Pryce Covington’s body remained poised for escape, but his head spun toward the voice. There stood the burly Azzo Schreders, and next to him, coming up only to the barkeep’s stomach, was a surprised halfling. He had curly salt-and-pepper hair and a mustacheless beard that mixed almost every known color. He had an open, friendly face, marred only by an obviously big mouth. Moving nothing but his eyes, Covington took stock of the effect of what that mouth had said.
If the tavern proprietor had heard the halfling’s exclamation, he gave no sign. Fullmer, the liquids trader, and Hartov, the mine owner, were too concerned with their own business, while the shapely Karkober was still working out costs and prices. The other patrons in the restaurant and along the horseshoe-shaped bar showed no sign of having heard anything out of the ordinary.
Not standing on ceremony, Pryce ran forward with his arms wide until he stood directly in front of the halfling. “My dear fellow,” he said pleasantly, “of course I am not Darlington Blade.”
“Iyou” the almost four-foot-tall halfling sputtered. “Would Darlington Blade allow a woman to throw wine in his face?” Pryce asked him expansively. “But”
“Would Darlington Blade sit alone in such a distinguished establishment as this?” Pryce interrupted the flustered little fellow. “But you’re not”
“No, I am not the Darlington Blade you know,” Pryce said gravely. “I have changed. I’m different.”
“You haven’t-um, I mean, you have” The halfling continued to grope for words. “I mean, you areyou aren’t”
“Aren’t the same as when you saw me last?” Pryce shook his head sadly but kept talking quickly. “No, I’m not. I have experienced much
… learned much.” He threw his arms wide again. “I’m a completely new Darlington Blade!”
The halfling was reduced to pointing, his head turning from Pryce to Azzo. “But, you’re nothe’s not”
“Not willing to talk privately with you, old friend?” Pryce interjected. “No, I will never change that much. How could you even think that? In fact, let us go talk, person to person, this very moment!”
Pryce moved between the proprietor and his wine expert, put his hands under the halfling’s arms, and half-dragged, half-carried him until he came to a small open trapdoor on the far side of the bar.
Just as the halfling started to recover from the surprise, Covington dangled the winemaster’s hairy, shoeless feet over the opening and dropped him. Then he grabbed the lip of the trapdoor and jumped, ignoring the ladder that ran between the door opening and the dirt floor of the grotto. As he fell, he closed the thick wooden door after him.
Twelve feet below, Pryce found himself directly in front of the stunned halfling. The little fellow sat on a small barrel placed beneath the trap door. “Please, please, please!” Pryce begged quickly and quietly, his hands together in supplication. “Don’t expose me. It’s all a misunderstandingan innocent accident. I won’t hurt you. Just don’t say anything… not yet!”
“The trapdoor opened a crack, and the proprietor’s face appeared. “Gheevy? Is everything all right?” Schreders asked tentatively.
Pryce’s head whipped toward the sound of the bartender’s voice, then whipped back toward the halfling, fervently praying. The halfling looked at Pryce’s desperate face for a moment, then replied, “Everything is fine, Azzo. We’re just talking over… old times. You’ve heard how entertaining a storyteller Blade can be.”
Pryce moved his lips, thanking the halfling silently and effusively.
“Oh, heh, heh, of course,” chuckled the barkeep. “Just checking. Take all the time you need, fellows!” Schreders closed the trapdoor just as Pryce dropped to his knees and kissed one of the halfling’s hairy feet.
“Don’t do that!” the halfling cried, pulling his leg back.
“Sorry,” said Pryce, scooting backward on his knees to lean against another barrel. “It’s just all been so… so stressful.” Quickly he took in his surroundings.
One wall of the grotto was lined with aging casks. Some were installed right in the wall, others were stacked upright, while still others lay on their sides. Directly across from Pryce was a long line of wrought-iron wine racks, the bottles held at an angle. On a wide shelf stood a maze of multicolored glassware, each stoppered glass holding a different rare, esoteric liquid within it.
