R. Salvatore - Luthien's Gamble

“Oh, Parry went away a long time ago,” she said, drawing frowns from the companions. A million questions raced through Luthien’s mind. Where might Paragor have gone? And where, then, was Katerin?

“To his bedchamber,” the lady added, and Luthien nearly sighed aloud with relief. Paragor was indeed in the palace!

The lady bent low to whisper, “They say he has a lady there.”

Oliver considered her jealous tones and, understanding the protective, even incestuous, ways of a noble’s court, the halfling was not surprised by what was forthcoming.

“A foreigner,” the lady added with utter contempt.

“We must find him then, before . . . before . . .” The halfling searched for a delicate way to phrase things. “Before,” he said simply, with finality, adding a wink to show what he meant.

“Somewhere that way,” the lady replied, waggling a finger along the corridor, in the same direction the companions had already been traveling.

Oliver smiled and tipped his hat, then turned the woman about and shoved her back into the room from whence she came.

“These people disgust me,” Luthien remarked as the pair started off once more.

“Of course,” Oliver outwardly agreed, but the halfling remembered a time not so long ago when he, too, had played these noble party games, usually lending a sympathetic shoulder for those ladies who had not snared the richest or the most powerful or the most dashing (though Oliver always considered himself the most dashing). Of course they were disgusting, as Luthien had said, their passions misplaced and shallow. Few of the nobles of Gascony, and of Avon, too, from what the halfling was now seeing, did anything more substantial than organize their drunken parties, with the richest foods and dozens of young painted ladies. These frequent occasions were orgies of lust and greed and gluttony.

But, in Oliver’s thinking, that could be fun.

The pair grew more cautious as they continued toward the center of the palace, for they found fewer partygoers and more cyclopians, particularly Praetorian Guards. The music dimmed, as did the lighting, and finally, Luthien decided that they should drop the façade and hide under the protection of the magic cape.

“But how are we to find information to lead us to the man?” Oliver protested.

It was a good point, for they still had no idea of which room might be Duke Paragor’s, and no idea if this “foreigner” the lady had spoken of was even Katerin. But Luthien did not change his mind. “Too many cyclopians,” he said. “And we are increasingly out of place, even if we were invited guests to the palace.”

Oliver shrugged and hid under the cape; Luthien moved to the side of the corridor, inching from shadow to shadow. A short while later, they came to a stairwell, winding both up and down. Now they had a true dilemma, for they had no idea of which way to go. The fourth floor, or the second? Or should they remain on this level, for the corridor continued across the way?

The companions needed a measure of luck then, and they found it, for a pair of servants, human women and not cyclopian, came bustling up the stairs, grumbling about the duke. They wore plain white garb—Oliver recognized them as cooks, or as maids.

“E’s got ’imself a pretty one this night,” said an old woman, a single tooth remaining in her mouth, and that bent and yellow, sticking out over her bottom lip at a weird angle. “All that red hair! What a firebrand, she be!”

“The old wretch!” the other, not much younger and not much more attractive, declared. “She’s just a girl, she is, and not ’alf ’is age!”

“Shhh!” the one-tooth hissed. “Yer shouldn’t be spaking so o’ the duke!”

“Bah!” snorted the other. “Yer knows what he’s doin’. He sends us away fer a reason, don’t yer doubt!”

“Glad I am then, that we is done fer the night!” said one-tooth. “Up to bed wit me!”

“And down to bed with the duke an’ the girl!” the other shrieked, and the two burst out in a fit of cackling laughter. They walked right beside the companions, never noticing them.

It took all the control Luthien could muster for him to wait until the pair had passed before running down the stairs. Even then, Oliver tried to hold him back, but Luthien was gone, taking three steps at a time.

Oliver sighed and moved to follow, but paused long enough to see that the cape had left another of its “crimson shadows” on the wall beside the stairwell.

Their options were fewer when they came down to the next level. Three doors faced the stairwell, each about a dozen feet away. The two to the sides were unremarkable—Luthien could guess that they opened into corridors. He went to the third, curbed his urge to charge right through, and tried to gently turn the handle instead.

It was locked.

Luthien backed up and snarled, meaning to burst right through, but Oliver was beside him, calming him. From yet another pouch of his remarkable housebreaker, the halfling produced a slender, silver pick. A moment later, he looked back from the door at Luthien and smiled mischievously, the lock defeated. Luthien pushed right past him and went through the door, coming into yet another corridor, this one shorter, incredibly decorated in tiled mosaics, and with three doors lining each side.

One of those, the middle door to Luthien’s left, had a pair of burly Praetorian Guards in front of it.

“Hey, you cannot come in here!” one of the brutes growled, approaching as it spoke and moving its hand to the heavy cudgel strapped to its belt.

“My friend here, he needs a place to throw up,” Oliver improvised, jabbing Luthien as he spoke.

Luthien lurched forward, as though staggering and about to vomit, and the horrified cyclopian dodged aside, letting him stumble past. The brute turned back to complain to Oliver, but found a rapier blade suddenly piercing its throat.

The other Praetorian, not seeing the events behind Luthien, moved to slap the apparently drunken man aside. Luthien caught the hand and moved in close, then the guard went up on its toes, its expression incredulous as Blind-Striker sunk into its belly, angled upward, reaching for its lungs and heart.

Oliver shut the door to the stairwell. “We must hope that we are in the right place,” he whispered, but Luthien wasn’t even listening and wasn’t waiting for any lockpicking this time. The young Bedwyr roared down the corridor, cutting to the right, then back sharply to the left, slamming through the door into Duke Paragor’s private bedchamber.

Paragor was inside, sitting with his back to his desk in the right corner of the room, facing the bed, where Katerin sat, ankles and wrists tightly bound, a Praetorian flanking her on either side.

Something else, something bigger and darker, with leathery wings and red fires blazing in its dark eyes, was in the room as well.

Luthien’s first instincts were to go to Katerin, but he kept his wits about him enough to realize that the only chance he and Katerin had was to be rid of the wizard quickly, and hopefully the wizard’s demon along with the man. The young Bedwyr took one running step toward the bed, then cut sharply to the right, cocking back Blind-Striker with both hands.

The wizard jumped up and shrieked, throwing his skinny arms in front of him in a feeble attempt at defense. Luthien cried out for victory and brought the sword in a vicious arc, just under the flailing arms, and the young man snarled grimly as the sword struck against the wizard’s side, boring right across. He saw the wizard’s robes, brownish-yellow in hue, fitting for the sickly looking man, fold under the weight of the blow, saw them follow the blade’s path.