THE GREATER OF TWO EVILS

With a sigh, Bellany Tundash rolled over to the side, away from her lover. You ask too many questions, and always at the wrong moments," she complained.

The small man, Morik by name, scrambled over to sit beside her on the edge of the bed. They looked like two cut of the same cloth, petite and dark-haired, only Bellany's eyes shone with a mischievousness and luster that had been lacking from Morik's dark orbs of late. "I take an interest in your life," he explained. "I find the Hosttower of the Arcane...fascinating."

"You're looking for a way to rob it, you mean."

Morik laughed, paused and considered the possibility, then shook his head at the absurdity of the thought and remembered why he was there. "I can undo any trap ever made," he boasted. "Except those of trickster wizards. Those traps, I leave alone."

"Well, every door has one," Bellany teased, and she poked Morik hard in the chest. "Ones that would freeze you, ones that would melt you..."

"Ah, so if I just open two doors simultaneously...."

"Ones that would jolt you so forcefully you would bite out that feisty tongue!" Bellany was quick to add.

In response, Morik leaned over, nibbled her ear and gave her a little lick, drawing a soft moan.

"Then do tell me all the knowledge that I need to keep it," he whispered.

Bellany laughed and pulled away. "This is not about you at all," she replied. "This is about that smelly dwarf. Everything seems to be about him of late."

Morik rested back on his elbows. "He is insistent," he admitted.

"Then kill him."

Morik's laugh was one of incredulity.

"Then I will kill him - or get one of the overwizards to do it. Valindra...Yes, she hates ugly things and hates dwarves most of all. She will kill the little fellow."

Morik's expression grew deadly serious, so much so that Bellany didn't chuckle at her own clever remark and instead quieted and looked back at him in all seriousness.

"The dwarf is not the problem," Morik explained, "though I've heard he's devastating in battle."

"More boast than display, I wager," said Bellany. "Has he even fought anyone since his arrival in Luskan?"

Again Morik stopped her with a serious frown. "I know who it is he serves," he said. "And know that he wouldn't serve them if his exploits and proficiency were anything less than his reputation. I warn you because I care for you. The dwarf and his masters are not to be taken lightly, not to be threatened, and not to be ignored."

"It sounds as if I should indeed inform Valindra," said Bellany.

"If you do, I will be dead in short order. And so will you."

"And so will Valindra, I suppose, if you're correct in your terror-filled assessment. Do you really believe the high captains, any or all together, are of more than a pittance of concern to the Hosttower?"

"This has nothing to do with the high captains," Morik assured her.

"The dwarf has been seen with the son of Rethnor."

Morik shook his head.

"Then who?" she demanded. "Who are these mysterious ringleaders who seek information about the Hosttower? And if they are a threat, then why should I answer any of your questions?"

"Enemies of some within the tower, I would guess," Morik calmly answered. "Though not necessarily enemies of the tower, if you can see the distinction."

"Enemies of mine, perhaps."

"No," Morik answered. "Be glad you have my ear, and I yours." As he said it, Morik leaned in and bit Bellany on the ear softly. "I will warn you if anything is to come of this."

"Enemies of my friends," the woman said, pulling away forcefully, and for the first time, there seemed no playfulness in her tone.

"You have few friends in the Hosttower," Morik reminded her. "That's why you come down here so often."

"Perhaps down here, I simply feel superior."

"To me?" Morik asked with feigned pain. "Am I just an object of lust for you?"

"In your prayers."

Morik nodded and smiled lewdly.

"But you still haven't given me any reason to help you," Bellany replied. "Other than to forestall your own impending death, I mean."

"You wound me with every word."

"It's a talent. Now answer."

"Because the Hosttower does not recruit from outside the Hosttower, other than acolytes," said Morik. "Think about it. You have spent the better part of a decade in the Hosttower, and yet you are very low in the hierarchy."

