those men coming in now? Each of you get a good look at the face of one of them. Thorm, that one. Darratur, the tall one. Glays, the one with the mustache. Klatn, the balding one. I'll take the one with the beard. Go upstairs to pretend to look for rooms if you have to, or follow them into the jakes-just get a good look. Don't make them suspicious by staring. Try to seem boted, and look around idly, often, as if you always do. But fix their features in your memories. The moment you have, go out front, and we'll meet by the hitching rail."
"Why?" Klarn asked.
Boarblade decided there and then that Klarn would be the first of the four to die, if the need arose. He did not need someone questioning his every word.
"They are a Crown envoy and his bodyguards. We're going to wait until they're abed, use our hargaunts to adopt their faces, then firmly but urgently require the discreet use of our mounts-their horses; they'll be fast, first-rank beasts, believe me! — and ride on out of here."
Four faces stared intently at him. They were excited. Good.
"Trot until we're out of sight of this place," he added, "then walk until we find a stream. Rest the horses a bit, then walk them again, and start looking for a place off the road to camp. Come the warm hours after highsun on the morrow, if we do all that righr, we can be galloping hard along the Ride."
He sat back and said firmly, "We've got us some Knights to catch, they've a long start, and I for one am not walking all the way to Shadowdale. Which is certainly how far we'll have to go if we try to catch up to them, just plodding along on foot. Anyone dispute that?"
No one did.
Chapter 21
Alone I faced the Dragons
And now you laugh and stamp your feet
And profanely bellow for more ale
And mock my limp, my burns, and scars
Weakness your valor makes hale
Well let me tell, sneering younglings
As 'gainst my feeble sloth you rail
There was a time when I was as you
Bold, foolish, young, and pale
Riding to tame the world entire
Though dreams 'gainst talons fail
Fell my friends and lovers all, one by one
Burned, gnawed, screamingly pierced-impaled
Gutted and bone-smashed, 'til in the end
Alone I faced the dragon and lived to tell the tale
Drathar hadn't had magic to hurl for all that long. Oh, he'd always known from the tinglings when he was near a spell being cast or when walking through the roiling aftermath of a spell battle that he'd had a touch of the Art. Yet he'd been a thief, and no more than a thief, before he'd found the Qaethur.
It had been the Qaethur, a worn and chipped gemstone carved into a shallow relief depiction of a human face, that barely filled his palm, that had whispered to him, opening up a door in his mind to the glory of the Weave. Unthinking and eternal, the Qaethur spoke the same things to everyone who touched it. He had been one of the lucky few.
He had Varandrar to thank for that. The senior Zhent in Arabel had sent him to do that slaying and robbery, had known the Qaethur was there for the taking, and had specifically mentioned it to Drathar. Varandrar had meant him to find it.
The bastard.
Now he had power few thieves could do more than dream of and the riches that power had let him wresr from others. Now he was truly someone worthy among the Zhentarim, not a mere tolerated lackey.
And now, he knew as much as many in the Brotherhood did and so knew something else: true fear.
His spells were too paltry and fresh-learned for him to battle any but the greenest wizard, Art against Art, and hope to live. Yet he had a talent for the spells that called and coerced beasts to his bidding.
Which is why the Knights of Myth Drannor were soon going to be facing a gray render.
"Soon" as in very shortly after it finished tearing apart the joints of the wyvern it had just slain, gnawed the last shreds of meat, and went looking for more to devout to fill up the yawning, gurgling emptiness in its belly.
Riding its mind as lightly and gingerly as possible, Drathar smiled tightly as the horrible rending and splintering of bone went on.
As the old Dale saying put it, his own mother wouldn't know him now.
The hargaunt was spread very thinly across his face-just enough to make him seem a pocked, wrinkled woman who looked nothing like a certain former war wizard. Most of its bulk was busy doing its best to thrust his chest out into a rather impressive, though sagging with age, bust.
The tattered and dirty dress he'd had to strangle the crone he now resembled to gain possession of-hargaunt-disguised as the ornrion Dauntless, he'd intended merely to rob her, but she'd persisted in screaming and trying to blind him with her clawing fingers and everything breakable she could snatch up and throw-was catching on thorns and twigs and the gods alone knew what else as he fought his way through the brush, but what of that?
Torn went with dirty, and dirty suited him. He didn't want to look well-to-do or beautiful enough to make anyone consider him worth waylaying.
Onsler Ruldroun was in a hurry to do a little waylaying of his own.
"Auril's kisses, bur 'tis cold," Pennae murmured nigh Florin's ear, gently pushing aside the tip of his sword from where it had reached out to menace her as she approached. Hunched over and hugging herself for warmth, on the verge of shivering, she tried to thrust herself against his armpit. "There's always a chill before dawn, yes, but this is worse than I've tasted for a long time."
"And if a monster swoops swiftly in at me?" the ranger whispered. "What then?"
"Throw me at it, and use my screams to wake the others. Or use me as a shield."
Florin sighed, put his free arm around her, and started rocking the thief gently back and fotth, shifting weight from one boot to another just as he was, to restore the rhythm he'd established before she'd risen from huddled sleep to join him.