The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [140]
The three merchants coughed at her. "Oh, well…'the Bold,' eh?" the procurer replied. "Uh-ha."
"Rundrar always shares a suite with his friends on the road," Embra added rather grimly, "just so you don't go ordering me separate chambers or something similarly suspicious." She sighed and added, "Though I suppose I'm being overly wary. Even if some scrying mage finds us here, hired slayers can't ride up to the inn without being seen."
The three men exchanged rather more sober glances before Craer laid a hand on Embra's arm and said in low tones, "Think you slayers jingle about with scabbarded blades thrusting out from their armor in all directions and scars all over their faces? Lady, know this: It is so pitifully easy to kill a man. One knife-throw, one shove-even one well-placed broken goblet."
Embra sighed. "I was hoping to forget about all that for a few days. I want to test this Stone, and then give it to Sarasper."
"Ah," the healer said hesitantly, "perhaps that wouldn't be such a good idea just yet. You wield it so well…"
Craer shot him a look. "A god demanded you undertake this quest, and perhaps it's not such a good idea, now? D'you habitually try to outdeal gods, or is a grave looking particularly welcoming just now?"
Even through his florid, warty disguise Sarasper looked uncomfortable. "I-I don't trust myself with such power, that's all."
The armaragor's heavy hand came down on his shoulder. "We none of us love what life hands us, all the time-but there's no one listening, I find, when you give complaints to the Three. If you don't like what befalls, it seems, that's just too flootin' bad!"
"Friends," said the healer in a small voice, "I'm just a lot more… tired than I thought I'd be. I've hidden and skulked and grown patient for too long. Give me some time."
The procurer clapped his arm. "Well, that's easily done. I'd rather leave saving all Darsar from doom to someone else for a month or more, too, and go where every passing man with a tankard isn't a mighty mage trying to slay me in slow, utter agony just to gain a lump of rock."
Sarasper nodded as they went down the old and groaning roof stairs. "It'll probably be best if we lie low and use spells to scry out the land for a goodly time before we try to gain another Dwaerindim."
"For that matter," Embra agreed, "I'll be happier if we stay well clear of Aglirta while it's full of armies whelming and wizards swarming like angry bees around a cracked hive."
And she said not a word more until they were settled into their rooms, with a large, full tub of hot petal-scented water to soak in, and cold wine to share. Then she calmly kicked off her boots, dropped her clothes and her magical disguise together, picked up a wine flask, and asked, "Well? What are you all waiting for?"
Wisely the three men said nothing-but none of them failed to notice that, bare as she was, Embra had the Stone of Life tucked securely under one arm.
"Well?" Baron Ithclammert Cardassa sat back in his ornate chair of office and regarded his two advisers with a thin, unfriendly smile. "I'm waiting. Have either of you any other brilliant deductions as to the whereabouts of Dwaerindim?"
Baerethos and Ubunter squirmed under the baron's cold, watchful gaze. News of spell-battles in the wilds was all over Cardassa, and more: priests of the Three up and down the Vale had just proclaimed from their altars that a Dwaer Stone had been found and called upon.
The three men facing each other across the grandest table in Cardassa knew something else: that the baron's two best war blades had gone to great expense to hire wizards near the places Baerethos and Ubunter had said a Stone would be found. Exhaustive searches had followed-and found not the slightest trace of anything.
The two advisers darted glances at each other, found scant comfort in the view, and looked away, Baerethos regarding his own reflection in the mirror-polished table and Ubunter raising his eyes to the nearest flame-winged crow of Cardassa, of many adorning that lofty hall. Neither