The ceiling of the grotto was made of both natural stone and wood. It was fairly highalmost eighteen feet in places. It stretched off in different directions into the gloom. The central area where they were now, however, was a mere twelve feet or so beneath the trapdoor and was dramatically lit by, Pryce guessed, a continual light spell of some kind.
“What’s all this about?” the halfling asked, his eyebrows wrinkling with concern. “Who are you, anyway? You’re certainly not Darlington Blade.”
‘You have a firm grasp of the obvious,” Pryce said dryly. When the halfling looked affronted, Covington quickly continued. “Sorry. Just blowing off some pent-up tension. My real name isn’t as relevant, however, as the question how do you know?”
“What do you mean?” asked the halfling, taken aback.
Pryce took a moment to study the fellow carefully. He was wearing a dark, soft, comfortable-looking shirt that cinched loosely at his neck and wrists. Matching loose pants of some similar soft fiber cinched more tightly at his ankles. Over the shirt was a long vest with three pockets on each side, the top left one displaying the stitched legend Gheevy Wotfirr and under that. Af Your Service.
“Well, Gheevy,” Pryce said affably, “everyone else in this townincluding its official gatekeeper, a top-ranked inquisitrix, the owner of its most popular gathering place, and the daughter of the man’s own teacher! have never laid eyes on this Blade person, but apparently you have.”
“Well, everybody knows me,” the halfling said.
“Did Darlington Blade drink with you in the privacy of this grotto? Because no one upstairs seems to have seen him.”
“No,” the halfling began hastily. “You see, I deliver wine all over the area. That’s how everyone knows me. And II used to make some deliveries to a predetermined place outside the wall for Geerling Ambersong and”
“Don’t say it,” Pryce implored. “Let me guess… the person I’m not”
Wotfirr nodded.
“So,” Pryce continued wearily, “did you all sing songs around the campfire?”
“Now, now,” chided Gheevy Wotfirr. “There’s no need for sarcasm, my good man. Geerling Ambersong wanted Darlington
Blade’s identity to be kept a strict secret until he personally presented him to the Lallor citizenry at the Fall Festival. My seeing him was a complete accident. I only caught a glimpse of him through some trees.” The halfling shook his head sadly. “And ever since that moment, I’ve wished I hadn’t.”
“Me, too,” said Pryce dryly. “Why the Fall Festival? What’s the big secret?”
“Oh,” Wotfirr said with renewed spirit. “Mage Ambersong had a sincere desire to improve the lot of the people of Halruaa. But he was getting older, and he wanted his successor to be ready… and undistracted by the entreaties of many in Lallor who would seek favor with a new primary mage.”
“Hmmm,” Covington considered. “And with his identity a secret, he could travel without attracting undue attention… as long as he removed this blasted cloak, of course!”
“Mage Ambersong showed the cloak to the people at last year’s Fall Festival,” Wotfirr explained. ” ‘By this cloak you will know him,’ he said.”
“Just my luck,” Pryce said miserably. “I assure you, Gheevy, that I came into possession of this cloak completely by accident and was totally innocent of any malice aforethought. If I had known what it meant and what it represented, I never would have touched it, but it was windy and wet and cold, and, well…” Covington let his words trail off into silence.
“If it’s any help,” the grotto manager said quietly, “I believe you. But who are you?”
Pryce glanced at the earnest halfling. ‘Trust me, the name would be meaningless to you… just a bunch of syllables you would be better off not knowing. Or, to put it more truthfully, would be better off if you didn’t know. For the shortest time it takes to figure out a way out of this, please just call me anything but Darlington Blade.”p›
“Very well… friend… I understand. But what are you going to do now?”
“Well,” Pryce said briskly, standing up and brushing off his trousers, “The way I see it, there’s nothing to do but cut my losses, try to prevent any more trouble, and go back where I came from, never to be seen in these parts again.”
“Butbut you can’t!” Gheevy blurted suddenly.
Pryce looked at the halfling askew. “Why not? I grant you, the eye at the gate might be a problem, but”
“No, you can’t just leave now!”
