Richard Meyers: Murder in Halruaa

The mongrelman rose slowly. The jackalwere did not.

“Cunningham,” Pryce said sadly, leaning over the torn creature. As he looked down at the burned figure, who was caught between his human and animal state, he found that he had a lump in his throat.

“Ah,” the jackalwere managed to croak. “My dear fellow… please, do not mourn for the likes of me… ”

But Pryce would not leave it at that. “Though you are a monster,” he said softly, “this is not a monstrous thing you have done.”

The jackalwere managed a feeble laugh. “Oh, I know you, my good man. You would have been foolish enough to release me… to let me go with my children… but I ask youyou whom I would call my friendhow many innocent travelers would have been condemned to death by your kind action?”

He raised a paw that was partly a hand and touched Pryce’s face. “Stupid, ignorant, unaware travelers to be sure,” he said, “but innocent nonetheless.”

Pryce chuckled painfully, blinking away moisture. “Travel well, you whom I would call my friend. Run fast in the sleep that knows only peace.”

Cunningham smiled. “I will watch over my children from that place,” he promised. “And every moment I will bless the fact that they have no human consciousness… to make them do anything so foolish as to care.” Then he was gone.

Pryce stood and turned to the mongrelman, who was weeping openly and unashamedly. Pryce put his arm around the thing, and they walked toward the wood. They stopped only to look down at the charred, curled remains of what had once been Gheevy Wotfirr… and perhaps even Darlington Blade. There was really nothing left. Even now the wind was blowing what ashes there were in every different direction.

Pryce moved on to where Dearlyn held the crumpled Devolawk in her arms. “It was too much for him,” she said.

“His internal organs must be as piecemeal as his exterior,” Pryce realized. ‘The strain must have almost torn him apart.” He knelt down beside the creature that was part vole, part hawk, and part resurrected corpse. “Devolawk? Is there anything we can do?”

The human part of his eyelids fluttered while the hawk parts cleared and slid back. He tried to open his snout-bill, but could only burble one word. “Fly?”

Pryce put his hand on where the creature’s torn and twisted heart must be. “Yes, you will fly again, and rest in the earth. Soon. No more pain, my friend.”

Incredibly the broken one shifted in Dearlyn’s arms, one appendage straining for the sky, the other gripping the ground. “Freeeee!” he wailed before gladly dying.

Dearlyn looked up at Pryce and the mongrelman. Then she cradled the pathetic, but somehow noble, form of the dead broken one, lowered her head, and cried for him… as well as for her father.

“His fear in the workshop made me wonder all the more,” Pryce said as he walked deeper into the caverns beneath the city. “Then I remembered that he hid behind Dearlyn’s cloak and held the illumination orb directly in front of his face. I realized later that his action would have kept you from seeing his face and trying once again to tell me what I had so patently ignored earlier.”

The mongrelman grunted, bumping Pryce with what served as his hip. It was his way of saying ‘That’s all right”a method that had often come into play on the long trip back to the hidden caverns near the Question Tree. It was easier for the mongrelman to do that than to try to talk.

They reached a fork in the caves, a place where in one direction lay the entry behind Schreders At Your Service. And in the other direction? Only the mongrelman knew.

“Gurrahh?” Pryce asked. “Are you sure that’s an accurate pronunciation of your real name? Or are you trying to tell me something else I’m ignoring?”

“Grrrraughh!” the mongrelman replied, nodding its huge head. “Gurauggh.”

‘Take all the time you need,” Pryce advised, listening intently. “It’s no trouble. Believe me, I know what it’s like to have everyone get your name wrong!”

The mongrelman made the noise again and again until Pryce said “Gurauggh.” Then the beast nodded avidly. “Gurauggh,” Pryce said again, locking the pronunciation into his brain. “It’s that extra g that does it, eh?” The mongrelman lifted his hand and pushed his lip back to create a lopsided smile.

Pryce laughed in honest appreciation. “So, Gurauggh, will you look for more of your kind? Return from whence you came?”

The mongrelman glanced at both tunnel openings, then looked back at Pryce with a helpless shrug.

Covington leaned in and spoke with conviction. “You could come with me, you know… back into the light. We have much to learn from each other. I want to know your language so I never make such an egregious mistake again.” The mongrelman looked at him doubtfully. “This is indeed a shining region, Gurauggh,” Pryce assured him, “truly the hidden jewel of Halruaa, where all creatures can be accepted and at home, if they are willing to try.”

Even a twisted, horrible, resentful creature who was plotting a terrible revenge against a society that wasn’t even given a chance to accept him.

One glistening tear was the answer to Covington’s invitation. He listened carefully as the poor thing shambled into the darkness of the other tunnel. He waited until the mongrelman was completely out of sight, then turned to go.

“I… will… re… mem… ber,” he heard from the blackness.

“As I will remember you,” he quietly promised.

“So, Darlington Blade,” a patiently waiting Berridge Lymwich said as he stepped out of the renovated cave entrance behind Schreders’s restaurant. She handed him a brew and raised a tankard of her own. “I hope this strange welcome won’t chase you away from Lallor.”

“You mean this one right now,” a surprisednot altogether pleasedPryce asked, looking dubiously at the liquid, “or discovering that Gheevy Wotfirr was plotting against me and my master?”

The inquisitrix laughed, a bit stridently, but continued, all hale and hearty. “Well, everything’s been put to right. Don’t you worry on that score. The Mystra Superior herself did the incantations over the halfling’s remains. And, while I’m still a bit perplexed as to why you needed to confront him alone when all of Lallor was at your service, Priestess Sontoin herself assures us that if you say it’s in the interest of national security, then it is. So”she raised her glass to him”here’s to proving yourself… with a vengeance!”

Pryce tapped the bottom of his glass against the top of her proffered one, then waited until she finished drinking before handing back his untouched brew. “Have another,” he suggested. “On me.” Then he quickly slipped out of the alley to the street, leaving a repentant, anxious, and apprehensive inquisitrix with her hands full.

Dearlyn Ambersong stood before the fireplace when he entered the Ambersong dwelling. She had built a fire and wore an amazing scarlet and jade gown of velvet, with a golden-laced bodice. Her hair hung free, and the heat from the flames made it shimmy like a Halabar dancer.

He looked quickly around to spot her red horsehair staff and was relieved to see it in the corner, far from her grip. “Good evening, Miss Ambersong,” he said tentatively, feeling the residence welcoming him, but wondering about the feelings of his host.

She stood, one arm on the mantelpiece, looking deep into the fire. “Good evening,” she replied, pointedly not concluding the greeting with a name. She didn’t look up from the fascination of the flames even as he moved to the center of the room. He grew still when she spoke again. “You know,” she said, her voice throaty, “I really didn’t know what I was going to do until you actually accused me on the skyship.”