The Diamond

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THE DIAMOND

By

J. Robert King & Ed Greenwood

Contents

Prelude

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Other Books in Series:

The Abduction (0-7869-0864-5)

The Paladins (0-7869-0865-3)

The Mercenaries (0-7869-0866-1)

Errand of Mercy (0-7869-0867-X)

An Opportunity for Profit (0-7869-0868-8)

Conspiracy (0-7869-0869-6)

Uneasy Alliances (0-7869-0870-X)

Easy Betrayals (0-7869-0871-8)

Be sure to look for the other parts in your local bookstore.

She floated in beauty at the center of it all: a creature of pure light, her raiment a rainbow, her

scepter a staff of lightning, her eyes twin blue flames.

Paladin and Hero fell to their faces before her.

Her song now was one of triumph as her power blazed brighter. The black tentacles clutching the

diamond ignited, their flames adding to the brilliance. The globe of mirrors melted away, and a

blast of pure force roared out amid the circling stars and wandering moons.

THE DOUBLE DIAMOND TRIANGLE SAGA ™

THE ABDUCTION

J. Robert King

THE PALADINS

James M. Ward & David Wise

THE MERCENARIES

Ed Greenwood

ERRAND OF MERCY

Roger E. Moore

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR PROFIT

Dave Gross

CONSPIRACY

J. Robert King

UNEASY ALLIANCES

David Cook with Peter Archer

EASY BETRAYALS

Richard Baker

THE DIAMOND

J. Robert King & Ed Greenwood

To Peter Archer, who has labored mightily, his praises hitherto unsung, to keep the

Realms alive and colorful. The throne at the center of the fray can oft be too warm a

place but the Archer sits it with dignity.

E.G.

To Steven E. Schend, for showing me around the City of Splendors.

J.R.K.

THE DIAMOND

Š1998 TSR, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is

purely coincidental.

Distributed to the book trade in the United States by Random House, Inc. and in Canada by

Random House of Canada Ltd.

Distributed to the toy and hobby trade by regional distributors.

Distributed worldwide by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and regional distributors.

Cover art by Heather LeMay.

FORGOTTEN REALMS and the TSR logo are registered trademarks owned by TSR,

Inc. DOUBLE DIAMOND TRIANGLE SAGA is a trademark owned by TSR, Inc.

All TSR characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks owned

by TSR, Inc.

TSR, Inc. is a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

First Printing: July 1998

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-0691

8642XXX1501

ISBN: 0-7869-0872-6

U.S., CANADA, ASIA, EUROPEAN HEADQUARTERS

PACIFIC, & LATIN AMERICA Wizards of the Coast, Belgium

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Prelude

Rumination and Ruination

What a nuisance, death. No one’s polite to a dead man

even if the departed is the Open Lord of

Waterdeep.

A few manservants’d get the boot if Holy Tyr’s justice had aught to say about it. They hoist me

like a grainsack, drop me into coffins to check the fit, knock my head against any cornice or

filigree that presents itself, leave me lying however I land, and never deign to straighten garments

gathered at my knees or wadded up at my back.

On the second day of my demise, I was hung in the meat cellar with the rest of the perishables.

Simon the stablehand happened along to pilfer some cheese, and took the opportunity to pose me

provocatively with a three-foot-long Sembian sausage. If I hadn’t once been a mischievous lad

myself, I’d have him hanged like High Forest venison. If I’d not been mischievous

and weren’t

now as dead as Bane the Accursed.

I must be dead. Even Khelben thinks so. No breath. No pulse. Yet I can sense everything going on

around me. I’m haunting my own corpse! Once it decays, perhaps my ghost will be able to move,

haunting the entire Palace of Waterdeep. That would be considerably more interesting.

That is, if my body decays. I’m no mage, but I suspect the spell Khelben cast a tenday ago, bursts

of brimstone and blue wildfire crawling all over my skin, somehow preserved me. That’d be just

my luck. There’s little fun in haunting a casket; no wonder ghosts get peevish.

Ah, here’s proof of my suspicions: a dwarven smith. Hello, goodsir! Not that you can hear me.

Your name, fellow? Hornbeak Goldglimmer? Hammerhead Nailwhacker? Dullasrocks Stinkbreath?

And what have you there? A set of measuring rods, a pair of fat-nibbed quills, and a rolled-up set

of plans for

for a glass-covered coffin? Lovely.

Get your thumb away from my eyes! Ge-aughh, darkness again!

That’s the most frustrating thing about being dead. Whenever one of my eyelids shrinks back

enough to let me see what’s going on, somebody slides them closed. They’ll probably sew them

shut one of these days.

What good’ll a glass-topped coffin be then?

Death Comes for the Open Lord

Four young acolytes solemnly lit their tapers.

Piergeiron is dead. Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun, the Lord Mage of Waterdeep, sighed in defeat as

the trumpets, glauren, longhorns, and drums began their solemn dirge. It was chilly where he sat,

on a bench of polished marble in the balcony of the palace chapel. The stone was cold and hard

after the dark-stained wooden pews. The whole chapel had turned cold and hard. It had died

along with its lord.

I can scarce believe, after all these years, that he’s truly gone.

Yet there he lay, in a gleaming casket of gold and glass, master-work by the best crafters in all

the Sword Coast. Cold and beautiful and dead. Sages said beauty and truth were the same thing.

If that was so, the Open Lord, arrayed in silks and wools, gold and gems, was beautifully and truly

dead.

