The Family Business

James Lowder

 

"There's a rider coming," the Shadowhawk hissed, his breath turning to steam in the chill midnight air. "You remember what I told you? You get 'alf of what we pinch from the bloke, right?"

"Yes," the young boy replied meekly. He picked at the loaf of stale bread jutting out of the small pack at his feet, then looked up at his father. With wide brown eyes, he pleaded to be released from the frightening task that loomed before him. In reply, the Shadowhawk frowned and pushed his son through the tangled hedgerow separating them from the road.

Artus Cimber tumbled through the thorny branches, recently laid bare by the first blustery days of winter. As he stood and brushed off his threadbare tunic and breeches, he looked into the darkness down the packed dirt trade road. In one direction the way ran empty and arrow-straight much farther than the boy could see, almost until it reached the peaceful hamlet of Irath. In the other, it made a gentle curve around a tree-lined hill before striking north toward Waymoot. There wasn't the slightest hint of a horseman from either direction.

How can Father tell someone's coming? Artus wondered. I can't even see as far as I can throw a stone.

The boy glanced up, only to find the moon hidden behind iron-tinged clouds, swollen with snow. To one side of the trade road, past the thorny hedgerow, trees hunched like sleeping giants on a hill. On the other, fallow fields stretched for miles. Lights shone in the windows of a farmhouse, nestled atop a faraway ridge, but they appeared as tiny, flickering pinpoints. Artus would have mistaken them for fireflies, had it been summer.

"Not enough light to see anything," he whispered and tugged at his mask. After adjusting the tattered strip of cloth around his eyes, he squinted into the darkness once more.

Curiosity quickly overcame the boy's fear as he tried to puzzle out just how his father had detected a rider. He cocked his head and listened for the telltale sounds of hoof-beats on the frozen ground. An owl hooted occasionally from a branch high on the hillside. At the farmhouse, a dog barked at some annoyance, yelping and whining in fits. But those were the only sounds on that lonely stretch of road- though the young boy's heart was pounding so hard he wondered childishly if someone might hear it, too, if they listened hard enough.

Artus pressed a hand to his chest, hoping to muffle the hammering. Of course it wouldn't stop. He softly cursed his fear, but choked on the words; if he spoiled the job by making too much noise, his father would beat him for certain. There was nothing the Shadowhawk cared about more than his work, and Artus was suddenly petrified at the prospect of failing him.

Scoril Cimber was the most famous highwayman in the kingdom of Cormyr, known as the notorious Shadowhawk. If Scoril himself were to be believed, that fame extended throughout the disparate countries and city-states that made up the Heartlands, but even at seven, Artus could tell when his father was stretching the truth. And though the Shadowhawk was an overly proficient liar, it could not be denied many in Cormyr respected him as a master of his craft. Dozens of men from the Thieves Guild in the capital city of Suzail petitioned him regularly for apprenticeships. Scoril would accept none of them; if his craft was to be passed down, it would be through one of his two sons.

This cold Uktar night, it was Artus's turn to take up the mantle. His elder brother, Oric, had proved himself much more adept at robbing people. He was agile and as strong as many men twice his ten years in age. Yet Oric had also demonstrated himself incurably stupid time and time again-forgetting to disarm his victims or blurting out his father's name during a robbery. Never a patient man, the Shadowhawk couldn't bear these mistakes. So it had fallen upon Artus to become an apprentice highwayman. And even though he loathed the idea, he did his best to make his father happy.

Tonight, as on most nights, he failed.

"You're as bad as Oric!" The words struck Artus at the same time as the blow landed in the small of his back. The boy fell onto his chest, his ears ringing, his heart fluttering like a trapped songbird.

The Shadowhawk snorted. "You're lucky there ain't no rider."

"No rider?" Artus repeated.

"Course not." The highwayman tossed a small pack at the boy. "It was a test and you failed. What did I tell you about standing too long in the road during a jaunt?"

"That it's dangerous," Artus replied. He sat up and slid his pack onto his shoulders, but kept his gaze carefully locked on the scuffed tips of his boots.

"And?" the Shadowhawk prompted, pulling the boy to his feet.

Artus buried one hand in his pocket. Drawing it out again, he opened his grimy fist to reveal a blue gem, which glowed softly with a magical radiance. "And always keep this tight in one hand."

"The stone'll protect you, keep you from being trampled. You remember that stiff I showed you in Suzail, the knuckler what got run over by the wagon?" The pained look on Artus's face, heightened by the weird radiance of the stone, was answer enough. The pickpocket's bloody corpse had taken up a vivid residence in his memory. "Well, you'd look just as bad if a warhorse galloped over you."

Scowling, the Shadowhawk brushed away the lone tear meandering down the boy's cheek. "Oh, you're not 'urt," he murmured. "Right?"

"No, Father," Artus said between sniffles.

"These jaunts are for your own good. There's always danger if you're going to be a scamp, and I've seen a lot of blokes get killed being careless." He reached down and tucked the boy's tunic into his belt. "But you've got something they didn't 'ave, right? You've got brains. That makes you better than the little brats what only earn their blunt as buzzmen, swiping 'andkerchiefs and 'ats from the swells in Suzail. You can be a scamp, like me. Maybe even a good one."

The boy nodded and looked up at his father. The hood of the Shadowhawk's black cloak hid his stern features. That massive, shapeless cape had become a trademark of sorts for the highwayman, for it concealed both his face and his form. In the steady light of the gem, though, Artus glimpsed his father's hooked nose and the strange, predatory glint in his green eyes.

