Azure Bonds

by Kate Novak

  Alias went up to the bar, smiling at Jhaele. The woman smiled back, but still gave no sign of recognition, so Alias asked her, “Jhaele, do you remember the Company of the Swanmay?”

  “Yes, I do.” The innkeep’s smile spread further across her worn features. “They were hell-raisers, that lot.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Well, let’s see, The two fighters, a pair of thieves, a cleric, and Kith, the would-be mage. Six in all. All women.”

  “You don’t remember me?”

  Jhaele stared at Alias for a long moment. “No, I’m sorry, lady. I can’t say that I do. The Swanmays would sometimes pick up strays, but none of them stayed in my memory, I’m afraid. I won’t forget you now, though. Your song was wonderful. I’m honored you sang it in my taproom.”

  “But, Jhaele, you taught me that song,” Alias insisted.

  Jhaele laughed. “You must have me mistaken for another, lady. I can’t sing a note. Never could.”

  Alias opened her mouth to laugh, thinking Jhaele was teasing her, but the sincerity in the innkeeper’s face unsettled her. She blushed and fled through the door to the kitchen. Jhaele looked after her, but the swordswoman ran out the side door into the night.

  “Something eating at that one,” Jhaele muttered and returned to her chores at the bar.

  The sun had just slipped behind the distant Desertsmouth Mountains, and the sky was a deep, dark blue. The night air was cold, but Alias was too furious to notice as she strode hastily away from The Old Skull eastward down the road toward the common and the river.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” she growled. “I wasn’t some stray the Swanmays picked up! I was a member! For three seasons!”

  It was one thing for this new lord, Mourngrym, to forget the tale of the Swanmays, but Alias had wintered twice in The Old Skull. She and Kith and Belinda had spent at least a hundred evenings in Jhaele Silvermane’s company. The innkeep had mulled wine especially for them and taught them bawdy songs about men in general and certain male adventurers in particular. And Jhaele had taught her the song about the Standing Stone.

  “How could she forget me?” Alias whispered angrily. Her throat constricted as tears welled in her eyes. She gulped uncomfortably for air.

  How can you blame Jhaele, when you don’t even remember Elminster? her conscience said. To hear Mourngrym describe him, you’d think this sage was a town landmark. I could not possibly have missed noticing him in a town as small as Shadowdale. And even if I had, according to Mourngrym I should have heard about him from people in the outside world. He’s supposed to be famous.

  Maybe, she thought, Mourngrym was exaggerating the sage’s renown. Anyway, Mourngrym hadn’t been here seven years ago either, so how could he know for sure if Elminster was around then? Maybe these Elminster’s Tales that Mourngrym mentioned weren’t all that accurate. How could this Elminster mention the Swanmays and not mention me? How dare he forget me?

  Having passed the dozen or so buildings in the heart of town, and exhausted by her tirade, Alias considered going back to the inn to sleep. Secretly, she hoped that when she woke up she would discover the disappointments of the evening had all been part of another bad dream. That’s about as likely as my tattoo disappearing in the morning, she taunted herself. She walked on.

  She passed Tulba the weaver’s house. Next to it was a small, well-beaten path leading up to the side of the grassy rise known as the Old Skull. She could just barely make out a dilapidated sign by the path. It was marked with an upturned crescent with a ball hovering between its horns.

  Alias stepped onto the path to inspect the sign more closely. Below the symbol, in the common tongue, was written, “No Trespassing. Violators should notify next of kin. Have a pleasant day. —Elminster.”

  Alias’s eyes traveled the length of the path up to the hillock, where it ended at a ramshackle building perched awkwardly on the side of the rise. It was a sort of tower, but so many additions were built against it, cluttered with further additions leaning against or built on top of them, that it was hard to pick out the original structure. However, a spire of solid stone reached at least three stories higher than all the more recent constructions. Thick vines of flowering kudzu covered the tower and additions.

  Alias remembered every other building she had passed, from Lulhannon’s pottery to the weaver’s, but the path and the sign and the building were a blank. Alias had never seen them before. Ever. Not once in the thousand times she’d traveled this road. It was possible to miss a sage—he might have stayed inside all winter to protect himself from the cold—but she couldn’t have missed this building.

