In The Cards

The Children of Bhaal have many different talents. Some may be extremely powerful warriors, others skilled mages, deadly assassins or wise healers. Some have the skill of clever disguise, and of believably playing a part. Some…do not.

Excerpt from ‘Ruminations Of A Master Bard’

Zaerini quietly slipped between the tall bookcases of the Candlekeep library, hardly able to keep from laughing. What she intended to do was dangerous, but not as dangerous as it would have been in any other place, and it was also enormously entertaining. Finally, she spotted the person whom she was searching for.

At the end of an intersecting aisle a huge man was standing, pretending to be reading a scroll. He was obviously trying to masquerade as a monk. It might even have worked, if not for the fact that the simple robe he was wearing reached only slightly below his knees, displaying a pair of powerful and muscular legs to the world in a very un-monkly fashion. He was also wearing iron-plated boots, rather than the sandals more commonly associated with the profession.

When the man spotted Zaerini looking at him he startled violently and jerked his head up, momentarily displaying a pair of brightly glowing eyes from within his hood. Then, he sneaked away. Sadly, his idea of sneaking constituted of very rapidly and very loudly stomping off down the aisle, his back ramrod-straight and his head held high, making the books tremble slightly in their shelves with every step he took.

“Wasn’t that…” Imoen said, her eyes very wide.

Rini nodded. “None other. Let’s go talk to him, shall we?”

“T-talk to h-h-him?” Khalid protested, his teeth chattering. “B-b-but…”

“It’s all right. He won’t dare try anything here, not beneath the noses of the Watchers.” The redheaded half-elf shook her head. “Dangerous killer that he is, it really is rather sweet watching him try to make himself inconspicuous, don’t you think? Like seeing an elephant trying to do back flips…”

“Sweet?” Edwin said, sounding incredulous. “Not quite the word I would have associated with him. Dangerous, murderous, insane, bloodthirsty and large. But not sweet.”

The bard shrugged. “Any way, I want to talk to him. Better hurry so he doesn’t get away.” She grinned at her friends. “Come on! Don’t the rest of you want to hunt him for a change?”

“YEAH!” Imoen laughed. “Let’s get him!”

Jaheira nodded to herself. “Perhaps the idea has some merit…as you say, he really cannot do anything here.”

“Might be he can tell us where Reiltar is,” Yeslick growled, tapping his hammer against his palm.

“True enough,” Edwin agreed. “Or we may be able to pry some other important information out of him. (Preferably with a crowbar, but I’m not picky. A dull knife will do.)”

“Then let’s go!” Zaerini said, before running off after the ‘monk’. It wasn’t difficult to catch up with him, considering how he towered above the tops of the bookcases. Besides, she knew this library. She and Imoen had played catch here plenty of times, one of those times having led up to the infamous Toppling Incident. It had taken them three days to pick all the books up under Ulraunt’s baleful eyes. So she knew just where to turn in order to get where she wanted to. Dodging between two tall stacks of books, her friends hot on her heels, she suddenly found herself face to face with the tall man she’d been chasing.

“Hi!” she said in a bright voice, putting on her most innocent face. “You’re new aren’t you? I thought I knew all the monks here, but I don’t recognize you.”

“Um…YES!” The man spoke in a deep and booming voice more readily associated with a battlefield than with a library. “I…I am new. Very new. It…it is perfectly natural that you have never seen me before. Perfectly. It happens all the time, people overlooking me.”

“Riiiight…” Rini said, as she slowly let her eyes slide from the large feet in their metal boots, up along the muscular legs visible beneath the hem of the robe, across the powerful body that seemed to be trying to burst the fabric, and all the way up to the golden glowing eyes clearly visible despite the raised hood. “I bet you just fade into the crowd, don’t you?”

That, Softpaws remarked, would have to be a very strange crowd, Kitten. One from the Abyss…maybe.

“I do not believe you ever told us your name,” Jaheira said, giving the tall man a grim smile. “You do have a name, I assume?”

The large man drew himself up to his full height at this, his voice swelling with indignation. “Of course I have a name, you pathetic sniveling maggot!” he thundered. “One you are unworthy of uttering, even as you grovel in the dust to worship at my feet! One that shall be written across the pages of the book that is the Realms, written in words of BLOOD!”

“You know,” Imoen said with a small smirk, “you don’t sound much like a humble monk.”

The man interrupted himself in mid-rant. “What? No! I mean YES! Certainly I am a humble monk, the humblest you will ever meet. I am the humblest in the world; people travel from all over the world to study humility with me, the Master. I am so humble that…WHY ARE YOU ALL SNICKERING LIKE THAT?!”

“Oh…no reason,” Rini said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “No reason at all. Sooo…what is your name? You still haven’t told us, you know.”

The ‘monk’ cleared his throat. “Ah. Yes. My name. I have a name, you know. Of course I do. And it is a good name, a proud name, a strong name, a name to be carried across the world on wings of song, a…”

“A humble name?”

“Yes! Precisely!”

“So what is it?”

The ‘monk’ was perspiring heavily by now, and his enormous, callused hands were nervously trying to tug his robe down across his knees, without much success. “It’s…it’s…er…Koveras! Yes! That is my name. Koveras, the humble monk.”

