"I thought you hated wizards."
"I-I do ... magelords, at least. There's something about see¬ing spells hurled, though, that—"
"Fascinates, eh? I've felt that." Farl nodded in the moonlight. "You'll get over it once you've tried to fire a wand or speak a spell over and over again and nothing happens. You learn to admire it from a distance and keep well clear—or be swiftly slain. Gods-bedamned wizards." He yawned. "Well, a good night's work. . .. Let's get some slumber under Selune—or we'll be snoring some¬where when full day comes again."
"Here?"
"Nay—two of those dead, at least, have family vaults right here—and what if their servants, sent to clean up the tombs and the brush for a burial, are fearful enough of walking dead to de¬mand an escort of armsmen? Nay, we need to find a roof else¬where."
A sudden thought came to Elminster, and he grinned. "Han¬nibur's?"
Farl grinned back. "His snores'd wake a corpse."
"Exactly." They laughed and hastened back through the dark streets and alleys of the city, avoiding aroused bands of arms-men who were tramping aimlessly about in the night, looking for a running youth in dark leathers and an old mage strolling along in the air—and no doubt inwardly hoping they'd find nei-ther.
As the half-light that heralds dawn stole down the river and into Hastarl, El and Farl settled down on Hannibur's roof, won¬dering at the silence from below. "What's become of his snoring?" El murmured, and Farl shrugged his own puzzlement in reply.
Then they heard the small sound from below that meant Hannibur had slid open the eye-panel on his back door. They ex¬changed raised eyebrows and bent to look down into the alley— in time to see Shandathe Llaerin, called "the Shadow" for her smoothly silent ways, and perhaps the most beautiful woman in all Hastarl, come lightly up the alley to Hannibur's back door. They heard her say softly, "I'm here at last, love."
"At last," the baker rumbled as he drew the door warily open. "I thought ye'd never come. Come to the bed ye belong in, now."
Elminster and Farl exchanged delighted glances, and clasped hands with fierce joy in the night. Then, all thoughts of sleep gone, they settled down to listen to what befell in the room below.
And were fast asleep within seven breaths.
*****
The hot sun woke the two exhausted, filthy thieves sometime late in the morning . . . and once they were awake, the smell of fresh-baked rolls and loaves wafting up from Hannibur's shop made sure they stayed that way.
Stomachs growling, the two thieves peered carefully down at the bedroom below. They could just see Shandathe's elbow as she slept the day peacefully away.
"Don't seem right, that she should sleep, when we can't," Farl complained, rubbing his eyes.
"Let her sleep," Elminster replied. "She's doubtless earned it. Come." They climbed carefully down the crumbling back sills and cross-beams of the shop next door and went off to the silver-bit baths—only to find folk lined up.
"Whence this sudden urge for cleanliness, goodsir?" Farl asked a sausage vendor they knew by sight.
He frowned at them. "Haven't ye heard? The mage royal and a dozen other mages were killed last night! The dirge-walk be¬gins at highsun."
"Killed? Just who could manage to slay the mage royal?"
"Ah." The sausage seller leaned close confidentially, pretend¬ing not to see the eight or so folk who crowded or leaned out of the line to listen. "There's some who says it was a mage they awakened from sleeping in a tomb all these years since the fall of Netheril!"
"Nay," a woman standing near put in, " 'Twas—"
"And there's some," the sausage seller went on, raising his voice to ride over her, "what says it was a poor wretch they caught an' were going to eat, alive, so they say, for some foul magic—but when they sat down at the table, he turned into a dragon, and burned 'em all! Others say 'twas a beholder, or a mind flayer, or summat worse!"
"Nay, nay," the woman said, pushing in, "that's not it at all—"
"But meself," the sausage-vendor said, elbowing her back and raising his voice again, so that it echoed back off the stone wall across the alley, "I think the first tale I heard is the true one: their wickedness was punished by a visit from Mystra herself!"
"Yes! That's it! 'Twas just that as happened, I tell thee!" The woman was hopping up and down in her excitement now; her ca¬pacious bosom heaved and rolled like tied bundles on the docks in high winds. "The mage royal thought he had a spell that would bring her to heel like a dog so he could use her power to destroy all wizards but ours and conquer all the lands from here to the
Great Sea beyond Elembar! But he was wrong, and she—"
"She turned them all to boars, thrust spits up their behinds, and seared 'em in the hearth fires!" The gleeful voice belonged to a man nearby who stank of fish.
