Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [44]
The Silken Shadow clenched her fists, threw back her head to gulp air, chose her path across the garden between the great tubs and barrels of dripping plants-and ran for all she was worth, gaining speed and veering at the end just enough to hurl herself up… up… high into the night, tumbling once… twice…
Glory of glories! She was going to-
Crash into the window-sill hard enough to numb her arm and shoulder or break them outright, smash all the wind from her lungs, and somersault her helplessly into the darkness beyond, to thump, bounce, and skid along on a thick, fur-like carpet.
Colored glass in two decorative side-panels shattered and sang around her as she burst them wide, to bounce and swing in her wake, and…
There was a great bed in the ornate room. A naked man and woman lay bound hand and foot beside each other by the foot of it-and turning from them, two dark-clad, hooded figures with curved, gleaming knives in their hands!
Winded and in pain, Narnra could do no more than twitch and writhe as she came to a halt-and black-clad bodies blotted out the light.
Steel flashed down and bit into her, so cold and sharp that she couldn't have screamed even if she'd had breath enough to do so. Narnra rolled away, or tried to, mewing in pain, as those knives bit down again and again.
Seven
INTRIGUE IS A FINE DARK WINE
Making coins and crushing rivals is a fine day's feasting-but the dance of intrigue that leads to such things is a fine dark wine.
Andratha Thunbarr
My Days As A Merchant Queen
Year of the Wandering Wyrm
"Get her! By Shar, a hired slayer! Durexter, you'll pay for this!" Surth snarled, stabbing for all he was worth. He promptly slipped on the bunched-up carpet for the fourth time and fell heavily across the newcomer, leaving Bezrar no safe place to stab.
"Not mine!" the trussed merchant cried frantically, from the floor. "Not mine!"
"That's true," another voice roared, as someone else burst through the window, sending fresh shards of glass bouncing and singing across the bedchamber, "because she's mine! "
Gasping, shuddering, and pawing feebly for her own knife, Narnra Shalace sobbed in the grip of worse pain than she'd ever felt before, searing and wet and-emptying. She was emptying out, flowing…
Struggling atop her, Malakar Surth set the point of his knife into the floor, drove it down hard through a gap in the tiles, and used it as a handle to drag himself off of the heaving, slithering night-slayer beneath him. Such folk often carried poisons-possibly ones he himself had supplied-and he wanted to be well away from this one before-
Glarasteer Rhauligan ducked under Bezrar's wild slash, slammed a balled fist into the fat merchant's rotund chest-above the belly and below the heart, forcing Bezrar into the wild battlecry of "Eeep!"-and ran on, slamming hard into Surth and smashing him back against the nearest wall, which happened to sport a glass-fronted wardrobe.
More singing shards rained down amid the bouncing of Surth's bruised limbs, and Rhauligan found his feet, snatched Narnra by the shoulder, and was away toward the window before the wardrobe wavered, shivered all over as Starmara Dagohnlar screamed for the fate of her finest frilled lovegowns and nightrobes, and began its ponderous but inexorable thundering topple to the floor.
Malakar Surth, head ringing and hands smarting from dozens of small cuts, got himself dazedly up onto one elbow, coughing for breath, in time to wonder why what faint light there was in the room was so swiftly disappearing… for all the world as if black night was coming down from above like a solid ceiling…
The crash of the wardrobe slamming down with force enough to snatch everyone off their feet-or in the case of the trussed Dagohnlars, into the air-was loud enough to deafen Surth, even before his head burst through the flimsy back panel of the piece with a loud splintering sound. Had the wardrobe possessed stout wooden front doors, on the other hand, he might never again have heard anything at all.
This was not a consideration he was presently in any fit