Interesting, thought Khelben, watching four acolytes and four candles drift in stately procession up

the chapel aisle, that beauty and truth are so coldly meaningless without life.

Shaleen, so long dead and long mourned, lay in her own coffin beside her husband. The Lord

Mage himself had exhumed and restored her body to beauty. Khelben Arunsun could make her

whole and beautiful again, but without the aid and approval of Holy Mystra, he could not give her

life. And with Shaleen, as with so many others, Mystra had given him only her holy silence. In the

days and years to come, Piergeiron and his bride would lie side by side in the center of the chapel.

Khelben sighed again. His breath ghosted in the chill air, rising past fresh-painted plaster to

disappear among polished ribs of white marble. Yes, the chapel was beautiful in its gold, silver,

and limestone, aglow with bejeweled chandeliers. Its aisles lay like brushed snow under white

carpets from Shou Lung, stretching past ranks of bleached oak panels, reaching up between each

pillar to round windows of gem-studded stained glass. Once more, the Eye of Ao stared out in

radiant perfection from the greatest window above the gathered throng. The artisans had done

well. Damnably well.

Khelben had ordered the chapel refurbished to delay this funeral, the official proclamation of

Piergeiron’s death. It would take months, he’d thought, to haul away the cracked and

fire-blackened pews, the sword-scarred panels of mahogany, the shards of shattered stained

glass, bloodstained rugs and twisted, ruined lanterns. It would take longer still to replace them all.

Until the chapel stood bright and complete once more, the Lord Mage could hold off the hordes of

glint-toothed nobles and finger-cracking guildmasters hoping to personally replace their dead Open

Lord.

But here it was, a month hence, and the work was finished.

The nobles and guildmasters had done well

aye, damnably well.

They sat below, crowding the pews: nobles, guildmasters, magistrates, diplomats, secret lords

and not-so-secret lords, senior guards: the best and brightest of Waterdeep. A gleaming, glittering

forest of ermined shoulders, diamond necklines, high-coiffed hair, waxed mustaches, peacock

feathers, whalebone stays, and features held just so by toning salves, minor magics, and even tiny

clips and hidden strands of silk. The best and brightest.

Khelben had spent more than enough time among them to glimpse the monsters behind these

masks.

Lasker Nesher was here, lord of an illicit logging empire. He was one of the most vocal contenders

for the Open Lord’s seat, stirring the rabble of Waterdeep with speeches that were half truth and

all theater. Lasker had personally provided the bleached oak panels, rails, and bosses for the

chapel “and other important palace rooms, out of love for the great Piergeiron.” It was strange,

indeed, that all the milled, polished wood came bearing inexpert spells of clairvoyance and

clairaudience. Khelben hadn’t removed the clumsy enchantments, but instead had overlaid them

with spells that twisted all images and sounds into things menacing. Perhaps that’s why the loving

Lasker Nesher sat blinking between two new bodyguards, starched collar wilting against his

clammy neck.

Then there were the Brothers Boarskyr. Loudly devastated by the disappearance of their kin Eidola

of Neverwinter, the pair of oafs had used the misfortune as an excuse to move more or less

permanently into the palace. While they awaited news of their cousin, they ravaged the palace

stores of beef, sweetmeats, pork, and venison, and drank aisle after aisle of Piergeiron’s private

wine cellar. Both gained another pound each day they remained. The Lord Mage had grudgingly

provided enchanted saddles so the Boarskyrs wouldn’t break the backs of any more palace horses.

Khelben wished he could send the two back to their rickety bridge and let it collapse beneath their

combined enormity.

Plenty of other monsters sat in those pews, men and women as duplicitous and murderous as

Eidola herself. Khelben was glad she hadn’t returned and hoped she never would.

Not all the mourners here were monsters, the Lord Mage reminded himself. He watched a young

boy light a candle flanking the raised dais where the caskets stood. Beside the boy hulked the

man-giant Madieron Sunderstone, hair drooping in sorrow around his lowered face. Madieron had

taken his master’s death worse than most. As cheerful, powerful, and loyal as a sheepdog,

Madieron had guarded Piergeiron from swords and shafts aplenty. But this last attack had been

nothing he could fight, or, it seemed, even understand. The man had sat beside the gold and glass

casket from the moment the Open Lord was interred there. Khelben wondered if, like a faithful

guard dog, Sunderstone would sit beside it until he died of a broken heart. If there was such a

thing as a true heart, Madieron had one.

And what about Captain of the Guard Rulathon? The intense young man glared in amazed shame

at the coffin. He had shouldered the whole burden of the recent troubles in Waterdeep, blaming

himself for shapeshifters, the Unseen, and rampant conspiracies. It was clear the captain’s honor

would not recover from this blow—unless Piergeiron himself rose from the casket to forgive him.

The dwarven goldsmith had really outdone himself with those caskets. Their gold sheathings were

elegant sculptures. At the four corners of the dais the smith had fashioned four tall golden

candlesticks, overtopping the plainer rows of commoners’ candles. Atop these man-high ornate

gold giants, stout candles now sputtered to life, as the acolytes drew reverently back.

Where had the smith gotten all that gold on such short notice?

The candles suddenly flared, each blazing six feet high. In the sudden roar of light and heat, four

menacing shapes formed

warriors! They leapt in flaming unison from their conflagrations,

dropping to the floor in the midst of the astonished throng.

“Not again,” hissed the Blackstaff. Scowling grimly, he rose from his bench, taking to the air with a