"Wizards tend to stay for many, many years. We're a patient lot, else we would not be wizards."

"True, and those who come in with some heritage of power behind their name - Dornegal of Baldur's Gate, Raurym of Mirabar - tend to fill all the vacancies that arise higher up the chain of power. But were the Hosttower to suffer many losses all at once...."

Bellany smirked at him, but her sour expression couldn't hide the sparkle of intrigue in her dark eyes.

"Besides, you'll help me because I know the truth of Montague Gale, who didn't die in an accident of alchemy."

Bellany narrowed her eyes. "Perhaps I should have eliminated the only witness," she said, but there was no real threat in her voice. She and Morik competed on many levels - in their lovemaking most of all - but try as either might to deny the truth of their relationship, they both knew they were more than lovers; they were in love.

"And in so doing eliminate the finest lover you've ever known?" Morik asked. "I think not."

Bellany had no immediate answer, but after a pause, she said in all seriousness, "I don't like that dwarf."

"You would like his masters even less, I assure you."

"Who are they?"

"I care too much about you to tell you. Just get what I need and get far out of the way when I tell you to."

After another pause, Bellany nodded.

They called him "the general" because among all the mid-level battle-mages at the Hosttower, Dondom Maealik was considered the finest. His repertoire was dominated by evocations, of course, and he could throw lightning bolts and fireballs more intense than any but the overwizards and the Archmage Arcane Arklem Greeth himself. And Dondom sprinkled in just enough defensive spells - transmutations that could blink him away to safety, an abjuration to make his skin like stone, various protection auras and misdirection dweomers - so that on a battlefield, he always seemed one step ahead of any adversary. Some of his maneuvers were the stuff of growing legend at the Hosttower, like the time he executed a dimensional retreat at the last second to escape a mob of orc warriors, who were left swinging at empty air before Dondom engulfed them in a conflagration that melted them to a one.

This night, though, because of information passed through a pair of petite, dark-haired lovers, Dondom's adversaries knew exactly what spells he had remaining in his daily repertoire, and had already put in place a plethora of countermeasures.

He came out of a tavern that dark night, after having tipped a few too many to end off a day of hard work at the Hosttower - a day when he had exhausted all but a few of his available spells.

The dwarf came out of an alleyway two doors down and fell into cadence with the walking wizard. He made no attempt to cover his heavy footsteps, and Dondom glanced back, though still he tried to hide the fact that he knew he was being followed. The wizard picked up his pace and the dwarf did likewise.

"Idiot," Dondom muttered under his breath, for he knew that it was the same dwarf who'd been heckling him inside the tavern earlier that night. The unpleasant fellow had professed vengeance when he'd been escorted out, but Dondom was surprised - pleasantly so!  -  to learn that there was more than bluster to the ugly little fellow.

Dondom considered his remaining spells and nodded to himself. As he neared the next alleyway, he broke into a run, propelling himself around the corner where he pulled up fast and traced a line on the ground. He had only a few heartbeats, and his head buzzed from too much liquor, but Dondom knew the incantation well, for most of his research occurred on distant planes.

The line on the ground glowed in the darkness. Both ends of it rolled into the center, then climbed into the air, drawing a column taller than Dondom by well over a foot. That vertical slice of energy cut through the planar continuum, splitting to two and moving out from each other. In between loomed a darkness more profound than the already black shadows.

But the dwarf wouldn't notice, Dondom knew.

The wizard settled his portal into place, and nodded as the glowing lines fast disappeared. Then Dondom ran down the alley, hoping he would hear the dwarf's screams.

Another form came out of the shadows as soon as the wizard had departed. With equal deftness, the lithe creature created a second magical gate, right in front of Dondom's, and dismissed the original as soon as the second was secure.

A dark hand waved on the street, motioning the dwarf to continue.

The dwarf had to take a deep breath. He trusted his boss - well, as much as anyone could trust a creature of that particular...persuasion, but traveling to the lower planes didn't come with many assurances, no matter who was doing the assuring.

