Windwalker

by Elaine Cunningham

  Liriel looked expectantly at Fyodor. After a moment, he sighed and shook his head. “It pains me to admit this, but I could not mark our location on a map if you held a knife to my throat. Where are we now?” he asked Thorn. “How many days’ travel to Rashemen?”

  “On foot, you could not arrive before hard winter. Follow me, and you’ll see your homeland tomorrow by day’s end.”

  He considered this. “I know but little of magical travel, but are not gates like doorways? One passes the threshold and stands at once in some distant place. Yet you speak of a day’s journey.”

  “Distant places,” Thorn repeated. “It is said that Rashemi on darjemma are fearless travelers. This is so?”

  Liriel, who had been listening in uncharacteristic silence, let out a short laugh. “He’s traveling with me,” she pointed out.

  “Well said,” Thorn told her coolly. She turned her attention back to the human. “We walk,” she told him, “through the lands of my people.”

  Fyodor jolted with surprise. Thorn noted the sudden flare of understanding, the way his eyes widened with wonder. Apparently this one had paid close attention to the old Rashemaar tales. More important, he believed them.

  “Exile or silence,” she reminded him.

  “Your secret and my honor,” he vowed, holding up two entwined fingers.

  Liriel propped her fists on her hips and wheeled toward her friend. “What in the nine bloody hells just happened here?”

  Thorn swung a sudden, roundhouse punch toward Liriel’s face. Startled, the drow nonetheless managed to throw up both arms, wrists crossed, to block the attack. The elf’s blow drove right into the parry and slammed Liriel’s joined hands into her face with stunning force. The girl’s amber eyes rolled up, and she slumped to the ground.

  In a single fluid movement Fyodor drew his sword and stepped between the elf and his fallen friend. “No one harms Liriel while I live,” he said quietly.

  The elf lifted one ebony brow. “If I wanted her dead, I would have permitted Dolor to finish the task.”

  “Then why?” he demanded, nodding toward the unconscious girl.

  “You know what I am,” Thorn said, “and therefore you should not need to ask. You are not like this drow with her talk of ‘fairies’ or ‘gray elves.’ You are Rashemi, and you have heard tales of the lands through which we must walk. My people’s lands are in this world and yet not. I do not know for certain whether the eyes of a drow goddess can follow us there. I have seen Lolth gazing through Liriel’s eyes. I will not take that risk.”

  The Rashemi accepted this development with a wince and a sigh. “Liriel will not sleep long. Even now she stirs,” he pointed out.

  The elf took a spring of dried herb from a bag at her belt. “This is from my homeland. The scent of it is very powerful and will hold her deep in slumber.”

  “You couldn’t have mentioned this before?” Fyodor demanded.

  “It will hold someone in slumber,” she said pointedly. “The amount needed to place someone in a deep sleep is much greater and can be dangerous. Knowing this, would you have chosen the herb?”

  A soft groan came from the wakening drow. Fyodor put away his sword. He stooped and gathered Liriel into his arms. He rose and met Thorn’s gaze.

  “It was not my choice to make,” he said softly, “nor was it yours. You do not wish to invite the Goddess of Spiders into your people’s lands. I understand what you did, but I do not like it. Next time we come to a crossroads, speak of the paths we might walk, and let Liriel chose the way she will go.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The elf twined the stem of the herb through the weave of Liriel’s cloak, so that the dried herb rested against her cheek. Instantly she went limp in Fyodor’s arms.

  “It will not harm her,” Thorn said testily, noting the flash of alarm in the Rashemi’s eyes. “Nor will it cause you to be drowsy or forgetful. Keep your wits about you, and come.”

  She turned and strode into the forest. Fyodor followed with the drow girl in his arms and his blue eyes alight with excitement and anticipation. He would have to reckon with Liriel come tomorrow, but in his heart burned the Rashemi’s restless eagerness to see and know.

  All young people in his homeland, male and female, devoted a year or more to the wandering they called darjemma. None of them had been permitted to see the place to which Thorn promised to take them—or more accurately, of those few who had stumbled into Thorn’s homeland, none had returned. Or perhaps some did return, without memory of the places they had been or the wonders they had witnessed. The herbs of the Moon Hunters were powerful indeed.

