The large fighter shifted uneasily in his seat, looking all about the nearly empty tavern.
"Not so busy this night," the slender, I drowsy-looking man across the table remarked.
JL He shifted back lazily in his seat, crossed his legs in front of him, and draped a skinny arm over them.
The larger man regarded him warily as he began to understand. "And you know all in attendance," he replied.
"Of course."
The burly fighter looked back just in time to see the last of the other patrons slip out the door. "They have left by your bidding?" he asked,
"Of course."
"Mako sent you."
The weakling man curled his lips in a wicked grin, one that widened as the burly fighter regarded his skinny arms with obvious disdain.
"To kill me," the large man finished, trying to appear calm. His wringing hands, fingers moving as if seeking
something to keep them occupied, revealed his nervousness. He licked his dried lips and glanced around quickly, not taking his dark eyes from the assassin for any length of time. He noticed that the man wore gloves, one white and one black, and silently berated himself for not being more observant.
The thin man replied at length, "You knew Mako would repay you for his cousin's death."
"His own fault!" the large man retorted. "It was he who struck the first blow. I had no choi - "
"I am neither judge nor jury," the puny man reminded him.
"Just a killer" the fighter replied, "serving whoever gives you the largest sack of gold."
The assassin nodded, not the least bit insulted by the description.
The little man noticed his target's hand slipping casually into the hidden pouch, the fitchet, in the V cut of his tunk, above his right hip.
"Please, do not," the assassin said. He had been monitoring this man for many weeks, carefully, completely, and he knew of the knife concealed within.
The fighter stopped the movement and eyed him incredulously.
"Of course I know the trick," the assassin explained. "Do you not understand, dear dead Vaclav? You have no surprises left for me."
The man paused, then protested, "Why now?" The large man's ire rose with his obvious frustration.
"Now is the time," replied the assassin. "All things have their time. Should a killing be any different? Besides, I have pressing business in the west and can play the game no longer."
"You have had ample opportunity to finish this business many times before now" Vaclav argued. In fact, the little man had been hovering about him for weeks, had gained his trust somewhat, though he didn't even know the man's name. The fighter's eyes narrowed with further frustration
when he contemplated that notion and realized that the man's frail frame - too frail to be viewed as any threat - had precipitated that acceptance. If this man, now revealed as an enemy, had appeared more threatening, Vaclav never would have let him get this close.
"More chances than you would believe," the assassin replied with a snicker. The large man had seen him often, but not nearly as often as the killer, in perfect and varied disguises, had seen Vaclav.
"I pride myself on my business," the assassin continued, "unlike so many of the crass killers that walk the Realms. They prefer to keep their distance until the opportunity to strike presents itself, but I" - his beady eyes flickered with pride - "prefer to personalize things. I have been all about you. Several of your friends are dead, and I now know you so well that I can anticipate your every movement."
Sclav's breathing came in short rasps. Several friends dead? And this weakling threatening him openly? He had defeated countless monsters ten times this one's weight, had served honorably in three wars, had even battled a dragon! He was scared now, however. Vaclav had to admit that. Something was terribly wrong about this whole setup, terribly out of place.
"I am an artist," the slender, sleepy man rambled. "That is why I will never err, why I will survive while so many other hired murderers go to ear|y graves."
"You are a simple killer and nothing more!" the large man cried, his frustration boiling over. He leaped from his seat and drew a huge sword.
A sharp pain slowed him, and he found himself somehow sitting again. He blinked, trying to make sense of it all, for he saw himself at the empty bar, was, in fact, staring at his own face! He stood gawking as he - as his own body! - slid the heavy sword back into its scabbard.
"So crude," \feclav heard his own body say. He looked down to the figure he now wore, the killer's weak form.
"And so messy," the assassin continued.
"How .. . ?"
"I do not have the time to explain, I fear," the assassin replied.
"What is your name?" Vaclav cried, desperate for any diversion.
