A sputtering snort was Beldar's only response.

Starragar rolled his eyes and refilled their friend's monstrous tankard from a tall, moisture cloaked metal ale jug. Beldar's third, judging by its two toppled companions.

"He can barely hold his eyes open," Starragar murmured, meeting Korvaun's incredulous stare. "Let him drink himself into slumber, and the night will pass without bloodshed."

After a moment, Korvaun nodded reluctantly.

The three sober Gemcloaks sat with their friend, quietly trading jests they'd heard many times before, until Beldar's sagging head dropped onto the seat-cushion Taeros had thoughtfully placed on the table. When the gentle snores began, they eased out of the booth and gave another coin to the guard with instructions that henceforth no one was to disturb the Lord Roaringhorn's privacy.

When his friends' quiet footfalls had faded, Beldar hauled himself more-or-less upright. His usual impulse was to scoffingly dismiss Korvaun's cautions, but those last words had set Beldar to thinking.

Dimly he clung to one phrase, as if it was a flaming sword in his hand on a dark night, a lone lifeline on a storm-drenched deck, a… the Hells with it! He must not forget it: hasty vengeance.

Korvaun was quite right. He, Beldar, had come to that same conclusion, right? Hadn't he spurned vengeance immediately at hand and resolved to undertake long years' work… to make real the possibilities glimpsed in the necromancer's scrying bowl?

The scrying bowl.

Memories flooded back and with them the grim path he'd seen, whereupon Beldar remembered why he'd come here to drink.

Much pain lay ahead of him: pain, and shunning from kin and the Watch and… mere shopkeepers and beggars in the street.

Yet why not walk that road, when he could gain so much?

He would never be The Roaringhorn, patriarch of the clan. If the street battle was anything to go by, he'd never even be much of a warrior. His friends no longer looked to him as their leader; their devoted gazes were shifting from him to Taeros or Korvaun. Soon he'd have nothing. Be nothing.

Unless.

Unless he found a way to be stronger-and seize his destiny.

Beldar used the table to find balance enough to stagger out of the booth.

"Call me a coach," he growled, pressing yet another coin into the delighted booth-guard's hand. "I need to be at a certain bathhouse in Dock Ward. Now."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Mrelder studied the gleaming helm on the table. In his imagination, its empty eyes were watching Golskyn's pacing with faintly amused curiosity. He wished he could regard his father with the same shining detachment.

Suddenly Golskyn stopped. Mrelder tried not to shrink back as the priest leaned in close and snapped, "Again your sorcery fails us! It doesn't seem good for much-not that the mages I've known fare much better. I'd cast you aside as worthless, right now, if I hadn't made a grave error myself."

Mrelder knew just what casting aside meant. His life was balanced on the proverbial sword edge-and it was a very sharp sword. He hardly dared ask about this "grave error," but his father obviously expected him to. No matter, as long as the man who so grandly called himself Lord Unity didn't conclude his son would never be able to use the Gorget.

Mrelder thought he saw another way, a mere glimmer thus far… but there was no time to think now, not with his father glaring at him.

"Error, Father? We have the Gorget, with no Watch yet pounding on our door…"

"And that was my mistake," Golskyn said almost triumphantly. "Magical baubles can be traced and in the end are but tools, usable in only a few set ways. More reliable than weak and treacherous men, yes, but I know how to move men to my bidding. We should have grabbed Piergeiron, not this scrap of metal!"

"But Father, they'd have torn Dock Ward apart trying to find him!"

"Torn Dock Ward apart! Exactly! With a few Walking Statues, perhaps? Hah! Why control this or that stone man when you can control the one who commands them and the entire CITY?"

Golskyn's shout echoed around the room, and Mrelder winced.

"We could barely drag him; we'd never have got him in here without fighting off a dozen Watchmen! He's out of our reach, now, carried away-"

"Aye, carried off dead. Or possibly dead. More than possibly, if you send the right spell after him, and Waterdeep thinks him dead already! With sufficient strife in the streets, and if our magic from afar can keep him drooling or maimed long enough, no matter what healings are cast, the other Lords will be forced to choose and present his successor."

Golskyn drew lips back from teeth in an unlovely smile. "Such a man, chosen in haste, is hardly likely to be one so strong in faith. He's far more likely to be everyone's 'second choice,' in other words, a ready tool."

This was a very long chain of hopes and suppositions, but Mrelder knew better than to say so. When his father was like this, 'twas best "You," Golskyn hissed, leaning in again until his nose was almost touching Mrelder's, "will find this man for me. You can redeem yourself by identifying him and delivering him into my power. Bring me the next Open Lord of Waterdeep!"

Mrelder felt Piergeiron's helm being slapped into his hands. He'd not even noticed Golskyn snatching it up.

He stared into the fiery eye so close to his, swallowed, and managed to say, "I'll set to work. Right now."

Whirling around, he almost fled from the room.

He had just time to put a soft, cruel smile on his face before he flung open the door-and met the inevitable measuring gazes of several Amalgamation believers who'd been listening. By the misshapen gods! Why didn't Golskyn graft dogs' ears onto the lot of them? At least then they could eavesdrop at a distance!

Hurrying down the stairs, Mrelder made for the rear door. The back alley was far less likely to be full of bodies and Watch officers looking for handy persons to blame for them. He hefted Piergeiron's helm, and shook his head.

His father was getting worse.

All his life he'd been awed by Golskyn's shrewd eye for truths and seeing how things really worked, and how the priest could move men to his bidding. Even if there'd been no gods his father could call on and no Amalgamation, Golskyn could go far and rise high on wits and judgment alone. No, strike that: on his ruthlessness, too. But somewhere along the line, the priest's single-mindedness had become obsession.

Finally Mrelder faced a truth he had long known: He was never going to win Golskyn's respect. And strangely enough, he no longer craved it. A small part of Mrelder still ached for his father's approval, but he was ready to move on.

There were things to be learned from Golskyn. The deft cleaving between and through foes. The knowing what was going on behind the masks, the sneering at laws and conventions that bound others… that was the way to power and achievement.

It would be his way, and this grasping, brawling, coin-rich city of Waterdeep would be his home, this city he was coming to know so well. Before he was done, Mrelder would end up covertly controlling Lords and laws from the shadows.

But his father had stepped over the parapets of prudence long ago and just now clearly flung himself off the battlements of sanity. There'd be nothing safe and subtle about Golskyn of the Gods from now on. Mrelder had mastered enough Waterdhavian history to know that men who were boldly ambitious but neither safe nor subtle seldom lasted long.

And Mrelder intended to last a long time indeed.