by Ed Greenwood
“Most years, ” Semoor corrected sourly.
Islif shrugged. “If we ever-somehow-become adventurers, staying dry and warm and fending off hunger may well become daily excitements.”
“Always the cheery merry-maid, aren’t you?” Semoor sighed, turning his sunrise disk of Lathander over and over in his fingers.
“I’m easier on the ears than some always-sharptongues I could name,” the warrior-lass replied, hefting her sword meaningfully.
“Oooh,” the priestling of Lathander gasped in mock-terror, recoiling with all the subtlety of old Laedreth the Lute playacting a frightened queen in the greatroom of the Eye, with a few tankards inside him. “You’re so- menacing! Oooo!”
Islif sighed. “With just one good kick, holynose, I could really make you squeal!”
Semoor leered, “Ah, but I can do the same to you with naught but my tongue!”
Islif rolled her eyes. “Semoor, your mind outreeks a cesspit. It’s a wonder to me your prayers don’t make the Morninglord spew his guts out!”
Semoor’s smile went away in an instant. “Don’t jest about that. Holy Lathander blesses new ventures-and that’s just what we’ll be, if we set off adventuring!”
“Aye,” Jhessail agreed grimly. “If.”
“And if not,” Doust said quietly, “ ’tis temple-field farming for Wolf and for me, separate somewheres in the upcountry, while the two of you grow gray hairs here in Espar as farmwives, birthing calves, tilling fields, having babies, and cooking, cooking, cooking.”
“ Don’t remind me,” Islif snapped.
“Florin,” Jhessail said wistfully. “We need Florin to show us the way clear of this.”
The wind rose around them with a sudden howl, as if in agreement.
“Lad, both of the lord’s jacks’re deep in dreams,” came the hiss out of the darkness on the other side of the tree. “Still game for this?”
“Of course, Del,” Florin murmured, from his side of the great duskwood. “I’d not miss this for all Lord Hezom’s gold.”
The dark shape of the horsemaster moved in the still-faint light of the rising moon; Delbossan was shaking his head. “Huh. If she gets hurt-or if yon pair of jackblades wake-’twon’t be Hezom’s gold the two of us’ll have to be worrying over! He already owns rope enough for our hangings!”
“They won’t wake ’til morn,” Florin muttered close by Delbossan’s head. “Trust me.”
“Oh. Another of your herb-powders in their tankards?”
“Now if you ask not, I’ll not have to say, aye?” The ranger grinned. “Yet I’ve a strong hunch, somehow, they’ll be unharmed when they rise… around highsun. Mind you pretend to have been affected, too-and scare them enough that they agree to help you search along the road to save all your hides, rather than running straight to Espar to cry the alarm. Somewhat south of Hezom’s guardpost you ‘find’ a trail, and follow it through the woods around Espar to Hunter’s Hollow. I’ll meet with you there by highsun, three days hence.”
“Done, lad. Don’t make me rue this.”
“Trust me, Del. Now take my place here behind the tree, and keep hidden. She’ll probably run to where the moonlight’s strongest, but who can say for sure?”
“With that dragon, lad, there’s no surety-trust me. ”
They chuckled together, foreheads almost touching, and parted, clapping each other’s shoulders in the nightgloom. In the words of the old song: ’Twas time to be taming the lady…
The pavilion glowed like a bright jewel in the night, which surprised Florin not at all. A city-reared noble lass would want the warmth and reassurance of nightlamps around her, of course.
Filigreed screens inside the tent cast intricate, pleasing patterns on the pavilion walls, concealing shapely silhouettes from prying eyes outside-but Florin could see enough to know that the Lady Narantha Crownsilver was still up on her feet and moving around. Barefoot, by the soft gliding sounds, rather than shod. Probably-if she were anything like the wealthy merchants’ wives who betimes stayed for a night at The Watchful Eye, Espar’s lone inn-she’d be brushing her hair. Brushing and brushing her hair. Long and glossy it would be, in the lampglow…
Florin swallowed, shook his head at himself for thinking such thoughts, and glided forward as silently as drifting night mist.
He grinned like a wolf as he went, lips drawn fiercely back from teeth. It might not be much, and was far from heroic, but Florin Falconhand was finally-after all these years of dreaming-having an adventure.
