Murder in Halruaa (30 page)

He raised a paw that was partly a hand and touched Pryce’s

face. “Stupid, ignorant, unaware travelers to be sure,” he said, “but innocent nonetheless.”

Pryce chuckled painfully, blinking away moisture. “Travel well, you whom I would call my friend. Run fast in the sleep that knows only peace.”

Cunningham smiled. “I will watch over my children from that place,” he promised. “And every moment I will bless the fact that they have no human consciousness … to make them do anything so foolish as to care.” Then he was gone.

Pryce stood and turned to the mongrelman, who was weeping openly and unashamedly. Pryce put his arm around the thing, and they walked toward the wood. They stopped only to look down at the charred, curled remains of what had once been Gheevy Wotfirr … and perhaps even Darlington Blade. There was really nothing left. Even now the wind was blowing what ashes there were in every different direction.

Pryce moved on to where Dearlyn held the crumpled Devolawk in her arms. “It was too much for him,” she said.

“His internal organs must be as piecemeal as his exterior,” Pryce realized. ‘The strain must have almost torn him apart.” He knelt down beside the creature that was part vole, part hawk, and part resurrected corpse. “Devolawk? Is there anything we can do?”

The human part of his eyelids fluttered while the hawk parts cleared and slid back. He tried to open his snout-bill, but could only burble one word. “Fly?”

Pryce put his hand on where the creature’s torn and twisted heart must be. “Yes, you will fly again, and rest in the earth. Soon. No more pain, my friend.”

Incredibly the broken one shifted in Dearlyn’s arms, one appendage straining for the sky, the other gripping the ground. “Freeeee!” he wailed before gladly dying.

Dearlyn looked up at Pryce and the mongrelman. Then she cradled the pathetic, but somehow noble, form of the dead broken one, lowered her head, and cried for him … as well as for her father.

*****

“His fear in the workshop made me wonder all the more,” Pryce said as he walked deeper into the caverns beneath the city. “Then I remembered that he hid behind Dearlyn’s cloak and held the illumination orb directly in front of his face. I realized later that his action would have kept you from seeing his face and trying once again to tell me what I had so patently ignored earlier.”

The mongrelman grunted, bumping Pryce with what served as his hip. It was his way of saying ‘That’s all right”—a method that had often come into play on the long trip back to the hidden caverns near the Question Tree. It was easier for the mongrelman to do that than to try to talk.

They reached a fork in the caves, a place where in one direction lay the entry behind Schreders At Your Service. And in the other direction? Only the mongrelman knew.

“Gurrahh?” Pryce asked. “Are you sure that’s an accurate pronunciation of your real name? Or are you trying to tell me something else I’m ignoring?”

“Grrrraughh!” the mongrelman replied, nodding its huge head. “Gurauggh.”

‘Take all the time you need,” Pryce advised, listening intently. “It’s no trouble. Believe me, I know what it’s like to have everyone get your name wrong!”

The mongrelman made the noise again and again until Pryce said “Gurauggh.” Then the beast nodded avidly. “Gurauggh,” Pryce said again, locking the pronunciation into his brain. “It’s that extra g that does it, eh?” The mongrelman lifted his hand and pushed his lip back to create a lopsided smile.

Pryce laughed in honest appreciation. “So, Gurauggh, will you look for more of your kind? Return from whence you came?”

The mongrelman glanced at both tunnel openings, then looked back at Pryce with a helpless shrug.

Covington leaned in and spoke with conviction. “You could come with me, you know… back into the light. We have much to learn from each other. I want to know your language so I never make such an egregious mistake again.” The mongrelman looked at him doubtfully. “This is indeed a shining region, Gurauggh,” Pryce assured him, “truly the hidden jewel of Halruaa, where all creatures can be accepted and at home, if they are willing to try.”

Even a twisted, horrible, resentful creature who was plotting a terrible revenge against a society that wasn’t even given a chance to accept him.

