The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [42]
Another eight helmed horrors awaited Korvaun, four on either side this time. As he stepped forward, he felt the probing the ghostly lady had warned him about, like a tingling haze in the air. He was suddenly surrounded by blue smoke so thin he could barely see it, and so acrawl with power that he was shuddering.
The youngest Lord Helmfast hesitated as radiances flickered and grew stronger all around him, and his hands and face went numb. He decided to walk on. What sort of probing was this? The surging tinglings coiled most strongly around the rings on his fingers and the slender sword he wore, but seemed to ignore his dagger. Most curious.
Then it was all gone, fallen away as if it had never been, and he was passing between the motionless helmed horrors and traversing empty flagstones toward the stair. Before him, massive turned wooden posts like the deck-bollards of a great ship held up stairs as finely made as the flights in any villa or mansion he'd ever seen, but far plainer.
Faint kitchen noises-and now a waft of cooking, too-came from behind some of the doors he was leaving behind as he ascended, but he still saw no sign of a living person.
Some folk of Waterdeep spoke of Mirt's Mansion as a sort of vast prison or series of bloodstained torture chambers, where folk who'd been unwise or desperate enough to fall into his clutches screamed out their pain as he cut what he was owed out of their flesh. Others held that it was as gray and drab and graspingly humorless as any moneylender must be, and still others…
Had obviously never been here, any of them. None had walked along a thick blue fine-weave rug as long as any Waterdhavian noble villa might boast, in a white-walled passage whose sides curved up and around overhead in a smooth, unbroken arch. Korvaun strode softly along it, past several closed doors: broad, plain-plank affairs rather than the gaudily carved entries of snarling lion faces and suchlike favored by most rising-coin merchants. He was heading for what must be a solar ahead, where the passage opened out, sunlight streamed down from above, and plants flowered in profusion.
Fine plants, some in hanging baskets. Dodging amongst them was a fat, puffing man in flopping boots and seaman's breeches held up by both braces and the broadest belt Korvaun had ever seen. But then, he'd seen very few bellies that bulged and strained above and over belts with quite the quivering enthusiasm Mirt's did.
Just now, the infamous moneylender was watering his plants with a shower of sweat as he stamped, parried, and scrambled. Mirt was grunting and wheezing like a tired cart-ox as he fenced with a petite lady in dark leathers, whose hair danced behind her like the mane of a proud horse.
My, what a beauty! Korvaun watched her in open admiration and found his gaze drawn to the quickening skirl and clash of blades as Mirt groaned, sputtered, and cursed his way right out of view, driving his lovely opponent back through the greenery.
There followed a sudden lionlike roar of dismay and a tinkling of merry feminine laughter. Korvaun followed the sounds into the warm, damp air of the solar.
Both combatants were regarding him with interest before he could even draw breath to speak. Rings on their fingers glowed in sudden readiness. Korvaun tried a smile.
"I… offer no menace to you or to any in this fair house. I'm Korvaun Helmfast of House Helmfast, here to crave audience on matters of business with the famous Mirt the Moneylender."
Mirt grunted, wiped one fat-fingered hand across his brow, and leaned on his sword as if it was a dung-spade. Korvaun managed not to wince.
"A flatterer, eh? Ye must be desperate."
Korvaun found himself at a loss for words. Well, that was quick.
"I've some need for coin, yes," he managed, uncomfortably aware of dancing mirth in the woman's eyes,