Realms of the Dragons vol.1 a-9 Read online

  Mirt lifted his visible hand aside to reveal a waiting parchment, and thrust it forward with two fat and hairy fingers. Unhooding his lamp just one notch, he illuminated a small arc of table that included the page and a needle-knife too short to be much of a weapon.

  Yelver took up the knife, the moneylender's eyes never leaving him, and slowly and carefully pricked the tip of one forefinger and wrote out the added debt, adding his mark. Then he set the blade down with the same exaggerated care and stepped well back.

  "And so?"

  "And so," said Mirt, "a tenday hence, at dusk, we'll meet at the Yawning Portal, where ye'll render something in the way of payment-or I'll start seizing the trade goods ye forgot to mention, from the loft on Slut Street, Moro's cellar off Fish Street, and thy oh-so-secret hidehdlds in Sea Ward."

  Yelver swallowed at the moneylender's grim ghost of a smile and muttered, "Aye. I'll do that. Some coins, at least."

  "And if ye don't? And if, say, the city holds no hair of ye by sunset tomorrow?"

  "Then it'll profit you little to go looking for my bones," Yelver replied. "Seek for whatever I've left with the Keeper of Secrets."

  And he whirled away and was gone in a rattle of beads ere Mirt could ask more.

  The Revel of Storms had been marked by a trio of furious, fast-racing cloudbursts that had snarled across the city near highsun, leaving behind a hot, damp evening trimmed around its edges with ominous rolls of distant thunder.

  Mirt the Moneylender growled in tune with them as he tramped in out of the darkness, the well-oiled back door of the Yawning Portal swinging wildly in his wake. He ignored a disapproving look from one of the sweat-cloaked cooking lasses and lurched past her with nary a leer-leaving her looking warily at his back and wondering what calamity he was bringing word of.

  In truth, Mirt's dark temper was due to nothing more than a bad day of trade. Two debtors had paid off early, another two had vanished without trace, and four more were showing him empty hands and claiming poverty, while having no skills that Mirt could hire out to recoup his coins.

  A season or so back, in the Company of the Wolf, swift sword thrusts would have handed such grinning-up-their-sleeves wastrels fitting rewards … but just as he was no longer Mirt the Merciless, helm-lord of hireswords who'd been better disciplined blades than the grandest royal guards he'd seen anywhere, Mirt no longer handed out fitting rewards that carried high prices. His own neck, for instance.

  No, 'twas time for a drink and a quiet demolition of Durnan across a lance-and-lion board, whilst muttering forth heartfelt venom on all wastrels, idiots, and unsympathetic gods.

  There it waited under the lamplight at one end of the smooth-polished bar, all the pieces set out on the lancers and lions board, with Durnan's own battered tankard standing behind it, but-Mirt blinked-his old friend was across the room, grimly wrestling a slumped, gore-drooling body up out of a chair. Blood dripped from dangling fingertips as the lifeless man was swung up and under one of Durnan's stone-thewed arms. A lolling head faced Mirt for a moment: Yelver's.

  "Spew of Sune!" Mirt snarled. "Dur, how-?"

  "Throat dart," Durnan said. "Handbow, with his slayer sitting across from him. Young elf lass, by the one glimpse of an ear I had out the cowl of her cloak as she whirled away." He waved his free hand down the room. "Tharl tried to bar her way-but she murmured magic and the cloak swallowed her and itself before he could lay hand or blade to her."

  By then the innkeeper had reached his destination, and his hand fell to the ring of an all-too-familiar trapdoor, awakening the glow of the spell that let only him open it.

  Mirt lurched forward sputtering, "Hey-hoy! Nay so swift! I can have his memories spell-read."

  The innkeeper shook his head, and thrust a pointing thumb at something glistening that was starting to slide out of Yelver's left nostril, its black and slimy end questing obscenely into the air like a corkscrew seeking a bottle.

  "See?" said the innkeeper. "Some jack who did darker business than yours with goodman Toraunt made him swallow a brainworm."

  Black and glistening, the worm slid a little way out of Yelver's nose, swollen from its meal of man-brain.

  "Seventeen dragons" Mirt snarled disgustedly, glaring at it. "Gone for good." He turned away to slam one hairy fist down on a handy table-and remembered something, and turned back to where Durnan was calmly feeding the corpse down a chute into the unseen depths below.

