Anthology - Realms of Mystery Part 6

I stood in the middle of all this and wept. Tessen had committed a sin against Oghma that could never be forgiven. He had kept a secret, and a terrible secret at that. Had he been a guardian over that window, or its servant? I certainly could remember no hint of the malevolence that the window now displayed.

Finally, I could weep no more and I got back on my horse. Perhaps it was just my training in Oghma's priesthood, but I needed information to confront this challenge. When I had been here last, I had learned of one more place that I could go to find the answers I sought. 1 beckoned my steed back onto the road, and led it into the village nearby, to where I had heard that Greal lived and had set up his temporary new church.

Once I arrived, nearly exhausted now, I slid to the ground. I knocked on the door. When there was no response, I knocked again, pounding now.

"Master Greal?" I shouted. Still nothing.

"Master Greal, it is Loremaster Jaon." I continued my pounding, stopping only to confirm that the door was locked.

"I must ask you about the rose window I purchased from you!" My pounding fist accompanied each word like a drumbeat in some southern jungle ritual.

"I need to ask you about Loremaster High Tessen!" Completely expired, I collapsed against the door. "Tell me," I moaned. "Tell me what we were really worshiping in that abbey!"

As I rode back to my parish, I knew that someone had seen me. There had been eyes on me the whole time that I had spent pounding on that door. And as I had sat there, exhausted in the damp soil in front of Greal's home, the autumn leaves blowing around me like dead memories that may very well have been lies, someone watched. No one in that entire town had come when I called out. No one answered their door, but I knew that I was being watched. Even now.

How many of them were there, that had taken part in the foul rites that I could only imagine must have taken place in front of that rose window? Had those rituals gone on even when I had been there?

Could I have been so naive? Could-no, I would not think of it anymore. It was too hard, and too painful, and there were still things that needed doing back in my own church.

Which brings me to right now.

Jam writing this the day after I went to the site of the old abbey. I have not yet slept nor eaten.

When I came back, I had hoped against hope that Pheslan would be here, and that somehow I would have been wrong. But I was not wrong, and he was not here. I dressed myself in the vestments of my order-white shirt and pants, and the kantlara, a black vest with gold brocade. My kantlara had been made for me by my grandmother, who had also been a lore-master. I prepared my holy symbol andbrought out the staff that I kept by the door for emergencies-the staff with its ends shod in iron and made for fighting. I prepared to make my move, and take my stand against the evil that I myself had brought to my parish.

But I waited. What if I was wrong, as I had thought before? What if I let those things through? I somehow told myself that it could not be. An evil thing, like the rose window, must be destroyed. Only good could come from destroying it. Perhaps it could even free Pheslan from whatever held him. If indeed he still lived.

I spent the rest of yesterday at the bottom of the ladder, which I had never moved from its spot below the window. I looked up, but all day long, I saw only the blue-green stained gla.s.s. No movement, no shadows, nothing. Somehow, my indecision still prevented me from climbing to even the first rung.

So after so many hours of arguing with myself, pushed farther past exhaustion than I have ever been, I began writing this ma.n.u.script on the nightstand in my bedchamber.

On these few sheets of parchment, penned throughout the night, I have put my story. Now, as I finish, I prepare myself to climb that ladder. I will smash the rose window, and destroy every last shard.

If I am right, and the evil is over, I will return here to this ma.n.u.script and throw these pages into the fire so that none shall ever learn of these horrible events. But if I am wrong, you are reading this now. If that is the case perhaps you-whoever you are-will know what can be done and right my wrongs.

I am ready.

The Club Rules

James Lowder

"I didn't do it," the butler said blandly.

The dozen people lining the entry hail of the Stalwart's Club remained unmoved, dauntingly so. Their hard, silent stares revealed that they had already convicted the servant, if only in their minds. Even so, the emotions displayed on those faces were oddly muted-displeasure rather than anger, annoyance instead of outrage. It was hardly what one would expect from a crowd confronting the man accused of murdering one of their own. The butler, though, was not surprised. The Stalwarts could be a bloodless lot, especially when the matter before them was anything less esoteric than the smithing techniques of long-extinct dwarf clans or the proper table wine to serve with blackened Sword Coast devilfish.

