Elminster Must Die_ The Sage of Shadowdale - Ed Greenwood [60]
“Farruk,” he snarled.
“No, you haven’t brought enough for that,” she replied brightly, crawling quickly out of his reach.
He glared at her. Then, slowly, face twisting as wry humor won out over angry fear, he managed a grin.
A grin that wavered into confused disbelief as Amarune calmly took off the cloth belt of her robe and let the garment fall open.
“I’m going to blindfold you,” she murmured, stepping past him, and did so, tying her worn and raveled belt securely over his eyes. He offered no resistance as she gently guided him up to his knees.
“Try to remove that, and die,” she added, as softly as any lover.
The grizzled old man nodded carefully.
“Crawl forward,” Amarune murmured into his ear then. “Straight as an arrow and slowly, so as not to blunder into me. Without my guidance, there are several places ahead on our journey where you could easily meet your death. Very easily.”
“Understood,” he muttered. Then, satchel carefully clutched close, he started crawling cautiously after her.
Amarune swallowed again. Fear was making her throat very dry.
She hoped her face was as impassive as she was trying to keep it. Her rooms had never seemed smaller or more tawdry.
She hated and feared her newest client and suspected the woman knew that—and was amused.
Only two lions gleamed on her desk between them.
On the other side of it stood the woman who’d put them there. Someone Amarune knew she’d never seen before; someone lean, lithe, and clad in black leathers that covered her from head to the pointed tips of her boots, hooding her face in a mask that left only her mouth and large, lion-bright yellow eyes visible. Someone who’d given her name as Talane and held a drawn sword in her hand.
It was a blade that drank all light, reflecting back not the slightest gleam, and emanated a silent something that made Amarune feel ill even from across the desk.
Its bearer was every bit as agile as Amarune and probably far deadlier in any fight. If she happened to want the Dragonriders’ best mask dancer dead, Amarune was doomed.
“I’ve offered you fair coin,” Talane purred, “and really don’t believe you’re in any position to bargain with me, Silent Shadow. Or do you prefer to be called Amarune Lyone Amalra Whitewave? Only daughter of Beltar, last of your blood, whom the Helhondreths and the Ilmbrights would dearly love to find. They want their gems back, little Rune.”
Amarune stared at her visitor, not knowing what to say, fighting to keep her face as calm as stone.
She knows. She knows all about me. But how?
“Oh, I know you don’t have that chest of waterstars,” Talane added. “I do. Pity they blamed Beltar for that little theft; he was more useful to me alive. Almost as useful as you’re now going to be, little Rune.”
Her voice became softer, yet somehow more vicious. “One word from me and Cormyr’s proud wizards of war will be turning your mind inside out, learning all your little secrets and leaving you a drooling idiot as the price of their schooling. Which means you accept that fate—or you’ll be doing my bidding at prices I set henceforth, doing little tasks all over fair Suzail. I’ve amassed quite a list of little tasks, some of them too dirty for my hands to be seen anywhere near them. Quite a list; I hope you can flourish on mere scraps of sleep.”
She backed away. “I’ll come with the first of such tasks four nights from now. Feel honored, little Rune; you are my new ‘dirtyhands,’ and I don’t choose such agents lightly.”
“Honored,” Amarune repeated flatly.
Talane’s mouth twisted in something that was more sneer than smile. “Four nights,” she murmured, and she backed right out the window—and was gone, falling from view in eerie silence.
Something made Amarune hang back from rushing to where her shutters were swinging gently in the first gray hints of coming dawn.
She knew, somehow,