“Oi, I didn’t know there were dwarves around here,” Joen said.
“Sure,” I answered. “In Sundabar or Citadel Adbar, to the east past Silverymoon. But I didn’t think they’d be trading this far out.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Well, it’s a long journey, and the roads aren’t very safe. There are spring storms, not to mention bandits, and …”
My voice trailed off, buried beneath the sudden furious howl of two dozen small, ugly humanoids leaping up from the surrounding rocks and brush.
“Goblins,” I finished.
Before I could react, Joen was on her feet and sprinting off toward the dwarves. I stared after her, in awe of her courage. She knew little of dwarves and probably less of goblins, yet the moment danger reared its head, off she went.
I calmly walked back to where we had been resting, unfettered Haze, and climbed into her saddle. The goblin war cry had apparently also startled the horse. She was into a gallop almost before I was settled in my seat.
I overtook Joen several hundred yards from the dwarves, slowing down long enough to help her into the saddle behind me. Together we charged into the brewing melee.
The dwarves, for their part, were obviously battle seasoned and battle ready. As soon as the goblins leaped at them, they formed into a tight square, each of the eight stocky, bearded folk protecting his neighbor with his shield, and fending off goblins with a spear, war-hammer, or axe.
The goblins were far from organized, throwing themselves wildly at the dwarves, battering away and being battered. Though they outnumbered the dwarves three to one, their initial assault was a disaster. Three goblins lay dead, the rest pushed back from the phalanx, and not a dwarf had more than a slight scratch on him.
The largest among the goblins—which wasn’t saying much, as the spindly little things rarely top four feet—shouted something in a coarse, guttural tongue. He motioned to the dwarves, apparently urging his fellows to attack. But the suddenly demoralized goblins seemed hesitant. They kept glancing around, looking for an escape route, then noticed … us.
One of the smaller goblins grabbed its boss’s arm. The larger creature smacked the little whelp, turning around angrily.
I brought Haze to a trot, suddenly apprehensive.
The big goblin fixed its eyes on me, opening its mouth in a wicked grin. Again it bellowed something in its guttural tongue. This time the goblins didn’t hesitate.
The turned their backs on the dwarves and ran down the road.
Directly at us.
“Oi,” Joen said.
The dwarves, for their part, were no cowards. As soon as the goblins turned and fled, six of the eight dwarves leaped into pursuit. The others moved to the back of the wagons, to the tethered horses.
Joen hopped down from Haze, drawing her daggers. I followed, pulling my saber from its sheath and slapping Haze across the rump, sending her running.
“Brace yourself,” I said. “The goblins are faster than the dwarves.”
“Oi, but not the horses,” Joen answered. And indeed, it appeared she was right. Even in the thick mud, the horses easily outpaced the little orange-skinned humanoids.
But the goblins had a head start. The first of the ugly things reached us just as the riders overtook the last rank of goblins.
The first goblin leaped at me with abandon, spear tip leading. I brought my saber around, easily parrying its crude thrust, and rolled my blade up along the shaft. The goblin hardly even tried to slow itself, and my sword cut cleanly through its filthy leather jerkin, gashing its chest and dropping it to the ground.
But two more goblins were right behind.
I darted left, away from Joen, bringing my sword in a horizontal slash aimed at the nearest goblin’s head. This one had its sword in line for a parry and knocked my sword high. But before it could recover to attack me, its own companion slammed into its back, pushing it to the ground.
I brought my sword down from on high in a heavy chop. The newest goblin, stunned from its impact against its companion, didn’t have time to react before my sword killed it.
Joen, for her part, was a blur of motion, twirling and stabbing, quickly felling the first goblin to attack her then fending off the next three simultaneously. Our time at the Tower of Twilight had not been wasted. Her dance was fluid, perfect, mesmerizing.
But mesmerized was not something I wanted to be at that moment, as the goblin on the ground and two more charging in all lashed out at me.
I fell back, trying in vain to withdraw my sword from the dead goblin. I couldn’t move quickly enough to evade the attacks with the fouled weapon, so I let it go, choosing my life over my blade.