One glistening tear was the answer to Covington’s invitation. He listened carefully as the poor thing shambled into the darkness of the other tunnel. He waited until the mongrelman was completely out of sight, then turned to go.

“I… will… re… mem… ber,” he heard from the blackness.

“As I will remember you,” he quietly promised.

*****

“So, Darlington Blade,” a patiently waiting Berridge Lymwich said as he stepped out of the renovated cave entrance behind Schreders’s restaurant. She handed him a brew and raised a tankard of her own. “I hope this strange welcome won’t chase you away from Lallor.”

“You mean this one right now,” a surprised—not altogether pleased—Pryce asked, looking dubiously at the liquid, “or discovering that Gheevy Wotfirr was plotting against me and my master?”

The inquisitrix laughed, a bit stridently, but continued, all hale and hearty. “Well, everything’s been put to right. Don’t you worry on that score. The Mystra Superior herself did the incantations over the halfling’s remains. And, while I’m still a bit perplexed as to why you needed to confront him alone when all of Lallor was at your service, Priestess Sontoin herself assures us that if you say it’s in the interest of national security, then it is. So”—she raised her glass to him—”here’s to proving yourself… with a vengeance!”

Pryce tapped the bottom of his glass against the top of her proffered one, then waited until she finished drinking before handing back his untouched brew. “Have another,” he suggested. “On me.” Then he quickly slipped out of the alley to the street, leaving a repentant, anxious, and apprehensive inquisitrix with her hands full.

*****

Dearlyn Ambersong stood before the fireplace when he entered the Ambersong dwelling. She had built a fire and wore an amazing scarlet and jade gown of velvet, with a golden-laced bodice. Her hair hung free, and the heat from the flames made it shimmy like a Halabar dancer.

He looked quickly around to spot her red horsehair staff and was relieved to see it in the corner, far from her grip. “Good evening, Miss Ambersong,” he said tentatively, feeling the residence welcoming him, but wondering about the feelings of his host.

She stood, one arm on the mantelpiece, looking deep into the fire. “Good evening,” she replied, pointedly not concluding the greeting with a name. She didn’t look up from the fascination of the flames even as he moved to the center of the room. He grew still when she spoke again. “You know,” she said, her voice throaty, “I really didn’t know what I was going to do until you actually accused me on the skyship.”

“I figured,” he said quietly, moving toward the chair she had once knocked him into.

“Of course, I hardly believed you when you told me your plan in the workshop while the halfling was doing your bidding with the inquisitrixes.”

“I could see that,” he told her. “I hated to do it so soon after— after all that had happened, but there was no other time.”

She still didn’t look up from the fire. “I think I hated you then … for your deceptions and lies and machinations… but I could still see your passion and, more importantly, your compassion. You were as trapped in this plot as I was. More so, in fact, because it was truly your life at stake.” Finally she looked up at him, his eyes filling with hers.

“I knew I had to take a leap of faith,” she said, almost smiling, “both to trust you… and to jump from the ship.”

“Which you did,” he said, overcome with her courage, understanding, and beauty. “Magnificently. Both, I mean. Trusting and jumping.”

She stepped forward, turning her extraordinarily intelligent and insightful face up to him. “I almost didn’t,” she revealed. “But only when you were struck by lightning. I thought… I was afraid you might be dead.”

He smiled kindly at her, fingering the cloak clasp. ‘Your father saw to it that I wasn’t. He was looking out for me … for both of us.”

Tears began to move down both her smooth, clear cheeks. “As … as Devolawk lay in my arms… before you came over to us… my father spoke to me.”

Pryce stood straight, his face showing concern, but only for her feelings.

“He swore you were a good man. He said he loved me. Then he was gone.”

She lowered her head and closed her eyes, although the tears were flowing freely now. When she opened her eyes again, he was holding her. She wrapped her own arms around him and held on for dear life.

“Even Greila Sontoin herself said I should trust you,” she said as she rested her head against his chest. ‘That you had a clear eye, good intentions, and a sharp wit.” His cloak clasp was right against her ear. She looked up at him. “But who are you, really?” she asked with emotion.

