Swords of Eveningstar

by Greenwood, Ed

  “Ah, I fear not, Lady Highness,” the royal magician said gravely, pacing away from her with his hands clasped behind his back, “for there’s a law—another law, relatively recent but just as strong as any law in our code—forbidding that. Laws, I fear, inevitably pile up like a beaver’s dam, a great untidy intertwined heap one must traverse with care.”

  Tanalasta frowned. “But my royal father is the king! Surely he can ignore a law that stands in the way of his will? His justice? Do his decrees not make law?”

  Vangerdahast whirled around to face her, robe swirling, and leveled a finger at her—and despite all her training, despite all she’d schooled herself to do and not do ere entering this chamber, Tanalasta flinched back from a spell that never came.

  She’d have fled in tears if the royal magician had sneered then, or even crooked his mouth in amusement.

  But instead he stood looking sternly at her, as if she’d been very bad.

  “Laws and rules,” he said firmly, “must be observed at all times. Even by kings. For if a realm is a bright-armored knight, every rule broken is a piece torn away from his armor that a traitor’s blade can thrust through later, with its wielder crying, ‘But in days gone by, so-and-so set aside this rule; why then cannot I?’ ”

  Tanalasta trembled for a long, pale-faced moment, then blurted, “But you break rules. All the time. I’ve heard Father say so, and nobles and Alaph—” She fell abruptly silent, afraid to say more, trembling in shoulder-shaking earnest.

  The royal magician took a slow stride forward.

  “So I do,” he replied, his voice calm. “For the good of the realm. That is my duty—and my doom. For the great engine that is the court to work at all, someone must kick and tug and heave at it nigh daily, breaking the rules when need be—the rules that all others must follow. I am that rulebreaker.”

  Tanalasta’s tremblings were almost shiverings, now, but she lifted her chin almost defiantly to meet his eyes. “And if you are ever wrong in your breakings? What then makes you not a traitor? Nor someone who should be hounded as an outlaw?”

  Vangerdahast was smiling, now, and it was a thin, mirthless, unwelcoming smile. “I have been wrong in my breakings, as you put it. Many times. Yet kings have forgiven me.”

  “Why?” Tanalasta whispered. “Have you … enspelled them?”

  “Their wits, to compel them? No. Though most of the realm believes otherwise. Nor do kings leave me unchained out of fear, or hatred. Can you see your father fearing me?”

  “Yes.” The crown princess was as white as her favorite snow-fur robe, her lips bloodless, but her whisper was firm.

  The royal magician regarded her, smile gone again to leave his face old and expressionless, for long enough to make her quail, and said casually, “Well, perhaps he has grown wise enough to do so by now, at that. We’ll leave such considerations for another time, Princess, and return to the matters you must know and understand before another night comes. It is needful for you to know these things, that you be fit to serve the realm properly, when the day comes that you’re called upon to do so.”

  Uncertainly, one of Tanalasta’s hands rose to her mouth. “When—when Father dies, and I … become queen?”

  Vangerdahast’s face became severe again. “It is sincerely to be hoped that any princess of Cormyr will serve the realm fittingly, in many, many ways large and small, before she’s called upon to actually rule. There are other ways to serve than giving commands.”

  “As you would know well,” Tanalasta murmured, the graceful verbal slash so like her mother that Vangerdahast, far from being angered, had to quell a grin. Ah, but the lass was an Obarskyr true, under that stonefaced mask and haughty starch! Best to ignore her comment and simply—

  “Mage, why are you telling me this now?” Tanalasta was frowning at him in real concern. “What are you really trying to tell me, with Father off hunting more than a tenday, now; he’s all right, isn’t he?”

  Chapter 6

  DECEPTIONS WITHIN DECEPTIONS

  Most of us fall afoul of the tangles our tongues make for us when we trade in falsehoods too seldom and too clumsily. Yet there are courtiers, peddlers, seers, and moneylenders who lie adroitly, and can spin deceptions within deceptions deftly, rather than desperately or unintentionally. They court discovery as do clumsier liars, but flirt also with another danger: weaving deceptions so well that they lose sight of who they are, and without perceiving it are themselves transformed by their own falsity.