"I don't think they believe you, Uther," said the burly guardsman who had a firm grip on the butler's arm. "I don't neither."

"Either," the accused man corrected. At the guardsman's blank look, Uther explained, "'Don't neither' is a double negative."

"That sort of talk only proves you're smart enough to do a crime like this," the guardsman said, tightening his grip. "You already look the part."

The latter comment was as pointless as the supposed restraining hold the soldier had on the servant.

A misfired spell had left Uther with a visage that could only be described as demonic. His skin had been blasted to leathery toughness and a sooty crimson hue. Small but noticeable fangs protruded over his dark lips. The pair of twisted horns atop his head were not only impressive, but as sharp as any a.s.sa.s.sin's blade. His physique was equally daunting. Had he wished it, Uther could have shaken off the guard with the merest shrug and shattered the manacles around his wrists with one flex.

"There's only one thing that'!! save you now," the guardsman noted as he led Uther through the door. "A good attorney."

"A clever oxymoron," Uther said, narrowing his slitted yellow eyes. The resulting expression was an odd mixture of humor and anger. "And they say the city watch attracts only dullards."

The small knot of children always loitering before the Stalwarts Club broke into a chorus of taunts when Uther stepped outside. He regularly chased the urchins away, as they were wont to pick the pockets of any clubman drunk enough or foolish enough to give them the opportunity. For their part, the children hara.s.sed the butler whenever the chance arose, tying sticks to their heads as mock horns andfeigning horror at his grim features. But the conflict had long ago become a game between the ragged children and the servant. So when they saw the manacles on Uther's wrists, they swallowed their quips and gawked in forlorn silence.

One of the boys, a puny but bold child near the back of the knot, hefted a loose piece of paving stone and mentally targeted the soldier's skull, which was unprotected by a helmet or even hair. He c.o.c.ked his arm back to throw, but a gentle hand stayed the a.s.sault. The boy yelped in surprise. Few men were stealthy enough to sneak up on the streetwise group and not alert any of them.

Artus Cimber, however, had once roamed the same hopeless alleys and burrowed for safety in the same abandoned hovels those urchins now called home. His years as a world traveler had honed the survival skills he'd gained there-and tempered them with a bit of wisdom besides.

"That'll only make things worse," Artus said. He took the would-be missile from the boy's fingers and let it drop.

The clatter of stone on stone drew an angry look from the guardsman. "What's going-?" When he saw the man standing among the children, he cut his words short and shook his head. "Cimber. Still hanging about in the gutter, I see. Shouldn't you find some friends your own age?"

"I keep making them, Orsini, but you keep arresting them." As Artus started across the muddy, cobbled way, he asked facetiously, "What's he supposed to have done, let the wrong opera cape get wrinkled in the cloak room?"

"He's done the only crime that matters," was all Orsini said.

The reply made Artus stutter a step. He'd known Sergeant Orsini since his own days on the street.

The man had a surprisingly flexible view of the law for a Purple Dragon as the king's most redoubtable soldiers were known. Orsini had let many a thief escape detention, so long as their need was obvious and their crime motivated by survival, not greed. But there was a single offense the soldier took seriously: murder. He pursued men and women accused of that particular crime with a pa.s.sion that bordered on blind fury. It was almost as if each murder were somehow a personal attack on him.

"I stand accused of slaughtering the inestimable Count Leonska," Uther confirmed.

"It's about time someone got around to that," Artus muttered. Then, more loudly, he asked, "Why do they think you beat the count's other 'admirers' to the deed?"

Uther arched one wickedly pointed brow. "Because I am the butler, and the Stalwarts' library contains one too many Thayan murder mystery. It's happened at last-I am reduced to a clich. They should all be very proud of themselves."

"You left out the fact that you were the first person on the scene of the murder," Orsini added. His voice was harsh, his whole body tense. "And half the club had previously heard you threaten Count Leonska's life."

