Keturah watched the starsnake disappear into the sunrise clouds. She hadn’t been able to gather enough magic to get its attention, still less compel its will!
She cloaked herself with magic and with a wrap of flowing silk, then quietly made her way across the city to the home of the greenmage Whendura. There were many such physicians in the city, minor wizards and priests who had studied the magehound’s art as well as divination and herbal lore. The common folk had their midwives and clergy, but a wizard’s health was so bound up in Art that a special set of diverse skills was needed. Whendura was well respected, but her home was far from the fashionable coast, a location deliberately chosen to give clients a sense of privacy and security—or, as much as such things existed in Halruaa.
Whendura, a small, plump woman who looked as if she ought to be plying grandchildren with honeycakes, met Keturah at the door with a warm smile. She ushered her visitor up two flights of stairs to a small room, chatting cozily as she pounded herbs and mixed them with watered wine. Keturah stripped down to her shift and set aside all her spell bags and charms and wands, so that nothing magical might confuse the greenmage’s tests. She drank the green sludge Whendura offered, then endured a long list of questions and much magical poking and prodding.
At last Whendura nodded and began to gather up her wands and crystals. “So much magic within you,” she said respectfully. “It is a great gift that you give Halruaa!”
Keturah frowned. “I don’t understand.”
The greenmage’s busy hands stilled, and a flash of compassion lit her eyes. “Don’t fret over it,” she all but crooned. “It is often so. The potions can bring confusion.”
“Potions,” Keturah echoed without comprehension. “Confusion?”
Whendura gave her a reassuring smile. “It will be different when the babe is born,” she said gently as she continued to gather up her tools. “May Mystra grant,” she added under her breath.
Keturah realized that she was gaping like a carp. “Babe? What babe?”
It was the greenmage’s turn to be astonished. “You are not with child?”
“No,” she said flatly. “It is not possible.” How could it be, when her “husband” had never once crossed the threshold of her bedchamber?
“Then why have you come for testing?”
“I told you,” Keturah said impatiently. “My magic is diminishing in power and reliability. To whom should I come but a greenmage?”
Pity and comprehension flooded the woman’s face. “It is always so, for a jordain’s dam. Do not look so shocked, child,” she said, clearly distressed by what she saw in Keturah’s face. “You were told all of this, but sometimes a woman loses memory along with magic.”
The truth slammed into Keturah with the force of a monsoon gale. She was being prepared to give birth to a jordain!
Keturah forced calm into her reeling mind and brought forward what she knew of such things. Though jordaini births did occur unaided from time to time, it was more often a rare and highly secret procedure, involving potions that stopped the hereditary transfer of magic from mother to child.
So that was the reason why Dhamari was content to leave her at her door each night! Their match had been granted because it had the potential of producing a jordaini child. Keturah thought of the spiced wine they drank during their shared evening meal. No doubt he’d been slipping her potions to shape the destiny of their eventual child. He would not risk disrupting the process before it was completed.
Why would he do such a thing? Never was this fate imposed upon a woman without her knowledge and consent!
Wrath, deep and fierce and seething, began to burn away her confusion. The parentage of the jordaini counselors was held in secret, but great honor was afforded wizards who gave a counselor to the land. It was a sure way for a wizard to advance in rank and status, and none need know the reason. Despite the vast power of Halruaa’s magic—or perhaps because of it—many children died in infancy. A potential jordain was taken from his mother’s arms and listed in the public records as a stillbirth, lost among the many babes born too frail to carry the weight of Halruan magic. Never would the parents know the name or the fate of their child, and never would the public know why certain wizards acquired rare spellbooks, choice assignments, or even positions on the Council of Elders.
All this Keturah’s friend Basel had told her late one night, shortly after the death of his wife and newborn child. His description of this secret process had carried the bitter weight of a confession.
Keturah heard the greenmage’s voice in the next room and the soft, mellow chimes that opened the scrying portal. She crept to the door, pushed it open a crack, and listened.
