Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [133]
"Raki, lifted from the Bedine. Know somewhere we can share it in peace?"
* * * * *
Avarilous, bound to a crude chair, sat facing Commander Hesach across a rough wooden table. The Zhentarim commander was stocky, running toward fat. His black robes stretched tight across his ample belly, and his face was pitted and scarred, creased with lines that the harsh candlelight of the tent emphasized. He paced about a table, in the center of which were a variety of implements. Their purpose the merchant needed no one to explain. Despite their disconcerting presence, however, his face was composed, and he spoke calmly.
"I have no objection to telling you what I was sent here to do. After all, the Bedine have no claim to my allegiance beyond what price they offered to pay."
"What price was that?" Hesach snorted.
"A thousand pieces of gold," the merchant said.
The commander snorted in disbelief. "I wouldn't have thought they had anything like that."
Avarilous shrugged. "Raiding against caravans seems to have been successful this season. In any case, I haven't seen a copper from them yet. Perhaps the Zhentarim might find more use for my services. It would hardly be the first time I've dealt with those of the Black Network."
"Perhaps. Tell me precisely what you were sent to find, and I may consider it. Then again, I may simply agree to give you a quick death and let it go at that."
Avarilous stretched against his ropes and glanced casually around the interior of the tent. It was richly furnished with rugs and tapestries. Hesach lounged near one wall on a richly carved sedan covered in the skins of desert lions.
"The Bedine seem to feel you are looking for an artifact from the Buried Realms. They seem to think you may have found it."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
The commander gave a negligent gesture, and Avarilous’s head jerked back as if he'd been slapped. He shuddered.
"They believe you're trying to build a power base here. Are you?"
"Kindly remember that I'm asking the questions. It will go better for you if you do."
Hesach bit into a pomegranate and let the juice dribble down his chin in a pink stream.
Grinning at his prisoner, he said, The desert rats are more right than they know." He rose and plunged his hand into a silver-bound chest. "What do you think of that?"
In his palm rested a tiny amulet. It seemed, to Avarilous’s weary eyes, to twinkle and glitter, almost as if a star had been imprisoned within it.
He said cautiously, "It's obviously magical. What of it?"
"What of it? What of it?" The commander laughed. "You fat idiot, do you know what this is?"
"A magical amulet." Avarilous sounded bored.
"Ha! This amulet would allow me to control the very sands of the desert, to raise them in a storm, to level them in a sheet of sand that could sweep my enemies before it. It would make me master of the desert."
"It would" observed Avarilous, "but it won't. It's chipped and cracked. In that condition, I doubt you'd get more than a handful of copper pieces at any market in Calimport.
"True, fool, but where there's one, there must be more!" Commander Hesach tossed the amulet into the chest and sank back onto his couch. "For years, we Zhentarim have searched beneath these sands for the treasures of Netheril. Now, at last, I've found them!"
"You haven't found anything more than a cracked amulet yet," said Avarilous.
His body was relaxed against the ropes, but his eyes flickered back and forth across the tent as if seeking a means of escape.
"Not yet, but soon. Soon our diggers will break through into the hoard that rests below this place. I will control it. I will rise in power. Even Fzoul Chembryl himself will speak with me, will treat with me as an equal. In time, perhaps even I shall take his place at the head of our order."
His voice had risen in volume, and he was now shouting, flecks of spittle spraying from his juice-stained lips. In full cry,