Conspiracy (2 page)

It was as though these two men had been fashioned as eternal champions of opposite gods, and these two champions had battled their way across hilltop, threshold, and whitecap, through hundreds of pages of history, to converge at this spot beside this fountain. The statue at its center was, after all, a stone avatar of them, of their struggle against each other, the figure of a man wrestling the ineffable and inescapable unknown. All that remained was to determine which of them—Miltiades or Entreri—was the striving human hero and which the grasping and implacable monster.

The others converged.

The young golden warrior Kern hurled his hammer down at the onrushing head of the pirate woman, Sharessa. She had the foresight not to get beneath the maul. Kern overbalanced himself, a true idealist, and tumbled head over heels past Sharessa.

She stepped out of his way and helped him along, whacking the flat of her cutlass against his unarmored rump. She flipped her dark hair back over her slender shoulders and jested, “Find some hay, Sir Knight, and I’ll roll you in that, too.”

Kern, unamused, got up and advanced. “I can’t decide whether you’re worse off for having truck with this vicious scoundrel,” he waved his hammer toward Entreri, “or he for having truck with you.” With that, the golden warrior lunged. His hammer grazed Sharessa’s narrow belly as she leapt back.

“Such language,” the pirate laughed, “and from a

paladin. If you aren’t careful with that hammer of yours, I’ll end up having truck with you!” She followed her comment with a suggestively lifted eyebrow and a wickedly thrust cutlass.

The paladin had overcome his zeal and shame. His hammer struck away the sword, and he stepped close enough to plant an elbow guard in the woman’s side. It was Sharessa’s turn to roll away, grunting.

Kern stalked after her. “Surrender to me and quit your dealings with this assassin!”

Sharessa leapt lightly to her feet and drove the golden warrior back with a hail of blows. “Jealous, are we?”

Between the two, Miltiades suddenly appeared. He barged backward, propelled to the fountain’s edge by Entreri, who followed hard behind. Miltiades’s face was red and running with sweat. It dripped miserably into his steaming armor. He groaned with each swing of his hammer, but so far had only grazed his opponent.

Entreri sweated too, though in an even sheen of tiny droplets. The veins in his temples bulged with exertion. His sword darted and fluttered like a bird. All the while, his head remained still, his expression calm, his eyes intent.

Miltiades caught his balance at the low brink of the fountain. He hurled out a wide swing of his hammer and halted Entreri’s advance.

The small man danced inward, despite the paladin’s swings. He was about to jab for an exposed rib when a roar broke the din of battle. The sound ended in a crackle and thud. The fight paused, and the fighters saw.

The pirate named Anvil had once had a scarred face, but it was gone. In its place was the bloody end of a two-handed sword, whose hilt was even then held in the grip of the young, blond paladin, Jacob.

As the headless body collapsed, the bristle-bearded

dwarf, Rings, furiously attacked the killer. The stout pirate jabbed inward. Jacob clutched the bleeding wound and crumpled, replaced in turn by the leather-clad paladin. Trandon landed a solid whump of his quarterstaff on the dwarf’s shoulder. Rings proved heartier than previous fighters, whirling with an oath and striking back.

Three down already—a traitor, a veteran, and a young paladin. We were impressed. We were entertained. We were not yet fearful, though we should have been. For every stranger that fell in that battle, a thousand of our people would die.

Miltiades and Entreri hammered and jabbed their way around the fountain; Kern and Sharessa engaged in amorous swordplay; Trandon and Rings traded blow for blow; blind Ingrar clutched the fountain rail while waving his sword; Jacob bled quietly; Belgin breathed raggedly; the bodies of Anvil and Captain Jander Turbalt cooled in death.

Noph, meanwhile, had at last surmounted the slippery, roaring fountain. Clinging with one hand to an up-flung tentacle, he reached the statue’s neck and began lifting the lasso free. Until now the spraying water had masked the shouts and hidden the glint of swords. His lasso came loose and coiled in his hand.

But what to do?

The lasso. It did not err. It caught anything he desired. He could rope the leader of the brigands.

Noph flung the rope up. It whistled coyly overhead. The golden loop widened above the fountain. White spray shot past it as it grew. One more circle, and Noph would fling the lariat to snare the leader of the cutthroats and save the day!

Unless … unless she were their leader.