“So great a sacrifice!” Whendura said, speaking into the scrying globe. “If Keturah has lost this much memory so soon, I fear her mind will not survive the birth of the child.”
“You did well to contact me. I had not realized it was so bad with her.” Dhamari’s voice floated from the globe, resonant with earnest concern. “Childbearing does not come easy to Keturah. In the morning she wants no one near her. Sometimes her sickness lingers until highsun. Is there no potion that can relieve her suffering?”
The ringing sincerity in his voice made Keturah want to shriek with fury.
“You know there is not,” the magehound said sternly. “She cannot take any magical potion of any kind, for fear of altering the delicate balance and harming the child.”
Keturah’s eyes widened as a grim possibility seared its way into her mind. Dhamari knew her devotion to Halruaa. If she were chosen as a jordain’s dam, she would find a way to accept her fate. Yet he had made sure that she knew nothing of this.
“Keep my lady with you,” Dhamari went on in his gentle voice. “She is too confused to travel alone. I will come presently and collect her.”
Keturah hurried to the window. A tall iron trellis covered with pale lavender roses leaned against the wall, leading down into the greenmage’s garden. As she eased herself out and began to climb down, she blessed Mystra that Dhamari had never had much talent for travel spells. He would have to depend upon their stables. The ride to the magehound’s home and back granted Keturah some time.
Once she reached the ground, she conjured a travel portal and leaped through it. She emerged not in her own home but in the public gardens, near the pool where she had found the blue behir nearly a year ago.
For a moment she considering attempting another gate spell but was afraid what the next random location might be. She set off on foot, hoping that the sedate mare Dhamari usually rode kept to its usual, plodding pace.
After what seemed an eternity, she reached her tower. She raced up the stairs to gather a few belongings and seek some answers.
“Mistress.”
Keturah stopped on the stair landing and whirled, regarding a woman with a face similar to her own, yet somehow coarser and lacking in symmetry.
“What is it, Hessy?”
‘Did you see Whendura the greenmage this morn?”
Keturah blinked. “Yes. What of it?”
“She is dead. I heard it cried in the marketplace.” Hessy swallowed hard. “It is said she was killed by starsnakes.”
“A starsnake? At this hour? Unless she climbed one of the bilboa trees to accost one in its sleep, that seems unlikely.”
“She was attacked in her own tower. They say there must have been at least three of the snakes.”
Dread began to gnaw at Keturah, giving way to growing certainty. The winged snakes never ventured within human dwellings. They were also fiercely solitary creatures, capable of bearing young without need for another of their kind. They avoided each other assiduously—never had she seen more than one of them in the same place. Though starsnakes had a high resistance to magic, no natural starsnake would attack a wizard—unless compelled to do so by a powerful spell.
Keturah began to see the shape of Dhamari’s plan. He could not allow the sympathetic greenmage to become Keturah’s
ally for fear of what the two women might together discover. Keturah would be confined to her tower, under Dhamari’s care, until the birth of the valuable child. Then she would be turned over to Halruan law—if indeed she survived the birth with her mind intact—and the child would be Dhamari’s to control. No doubt a magehound would detect some spark of magic in the babe, and the child would be rejected by the jordaini order. Everyone would regard this as a tragic waste and look upon Dhamari with great sympathy.
Oh, but he was clever! The only flaw in his plan was Keturah was not yet with child. He probably had spells prepared to entrap her long enough to remedy this lack.
“It was Dhamari who found Whendura, I suppose.” Her voice was harsh as a swordsmith’s rasp. “Or what little was left of her?”
Hessy nodded, and her eyes confirmed Keturah’s unspoken suspicions. “The militia are questioning her servants about who came before him. He has not been truth-tested for her death. The militia did not deem it necessary, as he is a maker of potions and not a wizard known for his ability to summon such creatures.”
“Unlike his wife,” Keturah said bitterly. “Yes, Dhamari can be very convincing.”
“They will test you,” Hessy said hopefully. “They will learn the truth.”