The details Uther offered in reply were directed at Artus, not the guardsman. "One of the winged monkeys had escaped from the library," he said. "I was pursuing the creature through the back halls, hoping to recapture it before Lady Elynna's leopard caught its scent. During that endeavor I chanced upon the sounds of a disturbance in one of the rooms. When the door was eventually unlocked, in front of another witness." The butler placed obvious emphasis on this fact, but Sergeant Orsini didn't react in the slightest "The count's body was discovered. . . in a rather unpleasant state."

Uther did not bother to explain his threat on Leonska's life. There was no need. Artus had been in the Stalwarts' game room the day the count, using methods he'd perfected in his years as a mean-spirited drunkard, provoked a very public and frighteningly angry reaction from Uther. It was rare for the servant to rise to any bait dangled before him by a clubman-so rare that the incident remained vivid in the minds of everyone who'd witnessed it.

"Well," Artus said after a moment, "we shouldn't have too much trouble clearing you."

"Am I to conclude from your use of the plural that you will help prove my innocence?"

Orsini tugged on Uther's arm, hoping to move him toward the barred carriage waiting up the alley at the main thoroughfare. The guardsman might as well have tried pulling the Stalwarts Club from its magically secured foundation. "Don't waste your time, Cimber," he said. "The city watch will do its own investigation."Uther stared briefly and sternly down upon Orsini's bald pate. "That is precisely the reason I need someone with a feathersweight of intelligence to find the true killer." The words were snarled in such a way that the soldier was left to ponder just how deep the butler's demonic facade ran.

"I'll do my best," Artus said. "I hope my lack of standing in the club doesn't cause a problem."

"That you are not a Stalwart is all the more reason for me to desire your aid," the butler replied. He easily shrugged off Orsini's now halthearted grip and placed his hands on Artus's shoulders. "This will not be an easy defense to build. There are the side effects of my condition to consider, as well as the location of the murder."

"Which was?"

"The Treaty Room."

With that, Uther started down the narrow alley. Orsim had to hurry to keep pace with him, taking three steps for each of the butler's two long strides. Artus watched them go, though only vaguely. His mind was already focused on the complexities of the task before him.

The misfired spell that had warped Uther's form left him immune to any and all further magic, including those incantations the city watch used as a truth test against a suspect's claims. Magic would wrest no clues from the crime scene, either. The Treaty Room had been rendered "magic dead" just days after Uther's misfortune, and by the same world-rattling events that had caused the innocent spell to misfire and transform him. The instability in magic caused by the crisis known as the Time of Troubles had left the Treaty Room a magical void, a place where no spell could be cast and enchanted items simply failed to function.

Artus was still considering ways in which he might get around those obstacles when he entered the Stalwarts Club.

A few members milled in the entry hall, but most had gone back to whatever had drawn them to the club that day. A mournful fellow from Armot named Grig the Younger debated the finer points of Mulhorandi entrapment spells with a pair of dwarf women, twins who had both been named Isilgiowe for some reason that eluded even them. Sir Hamnet Hawklin expounded upon the hunting rituals of the Batiri goblins of Chult to Gareth Truesilver, newly commissioned as a captain for his heroics during the crusade against the Tuigan horde. In a nearby corner, an elf maid named Cyndrik tallied the money she'd gathered for the Lord Onovan Protection Fund, even though that hapless Dalesman had been quite fatally bitten in half by a gigantic lizard several months earlier.

They wrangled over topics and championed causes for which few outside the club spared even a moment's thought. It was that collective energy that drew Artus to the Stalwarts. The intellect and effort focused upon obscure matters by those famous explorers, those noted seekers of adventure, quickened his mind and reinforced his commitment to his own consuming quest-the search for the legendary Ring of Winter, the existence of which had been written off as utter fantasy decades past. At the moment, the pa.s.sion for the esoteric that Uther found so chilling about his employers was, in fact, bolstering his ally's resolve to prove him innocent.

