by Kate Novak
Unaware she had been observed by the sharp-eyed sage, the halfling sneaked out of the courtroom and down the corridor toward the prisoner’s cell.
If ye have plans to visit thy friend Nameless, ye little sneak thief, ye are in for a surprise, Elminster thought, suppressing a grin. He focused his attention again on the judges. “Two hundred years have passed since the exile of the Nameless Bard—”
“Excuse me, Elminster,” Kyre interrupted, “but are we to continue calling this man Nameless throughout this hearing? Surely we can be trusted with his name. It would simplify things, would it not?”
“No!” Morala objected. “It is we who made him Nameless. Nameless he will remain.”
Elminster sighed at the old priestess’s vehemence. “It is the purpose of this tribunal to decide not only whether or not to free Nameless, but whether or not Nameless’s name should be restored to the Realms. Morala and I have both taken an oath not to reveal the name unless the Harpers decide otherwise. So we must continue to refer to him as Nameless, at least until the end of this trial.”
“I see,” Kyre replied, nodding her head slightly. “Excuse my interruption.”
Elminster nodded and once again began the second half of his tale. “Nameless remained in exile for two centuries. Then certain evil powers deliberately sought him out and freed him from his place of exile.”
The tune coming from the bard’s prison ceased abruptly. Morala’s lips curled ever so slightly in satisfaction while Elminster stroked his beard thoughtfully, wondering just what Nameless was up to now.
In his prison cell, Nameless lowered the chordal horn and glared at his cell door. Something was jiggling in the lock. Elminster had given the guards specific instructions to show the prisoner every courtesy possible, including always knocking before opening his door. The prisoner scowled in anticipation of delivering a scathing reprimand to whichever guard had been so foolish to interrupt him in the middle of his composition.
The door swung open slowly. A female halfling stood in the doorway. Her hazel eyes sparkled, and she winked conspiratorially as she slid a copper wire into her russet hair. “Nice ditty,” she quipped. “Has it got any lyrics?”
“Naturally,” the prisoner replied, relaxing his angry face. “Would you like me to write them down for you, Mistress Ruskettle?” he asked.
“That’d be great,” the small woman said, stepping into the cell. She pushed the door almost, but not quite, closed behind her. Her furry bare feet padded silently across the plush wool Calimshan carpeting. She slipped off her knapsack and her wet cloak and checked to be sure the back of her tunic and pants were dry before seating herself on a tapestry-covered footstool.
The Nameless Bard lay the chordal horn down on the table. “Come in, Mistress Ruskettle. Have a seat and make yourself at home,” he said, though he knew sarcasm was wasted on halflings in general and on Olive Ruskettle in particular.
“Thank you, Nameless,” Olive replied. “Nice quarters you have here,” she said as her eyes inspected the polished furniture, the velvet drapes, the brass-bound clothes chest, the silk bedspread, the gold candelabrum, the crystal wine decanter, and all the other luxuries Nameless’s captors had provided for his cell. “You’re looking well,” she added, grinning at the fine silken shirt, fur-trimmed tunic, wool pants, and leather boots he wore.
Nameless grinned back as he seated himself cross-legged on the bed. He never could remain annoyed with Olive for long. She had, after all, rescued him from the dungeon of the cruel sorceress Cassana and also helped him free his singer, Alias, from Cassana. It wasn’t just gratitude, however, that made him fond of the halfling thief; Olive’s brash nerve amused him. It reminded him of himself.
“What have you been up to?” the bard asked. “It’s been over a year since I’ve seen you last.”
“Yes. Sorry about that. This summer’s been rather chaotic, as you’ve probably heard. I was staying with friends in Immersea, who talked me out of traveling until the trouble died down. If I’d known you were wasting away in prison, I would have come sooner,” the halfling said. From a silver bowl piled with fruit, she plucked a large, juicy plum and ate the delicacy in several dainty, but quick, bites.
“My imprisonment is a mere formality until the new trial is over,” Nameless said. “That door wasn’t even kept locked until that old bat Morala arrived and caused a stink.”
“She’s the priestess of Milil?” Olive asked. “The one who has it in for you?”
“You’ve met?” Nameless asked.
“I’ve seen her around.”
“Have you seen Alias?”
“Actually, I came to see you the moment I hit town,” Olive said. The halfling didn’t care much for Alias. Olive realized, however, that Nameless thought of the singing swordswoman as a daughter, so in an effort to be polite, she asked the bard, “How is dear Alias?”
“I don’t know,” Nameless huffed. “She and Dragonbait arrived in Shadowdale a day after Morala, and Morala won’t allow me any visitors. How did you get past the guard at the tower gate?”