  Tarth Ammarander, Sage of Athkatla

  World of Coins: Musings On Merchantry

  published in the Year of the Saddle

  We halt here,” Florin murmured, going to his knees in another place of rocks. Narantha had been clutching her arms and shivering for some time, and her face showed him how heartily sick she was of trees, trees, and more trees. She sank down beside him without a word.

  “See, here?” Florin asked, reaching out a finger to trace a roughly scratched symbol of two ovals joined by an arc on a head-sized stone in front of him. Narantha nodded wearily.

  “Remember it: this is a foresters’ cache. There are hundreds of them in the King’s Forest.” He rolled the stone aside to reveal a stone coffer set into the ground, a mossgirt cluster of other stones heaped around it. Florin had the coffer lid off in a trice, plunged a hand into the dank interior, and drew forth a leathery bundle that stank of mildew.

  Inside, when he shook it out, was another pair of boots, a belt, a tunic, breeches, some rope, and a weathercloak. There was also a sack of something right at the bottom of the coffer, beside a scabbarded knife that was dark and sticky with something oily, and some arrows.

  Florin drew out the sack, poured a handful of nuts onto a stone, and handed a smaller stone to the noblewoman. “Crush some of these and eat them.”

  She gave him a glare then nodded and set to work. Nuts bounced and flew under her clumsy attack, but Florin paid no heed. As a breeze rose and rustled through the trees around them, he shook and laid out the clothing.

  Narantha had just managed to crack her first nut without reducing it to powder, and was chewing and finding it pleasant enough—her mouth flooding with a sudden rush of hunger—when the forester said, “Stand up, and face yon tree.”

  Wearily she rose, still chewing, and he drew her boots off. When she looked down at what he was bringing to her ankles, she started to protest—then threw her hands wide in exasperation, choked off whatever she’d been going to say, and cooperated as he drew the breeches up her legs. They were of stiff, stout hide, smelled a little of mildew, and gaped at the waist, twice the size of her own.

  “Hold them up,” Florin murmured, sliding rope through belt-loops. Plucking her nightrobe up out of the way, he ran the hemp rope up and around her neck.

  “What’re you—”

  “Patience. Take off your robe.”

  “Sirrah, if you think I’m—”

  “That’s why you’re facing that way, and I’m around here behind you. Take it off.”

  With a weary sigh, her shiverings nigh-constant now, the Lady Crownsilver obeyed. Florin swiftly drew the rope tight into a suspender harness, plucking the robe from her hands and winding it around the rough-haired hempen to pad it and keep it from sawing at her skin. Cutting off the excess rope, he put the tunic over her head and the weathercloak over her shoulders—more mildew—and gathered the cloak at her waist with the belt. Getting her to sit down, he put her boots back on and carefully repacked them, massaging her feet where they’d rubbed raw. Narantha was mortified to discover that they’d acquired a faint but lingering smell.

  “There,” Florin said, drawing her upright again. “That ought to—”

  Narantha snatched her hand away. “Ought to, nothing. I look like a vagabond who’s stolen a floursack and tied it around herself. I’m not wearing this!”

  Florin shrugged and stripped weathercloak and tunic away with a flourish. Untying the rope, he tugged twice—and the breeches fell in a tangl
e around shapely Crownsilver calves.

  Shivering in her cloak of goosebumps, Narantha shrieked and sank down hastily, more out of discomfort than out of modesty.

  “Gods naeth, the cold!” she spat, her lips blue and trembling. The breeze quickened around her, almost mockingly.

  Florin’s firm hand took hold of her neck and raised her upright again—for all the world as if he were a farmer, and she his chicken, Narantha thought savagely—to swiftly reclothe her. Mutely furious, she didn’t try to resist.

  Smelling of mildew, hide hissing against hide with every step, the reclad fair flower of the Crownsilvers took a few tentative strides, a trifle warmer but no less miserable, sighed, and went looking for the nuts.

  Florin was munching a handful of them, and holding a handful more—already shelled—out to her.

