Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [0]
Elminster - 5 Elminster's
Daughter
Court Sage of Cormyr
Letters To A Man To Be King
Year of the Smiling Flame
Astramas Revendimar,
Sons, sons-always you boast of what your tall sons will do, with their sharp new wits and sharper new swords! Remember, O Prince, that you have also daughters! You're not the first man, great or low, to forget the shes he's sired, but mark this wisdom, Lord (not mine, but from the pen of a loremaster who was dust before dragons were ever driven from this land): The sages who turn the pages of history have a word for men who overlook their daughters… and that word is "fools."
One
A MURDEROUS MEETING OF
MERCHANTS
A wizard, a merchant, a lord among merchants-I see no shortage of fools here
.
The character Turst Sharptongue in Scene the First
of the play Windbag of Waterdeep
by Tholdomor "the Wise" Rammarask
first performed in the Year of the Harp
It was a moonfleet night, the silvery Orb of Selune scudding amid racing tatters of glowing cloud high above the proud spires of Waterdeep. Wizards in their towers and grim guards on battlements alike stared up and shivered, each thinking how small he was against the uncaring, speeding fire of the gods.
Far fewer merchants bothered to lift their gazes above the coins and goods-or softer temptations-under their hands at that hour, for such is the way of merchants. Hundreds were snoring, exhausted by the rigors of the day, but many were still awake and embracing-even if the hands of most of them were wrapped only around swiftly emptying tankards.
There were no tankards, no embraces, and no soft temptations in a certain shuttered upper room overlookingJembril Streetin Trades Ward. Instead, it held a cold, bare minimum of furniture-a table and six high-backed chairs-and an even colder company of men.
Six merchants sat in those chairs on this chill night in the early spring of the Year of Rogue Dragons, staring stonily at each other. The glittering glances of five of them suggested that the health of the sixth man, who sat alone at one end of the table, would not continue to flourish for more than a few breaths longer had it not been for the presence of the two impassive bodyguards who stood watchfully by his chair, cocked and loaded hand-crossbows held ready and free hands hovering near sword-hilts.
That sixth man said something, slowly and bitingly.
Outside, in the night, a shadow moved. An unseen witness to the merchants' meeting leaned closer to the only gap in the shutters across the windows of that upper room. Clinging head-downward to the carved stone harpy roof-truss nearest to the shutter, the shadow sacrificed as much balance as she dared, and strained to hear. Her slender arms were already quivering in the struggle to keep herself from plunging to the dark, cobbled street below.
"There are really no more excuses left to you, sirs," the man who sat apart told the others, smirking. "I will have my coins this night-or the deeds to your shops."
"But-" one of the men burst out, and then bit off whatever else he'd been going to say and looked helplessly down at the bare table before him, face dark with anger.
"So you'll ruin us, Caethur?" the next man man asked, his voice trembling. "You'd rather turn us out onto the streets than bleed us for another season? When you could set your hook at a higher rate, grant us more time, and keep us in debt forever, paying you all our days and yielding you far more coin than our stones are worth?"
Secure in the strength of the two murderous bodyguards at his back, Caethur leaned forward with a widening-and not very nice-smile on his face and replied triumphantly, "Yes."
He leaned back in his chair, very much at his ease, steepled his hands, and murmured over the resulting line of fingertips, "It will give me great pleasure, Hammuras, to ruin you. And you too, Nael. And especially you, Kamburan."
He moved his eyes in his motionless, smiling face to the other pair of seated merchants and added with a sigh, "Yet it almost pains me to visit the same fate upon you two gentlesirs.