He gaped at her. The pirate woman moved with the sinuous seduction of a serpent. Mystery beyond comprehension. Noph had never seen so vibrant a creature.

Every part of her was tightly and perfectly arranged. Curves appeared where they should, and flat spots in their places, too. She was muscular and soft in divine proportions. She could, from any visible distance, make a young man faint.

Noph almost obliged. He felt himself sliding back along the tentacle. His vision closed to a dark tunnel whose terminus was the deadly beauty. Noph lurched, catching himself. Blood dissolved the shadows at the edges of his sight.

During his blackout, the lasso had flown.

His shaky gaze traced along the now-taut line. The cutthroat leader struggled impotently at the end of the golden lasso. So, too, did Miltiades. Noph had snared both.

It was the end of the convergence. The fighting faltered and stopped. The fighters gazed at their captured commanders. Noph shivered atop our effigy.

It was the end of the convergence, and the beginning of the end for Doegan.

We heard and saw it all.

“You worthless, whining whelp! You spoiled, slow-witted stripling. I knew you would be trouble from the moment I laid eyes on your overstuffed pack bulging over your understaffed brain! And trouble is all you have been this entire journey!”

The tirade came from Miltiades, who struggled in the embrace of Entreri, both of whom were squeezed near suffocation by Noph’s golden lasso. The fight was over. Still, the bloodstained leaders tried to continue it. The best they could do was strike each other lightly in the back of the head.

“So what if you foiled an assassination plot? So what if you rounded up the conspirators in Waterdeep? So what if you slew a golem creature in our chambers? Lady Eidola is still kidnapped. With you along, I doubt she will ever be rescued!” Miltiades shouted, his voice echoing through the plaza.

The others—paladins and pirates—stood side-by-side and gaped at the furious warrior.

Noph, ignoring the insults, shouted to the leader of the cutthroats, “Who are you?”

The little man looked up. Though his eyes were defiant, his mouth produced the words, “I am Artemis Entreri, master assassin, and bane of the Sword Coast”

Noph gulped.

The pirates gaped in astonishment.

The paladins tightened holds on their weapons.

Only Kern, Miltiades, and Entreri seemed unsurprised.

“Why is an assassin of the north stirring up trouble here in the Utter East?”

With the same grudging glare, Entreri spoke again. His lips moved slowly, distorting the words. “I have come to find Eidola Neverwinter—kin of Boarskyr and bride of Piergeiron Paladinson—come to find her and kill her.”

That news shocked even Kern and Miltiades.

“Release me, imbecile boy,” Miltiades suggested. “I must fight this man to the death, here and now!”

“Wait,” called Trandon. “Noph, I suspect your lasso does more than bind. It has our two leaders under some sort of enchantment. They seem incapable of hiding the truth from us. Noph, don’t release them until the assassin tells us all.”

Noph nodded seriously, tightening his grip.

Trandon approached the roped pair. His quarterstaff thumped dully against the cobbles as he leaned on it, wizardlike. “Tell us, Artemis Entreri, who hired you?”

“I do not know,” the assassin replied, a look of triumph

in his eyes. “I know only that the masked figure claimed to be a Lord of Waterdeep, a friend of Piergeiron’s—and that he paid a handsome advance for the work.”

Trandon nodded. “Why would a friend of Piergeiron’s want the Open Lord’s bride to be slain?”

Entreri’s face clenched, pale with effort, but the magical power of the lasso was inexorable. “He said she was an agent of the Unseen.”

Miltiades stiffened. He stared fiercely into the assassin’s eyes. “The Unseen? Eidola consorting with tentacled horrors and black-hearted monsters? Impossible!”

“Yet that is what my employer said,” replied Entreri.

“And you were a fool to believe him. If Eidola worked for the Unseen, she could have slain Piergeiron long ago. What was she waiting for?”

“The wedding,” Noph blurted. The others looked up at him, and he sheepishly continued. “She could do more harm to Waterdeep as Lady Paladinson than as a mere assassin, couldn’t she? She could control everything through him. After the trade pact, her reach would extend all the way to Kara-Tur.”

Noph had not known what he was going to say until the words tumbled out, but they seemed right. The trade pact. That’s what this whole nasty business came down to. Half the people in Waterdeep wanted to prevent it and the other half to control it. But what would anyone in the Utter East care about an overland route that didn’t pass within a thousand miles of… ?