  As she took them, the forester commanded, “On. Now. Eat as we walk. I don’t want to be anywhere near here when the light begins to fail.” He pointed at some fur caught in the bark of a nearby tree. “Bear,” he said darkly.

  Narantha shook her head and looked down at herself. “I look like—like—” Words failed her, and she bit her lip and turned her head away, shaking it.

  “A beautiful woman,” Florin replied, “whose beauty shines forth no matter what she’s wearing.”

  When she looked at him disbelievingly, he winked.

  “Oh, I hate you!” she snarled feelingly, giving him a glare.

  Florin shrugged. “ ’Tis one way to get through life. Though too much hating eats away a person, inside. You’d do better to turn all that … verve … to loving, aiding, and helping. Young bride-hunting lordlings’ll be swarming all over you, swift enough, if you do.”

  Narantha snorted. “Those fops! Swaggering emptyheads, the lot of them! I doubt any of them can light a fire, or catch food, or—”

  She stopped abruptly and looked away again, her face flaming.

  Florin carefully said not a word.

  The spell flickered, fading noticeably—but not enough to obscure the scene its caster was intent upon.

  A lone lady in a dark gown smilingly traded jests one last time with a overloud and rather tipsy Derovan Skatterhawk, then gracefully descended the wide flight of steps toward the long line of coaches gathered under the mansion lamps.

  “Another highly successful feast, I see,” the watcher murmured, toying with a favorite—and loose—unicorn-head ring.

  The scrying-spell was wavering on the verge of collapse; only by the bright favor of the gods had it lasted this long, through all the wards and watchspells laid on Skatterhawk House by Laspeera and her enthusiastic underlings: the young, avid dregs of the Wizards of War.

  The watching wizard hissed in anger, thinking of them—then shrugged, smiled, and waved the unicorn ring-adorned hand dismissively. “Ah, but set aside such harshness. I must never forget I was one myself, once.”

  The lady was handed into a coach. She waved airily to Derovan—who almost fell on his face on the steps, waving back as he leered through mustache and monacle—as her conveyance rumbled away.

  “So Horaundoon of the Zhentarim is taking she-shape and courting randy elder nobles of Cormyr now, is he? Why, I wonder?”

  ’Twould be an elaborate scheme, unless Horaundoon had changed greatly in two summers …

  “More importantly,” the watching wizard mused aloud, as the spell collapsed into a cascade of winking sparks, “can he be convincingly blamed for what I’ll do, when I strike at last?”

  “Jhess? You’re sure you want to try this?”

  Jhessail gave Doust a withering look. “I didn’t drag you all the way out here at this time of night to dare nothing. Douse the lantern.”

  Her friend frowned. “Why? ’Tis hooded well enough—”

  “I don’t want it interfering with my spell,” she hissed, holding her cloak wide to form a shield over him.

  Doust blew the lamp out quickly, without leaking overmuch light into the darkness around them. Backing carefully away from it on his knees to avoid toppling it, he turned, patted Jhessail’s arm, and whispered, “Do it.”

  She nodded, handed him her cloak, and on hands and knees crept to the edge of the dell.

  As she’d expected, it was flooded with moonlight—and, sure enough, two nightbeaks were down there, tugging and tearing at the huddled bony heap that had been one of Hlorn Estle’s fattest sheep before it had stupidly strayed over the cliff.

  Her lip curled back in disgust; the vultures of the Stonelands were cruel, rapacious things that hunted day and night. Doust had brought a cudgel, but she hoped it would not be needed. A nightbeak could easily kill a person, and they shed maggots and lice even more copiously than they voided.

  Shuddering at the thought of fighting one fists to talons, Jhessail backed carefully away from the cliff edge—’twas a killing fall for her as surely as for a sheep—and found her feet again. Drawing a deep breath, she started to pick her way along the lip of the dell, Doust trailing her. She had to get to where she could see the nightbeaks, for the spell to work.

  If she could make it work.

  Here. This spot would do.

  She could see them picking at the carcass. Big and dusty black, their heads like fire-scorched helms, their beaks like … like …

  She shuddered again, and shut her eyes to banish such thoughts. Breathing deeply, she tried to settle her mind on the image of blue fire roiling vigorously in darkness.

