"Greenwood, Ed - Elminster 05 - Elminster's Daughter_v1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

Jeff Grubb, Eric Haddock, and Steven Schend.


*Sons, sons -- always you boast of what your tall sons will do, with
their sharp new wits and sharper new swords! Remember, O Prince, that
you have also daughters! You're not the first man, great or low, to
forget the shes he's sired, but mark this wisdom, Lord (not mine, but
from the pen of a loremaster who was dust before dragons were ever
driven from this land): The sages who turn the pages of history 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 merchants -- I 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
goods -- or softer temptations -- under 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 embracing -- even 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 furniture -- a table and six
high-backed chairs -- and an even colder company of men.