by Victor Milán
"You did not come to see me," the woman said, replacing the sapphire sphere in its holder, carved from onyx in the shape of a claw, which stood atop a pedestal of self-luminous quartz. "That's why I had to summon you thus, in the midst of night."
She turned. Her face was as pale as marble and shaped like an idealized heart; her hair grew down in a widow's peak. Her eyes matched her gown and the globe in her hand. Her nose was thin, and so were her lips, features so perfect that the first impression was that she was plain. In fact she was beautiful, but her beauty was not the sort to inspire passion, nor the kind to haunt dreams, such as was often found in elvish folk. Rather it was the kind of beauty to inspire awe.
As to her age, Zaranda would have said she looked mature, but could have hazarded no further guess. Certainly the flawless features showed no wrinkles nor sign of drying on the high slanted cheekbones. She seemed ageless and precise as a drawn blade.
"I didn't have that which you bade me bring you," Zaranda said with a shrug. She did not bother mentioning that the sorceress might as easily have summoned her in the daytime. Nyadnar had small patience with complaint, and heard no irony but her own. "There seemed small point in paying a social call."
"You were wise to forbear to waste my time. What do you plan now?"
Zaranda set her lips against her reflexive reply, which was to ask what business the sorceress had with hers. Unlike her wealth and age, Nyadnar's patience wasn't legendary. Rumor in Zazesspur, where she had allegedly dwelt, off and on, for centuries, held that she was as powerful as Elminster. Zaranda doubted that, but she was sorceress enough herself to sense that Nyadnar's power was great indeed; in the crawling of her skin she could sense enormous dweomer seeming to hover about the sorceress, as when Chen's emotions threatened to run away with her. Zaranda feared her, and for that reason had to guard against her own first reflex, which was defiance. The mage was not such to be either truly a friend or truly a foe of anyone, but her goodwill was much more to be coveted than her displeasure.
"At the moment I have few plans, but many possibilities," Zaranda said.
"You are too scattershot in your approach to life, child. Too given to disorder. You never truly had the discipline to be a mage."
"I lacked the patience, perhaps," Zaranda said tartly. "But I managed to advance so long as I stayed with it. And then I became a warrior, and had a certain amount of success at that. That's two careers I've made for myself-not bad for someone so disorderly."
"And now you've gone and wandered into a third profession," Nyadnar said imperturbably. "One in which you've not been thriving of late."
"I got your cursed head for you!" Zaranda flared, feeling cheeks grow hot. "I winkled it away from the Red Wizards of Thay and brought it safely all the way here-listening to its sophomoric suggestions and innuendo every step of the way, I might add." She made herself inhale deeply and struggled to be calm.
"Where is it now?"
"It seems that Baron Hardisty and his advisor Armenides have taken a personal interest in it. It is in their possession now, in the Palace of Governance." Zaranda tried not to slump. "I suppose you'll talk to them of buying it?"
"No such thing. You display again your propensity for irrationality. I do not wish my interest in the artifact advertised. Why else do you think I waited to summon you until such a time as it would seem nothing more than my well-known attention to all that goes on within the city walls?"
That was the way of Nyadnar: her eyes and spies were everywhere, but her actions, if any, she kept well hidden. As far as anyone could tell she hoarded facts for their own sake, as she did gems.
She asked for Zaranda's own account of what had happened to her recently. Zaranda gave it succinctly. Then she hesitated, and biting at a ragged scrap of cuticle on her thumb, said. "If the council won't give it back-"
"They won't."
"— then I could take it back. I stole it from the Red Wizards; I can steal it again."
"That would not be acceptable. First, I do not deal in stolen goods; despite your flippant reference, you considered your removal of it from the Wizards as a legitimate act of war against long-standing foes, and so do I. Second, while the baron and Armenides may not be as potent as the Zulkir Baastat, neither are they as complacent. You lack the ability to recover it by stealth or force. If you failed and were compelled to talk, it would inconvenience me."
She turned away, and her attention seemed to travel off among her treasures. Zaranda stood for a while, feeling a certain sardonic amusement at the blithe way Nyadnar talked about the possibility of her being put to torture. Eventually she turned to go. Nyadnar had no more use for the formalities of greeting and leave-taking than a cat.
