The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [162]
By the time Beldar reached his room, his head was throbbing, and the burning in his new eye made him long to tear it from his head. He ached all over, and no wonder. Each garment he shed revealed new bruises.
Gazing regretfully at his ever-handy decanters, Beldar went to one end of the sideboard, unlocked the hidden compartment there, and downed a healing potion.
It snatched away his headache in the time it took him to pad to his waiting bath. Ah, a long, warm soak! Sorbras was worth every last shiny dragon the Roaringhorns paid him…
The waters did nothing to ease his mind nor banish his restlessness, and Beldar lingered only long enough to scrub himself clean. Dripping his way back to his bedchamber, he found his bed far less inviting than he'd expected.
Bone-deep exhausted he might be, but something within him was driving him on; he had to be out there again, in the night.
Seeking… danger, perhaps. Well, hadn't Roaringhorns been famous battle-lions of old, and was he not a Roaringhorn? No battle was ever won, and no lands ruled, by a man languidly counting his bruises in a scented bath.
He'd need boots on his feet for the streets and something above them more suitable than an open-fronted, swirling chamber-robe.
Beldar padded barefoot to his robing-rooms.
He had no spell-spurning talisman to replace the one the half-dragon had destroyed, but he refilled his gem-pouch and selected his grandes "dashing yet refined bladesman of action" garb. Crimson shirt, breeches fashioned of red and black, black tunic… the eyepatches he'd ordered had been delivered, and Beldar selected one that bore a stylized lightning bolt across its darkness. Dashingly overbold, but it suited his mood.
His gemcloak was as bright and unwrinkled as if he'd never worn it. Beldar settled it around his shoulders in all its ruby splendor. Folk were beginning to know him in the streets by its striking hue; the notoriety he'd long sought was his at last.
Yet notoriety was a poor substitute for destiny. Small wonder he'd snatched so eagerly at the first chance at fulfilling the Dathran's prophecy. He touched his eyepatch lightly; yes, he'd quite literally 'mingled himself with monsters.' The Dathran had promised such a mingling would be the beginning of his path to greatness. She'd also said he'd be a deathless warrior and a leader of men.
Beldar smiled grimly at his reflection in the tall robing room mirrors-a smile that froze when a grim thought smote him: The Dathran had said nothing about the sort of men he'd lead nor the nature of his great and unknown destiny. Did not scoundrels require leaders more than honest men? Had he taken his first step to lordship over rogues and villains?
Frowning, he swept down the back stairs and out into the street. He knew not what he sought, aside from trouble. He'd welcome another chance at that half-dragon-or Hoth, for that matter. And this time, he'd fight his own battle!
"I am Beldar Roaringhorn," he proclaimed in a self-mocking murmur as he turned a corner, hand on hilt, "and 'twere best, m'lord, if you feared me."
A Watchman lounging in the lee of a greathouse gate-pillar waiting for a certain personage to obligingly step out of that gate to be arrested, overheard that murmur, and rolled his eyes before carefully not smiling. Young idiot.
He would have been more than surprised to know that for all his grandly carefree air, Beldar Roaringhorn agreed with his assessment.
Not knowing this, the Watchman had to settle for being surprised to notice a halfling in leathers the hue of mottled gray stone-and with hair to match-stroll along the street after Beldar, pausing briefly here and there to admire carved faces on pillars and grand ornaments on iron gates, but glancing repeatedly at the young noble.
A bit old and small for a cudgel-thief. Ah, but perhaps the elder Roaringhorns had hired a "vigilant eye" to see where