Shadow's Witness (4 page)

“Yrsillar calls and we answer.”

“Great Yrsillar, what is your will?”

“My will is to rule and to feed,” he pronounced. “And this plane is my realm and table.”

“Feed,” they hissed in echo. “Feed.”

Yrsillar smiled, smoothed his velvet robe, and gestured expansively. “You look upon the servant of Mask,” he announced.

Their yellow eyes narrowed quizzically and he began to laugh. “In good time, little brethren. For now, there is much to be done. Then we shall feed.”

“Feed,” they hissed eagerly. “Feed.”

Silently bemoaning his three-and-a-half foot tall halfling body as too damned inefficient for climbing, Jak slid over the cold stone of the inner wall and soundlessly dropped to the snow-dusted flagstones of the courtyard. There he crouched, listening. To his left, he heard the murmur of voices, though a forest of statuary blocked the source. The sounds grew steadily louder with each beat of his heart. Guards approaching, he assumed. But relaxed guards to judge from their easy tone. They hadn’t seen him. He bit his lip to swallow a mischievous grin—in the darkness, a flash of teeth could reveal him to an observer as easily as a wave and a shout.

He congratulated himself on his success

thus far. The defenses in the outer yard off Stoekandlar Street had presented him with only scant challenge. The lax guards were easily bypassed and the minor alarming wards were easily dispelled. He expected tilings to become more difficult now that he had neared the Soargyl manse proper. To that end, he had cast a spell that allowed him to endure cold so that he could shed his heavy winter cloak. The spell would last for over an hour. Plenty of time.

With the guards drawing nearer, he ducked into the darkness behind a marble sculpture of a rearing manticore and silently waited. His heart raced from excitement, not fear, but he managed to remain perfectly still. Selune had set hours ago. Except for the flaming brands borne by the guards, only the soft gold and red light of glow spells—minor magic used to illuminate and highlight the more impressive statues—dispelled the pitch of night.

When two bobbing torch flames suddenly came into view from across the courtyard and approached his location Jak melted fully into the darkness.

The green and gold liveried guards who held the brands talked casually to one another as they carefully wended their way through the maze of fountains, life-sized sculptures, decorative urns, and ornate topiary. Moving slowly toward the raised, paved walkway that ran along the inner wall and encircled the courtyard, they drew so close to Jak that he could hear the soft chinking of their chain mail, could see the frost clouds blown from their mouths and nostrils, and could make out their conversation. He tried to sink deeper into the darkness as the guards’ torchlight illumined a suggestive satyr and nymph fountain five paces to his left.

“… didn’t get much sleep yesterday,” the younger of the two was saying. A scraggly, frost-covered mustache

clung to his upper lip. Dark circles painted the skin beneath his tired eyes.

“Ha,” laughed his companion, an older, balding guard. “Larra the cooking girl keeping you up late, I’ll wager.” He thumped his comrade on the back. “We should all have such problems, Cobb.”

Jak mentally targeted each of them—just in case. If they spotted him, he would use a spell to immobilize them. Fleshy statues among the marbles. Then …

Then what? he wondered.

He didn’t know for sure what he would do if this went bad, but he did know that he would leave no corpses in his wake. Not tonight. Tonight was a holy night of sorts, not a night for killing.

Watching the guards closely from behind the manticore’s hindquarters, he prepared to cast the spell.

“No, no, it’s not like that,” protested the young man. “She nags, and I mean nags. Constantly.”

Though they passed within a short dagger toss of the statue he crouched behind, they barely even looked in his direction. Swords sat idle in scabbards. Cursory glances checked the shadows. Dim torchlight passed over him. They talked so loudly they wouldn’t have heard him if he snapped his fingers. Their boots beat a rhythm on the walkway as they marched away.

“With her body,” replied the older, “I could tolerate some nagging. As long as …”

Their conversation drifted away. Watching them go, Jak shook his head in astonishment. What incompetence! If he had been the sort, he could easily have killed them both before either knew what had happened. The Soargyls need to hire better guards, he thought, and tried to ward off a flash of disappointment. Perhaps this job wouldn’t be as challenging as he had hoped after all. The guards behaved as though they were irrelev—

The realization hit him like a slap on the cheek. A knowing grin split his face and he patted the manticore on the rump. That’s because they are irrelevant.

