Dawnbringer: A Forgotten Realms Novel Read Online Free PDF

particularly.”
    From the corner of his eye he saw the hooded figure shift slightly. The mage raised an overgrown eyebrow. “This object changes shape? On its own?”
    “And hence my understandable curiosity. Also, its previous owner died rather than give it up, and I’d like to know why.”
    To be entirely honest, Ping would have ordered the weird creature in the ship’s hold killed, whatever he did. But Gareth didn’t feel it necessary to go into all that. The less said about Ping, the better.
    The day after he and Ivor had taken refuge in the dubious safety of Mulmaster, word had come of a pirate ship, the scourge of the Moonsea, found adrift with all on board slaughtered. Stranger still, rumor said that the slain had not been left to rot where they fell, but that they had been laid out neatly, their weapons at their feet, as if somebody had taken the time to commend them to their respective gods. Ivor and Gareth had looked at each other over the greasy tavern table when they heard the word, silent by unspoken mutual agreement. The news was a relief, but the idea that they had set the mysterious, otherworldly strangers upon the ship they’d served was uncomfortable.
    The mage grunted skeptically, unfolded his arms, and poked at the bracelet with a long sharpened fingernail, stained ocher and yellow with the chemicals of his trade. The metal around Gareth’s wrist remained a bracelet. The mage rubbed his calloused finger on the front of his robe as if Gareth’s questionable treasure were no more than particularly unpromising fewmets.
    “The gems are unknown to me, and doubtless of no particular Power or value,” he declared in his sonorous voice. “I am unfamiliar with these chicken scratchings on the metal, and I doubt if they even come from the alphabet of any advanced race. It’s a trinket some charlatan cobbled together, either to gull a mark or to give a sweetheart, and has no intrinsic magical Power whatsoever.You could give it to some trollop if she fancies it. Otherwise it’s worthless.”
    Indignant, Gareth snatched up the bracelet before the mage could say more.
    “Very well,” he said. “You’ve made your point. I should have saved my coin for the whore. I would have had more enjoyment from it.”
    He was irritated at more than the man’s dismissal of an object he’d hoped to prove valuable, and, as he blinked in the sunshine outside the mage’s dim lair, he realized why that was. By saying the bracelet was valueless, fit only to buy a doxy’s favors, the mage implied the strange creature on the ship died for nothing. And Gareth realized he was obscurely offended at the insult.
    He tucked the bracelet away in a pouch beneath his shirt and made his way down the greasy cobbles, automatically avoiding the refuse that ran down the ditch in the middle of the street. He’d return to the Throatcut Sparrow Tavern that afternoon, and see if he and Ivor could hire on as mercenaries or even mule-hands with a caravan headed south. He didn’t see much chance of their establishing a foothold here, unless …
    He passed a queer sigil burned into a splintered door and shivered despite the noontide heat. No, there wasn’t much chance, unless they were willing to join the lower echelons of Bane’s dark brotherhood. And Gareth wasn’t that desperate—not quite yet. He hadn’t left Ping’s murderous ways behind to join the Dark Lord’s ranks.
    He sensed something move behind him and swung around, his hand on his sword hilt. All he saw was adouble row of shadowed doorways and the cobbled street, empty save for some dull-colored fowl that pecked at a pile of refuse.
    Gareth shifted his pack and continued his course. As the sun reddened in the east, the near-empty streets began to fill with all manner of folk going about their business after the midday warmth. Instinctively, Gareth let his right hand hover near the coin pouch on his belt, under the fold of his shirt, for the pickpockets had left their