"Nay! I heard she plucked off all their heads—and ate 'em!" an old woman said proudly, as if King Belaur personally had told her.
"Ah, get gone wi' ye. Why'd she do that, eh?" The man next to her stepped on her foot, hard.
She hopped in pain, shaking her finger under his nose. "Just you wait, clever-nose! Jus' you wait an' see—if they has carved wooden 'eads when they're borne past us, or their heads covered wi' the burial cloaks, then I'm right! An' there's some folk in Has¬tarl as'll tell you Berdeece Hettir's never wrong! Jus' you wait!"
Farl and Elminster had been trading amused looks, but at this Farl smiled and said out of the side of his mouth, changing his voice so that it sounded gruff and distant: "I suppose as thou wouldn't put money on it, hey?"
In an instant, the alley was a bedlam of shouting, red-faced Hastarl folk holding up fingers to indicate their wagers.
"Wait a bit, wait a bit," Elminster said—and silence fell: Eladar the Dark never talked. "It always distresses me to see ye wager," he said, looking around earnestly, "because after, there's so much hard talk and people furious at those who didn't pay. So if ye must wager—and ye know I don't throw my coins about thus—I'll write down thy claims, and all can be settled fair, after."
There was much talk ... and then a growing agreement that this was a good idea. Elminster tore the sleeve from the rotten shirt he was wearing, got some ink from the street-scribe in trade for a quill that he'd stolen out of a window a tenday ago, and was still carrying in his boot, and set to work, scratching out sums with a rough-pointed needle.
In the rush, none of the folk noticed Farl met several heavy wagers, standing always for the headless side. Elminster worked his way along the line to its head, dodged inside to continue wa¬gering, hung the scribbled sleeve on a high nail, and plunged headlong and fully clothed into the old wine-press tub that served as the bath. The water was already gray with filth, and Elmin¬ster came out again just as fast, pursued by the furious propri¬etor. They dodged around the rinse-pump while Farl worked the handle, dousing them both with rather cleaner water—and then Elminster thrust four silver bits into the man's hand, leapt to re¬trieve the wager sleeve, and scampered out again.
"Gods blast thee! 'Tis a gold piece a head this day!" the man bellowed after them.
El spun around, disgusted, and tossed a handful of silver bits in the bath-keeper's direction. "He's a worse thief than we've ever been," he muttered to Farl as they headed for a good place to hide the sleeve. It seemed fitting that the folk of Hastarl were willing to pay good gold to see the backs forever of the mage royal and a good handful of magelords besides.
"Or a better," Farl agreed. Word of what had befallen was all over the city; folk talked of nothing else around them as they walked—and something of the air of a festival hung over the city. El shook his head at the open laughter, even among the patrols of armsmen. "Well, of course they're happy," Farl explained to his wondering partner. "It's not every night that some helpful young thief—even if he does prefer to give all the credit to some myste¬rious mage who conveniently came out of thin air and just as helpfully vanished back into it again—downs the most hated and feared man in all Athalantar and many of his fellow mages ... not to mention a bunch of men that shopkeepers in this city owe a lot of coins to. Wouldn't you be, in their place?"
"They just haven't thought about which cruel magelord will step forward to proclaim himself mage royal, and make them even more fearful than before," Elminster replied darkly.
The wide streets along the route of the dirge-walk were filling already; folk who owned finery (and bath facilities of their own to prepare for its wearing) were pushing for the best positions— unaware of the flood of less polite and poorer neighbors who would shortly be charging in to seize the vantage points they wanted, regardless of who thought they owned it already. In most such processions, a good score of folk ended up crushed under the wheels of the carts, shoved forward by the press of leaning, shouting common folk.
"Are you thinking of what houses may be standing empty this good day, groaning with the weight of coins for the taking, while all Hastarl turns out to watch corpses paraded by?" Farl asked lightly.