Artus threaded his way between the people in the entryway, but found himself facing a loud and impa.s.sable obstruction just a few steps down the corridor. A beautiful mountaineer named Guigenor, her temper stoked to the intensity of her long red hair, confronted one of the most influential of the Stalwarts'

inner circle. Her wild gesticulations kept Artus from trying to slip past; the ceaseless, seamless character of her tirade yielded no opportunity for him to politely ask her to let him by.

"Are you feeble?" she snapped. "Are you blind? Uther had the motive and the opportunity for murder. He was standing at the Treaty Room door, alone, when I came across him. You could still hear Leonska moving around in there-drunk, but very much alive."

Without slowing for the s.p.a.ce of a single syllable, Guigenor repeatedly battered the oak paneling with her fist. It wasn't a very good simulation of the noises she'd heard from the Treaty Room, but she was aiming for impact, not accuracy As such, the dramatics proved a success; there were suddenly people lined up four deep on both sides of the blockage, listening to her prosecution.

"But does Uther use his strength to break down the door?" Guigenor continued. "No! He sent me for keys, for Torm's sake! What's Uther doing without his keys? It's obvious-he had them all along. Hesent me off, used his set to unlock the door, slipped into the room, and slaughtered Leonska. Then he sauntered back out, relocked the door, and waited for me to return with the spares. Any dolt-except you, perhaps-would see that there's no other explanation!"

There was a moment of stunned silence at the tirade's end. The placid-seeming older man at whom this verbal barrage had been aimed simply shook his head. "You are overwrought at the death of your mentor, my dear," said Marrok de Landoine. "Otherwise you would not address me in such an impudent manner."

Guigenor sputtered for a moment, struggling to put together a reply. Her anger at the casual dismissal, at the murder of her friend, boiled over into tears. She roughly shoved Artus out of her way and bulled through the crowded hallway much as she had many a s...o...b..und mountain pa.s.s.

The look on Marrok's face appeared full of fatherly concern for the young woman, but Artus had seen that smirking, fatuous expression before. Marrok reserved that empty smile for those he found distasteful, below his notice as a person of wealth and influence. Marrok was a man of remarkable resources, position, and accomplishment, even in a group as thick with decorated military heroes and t.i.tled aristocrats as the Society of Stalwart Adventurers. And, to him, Guigenor was quite unalterably an upstart.

The smile didn't alter when Marrok first noticed Artus standing there. Then it abruptly faded, transformed into a look of utter weariness. "Mystra save me from the rabble," the n.o.bleman muttered.

Artus opened his mouth to reply, but Marrok turned his back on the young man and walked away.

Grumbling through clenched teeth, Artus made his way back to the Treaty Room. He followed a route he would have found difficult to map, despite his years of practice in the field, for the Stalwarts Club was labyrinthine in design and cut loose from architectural logic by the amount of magic utilized in its construction. In some places angles did not operate as angles should. In others, straight lines were not necessarily the shortest distance between two points.

All that strangeness made the Treaty Room a haven to those few Stalwarts unimpressed by mages and spell-craft. Hidden in one of the most isolated sections of the club, the room could be generously described as four walls and a single stout door. It lacked secret pa.s.sages, magical gateways, even windows. Its floor and ceiling were identical to their counterparts in most mundane homes-more carefully constructed and, at most other times, quite a lot cleaner-but essentially commonplace. The two things that most obviously set the Treaty Room apart from those average places now were the amount of blood splashed on the walls and the poorly dressed and rather overweight corpse laying atop the conference table at the room's exact center.

"Well, let's take the gorgon by the horns," said Sir Hydel Pontifax-mage, surgeon, sometime War Wizard, and full-time Stalwart. He gestured to the Purple Dragon stationed by the door, who was doing quite a good job of refusing Artus admittance. "Be a good soldier and let my scribe in. I rather need his help if I'm to complete the medical examination your sergeant requested."

Artus tore a few pages from the journal he always carried tucked into his wide leather belt; the wyvern-bound book was magical, so it wouldn't even open in the magic-dead room. Then he ducked under the guard's outstretched arm and hurried to the table. "Thanks, Pontifax. I was hoping you'd be here."

