"Ed Greenwood - Forgotten Realms - Elminster 5 - Elminster's Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

have a word for men who overlook their daughters . . . and that word is "fools."

Astramas Revendimar,
Court Sage of Cormyr
Letters To A Man To Be King
Year of the Smiling Flame




One

A MURDEROUS MEETING OF
MERCHANTS
A wizard, a merchant, a lord among merchantsтАФI see no shortage of fools here.
The character Turst Sharptongue in Scene the First
of the play Windbag of Waterdeep
by Tholdomor "the Wise" Rammarask
first performed in the Year of the Harp


It was a moonfleet night, the silvery Orb of Selune scudding amid racing tatters of
glowing cloud high above the proud spires of Waterdeep. Wizards in their towers
and grim guards on battlements alike stared up and shivered, each thinking how small
he was against the uncaring, speeding fire of the gods.
Far fewer merchants bothered to lift their gazes above the coins and goodsтАФor
softer temptationsтАФunder their hands at that hour, for such is the way of merchants.
Hundreds were snoring, exhausted by the rigors of the day, but many were still
awake and embracingтАФeven if the hands of most of them were wrapped only
around swiftly emptying tankards.
There were no tankards, no embraces, and no soft temptations in a certain
shuttered upper room overlooking Jembril Street in Trades Ward. Instead, it held a
cold, bare minimum of furnitureтАФa table and six high-backed chairsтАФand an even
colder company of men.
Six merchants sat in those chairs on this chill night in the early spring of the Year
of Rogue Dragons, staring stonily at each other. The glittering glances of five of
them suggested that the health of the sixth man, who sat alone at one end of the
table, would not continue to flourish for more than a few breaths longer had it not
been for the presence of the two impassive bodyguards who stood watchfully by his
chair, cocked and loaded hand-crossbows held ready and free hands hovering near
sword-hilts.
That sixth man said something, slowly and bitingly.


Outside, in the night, a shadow moved. An unseen witness to the merchants'
meeting leaned closer to the only gap in the shutters across the windows of that
upper room. Clinging head-downward to the carved stone harpy roof-truss nearest
to the shutter, the shadow sacrificed as much balance as she dared, and strained to
hear. Her slender arms were already quivering in the struggle to keep herself from
plunging to the dark, cobbled street below.