He'd seen that look many times on jaunts, but the first had been two years ago, when his father had beaten a fellow scamp unconscious on the road outside Suzail. The Shadowhawk, his hood knocked back in the fight, had stood over the man in mute triumph, assured the brigand was completely in his power. Now the gaze revealed how confident the Shadowhawk was his son had no ambitions, no dreams other than those he had instilled in him.

So intent was he upon Artus that the Shadowhawk didn't hear the oddly muffled sounds from up the road until it was too late. There was no thunder of hoofbeats, no clink and clatter of tack to warn of the approaching warhorse; the mount's magical horseshoes did their best to mask these noises. The barely audible creak of leather as reins and harness and saddle strained on the galloping destrier-this was all that alerted the highwayman to the threat at his back. He looked up just in time to see the massive white horse bearing down on him. Its rider, oblivious to the obstacle, stared intently over his shoulder.

"Tyr's eyes!" the Shadowhawk cursed and threw himself on top of Artus. At the same instant, the glowing gem in the boy's fist flashed brightly. A sphere of light welled up from the stone to surround the unfortunate pair huddled directly in the destrier's path.

The shout and the burst of magic from the gem snared the rider's attention, but not soon enough for him to do anything to avoid the pair. He wrenched the reins, but the warhorse half-jumped, half-stumbled over the highwayman and his son, its hooves rapping a loud and threatening drum roll on the arcane shield. The force of the assault knocked the magical bubble a dozen yards down the road. It rolled like a crazed billiard ball with the two robbers tumbling inside.

As soon as the danger had passed, the gem drew in the force shield, and the battered duo assessed their situation. The Shadowhawk had gained a few bruises and a throbbing headache from the tumble, Artus not even a scratch. The highwayman shook his head, the severe frown telling the boy quite bluntly this trouble was his fault and he would pay for it. The Shadowhawk probably would have meted out that rough justice, too, if the destrier and its rider weren't sprawled, unmoving, at the edge of the road opposite the hedgerow.

"I'll check him," Artus said, adjusting his near-empty pack on his shoulders. If the jaunt went well, the sack would soon be full of coins and anything of value they might be able to fence in Suzail.

"Yeah, awright." The Shadowhawk rubbed the welt on his arm roughly. "Give 'im a topper if 'e's twitching too much."

Artus shuddered. Robbing people at knifepoint was one thing. Bashing them on the head was another. He knew his father dfdn't kill people-"doing the out-and-out" the thieves at the guildhall called it-but the Shadowhawk never shied away from roughing up a swell who resisted too much or a tax collector who threatened to bring the law after him.

The moon struggled from behind the clouds, casting its wan light over the road. Fortunately, the rider looked like he was in no shape to put up a struggle. He lay face down, his arms spread to his sides, his breath wheezing from him in bursts. He'd fallen clear of his mount, which was for the best; the horse had landed in a heap. Its neck was twisted grotesquely, and blood dribbled from its nostrils and mouth. Deep, ragged gouges marred the destrier's legs- wounds it couldn't have received in the fall-but the shattered bone jutting from its foreleg was clearly a result of the collision. The boy was glad the poor beast was dead. Its rider would have had to kill it anyway.

Artus knew his father was watching him, so he steeled himself and strode confidently toward the unconscious man. As he did, he exchanged the glowing gem in his hand for his dirk. That would please the Shadowhawk, he was certain. Besides, the feel of the dagger in his palm took his mind off the white, staring eyes of the dead horse and the uncomfortable prickle of his father's gaze.

The rider was wealthy, of that there could be little doubt. As Artus rolled him over, the moonlight danced over the silver links of an expensive chain-mail shirt. The man's cloak was new and fur lined at the collar to keep out the winter chill. His boots were tooled from the finest leather, as were his gloves and belt. Unlike the thieves, the young knight had bathed recently and his hair was neatly trimmed.

Roughly the boy pulled the man's scabbard from his belt and tossed it aside. Then he reached for the rider's tabard, crumpled by the fall. Wrought of expensive Shou silk, the cloth was emblazoned with the Purple Dragon. Symbol of King Rhigaerd II and House Obarskyr, the Purple Dragon was worn by all who served in Cormyr's military. But the soldiers in Rhigaerd's employ sported white tabards. This man's was gray. And his cloak was not military issue. Artus had seen enough soldiers around Suzail to know that.

"What's the delay, Art?" the Shadowhawk growled. "So 'e's a bloody soldier?" The highwayman eyed the man's warm clothes. "Be a good lad and give me 'is gloves. Me 'ands are frozen."

The boy peeled the gloves from the knight and tossed them to the Shadowhawk. "Father, I…”

"Quit stalling! You'll be sorry if 'e wakes up. I'll leave you to fight 'im, you know." The highwayman threw his own rat-nibbled gloves into the hedges and slid the new ones on. "Grab 'is jewelry, if 'e's got any, and whatever blunt 'e's got in that stuffed purse, then check 'is nag for supplies."

Quickly Artus pulled the gold ring from the man's left hand, a wedding band with delicate engraving inside. In the moonlight, the boy could read a name there: Filfaeril. The knight's lady love, it would seem. Without pause, he thrust the ring into his pocket. Once the engraving was smoothed out, it would fetch a good price in the city.

Next he cut the purse from the man's belt. It was heavy, and Artus couldn't help pausing to glance inside. Atop the mound of silver coins lay another ring-gold and encrusted with gems. It, too, bore the dragon of House Obarskyr.

