Murder in Halruaa (29 page)

“I called him ‘Geoffrey,’ because he kept saying ‘Gee-off-free,’” Pryce said with regret. “But he wasn’t trying to tell me his name, was he? With his tortured, multigenetic throat, he was trying to tell me your name!”

“And as usual, you wouldn’t listen!” Gheevy spat back. He slid through the spilled liquor and broken glass and gave the mongrelman a resounding kick on the side of his head. Pryce winced but held his position. An attack now would be sheer suicide. “Curse this useless hunk of hide, Gamor Turkal, and you as well!” Gheevy cried in frustration. “If Turkal had simply done his job without getting any stupid ideas, none of this would have happened!”

Pryce’s stratagem worked, in a small way. So intent was

Gheevy on showing off his superiority that he delayed destroying Pryce and underestimated the power of the wretched mongrelman. Gurrahh suddenly rose up, grabbing for Gheevy’s legs. The halfling was too quick for the monster, though. Nimbly he hopped up to the open window Gurrahh had jumped through, stamping on the mongrelman’s stomach as he went. He spun to leave the two with a killing spell, but instead he took a bottle full in the face.

No one could fault Pryce Covington’s deadly accurate throwing skills.

The bottle shattered, and Gheevy flew backward out the window. The mongrelman charged after him as Pryce slipped out the front door and ran around the side. He reached the adjoining field in time to see Gheevy, wet and cut but hardly the worse for wear, a good twenty yards ahead of him and ten yards ahead of the lumbering mongrelman.

No! Pryce thought. He couldn’t let the halfling escape now. Then it would only be a waiting game to see when the vengeful creature would torture and finally kill him … but not before he tortured and killed everyone Covington cared about.

Pryce ran as fast as he could, even moving ahead of the mongrelman, but Gheevy was faster. The halfling obviously had the same thought as Covington and was probably even now plotting the first sadistic move of an endless vengeance. To his horror, Pryce heard Gheevy laugh; then the halfling put on more speed, moving farther and farther ahead of the tiring human.

A furry blur sped past Pryce at a pace that outclassed even Wotfirr. In a matter of moments, the jackalwere was upon the halfling, snarling and tearing at his clothes. Pryce dived at the hairy, rolling, clawing bundle but was hurled back by a sudden circlet of pure white energy.

“Cunningham!” he screamed. Pryce could see the human-sized jackal within the circle, contorting in the air and howling unnaturally. Then the circle winked out, and the jackalwere

crumpled to the ground in a twisted heap.

Pryce vaulted to his feet and sprinted forward just in time to see the halfling’s back at the very crest of the hill. As he ran, Pryce could see more and more of the ground beyond the top of the mound. To his amazement, he noted that the halfling was no longer running. In fact, he was just standing there, looking down at a patch of brown stevlyman and white bevittle trees.

Standing in front of the small forest was Devolawk, the broken one. Beside him, her arm around what constituted the tormented creature’s shoulders, was Dearlyn Ambersong.

****

“I saw you die!” the halfling screeched.

“You saw me fall,” she corrected vehemently. “In Halruaa, there’s quite a difference.”

Pryce took a quick glance back at Cunningham. He lay in a charred circle of ground, his fur burned and his skin flayed, yet the suffering jackalwere still moved. Pryce returned his attention to the guilty party. “I saw to it that another levitation field was created beneath the ship,” he called to the halfling, keeping his distance. ‘The Mystrans collected her in a ship that flew below ours.”

“They caught you?” the halfling sputtered, finally at a loss. “But why the charade?”

“I had to keep you at bay until the Ambersong legacy was safe,” Pryce explained tightly. “I also had to be sure. And I had to give the inquisitrixes a solution that wouldn’t threaten Dearlyn or me in the future!”

Wotfirr turned on Pryce with rancor. “Threaten? What do you mean by that?”

‘You helped me, Gheevy,” Pryce revealed. “By deceiving you, I was able to concoct a plan in which I would keep the inquisitrixes from finding out about Dearlyn’s magical abilities by accusing her of it—in a melodrama designed to trap you!”

“Trap?” the halfling blurted. “You mean the authorities still don’t realize that she has… that you aren’t… ?”

Pryce merely smiled and nodded knowingly. “You tricked me,” the vengeful little thing seethed. ‘You! The dupe! The gull! Once I discovered that Gamor had contacted you, I decided that you should be the one to take the blame for the deaths. But then you had to take the cloak—the cloak that would mark Geerling Ambersong as a fraud and a fool—and set off this farce of mistaken identities!”