“Where’s Florin right now, I wonder?” Jhessail asked, halting outside her door.
Islif shrugged. “Safely abed somewhere, if he has any sense.”
Jhessail peered up at her and said softly, “But like me, you don’t think he has, do you?”
“No.” Islif’s teeth flashed in the moonlight as she turned to go. “No, I don’t. I think he’s awake and about in the night, right now, having an adventure.”
Florin Falconhand cast a last long look around, drew in a deep breath as he sank down into a crouch, and-face less than a handspan from the glowing canvas, gave throat to a horrible growl.
He heard a sudden intake of breath from inside the tent.
Grinning, he growled again, a long, bubbling beast-sound, trying to sound eager and… hungry. Then he made sniffing sounds, scrabbling with his knuckles along the canvas where it met the ground.
There was a tense silence from the pavilion, and he could hear the faint, close whistling of swift breathing.
He growled again, as horribly as he knew how-and there came the whisper of fast-moving bare feet, and a tremulous, “Delbossan?”
She’d gone to the front of the pavilion, and was no doubt standing just inside its door-slit now, staring at the hard-knotted lacings she’d so recently tied, and wondering whether to start untying them. “Master Delbossan?”
Florin put a gleeful chortle into his next growl, and clawed at the canvas with both hands, thrusting it inward. His reward was a little shriek followed by a full-voiced cry of Delbossan’s name.
The ranger drew his sword and used its pommel to thrust hard at the canvas, denting it in and leaning his weight on it while raking and scrabbling with his other hand. A tent-peg lost its hold, the pavilion buckled slightly, and the Lady Narantha Crownsilver screamed.
All dignity gone, she gave vent to a throat-stripping howl of terror, gulped breath, and shrieked another.
My, but Horsemaster Delbossan was hard of hearing this night.
The young noblewoman cried Delbossan’s name half a dozen times as Florin tugged out another tent-peg, and another, so he could bow the entire back wall of the pavilion inward, all the while clawing the canvas and snarling for all he was worth.
Sobbing in fear and rage, the Lady Narantha came rushing back across the pavilion, and Florin wisely ducked his head back from his outthrust sword.
“Oooh!” she gasped in effort, striking the canvas with something small and hard that set his sword to thrumming. He gave vent to a startled growl that began with a note of pain and rose into a terrible roar of rage-and the canvas in front of his nose punched and thrust groaningly at him, again and again, as the noble lady on its far side belabored it with-a gilded corner burst through the stretched and ravaged canvas-her jewel-coffer.
Lady of the Forest, she’d be through it and charging at him in a moment!
Between loud grunts of effort, young Lady Crownsilver was wailing Delbossan’s name repeatedly now, her voice growing steadily higher and more shrill in fury, leaving fear behind.
Then the canvas bulged with what was probably her descending head and shoulder, she made a startled sound, and Florin heard metallic slitherings and chimings. She’d overbalanced and fallen.
With the loudest roar he could muster he pounced atop her, clawing and biting at the canvas, trying to make sure she felt the hard edges of his pommel and belt buckle and still-sheathed dagger-and her next shriek was pure fear again, stabbing higher and shrill right through
his eardrums, the canvas heaved under him frantically…
And Florin Falconhand, head ringing, was on his knees amid tangled canvas, his prey fled across the sagging pavilion and shrieking wordlessly as she tugged, tore, sobbed, and tugged again at its door-lacings.
He growled as he caught his breath and got to his feet, shaking his head to clear it-and he’d barely caught his balance and hefted his sword before something barefoot that streamed long, unbound hair burst out into the night, splendid nightrobe fluttering.
“Delbossan!” she screamed as she ran to the turf-covered fire and stared wildly around, clawing the air and stumbling in her haste. “Delbossan!”
Florin ducked back behind the tent and roared again.
The young noblewoman shrieked and ran away from him, toward the road. There was nothing in her hands, and nothing on her feet-so she’d not get far before she’d be limping and would look back.
Florin dragged his jerkin up and half over his head to conceal his face, waved his sword, and loped after her, growling and snarling.