Excitedly, he removed from his belt pouch his current holy symbol—a bejeweled snuffbox taken from a Red Wizard of Thay exactly one year ago tonight. Intoning in a whisper, he cast a spell that enabled him to see enchantments and magical dweomers. The stronger the enchantment, the brighter it glowed in his eyes. When he completed the spell, he looked around the eourtyard and let out a low whistle. Trickster’s hairy toes!

So many spells glowed in the courtyard that they looked like the campfires of an orc horde. Enchantments littered the grounds from end to end—this statue, this fountain, this seemingly empty patch of ground. No wonder the guards restricted their patrols to the outer walkway. It would be impossible for them to remember where all the spells lay. If they patrolled the inner courtyard, the Soargyls would have magical pyrotechnics and dead house guards nearly every night.

The two guards that had just passed him must follow a predetermined route from the manse to reach the wall perimeter, where, he saw, there were no spells. He reprimanded himself for not paying closer attention to their path. He could have followed in their footsteps and saved himself some trouble.

Ah, well, he thought with a grin, saving yourself trouble is not how you work. “Or you either,” he whispered to Brandobaris the Trickster.

Many of the enchantments revealed by his spell must have served only harmless utilitarian purposes—the glow spells, for example, or spells that protected a sculpture from the weather, or made an iced-over fountain shimmer in the moonlight. But at least some of

them had to be alarms or wards, and bis spell was not sensitive enough to tell the difference. Fortunately, his spell did allow him to discern the really dangerous enchantments. They glowed with a bright, red-orange intensity that indicated powerful magic and promised an ugly end to anyone who triggered .them. No mere alarm spells, those. Most had been cast on the valuable pieces, so that anyone moving a sculpture without uttering the safety word would trigger the spell and find himself aflame, paralyzed, or electrocuted. One such spell protected the satyr fountain beside him, he saw. It had been pure luck that he had hidden behind the unprotected manticore and not the fountain.

He grinned, blew out a cloud of breath, and tapped the agate luck stone that hung from a silver chain at his belt. The Lady favors the reckless,” he whispered, to invoke Tymora’s blessing, and followed it quickly with, “and the Trickster favors the short and reckless.” He stifled a giggle, gave his holy symbol a squeeze, and replaced it in his belt pouch. As he did, he muttered, “This is your last dance, old friend.” After tonight, he would make an offering of the snuffbox to Brandobaris and use an item taken from tonight’s job as a new holy symbol.

Worshiping the Trickster makes for some interesting evenings, he thought wryly. Each year, Brandobaris required him to sacrifice his current holy symbol and acquire a new one with feats of derring-do. The nature of the item itself did not matter much—though protocol and Jak’s pride demanded that it be valuable—so long as he acquired it through a risky endeavor undertaken on this night.

Before tonight, he had hoped that lifting a snuffbox from the pocket of a Thayan Red Wizard in the midst of spellcasting would have earned him a year

off from this divine silliness, but to no avail.

So here he was, at the Soargyl manse—Sarntrumpet Towers. He had decided to hit Sarntrumpet because of the reputed brutality of Lord Boarim Soargyl. If he were caught stealing here, he knew he would not be turned over to the city authorities—in the city of Selgaunt, the nobles wielded their own authority. No, if he were caught here, he knew Lord Soargyl would have him tortured and executed. His body would be dumped into the frozen water of Selgaunt Bay and some fisherman would find his corpse days later, if the sharks didn’t get to it first.

“That risky enough for you?” he whispered into the air. He waited, but the Trickster made no answer. He sniffed in good-natured derision, gracefully climbed atop the head of the manticore he had used for cover, and studied the courtyard from above.

Though winter, only a light coating of snow dusted the flagstones. A labyrinth of fountains, statues, pillars, and decorative urns dotted the stone yard, some aglow with magic, some not. From above, the courtyard looked even more a forest of stone than it did from ground level. All of the sculptures and urns were of the finest workmanship and materials—the abundance of jade, ivory, and precious metals had Jak fairly slavering. The haphazard placement of the artwork left him with the impression that the pieces had been tossed randomly about in a snowstorm and left where they landed.

