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down at the table, he turned into a dragon, and burned 'em all! Others say 'twas a beholder, or a mind flayer, or summat
worse!"
"Nay, nay," the woman said, pushing in, "that's not it at all
"
"But meself," the sausage-vendor said, elbowing her back and raising his voice again, so that it echoed
back off the stone wall across the alley, "I think the first tale I heard is the true one: their wickedness was
punished by a visit from Mystra herself!"
"Yes! That's it! 'Twas just that as happened, I tell thee!" The woman was hopping up and down in her
excitement now; her ca-pacious bosom heaved and rolled like tied bundles on the docks in high winds. "The
mage royal thought he had a spell that would bring her to heel like a dog so he could use her power to
destroy all wizards but ours and conquer all the lands from here to the
Great Sea beyond Elembar! But he was wrong, and she
"
"She turned them all to boars, thrust spits up their behinds, and seared 'em in the hearth fires!" The gleeful
voice belonged to a man nearby who stank of fish.
"Nay! I heard she plucked off all their heads
and ate 'em!" an old woman said proudly, as if King Belaur
personally had told her.
"Ah, get gone wi' ye. Why'd she do that, eh?" The man next to her stepped on her foot, hard.
She hopped in pain, shaking her finger under his nose. "Just you wait, clever-nose! Jus' you wait an' see
if they has carved wooden 'eads when they're borne past us, or their heads covered wi' the burial cloaks, then I'm
right! An' there's some folk in Has-tarl as'll tell you Berdeece Hettir's never wrong! Jus' you wait!"
Farl and Elminster had been trading amused looks, but at this Farl smiled and said out of the side of his
mouth, changing his voice so that it sounded gruff and distant: "I suppose as thou wouldn't put money on it,
hey?"
In an instant, the alley was a bedlam of shouting, red-faced Hastarl folk holding up fingers to indicate their
wagers.
"Wait a bit, wait a bit," Elminster said
and silence fell: Eladar the Dark never talked. "It always distresses me
to see ye wager," he said, looking around earnestly, "because after, there's so much hard talk and people furious at
those who didn't pay. So if ye must wager and ye know I don't throw my coins about thus I'll write down thy
claims, and all can be settled fair, after."
There was much talk ... and then a growing agreement that this was a good idea. Elminster tore the
sleeve from the rotten shirt he was wearing, got some ink from the street-scribe in trade for a quill that he'd
stolen out of a window a tenday ago, and was still carrying in his boot, and set to work, scratching out sums
with a rough-pointed needle.
In the rush, none of the folk noticed Farl met several heavy wagers, standing always for the headless side.
Elminster worked his way along the line to its head, dodged inside to continue wa-gering, hung the scribbled
sleeve on a high nail, and plunged headlong and fully clothed into the old wine-press tub that served as the
bath. The water was already gray with filth, and Elmin-ster came out again just as fast, pursued by the furious
propri-etor. They dodged around the rinse-pump while Farl worked the handle, dousing them both with rather
cleaner water
and then Elminster thrust four silver bits into the man's hand, leapt to re-trieve the wager sleeve, and
scampered out again.
"Gods blast thee! 'Tis a gold piece a head this day!" the man bellowed after them.
El spun around, disgusted, and tossed a handful of silver bits in the bath-keeper's direction. "He's a worse
thief than we've ever been," he muttered to Farl as they headed for a good place to hide the sleeve. It seemed
fitting that the folk of Hastarl were willing to pay good gold to see the backs forever of the mage royal and a
good handful of magelords besides.
"Or a better," Farl agreed. Word of what had befallen was all over the city; folk talked of nothing else
around them as they walked
and something of the air of a festival hung over the city. El shook his head at the
open laughter, even among the patrols of armsmen. "Well, of course they're happy," Farl explained to his wondering
partner. "It's not every night that some helpful young thief even if he does prefer to give all the credit to some
myste-rious mage who conveniently came out of thin air and just as helpfully vanished back into it again downs the
most hated and feared man in all Athalantar and many of his fellow mages ... not to mention a bunch of men that
shopkeepers in this city owe a lot of coins to. Wouldn't you be, in their place?"
"They just haven't thought about which cruel magelord will step forward to proclaim himself mage royal,
and make them even more fearful than before," Elminster replied darkly.
The wide streets along the route of the dirge-walk were filling already; folk who owned finery (and bath
facilities of their own to prepare for its wearing) were pushing for the best positions
unaware of the flood of
less polite and poorer neighbors who would shortly be charging in to seize the vantage points they wanted, regardless
of who thought they owned it already. In most such processions, a good score of folk ended up crushed under the
wheels of the carts, shoved forward by the press of leaning, shouting common folk.
"Are you thinking of what houses may be standing empty this good day, groaning with the weight of coins
for the taking, while all Hastarl turns out to watch corpses paraded by?" Farl asked lightly.
"Nay," Elminster said. "I was thinking of switching the bucket that bath-keeper sits on for another
taking
the one he's filling up with coins right now, and in its place leaving a bucket of "
"Dung?" Farl grinned. "Too risky, though, by far
half the folk in line'd see us."
"Ye think they don't know what we do for a living, Farl? Even ye can't be that much the idiot!" Elminster
replied.
Farl drew himself up with an air of injured dignity. " 'Tis not that, goodsir
'tis that we have a reputation to
maintain. Every-one may know that we take, aye but none should ever see us doing the taking. It shouldst be magic,
d'you see? Like those wiz-ards you're so fond of."
El gave him a look. "Let's go take things," he said, and they strolled off to arm themselves for the workday
ahead.
*****
One house topped the list of places to loot, and they hastened hence, wearing livery that was not their
own but that served to conceal carry-bags strapped to their backs and bellies and to hide the handfuls of
daggers they both carried.
They dropped over the back wall into a pleasant garden, crossed it like two hungry shadows, and
swarmed up a climbing thornflower to a balcony. A servant was asleep in the sun in the room beyond, seizing
a prize opportunity while his master was out of the house.
"This is too easy," Farl said as they sped up the stairs to a gilded door. He thrust his dagger into the
carved snarling lion in its center and waited while the spring-loaded darts flashed away harmlessly down the
stairs. "Don't these fools realize that the shops that sell 'em thief-traps are always run by thieves?"
He dug his blade into one of the lion's eyes, and the cut-glass eye popped out of its setting to dangle from
the end of a cloth rib-bon. Finding the wire in the opening behind the eye, Farl cut it and swung the door
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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