But he was a good soldier, and besides, what worse could happen to him than all that had already transpired? He picked up his pace and came around the alleyway entrance in full run, yelling so that the clever wizard would know he'd gone through the gate.

"Ruffian," Dondom muttered as he strolled back to review his handiwork - and to dismiss the gate so that the obstinate and ugly dwarf - or one of the foul denizens of the Abyss - didn't somehow figure out how to get back through. The last thing Dondom wanted was to feel the wrath of Arklem Greeth for loosing demons onto the streets of Luskan. Or it was the next to the last thing he wanted, Dondom realized as he walked around and waved his hand to dispel his magic.

The gate didn't close.

The dwarf walked calmly back out onto the street and said, "Hate those places."

"H-how did you..." Dondom stuttered.

"Just went in to get me dog," said the dwarf. "Every dwarf's needin' a dog, don't ya know." He shoved his thumb and index finger against his lips and blew a shrill whistle.

Dondom more forcefully willed his gate to close - but it wasn't his gate. "You fool!" he cried at the dwarf. "What have you done?"

The dwarf pointed at his own chest. "Me?"

With a strange shriek, half roar of outrage, half squeal of fear, Dondom launched into spellcasting, determined to blow the vile creature into nothingness.

He stammered, though, as a second creature came forth from the blackness of the gate. It stepped out bent way over, for that was the only way it could fit through the man-sized portal, its horned head leading the way. Even in the dark of night, the bluish hue of its skin was apparent, and when it stood to full height, some twelve feet, Dondom nearly fainted.

"A - a glabrezu," he whispered, his gaze locked on the demon's lower arms - it sported two sets - that ended in large pincers.

"I just call him 'Poochie,'" said the dwarf. "We play a game."

With a howl, Dondom spun around and ran.

"Yeah, that's it!" cried the dwarf. To the demon, he commanded, "Fetch."

A fine sight greeted those revelers exiting the many taverns on Whiskey Row at that moment of the evening. Out of an alleyway came a wizard of the Hosttower, flailing his arms, screaming indecipherably. With his long and voluminous sleeves he looked rather like a frantic, wounded bird.

Behind him came the dwarf's dog, a twelve-foot, bipedal, four-armed, blue-skinned demon, taking one stride for the wizard's three and gaining ground easily.

"Teleport! Teleport!" Dondom shrieked. "Yes I must! Or blink...phase in and out...find a way."

That last word came out in a long, rolling syllable, covering several octaves, as one of the demon's pincers clamped around his waist and easily lifted him off the ground. He looked like a wounded bird that had gained a bit of altitude, except that he was moving backward, back into the alley.

And into the gate.

"I could've just smacked him in the skull," the dwarf said to his master's friend, a strange one who wasn't really a wizard but could do so many wizardly things.

"You bore me," came the reply he always got from that one.

"Haha!"

The gate blinked out, and the lithe, dark creature moved into the shadows - and probably blinked out, too. The dwarf walked along his merry way, the heads of his glassteel morningstars bouncing at the ends of their chains behind his shoulders.

He found himself smiling more often these days. There might not have been enough bloodletting for his tastes, but life was good.

"He wasn't a bad sort," Morik said to Kensidan. He tried to look the man in the eye as he spoke, but he always had trouble doing that with the Crow.

Morik held a deep-seated, nagging fear that Kensidan was possessed of some magical charming power, that his gaze would set even his most determined adversary whimpering at his feet. That skinny little man with soft arms and knobby knees that he always kept crossed, that shrinking runt who had done nothing noteworthy in his entire life, held such power over all those around him...and that was a group, Morik knew, that included several notorious killers. They all served the Crow. Morik didn't understand it, and yet he, too, found himself thoroughly intimidated every time he stood in the room, before that chair, looking down at a knobby knee.