  "Have ye ever heard of the Keeper of Secrets?" asked Mirt.

  As Durnan peered at his friend, lifting a surprised eyebrow, Yelver Toraunt's dead limbs thumped and thudded on stone walls a long way down. Something that slobbered was waiting for their arrival. After the final, meaty landing, made a swift but noisy disposal of Durnan's offering.

  Someone sitting at a table nearby winced at the gnawing sounds, and turned away.

  "Gods below," a sailor muttered, "but I need more bellyfire after hearing that! Keeper!"

  "The master's name is Durnan," the man seated across from him growled. "And orders aren't bawled here. Twice."

  The sailor's reply was a sneer, but Durnan was already striding across the floor, every inch a prowling warrior. The flicker of the candle wheels overhead gleamed on the broad metal bracers he wore on his forearms, and on the hilts of the three ready daggers sheathed in each of them.

  "What'll you have, thirsty guest?" he asked calmly. "Another tall tankard of Black Sail? Or something warmer?"

  "Uh, er, I'll stick to Sail," the sailor said, a little sullenly.

  "A sturdy quaff, to be sure," Durnan agreed, standing back with a smile.

  The serving lass who stepped in front of him to place a glistening-with-condensation tankard and a half-moon of seed-spiced cheese in front of the man wore only a smile, a magnificent mane of startlingly blue hair, baggy breeches, and a bewildering tangle of dark tattoos that confused every gazing eye.

  The sailor blinked away from her beauty and mumbled, "I've no coin for yon cheese. Take it aw-"

  "Nay, nay," the tattooed woman said in a husky, smoky, surprisingly deep voice, patting his arm like a hungry whore." 'Tis free-of my making, and Durnan's compliments. We like to treat friends well here, lord of the waves."

  The sailor shot her a swift, hard stare, seeking some sign of mockery, but found none. With a rather sheepish grunt, he raised the cheese in thanks, found himself looking into Durnan's half smile, and sought refuge in the tankard.

  When he set down both his drink and a remnant of cheese to draw breath a swallow or three later, he looked almost surprised to still be unpoisoned, or free of bitter-salt or other trickery.

  By then Durnan was setting an even larger tankard in front of Mirt, moving his first lancer forward to a fortress square, and saying, "I've been hearing about the Keeper of Secrets, Mur. A woman who deals with the desperate, they say. Her shop's in North Ward."

  "North Ward? A fence? A pawn-hand? And why've I never heard of her?"

  Durnan shrugged and said, "I guess you've not yet been desperate."

  Mirt snorted. "Not a rat gnaws nor a chamber pot breaks in this city that I don't hear about-excepting guild inner circle whisper-moots and what goes on behind the walls of the nobles' towers. Ye know that, Dur."

  The innkeeper shrugged, his eyes ranging around his taproom.

  "She's not been in business long, I'd guess," he said.

  Mirt moved a lion, and Durnan's fingers flipped up the trapdoor on the next square to reveal the grinning skull that meant he was bringing his lich into play-and dooming Mirt's piece-without the master of the Yawning Portal ever looking down at the board.

  "She does her trade in dark rooms atop an empty all-mending shop on north side Sammarin's Street," he added quietly. "Rooms of locked iron bar gates that're never lit, so no eye ever sees her. Neighbors hear her singing at all hours-haunting airs and unfamiliar tongues, but a beautiful voice."

  "Happy dancing hobgoblins," Mirt said, not believing a bit of it. He moved a lancer away from the re
vealed peril of Durnan's lich. "I can't believe I've never heard a breath of this…"

  "Deafness comes to us all, in the end," Durnan murmured, moving his lich forward to capture a lion-and doom Mirt's throne-princess in the process.

  The moneylender stared at his imminent defeat and sighed heavily.

  "I yield me. Another game?"

  The innkeeper smiled and took down his cloak, signaling to Luranla to take the bar. The tattooed lass gave him a smiling wave and wink, and turned to survey the room as Durnan had been doing.

  Mirt stared up at his friend and asked, "Do I play that badly?"

  "This night, yes. Yet we're friends, so I've agreed."

  The moneylender blinked.

  "To seek out your other game," Durnan replied, taking down a baldric heavy with warblades from a peg on the wall, slinging it over his shoulder, and reaching for its cross-buckles. "And visit this Keeper of Secrets."

  "Your business, gentlesirs?"

