The Crystal Shard (3 page)

“Morkai the Red, my former master, is dead,” Kessell reiterated softly.

“Akar Kessell, this day forward known as Kessell the Red, is now appointed to the Wizard’s Guild of Luskar!”

“Easy, friend,” said Eldeluc, putting a comforting hand on Kessell’s nervously twitching shoulder. “There will be time for a proper coronation when we return to the city.” He smiled and winked at Dendybar from behind Kessell’s head.

Kessell’s mind was whirling, lost in a daydream search through all of the ramifications of his pending appointment. Never again would he be taunted by the other apprentices, boys much younger than he who climbed through the ranks in the guild step by tedious step. They would show him some respect now, for he would leap beyond even those who had passed him by in the earliest days of his apprenticeship, into the honorable position of wizard.

As his thoughts probed every detail of the coming days, though, Kessell’s radiant face suddenly grayed over. He turned sharply on the man at his side, his features tensed as though he had discovered a terrible error. Eldeluc and several of the others in the alley became uneasy. They all fully understood the consequences if the archmage of the Hosttower of the Arcane ever learned of their murderous deed.

“The robe?” Kessell asked. “Should I have brought the red robe?”

Eldeluc couldn’t contain his relieved chuckle, but Kessell merely took it as a comforting gesture from his new-found friend.

I should have known that something so trivial would throw him into such a fit, Eldeluc told himself, but to Kessell he merely said, “Have no fear about it. There are plenty of robes in the Hosttower. It would seem a bit suspicious, would it not, if you showed up at the archmage’s doorstep claiming the vacated seat of Morkai the Red and holding the very garment that the murdered wizard was wearing when he was slain?”

Kessell thought about it for a moment, then agreed.

“Perhaps,” Eldeluc continued, “you should not wear the red robe.”

Kessell’s eyes squinted in panic. His old self-doubts, which had haunted him for all of his days since his childhood, began to bubble up within him. What was Eldeluc saying? Were they going to change their minds and not award him the seat he had rightfully earned?

Eldeluc had used the ambiguity of his statement as a tease, but he didn’t want to push Kessell into a dangerous state of doubt. With a second wink at Dendybar, who was inwardly thoroughly enjoying this game, he answered the poor wretch’s unspoken question. “I only meant that perhaps a different color would better suit you. Blue would compliment your eyes.”

Kessell cackled in relief. “Perhaps,” he agreed, his fingers nervously twiddling.

Dendybar suddenly grew tired of the farce. He motioned for his burly companion to be rid of the annoying little wretch.

Eldeluc obediently led Kessell back down the alleyway. “Go on, now, back to the stables,” he instructed. “Tell the master there that the wizards shall be leaving for Luskan this very night.”

“But what of the body?” Kessell asked.

Eldeluc smiled evilly. “Leave it. That cabin is reserved for visiting merchants and dignitaries from the south. It will most probably remain vacant until next spring. Another murder in this part of the world will cause little excitement, I assure you, and even if the good people of Easthaven were to decipher what had truly happened, they are wise enough to tend to their own business and leave the affairs of wizards to wizards!”

The group from Luskan moved out into the waning sunlight on the street. “Now be off!” Eldeluc commanded. “Look for us as the sun sets.” He watched as Kessell, like some elated little boy, scurried away.

“How fortunate to find so convenient a tool,” Dendybar noted. “The wizard’s stupid apprentice saved us much trouble. I doubt that we would have found a way to get at that crafty old one. Though the gods alone know why, ever did Morkai have a soft spot for his wretched little apprentice!”

“Soft enough for a dagger’s point!” laughed a second voice.

“And so convenient a setting,” remarked yet another. “Unexplained bodies are considered no more than an inconvenience to the cleaning wenches in this uncivilized outpost.”

The burly Eldeluc laughed aloud. The gruesome task was at last completed; they could, finally, leave this barren stretch of frozen desert and return home.

Kessell’s step was sprightly as he made his way across the village of Easthaven to the barn where the wizards’ horses had been stabled. He felt as though becoming a wizard would change every aspect of his daily life, as if some mystical strength had somehow been infused into his previously incompetent talents.

He tingled in anticipation of the power that would be his. An alley-cat crossed before him, casting him a wary glance as it pranced by.

Slit-eyed, Kessell looked around to see if anyone was watching. “Why not?” he muttered. Pointing a deadly finger at the cat, he uttered the command words to call forth a burst of energy. The nervous feline bolted away at the spectacle, but no magical bolts struck it, or even near it.

Kessell looked down at his singed fingertip and wondered what he had done wrong.