“Oh, but I can, my dear Gheevy,” Covington said patiently. “That is, if you’ll be kind enough not to say anything.”
“No,” the halfling said, agitated. “It’s not me. It’s you. It’s Darlington Blade!”
“I told you not to call me that!”
“No, you don’t understand! They’d hunt you down to the ends ofToril!” “Who would?”
“The wizards. The mages. The inquisitrixes. Berridge Lymwich!”
“Why?” Pryce asked in anguish. “All I did was borrow a cloak! I’ll put it back!”
“It’s too late! All those people you mentioned. They saw you. They called you… by that name. You didn’t disagree. Don’t you understand? Impersonating a mage is punishable by deathl”
The wine grotto was silent for what seemed like minutes.
A variety of emotions shot through Pryce Covington’s brain, but none showed on his expressionless face. Gheevy Wotfirr looked up at him in concern but said no more.
Finally the silence was broken by Pryce’s quiet, considerate, careful words.
“Oh, dear.”
“Are you all right?”
“Oh, my.”
“What are you going to do?” “Oh, no.”
Gheevy felt impelled to dispel the paralyzing mood that was filling the grotto. He gathered his courage and addressed the stunned man the only way he could. “Blade?”
“Yes?” said Pryce immediately, snapping out of his shock.
“What are you going to do?”
“Carry on,” Covington snapped. “With style.” He acted as if absolutely nothing was wrong. “All right, my dear Wotfirr, do you have any idea what Geerling Ambersong had in mind for Darlington BlI mean, for me?”
Wotfirr tried to speak but found he wasn’t up to the challenge. He shook his head vigorously.
“Do you have any idea where this Geerling Ambersong is?”
Gheevy shook his head again, then suddenly stopped and looked hopeful. “But I can show you where I delivered the ale and grog,” he offered. “He might be close by.”
Covington wasn’t impressed. “Let me guess,” he said aridly. “The Mark of the Question?”
Gheevy’s mouth dropped open. “That’s incredible!” he burbled. “How did you know that?”
“Rudimentary, my dear Gheevy,” Covington said airily, waving away the question with mock refinement. Then he abruptly leaned toward the halfling. “Where do you think I found this cloak?” he asked, then murmured, “Among other things…”
“I beg your pardon?”
Instead of answering, Pryce fell miserably to his knees. Unable to remain oblivious any longer, he let despair wash over him, driving him to his elbows, his face in his hands. For a time, the only sounds in the grotto were Covington’s groans. Finally, cupping the side of his head, he looked over at the halfling. “I wonder… can I trust you?”
The halfling straightened to his full height, his chin rising.
“Never trust a person by his words,” he intoned. “Only by his actions. You will note that I have not, and will not, turn you in. I will not have your death on my conscience for what I believe was an entirely innocent act.” He nodded with certainty. “I believe your remorse and confusion to be genuine.” Then he smiled kindly, with a small twinkle in his eye. “As is my pity for you, poor man.”
Pryce rose to his knees. ‘Thank you. I try. Now, would you mind doing me a small favor?”
“What have you gotten me into?” Gheevy Wotfirr complained into the night upon seeing the two corpses.
“Nothing!” Pryce insisted, motioning for the halfling to keep his voice down. “I just need your advice.”
“Well, then, my advice is not to have involved me in the first place!” the halfling retorted. “Oh dear, oh, dear. This is just awful!”
They had left Lallor under the cover of moonlight and the shadow of ale barrels. “Good friends” Gheevy Wotfirr and Darlington Blade had passed below the eye at the gate, carrying refreshments for their mutual friend and Blade’s teacher, Geerling Ambersong.
“But what if Inquisitrix Lymwich tries to follow us?” Gheevy had worried. “Or tries to get a wizard to track our steps?”
“I’m counting on Blade’s… I mean, my reputation to make her think that any attempt would be futile. If Lallor is truly Halruaa’s exclusive retreat, most of the wizards will be staying at vacation castles. I hope they’re not interested in being bothered. Besides, they would hardly dare to show up the city’s primary mage.”