"A moment." The sorceress's dry, husky voice stopped Zaranda at the door. "You recently acquired a new follower. The foundling girl from the stable. Why did you take her in?"
"Perhaps because I was a starveling orphan myself, once upon a time."
"And what will you do with her?"
A shrug. "I've cleaned her up, which was a necessary first step. If she'll let me, I'll civilize her. And then- who knows?"
"Will you teach her magic?" She was gazing at Zaranda again, eyes huge and bottomless as midnight seas.
"Perhaps. If she learns some kind of self-control. The powers she has already could do real hurt to her or others. Maybe if she studies a bit of formal magic she'll calm down. Why the interest?"
"These wild talents of hers, this innate ability to gather and-however ineptly-manipulate raw dweomer…" Nyadnar picked up the sapphire sphere and held it forth. "Our world is a system in dynamic equilibrium, in which opposing forces strive against each other without one or another gaining the upper hand. Someone with such attributes as you describe might have the potential to throw the system badly out of balance, to destroy, perhaps, that equilibrium. Should that occur, the results would be-"
She let the globe fall. Zaranda gasped and took a step forward. Just before it hit the floor, the great gem seemed to dissolve into a cloud of dark mist.
"— unimaginable." The mist swirled briefly around the sorceress's feet, hidden by the hem of her gown, and then began to twine upward about the glowing quartz pedestal to the top, where it coalesced slowly back into a flawless sapphire sphere.
"You have any advice you'd like to share with me about how to deal with her?" Zaranda asked, a little unsteadily. "I mean, so I don't inadvertently help her blow up the universe or anything?"
"You must find your own way," Nyadnar said serenely, stroking the now-intact gem like a favored pet.
"I appreciate the implicit vote of confidence," Zaranda said. "But there's something you should know."
"Which is?"
"Before all this is over I may do a little unbalancing of my own. And while I think the universe is pretty safe from my efforts, I may just destroy an equilibrium or two."
"Perhaps," the sorceress said.
"You have been told your case would be handled via the proper procedures, Countess Morninggold," Duke Hembreon, the most powerful member of the city council, told Zaranda as they stood in morning sunlight in his garden. He spoke the title as he might the words spoiled meat or gangrenous limb, as it were describing a state he found distasteful but was powerless to affect. "I hardly see what you expect of me."
In his day the duke had been a puissant warrior. But age had caught him up. His once-powerful frame was shrunken and stooped, his hair and immaculately trimmed beard were white as a gull's wing, and his blue eyes were red-rimmed and prone to prolonged bouts of blinking. Nonetheless, his gaze was clear, and his voice firm. He wore a simple cerulean gown and a soft bladder hat of the same color.
"Perhaps a measure of mercy, Your Grace," Zaranda said. "I stand to lose everything, and have committed no crime."
"Ah, but that remains to be seen, pending the appropriate hearings and investigations." He held up a long, liver-spotted finger. "Mercy is admirable, but must not be allowed to hamper justice."
&
nbsp; The duke's palace was of modest size, showing four blank whitewashed walls to the world, though a pitched roof of gray slates saved it from being as slablike as the much larger Palace of Governance that loomed not far to the west. The garden occupied a courtyard in the very center. It was quite cozy with greenery, the smells of leaves and early spring flowers and the water bubbling from a small fountain in the middle. Such a plan got one looked down upon by the neighbors, regardless of one's rank or pretension, for not sharing one's garden with others, though doubtless it had come in handy during the troubles.
A retainer in the duke's blue-and-white livery approached, discreetly clearing his throat for attention. "If His Grace will pardon the intrusion-"
"Yes? Very well, Strakes, what is it?"
Two more footmen with breeches clasped at the, knees by silver broaches ushered a blonde girl in by the arms. Her face had a sulky snub-nosed beauty, contorted at the moment by angry hauteur. She wore simple white robe. A torque of gold encompassed her slender neck.
