Done and Paid

"Not before time," Dagan growled, as Harid limped slowly into the common room of the Merry Wanderer.  Still, noting the weighty bulk of the Antherian's scrip, he signaled the serving wench for another flagon and stood to help the younger man into a chair.  Harid gave a slight heave of his shoulder, and the scrip lifted slightly, then slid by its strap down off Harid's shoulder to land on the table with a satisfying thump.1

"You got it, then," Dagan said.  (It was stating the obvious; Harid would not have shown up without the prize.  He would not have dared.)2

As Harid settled painfully into the chair, his stiff right leg stretched out to the side, a slight groan escaped him.  Dagan shook his head, wonderingly.  Full five years, Harid had not walked without great effort, nor quicker than a slug's pace, yet he was the most successful thief in the entire Archipelago.  Of course, that very fact probably accounted for a good deal of his successful anonymity.  Who would even suspect, after all?  In all the world, Dagan was one of only ten people who knew Harid by sight, name or even reputation, but among those ten, there was always work in plenty for the last son of lost Anther.  3

While the grizzled Ferithan SwordMaster lifted the leather cover-flap and peered in at his booty, Harid lifted his flagon and took a long, cooling draught of bitter ale.  He didn't like Ferith, largest of the islands of the Archipelago.  To the north, it was league on league of stinking marsh, to the west, nothing but blighted and scorched rock for a depth of twenty to fifty leagues all along its ship-killing coast.  The rest...an expanse that might take a man with fresh changes of horse and plenty of water (which he wouldn't have) a full twenty days to cross in any direction...the rest was all sand and sun and Ferithans, a people who made the land seem welcoming and kind.  4

Now that his commission was accomplished, he could not wait to collect his bounty, board a ship and leave the place in his wake, and he did not mean to even enquire of the ship's destination!  It would be going east, and that was enough.  Ferith was the westernmost of the Isles.  He knew there were other lands outside the Archipelago; he had even heard that there were landmasses that dwarfed Ferith as their populations would swallow the Peoples of the Isles and barely notice...maybe one day he would go, but for now, he did not care to venture far from his home on the cool, green Isle of Willowind.5

Grunting in satisfaction, Dagan hefted a purse and slid it across the table.  Harid did not open it; within, he knew, would be the agreed price.  Gold enough for travel expenses back to Willowind, where he would deposit the bank draft for the (unbelievably large) remainder.  He did not ask Dagan what he wanted with the simple stone statuette.  Dagan would not ask how he had managed to extract it from the Sithander's most secure chambers.6

Each knew the other too well.  Dagan knew he would learn nothing, and Harid knew that anything the SwordMaster wanted so badly could only be a step along the way toward Overlordship of Ferith.  What this small idol had to do with that ambition, he did not care.  If Ferith must have a WarLord, Dagan was as good a choice as any in Harid's eyes, and better than most.  With a silent salute, he drained his flagon, slipped the purse within his shirt and stood.  Dagan nodded as wordlessly, and Harid limped to the door, clambered atop his mount and set it ambling toward the harbor.7

When the sorrel mount arrived at the docks, it was a cleaner, older and far better dressed man who dismounted and walked with a strong and even stride to the gangplank of the ship that looked closest to ready to leave.  He called for the ship’s master, and requested permission to board and discuss passage east, which was, of course, granted immediately to one so clearly a man of wealth and power.  As fortune would have it, the vessel carried a load of spice-timbers for Willowind, that green and cool isle that was so like the land of his birth.  Within two ten-days, he would rest by the cool springs of his palace garden, amid the scent of the flowers and the sound of the birds that had migrated there when the Isle of their origin sank beneath the waves under the curses of the Wizards of Kharrqa, just as it’s people had fallen below the waves of their legions.8

Harid, last son of lost Anther and the last remaining heir of the cursed blood of the shape shifters, was going home again, or as near as could be for one whose home was no more.9

© MMV by eric lee10