Crown of Fire - Ed Greenwood [43]
He pulled off a worn leather gauntlet. They saw a brass ring around one of the man's fingers and a fine chain encircling his thick, hairy wrist. Something small gleamed as it dangled from the chain: a silver harp. Then it all vanished again beneath the-dirty leather; its owner winked and turned with a rolling gait to lead the way past a pile of tumbled stones and into the night.
"You know we have enemies?" Shandril asked him. "Some, I must tell you, are powerful indeed. Their magic-"
Mirt chuckled. "Aye, aye, make me tremble in my boots, girl. Ye've run into those Zhentarim snakes, as do all in the North sooner or later, and some of the crazedwits that every land in Faerun is home to; the Cult of the Dragon, in yer case. Worry not. The worst they can do is kill ye." He shrugged.
"Besides, their arts cannot spy on us or find us while ye stay close to me. I've magic of my own-a little-that I got from a grateful mage long, long ago. It cloaks me, she said, from scrying and probings of the mind, and suchlike. So we can all sing songs and have too much to drink well into the morning."
"Stout one," Delg murmured, "if you keep on like this, it will be morning."
Mirt rolled his eyes in silent reply and waved at them to accompany him. They followed the stout, wheezing old adventurer down into a little gully in the rocks, where several dark doorways opened out of crumbling wallsthe cellars of now-vanished buildings. Mirt shambled toward one opening.
Shandril yawned, stumbled, and almost fell. Narm rushed to hold her up and found her swaying with weariness, almost asleep on her feet.
Mirt wheezed up close to them, peered into Shandril's sleepy face, and sighed. "The problem with ladies, lad," he remarked to Narm, "is that they take all the fun out o' things. After, that is, they've put most of the fun into things, I grant."
He lurched on into the darkness. "Mind yer step, now. The best adventures begin when yer boots step proper and sure along some path or other to glory…"
When Shandril opened her heavy, sleep-encrusted eyes again, the light told her that it was late afternoon. She sat up with a start, fearing that something had gone very wrong. They should have been up and away from here at the first light of morning. Narm's cloak fell from her; underneath it, she wore only her breeches.
Narm smiled reassuringly at her from nearby, where he sat in the arch of an old, ruined stone window, his spellbook on his lap.
"What happened?" she demanded to know, pulling on her boots and getting up. Where was her tunic?
"You needed sleep-sleep you didn't get enough of, after all your fire-hurling. So we let you sleep.
Delg's been fishing most of the day in some pools at the other end of the ruins."
Shandril strode to him. "Fishing?"
"Aye-he said he wanted to be done before you were ready to bathe in the same water." Narm grinnedand then ducked aside to get his spellbook out of the way of her friendly fists.
She pummeled him playfully, until he caught her wrists. They rolled over, chuckling and straining to slap and tickle each other-until their struggles took them over the sill of the window, to a hard and graceless landing on the turf below Delg stumped toward them in dripping triumph, gleaming fish gasping and flapping in both hands. He raised an eloquent eyebrow.
Shandril met his gaze, blushed, and said, "It's not what you think."
"Oh, no," Mirt said in jolly derision, from behind the dwarf. "Of course not…"
Shandril scrambled to her feet. "Well, it's not," she said indignantly and marched back to where she'd lain. She turned, a dangerous look in her eye, and stood with hands on hips to glare at them all. "What have you done with my tunic?"
Then she met Mirt's appraising eyes, blushed, and covered herself with her arms. Delg kept his eyes carefully on hers, and said, "It's drying, on the rocks yonder. It took me awhile to find the right plants to scrub your smell out of it with."