Ed Greenwood - The Herald

The body of a man, extra clothes knotted to his arms and legs and neck that had been wrapped around sizeable stones.

A corpse weighted down with stones to keep it submerged and hidden. Almost certainly a murdered monk. Well, well …

Two caverns later, he encountered another. Then another.

These two were in shallower sewage than the first, and El took the trouble to drag them to where he could haul their heads out and wipe at them to see if he recognized them.

He did. Two monks whose faces he knew. The name of one-a man from the far, far South beyond Faerûn who had coal-black skin, and who’d always spoken sparingly-he couldn’t recall, but the other was a freckled, red-bearded onetime trader from Tharsult.

“Dalkur,” Elminster muttered aloud, as the name rose out of his overcrowded memory. “Wrote a beautiful hand, as swift as some folk breathe.”

He let both bodies slip back down under the reeking brown current, and waded onward thoughtfully.

Oh, monks died and their brethren in Candlekeep didn’t trouble to let the wider world know. They kept to themselves as a matter of course. A great many folk in Faerûn had no idea there were women among the monks, although there had always been, simply because the Avowed of Candlekeep hadn’t bothered to let the world think any differently. Aye, monks could die and the world not be told about it.

Yet the penitent dead weren’t buried by being weighed down and hidden in sewage, and for years he’d had his own spies among the monks, and so had the Harpers, the Lords’ Alliance, and half a dozen less savory cabals and alliances … and if there’d been many losses among the Avowed of Candlekeep, some word of it would have leaked out.

Nor had any of the bodies been there all that long. Moving excrement that mixed with air as this flow did was far from a preservative.

No, these monks had been murdered and then impersonated, or he was a shade of Thultanthar. So others were as interested in what was inside Candlekeep as he was.

“Well,” he muttered to himself, “this makes matters slightly easier. Undoubtedly I won’t be the only impersonator. ’Twill be interesting when I run into my double.”

Dalkur would do. Close enough in height and build … aye.

El found the bathwater sluice and tarried there, letting its chill waters thoroughly rinse away what he’d been wading through, as he concentrated on calling up every last memory he could of the freckled monk’s voice and manner and looks.

Andannas Dalkur, once of Tharsult, before that from Secomber.

From once-mighty Athalantar …

This changed matters, to be sure. Repairing the Weave in a hurry was still of utmost importance, and the secrets Khelben had hidden about how to do that were here if they survived anywhere, but it now seemed he had numerous competitors in the hunt for those secrets, and dealing with them must come first. So, add a few more steps to this most crucial of missions-and in that, why should it be any different than most of his tasks? There were always more steps to everything than ye thought there’d be, at the beginning. El chuckled and scrubbed his scalp with his fingers, trying to get the last of the sewer stench off himself. His freckled, bony-jointed, sunken-chested new self.

He failed, of course. It’d be the baths for him, once he stole a robe from the spare stores nigh the stables. And a good roll in mule dung in one of the stalls that hadn’t been mucked out yet, to cover one stink with another. Then the baths.

And then it would be time for the new false Andannas Dalkur to find the older false Andannas Dalkur in the halls of Candlekeep.

If that other impersonator didn’t find him first.

Ah, Norun Chethil. The cook among the cooks of the Avowed, and foraging alone in the deepest back pantries. Ideal.

Maerandor waited until the cook-a stout man, like most who tasted as they went-was bent over and rummaging through cobwebs at the back of a shelf in search of the oldest jars of preserves-oysters in spiced oil, as it happened-because they should be used first.

“Come out of there, you skulking rat of a jar,” Chethil grunted, smooth crockery spinning under his stubby fingertips. “ Hah ! Got you!”

That sounded like too good a cue to waste. Maerandor silently solidified right behind the monk. And pounced.

The moment his fingers closed on Chethil’s throat and head, the Shadovar put all the weight of his body and the speed of his bound into one swift, ruthless wrenching.

The cook’s neck broke with a soft, sickening splintering, the man’s arms writhing wildly enough that Maerandor had to fling out a hasty foot to kick one jar of oysters back onto the shelf before it could fall and shatter.

Then Chethil went limp. His slayer held him in a grip like unyielding steel, keeping the dying man immobile and alive for as long as possible.

It took but a moment to awaken the right magic and invade the dimming, helpless mind. The wards, reveal all you know of them …

Ah, much indeed. The wards, tell more! The kitchens had their own doors through the wards, which were opened when it was both safe and needful to use such swift alternatives to traders’ wagons coming up the Way of the Lion to the gates. That wasn’t often.

Tell more! Ah, and these gates were there and there and there, opened thus and so and with these safeguards …

Chethil’s next culinary work would begin three chants from now, after visits to the cellars that held onions and leeks and peppers, then up to the tower where the greenleaf was flourishing in the window boxes.

Yes, let’s have where all the cellars and pantries are, and what they all hold. Aha, yes. There were no keys to lock any of the deep back pantries, but few of the monks knew their ins and outs, and only a handful ever went to them. Unless Chethil took longer than three chants to appear in the kitchens, no one would come down seeking him. The apples many monks liked to sneak for themselves were a good five levels above.

Chethil’s undercooks were the monks Rethele and Shinthrynne, merry young women Chethil was fond of and whose jests and lively converse the stout cook heartily enjoyed-even if dusky-skinned Shinthrynne was from the hot jungles where they had strange ideas about fiery seasonings, whereas Rethele was from upcountry Impiltur and thought dry thistles made fine salads. They’d both be in the kitchen right now, making sauces and dicing marrows … and they knew what he’d gone to fetch. So he must depart the pantry with three jars of oysters.

What did Chethil know of the rest of Candlekeep?

Huh. Just about all of it, though no monk alive had been in all the turrets of the main keep. Some of the turrets had been walled off for centuries. Chethil had lived much of his life within Candlekeep’s walls, and had walked the well-worn route of the chant for the first score or so of those years.

The cook’s mind was darkening fast, his anger and fear mere dull echoes, his formerly frantic thoughts a slowing, drifting chaos as he slipped away.

Maerandor bore down, seeking what he needed to feign the man himself. Favored sayings, habits, hues, hobbies, Norun’s own preferred food.

Ah, that caused a last flare in the fading mind. Chethil himself detested ale and smoked meats, and loved strong cordials and the marinated lizard dishes once popular in Var the Golden … back when it had still been Var the Golden.

Back when … back when … the last life faded in a flickering, and all of Norun Chethil became a “back when.”

Maerandor lowered the stout body. Good. He’d plundered more than enough from the monk to fool others that he was Chethil. Once his body was an exact match for the cook’s, of course.