Rosemary Jones: Cold Steel and Secrets Part 2

“A tricky path to power, and dangerous to follow.”

Elyne nodded. “If he takes complete control, and there are many who see him as their leader already, I fear that the Nashers soon will be openly attacking Lord Neverember’s mercenaries. It would be bloody war in the streets.”

“When that day comes,” Montimort injected, “we will prevail. I just need to find the right master, someone powerful who can teach me more quickly.”

Sarfael looked at them and thought that Dhafiyand had been wrong when he named Elyne a pretty ruffian. She was indeed a noble lady, and Montimort, for all his pirate past, a chivalrous boy.

Karion’s dark house was squeezed between two larger and heavily damaged buildings. Only wide enough to present a door and a single, boarded-up window on the ground floor, it rose four stories, each upper floor showing only two narrow windows, also shuttered against the sun.

It reminded Sarfael in shape and color of certain types of fungus that grew up through cracks in stones.

Elyne stared with distaste at the black door with its rusty iron knocker.

“Are you sure there is anything living in there?” Sarfael asked.

“A good question,” she replied. “I never liked coming here as a child. But it looks as it always did, and Bottleburn seemed certain he’d seen Karion enter.”

She reached forward and, not touching the knocker, banged the flat of her hand against the door three times.

“Karion, Karion,” she shouted, “it’s Elyne.”

Silence responded. Elyne hammered on the door again, shouting her name.

The third time, they heard a muffled cry from inside: “Wait, wait.”

Bolts screeched and chains rattled. The door swung back with a squeak of rusty hinges.

A tall old man peered blinking into the afternoon sunshine. Dressed in tattered velvets and silks of faded scarlet, cut in the style of forty years ago, he swayed in the doorway. “Iriardne?” he said.

“I am Iriardne’s daughter, Elyne.” She stepped closer and, to Sarfael’s delight, neatly placed one booted foot across the threshold, keeping the skinny old man from slamming the door in their faces. Behind her back, she flapped her hand at them, motioning them forward.

“We’ve brought you supplies,” she said. “Food for the month.”

Montimort staggered forward with the wicker basket and Karion’s eyes gleamed.

“Cheese?” Karion asked.

Elyne nodded. “Bread, wine, meat, and fruit as well.”

Karion stepped back from the door, motioning them inside. “Don’t dawdle, boy,” he said to Montimort. “They’ll sniff it out and come running. You can’t keep a good cheese in this district, not for minute, without the rats trying to steal it.”

Once inside, Karion slammed the door shut, bolting and chaining it. “Can’t keep a good cheese safe,” he muttered. A single, guttering candle stood in a sconce by the door. Karion lifted it up and led them down the dark and narrow hallway.

Sarfael noted the portraits of men and women lining the wall from the floor to the shadowed ceiling. The painted eyes of the multitude seemed to track them as they passed.

They went down a narrow staircase, also lined with pictures, although some of them seemed to be landscapes and paintings of the city before the cataclysm. Karion led them into a kitchen lit by a fire sputtering in a cavernous fireplace.

Montimort fell back with a startled cry. An enormous striped cat crouched on the table facing the door, its lips drawn back in a snarl to reveal needle-sharp fangs.

“Not afraid of kitty, are you?” Karion smacked the immobile cat with one hand and a cloud of dust rose into the air. “Kitty has been dead for twenty years or more. I keep him here to scare off intruders, especially certain rodents.”

Karion circled the room, pulling down various crockery pots and lidded boxes, muttering as he went. “No, no, still got a bit of bacon in that,” he said as he peered into one. Another was hastily capped and replaced with “not sure what that is.” Finally he found an empty pot to his satisfaction and brought it back to the table, shoving the stuffed cat aside with one impatient hand.

“Give me the basket,” he said to Montimort.

Karion rooted through the basket that they had brought, unearthing a large slab of cheese with a delighted cry. He carefully packed the cheese away in the stoneware crock, fastening the lid tightly over it. Hugging the pot close to his chest, he left the kitchen.

“Are you certain he is sane?” Sarfael asked Elyne.

“Not at all,” she replied. “We were terrified of him as children. He would have fits and began to spout threats entangled with prophecies. But he does have some true talent. He once told me that I would stand alone in the city with only my sword for my companion.”

A pair of dirty windows overlooked a tiny courtyard. Sarfael glanced outside. All types of rubbish, broken statues, old furniture, boxes, and crates filled the space. Another staircase, forged from iron, twisted up the far wall, apparently leading to the street above.

“That’s quite a collection out there,” Sarfael remarked.

“ For as long as I remember, he’s scoured the city for the items he sees in his visions,” Elyne remarked. “Since that day of cataclysm, he’s grown much worse.”

Karion returned empty-handed. “What do you want?” he asked. “You must want something. Everyone wants something in Neverwinter. Everyone wants to be something in Neverwinter. Conquerors, looters, counterfeit kings.”

“We’ve come about the crown, Cousin,” said Elyne.

“Stashed away,” Karion flitted around his kitchen, unloading the basket and storing the rest of the food both high and low on the shelves. “Keep it safe from goblin kin, rats, and undead things.”

“Is he talking about the crown or his cheese?” Montimort asked.

Sarfael shook his head. Something skittered across the end of the room, lost in the gloom. If it was a rat, it was uncommonly large and very pale.

Elyne stopped Karion in his restless wanderings. “There are only friends and family here.”

“Who knows who hears?” Karion whispered to her. He stopped by his stuffed cat, his restless hands stroking the dead fur and fondling the creature’s pointed ears. He stared at Montimort. “Arklem Greeth’s lover listens at keyholes, watches in mirrors, speaks through painted mouths.”

“Arklem Greeth!” exclaimed Montimort. “That is a dark name out of Luskan’s past. But the villain has been dead a century or more!”

“So should his beloved be, but the grave won’t hold Valindra and she’s pushing into the city, poking into the shadows, sending her spies to snatch my treasures,” Karion crooned to no one in particular. “Pretty little moon elf, grasping with her cold dead hands. But she can’t take it from me! My pets will protect me.”

Whatever crawled along the edge of the room had acquired a companion. The crooked shadows cast up the wall looked like no creature that Sarfael knew.

“Cousin, we have come about the crown,” Elyne said.

Karion’s eyes narrowed and the faintest smile curled his thin lips. He beckoned to them all to come closer. Standing next to him, Sarfael became aware of a certain dank odor of decay, a grave-mold smell that evoked past adventures with Mavreen. A whiff of the necromancer hung around the old man.

“I don’t have the crown,” whispered Karion with exaggerated care. “I have the box.”

“A box!” exclaimed Montimort. “What good is a box?”

Karion grinned with a distasteful display of yellowed teeth. “It hides a crown that is not there.”

“What?” Elyne looked bewildered.

“Come, come,” Karion’s expression turned gleeful. Suddenly seeming delighted to have them in his home, the aged seer ushered them back upstairs, passing through the dark hallway with its dozens of painted portraits, all staring down with suspicious eyes.