Keturah shook her head. “He has been giving me potions that confuse magical inquiry. Whendura thought I was with child, and she is among the best greenmages in the king’s city. The council will wait until after I have given Dhamari a child. By wind and word, that I will never do!” she swore. “Let the mangy whelp of a rabid jackal find me if he can!”
The servant hesitated, then pressed a bit of bright metal into Keturah’s hand.
“Wear this talisman wherever you go,” she whispered urgently. “It will tell you when Dhamari is near, or those he sends.”
Keturah stared at the servant in puzzlement. “This is a rare and costly thing. How did you come by it?”
The girl attempted a smile. “You pay me well, and my needs are small. I saved every coin I could, hoping that when the time came, I could see you safely away.”
“When the time came?”
“I clean his lab,” Hessy said flatly. “I have seen the spells he creates. Forgive me for not speaking of what I knew!”
Many wizards enspelled their servants and apprentices to keep them from betraying secrets. Even so, Hessy’s concerns were for her mistress’s safety and not her own. Words utterly failed Keturah. She opened her arms, and Hessy rushed into them. For a moment the two women stood clasped in a sisters’ embrace.
Keturah pulled away and walked to the open window, chanting a spell as she went. Hardly caring if the spell held or not, she stepped out into the wind …
Tzigone hit the ground facedown, landing with a spine-numbing jolt and a solid splat. She pushed herself off the mossy cushion and rose to her feet, wiping the moisture from her face. For a while she paced, waiting for the last lingering shadows of her vision to fade. When all she could see was the bleak expanse of rocky moor, she sat down with her back against one of the jagged standing stones that littered the dark fairies’ realm.
So there it was—the beginning of her story. For years, Keturah had evaded Dhamari’s pursuit, finally falling into the hands of Kiva, the elven magehound. Somewhere in between, Tzigone had been born.
That was interesting, but Tzigone didn’t see how it could help her get free of this place. She would try again … later. Right now she was bone-weary, soul-weary.
Even so, she gathered her small remaining strength and sank back into recent memory. When she opened her eyes, a tall, solid figure stood over her, arms crossed and an expression of fond exasperation on his face. The illusion of Matteo was nearly as ghostly as the form of his friend Andris, but Tzigone took comfort from the illusion of his presence.
She raised her eyes to his shadowy face. “Good news, Matteo. Dhamari is not my father.”
You’re sure of this? inquired the illusion with typical jordaini skepticism.
“Positive. I saw it in one of those past memory trances you taught me to do. The little weasel never even made an attempt at fatherhood. You’d think all those wands and chalices and crystal balls that wizards have lying around would plant the idea. The man has no appreciation for symbolism! He never once cast a spell, if you follow.”
Matteo’s misty visage furrowed. No spells? But Dhamari is a wizard.
Tzigone groaned. “I’ll put this in terms a scholar can appreciate: either there was no lead in Dhamari’s stylus, or he was just never in the mood to write.”
A faint flush suffused the illusion’s face. You saw this?
“There wasn’t much to see, praise Mystra.” The amusement faded from her eyes, and she studied Matteo for a long moment. “None of this is real, you know. Nothing here is real, anyway, and I wouldn’t bet on whatever’s happening back in Halruaa. Life is mostly illusion and wishful thinking, isn’t it?”
Yes.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever known who is exactly what he seems.” She grinned fleetingly. “I’m sorry for all those times I called you boring and predictable.”
No you’re not, Matteo’s illusion responded.
Tzigone chuckled. “Well, maybe not all those times.”
She began to drift, and leaned back against the stone. “Stay with me for a while?”
Always.
Because this was the Unseelie court and because illusions had great power here, the answer Tzigone heard was what she needed to hear. As the exhausted girl sank toward sleep, she realized that truth, in its purest form, was quite different from fact Matteo was worlds away, but he was truly with her.
The familiar warmth of her friend’s presence enfolded her like a cloak. Drawing it around her, Tzigone settled down to sleep while she could.
