Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Vondish Ambassador

Emmis swallowed bile, and began the process of getting back on his feet.

By the time he was upright and ready to take another look the scene on High Street had changed; two guardsmen were dragging a limp figure toward him, while a small crowd watched from a safe distance behind them. As they approached Emmis heard an unfamiliar voice ask, "What about him?"

The guard who had accompanied him to and from Southmarket replied, "I think he's all right; he says he works for Lord Ildirin. We were going to meet someone he knows on Lower Street – a wizard."

"If this man killed a guard, shouldn't he go to the nearest magistrate?"

"He said Lord Ildirin would want to question him."

"What? Who said?"

Emmis saw the guard on the left nod toward him. "He did."

"Well, I hope they aren't in any hurry about questioning him; you hit him pretty hard."

"He was asking for it."

"Then I'd say he got it. Was it you who broke that arm?"

"No, Emmis did that." Again, the guardsman nodded toward him.

"Good for him."

Then the trio, the two guards and the unconscious Kelder, reached the intersection of High Street and Canal Avenue. Emmis could see that the stranger carried a lantern on his belt; the night watch was earning its pay tonight.

He also held a long, narrow-bladed dagger in his free hand – definitely not anything the city watch would issue. Kelder had probably had that hidden somewhere.

Emmis was glad he hadn't kept it somewhere readily accessible; if the assassin had pulled that when they were grappling back on Merchant Street, matters might have gone very differently.

"Emmis of Shiphaven, this is Gror Grondar's son," the familiar guard said.

"Good to meet you," Gror said.

"Thank you," Emmis said. Then he turned to the other. "I never got your name."

Gror laughed as the other said, "Arnen of Freshwater." Arnen cast Gror an angry look.

"Arnen says you're taking these two to Lower Street."

Emmis nodded. "To Guildmaster Ithinia. Lord Ildirin is waiting for Zhol and me there."

"Guildmaster? Which guild, the wizards?"

"Yes."

"Then we don't want to keep her waiting, do we?" He shifted his grip on Kelder, glanced down at Zhol's corpse, then looked at Kelder's face. The prisoner's jaw was hanging open, a thread of drool trailing down one side of his pointed beard. His eyes were closed.

Gror turned back to Emmis, and jerked a thumb toward the body on the ground. "You carried that all the way from Southmarket?"

"Yes."

"Seems to me you've done your share of the hauling, then. Arnen, can you take this one?"

Arnen mumbled something, and a moment later he had Kelder slung over his shoulder while Emmis helped Gror heave Zhol's corpse onto his shoulder.

And that was how they covered the final three blocks to Ithinia's door, where Ahan and Shakoph hurried to their aid.

"Is Fendel's Assassin gone?" Emmis asked, as he sank into a chair.

Ithinia held up her dagger, which gleamed in the lamplight, but only with the natural sheen of polished metal. There was no blue glow. "So it would seem," she said. "It carried out its assignment and you gave it the honey you had promised, so it should be."

"Good." While it was true that the creature had defended him from Kelder, the thing made Emmis nervous. "So will you turn Lar back, then?"

"In a moment. When Lord Ildirin returns."

Emmis nodded. Ildirin was out on the street with the guards, discussing what was to be done with Zhol's body, and with Kelder; Emmis had been sent inside to rest.

He certainly needed rest; it had been a very, very long day. He wanted to curl up somewhere and go to sleep; a bed would be first choice, but at this point he wasn't picky and would happily settle for a reasonably clean floor. A chair in the parlor would be more than adequate.

But he wanted to see Lar alive again, first. He glanced at the statue that had been his employer and frowned.

"Will the counter-spell take as long as the original spell? Maybe I could take a nap…"

"What? No, of course not! It just takes a moment to reverse the spell."

"It does?"

"Yes, of course. There's no way I could do another three-hour spell tonight – it would be dawn by the time I finished it. I'm not as young as I used to be, and I have no intention of staying up that late."

Emmis refrained from pointing out that it was already ridiculously late. He leaned back in the chair.

The next thing he knew, Ahan was shaking him awake.

"Lord Ildirin thought you would want to see this," the guardsman said.

"I… uh…" Emmis sat up, trying to clear his head and wondering how long he had been asleep. It was still full night outside the parlor window, so it couldn't have been terribly long.

Ahan, Ildirin, and Ithinia were standing around Lar's petrified form; Ithinia was holding the crystal goblet she had used in the petrifaction spell.

"Ready?" she said.

Ahan moved from Emmis's side to a position behind the statue, ready to catch Lar if he started to fall. Emmis blinked; it seemed as if he should be doing something more than just sitting there, but he was still too bleary to think what it might be.

"Give me your truncheon," Ithinia said, holding out her free hand.

Ahan drew the weapon and passed it over. Ithinia accepted it, hefted it, and nodded. Then she crossed the room and stood behind a small marble-topped table. She set the goblet on the table, and raised the guardsman's club.

Emmis expected her to pause and speak an incantation, but she did nothing of the sort; instead, without any ceremony, she slammed the truncheon down on the goblet, smashing the delicate crystal to glittering splinters and sending droplets of brown liquid spraying across the room.

Emmis started. "What…"

Then a sound caught his ear, and he turned to see Lar, no longer stone and entirely normal in appearance, slumping into Ahan's waiting arms. Emmis had been so muzzy, and so focused on Ithinia, that he had completely missed the transformation.

But he hadn't been that distracted; it must have been almost instantaneous.

He got to his feet, wanting to help, but Ahan seemed to have the situation under control; Lar was blinking as if awakening.

"Oh, my," the ambassador said, straightening up out of Ahan's grasp. "Oh, that was strange!"

"Are you all right, sir?" Emmis asked.

"Yes, I'm fine." Lar brushed at his sleeves as if removing dust, though there was no sign of any that Emmis could see. "Is… is it gone? The assassin?"

"It seems to be, yes."

Lar put a hand to his throat. "My neck…"

"It tried to wring your neck," Emmis said.

"Did it?" Lar took his hand away and looked at his spread fingers, apparently checking for blood and finding none, but Emmis could now see several long red scratches on the Vondishman's neck – none of them deep enough to bleed, but probably enough to be painful.

"Indeed it did," Lord Ildirin said. "Though only after our lovely hostess had cast a sleeping spell on you."

Emmis would not have thought of Ithinia as "lovely," but he supposed Ildirin was being polite – or perhaps his age gave him a different perspective.

"Is that what she did? I thought it was just the… the end of the first spell."

Emmis noticed the phrasing, and guessed that Lar was not confident enough of his Ethsharitic to use the word "petrifaction." "What was it like?" he asked.

Lar shuddered. "Everything went black. I was… I couldn't feel anything at all. The world just faded away. It was as if I was floating in total darkness. But I could hear a little – just a little. I heard you ask if the creature was still here, and I heard Ithinia say that it was, that it wanted its honey and didn't think I was dead. She said I was made of granite, but I felt as if I wasn't made of anything."