His reasoning had seemed logical enough, and all went well until they reached the tree. Then the halfling became a trifle unreasonable.
“Do you know who that is?” Wotfirr wheezed, pointing excitedly at the second man.
“Don’t tell me,” Pryce replied sarcastically. “Fm keen to guess.” “It’s Darlington Blade!”
“Shush!” Covington pleaded, then tried to distract the excitable halfling by pointing at the first man. “Do you know who that is?*
To Pryce’s surprise, Wotfirr said matter-of-factly, “Oh, that’s just Gamor Turkal. But what are we going to do about”
“Just Gamor Turkal?” Pryce interrupted. “What’s so unimportant about Gamor Turkal?”
“Well, if you must know,” Wotfirr began hesitantly, ‘Turkal wasn’t exactly well liked around here. No one, myself included, could understand why Mage Ambersong insisted that he be treated with such deference and respect. Turkal certainly didn’t treat anyone else that way.”
Covington nodded with recognition. Given the situation, he could well imagine Gamor acting arrogant. “But he was my partner,” Pryce said somberly. “And when your partner is killed, you’re supposed to do something about it.”
Wotfirr let that sink in for a moment, then replied helplessly, “Okay. What?” It was the halfling’s turn to drop to his haunches and put his head in his hands. “I promised not to turn you in,” he said miserably, “and I can’t, I won’t, have your punishment on my conscience… but, oh, if only the Council of Elders weren’t so intractable in their laws!”
Pryce felt sorry for the little man, so he tried to find a way out for both of them. “Gheevy, I brought you here because I have to know what is possible and what isn’t. Gamor was hanging by his neck from this branch.” He pointed at the bent branch of the tree. “And Darlington Blade was sitting right there, leaning against the trunk.”
“Where?” Gheevy asked.
“Here,” Covington replied, showing him. “Do you think it’s possible that somehow Gamor accidentally killed Darlington
Blade and hanged himself in remorse?” “What?”
“Well, it sort of fits,” Pryce said defensively. “Gamor does some incredibly stupid thing that gets Blade killed, and rather than face the wrath of Geerling Ambersong, he hangs himself.”
“But how does that explain the mage’s disappearance?”
Pryce looked at him blankly for a few seconds, then continued. “All right, how about this? Geerling takes one look at the scene and realizes that Gamor has caused Darlington’s death and has killed himself. The mage is so devastated by the death of his student that he wanders away, overcome with grief. And remember, it was Ambersong himself who insisted that Gamor be treated with respect, so the mage would also feel remorse at his own complicity in the death of his favorite disciple. It would be enough to drive anyone over the edge.”
For a moment, Wotfirr stared with disbelief into Pryce’s hopeful face, and then his expression turned sour. ‘The Council of Elders and the inquisitrixes would never believe that Gamor Turkal could do such a thing.” The halfling shook his head sadly. “Handsome? Yes. Smooth-talking? Yes. But intelligent enough to kill Blade on purpose or stupid enough to kill Blade by accident…?” The halfling looked helplessly up at Pryce. “Besides, where’s your proof? Was there a suicide note? They’re not going to simply accept our word for it, you know.”
Pryce recognized the truth of the halfling’s words. “I could try to find Geerling Ambersong,” he mused. “He couldn’t have gone far…”
“But what if you’re wrong?” Gheevy pointed out. “What if you find him and that’s not what occurred? What happens to you then?”
Covington thought about it and didn’t like the conclusions he reached. As before, the odds were just too great. “Good point,” he said, sitting down disconsolately next to the halfling. He considered his situation for a short time, hardly enjoying the cool, clean night air. “There’re only four things I can do,” he concluded. “One, run and take my chances.”
“You wouldn’t stand a chance,” said Wotfirr ruefully.
‘True,” said Pryce. “There’re only three things I can do. One, find Geerling Ambersong and beg for mercy.”
“Not much hope of that,” said Wotfirr. “On either count, I’m afraid.”
“Also true. So there’re only two things I can do. One, stay and continue the impersonation, hoping nobody finds me out.”