  The path could have been beaten hard in a year, the sign could have weathered to look that old in seven years, but the building was ancient. Kudzu grew like crazy, but it would have taken centuries for its vines to grow so thick and high.

  Maybe there were more trees here before, blocking the view, Alias mused. But then, wouldn’t I have seen it from the top of Old Skull? I scrambled up there often enough with Kith.

  With a surge of excitement, Alias began to wonder if Cassana and company wanted her to forget Elminster for a good reason. Maybe he could tell her more about her sigils than Dimswart. With a new determination, ignoring the sign, she strode up the path, planning to join Akabar as he waited on Elminster’s arrival.

  Reaching the building, she knocked loudly. She waited several minutes but there was no reply, even though lights could clearly be seen glittering in the upper windows of the tower. Certain that someone was within, Alias called out, “Hello,” and knocked again even louder. A shadow went across one of the windows. Several minutes passed, but still no one answered her or came to let her in.

  With just a trace of embarrassment, Alias tried the doorknob, but it would not turn. She tried other doors, and even a window, but found them all held fast. With a huff she spun about and marched back down the footpath.

  At the road she turned east and walked down the left-hand fork of the road that followed the River Ashaba south. “I’m going to find someone who remembers me,” she declared. “Sylune will remember me. She didn’t know me well, but she never forgets anyone.”

  In her haste she was oblivious to the shouting that came from the tower behind her.

  The Scribe and the Old Man

  “What do you mean, more forms?” Akabar bellowed, finally losing his temper. Secretly he hoped that his shouts would gain the attention of someone besides the bureaucratic fool of a scribe who stood before him—someone with the insight to understand the importance of his problem, someone who would rescue him from this morass of paperwork. Someone like Elminster.

  “Well, ummm, here,” Lhaeo the scribe said and pointed to a place on a form Akabar had completed over an hour ago. He blinked at the southern mage through a strange set of thick lenses wrapped in wire which perched precariously on his nose. “Here, where you mentioned that you have more than one wife, you should have gone to line twenty-three and listed all your wives’ mothers’ names, instead of line twenty-two, where you listed your first wife’s mother’s name. That error is going to require a special schedule HL, in order to keep our files straight.”

  “Files?” shrieked Akabar. “Look around you!” he demanded. “Does it look as if anything has been filed here in the last millennium?”

  The question was purely rhetorical. The scribe’s outer office, which also served as a waiting room for those seeking audience with the great Elminster, was a firetrap waiting for a spark. Parchment scrolls, leatherbound tomes, sheaves of loose leaves of paper, empty folders clearly labeled Important or Confidential, and bark textbooks stained with berry ink, and chalk dust lay on every available horizontal surface or leaned against a vertical surface. Colored streamers, on which were scrawled the most exotic letters, hung from the ceiling.

  Besides the gray slate used to write temporary messages, such as Attend Azoun’s Coronation and Warn Myth Drannor of Attack, there were stone and clay tablets and sheets o
f soft metals to hold more permanent messages, the ones to be handed down through history—Pick Up Laundry and Pay Lhaeo.

  All this, of course, was a tribute to Lhaeo’s ability to intimidate adventurers and keep them from disturbing Elminster. Akabar sensed this to some extent. At least, he could not believe that anyone, including Lhaeo, really gave a bat’s dropping for what he wrote down. His perception was that Lhaeo’s forms were some sort of test of his patience or intelligence or desperation. If he just stuck it out long enough, he was certain, Lhaeo would finally recognize his worthiness as a candidate and remind his master that a southern mage waited in the outer office.

  However, Akabar had been waiting five hours—three at the inn and two in this dismal, cramped room. His patience was spent, his intelligence exhausted on figuring out the ridiculous forms. Desperation was his final strategy. He considered dashing from the room to the tower, but without Lhaeo’s guidance through the maze of halls and doors and rooms, he wasn’t sure he could find it. Even if I did find the stairs, Akabar mused, I have no guarantee that Elminster is in the tower.