  The ever-so-slightly hollow voice seemed to come from their left. Down a speaking-tube.

  Durnan looked at Mirt, and made the "your speech" gesture they'd both known he'd make. Words had never been his chosen weapons.

  Still wheezing from their trip up the dark stairs, Mirt said, "Secrets. Yelver Toraunt told us to seek here."

  "What sort of secrets are you interested in leaving with me? Did Yelver say anything of my rates?"

  "Nay, he did not-and being upstanding merchants of Waterdeep, lady, we have no secrets," Mirt joked, assuming an air of exaggerated innocence.

  Her answer was the snort he'd expected.

  "Lady," he added, "we came here, at his bidding, to learn what secrets Yelver had left with you."

  "And where is Yelver, to give me his permission to reveal anything to you?"

  "Dead," Mirt replied. "Eaten."

  "You can prove this, of course?"

  Mirt looked at Durnan-who'd acquired a faint smile-and lifted his hand.

  "Lady," the innkeeper replied, "I'm the keeper of the Yawning Portal, Durnan by name. Yelver was most definitely dead-murdered-when I put him down the shaft to where the beasts below lurk."

  "Interesting," the voice observed.

  Mirt waited, but the unseen woman said nothing more. He sighed, and waved at Durnan to unhood the lantern completely.

  "Lady," he said, "Yelver was a business partner of mine-"

  "So much I know, Mirt the Moneylender, and more- every detail of your dealings together, in fact. Know you something now: I keep secrets, not betray them. Even the secrets of the dead. Especially the secrets of the dead."

  The lamplight showed the two men a vertical row of identical small, round holes-one of which must have been the speaking-tube in use-in a stone block wall before them. Stout-and chained and locked-iron bar gates blocked the way to closed stone doors to their left and right. The landing they stood on led nowhere else except back down the steep stair they'd ascended, to the street door below.

  "Keeper of Secrets," Durnan asked, "let us understand each other. Is there any way we can learn what Yelver told us to seek here? The payment of a fee, perhaps?"

  "No, goodman Durnan. I have no need of bribes, and if, as you say, Yelver Toraunt is dead, I can henceforth never trust anyone claiming to be him, or with a letter purporting to be from him. Unless, of course, you two are lying to me now-which makes you both untrustworthy in my eyes, and so not to be given Yelver's secrets in any circumstances."

  "So there's no way we can ever learn Yelver's secret?" Mirt growled.

  "None," the voice from the wall said lightly. "A good evening to you, good sirs."

  "It seems we've slipped from 'gentle' to merely 'good,'" Durnan observed aloud, waving Mirt toward the stairs.

  "Evidently the price one pays for being made wiser," Mirt agreed. "Farewell, Keeper of Secrets."

  "Farewell," the calm voice replied.

  The two men traded glances, shrugs, and smiles.

  Mirt set his boot onto the topmost step and asked suddenly, "Why the darkness? And all these bars?"

  "I like darkness," was the reply, as calm as ever.

  Durnan waved at Mirt to get moving, and rehooded the lantern. They went down the stairs quietly.

  "Mayhap Yelver just wanted to have one last, lame laugh at me," Mirt mused aloud, as they crossed a fish guts-littered alley where rats scurried fearlessly this way and that, and made for Adder Lane. "Why'd ye bring us this far south, hey? The Portal's a good-"

  "To see if all the men strolling along back there were following us, of course," Durnan muttered.

  Mirt stiffened, but managed to avoid turning around.

  "And-?" he asked.

  "They are." Durnan replied. "A dozen, and one may be a mage."

  "Watchful Order?"

  "Far less official, I'd say. Let's duck into Roldro's cellar."

  The innkeeper strode ahead, rapped on a particular panel set into a crumbling wall, and sang a brief, wordless phrase of music. A much smaller panel nearby slid open, and someone uttered a non-committal grunt from beyond it.

  "Flashscales," Durnan murmured in reply-and the response was the click of a bolt being slid back.

  The door, a few paces along the wall, looked more like a series of boards nailed over a disused hatch than a usable entryway. But the innkeeper snatched it open as he reached it, and was gone through it like a diving sea hawk. Mirt huffed and plunged after, banging the door closed not far ahead of a sudden shout and clatter of hobnailed boots on cobbles.