The paunchy mage leaned over the body. "And I was rather expecting you to show up. Just the sort of messy business you can't keep your fingers clean of. They're blaming Uther, you know."

"I told him I'd help clear his name."

Pontifax glanced up. "Good for you! That puts a n.o.ble cause behind your meddling."

Artus took the statement for what it was-gentle ribbing by his most trusted friend. He didn't reply, didn't feel the usual need to fire back a cutting response. In comfortable silence, the two set about their work. Pontifax examined the corpse and occasionally murmured observations to be recorded. Artus made a very rough sketch of the body and took down notes.

"What do you make of the dagger?" Pontifax asked after they'd completed their initial examination.

Count Leonska might have died from any of the dozens of deep slashes on his body, face, and hands, but the most obvious and violent wound was caused by the knife protruding from his chest. Theblade was hidden in flesh, but the golden handle burned with reflected light from the room's many candles.

"The markings are Zhentish," Artus said. "A ritual dagger of some kind?"

Pontifax muttered a vague reply. His white, cloudlike brows had drifted together over his blue eyes.

The effect was something like a gathering storm. "The body should be more of a mess," he said.

Blood lightly spattered the count's hands and clothes, but most of his wounds were clean. The sole exception was his crimson-smeared mouth. Artus used the dry end of his writing stylus to pull back a swollen lip. Leonska's teeth were missing. They'd been shattered, many broken right down to the gums.

"What's this?" Artus murmured. As he leaned close, he felt a shiver of apprehension snake up his spine. It was as if the count's dead eyes were watching him. Hands trembling just a little, he picked a small, dark shred of material from between two broken teeth. "It's leather, I think. Part of a gag?"

"That would explain why Leonska didn't cry out when he was being attacked," Pontifax replied. The mage nervously paced around the room, his stubby fingers steepled. "Uther heard a ruckus, but no shouts for help. That's why he didn't break the door in."

"Guigenor thinks the count was stumbling around in here, drunk, before she ran off to get the keys.

She was screeching at Marrok about her suspicions when I came in.,, "That young woman is one to talk about suspicions," said Pontifax. "When the watch asked her why she happened to be roaming around back here, she said Leonska had left her a note requesting her presence in the Treaty Room. But she can't find the note now.

"As for her claim that the count was alive when she heard the noises-nonsense. This murder took a long time to commit. They heard the end of the struggle, not its beginning."

"Do you think Guigenor had a hand in this?" Artus asked, gesturing to a wall of framed treaties and trade agreements, all of which had been signed in the room. Blood had splashed across each and every one. "What kind of weapon would she have used?"

"I've heard of a.s.sa.s.sinations. . . the work of men from far eastern Kozakura who call themselves 'ninjas.' They sometimes leave behind some strange gore slinging like this," Pontifax said. "It almost looks like Leonska was stabbed and slashed, then spun quickly so the blood would cake the walls."

Neither man commented that it would take someone incredibly strong to heft the count's bulk. The thought had occurred to both-as did the notion that Uther was probably the only person in the club who could do so without the aid of sorcery Pontifax returned to the table and stared at the open door. "How did the blackguard get out of the room after doing this to Leonska, I wonder. Uther said the noises continued in here until just before Guigenor returned with the keys. The door remained tightly closed and locked until he opened it."

"You don't suppose the murderer is still hiding in the room."

"Already been searched three times. We've checked for sliding panels and any of that rot. Nothing.

And no magic could possibly work in here."

Artus prodded a pile of threadbare clothes he'd found in one corner. The moth-eaten cloak, thick gloves, and long, dirt-smeared scarf had been folded and stacked neatly. Atop the pile rested a wide-brimmed hat dyed the black of ravens' feathers. "All these belonged to Leonska?"

Pontifax nodded. "He was seen bundled up in those rags when he entered the club this morning. It was his usual attire."

"You wouldn't think someone with such shabby clothes would bother folding them so neatly." Artus held up the corner of the rather grotesquely patterned scarf and said, "Poor fashion sense for a count."