• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The thespian opened his eyes, and a grimace of pain immediately passed over his face.

"You are alive old friend!" Volo said softly, not yet sure how serious the thespian's wounds were.

"Just barely," the son of Idle and Catinflas replied weakly.

"Is there anything I can do, old friend?" Volo asked.

"No, dear Volo," Passepout said a trifle dramatically. "Just allow me to pass from this life, here and now, in this pool of blood."

Volo felt on the verge of tears, and held the dying thespian's hand up to his face. "Courage, dear friend," he implored. "You are still warm, perhaps McKern can save you."

"No," the master thespian insisted, "I already feel death's cold shadow as my heart pumps its last few ounces of blood into the river that feeds this pool of blood."

Pool of blood, the master traveler thought to himself, it sounds so familiar.

Volo looked down at the area around his bisected friend. The floor was dry, and nary a trace of blood was visible.

Quickly the master traveler cast back the cloak from his prostrate friend's body, and observed the placement of the two blades, one sandwiched between two tree-sized thighs, the other nestled in the right armpit. In both cases, the thespian's skin was barely nicked.

The master traveler laughed.

"It serves me right, you lucky knave," the master gazetteer replied, as his thought-to-be-dying friend sat up with great vigor.

" 'Twasn't luck, 'twas skill," the thespian replied. "It is imperative that a skilled actor know how to avoid an oncoming blade in a dying sequence if one wishes to have much of a career on the stage."

"Pool of Blood was the title of one of the plays in your repertoire, if I recall correctly."

"Indeed, it is," the thespian replied, "Ward's Folly, also known as The Pool of Blood, a real slaughterfest of a show."

Out of the corner of his eye, Volo saw McKern. The old mage was still staring at the slowly recovering form of the captain of the Hawks, muttering under his breath.

"You killed my brother," he murmured. "An honest man, a craftsman, a humanitarian. He served Mulmaster as best he could, trusting his superiors, and now he is dead. He never saw it coming. My name is Mason McKern. You killed my brother; prepare to die!"

As the grief-possessed mage rambled on, his rage increased, his fingers began to flex, and his exclamations of grief dissolved into arcane incantations.

Rassendyll immediately recognized what was happening. "Back off Volo, Passepout!" he ordered.

"Get away from the bodies!"

Volo sprang to the side, while the chubby thespian responded with a quick roll to the right, seeking shelter behind a chair.

The High Blade's twin approached the mage, who was in turn approaching Rickman. "Calm down, McKern," Rassendyll urged gently, trying not to notice the smoke that seemed to be coming from the old wizard's fingertips. "This is neither the time nor the place for a fireball."

"Leave me be," Mason said sternly. "Your father's killer is dead, and my brother's killer should join him."

For the third time in less than half an hour, a person announced their presence to the inhabitants of the room with a loud, prohibitive command.

"No!"

The mage, former mage, gazetteer, and thespian turned toward a sideboard located on the other side of the room which had just started to swing forward to reveal yet another secret passage, out of which stepped the imposing figure of the blind swordmaster, Honor Fullstaff.

"The sentence of death will be carried out, old friend," Honor Fullstaff said with great certainty, "but not just yet. I am afraid that he might still be of use to us for just a little while longer."

McKern was torn between his desire for vengeance and the common sense preached by his old friend. The stern look on his old friend's face cast the deciding vote, as the old mage had no desire to cross Honor Fullstaff when he had already let his position be known.

"Agreed," the old mage assented. "What's our next move?"

* * * * *

In the Apartment of Mischa Tam in the

Thayan Embassy in Mulmaster:

Mischa Tam was beginning to get nervous.