“You know,” the halfling said, pulling out a silver pin from her cloak pocket, “it really is amazing how much respect the local constabulary has for this silly harp-and-moon symbol, even when it’s pinned to the breast of a short person with no visible weapons.”
Nameless grinned at the irony. He’d given the halfling thief his old Harper’s pin. According to custom, Olive would need him to vouch for her until she was accepted by the other Harpers, but he was a disgraced Harper. Now she’d used the pin to break a rule made by Morala—a Master Harper. There was nothing like the chaos a halfling—or a woman—could cause, Nameless thought, and Olive is both. “You realize,” Nameless asked aloud, “you’ll have some problems being accepted by the Harpers until I have reestablished myself?”
“You realize,” Olive retorted, “that I’ll have some problems accepting the Harpers if they don’t get off their high horses and forget this banishment business. In the meantime, you can’t stay in this dump. I’ve got a horse and provisions for you hidden at the edge of town.”
“Why, that’s awfully thoughtful of you, Mistress Ruskettle.”
“So let’s go,” Olive said, hopping up from the footstool and standing beside the bed, tapping her foot in mock impatience.
Nameless leaned forward, reached out a hand, and stroked her hair. Ordinarily Olive couldn’t stand having humans patting her on the head, but Nameless hadn’t actually patted her, and she liked him more than any other human she’d ever met, so she could forgive him a good deal. She looked up at him, puzzled that he’d even touched her at all.
“Oh, Olive,” he said with a rueful smile.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, not failing to note he had used her given name, something he’d never done before.
“Did you think me incapable of arranging my own escape, Olive?” Nameless asked.
“You’re still here, aren’t you?” Olive pointed out, growing annoyed.
“Yes, but not due to any lack of skill with locks,” Nameless said, holding out his hand and presenting the halfling with the copper wire he’d just slipped from her hair. Dexterously he twirled the shining metal strand through his fingers, then made it vanish so quickly that Olive couldn’t be certain if he’d flipped it away or slipped it up his sleeve.
“All right, I’m impressed. Can I have my pick-bone back?” the halfling asked.
“It’s in your hair, Olive, right where you put it,” replied Nameless.
Olive ran her fingers through her hair and found the wire lodged behind her ear exactly where she’d put it. “An illusion, right?” she guessed.
Nameless did not reply. Instead, his eyes twinkled with mischief.
“I hate it when you do things like that,” Olive huffed.
“You love it when I do things like that,” Nameless countered. “You just hate that you can’t do them yet.”
“All right. So you didn’t need my help to escape. Why are yo
u still here?” she demanded.
“Because I have no desire to become a hunted fugitive when I don’t have to. The Harpers will come to their senses and release me.”
“That’s what you thought when you turned yourself over to them two hundred years ago,” Olive argued. “What makes you think this trial’s going to end any different from the first one?”
“Elminster is speaking in my defense this time,” Nameless replied confidently.
“You put a lot of store in that old coot.”
“The Harpers have grown accustomed to abiding by Elminster’s counsel.”
Olive sniffed. “And you expect them to forgive all, to take you back into their fold and restore you to your position as a Master Harper?
“Naturally,” the bard said coolly.
“What then?” Olive snapped. “Engagements at all the royal courts? A few noble titles granted in honor of your talents? Wizards begging for your secrets? Flocks of apprentices ready to serve under you?”
“Why should it be any different than it was before?” Nameless asked with a cocky grin.
“You’re dreaming, pal!” Olive shouted, completely frustrated with his vanity and unrelenting certainty. “Wake up and smell the bacon! Not even the great Elminster is going to bring Morala around. As for the other two, the ranger might take pity on you, but that half-elf bard’s got all the compassion of an iron golem. You need—” Olive halted, alarmed at the way her voice echoed through the cell and annoyed that this stupid human had made her lose her self-control. “You need a contingency plan,” the halfling whispered. “Just in case I’m right and you’re wrong.”
“I have too much to lose if I flee now and you’re wrong,” Nameless retorted heatedly.
“You have too much to lose if you don’t. Security isn’t going to get any more lax if they condemn you, you know. Since you’ve already broken out of the Citadel of White Exile, they’ll have to find some place even worse—if you can imagine any place worse than that.”
Nameless fought to control a tremor in his lip. For two centuries, he’d lived in the Citadel of White Exile, able to scry on the happenings in the Realms but completely unable to participate. It had been torture for him, but he could imagine worse things. He had other objections to trying to escape, though. “You forget we’re talking about the Harpers,” he said. “They’ll have no trouble tracking me down.”
“You’re a Harper yourself,” Olive pointed out. “If you weren’t so eager to rest on your laurels, you could keep a step ahead of them. I’ve got a place where you could hide, too—somewhere you’ll be welcome, and no one would ever be able to detect you magically.”
