The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [164]
"Who are you working for?" Beldar snarled, pinning the spy against the steps and thrusting his head forward until their noses were almost touching. "What were you after? My life?"
"N-nay," the dying halfling whispered. "Something you stole, high and mighty lorrrr…"
That last word became a gurgling rattle, and the flickering light in those doomed eyes faded.
Leaving Beldar Roaringhorn holding a dead halfling on the side of Mount Waterdeep in a cold, rising breeze-and uncomfortably aware of the City Guard lookouts somewhere above and behind him and the watching city spread out below.
Stunned, Beldar cradled the body of the hin as if comforting a chilled friend.
He'd just murdered someone. In the space of a few breaths. A stranger, who didn't seem to be carrying anything more than two daggers-just small knives, for all their wicked sharpness. Someone trying to recover something he, Beldar, had stolen?
That made no sense. The gauth whose eye he now possessed was dead, sliced into dozens of bloody cantels to yield up eyes and innards to the Amalgamation. Beyond that, Beldar couldn't think of anything he'd taken, beyond a few kisses at the Slow Cheese, before…
Before everything had fallen, and Malark had died.
Beldar shivered and thrust the halfling away from him. Head lolling, the body started to topple. In sudden horror Beldar caught hold of it and arranged it hastily in a lounging position on the steps. The head lolled over again.
He put it back in a reasonably lifelike pose, and it slowly lolled to one side. Again.
Sickened, Beldar stood up, fetched his fallen sword, and hurried on up the steps, trembling in revulsion. He'd just done murder.
So swiftly, so easily.
"Gods," he whispered aloud to the wind, "what have I become?"
Behind and below him was a city full of mages and priests who could snatch secrets from the newly dead, Watchmen who arrested murdering young lords, and black-robed Magisters who pronounced sentence with the full force of Waterdeep's laws…
As he came up onto the City wall-deserted here, with no guardpost near-Beldar realized he'd been whispering his question over and over.
He clapped a hand to his beholder eye. It was magical-and all too powerful: Its wounding magic could slay. An appendage of his, now, and not the other way around.
Right?
It felt warm, and-though he knew this was impossible-larger than his entire head. Hastily Beldar slipped his eyepatch up into place.
The world seemed to shift slightly, some of the color going out of it. Beldar stumbled, reeled, and muttered, "What in the name of all the Watching Gods is happening to me?"
He strode a few paces, passing a dark dome beyond the battlements: the top of the great stone head of one of the Walking Statues of Waterdeep. It stood in its niche below the wall-walk, staring blindly out to sea.
Staring blindly. Beldar almost envied it.
Something warm and dangerous stirred behind his eyepatch. The dead hin would soon be found; he must get down off this wall in all haste.
No, that was craven… unworthy. He'd done what he'd done, and must face the consequences.
But a fierce voice rose within him, filling his head and spilling out of his mouth. "Move," Beldar muttered. "Get you gone, idiot! Move!
Just ahead, the next Walking Statue stirred.
Beldar's heart jumped. The Guard had seen his crime! They were causing the Statue to turn and smash him, right here!
"Turn around, blast it all!" he snarled. Must run…
The Statue turned and settled back into its niche.
Beldar gaped.
Staring at it in bewilderment, he found himself wondering just what it was that looked different about this Statue.
Oh. This was the Sahuagin Statue.
He'd see its cruel, monstrous stone face more clearly if it turned a bit that way…
Obediently, with a few grating sounds as it brushed against the mountainside, the titanic stone sahuagin turned to show him its profile.
For a long time Beldar Roaringhorn stood as still as the Statues along the wall