  Lheao shrugged. “You must understand, Elminster is a very busy man. This is the only way we have of determining if a problem is truly important enough to warrant interrupting his already overcrowded schedule.”

  “Just what size dragon does it take to land in this room to merit the sage’s attention?”

  “Oh, Elminster doesn’t consult with dragons,” Lhaeo assured the mage. “Consults on dragons, perhaps, but not with them. The sage is very, very busy, and he does not, as a rule, waste his time with dragons. That’s what adventurers are for. And if, um, when you get in to see him, I would advise you to mention dragons as little as possible.”

  “Look,” Akabar said, “I understand that the sage is busy. When I got his message to hurry over, I assumed he would see me on his dinner break or something.”

  “Dinner break?” The scribe used a delicate finger to push the wire rims around the lenses higher up his nose. “I don’t think Elminster has taken a dinner break since, let’s see … umm … this is the Year of the Prince, then that makes it …” Lhaeo consulted a calendar.

  “Does anyone ever make it past this blizzard of parchment?” Akabar growled.

  “Well,” Lhaeo sat and thought for half a moment. “There was a delegation from the Forest of Anauroch.”

  “Anauroch is a desert, not a forest,” Akabar said.

  “Well, now it is, yes.”

  “Was that supposed to be a joke?” Akabar snapped.

  “Am I laughing?” the scribe asked, looking at Akabar over the rim of his glasses.

  “No.”

  “Then it couldn’t be a joke, could it?”

  “Look,” said Akabar, “I realize the sage can’t spare time for everyone. I wouldn’t bother him with a petty problem. I’m a mage of no small water. Another member of the sage community, Master Dimswart of Suzail, was unable to handle all the complexities of my case. He recommended I see Elminster. I traveled all this way to do so.”

  “Oh!” Lhaeo exclaimed, his eyes lighting up behind the thick lenses. “You’re a referral! Well, then we need to start again with a different set of forms. One moment, I’ll get them.” The scribe put his hand in a drawer and drew out a bird’s nest of shredded paper. “No, this can’t be them. They must be in that other cabinet.”

  Akabar counted to ten.

  Far below, someone knocked on a door, but in his search for the referral forms, Lhaeo ignored it.

  “Here we go,” the scribe announced. “Last copy, too, so we need to fill out an acquisition memo to file with the local merchants for the next shipment of parchment.” The referral form passed dangerously close to a candle flame. “Oooch, singed it a little, but, uh, we can just, yes, we can just make out an addendum form to explain that the singed parchment was my fault.”

  From below, someone knocked again, only louder.

  “Isn’t someone going to answer that?” Akabar asked.

  “Well, no.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s way after business hours. We’re closed.”

  “But, I’m here,” Akabar said, then nearly bit off his tongue.

  “So you are. We’ll need another form for that. Nocturnal visitors.”

  The knocking stopped.

  “Now, please, include as much information on the sage Dimswart as you can recall. What you asked him on this line, what he answered on this one, what he didn’t tell you on this one. Any reasons you may have to believe he may have been incorrect on this line.”

  Akabar dipped a quill in the inkpot and began again. He wished he’d brought Alias along. Broadswords had such a nice, satisfying way of cutting through red tape. It wasn’t until a minute later, upon discovering there was a form to fill out because Alias, not he, was the sage’s real client, that Akabar lost his temper again and renewed his loud verbal assault on the sage’s scribe.

  * * * * *

  Sylune’s hut was atop a low rise overlooking the road and the River Ashaba. Alias remembered the dwelling as small but comfortable, covered with vines, with smoke always drifting from a chimney for a cooking fire. She remembered Sylune as a radiantly beautiful woman with shining silver hair. Kith had told her that Sylune was at least a century old but kept young with her magics. Alias had always suspected that Kith planned to use her power toward the same goal, improving and maintaining her looks.

  The thought put a smile on her face that disappeared as Alias topped the rise. Illuminated by moonlight, Sylune’s hut was nothing but rubble, its timbers and stone shattered and scattered along the hilltop. A rocky stump, once the fireplace, was the only indication that a dwelling had once stood there.

