Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [46]
* * * * *
Daggerdale, Kythorn 16
The milky mists of approaching dawn had come again to Daggerdale, and Sharantyr shivered once as she stripped away the last of her clothing and stared down at the headless body, contemplating the grisly task ahead. Belkram deftly took the well-worn cotton halter and clout she handed him, as he'd taken her leathers before.
"Don't look," she commanded both Harpers with mock severity.
"Of course not," they replied with identical grins, keeping their eyes carefully on hers. Then they turned around together, walking well away around one soot-blackened wall.
Sharantyr watched them go, took a deep breath, and reluctantly let her eyes fall to the cold form at her feet. She swallowed and then knelt beside it, taking up her newly sharpened knife. This was not going to be easy.
"Be easy, sister-in-arms," nothing spoke, close by her ear. Shar nodded and smiled wanly as the voice of Sylune went on. "Place your longest finger on the ribs, on the right side. Feel them? Move up one… and another.
There. Take the knife and make a mark large enough to see clearly."
Shar swallowed. Then, deliberately, she did as she had been told, feeling her gorge rise alarmingly within her, a sudden hotness in her throat.
"If you spew on the body," Sylune said in dry but somehow sympathetic tones, "you'll make the job a lot more distasteful."
Shar nodded irritably, wiping sudden sweat from her brow with one swipe of her forearm. Cutting a foe in the heat and swiftness of battle was one thing, but…
How did chirurgeons-and butchers, for that matter- do it?
The stone is deep," Sylune said calmly, steadying her. Shar thanked her with another smile, ran the knife point down Old Elminster's side almost to the ground, and then drove it in.
Blood flowed, more and faster than she'd have thought, bathing her fingers in warm stickiness. Sharantyr's stomach lurched.
Involuntarily her eyes traveled to where Elminster's head should be and was not, and a moment later she flung herself to one side and emptied her gut onto the turf, her own ribs aching as she shuddered and heaved uncontrollably.
"It'll be harder if you wait," Sylune said soothingly, but Sharantyr sung back to the bleeding body with an angry snarl, face white, and dug her blade in as if striking a blow in battle.
Her arms and breast were soon dripping, and she nearly squirted herself in the eye twice. One glimpse of her matted, dangling hair made her wish she'd tied it back before starting this, but she couldn't think of everything, by all the gods, and…
There. It slipped out easily into her fingers: a gray, unremarkable stone from Sylune's hut, the focus that allowed the undead Sister to speak, to be, this far from the place of her death. The means by which she'd been able to make this spell-crafted body move and speak and perceive-and ape Elminster so well.
The impersonation had been masterful, Shar reminded herself as she took another deep breath, her stomach a loose and floating thing, and got up grimly from her knees, the stone tightly clutched in her fist. Blood ran down her arms and dripped off her elbows as she headed for where the two Harpers stood talking. Modesty was just going to have to be abandoned for the nonce; she had to get clean!
"Goodsirs," she said tightly, "I must…
"Close your eyes and trust in us," Itharr said gently. "We won't lose the stone; just hold it out."
Sharantyr did as she was bid and felt the stone taken from her fingers, followed by a warm stinging on them and on her eyelids, face, and body as someone washed her carefully with… zzar!
She wrinkled her nose at the unmistakable almond scent, and someone chuckled. Before she could draw breath to speak, Belkram said, "Sorry, Shar. 'Tis all we could think of in haste." After a moment, he offered slyly, "We could lick you clean, after."
"You could run to