  A sudden doubt assailed him. Despite Thorn’s measures, what if Lolth’s power extended into this distant place? He doubted that it could, but then, Qilué and her priestesses had been surprised by the Spider Queen’s invasion. Was it true that where Liriel went, conscious or not, Lolth would follow?

  If so, he was not likely to see Rashemen again. Thorn and her kind were fierce people. They would not forgive any who endangered their homeland.

  For that matter, what of Fyodor’s people? What was he bringing their way, and how would they respond?

  Find the Windwalker, Zofia Othlor had told him. Bring her back. She will bind and break, heal and destroy.

  Fyodor gazed down at the drow in his arms. For the first time he fully understood why the witch had spoken of the amulet as “she.” Somewhere along the way, his quest had changed. He would bring the ancient artifact back to Rashemen, but in some mysterious but important way it was no longer the Windwalker of legend. Liriel was.

  Zofia’s grandson knew this to be true through the Sight that was his heritage and his curse.

  A sad smile touched his face. It was a blessing that Liriel, for all her power, could not know the destiny ahead.

  A day passed, and twilight was drawing near as Sharlarra pulled up to a small cluster of stone-walled travel huts located a hard day’s ride from Waterdeep. She swung down from her horse and grimaced in distaste at the latest collection of skulls displayed on the stone plinth outside the caretaker’s hut, an expression she quickly replaced with a smile when a bandy-legged old man hurried out to greet her.

  A few dull strands of once-red hair clung to caretaker’s pate, and his teetering gait was reminiscent of a sailor pacing the deck of a storm-tossed ship. The sword resting on one still-powerful shoulder gleamed in the fading light, and the carefully displayed remains of would-be bandits and horse thieves gave grim testament to the old man’s ability to hold this outpost.

  The elf’s host squinted at her for a moment. His rheumy blue eyes lit with pleasure.

  “Well, if it isn’t Lady Judith, come to call on her old swordmaster! Come in, girl, and it’s heartily welcome you are.”

  It took Sharlarra a moment to tune her ears to the thick North Moonshae burr. Shaymius Sky had been swordmaster to the Thann family. He remembered Judith’s red-gold hair, all his eyes could pick out from the blur that people had apparently become. As far as Shaymius was concerned, Lady Judith remembered her old tutor. The aging warrior took so much pleasure from these visits that Sharlarra hadn’t the heart to rob him of his fond notion.

  She remembered something Danilo had told her at Galinda Raventree’s last soiree and said, “The Westgate caravan was to pass through this way. I trust all went well and that you received the box of new wines and harvest cakes?”

  Shaymius patted his belly contentedly. “That I did. The mead was as smooth as an elfmaid’s arse. Already there’s a nip in the air come nightfall, and nothing’s better to push back winter aches than a flagon of mead heated with spice bark. The horses come first, o’ course, but you’ll have a mug?”

  “If the horses leave any for us, certainly.”

  “Don’t be daft, Judy girl. Horses don’t—” The old man broke off, caught the jest, and cast his eyes skyward. He unhooked a hoof pick from his belt and flipped to it the elf. “For that, you’ll help putting these three fine stallions to be
d. Concerning that, what are you needing with three horses? By the looks of them, you haven’t been riding hard enough to require a change of mount.”

  Sharlarra lifted a front hoof and began to scrape away the bits of crushed acorn clinging to the shoe. “The mares out at Ethering Farms are in season.” That was true, as far as it went, and Shaymius would draw his own conclusions.

  The old man grunted in agreement and patted the glossy black flank of the horse Liriel had ridden from Waterdeep. “Aye, these are well-chosen sires. The Lady Cassandra still keeps the stud books, then?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.” The Thann matriarch controlled every other aspect of the family businesses, and from what Sharlarra had observed she attempted to do the same with each member of the family. Such was the force of Lady Cassandra’s will that Sharlarra suspected every stallion on the outlying Thann farms would instinctively await her advice on this matter, stud book or not.

