Realms of the Arcane - Brian M. Thomsen [90]
Ampratines wafted into view like a phantasmal castle suddenly appearing in the desert. The djinn by their nature are a clever race, and Ampi is the cleverest of the lot, with more brain cells per cubic inch than any other creature on Faerun.
Ampi was dressed as normal, in long blue robes that set off his crimson skin. His black topknot of hair was immaculately greased and mannered, protruding through an azure skullcap like the tail of a championship horse. His solemn mouth was framed by an equally well-mannered beard and mustache.
'What ho, Ampi?" said I. "You heard?"
"Druids in the High Forest heard, I have no doubt," said Ampi calmly, his voice as deep as the crypts of Undermountain and as smooth as a halfling's promise. "It seems your granduncle has need of you."
"Need for a pawn," I muttered, looking around for my pants. Ampi waved a hand, and the missing trousers manifested at the end of his large, well-manicured hand. Genies are wonderful that way, and I think everyone should have at least one. Regardless, I was in no mood to list my djinni's good points after being terrorized by my own flesh and blood. "Why does he need me?"
"I can endeavor to find out," said Ampi smoothly. "It may take me a brief while." With this he wafted out of view. Butlers, menservants, and members of the guard would pay good money to learn how to waft as effortlessly as this genie could.
I tried to get back to sleep, but once you've been threatened in bed by a magical projection of the family patriarch, the bliss of slumber is denied. Instead, I paced, worried, and sat up by the windowsill, watching the horses in their paddock and marveling at the simplicity of their lives.
And with the arrival of morning, and the failure of Ampi to return, I chowed down a modest breakfast of snakes in gravy (at least that's what I assumed it was). Then I retired to the portico of the Nauseous Otyugh with orders for the wait staff to send another Dragon's Breath out every half hour, and keep doing so until I was no longer able to send the empties back. I sought to stave off the oncoming hangover from the previous night by launching directly into the next one.
The Nauseous Otyugh, by the way, is a bit ramshackle, a former general store put out of business by Aurora and her catalog. The second floor was set back from the first, creating a wide porch, suitable for the major Scornubel sports of drinking oneself into oblivion and watching others do the same on the street below. I had gotten quite good at both activities for the past two weeks, and was quite prepared to begin my career as a Waterdhavian expatriate, sopping up the sun and the alcohol and telling people about how horrid it was to live in a city like Waterdeep, where every second noble is a mage, and most of those are relatives.
And, of course, now I mentally kicked myself for not leaving Scornubel. Ampi had strongly recommended we keep moving a week ago, but I demurred. I would not be like some of my cousins, ordered around by servants, controlled by their butlers, mastered by their own magical homunculi. If I was to be banished from Waterdeep, I had told Ampi at the time, there was no better place to begin my exile than the balcony of old Nauseous, watching the caravans go by. But Scornubel was only a few hundred miles down the Trade Way from Waterdeep, and apparently not far enough from Granduncle Maskar's plots.
My mental wandering was interrupted when I was made aware of a youth to my right, instead of the patient barmaid that had been bringing my drinks. Surely it could not have been noon already, I thought, and the changing of shifts. Someone would have come out with a lunch menu, at the very least.
I strained to focus a bloodshot eye and discovered that the newcomer, bearing ale on a silver plate, was a halfling. His wide ivory grin was visible in the shadows of a badly woven straw hat. I blinked twice, and when he failed to disappear, ventured a conversational gambit.
"Yes?" I asked, that being the soul of wit I could