The Diamond (10 page)

moving, pressing against the inside of the glass.

“Shaken!”

His heartfelt shout shattered the shocked silence, and a thousand throats took up the name in a

thunderous chorus. The one they called on clawed at the inside of her coffin just as her husband

had done before.

“Right,” Khelben called calmly, reminding all who heard it that he’d been through this before.

“Crafters, bring your pry bars and augers! Priests: prayers and gauze.” He turned to smile at a

mop-haired man-giant. “And, yes, Madieron, see if you can’t lay hands on a plow horse

somewhere.”

In the ensuing bustle and excited roar, Piergeiron spun away from the coffin. His eyes were sharp

again and piercing. The fog was gone from him. He sought one man: a certain silver paladin with

a penchant for hidebound heroism and a hammer as large as all outdoors.

“Miltiades!” Piergeiron cried, reaching the man he sought and clapping him on one ornamental

epaulet, “how’s about I have a look at your hammer?”

The paladin gaped at him, bewildered. “What?”

“Come now, Miltiades, don’t be stingy,” Piergeiron roared. “The lads and lasses of three continents

are talking about this golden hammer you wield. It’s not as though I’d dent it.”

Blinking, as stiff as always, Miltiades blurted, “Well, of course not. It’s not as if

I mean to say, if

you can’t be trusted

er, that is—” He unslung the mighty weapon. “Here.”

“Thanks,” said Piergeiron, his old humor sparkling in his eyes.

He strode back through the carnival of crafters and clergy and gawkers, crowded eight deep

around the casket where his wife struggled. His very presence cleared a path.

Knees against the still-warm gold, Piergeiron hoisted the great sledge over his head and cried out,

“If ever there was Justice, in the name of Tyr—!”

And the hammer fell.

Some say it was not the paladin’s golden hammer but a crack of lightning sent by Tyr himself that

leapt down through the chapel to strike the glass-covered coffin. But such folk were often enough

wrong about daily weather predictions to call into question their grasp of divine thunderstorms.

Others said Khelben the Blackstaff worked an enchantment so powerful that it not only left the

Lord Mage drained for three days but gave Halaster in Undermountain a splitting headache and

temporarily enhanced the power and endurance of another smaller though no less mythically

proportioned hammer in the possession of one Old Mage of Shadowdale.

Those with honest eyes, more interested in one man’s simple passion than all the Tyr-storms and

spells on Toril, say that the hammer blow was borne home by nothing more than Piergeiron’s love

for Shaleen.

A crack like thunder

a burst of glass

and as the shining fragments flew skyward, Piergeiron

lifted his lady free.

Glass showered down.

A great cheer fountained up.

Even Miltiades was elated. He would later describe the event as nothing less than a divine

epiphany.

Piergeiron swung his lady around into an embrace. “Shaleen! You’re alive!” He clutched her tightly,

driving the new breath from her lungs. “I went down into death to find you. I dreamed of you

entrapped in a great diamond, and here you are!”

“Here I am,” she replied, wondering and solemn. There was a moment of distance, of silent

abstraction, and then the wide, lopsided grin of old spread itself across her face.

Piergeiron buried that grin with a kiss, and the best and brightest of all high Waterdeep were

reduced to hooting adolescents shouting out encouragements.

The dirge-musicians struck up a lively reel, and in moments all the room was dancing. The cries,

shouts, and laughter made a greater din than the midnight battle that had started this whole

crazed affair of diamonds and death and the Utter East. Flailing arms and tossing up gowns, the

dancers spilled out into the halls of the palace, and from there into the streets.

With a spell that made his voice thunder, Khelben stopped the music. “Hold! What is this unseemly

hurly-burly? Jigs? Reels? Dancing in the chapel? Kissing and cavorting? These are not seemly

things for so reverent and auspicious a ceremony!”

“What ceremony?” shouted back Lasker Nesher sourly. He was perhaps the only Waterdhavian

not cavorting. “This is the third time you’ve thrown a funeral, and each time the body gets up and

dances. There’s no ceremony! I’m never coming to a funeral here again!”

“There’s no funeral ceremony,” Khelben replied, “but if those two keep kissing that way, there’d

better be a wedding!”

This time it was an elated Piergeiron himself who answered, “What’re you squawking about, Old

Crow? This is my wife!”

