The Erevis Cale Trilogy 02 - Dawn of Night by Forgotten Realms

Author:Forgotten Realms [Forgotten Realms]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-08T16:34:55+00:00

Azriim watched the one-eyed assassin stalk into the common room of the Crate and Dock. The human moved with a grace, a predatory sinuousness that reminded Azriim of his brood-mate Serrin. The human's efficiency too—at least to judge from the fight with the sailors in the street-was also reminiscent of Serrin. No wonder Azriim's brood-mate hated the human so. Serrin and Azriim had nearly come to blows over Serrin's insistence that he be allowed to attend the meeting with the human. Azriim had refused, concerned that his brood-mate's hostility for the assassin would have shown through even a changed form. Instead, he'd stationed Dolgan on the street outside, in the big slaad's habitual form of a street drunk, and left Serrin back at the storehouse.

Anything unusual? Azriim projected to his brood-mate. He was alone, Dolgan responded.

Dressed in a nondescript gray cloak over leathers, the human wore his sabers-magical sabers, Azriim saw—with practiced ease. The assassin's one eye quickly swept the candlelit, hazy common room, and the dozen or so laborers sitting at the worn tables—the Crate and Dock was a favored eatery of dock laborers. When he spotted Azriim, in the form of Thyld, the human's eye narrowed.

Rather than sit at the table in the center of the common room that Azriim had chosen, the human nodded Azriim over and sat at another table in a dark corner, one with a view of the rest of the space. Azriim smiled as he rose. The human was choosing the battlefield, in case Azriim had set him up, and forcing Azriim to put his back to the door.

Limping along as Thyld, Azriim crossed the common room and slid into the chair opposite the assassin. For the meeting, Azriim grudgingly had changed his eye color to match Thyld's dull brown.

"Speak," the assassin said. "You know what I want to hear."

Azriim placed his hands on the table and interlaced his fingers.

'First, my price," he said, playing his part.

"If what you offer is of value to me, you'll be treated well," the assassin said with a sneer. -If what you offer is lies, you'll be treated quite differently."

Azriim rubbed the back of his neck, making a show of worried consideration, then said, "Very well. You wanted to know about a duergar with eyes of two different colors. Here is what I know. Without embellishment, of course."

Azriim began to tell the assassin a fiction about the duergar slaver and his two human companions who had hired a troop of armed guards to escort a caravan into the northern tunnels of the Underdark. Apparently, they were transporting valuable cargo.

As he spoke his lies, Azriim thought all the while of how the appearance of Cale and his comrades in the midst of a slaver gang war would only increase the likelihood of a rapid and overwhelming response by the Skulls. It was beautiful really. The timing could not have been better.

*****

Cale and Magadon cowled their faces with the hoods of their cloaks and used side streets to approach the Crate and Dock.

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