"Ghost," answered the assassin. He lurched over, confident that the seemingly androgynous form, one he knew so well, could not muster the speed to escape him or the strength to fend him off.
Ifcclav felt himself being lifted from the floor, felt the huge hands slipping about his neck. "The ghost of who?" managed the out-of-control, desperate man. He kicked as hard as his new body would allow, so pitiful an attempt against the burly, powerful form his enemy now possessed. Then his breath would not come.
Vaclav heard the snap of bone, and it was the last sound he would ever hear.
"Not 'the ghost,' " the victorious assassin replied to the dead form, "just 'Ghost.' " He sat then to finish his drink. How perfect this job had been; how easily \fcclav had been coaxed into so vulnerable a position.
"An artist," Ghost said, lifting his cup in a toast to himself. His more familiar body would be magically repaired before the dawn, and he could then take it back, leaving the empty shell of Sclav's corpse behind.
Ghost had not lied when he had mentioned pressing business in the west. A wizard had contacted the assassin's guild, promising exorbitant payments for a minor execution.
The price must have been high indeed, Ghost knew, for his superiors had requested that he take on the task. The wizard apparently wanted the best.
The wizard wanted an artist.
Placid Fields
adderly walked slowly from the single stone tower, across the fields, toward the lakeside town of Carradoon. Autumn had come to the region; the few trees along Cadderly's path, red maples mostly, shone brilliantly in their fall wardrobe. The sun was bright this day and warm, in contrast with the chilly breezes blowing down from the nearby Snowflake Mountains, gusting strong enough to float Cadderly's silken blue cape out behind him as he walked, and strong enough to bend the wide brim of his similarly blue hat.
The troubled young scholar noticed nothing. Cadderly absently pushed his sand-brown locks from his gray eyes, then grew frustrated as the unkempt hair, much longer than he had ever worn it, defiantly dropped back down. He pushed it away again, and then again, and finally tucked it tightly under the brim of his hat.
Carradoon came within sight a short while later, on the banks of wide Impresk Lake and surrounded by hedge-
lined fields of sheep and cattle and crops. The city proper was walled, as were most cities of the Realms, with many multistory structures huddled inside against ever present perils. A long bridge connected Carradoon to a nearby island, the section of the town reserved for the more well-to-do merchants and governing officials.
As always when he came by this route, Cadderly looked at the town with mixed and uncertain feelings. He had been born in Carradoon, but did not remember that early part of his life. Cadderly's gaze drifted past the walled city, to the west and to the towering Snowflakes, to the passes that led high into the mountains, where lay the Edificant Library, a sheltered and secure bastion of learning.
That had been Cadderly's home, though he realized that now it was not, and thus he felt he could not return there. He was not a poor man - the wizard in the tower he had recently left had once paid him a huge sum for transcribing a lost spell book - and he had the means to support himself in relative comfort.
But all the gold in the world could not have produced a home for Cadderly, nor could it have released his troubled spirit from its turmoil.
Cadderly had grown up, had learned the truth of his violent, imperfect world, too suddenly. The young scholar had been thrust into situations beyond his experience, forced into the role of hero-warrior when all he really wanted was to read of adventures in books of legend. Cadderly had recently killed a man, and had fought in a war that had blasted, torn, and ultimately tainted a once-pristine sylvan forest.
Now he had no answers, only questions.
Cadderly thought of his room at the Dragon's Codpiece, where the Tome of Universal Harmony, the most prized book of the god named Deneir, sat open on his small table. It had been given to Cadderly by Pertelope, a high-ranking priestess of his order, with the promise that within its thick bindings Cadderly would find his answers.
Cadderly wasn't sure he believed that.
The young scholar sat on a grassy rise overlooking the town, scratched at his stubbly beard, and wondered again about his purpose and calling in this confusing life. He removed his wide-brimmed hat and stared at the porcelain insignia attached to its red band: an eye and a single candle, the holy symbol of Deneir, the deity dedicated to literature and the arts.
