Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [39]
Then your patience will be rewarded," the Vaasan said firmly.
Melegaunt looked up, his brow furrowed into a deliberate scowl. "Am I to understand you don't trust me?" "I trust you to try harder if you have n-need of us." "An answer as slippery as the bog in which you are mired," Melegaunt snapped. "If I am successful, you will have no need of me. How can I trust you to guide me then?"
"You have the word of Bodvar, leader of the Moor Eagle Clan," the Vaasan said. "That is all the trust you need."
"Trust has different meaning for outsiders than for Vaasans, I see," Melegaunt grumbled, "but I warn you, if you go back on your promise…"
"You have nothing to fear on that account," Bodvar said. "You have but to keep yours, and I will keep mine."
"I have heard that before," Melegaunt muttered, "far too many times."
Despite his complaint, Melegaunt continued to advance up the road, probing ahead for rotten logs. By all accounts, the Vaasans had been a harsh but honest people until the fabled bloodstone mines of Delhalls and Talagbar were rediscovered and the outside world intruded to teach them the value of duplicity and fraud. Now, save for a few villages like Moortown where a man's word was rumored to be more precious than his life, they were said to be as corrupt and sly as everyone else in this world of liars and cheats.
Melegaunt was beginning to doubt Bodvar's story about the rot when his dagger finally found soft wood. He pressed harder, and the entire log disintegrated, crumbling into red dust before his eyes. Then the one beneath his hands grew spongy, prompting him to push back onto his haunches. The log beneath his knees began to soften as well, and a muddy dome of peat welled up not three feet in front of him, a long line of dorsal barbs breaking the surface as the spine of some huge, eel-shaped creature rolled past.
Melegaunt dropped onto his seat and pushed away, scrambling backward as fast as he could crawl. By the time the wood ceased growing soft, he was five paces farther from Bodvar, distant enough that he could no longer make out even the shape of the Vaasans' heads.
Another clansman screamed, then slipped beneath the bog with a muffled slurp.
"Traveler, are you still there?" Bodvar called.
"For now," Melegaunt replied. He stood and backed away another couple of paces. "Something came after me."
"One of the bog people," Bodvar said. "They are attracted by vibration." "Vibration?" Melegaunt echoed. "Like talking?"
"Like talking," Bodvar confirmed. "But do not worry about me. My armor muffles the sound-it is made of dragon scales."
"All the same, rest quiet for a while." Melegaunt's opinion of the Vaasan was rising-and more because of the risk he was taking for his tribe than because he wore dragon-scale armor. "I'll get you out. I promise."
"A man should not promise what he cannot be certain of delivering, Traveler," Bodvar said, "but I do trust you to do your utmost."
Melegaunt assured the Vaasan he would, then retreated a few more paces up the road and held his hand out over the road edge. There was not even a hint of shadow. Melegaunt's magic would be at its weakest, and he had already seen enough of his foe's power to know it would be folly to duel him at less than full strength-even in this world of decay and rebirth, wood simply did not rot as fast as had those logs.
Doing his best to ignore the occasional screams that rolled out of the fog, Melegaunt removed a handful of strands of shadowsilk from his cloak pocket and twisted them into a tightly-wound skein. In a century-and-a-half of reconnoitering Toril, he had yet to risk revealing himself by using such powerful shadow magic where others might see-but never before had he been given reason to think his long quest might be nearing its culmination. This Bodvar was a brave one, and that was the first quality. He was also wary, neither giving oaths nor taking them