“And Geerling Ambersong never returns,” Wotfirr reminded him.
“And Ambersong never returns.”
“Unlikely,” the halfling commented. “Besides, from what you told me, you nearly were caught twice in the tavern.”
“True again.” Covington sighed. “So there really is only one thing I can do.”
“And what is that?” Wotfirr asked curiously.
“Find some proof,” Pryce said flatly, leaning back against the tree’s tangled network of aboveground roots. Suddenly he froze in place as he spotted something close to the tree trunk. “What’s this?”
“What’s what?” Gheevy inquired, leaning back.
“Look here, Gheevy, in the space between these roots.” Pryce turned over on his hands and knees and gripped a loop of a root that rose from the loose dirt.
“What is it, Blade?” Wotfirr inquired, straining to see what had so interested Covington.
Pryce looked up at the night sky and then down again. “This afternoon’s storm probably washed away any other evidence we might have found, but these roots form what amounts to a tiny protected cave. And look here, in the mud.”
Wotfirr used his halfling sight to good effect, peering among the roots as closely as he could. “It’s a footprint of some kind.” Pryce’s mood lifted. “No,” Gheevy corrected himself, “a paw print of some kind.” Pryce’s mood sank.
“Wait a minute,” Covington said, inspired. ‘What kind of paw print?”
“II can’t quite make it out. I don’t recognize it.”
“Let me see,” Pryce insisted, maneuvering to get a better angle. He held onto the upturned roots like handlebars and stuck his head, upside down, between the roots.
“It’s a footprint and a paw print,” the halfling marveled in Pryce’s ear.
“By all the electrum in Maeru,” the bogus Blade said. “It’s a jackalwere print!”
“What is a jackalwere doing this far south?” Pryce wondered aloud as they made their way northeast from the city.
“How would I know?” Wotfirr complained. “I only said I’d never seen a footprint like that before. I didn’t say I knew anything about the blasted creature’s migratory habits!”
The halfling was worried, and not just because he was carrying Gamor Turkal’s body across his shoulders. The weight was no problemWotfirr was used to hauling heavy kegs of alebut they were moving farther and farther away from the safety of Lal-lor’s walls. “If we must search for this jackalwere lair, must we also carry around this” he paused and cringed at the term he couldn’t avoid using “this dead weight?”
“I told you,” Covington admonished him, carrying the other body on his own back. “We can’t take the chance of anyone else coming upon this living proof of my true identity!” He grimaced at his extremely poor choice of words. “Well,” he corrected himself, “not living proof, I suppose. Anyway, if we are to discover the truth of the matter, we can’t afford to wait until tomorrow to find the jackalwere. I’ve had some experience with those beasts. They’re constantly on the move, preying on unsuspecting travelers.”
“Oh, good,” Wotfirr moaned. “That certainly puts my mind at ease!”
“We’re not in any danger,” Pryce said. “We’re suspecting travelers. Like all ambush artists, jackalweres prefer finding unprepared victims rather than prepared adversaries.”
“Even so,” Wotfirr complained, “we must be mad to do this!”
“I’m sorry, Gheevy, but we have to find a place to hide these bodies, and we have to discover if this jackalwere knows anything about their deaths. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“But why”
“Shhhh,” Pryce suddenly instructed, slowing down as the road approached a forest of dead trees. The landscape around them was a series of small valleys interspersed among low hills. Trees were plentiful, but their bare, empty branches looked like the fingers of starving men clawing at the sky. There was no way a gang of marauding brigands could hide behind them, or in the coarse, briar-lined bushes that covered the hills. But the foliage would be perfect for smaller creatures.
The two heard a low moan coming from around a curve in the road just ahead of them. Pryce leaned over to whisper. “It sounds like a traveler in distress.”
Wotfirr peered into the murk. “I don’t see anyone,” he said, stepping forward.
Pryce hastily held him back with a single outstretched palm. Then he placed a forefinger to his lips. Silence did not reign long.
“I say,” came a clipped, civilized voice from the gloom ahead. “I say, is someone there? I seem to have fallen and twisted my ankle. Can you help me?”
