Philip Athans - Realms of Mystery

While King Orpheus sang, Garragius growled out a counterpoint. Tattered black rags swayed around his twisted frame. Within the cloth, a wickedly curved dagger glinted with little flame teeth from the foot candles. Clutching the blade, Garragius made his way toward the king.

Garragius groveled his way to the foot of the singing king and lifted the dagger in tremulous hands. King Orpheus sang on, oblivious, as his foe rose from the shadows to slay him. Giving a final shriek of animal fury, Garragius rammed the curved dagger into the King’s bulging gut. A gout of blood sprayed forth.

I was impressed with this bit of stage magic, more realistic than in the fifty-some last performances. The blood even steamed in the cool air.

Tonias’s song turned into a shriek of agony and he stared in horror and shock at the knife jutting from his stomach. “He’s killed me!” Tonias cried out unmusically. The pit orchestra ground to a halt. The lead rebec player-a thin, pale woman-rose to stare, aghast.

Tonias lifted a crimson hand from his belly. “V’Torres has killed me!”

V’Torres? I flung back the curtain and rushed onstage. Too late. Tonias’s whole body shuddered. His sword arm went limp and dropped, blade still in hand. The steel flashed in an orange arc and struck V’Torres in the neck, bringing an instant spray of gore.

V’Torres’s scream was taken up by many members of the crowd. The audience recoiled from the stage, clambering over seats and bustles and miles of satin to get away from the blood. I was drawn to it. I reached the scene in time to catch Tonias, slumping unconscious to the floor. The dead weight of the man bore me down in a heap beneath him. Next moment, V’Torres added his body to the pile, hand falling from his spurting neck.

That’s when I began bellowing. Hot blood soaked my clothes, and three hundred pounds of tenor crushed me. But mainly I bellowed because the men I’d been hired to protect had, in front of thousands of elite witnesses, killed each other dead.

Well, not exactly dead, thanks to the priests of Lathander in the front row. I commandeered the healers, who accompanied body-bearing guardsmen to separate dressing rooms where ministrations began. After issuing orders for crowd control, I got the blood cleaned off me and headed for Tonias’s dressing room.

I knocked on the door. The lead rebec player answered. She blinked big moon eyes at me. Her hair bristled in a brown, unkempt mat and her mannish tunic and trousers were stained in blood. “What?”

“I’m Bolton Quaid, the bodyguard.”

“A little late, aren’t you?” she asked caustically. She stepped back and let me in.

The room was as sumptuous as it was crowded-wool rugs, glazed windows, silvered mirrors, embroidered chairs… Tonias lay, huge and sweating, on a too-small fainting couch, midsection covered by a rumpled yellow shirt. At his head stood one gray-garbed guardsman. Another stood at his foot. The rebec player drifted quickly in to kneel beside the couch on a lush Shou Lung carpet. Her knees settled just beside the bloody sword that had almost killed V’Torres. I made my way past red-and yellow-robed priests and stood over the tenor.

Tonias groaned to see me. “There’s the man. There’s the man whom I was told would ensure my safety, my very life. There he is, Waterdhavian sewer rat, keeping track of his pay but not his responsibilities…“

“That’s why I’m here, actually,” I said, dragging a notebook and a fat-nibbed hunk of lead from my pocket, “my responsibility. It’s not just guarding you. It’s also convicting anybody that attacks you-or V’Torres.”

Tonias’s face grew a fiery red beneath his crown of gold hair. “Why aren’t you questioning him?”

“Hard to question an unconscious man.” I shoved a couple music scores off a chair, drew it up beside the bed, and straddled it. “Besides, he’s looks guilty enough. Everybody saw him stab you. That was no accident. That was attempted murder. The real question is, what happened with this sword of yours? Was that an accident, or…”

The flush of Tonias’s face waned the moment I’d pronounced V’Torres’s guilt, but his eyes still blazed as he said, “I wish to the gods I’d killed him. I wish to the gods the sword had cut his head clear off. I assure you, if I’d done it on purpose, it would have killed him. I hate the man. But the blow of my sword was completely accidental.”

I made a line of nonsense scribbles on my pad of paper. I never write real notes, but scribbling keeps people off balance. “That’s a funny kind of argument. You’re saying you had motive, means, and opportunity, and yet you didn’t try to kill him? That’ll be hard to prove.”

He glanced down. His jowls rippled as he chewed over a decision. At last, he said, “It’s easy to prove. It’s the easiest thing in the world to prove, only I won’t do it with all these people here.”

I glanced up. The priests of Lathander returned my questioning gaze, most of them young, clean-shaven, and naпve.

I gestured toward the man’s belly. “What’s the prognosis? He well enough for you folks to step outside?”

The chief healer nodded and smiled-even his eyes smiled. “The Morninglord has been generous, indeed. The wound closed with the first prayers uttered, and the patient is resting comfortably-”

“That’ll be the day,” sniped Tonias.

“…so I suppose we could step outside and see how V’Torres is doing.”

“Fine,” I said, dismissing them.

The priests filtered out, robes rustling in the stale air, and I closed the door behind them. Tonias glanced meaningfully at the guards at the head and foot of his bed.

“Not a chance,” I said. “They’re working with me.”

Grimacing reluctantly, Tonias said, “I had the motive and opportunity, but not the means. I would have loved to kill V’Torres, but I never would have tried to kill him with that sword.” He nodded down to the blood-crusted blade beside the couch.

I reached down and lifted the thing, amazed at its heft. This was no mere stage sword. The blade was broad and balanced, its hilt expertly wound.

“Look at it, Quaid. This is the real murder victim tonight,” said Tonias cryptically. The blade certainly was bloody enough to be a murder victim. V’Torres’s gore was drying all across its fine etching. “Do you have any idea what… whom you hold in your hand?”

“Whom?”

“That is… was Ranjir, an ancient elven singing sword. An intelligent weapon,” said Tonias sadly. “It was forged before the time of Myth Drannor. It fought in thousands of battles, many for the elven homelands they still hold today. It has changed the course of Faeruin. And now, it is dead.”

“Dead?” I glanced up and down the blade. “How can you tell?”

“Look at the ruby in its hilt. It once shone with an inner light. Now look at it,” he urged. “Look at it!”

I turned the sword over, gazing into an eye-sized gemstone set in the silver filigree of the basket handle. The stone was cracked, shot through with sooty blackness. I tried to keep the humor from my voice as I asked, “How did it die?”

“Blood,” Tonias responded, miserable. He folded his arms over his chest. “The sword was forged so that if ever in battle it was touched with blood, it would be slain.”