Lady Narantha screamed again and sprinted down the road, in the direction of distant Suzail. Florin pounded after her, making sure she heard deadwood snapping under his boots, and she wept and shrieked and ran.
When the ranger reached the vast, moss-covered trunk of a long-fallen, rotten shadowtop that told every traveler the camping place was nigh, he sprang onto it and raced along it into the trees, outpacing his noble prey as she stumbled, sobbed for breath as her wind was jarred from her, and stumbled again.
Then he burst out of the trees right beside her with a horrible roar, a great hulking headless shape with a sword in its paw-and she shrieked again and fled blindly away, west off the road into the trees.
Toward the Dathyl, just as he’d planned. His tunic hid Florin’s wolfish smile from the world as he ran after the fair blushing flower of House Crownsilver.
She was panting like a deer on its last legs-and he was almost choking on a delicious thrill. Adventure at last!
Cormyr had always been a safe place of warmth, good food, and scurrying servants, of beauty, fine clothes, and coddling, of bright banners, and of airy graces. Oh, it was the Forest Kingdom, of course — but its forests had never been anything more than a distant green line beyond Jester’s Green, and the place where all the stags whose heads adorned more mansion and highkeep walls than she could count had come from. Narantha half-remembered fearsome nursery tales of outlaws, owlbears, and wolves, foresters simply vanishing in the dark leafy depths, and the fell magic of malevolent faeries and elves who saw humans as foes or even food… Oh, why had Father ever fallen upon this foolish, nasty, hateful idea that she needed tutoring of some sort by some backwoods bumpkin? Hezom wasn’t even a proper noble, but one of the king’s appointed lordlings-why, he might be an old drunkard of a Purple Dragon, or an outlaw and stag-poacher given a title by Azoun to keep younger, wilder rivals in check!
An outlaw! But what mattered it, when she was going to die here, alone in the dark, with no one to even know she’d fall- oooh!
The Lady Narantha caught an ankle between two unseen branches and crashed through a thornbush to fall on her face in something scratchy that left burrs all over her as she rolled frantically, sobbing for breath, and scrambled to her feet again. It was the third time she’d fallen, and every step now brought a stab of pain-she’d have been weeping non-stop if she’d dared spare breath for doing so. Branches whipped across her face and breast often, some of them slashing her or tugging at her with their horns-and she’d left a lot of hair behind on them.
Yet she dared not stop, because not far behind her in the darkness there was always the growling thing, its footfalls, occasional crashings…
“Tymora deliver me,” she gasped, “Torm defend me, Father Silvanus send away your… your… things that hunt-”
She ran hard into a horizontal branch that caught her low in the ribs. All the breath whuffed out of her, the night spun in a swirl of crazy yellow motes of light, and Narantha was falling… falling…
The moonlight went away, and the darkness that awaited hungrily all around her flooded forward and dragged her down…
Chapter 3
A FORAY IN THE FOREST
Beginnings-beginnings are easy. Any fool with a sword or a shout or a moment’s witlessness can start something. ’Tis finishing such matters alive, and getting home again whole-that takes bold heroism. And the luck of the gods.
Gornrel Murtarren
One Merchant’s Musings published in the Year of the Turret
F lorin came to a cautious halt, his heart pounding. Was she-?
Cautiously, he circled the huddled shape, his own breathing hard and fast. Gods, she’d run like the wind! He bent closer, very cautiously…
Was that a hiss of breath?
He was a fool, a reckless young fool! She’d been leaving bloody footprints this last while, racing terrified and blind into a forest where unseen branches could serve her as eye-gouging, throat-piercing blades-through tangles where even wise foresters could turn ankles or break legs.
And now she’d collapsed, and if she were dead, he and Delbossan were worse.
Grimly Florin sheathed his sword. “Lady of the Forest, forgive me,” he breathed, feeling an icy breeze rising to ghost past his cheek. Gods, if she were dead…
’Twas too dark here, in the shadow of a gnarled forest giant, for moonlight to tell him what he needed to know. The ranger’s fingers ran along the carved wooden catches of his belt pouches until he found the right two shapes, got them open, and rubbed together a fingerdaub of moss and a particular mushroom. A faint, ghostly radiance arose from their mingling, and he thrust his glowing fingers at her still, white face.
