Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [43]
"All right, all right," Beldimarr muttered. "Yer enthusiasm ' grates nigh as much as it overwhelms.
Just stand aside for a trice, and we'll – anything, Raunt?"
Arauntar was wading gingerly among hoop-topped open chests of cargo. "Blandreths look all too much like crouching men in armor," he growled back.
"Good merchant, tell me: Why d'ye carry these pots uncovered? Strikes me they'll rust!" Warily he thrust his blade close to one suspicious-looking heap and stirred it with his hand.
Haransau Olimer smiled. "Ah, good warrior, 'tis precisely 'gainst rust that my best pots travel bared to the world – when the air can reach them, they rust not! A good blandreth, know you, must be special, lest the coals or fires its three feet stand in scorch it and ruin what cooks within it!"
"I thought blandreths hung above fires on chains – from tripods, like we see in camps," Beldimarr rumbled, his eyes never leaving the cautiously stalking figure of Arauntar.
"Ah, good warrior, those cauldrons of the tripods are 'great blandreths.' My beauties stand right in thy coals or thy fire but are raised on their legs above the burning!" The merchant spread his hands. "Would you like to buy one? They're just the thing for warriors who must dine by night over fires and move on again with the new day! Why, I believe – "
"I believe there're no lurking brigands here, and we've more than a score of other wagons still to check," Arauntar growled. "Another time, perhaps, Olimer. Oh, mind out: The three pots in that corner are a-crawl with rust. I'd cover these chests at dewfall, if yer wagonflaps are open."
The blandreth-dealer gave him a sickly smile. "I thank you," he said with a little bow. "I – I'll bear that in mind."
Arauntar gave him a cheery wave and swung down from the wagon. The other guard straightened slowly with the lantern in his hand, his eyes never leaving the face of the merchant.
"Call out if you see or hear anything suspicious,"
Beldimarr added, as he turned to follow Arauntar.
"Anything at all."
"I shall, yes," the merchant assured him, clasping his hands as men who are well satisfied – or very nervous – do. The guard nodded and strode away.
Haransau Olimer lifted both of his eyebrows and looked up at the starry sky. "And that, O watching gods," he murmured in a voice so soft that even a man standing right -behind him would have struggled to hear it, "is all I know about blandreths, so the special oils wilt stay stoppered and those pots will simply have to rust. I'd best separate them into a chest of their own ere our eagle-eyed friend next inspects my wares."
It had taken only one spell from his ring to set two wagons afire and immolate the real Haransau Olimer and his assistant in one of them. It had taken Marlel's natural guile and but a few moments of pretty speech to lure the two men into one of those wagons in search of some very good deals – and he was back in Olimer's wagon hastily donning the padded belly and one of the blandreth-dealer's second-best robes before most of the shouting began. It was a matter of moments with face paints to give himself Olimer's pimples and baggy eyes, and he was ready to emerge and gawk with the rest and later sorrowfully tell Voldovan that both his passenger and his assistant seemed to be among the missing.
That passenger, paying a wagon-owner for riding-inshelter passage from Scornubel to Waterdeep, had been a young, slender man of few words and a face hidden in a cowl. Earlier Olimer had confided a few suspicions regarding him to one of the guards – but the merchant's customary cheerful disposition soon returned after the disaster, and he dismissed suggestions that his passenger had been involved in fell magic with the news that he'd gathered by roundabout queries that the lad was on something of a pilgrimage to a Waterdhavian temple and considered himself both unworthy to serve his god and unable to work holy magics. Just which god, the youngling had declined to say.
Now, of course, he was beyond questioning. Marlel looked around