Cadderly had served Deneir since his earliest recollections, though he had never really been certain of what that service entailed, or of the real purpose in dedicating his life to any god. He was a scholar and an inventor and believed wholeheartedly in the powers of knowledge and creation, two very important tenets for the Deneirian sect.
Only recently had Cadderly begun to feel that the god was something more than a symbol, more than a fabricated ideal for the scholars to emulate. In the elven forest Cad-deriy had felt the birth of powers he could not begin to understand. He had magically healed a friend's wound that otherwise would have proved fatal. He had gained supernatural insight into the history of the elves - not just their recorded events, but the feelings, the eldritch aura, that had given the ancient race its identity. He had watched in amazement as the spirit of a noble horse rose from its broken body and walked solemnly away. He had seen a dryad disappear into a tree and had commanded the tree to push the elusive creature back out - and the tree had heeded his command!
There could be no doubt for young Cadderly; mighty magic was with him, granting him these terrifying powers. His peers called that magic Deneir and called it a good thing, but in light of what he had done, of what he had become, and the horrors he had witnessed, Cadderly was not certain that he wanted Deneir with him.
He got up from the grassy rise and continued his journey to the walled town, to the Dragon's Codpiece, and to the Sane of Universal Harmony, where he could only pray that be would find some answers and some peace.
He flipped the page, his eyes desperately trying to scan the newest material in the split second it took him to turn the page again. It was impossible; Cadderly simply could not keep up with his desire, his insatiable hunger, to turn the pages.
He was finished with the Tome of Universal Harmony, a work of nearly two thousand pages, in mere minutes. Cadderly slammed the book shut, frustrated and fearful, and tried to rise from his small desk, thinking that perhaps he should go for a walk, or go to find Brennan, the innkeeper's teenage son who had become a close friend.
The tome grabbed at him before he could get out of his seat. With a defiant but impotent snarl, the young scholar flipped the book back over and began his frantic scan once more. The pages flipped at a wild pace; Cadderly couldn't begin to read more than a single word or two on any one page, and yet, the song of the book, the special meanings behind the simple words, rang clearly in his mind. It seemed as though all the mysteries of the universe were embedded in the sweet and melancholy melody, a song of living and dying, of salvation and damnation, of eternal energy and finite matter.
He heard voices as well - ancient accents and reverent tones - singing in the deepest corners of his mind, but he could not make out any of the words, like the written words on the pages of the book. Cadderly could see them as a whole, could see their connotations, if not the actual lettering.
Cadderly felt his strength quickly draining as he continued to press on. His eyes ached, but he could not close them; his mind raced in too many directions, unlocking secrets, then storing them back into his subconscious in a more organized fashion. In those brief transitions from one page to another, Cadderly managed to wonder if he would go insane, or if the work would consume him emotionally.
He understood something else, then, and the thought fi-
nally gave to him the strength to slam the book shut. Several of the higher ranking Deneirian priests at the Edificant Library had been found dead, lying across this very book. Always the deaths had been seen as by natural causes - all of those priests had been much older than Cadderly - but Cadderly's insight told him differently.
They had tried to hear the song of Deneir, the song of universal mysteries, but they had not been strong enough to control the effects of that strange and beautiful music. They had been consumed.
Cadderly frowned at the black cover of the closed tome as though it were a demonic thing. It was not, he reminded himself, and, before his fears could argue back, he opened the book once more, from the beginning, and began his frantic scan.
Melancholy assaulted him; the doors blocking revelations swung wide, their contents finding a place in the receptacle of young Cadderly's mind.
Gradually the young scholar's eyes drooped from sheer exhaustion, but still the song played on, the music of the heavenly spheres, of sunrise and sunset and all the details that played eternally in between.
It played on and on, a song without end, and Cadderly felt himself foiling toward it, becoming no more than a passing note among an infinite number of passing notes.
On and on...
"Cadderly?" The call came from far away, as if from another world perhaps. Cadderly felt a hand grasp his shoulder, tangible and chill, and felt himself turned gently about. He opened a sleepy eye and saw young Brennan's curly black mop and beaming face.