"I regret to report that we discovered your daughter rifling Your Grace's purse," Strakes said, holding up a black velvet pouch. He had thinning black hair combed over the dome of his head, long, lugubrious features, a button nose, and a gift of speaking without moving his lips.
"Let me go!" the girl exclaimed, wrenching her el-bows free of the footmen's grasp. She shook back her hair and held her chin high.
"Tatrina, Tatrina," the old duke said in a tone of halfhearted severity, "what am I to do with you?"
"You have more than you need!" she declared. "The poor children of Zazesspur need help. I was merely trying to do the right thing, since you will not!" She had the habit of speaking with almost visible exclamation marks.
"I devote the waking hours of every day to the welfare of the people of Zazesspur," Hembreon said, "especially the children."
"There must be more! Ao must reign triumphant!"
"I will not countenance your stealing from me for whatever purposes, however noble." He held out his hand. Strakes deposited the purse in it. The duke dug inside and produced a gold Zazesspur gulden "Here, my child. Be at peace, and leave me in peace. I am a busy man."
The girl scowled. "This is not-"
"Enough!" the old man snapped. "You've taxed my purse; do not tax my patience. And if I catch you filching from me again, you'll be restricted to your chambers for a month!"
She sniffed, did another hair-flip, pivoted, and stalked from the garden. The servitors followed. Duke Hembreon sighed.
"Or at least a week." He shook his head. "Isn't that ever the way of it? No matter how much power one wields in the world, it's always hardest to rule one's home."
"I wouldn't know, Your Grace," Zaranda said. "I have no children."
"Perhaps you should bear some, Countess Morning-gold. It would greatly enhance your sense of responsibility. Now, if you have no further matters to discuss, I crave your leave. The city's business presses."
There was a blue-and-bronze patrol standing in the street when Zaranda stepped out of the duke's gabled front door. At her appearance the leader swept off a purple velvet bladder hat with a long pheasant tail feather stuck in it and performed a sardonic bow.
"The Countess Morninggold, I presume?" he said with a sneer. He was a man of middle height or a shade beneath, whose expensive doublet-purple velvet slashed to display gold satin lining-and orange pantaloons augmented rather than concealed a bandylegged, ungraceful figure. His face and voice were well suited to sneering, the former being dominated by a large nose with a wart prominent on the side of it, and a ginger-colored goatee surrounding full lips below. An unprepossessing apparition, withal, yet Zaranda marked a lightness on his feet and a fluidity to his bow that belied his unhandy form. His codpiece was wrought in the face of a leering fiend with pointed tongue protruding.
"Indeed you do presume, I think," Zaranda said. "And whom have I the… honor… of addressing?"
The man's head was perfectly bald on top, with tufts of wiry reddish hair jutting to the sides. He made haste to replace his cap. "I am Shaveli, captain of the civic guard, though better known to the admiring multitudes as Shaveli Sword-Master." And he caressed the diamond-inset gold pommel of the swept-hilted rapier hung from a leather baldric.
He was known as a few other things, Zaranda's street contacts had told her over the last few days, including the commander of a well-feared secret detail of the guard known as the Specials. A brutal man, who had been a professional duelist before the reformers had offered him rank in the civic guard, he was rumored to make use of the office to indulge certain dark tastes. Men in such positions, and women also, were always rumored to do so. Looking at the man for the first time, though, Zaranda was minded to give the rumors credence.
"Am I to be arrested, then?" she asked. Behind the Sword-Master, his guardsmen shuffled their feet and shifted grips on their halberds uneasily as they eyed her with a mixture of desire and fear. Zaranda had a reputation of her own.
"The choice is yours, Countess," Shaveli said, saying the title as he might say whore.
"Then I choose not to be arrested. Good day." She started to walk past.
Two guards sprang forward to cross their halberds before her. "Ah, but there's the rub, Countess," Shaveli said. "If you choose not to be arrested, you must choose to come with us."
"Ah," she said with an acid-dipped smile. "I see. Our noble city council has seen fit to reform the language as well as the laws, so that choice means doing what the government compels one to do."
