The City of Splendors_ A Waterdeep Novel - Ed Greenwood [94]
Or rather, the necromancer's prophecy had stolen that smile and put a swagger into Beldar's step that hadn't yet deserted him.
Until today.
His first real battle had been an utter disaster. He was destined to be a leader of men, a hero who could rise from seeming death. That was the prediction his brother's coins had bought, yet to his utter mortification, he'd let some lout get a fish-gutting knife past his guard, then swooned at the sight of his own not-quite-blue-enough blood!
He'd atone for this. He would win his next battle, which was why he was here again. It would be a simple matter for the necromancer to seek out the man who'd cut him and the names of those who'd caused the fray in the first place. Thus armed, Beldar Roaringhorn would seek vengeance on them all.
The stairs ended in a small, dark stone hall. Its far wall was carved into the likeness of an enormous skull, a faint greenish glow emanating from the empty eyesockets.
Beldar strode forward to put the purse Taeros had given him on the ledge of the skull's nose.
"I seek names. Their fates have already been decided."
A moment of silence greeted his boast. Then a dry chuckle came from behind the skull-wall, and a voice he knew. A crone's voice. "Welcome, young Roaringhorn. Come in, and learn those you wish to slay."
The front four "teeth" swung inward, and Beldar ducked and climbed through that opening-and a tingling moment of warding magics and spells of darkness-into a surprisingly lavish room.
Fabulous tapestries softened its stone walls, and a warm red glow came from a marble hearth. A winged imp, the necromancer's familiar, was curled up before the brimstone-scented fire like a somnolent cat.
A shapeless pile of black rags rose haltingly from a deep-cushioned chair. Beldar went to one knee-not out of respect, but from memory of the pain the old woman had inflicted at his last visit, when as a lad he'd been too proud to bend a knee.
The old crone nodded approvingly and raised a wizened hand to remove the black mask concealing her face. Bright blue eyes gazed out of a maze of wrinkles. "So you've come to Dathran again."
He bit back a retort about stating the obvious, for the old woman's calling was more a title than a name. Dathrans were rogue witches cast out of Rashemen for doing evil or using magic in a way proscribed by her sisterhood-in her case, death magics of Thay.
Those dark spells and her second sight had earned "Dathran" a place in Waterdeep's underground. Like many nobles, Beldar had more of an acquaintance with the dark underbelly of city life than he would admit to in polite society.
"I want the man who did this," Beldar said, touching the wound on his forehead, "and those who started the battle in which I received it."
Dathran nodded again and hobbled to a shallow scrying-bowl. "Blood," she said, looking at him expectantly.
The Lord Roaringhorn swallowed a grimace and came over to the basin. The necromancer mumbled a brief incantation as she reached up to touch his forehead, her fingers as dry and brittle as bird's feet. They traced the wound, calling forth the memory of its making, and with it, a swift new flow of blood.
Beldar leaned over the basin, letting the dark drops fall into the water. Light promptly began to rise toward the surface, like a glowfish rising from the depths of a cave pool. The water roiled briefly, then smoothed, a vivid picture forming: a roadside smithy, the South Gate of Waterdeep rising close behind it, where a leather-aproned man was tapping a new shoe onto a carthorse hoof. The man's face was familiar, and the sign over his forge-wagon read "The Lucky Horseshoe."
All of Tymora's luck, Beldar thought grimly, would not be enough to keep him alive. "And the instigators?"
The necromancer bowed her head, spread her hands over the bowl, and rocked gently back and forth. Dreading what he might see, Beldar dropped his gaze to the bowl again.
In the scene now floating in those depths, an elderly man was lowering himself into