But he wasn’t overly dismayed. His own blackened nail was the strongest effect he had ever gotten from that particular spell.

egis the halfling, the only one of his kind for hundreds of miles in any direction, locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back against the mossy blanket of the tree trunk. Regis was short, even by the standards of his diminutive race, with the fluff of his curly brown locks barely cresting the three-foot mark, but his belly was amply thickened by his love of a good meal, or several, as the opportunities presented themselves.

The crooked stick that served as his fishing pole rose up above him, clenched between two of his furry toes, and hung out over the quiet lake, mirrored perfectly in the glassy surface of Maer Dualdon. Gentle ripples rolled down the image as the red-painted wooden bobber began to dance slightly. The line had floated in toward shore and hung limply in the water, so Regis couldn’t feel the fish nibbling at the bait. In seconds, the hook was cleaned with no catch to show for it, but the halfling didn’t know, and it would be hours before he’d even bother to check. Not that he’d have cared, anyway.

This trip was for leisure, not work. With winter coming on, Regis figured that this might well be his last excursion of the year
to the lake; he didn’t go in for winter fishing, like some of the fanatically greedy humans of Ten-Towns. Besides, the halfling already had enough ivory stocked up from other people’s catches to keep him busy for all seven months of snow. He was truly a credit to his less-than-ambitious race, carving out a bit of civilization in a land where none existed, hundreds of miles from the most remote settlement that could rightly be called a city. Other halflings never came this far north, even during the summer months, preferring the comfort of the southern climes. Regis, too, would have gladly packed up his belongings and returned to the south, except for a little problem he had with a certain guildmaster of a prominent thieves’ guild.

A four-inch block of the “white gold” lay beside the reclining halfling, along with several delicate carving instruments. The beginnings of a horse’s muzzle marred the squareness of the block. Regis had meant to work on the piece while he was fishing.

Regis meant to do a lot of things.

“Too fine a day,” he had rationalized, an excuse that never seemed to grow stale for him. This time, though, unlike so many others, it truly bore credibility. It seemed as though the weather demons that bent this harsh land to their iron will had taken a holiday, or perhaps they were just gathering their strength for a brutal winter. The result was an autumn day fitting for the civilized lands to the south. A rare day indeed for the land that had come to be called Icewind Dale, a name well-earned by the eastern breezes that always seemed to blow in, bringing with them the chilled air of Reghed Glacier. Even on the few days that the wind shifted there was little relief, for Ten-Towns was bordered on the north and west by miles of empty tundra and then more ice, the Sea of Moving Ice. Only southern breezes promised any relief, and any wind that tried to reach this desolate area from that direction was usually blocked by the high peaks of the Spine of the World.

Regis managed to keep his eyes open for a while, peering up through the fuzzy limbs of the fir trees at the puffy white clouds as they sailed across the sky on the mild breezes. The sun rained down
golden warmth, and the halfling was tempted now and then to take off his waistcoat. Whenever a cloud blocked out the warming rays, though, Regis was reminded that it was Eleint on the tundra. In a month there would be snow. In two, the roads west and south to Luskan, the nearest city to Ten-Towns, would be impassable to any but the sturdy or the stupid.

Regis looked across the long bay that rolled in around the side of his little fishing hole. The rest of Ten-Towns was taking advantage of the weather, too; the fishing boats were out in force, scrambling and weaving around each other to find their special “hitting spots.” No matter how many times he witnessed it, the greed of humans always amazed Regis. Back in the southern land of Calimshan, the halfling had been climbing a fast ladder to Associate Guildmaster in one of the most prominent thieves’ guilds in the port city of Calimport. But as he saw it, human greed had cut short his career. His guildmaster, the Pasha Pook, possessed a wonderful collection of rubies—a dozen, at least—whose facets were so ingeniously cut that they seemed to cast an almost hypnotic spell on anyone who viewed them. Regis had marveled at the scintillating stones whenever Pook put them out on display, and after all, he’d only taken one. To this day, the halfling couldn’t figure out why the Pasha, who had no less than eleven others, was still so angry with him.

“Alas for the greed of humans,” Regis would say whenever the Pasha’s men showed up in another town that the halfling had made his home, forcing him to extend his exile to an even more remote land. But he hadn’t needed that phrase for a year-and-a-half now, not since he had arrived in Ten-Towns. Pook’s arms were long, but this frontier settlement, in the middle of the most inhospitable and untamed land imaginable, was a longer way still, and Regis was quite content in the security of his new sanctuary. There was wealth here, and for those nimble and talented enough to be a scrimshander, someone who could transform the ivorylike bone of a knucklehead trout into an artistic carving, a comfortable living could be made with a minimum amount of work.

And with Ten-Towns’ scrimshaw fast becoming the rave of the
south, the halfling meant to shake off his customary lethargy and turn his new-found trade into a booming business.

Someday.