A sudden thunder of hoofbeats heralded the arrival of one of the dwarf riders, who had cut a bloody swath through the goblin swarm. His horse shoved aside the two standing goblins that were attacking me. Its hoof dropped onto the prone goblin, landing with a dull thud and the crack of bone.
But the horse stumbled on the creature, throwing its rider. The black-bearded dwarf landed heavily in the mud. I feared the massive impact may have killed him, or at least knocked him out.
Instead, he was back on his feet in a flash, laughing and brandishing an axe. With one light tug, he pulled the sword out of my goblin victim and tossed my sword to me.
The other rider came in behind him from the other side, pushing goblins out of his way with his horse. A few spears reached up at him, prodding at his heavy armor, but he paid them little heed. Joen fell back from her melee, and the goblins didn’t pursue. The second rider, a yellow-bearded fellow, joined we three.
The goblins hesitated, but only for a moment. Five more of theirs were dead, but they still had us outnumbered, sixteen against four.
Thrust and parry, parry and thrust. Keeping my thirteen months of training in mind, I worked furiously to hold off the savage assault. The black-bearded dwarf with the axe stood alongside me, his broad shield serving as fine protection for the both of us. Similarly, the yellow-bearded dwarf offered his aid to Joen. But after a moment of furious combat, each of us sported the nicks and cuts of battle, and while our parries and blocks were growing slower as we tired, the goblins’ frenzy only seemed to build.
“Ye might want t’brace yerself,” the black-bearded dwarf whispered to me. “This’ll be int’restin’.”
“Define ‘int’restin’,’ ” I said.
He only laughed. His companion joined him.
And so did the six heavily armored dwarves charging in from the back.
The phalanx crashed against the goblins, and the goblins crashed against us. The sheer weight of the impact shocked me, and I was unable to hold my footing in the loose mud. I dropped flat on my back.
Desperately, I brought my sword up to fend off the inevitable goblin attack. But it never came. The force had knocked me down, but it had also scattered the goblins. Heartbeats after the reinforcements arrived, the remaining creatures were dead or scattered, and my black-bearded friend was helping me to my feet.
I was covered in mud, head to toe. Somehow, Joen seemed to have avoided even getting dirty. Her blonde hair matched that of the other dwarf rider who had come to our rescue, and she stood leaning on the dwarf’s shoulder. The two of them tried, and failed, to hold back their laughter at the sight of me. In the meantime, two of the dwarves gathered their horses and rode back up to the caravan. The well-trained pack beasts had already started moving toward us, and the dwarves’ wagons were rolling up before the last of the wounded goblins had even been put down.
Curious, I knelt down next to one of the dead goblins and looked over the nasty creature—nasty looking, and nasty smelling. “Bandits?” I asked the dwarves around me.
The leader of the dwarves shrugged and started poking at the goblin with his axe. “An insult to bandits, if ye ask me,” he said. But as he prodded at the goblin, I noticed it wore around its neck a little totem made of twigs and bone. Gingerly, not really wanting to touch the thing, I picked
up the totem and pulled it off the length of twine it hung from.
“What’s that there?” the dwarf asked.
“Some kind of jewelry?” Joen asked.
I shook my head and answered, “Maybe a clan symbol of something.”
It was shaped like the antlers of an eight-point buck, and something about it made me shiver.
“Are you from Sundabar or Citadel Adbar?” Joen asked the dwarf leader.
“Neither, girl,” answered the black-bearded dwarf. “We be from Mithral Hall, home o’ Clan Battlehammer and good King Bruenor Battlehammer.”
“Bruenor?” I asked, momentarily forgetting the totem. “You know Bruenor?”
“King Bruenor,” the dwarf corrected. “An’ every dwarf in the Marches knows King Bruenor.”
“Big red beard?” I asked. “Travels with two humans and a dark elf?”
The dwarf looked at me curiously. “Few folks in the North ain’t heard them stories. Why you ask, boy?”
