Ричард Байерс - Dissolution

Fighting the sickness and weakness, Faeryl tried to thrust her hand forward. The effort strained her flesh against the ghoul's talons, tearing her wounds larger and bringing a burst of pain—but then her arm jerked free. The blade rammed into Umrae's withered chest, slipping cleanly between two ribs and plunging in all the way up to Faeryl's knuckles. Umrae convulsed and threw back her head for a silent scream. The spasms jerked her hands and threatened to rip Faeryl apart even without the traitor's conscious intent. Umrae froze, and toppled backward, carrying her assailant with her. In contradiction of every tale Faeryl had ever heard, the shapeshifter didn't revert to her original form when true death claimed her. Still horribly sick, the envoy lay for some time in the ghoul's fetid embrace. Eventually, however, she mustered the trembling strength to pull free of the claws embedded in her bleeding limbs, after which she crawled a few feet away from the winged corpse.

Gradually, despite the sting of her punctures and bruises, she started to feel a little better. Physically, anyway. Inside her mind, she was berating herself for an outcome that wasn't really a victory at all. Given that she needed to learn what Umrae knew, not kill her, she'd bungled their encounter from the beginning. She supposed she should have agreed to the traitor's terms, but she'd been too angry and too proud. She should also have spotted the vial and fought more skillfully. If not for luck, it would be she and not her erstwhile scribe lying dead on the stone. She wondered if her sojourn in Menzoberranzan had diminished her. Back in Ched Nasad, she had enemies in- and outside House Zauvirr to keep her strong and sharp, but in the City of Spiders none had wished her ill. Had she forgotten the habits that protected her for her first two hundred years of life? If so, she knew she'd better remember them quickly.

The enemy hadn't finished with her. She wasn't so dull and rusty that she didn't recall how these covert wars unfolded. It was like a sava game, progressing a step at a time, gradually escalating in ferocity. Her unknown adversary's first move, though she hadn't known it at the time, had been to turn Umrae and lie to Triel. Faeryl's countermove was to capture the spy and remove her from the board. As soon as Umrae missed some prearranged rendezvous, the foe would know her pawn had been taken and advance another piece. Perhaps it would be the mother. Perhaps the foe would suggest to Matron Baenre that the time had come to throw Faeryl in a dungeon. But life wasn't really a sava game. Faeryl could cheat and make two moves in a row, which in this instance meant truly fleeing Menzoberranzan as soon as possible, before the enemy learned of her agents demise. Light-headed and sour-mouthed from her exertions, Faeryl dragged herself to her feet, trudged in search of Mother's Kiss, and wondered just how she would accomplish that little miracle.

Cloaked in the semblance of a squat, leathery-skinned orc, whose twisted leg manifestly made him unfit for service in a noble or even merchant House, Pharaun took an experimental bite of his sausage and roll. The unidentifiable ground meat inside the casing tasted rank and was gristly, as well as cold at the core.

«By the Demonweb!» he exclaimed. «What?» Ryld replied. The weapons master too appeared to be a scurvy broken-down orc in grubby rags. Unbelievably, he was devouring his vile repast without any overt show of repugnance. «What?»

The Master of Sorcere brandished his sausage. «This travesty. This abomination.»