“Oh, no, she’s not!” the mage thundered so definitively that a chill and cries of dismay ran through

the crowd. “I was at your wedding to Shaleen. In my clear recollection, your vows involved the

words ‘Until death do us part.’”

“Yes,” Piergeiron confirmed slowly, realization dawning.

Khelben shook his beard like a lion shaking out its mane. “Well, I don’t know a couple around here

who’s been more dead than you two!”

“A wedding!” Noph shouted suddenly, and the cry carried through the crowd.

“Yes!” Khelben cried. “This began with two attempts at wedding Eidola—may she rest in

peace—and ended with three tries at burying Shaleen. We can’t have the funerals outnumber the

weddings! So to your seats, everyone! You two lovebirds: to me!”

The roar of the crowd redoubled as nobles and guildsmen clambered across benches, musicians

tuned instruments like madmen, and the priest of Ao shredded his eulogy, hurled it into the air,

and paced in a tight circle, trying to recall what he could of the wedding rite.

Through all this tumult, Piergeiron reached Khelben at the back of the chapel. “Well, Lord Mage,

you were such an observant witness the last time I married Shaleen, I must ask you to be best

man this time!”

Khelben’s gray-grizzled beard didn’t quite hide his rare but rueful smile. “Thanks, but nay. I want

to keep my hands free. This is one ceremony I don’t want interrupted.” He put a hand on the

Open Lord’s shoulder and pointed at a particular member of the crowd. “Besides, there’s a better

candidate—”

“Better than the Lord Mage of Waterdeep?”

“Here’s a young man who single-handedly foiled an assassination attempt at your last wedding,

rounded up the conspirators, bravely fought bloodforge warriors and fiends and his own fears,

revealed Eidola for what she was, rescued Miltiades and his fellows numerous times, and has in

this month done nothing but tirelessly fight for the people of Waterdeep. He’s even taught me a

few things about heroism. In fact, I think so highly of Noph Nesher that I suggest he join us as a

Lord of Waterdeep.”

Piergeiron smiled. “Noph Nesher? That man there? That tanned, brawny scrapper—the one rising

just now to give his seat to yon fat lady? Wasn’t he just a boy locked away in my dungeon during

the last wedding? He seems a completely new man.”

Khelben nodded. “So do you, friend. So do you.”

Postlude

Lord and Lady

How has this happened?

In one evening, I’ve been transformed from that inward-shrinking worm back into Piergeiron

Paladinson, Open Lord of Waterdeep. The will of dust has changed. All of me sings. All that was

once sundered has come together.

Ah, well, I should’ve expected transformations. I chose to orbit a changeable star. Shaleen. It is so

good to hear your breath, to feel your warmth beside me.

Awake again? Heigh ho, girl, but when you rise from the dead, you rise!

Oh, to sleep

But that’s not the point of honeymoons, is it?

WELCOME TO THE UTTER EAST!

THE DOUBLE DIAMOND TRIANGLE SAGA

The story continues

The bride of the Open Lord of Waterdeep has been abducted. The kidnappers are from the far-off

lands of the Utter East. But who are they? And what do they really want? Now a group brave

paladins must travel to the perilous kingdoms of this unknown land to find the answers. But in this

mysterious world, nothing is ever quite what it appears.

Look for the books in the series

The Abduction

(January 1998)

The Mercenaries

(January 1998)

Errand of Mercy

(February 1998)

An Opportunity for Profit

(March 1998)

Conspiracy

(April 1998)

Uneasy Alliances

(May 1998)

Easy Betrayals

(June 1998)

The Diamond

(July 1998)

About the Authors

J. Robert King lives in Burlington, Wisconsin, from which base he bravely sets forth into the worlds

of the FORGOTTEN REALMSŽ, RAVENLOFTŽ, PLANESCAPEŽ, and DRAGONLANCE Ž. He is the

proud father of two sons, the proud husband of a lovely wife, and the proud smoker of really,

really big cigars.

Ed Greenwood, creator of the FORGOTTEN REALMS campaign setting, lives in Canada with his

wife and about a zillion books. He has written more than fifty novels and game modules for TSR,

more than two hundred and fifty articles for DRAGON Ž Magazine and POLYHEDRONŽ newzine,

and shows no sign of running out of things to say any time soon.

RAVENLOFT, PLANESCAPE, DRAGONLANCE, DRAGON and POLYHEDRON are registered trademarks

owned by TSR.