Concerned, Gheevy hopped to Pryce’s side. “Let me see if I can help this fellow,” he said. “He sounds harmless enough, and he’s obviously in great pain.”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” Covington said quietly.
“But my family knows of certain healing ways,” the halfling retorted. “Let me put my burden down and supply some aid”
“The only thing you will supply is this evening’s repast,” Pryce snapped. “And that burden, as you call it, is probably the only thing keeping you from being set upon immediately.”
Gheevy opened his mouth to reply, but quickly shut it tight.
“I say,” the voice continued. “I’ve twisted or broken my ankle or some such. Dash the luck. Can anyone give me a hand?”
“What a shame,” Pryce called ahead. “Sadly, our hands are full at the moment.”
“Really?” came the smooth reply from the darkness. “How awfully inconvenient for us both. Well, let’s see if I can” there was some painful grunting and authentic-sounding moaning”manage to regain my feet…Ah, there we are.”
The two reluctant body snatchers heard an ominous shuffling coming toward them.
“I say, I do hope you won’t mind my accompanying you for a short way. Perhaps I could be so bold as to request some guidance? Perhaps you might even deign to allow me to lean on one of you fine examples of humanity for some slight support?”
The person who appeared to them out of the night was the most benign-looking gentleman imaginable. He had a long, sympathetic, somber face, the kind you might find on an understanding uncle who would always offer you his shoulder to cry upon. His wardrobe had at one time been elegant, but now it was a bit frayed, like that of a traveler slightly down on his luck.
“Greetings,” he said bravely, favoring his right leg. “Please allow me to introduce myself. The name is Cunningham, and I am but a humble vagabond who wants nothing more than to be on my way and of no bother to the likes of you gentlemen.”
“Greetings,” Pryce replied. “You may call me Darling, and I’m told I’m delicious in a Halarahh wine sauce.”
The old gentleman stiffened, his dark eyes suddenly piercing as he turned his gaze on Gheevy. “What is your associate talking about?” he said intently.
“I’ll be cursed if I” the halfling started to say, looking up.
“Don’t look him in the eye!” Pryce cried, but it was too late to warn him of the creature’s magical gaze now. Wotfirr’s vision grew cloudy, his eyelids slammed shut, and his small, squat form crumbled to the ground beneath Gamor Turkal’s cadaver.
The change that came over the self-styled Cunningham raised the hair on the back of Pryce’s neck. Then the entire scene changed enough to raise the hair all over Covington’s body.
The wounded man’s leg strengthened and straightened. He smiled… and when his lips arrived at the point where a human’s lips should stop, they kept right on going. They stretched wider and wider and never seemed to come to the end of this character’s teeth.
Soon the smile was satanically wide, but still the lips kept stretching and curling, and the teeth multiplied like reinforcements joining a battle line. The bottom of the creature’s face distended with a wet, audible cracking sound. His nose sniffed and his nostrils flared, but instead of returning to their natural position, they remained open, growing even wider and darker.
Cunningham had given the impression of being unshaven the better to match his disguise as an itinerant wandererbut now his five o’clock shadow had become a midnight thicket of coarse orange-red fur. His dark eyes had become yellow, but no less piercing. Fusing from his thickening hair were two quivering cones of fur-covered flesh. His hands, too, had become much larger, and his fingernails now looked like steel knives.
He snapped his head forward and back, and his appearance became completely feral. Frighteningly, his face still held the obvious intelligence of an educated humana malevolent, dangerous, violent human, but an educated one nonetheless. Even so, he emitted a sound that was part whistle and part death rattle.
Covington knew from experience what was coming, and he heard them before he saw them. Cunningham had called his children… full-blooded jackals, although born of a jackal mother and jackalwere father, with no human consciousness whatsoever.
The little beasts appeared from all around Pryce, forcing their emaciated, starving bodies from the prickly brush, their skin torn from the briars. If they weren’t so dangerous, they’d be pitiful.