Kensidan was more than the son of Rethnor. He was the brains behind Rethnor's captaincy. Too smart, too clever, too much the sava master. Imposing as he seemed when he sat, when he stood up and walked that awkward gait, his cloak collar up high, his black boots laced tightly halfway up his skinny shins, Kensidan appeared even more intimidating. It made no logical sense, but somehow that frailty played off as the exact opposite, an unfathomable and ultimately deadly strength.

Behind the chair, the dwarf stood quietly, picking at his teeth as if all was right in the world. Bellany didn't like the dwarf, which was no surprise to Morik, who wondered if anyone had ever liked that particular dwarf.

"Dondom was a dangerous sort, by your own word," the Crow answered in those quiet, even, too controlled tones that he had long-ago perfected - probably in the cradle, Morik mused. "Too loyal to Arklem Greeth and a dear friend to three of the tower's four overwizards."

"You feared that if Dondom allied with Arklem Greeth then his friends who might otherwise stay out of the way would intervene on behalf of the archmage arcane," Morik reasoned, nodding then finally looking Kensidan in the eye.

To find a disapproving stare.

"You twist and turn into designs of which you have no knowledge, and no capacity to comprehend," Kensidan said. "Do as you are bid, Morik the Rogue, and no more."

"I'm not just some unthinking lackey."

"Truly?"

Morik couldn't match the stare and couldn't hold the line of defiance, either. Even if he somehow summoned the courage to deny the terrible Crow and run free of him, there was the not-so-little matter of those other puppeteers....


"You have no one to blame for your discomfort but yourself," Kensidan remarked, seeming quite amused by it all. "Was it not you who planted the seeds?"

Morik closed his eyes and cursed the day he'd ever met Wulfgar, son of Beornegar.

"And now your garden grows," said Kensidan. "And if the fragrance is not to your liking...well, you cannot pull the flowers, for they have thorns. Thorns that make you sleep. Deadly thorns."

Morik's eyes darted to and fro as he scanned the room for an escape route. He didn't like where the conversation was leading; he didn't like the smile that had creased the face of the dangerous dwarf standing behind Kensidan.

"But you need not fear those thorns," Kensidan said, startling the distracted rogue. "All you need to do is continue feeding them."

"And they feast on information," Morik managed to quip.

"Your lady Bellany is a fine chef," Kensidan remarked. "She will enjoy her ascent when the garden is in full bloom."

That put Morik a bit more at ease. He had been commanded to Kensidan's court by one he dared not refuse, but the tasks he had been assigned the last few months had come with promises of great rewards. And it wasn't so difficult a job, either. All he had to do was continue his love affair with Bellany, which was reward enough in itself.

"You need to protect her," he blurted as his thoughts shifted to the woman. "Now, I mean."

"She is not in jeopardy," the Crow replied.

"You've used the information she passed to the detriment of several powerful wizards of the Hosttower."

Kensidan considered that for a moment then smiled again, wickedly. "If you wish to describe being carried through a gate to the Abyss in the clutches of a glabrezu as 'detrimental,' so be it. I might have used a different word."

"Without Bellany - " Morik started to say, but Kensidan finished for him.

"The end result would be a battle far more bloody and far more dangerous for everyone who lives in Luskan. Think not that you are instrumental to my designs, Morik the Rogue. You are a convenience, nothing more, and would do well to keep it that way."

Morik started to reply several times, but found no proper retort, looking all the while, as he was, at the evilly grinning dwarf.

Kensidan waved him away and turned to an aide, striking up a conversation on an entirely different subject. He paused after only a few words, shot Morik a warning glare, and waved him away again.

Back out on the street, walking briskly and cursing under his breath, Morik the Rogue again damned the day he'd met the barbarian from Icewind Dale. All the while, though, he secretly hoped he would soon be blessing that day, for as terrified as he was of his masters, their promises of rewards were neither inconsequential nor hollow. Or so he hoped.

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