Artus froze. A cold dread spread from the ring to his suddenly numb fingers, up his arms, and finally to his heart. Only one young man would carry such a signet ring. The boy looked at the knight's face. He was the right age, just a little older than the Shadowhawk. And it was said in the Thieves Guild he often rode out of the royal castle in Suzail, disguised as a wandering cavalier, a sell-sword meting out justice as part of a brave band known as the King's Men.

"Prince Azoun," Artus whispered.

The purse slipped out of his fingers, rebounding off his leg before hitting the ground. The coins jingled musically as they scattered over the road. 'The prince," Artus said, turning to his father. "We've got to-"

But something else had captured the Shadowhawk's attention. He fell to his hands and knees, head cocked curiously. "Something's coming," the highwayman said. Artus thought he heard an edge of fear in his father's voice. "It ain't on the road, though. More like ... under it."

The road trembled beneath Artus. He tried to stand, but the packed earth under his feet shifted, sending him sprawling atop the unconscious prince. Frantically he reached for the gem in his pocket.

As Artus's fingers closed around the blue stone, something burst up from the dirt next to the dead horse. The boy caught a glimpse of it-shaggy hair and beard, all wild and unkempt and matted with soil. That mop seemed to be the entirety of its head and upper body, until it flexed its stubby arms and slashed the air with long black talons.

The creature plunged back into the ground then, just as another surfaced momentarily on the other side of the horse. Together the two creatures circled the unfortunate mount, a track of disturbed earth forming around the corpse. Before Artus could cry out his amazement, a hole swallowed up the entire warhorse.

"Run!" he heard his father shout, but the words seemed to come from very far away.

Brightly the gem in Artus's hand flared to life. The force wall flowing from it pushed his fingers apart, as it always did, and spread out to encircle both the boy and Prince Azoun. Artus felt the globe sink as the earth gave way, opening a wide maw for him. He looked with staring eyes at the still form of Azoun, past him to the translucent blue floor of the sphere. At any moment, the dirt beneath it would fall away and they would be swallowed up, just like the dead destrier.

Then the rumbling beneath Artus stopped. All was silent for an instant as the globe settled in the shallow sinkhole. Nearby, where the horse had been taken, clots of dirt shot from the burrow. They rained down on the road in a soft patter. On the other side of the road, the Shadowhawk crouched near the hedgerow, neither fleeing nor lifting a hand to help his son. Like Artus, he seemed frozen by fear.

"Whatever you do, boy," came a strained, quiet voice, "don't let go olthat gem."

Artus nearly did just that at the unexpected words from the prince, but Azoun reached out and gently steadied the boy's trembling hand.

"W-What are they?" Artus stammered.

Reaching up to gingerly prod the bloody wound on his forehead, Prince Azoun said, "Zhentarim assassins. Magically altered dwarves, I think. Voracious little beasts called groundlings. How-Ooch." He pulled his fingers away from the gash. "How long can you keep that force shield up? I think it's blocking the groundlings' tracking sense."

"It stays up by itself, but only as long as we're in danger and the gem's touching my skin. I mean, I can't control it other than that."

"One of the groundlings must be right below us," the prince observed. "Close, too, if it's triggering the shield." He reached for his sword, but found his belt empty. "Where's my blade?"

The boy gestured to the weapon, which lay in the road, well out of reach. Then he flinched, as if he were expecting a blow for his mistake.

"It's all right," Azoun said kindly. "Just give me your dagger."

The prince took the small, rather dull knife and rolled onto his knees. The movement caused the thing in the ground beneath the force globe to stir, and the sinkhole grew deeper as the groundling blindly expanded its burrow. The sphere of magical energy sank into the earth, far enough that Artus could barely spy his father as he huddled near the hedgerow.

The boy soon regretted even that limited vista.

From the wide burrow that had swallowed the prince's horse, a coarse laughter began to echo. The hacking was soon accompanied by the sickening crack of still-warm bones breaking. Limb by limb, rib by rib, the destrier's remains flew out of the burrow. The gory missiles landed in the grass, bounced off the force shield, even buffeted the Shadowhawk. The bones had been stripped of most of their flesh by the assassins, the tack and saddle chewed almost beyond recognition.

That was more than enough to panic the highwayman. With a single glance back at his son, the Shadowhawk sprang toward the hedgerow. He fixed his cold eyes on the hillside beyond. The trees, leafless in the Uktar wind, promised safety with their high branches. If only he could reach them....

As soon as the highwayman moved, three tracks of churning earth shot across the road-two from the horse's grave, another from beneath Artus and Azoun. The groundlings burrowed furiously after the Shadowhawk, like sharks in bloody waters. They converged on him just before he reached the row of thorny bushes at the road's edge. Clawed hands burst through the topsoil and closed around his ankles. Talons sharp as swords tore deep furrows in the highwayman's boots and painful scratches in the skin below.

The Shadowhawk screamed once before he disappeared into the burrow.

The force globe vanished when the groundlings went after the highwayman. Prince Azoun hit the bottom of the sinkhole with a grunt of pain, then reached out to stop the boy from running. Artus ducked the prince's awkward grab, leaped from the hole, and raced to save his father.

"They won't kill him!" Azoun shouted. "They're after me!"

Artus wasn't listening. When he reached the burrow where the Shadowhawk had vanished, he stuffed the blue gem into his pocket and grabbed a more suitable weapon- a fist-sized wedge of stone tapering to a point at one end. Kneeling before the hole, he whispered, "Father?"

His knees had barely touched the road before two squinting red eyes appeared in the blackness. Artus didn't wait to see what the groundling would do. Savagely he lashed out with the stone. The Shadowhawk had trained the boy in knife-fighting, but his years in the roughest alleys of Suzail had given him less orthodox fighting skills, too. In his hand, the stone might as well have been a warhammer, wielded by a young dwarven warrior from the halls of Earthfast.

