Philip Athans - Realms of Mystery

I took Ranjir with me and headed out alone to the city garrison. On the way, I stopped to get a breath, to get my bearings.

I stood in a small circular courtyard, a cobbled alley surrounded by fieldstone towithouses. The crescent moon was a bright scar on the belly of the night. Thin clouds wrapped the sky in torn gauze. The roof line of the city rankled below. Black tiles, seeping shakes, and shaggy humps of thatch. Widow’s walks bristled like vulgar crowns. Water whispered in gutters and glinted in the distant cup of the sea.

Selgaunt. A quarter the size of Waterdeep, but still embroiled in nastiness. Fakery. Mendacity. Rich fat prima donnas attacking rich fat prima donnas. All that I could’ve stood-I was used to it-but caught in the center of this fight was something fine, something noble and beautiful.

I hefted the sanguine blade before me. Ranjir, ancient singing sword of elven kings, forged for battle, hero of a hundred wars, shaper of continents… and forevermore dead. Killed as an evening’s entertainment. That wasn’t even the worst of it. Before all that, the sword had been enslaved to two stupid, petty men. They’d made it sing for applause, perform like a trick monkey, and spend the rest of its time in triple-locked darkness. It might as well have been used to slice watermelons and pry open stuck doors.

Standing there under gauze clouds and frightened little stars, I knew with a sudden certainty that Tonias and V’Torres hadn’t been the sword’s first taskmasters. How many of the other great tenors of Semmite opera had used this blade? For how many hundreds of years had the singing sword of elven kings been enslaved by puffed up blowfish like Tonias and V’Torres?

Suddenly, there it was again. The smell of death.

I was no longer alone in the cobbled courtyard. From beneath crumbling arched alleyways they came. They emerged from behind ragged wooden tool sheds, abandoned flower boxes, a pile of rotten barrels. Lean, black-suited fighters with eyes like candle flames. They were all around me, blocking all exits.

I crouched, holding out the sword before me, and noticed that not a single one wore any armor over their body stockings.

An eloquent and dramatic voice came from one of my attackers, “It would seem, Agent Quaid, that you are at our mercy, and mercy is perhaps the rarest coin in our realm.” Not assassins. Thespians. “Surrender the sword to us, Quaid, for we have taken your mettle, and our taste is for a much finer alloy.” Bad thespians. There was a bit of whispered protest after that line, and a small slap fight to determine who would get to address me in the future.

“This sword is at the center of this investigation,” I said flatly. “You can’t have it. Besides, it’s dead. What would the Guild of Thespians, Bards, and Choristers want with a dead sword?”

That brought more nervous whispers. Someone argued they should make a run for it. In the end, a new voice won out. “Believe what you will about who surrounds you, Quaid. We will believe what we will about the sword. Now, hand it over or taste our own tongues of steel.” That speech was the most popular so far. Heads nodded in the darkness.

Thespians or no, there were twenty of them. They could kill me with prop swords. Still, Ranjir had been through too much already. I wasn’t about to surrender it to another batch of simpering fops. “Come, take it.”

“We will!” someone improvised, though the group seemed anything but keen on charging me.

The circle slowly tightened. I shifted my feet, turning to keep them all in view. Quick footsteps came behind me. I whirled. Ranjir whistled into the space. Steel struck steel and sparks flashed before a black goatee. With another swipe, I drove the attacker back.

And whirled. Two more swords darted toward my back. Ranjir cracked against them, one, two… I charged after the swordsmen, needing more room. They staggered back, fashionable berets outlined against the starry night, and foundered on a pile of barrels. Staves popped and rusty hoops groaned as they tumbled.

I’d gotten room enough to breathe but wanted to keep it. I swung Ranjir in a wide arc to my right and let the weight of the blade spin me around. With an audible gasp, the black body-suits fell back.

I assumed a fighting stance and growled out, “The damned blade is dead. Give it up, or you may be as well.”

They seemed impressed by this speech-literarily, not literally. One shouted back, “Give it up, or you may be as well.” That pleased the crowd even more, and hardened my resolve. Dead or alive, Ranjir would not end up in the hands of more theatrical taskinasters.

I took the battle to them, rushing a pair of men outlined by an alleyway. If I could bash past them.

Swords rang angrily on each other. The attackers’ blades sounded tinny mixed with the bell-tones of Ranjir. Even dead, it was a beautifully turned blade. I lunged. The tip of Ranjir catching in the basket hilt of a foe’s sword. As I struggled to wrench the blade away, something lashed my sword arm. My shoulder felt suddenly hot and achy. I won free and backed up, carving space around me.

Blood was creeping down my arm, dousing the sleeve of my shirt. One of the leotard crew had gotten in a lucky strike. The blow was superficial. It stung, but I could still wag Ranjir well enough. Then one of the actors was counting to three in an ominous stage whisper, and they all rushed me. I shouted in surprise, but there was no time for threats or words or even breath.

A thicket of blades surrounded me, jabbing in, nicking my side, my back, my neck. Ranjir danced with a will all its own, seeming to drag my wounded arm behind. All the while my blood crept down from shoulder to elbow to forearm to wrist. I was losing, and I knew it.

Ranjir knew it, too.

Light suddenly flashed through the courtyard. Thirty-some lanterns were unhooded at once, surrounding us in glare. Lances of light sliced through the circle of thespians. They shrank back, muttering about watchmen and dungeons and the fact that the world never recognizes true genius. Then they bolted, scrambling away through the shadows like so many rats. I expected to hear sounds of struggle and eloquent protests as the watchmen collared them.

But there were no watchmen, no lanterns. The light, in fact, radiated from the ancient elven sword I bore. The ruby blazed with light and life. The sword sang sadly:

“Lift me, if you please. The blood on your hand Could kill me.”

I complied, raising the blade overhead and watching the trickle of blood on my hand reverse, flowing back down my wrist. And there I stood, sword lifted high, a shabby, common version of King Orpheus. And, as in the play, the sword sang:

“I rise. I rise upon the dawning hope of Distalia, Like pollen in the teaming air of Spring.

I rise. I rise as all life rises, green and soft Through iron-hard ground to daylight gleam. I rise. I rise from roots that turn your dark decay To golden finery, turn grave soil to wind-borne seed. I rise, as all of life, I rise”

“So,” I interrupted wryly, “it was you all along. You used your mass hallucination powers to fake your own death?”

“And you faked the stab wounds, too. No wonder they healed so easily. I was surprised even the Morninglord was so solicitous. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if you somehow sent some of those death threats, too.”