17

“A table in the back?”

“Yes,” Baylee said. “And I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Of course.” The waiter, a young man with a foppish attitude but a well-worn dagger hilt, walked toward the rear of Nalkie’s.

Baylee followed, noting with surprise that it seemed nothing had changed in the time that he’d been gone. But then, remembering, he didn’t think anything had changed at all since the time Golsway first brought him into the tavern.

Wood dominated the decor, but none of it was fancy or showed an artful hand. The floor fit together neatly, but did not have a shine. The tables held carved initials as well as burn marks from pipes. Lanterns hung over the table, but they were brass functionals with stubby candles instead of oil.

In spite of Nalkie’s spendthrift ways, the larder was well provisioned and all of his cooks knew their way around the kitchen.

Baylee took the booth in the back. The sides concealed him from any other tavern patrons. For the moment only a handful were in the front section of the building. He gave his order to the waiter, ordering a glass of water for the moment.

He gazed out at the view over Waterdeep Harbor. White sails cleaved the green sea and the blue sky on both sides of the breakwater. Sitting there, in the booth he’d shared so many times with Golsway and the people they’d talked with over the years, the ache of the old mage’s passing filled the ranger. He said a quiet prayer to Mielikki that he never forget the love he had for the old man no matter how rough the times had gotten.

Xuxa struggled against Baylee’s arm, pushing to get out from under his cloak. Freed, she crawled under the table and clung upside down. No one saw her.

The waiter returned with the water and a recitation of the menu.

Baylee ordered an entree of swordfish and vegetables because he knew he needed something to eat. He wished he’d dared show up at the Emerald Lantern and get another plate from Tau Grimsby, but he guessed that the tavern would be one of the first places lieutenant of the Watch Cordyan Tsald would check for him.

She is a very intelligent woman, Xuxa put in, as I’ve told you over these last few days.

Do we have to talk about this now? Baylee asked as the waiter walked away. He felt the resistance in the azmyth bat’s mind and readied himself for it.

No.

Good. Baylee sipped the water, tasting the clean bite of it. Then he took the silver flask from his pocket. His fingers only shook slightly as he unstoppered it. In his hands, he felt the antiquity of the flask. Then he spoke the command word he and Golsway had agreed upon years ago, the name of the foul-mannered donkey Baylee had had to ride down into the valley in the Storm Horn Mountains when the ranger had been only twelve.

Instantly, Fannt Golsway sat across the table from him. The old mage had a pipe in his mouth. From the posing going on, Baylee knew Golsway had conducted the spell in front of a mirror, getting himself set. Pipe smoke wreathed his head.

“Well, my boy,” Golsway said, “I’m here and you’re there, which means I’m dead and you’re not.”

The words, spoken in the no-nonsense way Golsway preferred in his dealings, brought a lump to Baylee’s throat. He wanted to speak to Golsway, let the old mage know everything that had been in his heart and in his head these last few days. But he couldn’t. The nature of the spell, however, required that he could interact only in a limited fashion. The vision dancing in Baylee’s head also was not visible to anyone else, even if they walked up on him. The exchange of thoughts went on rapidly, much faster than real time.

Golsway smoked on his pipe again. “I can’t say that I can quite imagine what it must be like to be dead. Curious, I suppose, because there may be limitless possibilities to explore. And in the afterlife, maybe all the mysteries of what has gone on before will finally be explored to my satisfaction. I doubt that, but one can hope.”

Baylee laughed, but tears warmed the sides of his eyes.

“Baylee,” Golsway said, “you don’t know how many times I’ve filled up this bottle of thought for you over the years. So I’m not going to wax eloquent on whatever I may think of the afterlife. I just hope it’s not boring.”

“A good wish,” Baylee said. “I hope it’s true for you.”

“Before I get into the why and wherefore of my death, at least as I can reconstruct it while sitting here and it hasn’t happened yet, I want to talk of something else.” The old mage’s face softened. “We’ve been estranged of late, dear boy, and I wish that had not happened between us.”

“Nor I,” Baylee said.

“However, that would be as foolish as wishing geese didn’t fly south in the winter.” Golsway’s memory held a coal to his pipe, sucking the pipeweed into renewed life. “You grew up, and you wanted your own life. There’s no fault in that. I wanted to hang onto you. There’s no fault in that. Know that wherever you went, Baylee, my thoughts were with you.”

Remember his words, Xuxa encouraged. Knowing Golsway as you did, you know those weren’t easy words for him. He hated admitting he wanted anyone around.

“Getting back to the murder at hand, so to speak,” the old mage said. “If I’ve come to a questionable end, then I must point you in a direction. Assuming that I didn’t get killed by some stripling in a tavern when I was deep in my cups. Or simply passed away from old age, the Lady forbid.”