The blow landed on the bridge of the assassin's snoutlike nose, shattering it noisily. The groundling howled and clutched at its face. Artus attacked again, this time planting the stone squarely atop the creature's shaggy head. The sound of a skull fracturing resounded in the burrow.

For an instant, Artus felt a surge of relief. Then the groundling burst from the burrow once more, crazed with pain and fury. When he saw the flash of the creature's teeth, the boy realized what a horrible mistake he'd made.

Certain of his doom, Artus braced for the attack. He didn't close his eyes or turn away; fright had locked his arms and legs. The sole thought running through his mind was how stupid he'd been for putting the magical gem in his pocket.

Like a diving falcon, a silver blade flashed out of the night and pierced the groundling's back, right between the shoulder blades. The assassin's dirty paws went limp on Artus's arms. The thing puffed out a last stinking breath and was still.

Artus stared in horrified amazement at the groundling. Short and stocky, it vaguely resembled the dwarves who sometimes passed through Suzail as itinerant sell-swords or miners or metalsmiths. Yet its features had been twisted by the Zhentarim's dark sorcery. Whatever stunted ears it had were buried in wild fur, its eyes reduced to nothing more than narrow slits. Artus had bloodied the long, fleshy snout, probably even broken it, from the awkward bend near its bridge. Even in death, though, the bristles on the snout's tip twitched spasmodically. The creature stank of rotten meat and fetid water. Sticks and decaying leaves, worms and crawling weevils, dotted its hairy flanks and the crown of its head.

"Get to the trees!" Prince Azoun shouted.

Artus, shocked out of his frightened stupor, looked up to find the prince bracing one dragonhide boot on the corpse. He was trying to wrench his sword free. The blade had gone right through the assassin, pinning it to the ground. Now it wouldn't budge.

A shriek reverberated eerily from the depths of the burrow. It was the animalistic cry of a groundling, and from the angry snarls that followed it, Artus was fairly certain the remaining pair of assassins had discovered their mistake in grabbing the Shadowhawk.

As the angry cacocophy in the burrow grew louder, the prince grasped the sword more tightly and pulled with all his strength-to no avail. He'd simply struck the beast too hard.

"Brute force causes as many difficulties as it solves," he said bitterly, repeating a maxim favored by Vangerdahast, his royal tutor. As with most of the wizard's sage advice, though, its true meaning had come to Azoun just a little too late.

When he saw Artus still standing at the edge of the burrow, staring mutely at the corpse, the prince released his grip on the trapped sword. Grabbing the boy by the arm, he bolted through the hedgerow and ran toward the hillside beyond. They stopped at the nearest tree with branches low enough and sturdy enough for them to climb.

"Go as high as you can," Azoun said as he boosted Artus onto a gnarled limb. "Then take out that gem again and hold it tight."

The boy moved tentatively into the lower branches. He wasn't afraid of heights; it was just that he'd never climbed a tree before. After all, he'd had few chances to do so in Suzail, since only noble estates and small, well-patrolled public parks held any greenery at all. And the Shadowhawk frowned upon hiding in trees during a jaunt, since a robber was just as likely to hurt himself by leaping on a victim.

"The only time a proper scamp's found in a tree is when 'e's dangling from it," was one of his favorite sayings.

To counter the fear welling inside him, Artus tried to picture himself climbing up to the second story of the ruined tavern where he had his secret library. By scaling a flight of rickety stairs and pushing through a hole in the upper floor, he would come to his treasure trove of books. He'd stolen most of them from scribes' stalls in the marketplace, but a few proclamations had come to him from the rubbish heaps outside the city walls. Scaling the tree wasn't so different from getting up to the loft, he decided, and the climb became less of a struggle.

When at last he reached a safe vantage, high in the tree, Artus looked down to find Azoun struggling along behind him. The prince's cloak snagged branches with each move he made, and his chain mail shirt hung heavily on his shoulders. Azoun settled on a thick limb below the boy. Only then did he begin to undo the elaborate clasp holding his cloak closed.

"That was a brave thing you did," the prince noted. He puffed out a breath of relief as he slid the cloak from his shoulders. "Put this around you. It'll get cold up here fast, once the fright lets go of you."

Artus took the cloak with a softly murmured thanks. "What about my fa-uh, the Shadowhawk?" he asked.

The prince paused. "The Shadowhawk, eh? At least I was waylaid by the best." Forcing a grim smile, he added, "Don't worry. The groundlings are professional assassins. They won't harm your father-the Shadowhawk, I mean. He's got my gloves, I suppose. That's why they went after him-they could pick up even that much of my scent on him as he moved. But, like I said, they won't hurt him. Their contract is for my death. To kill someone else would be against guild rules. Do you understand?"

The boy nodded, and the cloud of concern passed from his brown eyes. If the creatures were sentient enough to follow the rules of the Assassins Guild, perhaps his father could fast-talk his way free. "Will they let him go when they figure out he's not the one they want?"

"Not right away. At least not until they've got me. Right now, the groundlings-"

A scraping noise drew Azoun's attention back to the road. There, the assassin's corpse was slowly sliding into the burrow. The sword point jutting from its chest cut through the ground like a plow blade as the groundlings dragged their dead fellow deeper into the earth. Soon, the corpse and the sword were gone.

