Silver Shadows - Elaine Cunningham [16]
"That should do the trick," he said happily. At last raising his eyes to Arilyn, he inquired, "Do you sing?"
The Harper blinked. "I don't make a habit of it."
"A pity." Tinkersdam stroked his bald chin and mused. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. Reaching confidently into the general debris of the table behind him, he pulled from the pile the lid of a large pot. He poured a single drop of the still-steaming fluid onto the metal and then lifted the lid into a shield-guard position.
"Be so kind as to strike," he requested. When she hesitated, he pointed out, "The potion did no damage to a tin lid. It is unlikely to harm an elven sword!"
Seeing the logic in this, Arilyn drew her moonblade and obligingly smacked the flat of it against the makeshift shield. Immediately a deep, ringing sound rolled through the cavern, like the tolling of a giant bell might sound to someone who stood in the bell tower directly below it.
The Harper swore and clapped both hands to her sensitive ears. Tinkersdam, however, merely beamed, even though the vibrations from the "shield" ran up his arms and set his pair of chins aquiver.
"Oh, excellent! A fine result," he shouted happily.
Still smiling broadly, Tinkersdam tossed aside the lid, then stoppered the vial with a cork and handed it to Arilyn. "You might find a use for this in your travels. Don't drink it," he cautioned her loudly. "At least, not on an empty stomach. Rumblings, you know."
Since the rejoinder that came to Arilyn's mind paled before this latest absurdity, she merely took the vial and gingerly tucked it into her pack. "The other things?" she requested, shouting to be heard above the ringing in her ears.
"Most of them," the alchemist agreed in kind. He bustled over to the far side of the cavern and took a large, paper-wrapped bundle from a pile of similar packages. "This one is yours. I added a few new devices for you to test. Do tell me how they turn out."
Arilyn noted the insignia of Balik-the family name of Zazesspur's ruling pasha-adorning several of the packages. "Hasheth has been here, I see."
Tes, indeed. Fine lad," the alchemist commented.
The Harper was not so sure she agreed with that assessment. Granted, the young Prince Hasheth had proven to be a valuable contact. Through him Danilo had gained access to the palace, and she herself had received much useful information about Zazesspur. It was Hasheth who had helped her set up Tinkersdam in a wondrous workshop hidden in the mountains overlooking the city, and who continued to supply the alchemist with needed ingredients, often at his own expense. Yet Arilyn could not forget the particulars of their first meeting: Hasheth had been a student assassin, and she had been his assigned prey. Although the young prince had opened a door for her into the closely held assassins' guild and had since moved on to sample several other professional endeavors, the half-elf did not' miss the predatory gleam in his black eyes whenever he regarded her.
Or perhaps she was simply becoming too accustomed to expecting the worst wherever she looked. "Soon 111 be seeing ogres under every bed and drow in every shadow," she muttered.
"That happened to me once," Tinkersdam commiserated. Apparently, his hearing slipped back into the normal range with amazing speed. "Fumes, you know. I was swatting at invisible stirges for days."
Arilyn sighed and shouldered her package. "I was offered another assignment. I might be going away for a while."
"Oh? We're moving again?"
It was not an unreasonable question. An explosion in Suzail a few years back had destroyed a hefty portion of a castle belonging to an influential nobleman and forced Tinkersdam into hiding. Rather than hunt him down whenever she needed him, Arilyn found it worth her while to locate the alchemist near her current base of operations. She paid most of his expenses through the fees she earned adventuring for the Harpers and considered every copper well spent.