“Koveras?” Edwin said, raising an eyebrow. “Are you actually being serious? (Next we’ll probably encounter an elderly mage in a stupid pointy hat, calling himself Retsnimle or something equally preposterous.)”

The golden eyes flared up inside the hood and one heavily muscled arm twitched toward the hilt of a sword not currently present. “YOU DARE DOUBT MY WORD AND MAKE FUN OF MY NAME? FOR THAT I SHALL RIP YOUR STILL BEATING HEART OUT AND SQUEEZE THE HOT BLOOD FROM IT, EVEN AS I USE YOUR DECAPITATED HEAD AS A FOOTSTOOL! AND I WILL PLACE IT ON A SPIKE, TO CARRY BEFORE ME AS I STRIDE OUT TO CONQUER THE WORLD!” Then he twitched, as if he had suddenly remembered something. “That is…I mean…it is a humble name.” He was gritting his teeth as he spoke. “Befitting a humble monk. Yes. That is what I meant to say all along.”

“Of course you did,” Zaerini said in a soothing voice, putting her hand on one of the massive arms. “Of course you did. Say, maybe you can do me a favor?”

“I do no favors for lowly mortals! Your impertinence in asking that will earn you the sharp edge of my…” Koveras twitched again, and wrung his hands in a strained gesture. “I mean…yes…of course. As befitting a…a humble monk, such as myself. Because that is who I am. A humble monk. Koveras. Not Sar…anybody else. Koveras. Yes. That’s right.”

“Sure, Koveras. Whatever you say. Anyway, I was just thinking…I’ve heard that my brother may have traveled to Candlekeep recently.”

“Your…ah…brother?”

“Yes. My brother.” Zaerini made her smile as charming as she knew how. “Big, tall fellow…almost as tall as you, I’d say.”

”ALMOST?”

“What am I saying…I’m sure you’re both taller and stronger. No insult intended, I’m sure.”

Koveras was literally grinding his teeth by now. “What…about…him?”

“Well, as I said, he’s big and tall. Has a deep voice, eerie glowing eyes and a bad attitude.” The bard put her finger across her lips as if she had just thought of something. “Oh, and he wears this atrociously ugly spiky armor. Really frightful, I don’t know why he’d want to look like a rabid porcupine, but there you have it.”

“IT ISN’T UGLY! IT IS TASTEFUL, IMPRESSIVE AND EXTREMELY INTIMIDATING! I WILL SLAY YOU FOR THAT SLIGHT AND…”

“Whatever for?” Edwin remarked with a sly grin. “She wasn’t talking about you, after all…Koveras.”

The large man visibly deflated. “I…she…no. Of course not.”

“So,” Rini said, patting him on the hand. “If you should happen to run into my brother – the large guy wearing ugly spikes, remember? Just tell him that I’m not really looking for a fight with him. Not at the moment anyway. But I’m here on business of my own, and he’d better not interfere if he knows what’s good for him. And he’d better not cause a scene in the hallways either, not unless he wants to get in trouble with the Watchers. Can you remember all of that? Good. Off you go then.” The half-elf waved encouragingly as Koveras stumbled off along the hallway, looking slightly dazed, as if he wasn’t entirely sure what had just taken place. “Oh, and Koveras?” she suddenly shouted.

No reaction.

“Koveras!”

He still didn’t stop.

“KOVERAS!”

Finally, the man in the monk’s robe reacted to the sound of his own name. “What?” he said, sounding more than a little wary.

“Tell my brother that I will do as he asks. When the time is right, I will come out and play. And thank him from me for what he said in the dungeon. I appreciate the thought. Well, except for the part about killing me.” Zaerini blew a kiss at the large man. “Run along now. Wouldn’t want to keep you from your monkly duties…”

It was some later that Sarevok stumbled into Winski’s quarters, feeling rather as if somebody had just turned him upside down and spun him around like a top. He had a small but nagging doubt that his encounter with his sister hadn’t gone all that well, and felt the need to talk it over with his mentor.

Winski stood by the window, and as Sarevok entered the room he turned around, a highly amused look on his gaunt face. “Well!” he said. “That was certainly an entertaining performance. My compliments for managing to make a spectacle of yourself in such a novel manner, I could probably have charged people for it if only I had been able to record the visions in my Crystal Ball for posterity. ‘Faerun’s Funniest Mishaps’ I could call it.”

“Actually,” Sarevok said in a haughty voice, “it all went excellently.”

“Is that so?” the wizard said, pursing his lips. “How odd. You must have been spending the past minutes in a different dimension than I, then.” He shook his head. “Really, I don’t know what possessed you. I told you that that so-called disguise wouldn’t fool anybody, didn’t I? And even if it had been a proper size, you still aren’t cut out for spying. Spying requires an admirable character trait known as ‘discretion’; you ought to try acquiring it some time. Who knows, you might even like it.”

“I am a natural spy!” Sarevok protested. “She had no idea whatsoever who I was. If she had, I’m sure she would have betrayed herself. It was close a couple of times, but I kept my cool, despite the fact that she almost seemed to be deliberately trying to annoy me.”

Winski slowly put his head in his hands. “Why me?” he asked the universe in general in a despairing, hollow voice.