Azoun sighed. "Right now, the groundlings are building a warren, an underground camp. They must realize they have us trapped, since nothing is moving on the ground. They'll do all they can to bleed us out of weapons, food, and hope, then wait for us to come down." Scowling, he noted, "Especially food. They'll eat almost anything. I managed to escape them outside of Waymoot by dumping my rations onto the road-that and being lucky enough to have a very fast mount with enchanted horseshoes."

"I have some bread!" Artus offered brightly, gesturing to his pack. "I mean, if you can think of a way to use it against the groundlings ..."

"Well, at least we won't starve," the prince said, trying not to be patronizing, but failing badly. "But since we don't have a horse or any way of escaping, tossing it to the assassins won't do us much good right now."

Clouds slid over the moon once more, blanketing the hillside in a more profound darkness. A cold breeze made the branches creak and sway. The boy was glad for the prince's cloak then, for his shabby clothes gave little protection from the wind. "I'm Artus," he began softly.

The words jolted Azoun out of some intense reverie. "Eh? Well, Artus, you can call me Balin."

The boy paused, then pulled the gem from his pocket. Its blue light cast strange shadows over Azoun's face. He stared at the young man for a moment, openly sizing him up. "But that's not your name," Artus said at last.

"Of course it is," Azoun began, but he saw the frown on Artus's lips, the look of distrust stealing over his eyes. He looked down at his hands, to the indentation on his finger left by his missing wedding band. His purse was gone, too. "Was it the princess's name on the wedding ring or the signet ring in my purse that gave me away?"

"Kinda both," Artus replied. He dug the gold band out of his pocket and returned it to the prince. "And the tabard, too. Not many sell-swords would wear the king's symbol like that."

Azoun looked down at the torn and grimy Purple Dragon. "My tutor always said this was rather silly, to wear the family crest on a disguise. Still, it fooled men a lot older than you."

"People don't look for the obvious. Do you want me to call you Your Holiness?"

"No," Azoun said, trying not to smile at the boy's blunt-ness. "We're fighting together now, and brothers-in-arms need not bow to courtly manners. Besides, you call clerics Your Holiness, not princes."

"Sorry. I never met a prince before."

"So how do you know so much about me?"

The boy fidgeted uncomfortably with the cloak's fur collar. "Well, I've read about King Rhigaerd and about you on the royal proclamations posted around Suzail. And I saw you on your wedding day, when your carriage went down the Promenade. Well, I was too far away to see you, but I saw your carriage. And then there's the stories they tell in the Thieves Guild about you-how you dress up in disguises and play like you're a knight They say-"

"All right," Azoun said, holding up a hand to stop the torrent. It was his turn to study his unwilling companion, to size up this worldly child-robber. Most children grew up quickly in Cormyr, especially poor children from the city. But this boy was more than world-wise. He was obviously clever. Moreover, he could read, a skill confined mostly to the nobility, the priesthood, and a few wealthy merchant families. "Your father taught you to read, did he?"

Artus laughed with surprising bitterness. "He doesn't like me to read. A priest of Oghma taught me on the sly, until Father found out, that is. It didn't matter, though. By the time he told me to stop I already knew how." He gripped the gem tightly, cutting off most of the light. Still, Azoun could see the angry look in the boy's eyes as he said, "I don't want to be a scamp like him."

The prince held his hand up to the boy. "If you don't want to be a highwayman, how about giving me your mask? I could use it right about now."

For a moment Artus thought the prince was going to try to fit the dirty strip over his face, but he began to tie it over his forehead. Then the boy noticed the gash on Azoun's head was leaking blood into his brown hair, staining it dark and masking the strands of gray already taking hold there. "So what's your ambition then-a priest, perhaps? Maybe a bard? You seem to remember stories pretty well."

A smile crept across Artus's features. "I like stories a lot. I-" He cast his eyes down at the glowing gem and paused. "I know some about you. The men at the guildhall told me about the King's Men. They say you won't be a good king, you know, that you'll be wandering off to rescue people and fight dragons."

"Indeed," Azoun said flatly. "Maybe they're right. We'll find out soon enough, though, won't we?"

Artus let the cryptic comment drop, for the cold tone in the man's voice frightened him just a little. His father sounded the same way whenever he talked about a failed jaunt or a rival in the Thieves Guild who had questioned his skill. "What will we do now?" he asked after a time.

"Wait, I suppose," the prince said mournfully. "They won't attack us once the sun comes up. It hurts their eyes too much. Besides, by dawn there'll be travelers on the road again. We can muster enough people to stand against the little monsters, if they haven't given up by then and gone back to Darkhold."

An uncomfortable silence fell over Artus and Azoun after that. Both were certain there should be some way to fight, but neither came up with a plan worth suggesting. Azoun took to whittling away bark with the boy's knife, while Artus slumped unhappily against the trunk.

Occasionally one of the groundlings would appear at the mouth of the nearest burrow. It would sniff the air, squint uselessly into the night, then call into the darkness, "Escape is not for you, Azoun." Their voices were frightful, high-pitched and screeching like hobnail boots sliding on a slate floor.

After a time, though, even this harassment stopped. Artus dared to hope that the assassins were giving up, that his father would soon crawl out of the ground a free man. But the sudden, violent collapse of a tree perilously close to their sanctuary crushed those hopes.

"They're not going to wait for us to come down," Azoun observed bitterly.

Horror-struck, they watched another tree drop into a sinkhole, then pitch forward. The night filled with groans and cracks as the oak smashed into a leafless maple and both crashed to the ground. All around the fallen trees, groundling burrow tracks cut through the earth. Every few feet, one of the assassins would breach and test the air.