Baylee waited, amazed at how healthy the old mage looked. Crawling through the burned remains of the house, the images that had filled his mind were terrible, twisted and blackened.

“I’m sure that this all goes back to a new expedition I’ve been planning,” Golsway went on. “I’ve been awaiting a few more pieces to come into my hands. I’ve already prepared some messages to go out for you to call you home—if you are willing. Mayhap one of them has already reached you and that’s why you are in Waterdeep now.” The old mage’s thought-induced image paused. The familiar twinkle fired in his eyes. “This could well be the big one, Baylee. The one I’ve been waiting all my life on.”

Baylee felt all the old excitement that Golsway’s tales and stories could make rise in him fill him to the brim. “Myth Drannor!” he whispered.

“This all begins near the fall of Myth Drannor,” Golsway said. “You’re aware of my interest in the area. But it has been so hunted over, so infested with beasts and creatures so deadly to man that I consider it foolishness to simply wander in and hope for the best.” He shrugged. “Still, in my younger days, I’d journeyed there a few times. I found nothing that wasn’t picked over or nearly worthless.”

Baylee waited, captivated.

“Back in those days, even before the Army of Darkness descended on the City of Songs and the final battles were fought, some of the elves had started arranging for the flight of the elves to Evermeet.”

Anxiety chafed at Baylee, but he knew Golsway would only tell the story the way he wanted to.

“One of these men was a wood elf named Faimcir Glitterwing. He was one of those who reluctantly went along with Coronal Eltargrim’s decision to open the gates of Myth Drannor to the humans and dwarves, and others. Glitterwing was related to the Irithyl family, but was in no way close for the contention of being Coronal. He had been a hero in the Crown against Scepter Wars, and fell in one of them. But during that time, Glitterwing built a huge library, a library that rivaled even the greatest of libraries ever assembled by the elves. A library, by all accounts that I have seen, that rivaled what is maintained at Candlekeep.”

Baylee tried to imagine what such a library would hold. Magic, for certain, because the elves always had an interest in the arcane. But the histories, the geographies, the biographies and hopefully autobiographies, the stories of lands now dead and barely remembered, all those would be in there as well.

And more. By the Lady of the Forest, how much more could there possibly be?

“When it became apparent,” Golsway’s image said, “that Myth Drannor was doomed to fall and the mythal could not keep the hordes of evil out, Glitterwing’s heirs sought to move the library to Evermeet. The task fell to Gyynyth Skyreach, Glitterwing’s granddaughter. Both of Faimcir’s sons had been killed in the Crown against Scepter Wars. Skyreach was every bit her grandfather’s blood and temperament, according to the records I’ve read. But to move all the library at once would have taken a huge fleet.”

Baylee’s imagination fired at once, seeing the elves cutting across the Trackless Sea, the ships heavily laden with the library. But knowing about the library wouldn’t do him any good. Nor would it have gotten Golsway excited. The library would have been out of reach in Evermeet.

“Skyreach had only started moving the library when the Army of Darkness swarmed over Myth Drannor, beating the City of Songs down to her knees. Skyreach herself was aboard a ship, leading a fleet toward Evermeet. She didn’t reach her destination.”

Baylee waited with his breath held. A ship or ships had washed up on the shores somewhere around the Moonshaes and hadn’t been discovered in hundreds of years. The possibility was staggering.

“I’ve researched this particular piece of information for decades,” Golsway said. “A piece of gossip here, a thread of a tale there. But nothing seemed to add up. Nothing, at least, until a pictograph detailing Glitterwing’s family’s part in the Flight of the Elves was recovered. Uziraff Fireblade found the pictograph and sent it to me. I paid him a small fortune for it because he knew some of its worth, but not all. I’d planned on dealing with him myself because I know he and you don’t get along very well.” The old mage sighed. “Well, evidently that’s not going to happen. So you’ll have to make new plans.”

Baylee’s mind was already working.

“You’re sure this is him?”

Tweent looked at the man sitting at the far end of Nalkie’s. “There is no mistake,” he said.

Zyzll, his cousin, looked at him and shook his head. They sat in a booth across the room and at the other end. “There can be no mistakes,” Zyzll said. “The drow woman who hired us for this thing said she would have our heads if we failed. I believe she means it.”

Tweent glanced at his cousin with disdain. “I can’t believe you think of failure at a time when one of our greatest successes lies within our hands.”

“Don’t look at me that way,” Zyzll complained.

Tweent touched his features, running his fingers along them and wondering what look his cousin referred to. The face was only hours old, and the newly absorbed memories danced around in his head like live things. “It’s hard to look at you any other way.”