  “Bhaal’s breath,” Alias cursed as she walked through the remains of the hut. The damage had occurred years ago. Her boots struck an occasional flagstone, but the majority of the floor had long since disappeared beneath grass and creepers.

  The hairs rose on the back of the swordswoman’s neck, and she realized Shadowdale was no safer a haven for her than Shadow Gap had been. She immediately regretted leaving her sword in her room. Then she thought, what difference does it make? The sword was useful against the assassins, but it could never have cut through the crystal elemental the way Dragonbait’s did, and only the barbarian’s sword could have defeated the kalmari.

  Reason told her to flee back to the inn and the safety of her companions, but feelings of pain and anger overwhelmed her and made her fey. I’m sick of retreating, she thought. I want a fight.

  “This is as good a place as any,” Alias muttered. Her voice rose in volume and pitch. “First, there’s the old ruin—an abandoned or burned-out shell. Darkness all around. The stage is set.” She began shouting. “What are you waiting for, O mighty masters? Here’s where the nasty, creeping horror lurches out at me, isn’t it?”

  She laughed. “What’s the matter? Can’t make up your minds what to send this time? How ’bout a beholder, all round with flashing eyes? Oh, no, wait! I’ve got it! Send a mind flayer or, better yet, an intellect devourer! It’ll starve, you know, because you’re driving me crazy!”

  Her raging bellows carried across the Ashaba.

  “Show yourselves, you cowards!” she shrieked, losing all control of her anger. “I’ll teach you to make a puppet out of me! Come on, attack me! I dare you!”

  “Well, I don’t want to,” a reedy voice answered her from the fireplace. “But if ye don’t stop shouting, I will.”

  Alias whirled around, but all she could see in the dark was a shadow near the ruined stump of the hearth. She instantly came to her senses and reached down to grab the dagger from her boot.

  “I’m … sorry,” she whispered, still crouching, ready to cast the blade if the shadow made any sudden moves. It appeared to be an ordinary man, but then the kalmari had looked like an ordinary merchant in her dream until it was ripped asunder and the deadly cloud rose from its shell. “I thought I was alone up here.”

 
“Talk to thyself often, do ye?”

  “Well, I mean, I thought someone might be listening. Someone far off—hopefully.”

  “Keep shouting like that,” said the shadow, “and ye’ll bring the entire dale up here. I was about to lay a watch-fire. Do ye care to help me tend it?”

  Without waiting for an answer, the figure turned away from her and knelt by the hearth. Alias stood up straight, and the tension she’d felt eased as the cool metal hilt of the dagger warmed in her palm. The figure by the hearth hummed an aimless tune while piling the logs and tinder together. There was a spark, then a second flash, and the dry tinder went up, casting a circle of light and warmth from the center of the ruined hut.

  Illuminated, the shadow transformed into a beanpole of a man, dressed in weatherbeaten and stained brown robes. His gray beard was stringy and unkempt, and his hood was thrown back to reveal a balding pate which gleamed red from the flames of the fire. He seemed nothing more than an elderly, crotchety goatherd.

  “If ye aren’t going to take advantage of the warmth,” the old man said, “at least come into the light so I can see ye use that dagger.”

  Alias stepped into the firelight, feeling foolish for having been caught raging at fate, but even more foolish for having threatened an old man. She sat down crosslegged before the hearth.

  “I’m looking for the river witch Sylune,” she explained.

  The old man sat down facing her and leaned his back against the broken fireplace wall. He pulled a ball of tobacco from a pocket and used his thumb to shove it into a thick, clay pipe. He looked at her thoughtfully. “She’s dead,” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “She’s dead,” repeated the old man. “Deceased. Here no more. People die. Even here.” He lit the pipe with the end of a burning twig.

  “How?” Alias whispered. The news hit her like a blow to the gut. She had never been close to Kith’s mentor, but everywhere she went, anytime she felt close to getting some answers, her efforts were thwarted. I’d been counting on Sylune more than I realized, she thought.