Finding no trace of the prince amongst the wreckage, the groundlings set about toppling more trees. The din was terrible as the oaks and pines tumbled, tearing branches from other trees in the path of their fall, pounding the life out of anything caught beneath their impact. Birds and squirrels and other creatures took flight as their homes swayed and collapsed. Any creature larger than a rat that fled on the hillside found itself swallowed up by a groundling burrow. As the prince had noted, it seemed the voracious assassins would eat almost anything.

Finally a tree toppled close enough to swipe at Artus and Azoun with its barren limbs. The gnarled branches clutched at them like skeletal fingers, scratching a painful line across the prince's cheek and snagging the heavy cloak Artus wore. The boy felt himself falling backward. The gem in his hand threw its magical globe around him at that moment, shielding him from a branch that careened past him. Yet the globe didn't anchor Artus to his perch; neither, he knew, would it cushion his impact with the ground if he fell. Reluctantly the boy let the gem slip from his hands and tried one desperate grab for the trunk.

His cold-numbed fingers closed on air. Shouting for help, Artus plummeted.

He didn't fall far, though. Azoun, his legs wrapped tightly around a branch, grabbed for the boy as he went past. Fortunately, the prince stopped Artus's fall. Unfortunately, he did it by snagging the cloak, which fluttered behind the boy like a sparrow's broken wing.

Artus jerked to a stop. Choking, he tried to get a foothold or handhold on the tree. Any sizeable branches were well out of his reach, so all he managed to do was set himself swinging back and forth. The clasp cut into his throat, and the tree's smaller branches battered his face. When at last Artus got a firm grip on the cloak, he gasped in a ragged breath and looked down at the site of his almost-doom.

The tree had barely landed before the assassins were swarming around it. They nosed at the glowing blue gem, which lay nearby, but it held little interest for them. The groundlings were, after all, dwarves at heart. Though mutated, they shared that stout people's disdain of unfamiliar magic.

The Zhentarim agents wasted little time on the search. As soon as they were convinced the prince had not fallen with that particular oak, they set to work undermining the next. It wasn't long before shudders began to ripple up the tree holding Artus and the prince.

His face red, his arms quivering at the strain of holding his neck out of the fur-collared noose, the boy looked up at Azoun. "Let me go," he croaked.

Ignoring the plea, the prince began to reel in the cloak like a net. Artus writhed, trying to break free. "I can . . . save us," the boy cried.

Azoun grimaced. "Don't be foolish," he snapped. "You can't-"

Another shudder wracked the oak as the groundlings cut away a major root. The prince braced himself, waiting for the trembling to pass. At the same time, Artus twisted sharply, jerking the cloak from Azoun's fingers.

The boy fell, spinning violently in the air. The momentum was enough to send him toward a heavy branch. He grabbed it just long enough to slow his fall, then dropped again, rebounding off limbs closer and closer to the ground. He hit the hillside on his feet and was running before the assassins could react.

As Artus dashed away from the tree, one of the groundlings broke off from the excavation and followed. It tried to keep up with the runner, but he leaped onto the trunks of fallen oaks and scurried into the thick branches of toppled firs. With footfalls muffled by the fresh blanket of needles, he was almost imperceptible to the hunter's keen senses of hearing and touch. Artus might have eluded the creature completely, had it not been for the cloak he wore. Even tearing through the frozen earth, the groundling could smell the prince's scent.

And that was just what Artus was counting on.

A deep groan warned the boy that the tree sheltering Azoun was ready to fall. He turned back just as it started to lean. But instead of avoiding the tree, the boy ran straight toward it.

The oak fell slowly at first, and Artus could see the prince scrambling for a vantage from which he could leap clear when he got close enough to the ground. The boy wanted to shout to him, tell him not to jump just yet, but he knew the prince wouldn't be able to hear him. Even if he did, he probably wouldn't listen, just like the Shadowhawk....

Those bitter thoughts kept Artus's mind off what he was doing, which was a blessing of sorts. The chance the plan would fail was great, the chance it would succeed terribly slim. Nevertheless, Artus ran right into the path of the falling oak, the assassin bearing down on him.

As the track of churning earth touched his boot heels, Artus shrugged the heavy cloak from his shoulders and dived forward. The groundling, certain its victim had fallen, burst up and grabbed the prince's cloak-just beneath the tree trunk as it hit the ground. Like a mallet wielded by a storm giant, the oak drove the unfortunate dwarf-thing back into the dirt, shattering its skull and most of its bones.

That part of the plan worked perfectly. The rest did not.

Artus rolled away from the tree's impact and landed next to the softly glowing magical gem. The boy dared for an instant to hope he'd won. Then a thick branch dropped onto his leg. Artus managed to heave the wood aside, but it left his knee throbbing. Teeth clenched in pain, he sprawled on the soft bed of pine needles and clutched the blue gem in trembling fingers.

The prince fared no better. As he leaped from the oak, he was battered by its limbs. The tree flung him toward the ground in an awkward tumble, and his mail shirt prevented him from righting himself. Azoun hit the hillside shoulder-first and slid into the furrow left in a groundling's wake. Though he landed only a horse's length from Artus, the prince might as well have been a hundred leagues away, for all the help he'd be against the last assassin.

Azoun pushed himself to his knees and dazedly looked around. The makeshift bandage had been torn from his head, and blood ran freely down his face. He spotted Artus and managed to crawl to the wounded boy. "Save yourself," he murmured, then spiraled down into unconsciousness.

Warily the remaining groundling surfaced a dozen yards from Artus and Azoun, squinting toward them with its slit-like red eyes. "Now you are done, princeling," it screeched and tunneled into the ground.