They were dopplegangers, young by their standards, but still used to killing others to use for their identities. The faces they wore now belonged to two sailors they’d found late last night while stumbling back to their ship after a trip down the Street of Red Lanterns. Both wore dock clothing and carried a multitude of daggers. Zyzll carried a cutlass and Tweent carried a boat hook.

“The female drow paid us half the agreed upon price in gold coins,” Tweent said. “When we meet her again tonight, wearing this man’s face, she’ll pay us the balance.”

Zyzll frowned. “I don’t trust her.”

“She’s a drow,” Tweent said. “Don’t trust her. She won’t be offended. In fact, she may feel quite honored.” He smiled. Trying out a new face’s emotional range was one of the greatest things about having a new body.

“Suppose we kill him here and now,” Zyzll asked, “and we go to meet the drow tonight but she doesn’t show?”

“Don’t forget,” Tweent said. “Once we kill this man, we’ll know most of what he knows. It could be we’ll know enough to find her and make her pay.”

“Perhaps.” Zyzll cut his eyes toward the human in the booth. “There is something else, though.”

Tweent raised his eyebrows. It was a favorite thing of his no matter what face he wore. “What?”

“We’ve not yet decided who gets to become this man.”

Producing one of the shiny new gold coins paid them by the drow, Tweent spun it high into the air. “Call it then, cousin.”

“Baylee, if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you’re going to be buried in would-be adventurers seeking a quick fortune.”

The ranger knew the thought-specter of his old mentor was exactly right.

“You will find Uziraff Fireblade at one of his usual haunts in the Moonshaes,” Golsway said. “He knows nothing of the elven ships that went down in the ocean somewhere near where the pictograph was found. He did not give me the location or the circumstance of how it was recovered. I did not want to tip my hand too early. But when you show up on his doorstep, he’s going to know.”

I have never liked that man, Xuxa said, making an unpleasant clucking noise. She had tapped into the thought bottle’s contents through her telepathic link to Baylee’s own mind.

Baylee only half-listened to the azmyth bat. In his mind he was already planning his meeting with Fireblade. He had no love for the man either, and was surprised that Golsway had even had anything to do with him. Uziraff Fireblade was a full-time pirate and part-time archeologist, learning just enough to let him know when he could demand extra money for the return of an object he “found.” Golsway had worked with the man in the past, but had never enjoyed the experience. Fireblade was a braggart, but he was an excellent swordsman with the twin cutlasses he carried.

“The trail won’t end there if you follow it carefully enough,” Golsway said. “But if it does, I’m sure what you can recover from the wreck will more than pay for itself. My only hope is that some of the books will survive in some form after all these years of being on the ocean floor.”

Baylee hoped so too. The thought of it almost made him too excited to sit there.

“And now,” Golsway said, “it is time for me to go. But before I do, I wish you Mystra’s favors in this endeavor or in any other that you choose to undertake. Take care, my son, and know that if I can, I shall watch over you.”

Golsway’s final words echoed in Baylee’s ears as the old mage faded from his view. He sat back in the booth, gazing at the silver flask in his hand.

The waiter brought his meal to the table, and he ate with more appetite than he expected. The pain over the loss of Golsway warred in him with the excitement of the elven ship sitting on the ocean floor awaiting his arrival.

The first thing we’re going to need to do, Baylee told Xuxa, is find a ship heading for the Moonshaes.

In these waters, the azmyth bat responded, that will be easy enough. Trade ships go back and forth all the time. Money and supplies are another matter.

Baylee finished his plate and pushed it away. He nursed the single glass of wine he’d taken with the big meal. I’ll go see Madonld, Golsway’s law-reader. If Golsway intended for me to make this expedition, he’d have left money for me. He gazed out at the green sea, wondering if he could book passage on a ship sailing this afternoon. He didn’t relish the idea of getting back out on the ocean. Even the short trip up the Sword Coast had tested his compatibility with sitting inert on a ship.

He left money on the table for the meal and the wine, including a large tip that would mark him as one of the men who frequented Nalkie’s. The tip would ensure that no one would remember seeing him in the establishment later, in case Cordyan Tsald and her men from the watch came looking. He took Xuxa back under his cloak.

Outside in the noon air, with a breeze coming in from the sea, everything smelled crisper, cleaner. He felt good, ready to be adventuring. Then he heard boot leather scrape on the road behind him.

We’ve been followed. Xuxa leapt from under Baylee’s cloak, taking wing and darting around him.

Baylee said nothing as he turned to confront the two sailors that stepped down from Nalkie’s porch behind him. He thought at first that he’d been mistaken, too paranoid for his own good. Then he spotted the weapons in their hands.