There were a half a dozen in all, snarling, coiled, and ready to strike. Pryce’s eyes darted this way and that, carefully noting their positions and making sure none started to nip at Gheevy. Pryce could practically smell their hunger and resentment.
From the moment he and Wotfirr had walked away from the Question Tree with the bodies, Pryce had been preparing himself for this eventuality, but now had to wonder whether he had the courage to get rid of these fresh corpses and elicit information from a dangerous jackalwere at the same time. At this point, he hardly had a choice.
He waited in the center of the circle of jackals, trying not to be paralyzed with fear. To keep his fear from taking over, he kept thinking over and over, “I am Darlington Blade, master mage and hero, and I know I am in complete command here!”
“What is that you are carrying?” Cunningham suddenly hissed. The threat inherent in his question was unmistakable, and the interruption in his thought process made Pryce freeze in place.
“You really don’t know, do you?” Covington snapped nervously. The jackalwere was taken aback by the man’s sharp retort, but Pryce didn’t leave it at that. “That must mean that these bodies appeared at the Question Tree after your visit there.” It had to be that way. If the jackals had found these carcasses earlier, they would surely have eaten them.
“The Question Tree…? How do you know I was there?” But then the creature’s animal rage boiled over. “Do you know who you’re dealing with?”
“Do you?” Covington countered, dropping the body at the jackalwere’s hairy, clawed feet. The corpse landed with a heavy and horrible thud, face up, his eyelids seeming to stare at Cunningham. “Do you recognize him?” Pryce held his breath; nearly everything depended on what the jackalwere replied.
The red and black fur-covered face went from the dead man to Pryce. “I don’t need to know him,” he growled, “to devour him!” He took a threatening step forward.
Covington matched him, stepping forward himself, his thumb under the cloak clasp that had been previously covered with the dead man’s arms. “Then do you recognize this?”
The reaction was extraordinary. The jackalwere stood straight up, and every visible hair on his body stood up with him. Immediately all the jackals around Pryce froze in place and arched their backs, their own fur standing on end like quills. They spit like frightened felines.
“Darlington Blade!” Cunningham almost screeched. “Of all the” he began, but then his words changed into a night-rending howl. The others raised their heads and joined him, filling the dark with an eerie, howling chorus.
“Shut up!” Pryce bellowed. “Shut up, all of you!”
The cries stopped as suddenly as they had begun. Pryce surveyed them carefully. The small jackals were shivering and frightfully thin. Their fur was slick with their own blood, since they had suffered many cuts from hiding in the briar patches. He spun to look into the shocked face of their father.
“Do you want to eat?” he demanded. “Do you want to survive in this land of the hostile, the powerful, and the prepared?”
“Curse you, adventurer…”
“There’ll be time for curses later,” Covington said evenly. “Now it’s time for answers, and then you will eat. There will be plenty of freshly killed meat for you and your pups.”
He saw Cunningham’s conflict in the dance of the jackalwere’s facial muscles. The monster would like nothing better than to tear at the despised flesh that stood before him, for the skin of wizards was said to be the most succulent of all. But the monster knew that the legendary Darlington Blade would make quick work of any attack… and then his offspring would continue to suffer and slowly starve.
“You would give us this meat?” he growled, nodding at the fallen bodies as drool coursed from between his teeth.
“I don’t want to,” Pryce replied honestly, a catch in his voice, then realized Gheevy was still prone on the ground. “Not the living one!” He hung his head in shame. “But the recently killed… meat… yes.” He felt deep, abiding regret, but he had to save himself from these beasts as well as the Council of Elders’ vengeance. A painful trade-off was called for. “If’you answer my questions!” he suddenly demanded.
“I do not need to answer your questions!” the jackalwere snarled.
“Answer and you can eat,” Pryce said intently, leaning daringly toward Cunningham. “Don’t answer and you can continue starving to death.”
The jackalwere stood still for a moment, then spun to the ground. Pryce jerked in surprise, but managed to keep from crying out or stepping back. Blade or no Blade, any sign of weakness meant certain death.