  "Cellar to cellar, and so away," Durnan told his friend several rooms and startled young Roldro children later, as they went down damp steps into a room that stank of rotting tide wrack and mildew. "To rouse the Portal."

  Mirt nodded a little wearily and said, "Aye, where they know where to find us."

  Something wriggled inside his head, and he stumbled up against the wall of Murktar Roldro's cellar with a groan.

  "Magic?" Durnan snapped, putting a steadying hand on Mirt's shoulder.

  The moneylender nodded and waved a vague hand struck dumb by a flood of memories-faces, places, names, and amounts owed and due dates and-and-

  The invasion was gone, as swiftly as it had come.

  "Someone … in my mind," he wheezed, clutching at Durnan's stone-steady arm. "That mage following us."

  The innkeeper nodded and asked, "Seeking memories of Yelver?"

  "Aye. Turned up everything-gods, my head's a-whirl still-but Yelver, yes, an' our talk with the Keeper. I wonder what Yelver was mixed up in?"

  Durnan was already whirling past him.

  "Stay here," he said. "Be right back."

  Mirt leaned against the wall, groggy, listening to his friend's boots racing up the stairs-and more slowly coming back down again. The keeper of the Yawning Portal wore another of his grim smiles.

  "They're all racing away back nor'east, of course."

  "To the Keeper of Secrets," Mirt grunted. "Knowing she told us nothing, we're now nothing-but she remains a danger." He slapped his hand to his sword hilt, drew in a deep breath, and started up the stairs himself. "So, 'tis back to Sammarin's Street."

  "Way ahead of you," Durnan replied cheerfully, bounding past.

  "Aye," Mirt agreed. "Everyone always is."

  The flash and the trembling of cobblestones under their feet came when they were still a street away from the Keeper's shop.

  Faint sounds of startled cries, curses, and the crashes of things falling and breaking arose in the tallhouses and shops all around. Durnan broke out of the trot that let Mirt keep pace with him, and raced ahead.

  Almost immediately he returned with the terse explanation: "Two Watch patrols."

  "Rooftops," Mirt replied, waving at a distant tall-house with carved dolphin downspouts.

  Durnan flashed him a smile and dropped it off his face as he looked back behind them.

  "More Watch coming," said the innkeeper.

  Mirt shrugged and replied, "So we're innocents, look ye. Deafinnocents
."

  "No sort of innocent climbs downspouts in the middle of the night."

  "Innocent downspout inspectors do," Mirt growled. When Durnan rolled his eyes, the moneylender protested, "I've a palace badge, and know what names to invoke. I-"

  The uppermost floor of the building they'd visited not long before burst apart with a roar, in an eruption of stones, roof slates, and the shattered bodies of men.

  A head and what looked like a knee bounced and pattered wetly to the cobblestones nearby. Durnan abandoned any attempt to look innocent and clawed at Mirt.

  "Down" he hissed, "and look dazed."

  Blinking around at the tumult of running Watch officers and still-rolling shards of stone, Mirt complied.

  They crouched together against the wall of what looked to be a toy shop as shouting uniformed men ran past, lanterns bobbing.

  "Yelver surprises me more and more," the fat moneylender muttered, "but we'll never know his secrets now. No one could've-"

  There was a creaking close at hand as a "downsteps door" opened. Durnan peered down a narrow flight of stone steps past the usual clutter of rain barrels and discarded trash, into one of the many cellar-level entries common to that part of North Ward. After the blasts, someone could come out curious, or wanting to flee, or waving a blade and wild enough with fear to use it on anyone.

  Mirt hastily drew back his boots to let the lone cloaked and cowled figure mount the steps, noting bare, empty hands clutching at her-yes, her-cloak to keep her features covered.

  She stopped, peering up at the two men, and said, "Stand back, if you please, and let me pass."

  It was the calm voice they'd traded words with in the darkness.

  "Of course," Mirt squeaked, trying to make his voice sound unlike his own.

  He and Durnan both stepped back, lifting empty hands to signal that they meant no harm. But as the woman reached the top of the steps, Durnan whirled back to face her, luring her attention. Mirt plucked back her cowl.

  Her revealed face was smiling wryly. Beneath the emerald-green cloak was a rather plain, heavy-set woman in a rumpled gown. She had very large, dark, arresting eyes. Around their dark-fire gaze one scarcely noticed plump cheeks, pale skin, and unruly brown hair.