The assassin surfaced again, near the spot where it had scented Azoun. All it found was the blue glow of the force globe, since the magic masked the prince from detection. The groundling cried out in frustration and, for the first time, a little fear. The Zhentarim sorcerers who had dispatched the assassins from the bowels of Darkhold never brooked failure. Even if it survived this encounter with the prince and his able young protector, the groundling would find itself facing endless punishment in that foul keep's dungeons, tortures like the smiling screws or the gruesome kiss of the carrion worms.

To even the groundling's limited intellect, this proved incentive enough for an original thought to emerge.

"You cannot run," the assassin shrilled in sudden realization. "I've won!"

"We can hide in the globe," Artus said as bravely as he could, though pain and fright made his voice crack pitiably. "You've lost. Sooner or later, the royal wizards will come looking for the prince. Until then, we'll be safe in here."

The last was pure bluff, but it set the groundling digging around the magical globe. Dirt and stones rained down on the shell, the clatter underscored by the assassin's unearthly wailing. Then, all at once, the creature ceased its frightening tantrum and sidled up to the globe. It glared at the magical bubble, the pale light nearly blinding it, and said, "They'll find a corpse here just the same. I have the one who was with you, boy." The groundling paused and licked its snout with a long black tongue. "I'll leave his bare bones around you like a picket fence if you keep my prize from me."

"But the guild rules-"

"Mean nothing if I lose the prince," the groundling snapped. "So they take away my guild badge for killing the wrong man. So what?"

Artus's shoulders slumped. There was really no choice if the assassin threatened his father. Besides, what was Azoun to him?

"A trade, then," the boy called. "I'll hand over Prince Azoun, but you've got to bring the other man back here."

"What about the magic wall?" the groundling shrieked. "You'll take the other and hide him there with you and never give me the prince!"

"And you'll just kill me as soon as you have Azoun!" Artus snapped.

There was an uncomfortable pause as the boy and the dwarf-thing considered their rather limited options. It was Artus who finally suggested a plan. In it, there was just the slightest chance he and the Shadowhawk would survive this nightmarish ordeal-and maybe even rescue the prince, too.

"I'm a thief, so we're brothers in trade, right?" Artus began tentatively. In truth the groundling did rather remind Artus of his brother Oric. "So we should be able to make a fair bargain. If, uh, I promise to put the magic gem away and not use it until you have the prince, the trade should be easy. Is that all right with you? I mean, once you have Azoun, you've got no reason to harm us, so we can all get what we want out of this."

It took a few moments for the groundling to wrap its limited intellect around that complicated arrangement, but at last it agreed to the plan. In a flurry of gravel and dirt, the assassin disappeared into its burrow. As soon as the thing was gone, the globe vanished. Artus unslung his ragged pack and prepared Prince Azoun for the groundling's return.

The Shadowhawk was bound hand and foot when the assassin dragged him to the surface. His cloak hung in tatters on his back, and his hood lay in useless strips around his shoulders. Fear filled his wide, staring eyes. Dirt and grime clung to his hair, transformed into clinging mud by blood and sweat. A gag pulled his mouth into a frightful rictus grin.

In silence, Artus stood over the unconscious form of Prince Azoun, who now lay with his head propped up on the boy's pack. Stepping away from the nobleman, he walked slowly toward his father. He could see the surprise in the Shadowhawk's usually cold green eyes, but that didn't concern him as much as the look of reckless triumph twisting the groundling's already horrific features.

The assassin swam through the ground at the surface, paddling straight toward Azoun. It paused at the prince's side, then reached out with a single claw. Perhaps the groundling assumed Azoun would turn out to be a phantasm, despite what its keen senses reported. Whatever the reason, the assassin started when it touched the prince's warm flesh. This was even more than it had hoped for bringing Azoun back to Darkhold alive would quadruple the reward, perhaps even purchase a transformation back to its original dwarven form.

Carefully the creature encircled the prince's legs and started to pull him into the burrow. As Azoun slid, the bed of pine boughs and the small pack that was his pillow slid with him. The groundling didn't seem to notice the branches falling into the burrow, but it stopped dead when the sack's contents rolled onto him-a few sticks of greasepaint used for disguises, a small length of thin black cord, and the stale loaf of bread that was to have been Artus's sustenance on the long trek home. It was this last item that caught the attention of the groundling's twitching nose.

"Hey," Artus called halfheartedly, "that's mine!"

The assassin snorted and scooped the loaf into its maw. Chewing only enough to break the bread into chunks, it gulped the prize down. The groundling then turned its weak eyes back to Artus, a snide comment on the tip of its black tongue, but found the boy standing very close to the burrow's edge.

"Leave the prince alone," Artus said coldly. He planted his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest in what he assumed to be a heroic pose. "If you go now, I'll let you live."

The groundling snarled and tensed its legs to spring, but an odd feeling in its gut made it pause. It groaned and looked down at its suddenly burning stomach. Was the boy using magic? The glowing stone, perhaps? The assassin cursed itself for trusting the human child, especially since it intended to break its vow once the prince was bound securely for the trek back to Darkhold.

"Really," Artus said, "you'd be better off to give up right now. You're beaten."

That was enough for the groundling. It threw back its head and howled, then lunged at the boy.

Artus calmly curled one small hand into a fist and raised it to strike the charging monster. But the groundling never got close enough to harm the boy. The gem it had swallowed with the bread responded to the raised fist by throwing out its protective shell. The magical wall mindlessly and methodically expanded, trying to encase its new master.