"Are you all right?"
Cadderly managed a weak nod and rubbed his bleary eyes. He sat up in his chair, felt a dozen aches in various parts of his stiff body. How long had he been asleep?
It was not sleep, the young scholar realized then, to his mounting horror. The weariness that had taken him from consciousness was too profound to be cured by simple sleep. What, then?
It was a journey, he sensed. He felt as though he had been on a journey. But to where?
"What were you reading?" Brennan asked, leaning past him to regard the open book. The words shook Cadderfy from his reflections. Suddenly terrified, he shoved Brennan aside and slammed the book.
"Do not look at it!" he answered harshly.
Brennan seemed at a loss. "I... I am sorry," he apologized, obviously confused, his green eyes downcast. "I did not mean - "
"No " Cadderiy interrupted, forcing a disarming smile to his face. He hadn't intended to wound the young lad who had been so kind to him over the last few weeks. "You did nothing wrong. But promise me that you wiD never look into this book - not unless I am here to guide you."
Brennan took a step away from the desk, eyeing the dosed tome with sincere fear.
"It is magical," Cadderiy acknowledged, "and it could cause harm to one who does not know how to read it properly. I am not angry with you - truly. You just startled me."
Brennan nodded weakly, seeming unconvinced.
"I brought your food," he explained, pointing to a tray he had placed on the night table beside Cadderiy's small bed.
Cadderiy smiled at the sight. Dependable Brennan. When he had come to the Dragon's Codpiece, Cadderiy had desired solitude and had arranged with Fredegar Harri-man, the innkeeper, to have his meals delivered outside his door. That arrangement had quickly changed, though, as Cadderiy had come to know and like Brennan. Now the young man felt free to enter Cadderiy's room and deliver the plates of food - always more than the price had called for - personally. Cadderiy, for all his stubbornness and the icy demeanor he had developed after the horrors of Shilmista's war, had soon found that he could not resist the unthreatening companionship.
Cadderiy eyed the plate of supper for a long while. He noticed a few specks of crumbs on the floor, some from a biscuit and some darker - the crust of the midday bread, he realized. The curtains over his small window had been drawn and his lamp had been turned down, and then turned backup.
"You could not wake me the last three times you came in here?" he asked.
Brennan stuttered, surprised that Cadderiy had deduced that he had been in the room three times previously. 'Three times?" he replied.
"To deliver breakfast and then lunch," Cadderiy reasoned, and then he paused, realizing that he should not know what he knew. "Then once more to check on me, when you turned the lamp back up and drew the curtains."
Cadderiy looked back to Brennan arid was surprised again. He almost called out in alarm, but quickly realized that the images he saw dancing on the young man's shoulders - shadowy forms of scantily clad dancing girls and disembodied breasts - were of his own making, an interpretation from his own mind.
Cadderiy turned away and snapped his eyes shut. An interpretation of what?
He heard the song again, distantly. The chant was specific this time, the same phrases repeated over and over, though Cadderiy still could not make out the exact words, except for one: aurora.
"Are you all right?" Brennan asked again.
Cadderiy nodded and looked back, this time not so startled by the dancing shadows. "I am" he replied sincerely. "And I have kept you here longer than you wished."
Brennan's face screwed up with curiosity.
"Tfou be careful at the Moth Closet" Cadderiy warned, referring to the seedy private club at the end of Lakeview Street, on the eastern side of Carradoon, near where Im-presk Lake spilled into Shalane River. "How does a boy your age get into the place?"
"How .. ." Brennan stuttered, his pimpled face blushing to deep crimson.
Cadderiy waved him away, a wide smile on his face. The dancing shadow breasts atop Brennan's shoulder disappeared in a burst of splotchy black dots. Apparently Cad-derfy's guesses had knocked out the teenager's hormonal urgings.
Temporarily, Cadderly realized as Brennan headed for the door, for the shadows already began to form anew.
