Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [85]
He broke into a run, hard and swift, bouncing and bruising her but somehow keeping his balance. His boots were on cobbles, now, with the sounds of Marsember all around. More echoes, the distant rumble of cartwheels, some chatter, and a growing din.
Rhauligan carried her into somewhere quieter that stank of dung, rotting fish, and other decaying things, turned a few corners, scraped her boots once against stone, and set Narnra down on what felt-and groaned-like a rickety wooden cart.
She sat still as he fastened something around her neck then set her on her feet and kicked away the cart. Its wheels set up a protesting squeal that ended in a crash of wood against stone. Narnra heard the familiar sound of a rat scuttling through refuse.
His hands were at a buckle, and… she was unhooded and blinking in the sudden light of day, gasping as none-too-fresh air was hers once more for the taking. Rhauligan shook out the hood, which proved to be a vest. His vest.
Narnra drew in deep breaths, looking around. She was in a garbage-strewn Marsemban alley, hobbled and with her thumbs and fingers wired together behind her back… and the cord around her waist and thighs led up to-she turned, lifting her head to look, and discovered she wore a choke-leash-the underside of a rusty iron outer staircase. The leash led there, too. It looked like the back stair of a warehouse that saw little use but presented an unfriendly, rotting fortress face to Faerun anyway.
Rhauligan, of course, stood not far away-but out of any possible reach, no matter how furiously she might try to strangle herself reaching him.
"Important folk seem very interested in you," he said thoughtfully as their eyes met. "I wonder why."
Narnra shrugged at him through her tangled hair. "I know not," she snapped, "but I do know that I'm not yours nor your Mage Royal's to take and confine like some sort of pet or bauble-just as I was not Elminster's to give!"
"I can scarce believe, she-thief, that you've not yet learned that if anyone can do a thing to you, they've the right to do it-if they stand for law, and you do not."
Rhauligan cast quick glances up and down the deserted, refuse-heaped alley and added, "Brutal, yes, but outlanders like you who deal with the Lady Ambrur are buyers and sellers of information… and the whereabouts and doings of Vangerdahast is information that could make you very rich and doom Cormyr at the same stroke. Had the Mage Royal not commanded your capture, I'd be slaying you now, not bandying words with you. I dislike slaying young lasses, but if I must choose between spilling the blood of just one of them and saving a bright realm full of them, my choice is clear."
Narnra glared at him, straining against the wires until her fingers burned, and spat, "So you can sell the information yourself, no doubt, or we'd not be in this alley. I know Waterdeep, not Cormyr. I couldn't even find my way to a gate out of this city unless you let me search for a bit. Who'm I going to sell anything to? And how'm I supposed to know anything useful to sell to a realm full of folk I don't even know? "
Rhauligan's only reply was a wordless, crooked smile.
"So what's going to happen to me now?" she snarled. "Why'm I here?"
"Business meeting," Rhauligan said, looking up and down the alley again. "Important business."
"With?" Narnra demanded, staring around at the deserted, garbage-heaped alley with a skeptical eyebrow arched.
A sensation broke over her then, a creeping and tingling quite unlike anything she'd ever felt before. It was energetic, swift… and magical.
Narnra tried to curse, but her tongue seemed huge and heavy, and her suddenly slack mouth not her own. She tried to toss her head and-with a sudden leap of fear-found herself still standing motionless, still gazing just where she'd been looking before.
The invisible, paralyzing force was streaming into her from off to her left, about six paces away… where a heap of trash suddenly shifted and rose up with a little grunt of effort, falling away untidily to reveal a woman