“My father?” Dearlyn choked. “A fraud?”

The halfling whirled on her. “My plan was perfect. Lymwich would find your father dead, in a youthful form, wearing the Darlington Blade cloak. What else could she think? Only that your father was trying to hold on to his power by using a youth spell and pretending he was a vital new mage named Darlington Blade! They would assume that the doddering old idiot made a mistake and died in the process.” The halfling grinned wickedly at her. “My killing spell was designed to leave behind that echo for Witterstaet to find … the masterful spell I murdered Geerling Ambersong with!”

He turned so quickly and his expression was so evil that Pryce actually took a step back. “But this incredible idiot had to come along and ruin it all! I swore I would play him like the puppet he was and lead him to inexorable destruction. And so I still will.” He looked back at Dearlyn with a wicked sneer, pointing at Pryce with a clawing finger. “Don’t you know how he lied and used you? Don’t you know what he did to your father?” He pointed at the tremoring jackalwere. “He fed him to that!”

Dearlyn bit her lip, her eyes wavering. But then her shoulders straightened and she stared straight back at the depraved halfling. “He didn’t want to do any of it,” she said shakily.

“Nonsense!” Wotfirr roared. “All he cared about was staying alive!”

“No,” she answered, her voice gaining strength. “Maybe to begin with… maybe at the start, yes.” She looked at Pryce with sadness, and then something else. Something brave, even kind. “But not afterward,” she maintained. “I know that for a fact” She turned to look haughtily upon her father’s murderer. “You told me so yourself, halfling. In the secret workshop. ‘He didn’t mean it… it was an accident!’”

“Bah!” Gheevy raged. “Maybe you won’t accept it, but I’m sure I’ll be able to convince a certain inquisitrix that—”

“Face it, Gheevy,” Pryce interrupted. “It’s over. We know the whole story, and the inquisitrixes know enough not to believe you. Gamor got you enough parts to test your evil magic on and create poor Devolawk. But when none of your forbidden magic turned out well enough, you altered your plans and used a jackalwere to find Gurrahh for you so you could secure the workshop. But Gamor even ruined that for you, by trying to double-cross you with his partners and steal it on his own.”

“Gamor, that idiot!” Gheevy exploded. “I promised him the workshop when I was done with it, but he couldn’t wait!”

“So he had to die, didn’t he?”

“You all do!” Gheevy finally screamed, his little body shaking. “Stinking humans… always think you’re so great… and you are the worst of them!” He pointed a trembling hand at Pryce. ‘You’re everything I hate about your kind! Smug, arrogant, stupid… think you’re so smart and funny… but you’re nothing… nothing!”

“You’ve hurt enough people, dark one,” Dearlyn said. “Have you forgotten who you’re dealing with? One who could arrange the Verity melodrama? One who confers with high priestesses of unearthly wisdom? You’re not dealing with a petty outsider any longer. Now you’re dealing with the great Darlington Blade.”

Gheevy grabbed his head, arched his back, and shrieked to the treetops. “Imbecile! I’m the great Darlington Blade!” Then he unleashed his rage at the man who had ruined all his plans.

The clearing between the hilltop and the wood suddenly exploded in streams of lightning, balls of thunder, and sparks of power. Pryce dived to the side, curling into the tall grass as the mongrelman jumped forward, deflecting the nerve dance meant for Covington. The beast twisted and jerked in place as Dearlyn Ambersong hurled her staff.

Gheevy used a rapid reflexive response spell to grab the staff out of the air and hurl it back at Dearlyn. Devolawk twisted in front of her, taking the brunt of the blow as Pryce charged the halfling. But Gheevy’s magic was too fast and too powerful. The halfling created a ring of disintegration and sent a six-inch circlet of annihilating matter directly at Pryce’s head.

Dearlyn immediately effected a spell, raising her arm and crying “Versus petrification!” Another circlet appeared from her palm and shot over to swallow Gheevy’s bead of destruction. Pryce ducked in time to feel the warring spells just barely pass over his neck.

“Blast you!” Gheevy cried. “Blast you both to the bowels of Hades!” He yanked a small, pale item from his pocket and held it up to the autumn sun.

“By Zalathorm, no!” Dearlyn cried.

