Elfshadow - Elaine Cunningham [14]
"Welcome, welcome," he said to the approaching figure. "Changed your mind, I suppose? Well, that's fine. Come right on over to old Sratish, and I'll-"
The old man's invitation ended in a strangled gulp as two slender feminine hands closed around his neck. Frantically he tried to pry the hands loose, but his attacker was inhumanly strong. He threw himself back and forth, but the intruder hung on, her grip tightening. Within moments the informant's rheumy eyes bulged, and his mouth opened and closed like that of a fish gasping on the sand. Finally his spidery body slumped, lifeless, onto piles of parchment.
The intruder casually pushed the body to the floor and sat down at the writing table. She picked up the smudged page, quickly scanning the still-damp writing by the light of a single, rapidly diminishing candle. Quiet as a shadow, she rose and carried the candle and several pages of parchment to the room's fireplace. The manuscript fluttered onto the hearth, and she stooped and held out the stub of burning candle. The edges of one page turned brown, then curled in upon itself as the flame caught and spread. The shadowy figure stood and watched as the final chapter of the old man's memoirs turned to ash.
Three
The merchant caravan made camp for the night, but underlying the usual bustle of activity was a deep spirit of unease. On route from Waterdeep to Cormyr, the caravan was camping in the shadow of Darkhold.
It was not unheard of for lawful merchant trains to stop at the Zhentarim stronghold; after all, business was business. Openly trading with the Dark Network was vastly preferable to defending a caravan against it. Since raiding was a random business and supplies had to be maintained, the outpost fortress routinely traded for whatever items they could not steal.
The merchants had been given every assurance of safety and fair trade, but no one in the caravan would rest easily that night. Peace of mind was impossible; surrounded on all sides by sheer rock cliffs and a heavily fortified wall, they were effectively trapped inside the Vale of Darkhold with the thousand or so members of the Zhentarim-sponsored contingent. The caravan's watch had been tripled, but so apparently had the guard on the perimeter wall above them.
Members of the merchant caravan who did not draw watch also stayed awake long into the night. Tensions were channeled into games of chance, hard drinking punctuated by loudly told tales of bravado, and furtive, frantic trysts.
In a small tent at the very edge of the camp, a lone figure waited impatiently for the others to sleep. Hours of noisy revelry passed, and after a time she could delay no longer. Arilyn Moonblade gathered her supplies and slipped away into the night.
Years of practice and an innate elven grace enabled Arilyn to move without sound, and the moonless night cloaked her in darkness. The half-elf slowly made her way toward the fortress, using the route she had painstakingly mapped. Except for a few acres of trees, the valley floor had little natural cover. Arilyn used whatever was available, darting between heaps of boulders and crawling through scrubby brush. Finally she reached the copse of trees just west of the Postern Gate Tower. Before her lay a moat, and beyond that the massive outer wall of the fortress.
The old Zhentish informant had told her most emphatically that she should not attempt to swim the moat. It was full of dangerous creatures, including small fish with razor-sharp teeth. A school of these fish could strip the flesh from a horse in a matter of minutes. Across the deceptively still waters of the moat, the fortress loomed against the starless night, its black towers thrusting upward. Crouched in the shadow of the trees, Arilyn took