  “Great lady, your mum,” Shaymius said, eyeing Sharlarra as if daring her to contradict him. “Good eye for business.”

  “Posting you here was certainly a good day’s work,” the elf said, getting straight to the heart of the matter. “The horses left with you couldn’t want better care, and not a single merchant who’s slept under these roofs has offered a word of complaint.”

  The caretaker nodded, satisfied. Old though he was, his employers were content, and his post was secure. He set to work brushing down the black stallion, happily unaware of the real circumstances of his current position.

  Sharlarra had heard the gossip, of course. That was one of the benefits of an apprenticeship in Blackstaff Tower. Ballads had been written about the exploits of young Shaymius Sky, and Lady Cassandra had gladly paid a high price to have the sheen of his ancient glories bestowed upon her firstborn son. For a time, she even overlooked her steward’s regular morning-after trips to the Brawlers’ Den, a chamber in the prisons of Waterdeep Palace devoted to those who grew bellicose in their cups. But the price of Shaymius’s freedom, meted out after every tenday, soon came to overmatch his wages. That, and the crescendo of whispered rumor, ended the matter. No sordid little scandal dared touch the heir to the Thann title and estates.

  It had been Danilo who’d persuaded the steward to buy Shaymius free one last time and to offer him this new employment. The old warrior, increasingly restless with city life and longing for adventures that would never come again, regarded this post not as banishment for brawling but as a reward for the skills he so routinely displayed. As far as Dan was concerned, Shaymius Sky deserved to believe this pleasant lie until the day he died.

  Sharlarra couldn’t have agreed more.

  Once the horses had been tended and fed, the old man and the elf settled down by the caretaker’s hearthside to chase tales and songs of faded glory with mugs of well-spiced mead. As much as Sharlarra enjoyed her occasional stolen moments with the old warrior, she was relieved when at last Shaymius’s stories faded into silence. She sang one more ballad just to make sure and kept singing until the music was lost in the old man’s grating snores.

  She eased away from the hearth and crept out of the hut, making her way into the clearing behind the stables. She took from her bag a large, unset sapphire and the small vial of the Blackstaff’s powdered magic she’d stolen from Danilo. She had one more task to complete before she slept, on behalf of one more misfit in search of a place in an oft-confusing world.

  Back in Waterdeep was a sea elf awaiting help in his quest to become a mage. Though Sharlarra had not yet found a suitable teacher, she wanted to assure the elf that he was not forgotten—and while she was at it, reclaim the bag of gems she’d left with Xzorsh as surety. Since leaving Liriel and Fyodor, it had occurred to Sharlarra that if she and Khelben could trace the drow girl through possessions she had once held, it was likely that others could do the same. Xzorsh held a fortune in his webbed hands, but a dangerous one.

  The young wizard’s fingers sped through the arcane gestures, a difficult spell but nearly identical to one the Blackstaff had recently taught her. Sharlarra finished the spell and braced herself for the result. An invisible hand seized her and pulled her along a magical trail. For a moment, all the colors she had ever seen or imagined careened past like a rainbow gone mad.

  She came to rest suddenly. Momentarily blinded by the brightness of the magical transport, she drew in a deep breath, fully expecting the tang of salt water and the complex stench of the Dock Ward. Instead, her senses filled with the coppery scent of fresh blood and the dank, dusty smell unique to places that had never known the sun. The sort of place that she knew far too well.

  “T’larra kilaj”, she murmured, speaking a simple elven cantrip Khelben had taught her, one from archmage’s long-ago childhood. Her vision cleared at once.

  She stood in a rock-strewn cavern, a rugged place dimly lit by the glowing lichen that clung to the stone walls, and she stared with dawning horror into the equally startled face of a drow warrior.

  The drow, a male with close-clipped white hair and a dragon tattoo across one cheek, was crouched over the body of a large lizard, his knife poising in the act of cutting off strips of flesh. The creature was not yet dead. It did not move its stick-straight tail or rigid limbs, but its eyes rolled wildly.

  A stray bit of information rose to the surface of Sharlarra’s shock-becalmed mind. The Harple treatise claimed that drow preferred to devour living animals, believing that the mixture of pain and terror lent a certain piquancy to the meat.