"You have said it," the Sword-Master said with a flourish and a bow. "And now, if you will follow me-"
15
"I have heard much about you, Countess Morning-gold," the tall man said. He placed the dome back on the rotunda of a miniature building in his model city. He turned from the table to face Zaranda. His face was long and heavily handsome, shaven clean and just beginning to show the marks of weathering, age, and care, particularly in the lines around the mouth and the intense brown eyes. His square-cut hair was dark brown, heavily salted with gray. The simple severity of a gold-trimmed green tabard of rich fabric worn over brown blouse and golden hose minimized the visible effects of prolonged inactivity on a once-athletic frame. "I am honored to make your acquaintance."
He took Zaranda's hand, bowed over it, and pressed it to his lips. From below and around them in the vast half-completed Palace of Governance came the woodpecker and cicada sounds of artisans at work. The air in the chamber was still, warm, and charged.
"Your lordship's gallantry is impeccable, but I fear it outstrips your memory," Zaranda said. "We've met before."
He straightened and showed her a grin that stripped years from his countenance. "Ah, but that was Zaranda Star, the dashing war captain, not Countess Morning-gold."
"And I have long been denied the pleasure of meeting either one," a voice said. From an archway a white-robed man emerged into the octagonal hall on the Palace of Governance's uppermost story. Civic guards lurked in the shadows without. Zaranda had not been disarmed before Shaveli bowed her mockingly into the baron's chamber, but Hardisty took few chances. The newcomer was a spry elderly man with marmoset tufts of white hair surrounding a gleaming dome of head, a beak of a nose, bright blue eyes nestled among laughter lines above apple cheeks. A plain white robe hung on a spare frame. Sandals gently slapped the green marble floor as he strode toward Zaranda with hand extended.
"Countess, my chief advisor and friend, Armenides the Compassionate," Baron Hardisty said.
Zaranda presented her hand and was relieved when the cleric settled for shaking it rather than emulating Hardisty. She noted that his neck was bare.
"The honor's mine," she said, "especially considering high priests of Ao are far rarer in this world than captains or countesses. And please, my name is Zaranda Star."
Armenides beamed and nodded. "Just so, just so, good Mistress Star. And, the All-Father willing, his high priests shall not long remain a rarity in Faerun."
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br /> "My lifetime has seen the flight of dragons and the death of gods," Zaranda said. "Perhaps it shall be as you say, Excellency."
"If you can forgo titles, so can I. Armenides will suffice, or simply Father."
"As you wish."
"For my part please call me Faneuil, as once you did," Hardisty said. He gestured at the model city. "Do you like it?"
Zaranda walked round the model, leaning and stooping to study it with genuine interest. Elaborate and clever constructs had always appealed to her. The buildings were carved of wood to exquisite detail, and so placed that the noonday sun shone down through the octagonal skylight overhead and made them seem a real city somehow reduced and captured on a magician's table.
"It's wonderfully wrought, Faneuil. Did you build it yourself?"
He laughed. "Ah, but that I had the hand skill-or the time. I should more readily win the trust I need from our good people; you know how Tethyrians admire craftsmanship. No, only the vision's mine, guided by the clear eyes of Father Armenides." He held forth a hand. "Behold the Zazesspur of the future!"
Zaranda looked up in amazement. "Zazesspur?"
Hardisty smiled fit to split his head in half. "Indeed."
"You'd raze the city and rebuild it from earth upward?" she asked, straightening.
"An audacious plan, but one I hope to see completed before I pass on."
"But where are the houses and shops? All I see are blockish things like, ahh-"
"Like the palace itself, though smaller. Except for the Temple of Ao and All Faiths there across from it."
Armenides spread hands above the miniature city as if bestowing a benediction. "All parts of daily life shall be drawn together, even as over time the worship of the sundry gods, which is none other than worship of Ao in his myriad aspects, shall be reabsorbed into the body of the All-Faith. In these times of uncertainty and peril, compassion demands that we draw our flock close together where we can most efficiently watch over it."
"I'm uncomfortable thinking of people as sheep," Zaranda said. "But surely you didn't bring me here to discuss rebuilding Zazesspur, Faneuil."