Cadderly's laugh turned Brennan back around.
"Tfou will not tell my father?" he pleaded.
Cadderly waved him away, stifling the urge to burst out in laughter. Brennan hesitated, perplexed. He relaxed almost immediately, reminding himself that Cadderly was his friend. A smile found his face, and a dancing girl found a perch on his shoulder. He snapped his fingers and swiftly disappeared from the room.
Cadderly stared long and hard at the closed door, and at the telltale crumbs on the floor beside his night table.
Things had seemed so very obvious to him, both of what had transpired in his room while he was asleep, and of Brennan's intentions for a night of mischief. So obvious, and yet, Cadderly knew they should not have been.
"Aurora?" he whispered, searching for the significance. "The dawn?" Cadderly translated, and shook his head slowly; what could the dawn have to do with silhouettes of dancing girls on Brennan's shoulder?
The young priest looked back to the tome. Wnild he find his answer there?
He had to force himself to eat, to remind himself that he would need all his strength for the hours ahead. Soon after, one hunger sated and another tearing at him, Cadderly dove back into the Tome of Universal Harmony.
The pages began to flip, and the song played on and on.
Mopping Up anica blew a lock of her strawberry blond hair from in front of her exotic, almond-shaped brown eyes and peered intently down the form est path, searching for some sign of the appreaching enemy. She shifted her compact, hundred-pound frame from foot to foot, always keeping perfect balance, her finely toned muscles tense in anticipation of what was to come.
"Are the dwarves in position?" Elbereth, the new king of Shflmista's elves, asked her, his strange, almost eerie, sflver eyes looking more to the trees surrounding the path than to the trail itself.
Two other elves, one a golden-haired maiden, the other with black hair as striking as Elbereth's, came to join the friends.
"I would expect the dwarves to be ready in time," Dani-ca assured the elf king. "Ivan and Pikel have never let us down."
The three elves nodded; Elbereth could not help but smile. He remembered when he had first encountered the gruff dwarves, when Ivan, the tougher of the pair, had found him bound and helpless as a prisoner of their enemy. Never would the elf have believed that he would soon come to trust so implicitly in the bearded brothers.
"The dryad has returned," the black-haired elf wizard, Tintagel, said to Elbereth. He led the elf king's gaze to a nearby tree, where Elbereth managed to make out Ham-madeen, the elusive dryad, as her tan-skinned, green-haired form peeked from around the trunk.
"She brings news that the enemy will soon arrive," remarked Shayleigh, the elven maiden. The anxious tone of her voice and the sudden sparkle that came into her violet eyes reminded Danica of the fiery maiden's lust for battle. Danica had seen Shayleigh 'at play* with both sword and bow, and she had to agree with Ivan Bouldershoulder's proclamation that he was glad Shayleigh was on their side. Tintagel motioned for the others to follow him to the rest of the gathered elves, some two score of Elbereth's people, almost half of the remaining elves in Shilmista. The wizard considered the landscape for a moment, then began positioning the elves along both sides of the path, trying to property distribute those better in hand-to-hand combat and those better with their great bows. He called Danica to his side and began his spell-casting chant, walking along the elven lines and sprinkling white birch bark chips.
As he neared the end of the spell, Tintagel took up his own position, Danica moving to her customary spot beside him, and sprinkled chips upon himself and his human escort.
Then it was completed, and where Danica and forty elven warriors had been standing now stood rows of unremarkable birch trees.
Danica looked out from her new disguise to the forest about her, which seemed vague and foggy to her now, more like a feeling than any definite vision. She focused on the path, knowing that she and Tintagel must remain aware of their surroundings, must be ready to come out of the shape-changing spell as scon as Ivan and Pikel began the assault.
She wondered what she looked like as a tree, and thought, as she always thought when Tmtagel performed this spell, that she might like to spend some quiet time in this form, viewing the forest around her, feeling its strength in her feet-become-roots.
But now there was kilting to do.