The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [146]
He pushed his way through the growing thunder-rumble of carts, looking this way and that for some sign of his friend. Heartsick, he saw nothing, nothing… no gleam of blue gemweave amid the sprawled bodies.
And then, in the far tree- and tomb-studded distance, above the heads of the milling crowd of searchers, he caught sight of disheveled fair hair. Korvaun was taller than most-it could be…
Taeros broke into a run, dodging and darting.
Yes! Korvaun alive, by all the Watching Gods! And beside him, both clinging to and supporting the rather bedraggled Lord Helmfast, was a slender, flame-haired lass who could only be Naoni Dyre.
Relief flooded the Hawkwinter. Laughter welling out of him, he raced forward and threw his arms around them, and the three clung together, laughing and crying, as carts rumbled by and others wept.
Finally, starving for air, Taeros pulled away. "Thanks be to Torm for friends too bloody stubborn to die!"
A shadow passed over Korvaun's face, and Taeros winced. For what were the ghosts that so swarmingly haunted the Deadrest, but folk too stubborn to die?
"Do you count me among your friends, then, Lord Taeros?" Naoni Dyre asked quietly. "On such short acquaintance, and me a common-born lass?"
Her stare told the Hawkwinter that his answer really mattered to her. Glib phrases rose readily to his tongue-and there stopped. Taeros blinked, realizing that what he was about to say was simple truth.
"Strangely enough, I do," he marveled.
Before he could chastise himself for that slip of the tongue, both of his friends, the old and the new, burst into laughter.
Taeros heard the high, wild edge to Naoni's mirth and told her quickly, "Let's begone from here. I saw not your father nor sister outside the gates, but in all candor, I wasn't looking for them."
"Nor would you have found them. Father told us not to expect him in at all last night-New Day work, I've no doubt-and I took his room, so I could sleep while Faen slipped out to a revel. She's probably not back even yet, and neither of them knows I came here. But they'll soon find me missing, and worry."
"I've a coach waiting, if you can walk four streets west."
Relief and gratitude shone on Naoni's face, making her look like a lamp lit from within, and Taeros wondered why he'd ever thought her plain.
The three lost no time in departing the City of the Dead. Handcarts laden with corpses were already rumbling past. Naoni winced as an arm slid off its chest to sway and dangle, but Taeros gazed at smeared lip-paint on the dead man's face and said softly, "I'll wager that one never thought, hurrying to an afternoon tryst, that he was rushing to his grave."
"Few think of their own deaths until they lie dying," Korvaun replied. He looked down at Naoni with the future in his eyes and added, "Much less what comes after. I'd never had reason to do so myself, ere last night."
Taeros stiffened in enlightenment. First Roldo, now Korvaun! With Malark gone and Beldar so troublingly preoccupied, he'd soon be reduced to drinking and wenching with just Starragar. And Lord Starragar Jardeth was certain to wed young, for what better way to maintain his customary ill spirits?
Leaving him alone, with his books and inkpots.
Another handcart rumbled past, bearing a lone dead man. It was followed by a sobbing, staggering woman. Taeros winced. Well, there was alone and then there was alone.
* * * * *
"Nao! Naoni!" The frantic whisper resumed, and so did the rattling of the heavy bolt.
Striding through cheering merchants to take his place at the gleaming table where citizens could confer publicly with the Lords of Waterdeep-all of them unmasked and rising to applaud his entrance-Varandros Dyre frowned. That sounded like Faendra, and what would she be doing here, whispering for her sister in all this tumult?
"Naoni Dyre, wake up! If you don't get up and out of here soon, Father'll be back, and then what-"
Varandros Dyre was suddenly receiving applause from no