An artist with style buys for the Soargyls, he thought, but a tasteless clod does the decorating. Probably Lady Soargyl herself, he speculated. Mora Soargyl was a big woman reputed to be a bit like a dwarf when it came to fashion—lots of wealth, little grace, and even less taste.

Still, the price of any one of these urns would have

kept Jak in coin for a month. But that’s not why I’m here, he reminded himself.

Surrounded on all sides by the tasteless artistic trappings of Soargyl wealth, Sarntrumpet’s squat towers jutted out of the center of the courtyard like five thick stone fingers. Crimson tiles shingled the roofs of each spire, blood red in the starlight. As with everything in the courtyard, the manse was built entirely of stone—marble, granite, and limestone mostly—with wood used only as necessary and evergreen shrubbery absent altogether. The few windows cut into the stark exterior were dark—bottomless mouths screaming from the stone. Hideous gargoyles chiseled from granite perched atop the roof eaves and stared ominously down on the courtyard.

To Jak, the grounds evoked the image of a grand cemetery surrounding a great mausoleum, or one of the cities of the dead built around an emperor’s tomb like those he had heard about in tales of distant Mulhorand.

He had approached the manse from the back, so he could not see the main entrance. A few outbuildings stood in a cluster in the northwest corner—a stable and servants’ quarters, he assumed.

From atop the manticore, he had a full view of the perimeter walkway that surrounded the courtyard and saw that not one, but three pairs of torch-bearing guards patrolled it. Not only that, but a full squad of guards in heavy cloaks patrolled around the manse itself. The Trickster only knew how many more men were within.

Could be worse, he thought with a grin, and jumped down from his marble perch.

Still using the magical vision granted him by his spell, he determined a safe path through the enchantments. Always alert to the location of the guards, he

darted from shadow to shadow, from pillar to fountain, until he stood amidst a tight cluster of tall statues within fifty paces of the manse. Close enough that Sarntrumpet itself stood within the range of his spell, he saw that the high windows also shone with enchantments, though the actual tower walls did not. He nodded knowingly, having expected as much. There was too much wall space to protect it all with spells, but windows provided access for flying wizards and climbing thieves. Only a fool left them unprotected.

He focused his attention on the central tower, the tallest of the bunch by over two stories. The great spire was windowless on this side except for three expansive, closely packed panes near its top. All three glowed with the bright, red-orange light of powerful magic. That has to be the place, he thought, while he eyed the sheer walls critically.

He had not come into this job unprepared. Though he worshiped Brandobaris—the halfling god of rogues who ran pell-mell into the Abyss itself and still managed to escape with his hide—he nevertheless made it a habit to plan carefully before taking risks.

Because you’re a god, and I’m a man, he thought, and hoped his oft-repeated phrase justified his habitual caution in the Trickster’s eyes.

Since he wanted his new holy symbol to be an item taken from the very bedchamber of the brutal Lord Soargyl himself—a bedchamber whose location within Sarntrumpet Towers was hardly public knowledge—he had for the previous two tendays sprinkled coins and discreet inquiries among the city’s architects. When that idea had failed to produce any useful information, he had ruefully decided to rely on the unpredictable humor of the Trickster. Before setting out this evening,

he had cast a divination spell and requested the location of the bedchamber. The response from Brandobaris that popped into his head had been surprisingly frank, if a bit overwrought:

Through darkness thick, and dire-filled gloom, Where danger lurks, and shadows loom, In tallest spire that stabs the sky, within is where the treasures lie.

He smiled and sat back on his haunches under the watchful eyes of a marble swordsman. The Trickster had given him the location, but it was up to Jak to get in. And out, he reminded himself.

He sat casually under the statue, eyed the guard patrols as they circled the manse, and tried to tune their routes. While he watched, he took the time to relish the moment and congratulate himself on his skills. The Trickster had set him a hard task, but he had proven himself up to the challenge, as usual.

While waiting for the guard patrol to complete its circuit around the manse, he studied Sarntrumpet and tried to guess at its internal layout from its external features. It did not surprise him that Lord Soargyl had chosen the highest spire in the manse for his bedroom. Nobles in Selgaunt were notoriously arrogant, and Lord Soargyl was reputedly worse than most. Only a room that looked down on the rest of the city’s citizens would satisfy his ego.