Prince of Lies - James Lowder [38]
He's no fool, Rinda noted. This part of the Keep often proved a deathtrap for those unfamiliar with the things that stalked its night – the press gangs and assassins and lurking creatures hungry for human flesh. Worst of all, though, were the naug-adar, the Zhentarim wizards who roamed the alleys in search of subjects for their sadistic experiments. No one was safe from these "devil dogs," not even men wearing Cyric's holy symbol.
"Er, we was supposed to tell you he's dead," Worvo blurted. "Your father, I mean. Three nights ago."
"Yeah," Var added. "Right after he recommended you, he had a accident in the crypts below the temple. The church buried him there as a martyr."
"How nice," Rinda said flatly. She swallowed hard to drive down the lump in her throat – not of sadness, but of rage. Betrayal was nothing new to her, especially from her father. What infuriated her now was the thought that Bevis had given over his only child to theChurchofCyric, and he hadn't even saved himself by doing it.
* * * * *
Rinda smelled the parchment-maker's shop long before she saw it. The stench of animal skins and fetid barrels of standing water wafted from the place, making the whole alley stink like an abattoir. From the amount of activity on the street, though, it was obvious the neighbors had gotten used to the unpleasant odor long ago.
In darkened doorways, scantily clad girls called out to anyone sober enough to walk on his own. And if a passerby happened to stumble, they descended on him like crows on a battlefield, taking everything of the slightest value. The body picked clean, the women hurried back to their cold, lightless perches, hacking and coughing from long-untreated maladies.
A pack of grubby children poured out of a rookery at one end of the street. They howled like wolves and overturned everything in their path not nailed down. Before that horde of flying feet and unwashed faces, men and women scattered. The prostitutes slammed their doors closed, waiting for the mob to pass, and Rinda and her escort pressed themselves against a wall. The churchmen drew their daggers to warn away the urchins. Fortunately, the pack seemed more interested in making noise than preying on anyone in particular.
As the children passed and the howling died down, a drunken chorus of bawds took command of the night air. At a tavern down the way, they belted out a paean to Loviatar, punctuating the end of each verse with a loud clattering of mugs on tabletops. Rinda thought she heard the sharp crack of a whip, too – a common enough sound at dusk in Zhentil Keep.
"This way," Var murmured through the handkerchief braced against his mouth and nose. He tugged her toward a small shop crushed between two higher buildings.
Light bled out through thick, latticed windows on the lower floor, pooling in the street that revealed enough of the place for Rinda to see it was a one-story workshop, with two floors of living quarters over it. The upper windows were either boarded up or dark. As she had suspected from the smell, the sign above the door proclaimed it the abode of a parchmenter.
Six Zhentilar stood before the shop, a wall of chain mail and bared swords. These were elite soldiers, Rinda guessed, maybe even part of Lord Chess's personal bodyguard. They stood at attention, watching the passing prostitutes and drunkards and feral children.
Var lowered his handkerchief as he approached the Zhentilar, then batted Worvo's down as well. The soldiers greeted him in return with a picket of raised blades. "Scribe for Patriarch Mirrormane," Var said to the nearest soldier.
After a moment, the man nodded his square chin and let them pass. Rinda shuddered as the light played off the soldier's face. The long scars marring his cheeks announced to the world that his tongue had been removed.
The shop door creaked open. Patriarch Mirrormane appeared on the stoop, wreathed by light and rubbing his hands together nervously. "Ah, at last," he said then fished two silver coins from the pocket of his long purple