  The dark elf spat out a half-chewed morsel of raw meat and rose to his feet. A sword appeared in his hand so swiftly and smoothly that Sharlarra’s eyes didn’t perceive the act of drawing it.

  The thief shook off the moment of shock and drew her own sword. She did so recognizing the futility of defense, even before she saw the shadows stir and shift. A circle of dark warriors broke free of the endless, underground night and began to tighten around her.

  “Zapitta doart!” snapped the drow hunter. Instantly his cohorts’ advance stopped. His red-eyed glare flicked to the sapphire still clutched in Sharlarra’s hand.

  “Are there more?” he demanded, lending the Common speech an accent that was at once harsh and musical.

  The elf swiftly followed his line of reasoning. He wanted to know whether someone else might follow.

  “More of these gems?” she said, and shrugged. “Three or four, I suppose. This is the only one in my possession, but there were several other uncut stones at the auction and a number of other wizards bidding.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Sharlarra’s first instinct was to toss the gem to the drow, but she realized that such action could be perceived as an attack. It galled her that it would not be an attack and that she had no other spell prepared. She had stepped into a magical gate, one with a variable destination, without any defensive spell at the ready. It was a mistake no sensible first-year apprentice would make.

  One of these days, she really had to start paying closer attention to detail. Demons hid in them, that she knew. Apparently drow did as well.

  She stooped slowly, lowering the gem to the stone floor, holding her sword in guard position.

  The drow closed the distance between them in a few swift, fluid steps. Before Sharlarra could respond, the dark elf dealt a brutal kick to the ribs that stole her breath and sent her sprawling.

  “Lies,” sneered the warrior as he stalked a circular path around his victim, “and clumsy lies, at that. Only one gem was missing. Do I think I would fail to learn exactly what price was paid to free the pirate’s ship?”

  It occurred to Sharlarra that the drow leader was speaking not to her so much as to the other elves. His words were a boast and perhaps also a defense. If there was discord in these ranks, perhaps stoking it might offer her a chance for escape.

  She managed to suck in enough air to fuel speech. “Useful knowledge, provided you also know enough about gems to realize when a bit of colored glass had been
substituted for a sapphire.”

  The expression of fury and hatred that crossed the drow’s face chilled Sharlarra to the bone. She felt the effort it took the warrior to refrain from glancing at the other dark elves. If he had, he would have seen flashes of malicious pleasure in their crimson eyes and smirks on their dark faces. Even so, Sharlarra knew with cold certainly that she would pay dearly for the leader’s embarrassment.

  “Stand,” the drow commanded.

  She did so, ignoring the pain of bruised ribs as best she could. The drow came on, delivering a barrage of jabs and slashes that came faster than Sharlarra could block. When the drow stepped back, the elven thief was quite frankly stunned to realize that she was still on her feet.

  “Your sword,” the drow said, his eyes moving pointedly to the jeweled hilt.

  Sharlarra glanced down. The gems had been pried from the hilt and pommel, leaving empty sockets. Her opponent opened one palm to show the small, glittering hoard—including the sapphire she had placed on the ground.

  “Impressive,” she said and meant it.

  “To you, perhaps. I could remove your lungs and liver without leaving a scar.”

  The gleam in the drow’s eyes revealed how eager he was to begin this new project, but as he spoke, he shifted his forearm slightly, a subtle movement that nonetheless drew the eye. Sharlarra noted the faint raised line that traced a path from elbow to wrist—a mark that the drow was obviously eager to keep from view.

  “No scar?” she said, gazing pointedly at his arm. “Too bad your former opponent didn’t have your skill.”

  Fury twisted the dark face, and Sharlarra knew she had struck the right chord. She would die—there was no help for that—but a least her fate would be swifter and kinder than that suffered by the half-slaughtered lizard.

  The drow lunged and caught Sharlarra’s now-unbalanced sword with his weapon’s cross guard. A deft twist disarmed the elf, and another quick stroke slapped aside her attempt to pull a dagger. The drow leaped and spun, lashing out high and hard with his elbow, slamming into Sharlarra’s face and following with a smash from his pommel.