“Mycontril’s Last Resort,” Gheevy gloated. “Nothing you can do can stop this spell. You will be eradicated in a culmination of all Ambersong magic energy!”

Pryce recognized the spell and the item. To destroy everything in a thirty-foot radius, using the power of all the remaining spells in a caster’s memory, required diamond dust worth five thousand gold pieces, a pure platinum ring … and the finger bone of an archmage.

It was Geerling’s finger.

“Gheevy, no!” Pryce cried. ‘You’ll be hurt, too!” “But I’ll survive,” the enraged halfling shrieked. “Unlike all of you. All that matters is that you will finally be gone… forever!” He started the spell, nature itself reacting to the tear in reality.

The branches and tall grass bent in a powerful wind as dark storm clouds gathered above the halfling.

Pryce looked about wildly. Cunningham and Gurrahh were still down. Dearlyn was too close. There was no way any of them could get clear of the devastation in time. There was no way to escape, to stop him, or to distract him, except—

The voice of Geerling Ambersong sounded on the howling wind. “Darlington Blade!”

Dearlyn looked around wildly. “Father?…”

“Darlington Blade!”

The voice was so unearthly and so real that even Gheevy froze in his casting. “M-Master?” he stuttered despite himself.

“Darlington Blade,” Geerling Ambersong called.

A fingered wing touched Dearlyn’s arm and moved her aside. Devolawk, the broken one, trudged forward, his snout-beak all the way open, his corpse teeth and mangled lips making the sounds. “Darlington Blade… you must not do this____”

“The haunt,” Pryce whispered.

The spirit of Geerling Ambersong was back. It was near because of Cunningham. The Haunt had been traveling with the jackalwere because of Pryce’s horrible previous payment to the jackals in exchange for his first clues.

“M-Master?” Gheevy repeated, startled, but then restarted his spell. “No, not my master!
am the master here! You fool, thinking your magic could cure me. There is nothing to cure! You deserved to die! All humans deserve to die!”p>

“No, Darlington, no!” the haunt cried, his winged arms held high.

Pryce looked from the halfling to the woman to the broken one. All three began to move at once. Each was starting a spell, but unless Pryce did something, the halfling would finish first… and then they all would be finished.

Pryce Covington went up on one leg, curled one arm, tightened his fist, and swung his arm under and around. “Gheevy!” he

cried. “Crystal Orb!”

The halfling glanced over without slowing his movements. “Idiot! You have no magic!” But then he saw a small glowing ball shoot from Pryce’s sleeve and speed toward his face. Gheevy immediately lost his stance, lost his movements, and stumbled over the necessary spell words.

The illumination ball—the one Pryce palmed when Gheevy had dropped it after the outside wall of the workshop first swung open—bounced harmlessly off Wotfirr’s upraised arm.

The halfling stared incredulously down at it, then looked up, openmouthed, at a grinning Pryce. “Well, what do you know?” Covington said pointedly. ‘You’re right.”

That’s when the combined might of the Ambersong father and daughter erupted from the forest and smashed into the infuriated halfling.

Dearlyn’s entire arms were consumed by a fiery white, which sped across the fifteen feet separating her from Wotfirr, but even those beams of destruction couldn’t rival the power displayed by Devolawk. From every finger, every claw, and from under every feather came a bolt, stream, circlet, orb, or blast. They sliced, stabbed, encircled, grabbed, and smashed into Gheevy, making the halfling dance wildly in place, as if the deities themselves had each taken a limb and shook it.

Through this wash of color and power came Dearlyn’s beams, which crashed into the halfling like the waves of a tsunami, engulfing him.

Pryce fell back, shielding his eyes, and quickly crawled over to where the mongrelman and Cunningham lay. In seconds, it was over. Darlington Blade was dead. Long live Darlington Blade.

All that was left was to bury the dead.

The mongrelman rose slowly. The jackalwere did not.

“Cunningham,” Pryce said sadly, leaning over the torn creature. As he looked down at the burned figure, who was caught between his human and animal state, he found that he had a lump in his throat.

“Ah,” the jackalwere managed to croak. “My dear fellow… please, do not mourn for the likes of me____”

But Pryce would not leave it at that. “Though you are a monster,” he said softly, “this is not a monstrous thing you have done.”

The jackalwere managed a feeble laugh. “Oh, I know you, my good man. You would have been foolish enough to release me… to let me go with my children … but I ask you—you whom I would call my friend—how many innocent travelers would have been condemned to death by your kind action?”