"Nay," Elminster said. "I was thinking of switching the bucket that bath-keeper sits on for another—taking the one he's filling up with coins right now, and in its place leaving a bucket of—"
"Dung?" Farl grinned. "Too risky, though, by far—half the folk in line'd see us."
"Ye think they don't know what we do for a living, Farl? Even ye can't be that much the idiot!" Elminster replied.
Farl drew himself up with an air of injured dignity. " 'Tis not that, goodsir—'tis that we have a reputation to maintain. Every¬one may know that we take, aye—but none should ever see us doing the taking. It shouldst be magic, d'you see? Like those wiz¬ards you're so fond of."
El gave him a look. "Let's go take things," he said, and they strolled off to arm themselves for the workday ahead.
*****
One house topped the list of places to loot, and they hastened hence, wearing livery that was not their own but that served to conceal carry-bags strapped to their backs and bellies and to hide the handfuls of daggers they both carried.
They dropped over the back wall into a pleasant garden, crossed it like two hungry shadows, and swarmed up a climbing thornflower to a balcony. A servant was asleep in the sun in the room beyond, seizing a prize opportunity while his master was out of the house.
"This is too easy," Farl said as they sped up the stairs to a gilded door. He thrust his dagger into the carved snarling lion in its center and waited while the spring-loaded darts flashed away harmlessly down the stairs. "Don't these fools realize that the shops that sell 'em thief-traps are always run by thieves?"
He dug his blade into one of the lion's eyes, and the cut-glass eye popped out of its setting to dangle from the end of a cloth rib¬bon. Finding the wire in the opening behind the eye, Farl cut it and swung the door open. El looked back down the stairs as they went in, but the house was silent.
The bedchamber was a vision of red and deep pinkish tapes¬tries, cushions, and couches. "I feel as if I'm in someone's stom¬ach," Farl muttered as they crossed this sea of red.
"Or wading around in an open wound," Elminster agreed, striding up to a silver jewel-coffer.
As he reached for it, a hard-thrown dart flashed past his fin¬gers. Farl spun, dagger in hand—to stare into the eyes of two women and a man who were climbing swiftly in through a win¬dow. They were all clad in matching black leathers, and bore a sigil on their breasts: a crossed moon and dagger.
"This loot belongs to the Moonclaws," said one woman in a steely whisper, her eyes hard.
"Ah, no," Farl replied disgustedly, hurling his dagger. "Gangs!"
His blade spun through the air to plunge through the hand of the other woman, the hand that had been sweeping up with a dart in it. She screamed and fell to her knees.
Elminster hurled a dagger hilt-first into the man's face, tossed a cushion after it, and then sudden rage took hold of him. He leapt forward to plant a kick so hard in the man's gut that he groaned aloud as his toes struck the armor plate there—but its wearer was driven headlong back out the window to fall scream-ing to the garden below, a garrote waving uselessly in his hands.
"So noisy ... so unprofessional," Farl murmured, snatching up the jewel-coffer. The wounded woman was fleeing for the rope at the window she'd come in by, sobbing from the pain and shak¬ing blood all over the red carpets. "Hey—that's one of my good blades!" he complained as the other woman leapt at him, hurling one dagger and raising another.
Farl ducked and swept the coffer up; her blade struck it and shot into the ceiling, where it struck a roof-beam and stood quiv¬ering. The woman tried to reach over the coffer and slash his face, but Farl simply stepped around her, keeping the coffer be¬tween them, his head low and out of reach, and shoved her away with its end. She slipped on the carpet, and he brought the coffer down hard on her head. She collapsed soundlessly, and Elmin¬ster gently laid her unconscious companion atop of her, handing Farl his blade.
Farl examined its bloody tip and wiped it on the woman. "Dead?"
Elminster shook his head. "Just asleep; too hurt to defend herself." They knelt together over the gem-coffer, scooping and snatching in real haste, until Farl said, "Enough! Use their rope—let's begone!"
They paused to check the firmness of the gang's grapnel, and then hastily clambered down, Farl first. The male thief lay sprawled senseless on the turf, with a shocked-looking servant gazing down at him. Seeing the rope dance and jerk, he stared up at them. Then he screamed and ran, and from the window above them, the two thieves heard an angry shout.