He headed for the culprit's kiosk, a sad little construction of bone poles and sheets of hide, taking care not to walk too quickly. His veil of illusion would make it look as if he were limping, but it wouldn't conceal the anomaly of a lame orc covering ground as quickly as one with two good legs. The long-armed, flat-faced goblin proprietor produced a cudgel from beneath the counter. Perhaps he was used to complaints. Pharaun raised a hand and said, «I mean no harm. In fact, I want to help.» The goblin's eyes narrowed. «Help?» «Yes. I'll even pay another penny for the privilege.» he said as he extracted a copper coin from his purse. «I just want to show you something.» The cook hesitated, then held out a dirty-nailed hand and said, «Give. No tricks.» «No tricks.» Pharaun surrendered the coins and to the goblin's surprise, squirmed around the end of the counter and crowded into the miniature kitchen. He wrapped his hand in a fold of his cloak, slid the hot iron grill with its load of meat from its brackets, and set it aside. «First,» Pharaun said, «you spread the coals evenly at the bottom of the brazier.» He picked up a poker and demonstrated. «Next, though we don't have time to start from scratch right now, you let them burn to gray. Only then do you start cooking, with the grill positioned here.» He replaced the utensil in a higher set of brackets. «Sausage take longer to fry,» the goblin said. «Do you have somewhere to go? Now, I'm going to assume you buy these questionable delicacies elsewhere and thus can do nothing about the quality, but you can at least tenderize them with a few whacks from that mallet, poke a few holes with the fork to help them cook on the inside, and sprinkle some of these spices on them.» Pharaun grinned. «You've never so much as touched a lot of this stuff, have you? What did you do, murder the real chef and take possession of his enterprise?» The smaller creature smirked and said, «Don't matter now, do it?» «I suppose not. One last thing: Roast the sausage when the customer orders it, not hours beforehand. It isn't nearly as appetizing if it's cooked, allowed to cool, then warmed again. Good fortune to you.» He clapped the goblin on the shoulder, then exited the stand. At some point, Ryld had wandered up to observe the lesson. «What was the point of that?» the warrior asked. «I was performing a public service,» answered the wizard, «preserving the Braeryn from a plague of dyspepsia.» Pharaun fell in beside his friend, and the two dark elves walked on.

«You were amusing yourself, and it was idiotic. You take the trouble to disguise us, then risk revealing your true identity by playing the gourmet.» «I doubt one small lapse will prove our undoing. It's unlikely that any of our ill-wishers will interview that particular street vendor any time soon or ask the right questions if they do. Remember, we're well disguised. Who would imagine this lurching, misshapen creature could possibly be my handsome, elegant self? Though I must admit, your metamorphosis wasn't quite so much of a stretch.» Ryld scowled, then wolfed down his last bite of sausage and bread. «Why didn't you disguise us from the moment we left Tier Breche?» he asked.

«Never mind, I think I know. A fencer doesn't reveal all his capabilities in the initial moments of the bout.» «Something like that. Greyanna and her minions have seen us looking like ourselves, so if we're lucky they won't expect to find us appearing radically different. The trick won't befuddle them forever, but perhaps long enough for us to complete our business and return to our sedate, cloistered lives.» «Does that mean you've figured out something else?» «Not as such, but you know I'm prone to sudden bursts of inspiration.» The masters entered a crowded section of street outside of what was evidently a popular tavern, with a howling, barking gnoll song shaking the calcite walls.

Pharaun had never had occasion to walk incognito among the lower orders. It felt odd weaving, pausing, and twisting to avoid bumps and jostles. Had they known his true identity, his fellow pedestrians would have scurried out of his way. As the two drow reached the periphery of the crowd, Ryld pivoted and struck a short straight blow with his fist. A hunchbacked, piebald creature—the product of a mating of goblin and orc perhaps—stumbled backward and fell on his rump. «Cutpurse,» the warrior explained. «I hate this place.» «No pangs of nostalgia?» Ryld glowered. «That isn't funny.» «No? Then I beg your pardon,» Pharaun said with a smirk. «I wonder why this precinct always seems so sordid, even on those rare occasions when one finds oneself alone in a plaza or boulevard. Well, the smell, of course. We don't call them the Stench streets for nothing, hut the buildings, though generally more modest than those encountered elsewhere in the city, still wear the same graceful shapes our ancestors cut from the living rock.» The teachers paused to let a spider with legs as long as broadswords scuttle across the street. The Braeryn notoriously harbored hordes of the sacred creatures. Sacred or not, Pharaun reviewed his mental list of ready spells, but the arachnid ignored the disguised dark elves. «That's a foolish question,» said Ryld. «Why does the Braeryn seem foul? The inhabitants!» «Ah, but did the living refuse of our society generate the atmosphere of the district, or did that malignant spirit exist from the beginning and lure the wretched to its domain?»