The groundling clutched its swelling gut and fell face-first into the dirt. Artus limped another step closer to the creature. "I warned you," he said.

In reply, the assassin belched as defiantly as possible, then burst like an overripe melon dropped onto a cobblestone street.

The silence that followed was quickly filled by the mundane sounds of an Uktar night-hooting owls, the distant barking of dogs, and the chill wind rustling through the trees. Artus stood still for a time, reveling in that normalcy, then set to work untying his father. The Shadowhawk said nothing-no exclamations of pride, no cries of relief, no words of gratitude. He merely rubbed his sore limbs and watched his son without comment as he pulled the prince out of the burrow, bandaged his head again, and moved him out of the road to the safety of the hedgerow. Scoril Cimber could see there was something different about the boy now, but he couldn't quite figure out what.

When he finished with Azoun, Artus turned back to the Shadowhawk, who still sat amidst the piles of earth and gaping holes covering the trade road. "Father," he said flatly, "there's a rider coming."

If the highwayman was surprised his son had heard the faraway rumble of hooves before him, he never let on.

The rider turned out to be the vanguard of a large patrol, scouring the countryside for the lost prince. When the soldiers paused to search the destruction, Artus threw a few stones to draw their attention to the hedgerow and the unconscious royal. Even with his sprained knee it proved simple for the boy and his father to elude the mounted and heavily armored patrol on the wooded hill. The Shadow-hawk was a wanted man, after all, and capture by the king's Purple Dragons was something he had avoided many times before.

In the days that followed, Scoril Cimber cemented his place at the cynosure of the weblike Cormyrian underworld with wild tales of his role in the rescue of Prince Azoun. Artus did nothing to counter these yarns. In fact, the boy often lent quiet support to the Shadowhawk's claim that he'd killed all three Zhentarim thugs and single-handedly protected the heir to the throne of House Obarskyr. And since the palace never commented on assassination rumors, for such things tended to upset the commoners, the Shadowhawk rose unopposed to the height of scamp notoriety.

Such fame always proved fleeting in the back alleys of Suzail, though, and other topics soon supplanted the daring rescue and the molelike killers-foremost among them the oft-repeated rumor that the withering sickness would surely claim King Rhigaerd before the year was out Young Prince Azoun would soon be King Azoun IV. No one seemed pleased to hear this.

"Look," a grizzled thief said, just loudly enough to overwhelm the ten or so voices vying for dominance in the Thieves Guild common room. "Rhigaerd was a bully. No one's arguing with that. All I'm saying is we knew what to expect from him."

"Yeah," someone chimed in, "a quick hanging if we got caught on the road with five silver falcons we couldn't prove as our own."

The grizzled thief frowned. "But at least we knew where we stood. He was a strong king, sure, but that also meant prosperity for the nobles-and good pickings for scamps smart enough to follow guild rules and keep away from his patrols."

From his position in the center of the throng, the Shadow-hawk cleared his throat. The room quieted noticeably and all eyes turned to him. "Azoun don't want to be king, right? So maybe 'e'll spend 'is time daydreaming about fighting giants and leave us be." He put his boots up on the table right in front of Artus and paused smugly. "Yeah, I think 'e'll just leave us be. After all, the bloke owes 'is life to a scamp, right?"

"But what about Vangerdahast, that tutor of his?" another thief asked. "He's a scary one, real sly and real smart. That wizard'll be running things himself if Azoun isn't going to do it proper, and he has no love of the guild."

A pickpocket with three fingers missing on one hand nodded sagely. "Wizards ain't to be trusted," he said, wiggling his remaining digits meaningfully. "It may not matter, though. I hear said that when Azoun's son died last year he changed, started to think of things more like a prince. It took the wildness out of him. Not surprising, when a babe two winters old dies so sudden. Makes you wonder what he did to offend the gods, eh?"

Someone across the room raised a mug in mock reverence. "To Azoun," he said. "May he be half the king his father was-half as good at catching thieves!"

Silent the entire morning, Artus shook his head. "Azoun will be a great king. All the assassins and thieves in Cormyr will be sorry for it, too."

"You'd better 'ope not, Art," the Shadowhawk said, surprised by the comment. "After all, you'll be the scamp to end all scamps yourself one day."

The boy turned cold brown eyes to his father, and the Shadowhawk caught a glimpse of that strange expression he'd seen on Artus's face the night of the battle, just before he'd killed the last of the assassins. "But, Father," he announced in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, "you said I don't have to be a scamp."

"What?" the Shadowhawk bellowed. "I never-"

"Right after the fight-right after you killed all three assassins-" Artus cut in quickly, "you said I fought so badly I would never be safe robbing people. I should be a scribe, you said, or a bard."

Everyone's attention was on Artus and the Shadowhawk, and those thieves prone to jealously and envy-which was, in fact, all of them-found their spirits buoyed by a sudden hope that Scoril Cimber's yarns might now be proved untrue. The room stood frozen for a moment as the highwayman searched in vain for some way out of his son's well-laid trap. The boy had let him tell his version of the rescue, let him take all the glory and reap the guild's rewards for such notoriety. Now, it seemed, he wanted his payment.

But when Scoril looked closely at Artus, he realized there was no escape. The predatory look in his son's eyes was a familiar one, a glint as hard as the stiletto hidden in his boot and as cold as the winter chill creeping through the guildhall's cheap floorboards.

"Yeah. You be a bard," the Shadowhawk murmured at last.

He turned away from Artus's triumphant smile and gulped his ale. Even if he ain't going to be my apprentice, the highwayman thought ruefully, the boy's learned more than I ever intended to teach him.