  My first big spell. My first battle spell, that deals harm to others.

  Blue fire, seething and leaping …

  If I can’t cast this, I am no spell-worker.

  By Lady Mystra and Lord Azuth, the working was simple enough. So if this Art was beyond her, then all Art was.

  She swept that thought away, seeing blue fire in her mind and plunging into it.

  When she had its image bright and strong in her mind, she opened her eyes again to give Doust a quick smile and nod. He stepped carefully back, getting well away from her.

  Jhessail looked up at the stars, brought the blue fire foremost in her mind, and when she was gazing at it and feeling a part of it, she looked quickly down into the dell, glared at a nightbeak, flicked her fingers in a swift circle, and with that hand pointed at the vulture.

  Blue fire trembling inside her, she snapped, “Alavaer!”

  Unleashed, something wonderful raced along her arm, coiling and surging arrow-swift, thrilling her though it left emptiness behind. It burst forth from her pointing finger as a deep blue bolt that streaked down into the darkness with the faintest of whispers.

  One nightbeak looked up at the sudden flare of light. Approaching light, streaking—

  Alarmed, it tried to flap its wings to leap into the air—

  And died before it could even unfurl them, snatched off its talons and blasted, fire that wasn’t fire scorching through it, to bounce and flop among the cliff-bottom weeds and stones in loose-necked silence. Dead silence.

  The other nightbeak looked up and squawked questioningly, expecting an answer that would never come.

  “Yes!” Jhessail cried exultantly, shaking her fists in the air. “I did it!”

  The sound of her cry sent the surviving nightbeak into the air, flapping heavily out of the dell in search of quieter meals.

  Laughing, the delighted Silvertree lass raced to Doust and embraced him, whirling him around and around in the night shadows.

  “I believe,” he observed with a grin, “it’s considered bad form to sound surprised that your spell worked. Wherefore: of course you did it. Well done!”

  Ecstatic and drenched with sweat, Jhessail hugged him, relieved and delighted laughter bubbling over him in a flood. Nose buried in her bosom, Doust managed to say gruffly, “Careful, now. You’ll start giving me unholy ideas.”

  “Hah,” she laughed, clutching him even tighter, “and you’d dare to do something about them, when I can blast you with magic? Hey?”

  “A compelling point,” he said to her
stomach, as her wild mirth made him slide downward, his voice muffled by warm and smooth Jhessail.

  An instant later, his chin struck her knee, which was very hard, bouncing him back up to behold the stars for a crazed and whirling moment—before his chin met the stony ground, which proved even harder.

  “Oww,” he said. “Aye, most compelling.”

  “What was that?” Narantha hissed, as the strange hooting call came again.

  “Owl,” Florin said, his voice just a murmur above a whisper. “Successful in its hunting.”

  The noblewoman rolled onto her side to look up from the rough pillow of his pack. The forester—her forester—was sitting just as before, back to a tree and drawn sword across knees, staring into the night. Stars glimmered over his shoulder.

  “Are you going to sit there all night?”

  “Yes.”

  She waited for him to say more. Waited for breath after breath, until the chirping night insects started up again. Then she sighed in exasperation. “But when will you sleep?”

  “On the morrow.”

  “But you said we’re going to walk through the forest all day. So when?”

  “I’ll find plenty of time to slumber,” he replied, “while you’re talking.”

  “What?” she sputtered, nettled.

  “You talked more than half the sunlit day just past,” the forester observed serenely. “Don’t you ever get tired of talking?”

  “You,” she hissed back at him, “are impossible! Such rudeness!”

  “The curse of our generation, I’m told,” Florin told the night. “Wherefore Cormyr sinks sadly from what it was in the golden days of our grandsires.”

  His mimicry of a gruff old whitebeard sounded so like her uncle Lorneth that Narantha found herself giggling. The giggle built inside her, into something that burst out and had to be muffled by biting her knuckles and rolling over to put her face into the ill-smelling pack.

  Above the shaking bundle that was Narantha wrapped in her weathercloak, Florin smiled up at the stars.