The Lady Narantha’s eyes were closed, and her mouth was slack. He put his other hand to her mouth and nose, and felt a faint warmth. She was breathing.
Mielikki deliver me!
Florin bowed his head and muttered a silent prayer of thanks, feeling almost weak. Seeing a long stone amid the rotting leaves and fallen twigs, he smeared the glow-mix on one end of it, wiping away the last of it on some protruding bark that he then carefully tore away and thrust into his jerkin-pouch.
Going around behind the noblewoman, he hauled off his jerkin, did off the rough tunic he wore beneath it-and bound its homespun over her eyes, letting the loose end cover her face. He hoped she didn’t mind the smell.
Her breathing deepened, but she didn’t rouse, thanks be to Mielikki. Florin rolled the Lady Narantha onto her back and ran his fingertips lightly along her limbs. No weapons, nothing hidden-just the double-layered robe, all slippery silk and shimmerweave. Over bone-white skin, all soft curves and… well, enough of that. Seeing her displayed thus in the pale glow was unsettling, but somehow-the thaerefoil, of course-aroused nothing in him beyond a sort of restless, wistful hunger.
He rolled his catch onto her side, very much as he turned large game for skinning, and knelt astride her hip, feeling at his belt for the right pouch again-the one wherein rode the rawhide thongs every ranger carried when in the forest. Swiftly, now, in case his handling awakened her…
Five hard, fast breaths later Florin had bound two noble thumbs together, and served Narantha’s big toes the same way. The next two thongs did her little fingers and her elbows, pulling her arms forward in front of her. She hissed and made as if to pull away as he finished tying them. Ah, just in time.
Plucking her off her feet and up over his shoulder-whoa, she was tall; this might prove tricky-Florin drew his sword and set off deeper into the forest, seeking the gentle glimmer and chuckle of the Dathyl.
Not striving overmuch for stealth, he hacked aside clawing branches as he went.
His noble catch was weightier than he’d expected, but not staggeringly so, yet apt to tip if he didn’t stride carefully. He was a foolhead, and this venture not such a glorious thing as it had seemed in his fancy. Yet he was in it now, up to his neck…
His neck, indeed.
/>
Florin swallowed and walked on. As he shouldered through the trees, Narantha heavy on his shoulders-and squirming now, definitely awake-small crashings in the night marked the flight of small animals, disturbed by his approaching boots.
The Dathyl seemed farther away than it should have been, but eventually he stumbled down a leaf-strewn bank onto its sandy shore, nearly blind in the deep gloom where moonlight could not reach.
The stream rushed merrily past, chuckling over stones, and Florin stood for a moment in thought. He must be a good ways south of the foresters’ cache he needed, where there were boots, packs, bandages, and weathercloaks. It was back toward the road, and he thought he remembered the tangle where he’d have to turn away from the Dathyl. A big tree had fallen over in a winter windstorm, years ago, and left its roots standing up like so many bristling spears, aye…
Yet the stream was shallower hereabouts; he’d best cross right over. Decisions, decisions, decisions-so this was adventure. Huh.
He hefted the shapely burden on his shoulder and balanced himself, lifting first one boot then the other to make sure his heels hadn’t sunk into the wet sand deep enough to throw him into a fall the moment he tried to spring forward. They hadn’t, but one step told him there’d be no leaping the Dathyl dryshod here. He was going to have to wade hip-deep, or more, and that meant he’d best reach a hand down to lift the lady’s head. Blindfolded or not, Crownsilver blood wouldn’t keep the lass from drowning if he trailed her head underwater all the while he was trudging through the chill flow. Not quite the facing-what’s-real training her parents had intended. And dragon, haughty foolhead or not, he’d brought her here.
His tunic was still in place over Narantha’s eyes, though her upside-down dangle had bared her chin and throat. Cupping his hand around a trembling, hard-corded white neck so as to be ready to lift her head in mid-stream, he stepped carefully forward into the cold, cold water, slowly and deliberately finding footing.
One stride, two-then he gasped and almost fell at a sudden, unexpected pain in the fleshy heel of his hand. She’d bitten him!