“I sailed with him, two autumns past,” I said. “In the southern seas between Baldur’s Gate and Memnon, then back to Waterdeep just before the winter.”
“Well, that’s int’restin’. Name’s Kongvaalar. What’re ye called?”
“My name is Maimun, and this is Beshaba,” I answered. Joen looked at me funny—they all did. “Wait,” I said, looking down at the totem I’d pulled off the dead goblin. My hand shook and I dropped it as though it were a spider about to bite me.
“My name is Joen,” Joen told the dwarves, then looked at me and said, “What’s the matter with you?”
“Rites and Practices of the Cults of the Realms,” I said, quoting the title of one of Malchor Harpell’s many books. “The goblins were wearing the symbol of Beshaba.” And another chill hit me when I said her name.
“Well,” Kongvaalar grunted, “they honored their goddess with their bad luck.”
Joen and I exchanged a fearful look. I was starting to have a hard time believing in coincidences. Maybe there was a reason the goblins were so quick to turn away from the dwarves when they saw us.
“Well, any friend o’ me king’s a friend o’ me own,” Kongvaalar said. “Pleasure fightin’ at yer side, but we needs be off. Things to do, ye know.” He gave me a curt nod and turned back to his caravan.
“Wait,” I said, and the dwarf obliged. “King Bruenor’s drow companion, Drizzt. Do you know him?”
“Aye, we know him.”
“Is he at Mithral Hall?” A plan formed in my head—a contingency plan, really. If we couldn’t find what we needed in Silverymoon, I would seek Drizzt’s counsel. But then I remembered my promise to Joen: if Silverymoon was a bust, we’d stop looking for the time being.
“Some o’ the time, he’s there,” the dwarf answered. “But more often he’s in Silverymoon, or on the road between.”
I nodded and Kongvaalar turned and started away again.
“Oi, hold a bit,” Joen said.
“Oh fer …,” the surly dwarf grumbled, stopping once more.
“Dwarves like shiny things, right?” asked Joen.
Kongvaalar scowled at her, and behind him, several other dwarves grumbled.
“I mean, gems and the like. Dwarves like to trade in gems, eh?”
“And yer point is?”
She reached into her pocket, withdrawing the sizeable sapphire she’d taken from the dragon’s lair.
The dwarf’s eyes went wide, just for a moment, then his face went stony again. “That ain’t worth much, girl,” he said. “Not even worth our time to stop and trade for it.”
“Then why haven’t you left yet?” I asked.
Kongvaalar’s face screwed up a bit. “Since yer friends to King Bruenor, we’ll stop ’n trade,” he said. “But it’s only semiprecious, so it ain’t worth much.”
“That’s not true,” Joen said.
Kongvaalar scowled again. “Yer callin’ me a liar?” he said, indignant.
“Oi, not really,” she answered. “Jus’ saying, this is a very valuable little shiny. You’re trying to make us think it ain’t so we’ll sell it for less than it’s worth.”
“That’s the same thing as lyin’,” Kongvaalar said, his face sour.
“Not hardly,” I interjected. “ ‘Everything is worth what its buyer will pay for it, and what its seller will sell it for,’ ” I quoted from another of Malchor’s books, penned by a famed dwarf merchant. I hoped the dwarves would catch the reference.
By the softening of Kongvaalar’s face, I figured he had. “Aye, that be true,” he said. “And you know what they say about the fool and his coin.”
“They were lucky to get together in the first place,” I finished, again quoting the old dwarven text.
“But we ain’t fools,” Joen said. “And this is no coin. Though it is worth more’n a few of them, eh?”
“Aye, that it is,” the dwarf said with a sigh. He held up a hand to the other driver of the lead wagon, who apparently had already counted out the appropriate number of gold pieces. “A hunnerd in gold,” he said, tossing a small bag to me. “That’ll last yerselves some, if ye spend it wisely.”
Joen skipped up to the wagon and handed the sapphire to the dwarf. He accepted it, but his mouth turned down in a frown. I figured he must not have wanted to pay so much for the stone, though I also figured it had probably been worth even more.