Pryce opened his mouth to speak but could say nothing. He was born with the name Pryce Covington, but he really wasn’t that person anymore. But neither was he the real Darlington Blade. But then again, who was? The person Geerling Ambersong wanted the halfling to be, or the truly evil halfling himself? Or was it the legend Gamor Turkal had created in Lallor… the man who Greila Sontoin wanted him to be?

Finally he looked down at her, seeing his reflection in her eyes. That gave him all the strength he needed. “We cannot see our own faces,” he said, paraphrasing the first words he had ever spoken to her. “So I am truly whoever you see.”

She kissed him, holding the back of his head and filling his mind with an ardor that reduced the kiss of Chimera in the Mystran castle to what it had truly been… an illusion.

“Thank you,” she finally said softly. “Thank you for avenging my father’s death and making things right… Darling.”

He smiled down at her, happier than he had ever been in his life. “You’re welcome,” he said. “Dear.”

They stood that way for a long time, until the blazing fire diminished to a slow and steady heat.

‘You know,” she finally said, “there are still many mysteries in this city … mysteries that may require the clear eye and the sharp wit of a man with good intentions… but also the magic of the Ambersongs.”

“That’s true,” he admitted. “But you are not a man of good intentions.”

She laughed. “And you,” she reminded him, “are no Ambersong magician.” Pryce considered the odds. Without her, his lack of magical

knowledge would soon become apparent. But without him, her magical knowledge would soon be discovered, melodrama or no melodrama.

He could make a show of teaching her, he supposed, but that would take time… time to enjoy the plush surroundings and infinite respect of Lallor. It certainly seemed like a cushy job… if not for life, then near enough.

Then he considered Dearlyn Ambersong. She was indeed cushy, certainly courageous, and most definitely interesting… but he had better watch out for the sharp edges of her magic and her gardening implements.

Mustering all his wit and strength, he finally came up with a totally logical reply: a massive, spine-stretching yawn.

“My goodness,” she said, letting him go and stepping back. “Have you slept at all since your arrival in Lallor?”

“Well, actually,” he drawled slowly, “except for some time unconscious from a head wound… no.”

“You must be exhausted!” she exclaimed, hurriedly moving toward the sleeping quarters and beckoning him to follow.

Pryce stood in the main room dreamily. He suddenly realized that he had been called a good man by no less a source than Halruaa’s highest priestess and even the haunt of Labor’s primary mage. And at this point, he would accept being a good man over being a great Blade. While he might have quibbled with everyone’s Pryce estimate in the past, he now had to admit he had reason to be pleased.

After all, he had actually resolved a puzzle that was unique in the history of the mystery. A murder conundrum in which the victim, the killer, and the detective were all the same man.

He had solved his own murder in Halruaa, as it were.

Pryce wandered slowly over to the sleeping quarters, taking off his cloak as he went. He leaned on the door and watched Dearlyn turn back the bedcovers.

‘This is only temporary, of course,” she said to him quickly.

“You’ll have your own room soon.” He resisted the temptation to express his disappointment, but she continued regardless. “Father would have wanted it that way. To tell you the truth, I miss having someone to cook for… it’s sometimes so sad to cook for one. And I can help you understand father’s work, and we can oversee the inventory of father’s workshop, and—”

Darlington Blade drowsily put his forefinger to his lips with one hand and waved her back with the other. “Moot,” he said, trudging forward. “All moot until I awake. Besides,” he concluded, standing beside her radiance amidst the most wonderful house he had ever known, “I still have to see whether or not this is all really a dream.”

Dearlyn Ambersong smiled widely at him, anchoring him with a look that promised many interesting moments. “No,” she said. “It’s no dream. But thanks to you, at least the nightmare is over.”

He wavered in place for a moment, then gave the bed a sleepy smile.’Ah, well,” he said, “that’s just the Pryce you have to pay.”

He was happily asleep even before she gently covered him with Darlington Blade’s cloak.