The dark fairies would return soon enough.
CHAPTER SIX
Two figures strode across the swamp water surface, confident in the spells that allowed them to traverse the murky water as easily as a northman might cross a winter-frozen pond. Despite their reliance upon magic, both these travelers looked utterly at home in this wild place.
Kiva’s coppery skin and jade-green hair proclaimed her a native of the jungles. The colors of her beauty blended with the lush foliage, and her movements held the subtlety of shifting shadows. The human’s scaled, faintly green skin, the gills on his neck, and the webbing between his fingers suggested a creature well suited to places where air and water mingled.
The amphibious wizard halted, leaning on his staff as he rested. For several moments the only sounds were the voices of the surrounding swamp, the faint crackle of energy that surrounded the wizard’s staff—a living but stiff-frozen eel, hard as mithral—and Akhlaur’s labored breathing.
“The air is thin. Two hundred years in magic-rich water cannot be countered in mere days,” he snapped at his companion, as if she had chided him for some weakness.
Kiva lifted her hands in a defensive gesture. “This jungle has always been difficult for humans. Surely you remember the last time you were here.”
Akhlaur’s thin lips curled in a sneer. “Not so difficult The natives died as easily as those in any other place.”
The wild elf bit back her outrage and kept her face calm. “When you are ready, we should move on.”
They pressed deeper into the Kilmaruu Swamp, the site of Kiva’s first great victory. Twilight gloom settled over the swamp as they neared a swift-running river bordered by deep gorges and spanned by the remains of a bridge fashioned from a single, enormous log.
Akhlaur regarded the skeleton of the three-horned creature sprawled across the blackened wood. His face took on a dreamy expression, as if he were lost in fond memory.
“Monsters from Chult—I’d almost forgotten that spell! Bringing them here was difficult but worthwhile. The wild elves had never seen such creatures before. Quite amusing.”
“No doubt,” Kiva said flatly. She pointed toward the opposite bank. “That way.
”
The necromancer eyed the apparently impenetrable forest wall. “It did not look so when last I came through. There were terraced gardens amid the trees.”
“Two hundred years,” the elf reminded him. “The jungle covers all and forgets nothing.”
He sent her a sharp glance. “That sounds suspiciously like a warning, little Kiva.”
“A proverb,” she said mildly, “of a sort often spoken by the jordaini. During your exile, these sayings have infested the Halruaa language like gnats upon overripe fruit”
“So much for my gift to Halruaa,” Akhlaur observed. “It is said that no good deed goes unpunished!”
Several responses came to Kiva’s mind, all of which were almost guaranteed to kindle the necromancer’s rage. She acknowledged his ironic proverb with a nod, then led the way across the log bridge. They crawled through the rib cage of Akhlaur’s creature and passed into the forest The wizard followed her down long-forgotten elven paths that no human, magically gifted or not, could ever see.
Night fell, and the path traced a steeply sloping hill. They skirted several ravines and pits—all that remained of the elves’ outer defenses. Finally they stood within the crumbling walls of the ancient elven city.
Moonlight filled the courtyard, lingering on the blackened, vine-covered ruins.
Akhlaur looked about in dismay. “What happened here? Pillage I could understand, had it been widely known that elves lived in this part of Halruaa! But this was a hidden city. Certainly a few learned wizards suspected its existence, but sages and looters seldom drink from the same bottle.”
“Not looters, Lord Akhlaur, but time. Time and Halruaa herself conspired in this destruction.”
“I am not one for riddles,” he warned.
She took a moment to choose her words. “The destruction of Halruaa’s elves could not have been accomplished by one wizard, not even one as powerful as you. During your rise to power, all of Halruaa looked the other way and pretended not to know.”
The necromancer looked at her as if she’d stated that most of the trees were green. “You are just now discovering the nature of humankind? Even those who consider themselves virtuous see only what they wish to see. Especially those who consider themselves virtuous! After all, illusions, once created, must be maintained.”
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