I wasn’t about to argue with this fortune, though. I peeked into the bag to see the glint of gold.
Silverymoon was not like any city I’d ever seen. It didn’t seem to be a city at all, really. Instead, it appeared as something between a city and a forest, with more than a hint of magic to complete the picture. Whereas other cities, particularly in the wealthier districts, may have tree-lined avenues, here it seemed the avenues lined the trees—roads wound around the trees, which had probably stood since before there was a city here.
The architecture, too, seemed a natural extension of the woods—not the gabled roofs of Waterdeep or Baldur’s Gate, nor the squat, square, mud-and-stone houses of Calimport or Memnon. The structures here flowed freely, rising and falling like the surrounding hills. Spires of various shapes and sizes stuck their heads skyward, mingling with the numerous trees.
The city was alive with springtime, the trees blooming, the people enjoying their first opportunity in months to be outside. People—and elves, dwarves, and halflings—wandered about, some aimless, some moving with great purpose. Commoners in plain clothes mingled with wizards in robes and soldiers in shining silver armor. They walked or rode, or floated along on magical creations, or flew on winged steeds. Usually Haze, in her magical beauty, would stand out in a city, but here, she, and we riding her, seemed a normal part of the crowd.
Once we passed the city gates—they were left open, and the guards hardly gave us a passing glance—Joen said barely a word. She was gripping my waist tightly, leaning her head back, gazing skyward at the trees and spires and flying things, taking in the beauty of the place. I envied her some, her ability and willingness to just bask, but I couldn’t join her. I had my own purpose, my own task to accomplish. And my own worries.
Who had sent those goblins out after us, and who might still be stalking us? Beshaba’s Sentinel? I didn’t even know who that was. For all I knew, there were mad cultists around every tree trunk, just waiting for an opportunity to jump us.
Though the streets were often broad, they were always winding, and many times I had to ask directions. The citizens of this beautiful, open city were no less open themselves, and with each inquiry I received a courteous and usually helpful answer. Though it took a fair bit of time, especially since I felt the need to examine everyone we met as closely as I could for some sign or totem of the Maid of Misfortune before I felt safe talking to them, we reached the library without any trouble.
I tried to dismount, only to find Joen still holding me tightly, strongly, keeping me firmly in place. She stared at the structure in front of us, soaking it in, admiring its beauty. And trul
y the great library at Silverymoon was beautiful. Unlike much of the rest of the city with it myriad of free-flowing forms, the library appeared more structured. It was square, classical, reminiscent of the temples in the walled-off Temple District in Baldur’s Gate. Yet, somehow, it seemed it would fit only here in this place. Its roof was high, its windows huge, bright, and grand. Along the front marched a colonnade of tall pillars carved of perfect, unblemished marble.
Again I tried to dismount, anxious to get inside and find the information I sought. But Joen didn’t seem to notice me at all.
I cleared my throat, hoping to get her attention. When that didn’t work, I pinched her arm instead.
“Oi,” she said, looking at me at last. “That hurt!” She punched me in the shoulder, but not very hard.
“We’re here,” I said.
“Oh. Good.” She released her viselike grip, finally letting me dismount.
The antechamber of the library was much like the outside: classical, aged, beautiful. Doors opened left and right, and two more doors stood beyond a desk on the far wall. A woman in a silver robe sat behind the desk, several tomes splayed open before her. She looked up as we entered.
“Public rooms left and right,” she said, her tone bored. “Help yourselves, and have a pleasant day.” Her head dropped back to her reading.
“Public rooms?” I asked.
“That’s what I said,” she answered without raising her eyes.
“So not all the books are public?”
Now she looked up. “Of course not,” she said. “Not all information is equal, you know.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” I said. I was acutely aware of the differing value of information—after all, I’d just spent a year and more to obtain but a small piece of what I sought. And that information had basically just been a marker, pointing here. Somehow, I doubted these public rooms would prove especially useful. “How can I see the rest?”