Again, a flash of insight. These tiny countries needed trade, they needed mercenaries to fight their battles, they needed wealth and power. All of it could be given them by a route that was half land and half sea. Ships would dock right here, in this steamy seaport, and their loads would be transferred to elephants for the overland leg. Returning caravans would stop in Eldrinpar to transfer their cargoes to ships. Doegan could tax items going and coming.

That was why Eidola had been kidnapped, Noph thought bitterly. For cash. Cold hard cash.

While Noph ruminated, Trandon continued to question the assassin. But he learned nothing more of the man’s mission or his employer. The only further fact that emerged was that Entreri had hired the pirates, straggling survivors of a shipwreck, for a chest of gold coins apiece.

“What if your employer is no friend of Piergeiron’s?” Noph broke in. “What if Eidola is an innocent woman, not an agent of evil?”

“I don’t care about whom I kill or whom I kill for. The only thing I care about is whether I get paid. If I don’t, whom I kill and whom I kill for become the same person.”

“Let me out of this Tyr-blasted rope, Noph,” Miltiades groused, “before your clumsiness kills me as it killed Harloon!”

Noph winced. For a moment the world around him disappeared. The tan cobbles softened and melted to form a face—the face of Harloon, whose life had bought Noph from death, and whose death had granted him the golden lasso he now held.

Except that the rope looked red. Everything suddenly looked red. The white sprays of water had turned to bloody crimson.

Noph shivered, blinking, but the stain remained. He looked down at the sanguine fountain. Captain Jander Turbalt’s body bobbed in the water, one of Entreri’s daggers jutting from his head.

I betrayed Harloon, Noph thought bitterly. He stared at the captain’s gushing head. That’s who I am, right there. A traitor.

“Let me loose, you immature imbecile!” Miltiades demanded. “How can I baby-sit you if you’ve got me all tied up?”

He sounds just like Father, Noph thought angrily. I traveled half the world to escape my father, but he’s

still here. This preening, self-important, unappreciative paladin has become my father. Noph couldn’t bear the thought of spending another moment with him, and his shoulders stiffened in sudden resolve.

“I’ll let you both go on one condition,” he said. He climbed steadily down the bloody statue. “That you, Miltiades, let Master Entreri and his crew slip away with their wounded and dead into the city.”

“What?” Miltiades demanded of Noph. “You would let these black-hearted brigands go, though you know they seek to kill the very lady you are sworn to rescue?”

As Noph climbed down the slippery slope, he said, “That was your oath, not mine.” He reached the bloody pool at the base of the fountain, and sloshed purposefully through it, drawing the rope tight all the while. “Besides, as you said, you’d probably never rescue her with me along.”

Miltiades’s eyes shown as with battle fury. “You are quitting our band? How dare you? You will not survive an hour alone in this city!”

An arm was on Noph’s shoulders, a slender and strong arm, and he was whirled forcefully around into a hot embrace. The she-pirate Shar kissed him long and full on the lips. She drew her head back, staring with promise in her eyes and laughing scornfully. “You may not survive the hour, my luscious little lad, but I’ve got arms you can die in.” She tossed a grin toward the pair of roped leaders, both of whom looked equally mortified. “The kid’s coming with me. Call him a spoiled little spoil of war. And don’t get too jealous, Entreri. He just saved your skin. I’m simply returning the favor.” She bent closer to the dark little man and hissed so only he could hear, “You’ve kept enough secrets from us. Perhaps now I’ll start making some secrets of my own.” She swung her eyes back to the boy and gave him a delicious smile.

Noph turned his hurt gaze away from his erstwhile mentor and toward the brazen, voluptuous she-pirate. “I’m one of you, now.”

The paladin’s eyes strayed to the tatter-clothed and sensuous woman. “Agreed. Go with them. You deserve each other. As for you, Entreri, I will slay you another time.”

% %

Into the bloodstained Plaza of the Mage-King came the most feared man in Eldrinpar, followed by forty of his picked men.

Perhaps a year ago, Ikavi Garkim would have brought only twenty men, but now, every last soldier of Doegan’s native forces was weak with the Gray Malaise. The city’s priests had failed to find a cure, and those infected grew slowly, agonizingly worse. Already hundreds of civilians had died from it, and the malaise was beginning to cripple the army.