Free The Abduction by J. Robert King Page A

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    Khelben’s black brows drew down, and he prompted, “Something about rewarding his heroism…. Beyond releasing him from the dungeon….”
    “Yes.”
    The master mage turned toward the tattered lad. “The Open Lord is in need of your service, Kastonoph. He needs men he can trust, especially now.”
    Noph nodded humbly. “I could use the work—”
    “It’s more than just trustworthiness. If it weren’t for you, the crossbow would have gone off as those rogue mariners had planned, and we would have had no idea who had done it”
    “I can start right away—“ Noph said.
    “You single-handedly foiled a guild plot against Lady Eidola. You caught the ringleader, squeezed a confession from her, and rounded up the others—not to mention the scrap of cloth that was the chief evidence against the secondin-command. If it wasn’t for you, we would have thought the assassins from the mariners guild were in league with the dopplegangers or the agents from the Utter East. You and you alone solved the one mystery that has been solved here—”
     
    Noph wore a wondering look as he studied the Lord Mage’s face. “If your concern is money, I wouldn’t need more than bed and board—”
     
    “Damn it, son—you’re making this only more difficult,” snapped Khelben. His eyebrows thickened like twin storm clouds. “I am not accustomed to being a messenger boy for the Open Lord, or anyone—”
     
    “What the Blackstaff is trying and failing to say,” interrupted
    Piergeiron quietly, “is that I owe you a deep apology.
    I placed my trust in you once, and it was well placed.
    I should not have doubted you”
     
    Noph coloured, unsure how to respond to the apology of the Open Lord of Waterdeep. He waved a dismissive hand. “Bygones.”
    “And not only do I and all Waterdeep owe you a debt of gratitude, but we have further need of your heroism. We yet do not know what the dopplegangers had plotted, or for whom they worked. And we have no idea yet who those shadow warriors were, where exactly they came from, and where they took Eido—” The Open Lord’s voice, until then a thready whisper, was choked away into silence.
    “He wants you to aid a group of paladins we are gathering to rescue his bride,” Kbelben supplied. “Would you be interested in such an appointment?”
    Something of Noph’s former spirit returned. “I go to watch”
    Postlude Wrong Side of the Mirror
    Oh, to sleep….
    It is all I want to do.
    This weariness is the sort mat denies sleep.
    Perhaps if I slept, I could keep the dust of my pulverized world from filtering down through my eyes and mind and into my very soul. Perhaps if I slept, I would be letting go like the very dust itself. After all, what once bound all to all is gone now. Everything solid melts into air.
    Shaleen, it is as if you died again. What has happened to me, to the Open Lord of Waterdeep?
    What once bound all to all?
    Oh, to sleep….