When the jackalwere stood again, he was once more the kindly, civilized traveler known as Cunningham. Pryce realized that this humiliationbartering with a human! would be easier to accept this way. “Goodness, sir,” he chirped. “What a predicament!”
Pryce ignored Cunningham’s opening gambit… and the sweat that coursed freely down his forehead in the cool night air. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “What could a jackalwere hope to gain by coming to a place where magic reigns, where the great majority of residents could easily defeat a savage such as yourself?”
“A… creature invited me,” he said with shamed tones.
“What creature?” Pryce asked, still careful not to get too close.
“A misshapen creature, the likes of which I had never seen before. It made me promises that were too good to be true… a steady supply of meat… spectacular hunting… the flesh of unearthly wisdom. I should have known better,” he said bitterly.
‘This misshapen one offered you the flesh of spellcasters?” Pryce asked incredulously.
“Not in so many words…”
Covington couldn’t afford to dwell on this. The longer he spoke to this creature, the greater the chance that its unreasoning children would attack, and then the beasts would be in for a pleasant surprise. They would discover that the person they thought was the great Darlington Blade was actually a mere messenger from Merrickarta with no magical powers whatsoever. “When were you at the Mark of the Question?”
Cunningham seemed pleased at the change of subject, since he no longer had to talk about his gullibility and humiliation. His sad eyes wavered in recollection. “Early this morning… I believe.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I had been told to meet someone… that he would have food.”
“Who told you?”
“The dust… dust on the wind!” Cunningham raised his head and started a pathetic, accented, off-key howl.
“Stop that!” Pryce demanded, annoyed at the creature’s behavior and the possibility that Gamor helped lure it to the Lallor area. “Did you meet this person?”
“No,” Cunningham said sadly. “He never arrived.” His eyes began to become bloodshot. “Nor did the food…” Covington heard the young jackals behind him start to snarl deep in their throats. He was rapidly running out of time… and questions.
“Did you see anyone… anyone at all?” he asked sharply, hoping to uncover at least some other lead or clue for his trouble.
“Oh, yes,” said Cunningham abjectly. “Oh, yes, there were others by the tree of mystery, but they weren’t for me and my kin… The wind told me that their meat was not for the likes of ussssss!”
Pryce was losing him. He could see it in Cunningham’s changing face, smell it in the sickly stench of starvation that surrounded him, and feel it in his very bones. “Who was it?” he said quickly. “Who did you see?”
‘The little big lady,” Cunningham said in a dangerous singsong voice, his head beginning to tip this way and that. “The great defender of Mystra, with her arrogant airs and tightly coiled muscles. Not much meat on that one, but I’m sure what there is is ssssssucculen… ”
Lymwich, Pryce thought. He’s got to be talking about Berridge Lymwich. But what was she doing there? “Anyone else?” he pressed urgently. “Who else?”
‘The great captain of industry!” Cunningham bayed at the sky. “The sailor on the pirate sea! His little chin spike a-quivering and a-quaking, his long lip curls a-shaking and a-shimmying with his pomposssssity. Oh, the meat on him… all the lussssscious meat on him!” The jackals all around Pryce started to bark and yip excitedly.
Fullmer the wine trader, Pryce marveled. The plot was rapidly thickening. “Anyone else?” Covington asked, moving carefully back and off to the side.
“That is all, 0 mighty Blade!” Cunningham called. “Our emisssssary, and our meal, did not arrive, nor did any unwary sssssoul. My children and my craving called, ssssso I had to go. I had to run, ssssscreaming in my frussssstration and failure!” He threw his head back and cried into the night. “0 demons below and gods above, I do hunger! Does not even a creature as wretched as I deserve some measure of pity?”
“Pity, no!” Pryce yelled at him. “Sustenance, yes! At least for now.” He grabbed the still-unconscious halfling’s arms and, with one mighty pull, jerked Gheevy Wotfirr onto his back. “Remember my mercy, jackalwere!”
Then Pryce Covington ran madly into the night, leaving the corpses behind. The sound of slavering beasts diminished behind him as he ran, but it would never again leave his memory.