“You want me to hide behind Alias’s shield,” Nameless replied, referring to the misdirection spell cast on the swordswoman, a spell which made her and anyone she traveled with completely undetectable by magical means. “Forget it,” Nameless said vehemently. “I’m not getting her involved in this.”
“I wasn’t talking about Alias,” Olive said. “Give me credit for some sense. She’s too obvious. I wasn’t talking about a magic dead zone, either. That’s too obvious, too; besides, there’s too much riffraff in places like that. I have someplace even better in mind. With any luck, the Harpers will waste their time checking out Alias and the dead zones and miss us altogether. The Harpers aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. Why do you give them so much power over you?”
“Because,” Nameless hissed angrily, “they have my name.”
Olive shrugged her shoulders and helped herself to another plum. “Big deal. So do I. It’s Finder. Finder Wyvernspur, from the clan Wyvernspur of Immersea, in Cormyr,” she said nonchalantly. She stifled a mock yawn before adding, “Your older brother was Gerrin Wyvernspur. Your mother’s name was Amalee Winter, and your father was Lord Gould. Your grandfather was the Paton Wyvernspur. Sound familiar?”
The bard leaned back against the wall, staring at the halfling with undisguised amazement. Silently, with his eyes closed as if he were reciting an oft-repeated prayer from childhood, the bard mouthed the names Olive had given him.
“Surprised?” Olive asked, unable to keep from grinning.
The bard looked at the halfling and nodded, still dumbfounded.
“I’ve got something else for you, Finder,” Olive said, pulling something from her cloak pocket. She laid it down on the bed in front of the bard. “Recognize this?”
Finder looked down at the halfling’s gift. It was a sparkling yellow crystal, multifaceted and roughly egg-shaped, somewhat larger than a hen’s egg. The bard gasped. Then he whooped once with pleasure, leaped from the bed, snatched Olive up in the air, and swung her around, laughing with delight. “You stole the finder’s stone! You incredible halfling! I could kiss you!”
“Well, I suppose I deserve it,” Olive said, turning her head and pointing to her cheek. Finder pressed his lips against her flushed face. Then he laughed and spun around again, with Olive still in his arms.
“I’ll lose that plum I just ate if you don’t set me down,” Olive threatened.
Finder lowered the halfling gently to the bed. Olive bounced once on the mattress and snatched up the crystal. “Is this thing still loaded with magic?” she asked, tossing the stone to the bard.
Finder caught the crystal with one hand. He sang a short, clear G-sharp and peered into the stone’s depths. “Yes!” he announced. “I don’t believe it. Elminster didn’t give this to you, did he? You did steal it, didn’t you?”
Olive grinned. “No and no. Elminster gave it to Alias last year. Maybe he felt she had some right to it, seeing how she’s related to you. We lost it outside of Westgate, but I ran into the man who found it and convinced him to part with it.”
“And my name? Who parted with that?” Finder asked.
“That’s a longer story. Why don’t we save it for later? Let’s go, huh?”
Finder sat down on the footstool. “There’s no hurry now,” he insisted. “We can leave anytime. There’s a teleport spell in the crystal.”
“Which won’t work if Elminster’s cast some sort of anti-magic shell around this cell,” Olive argued.
“The finder’s stone is an artifact. Not even Elminster’s magic can stop spells cast from it,” Finder declared. He picked out a plum from the bowl and took a bite, slurping noisily. “I want to give Elminster the chance to argue my case before the Harpers as he should have done the first time. If he fails to convince them to pardon me, then we’ll leave.”
“I have a bad feeling about this, Finder. Let’s go now, please,” Olive pleaded.
“Relax, Olive. I have everything under control. Here, have another plum.” Finder held out the silver fruit bowl toward Olive.
Olive crossed her arms, determined not to encourage her friend’s indifference to his own peril.
Finder waved the bowl enticingly under her nose. Unable to resist the smell, the halfling chose a second plum.
“Finder. Such a proper name,” the bard mused as he set the bowl back on the table. The halfling suppressed an unexplainable shiver and bit into her plum.
While Olive Ruskettle was trying her best to convince the Nameless Bard that Elminster might fail to get him freed, the sage himself was explaining to the Harpers how the alliance of evil beings that had freed Nameless had managed to trick the bard into building a new version of his simulacrum for them.
Morala shook her head and bit her tongue, but she could no longer hold back her annoyance. “This is just what I warned him would happen when he was planning the first simulacrum. Evil cannot disguise itself from good unless good looks the other way. Nameless’s own arrogance blinded him to their nature.”
“That may be, thy grace,” Elminster replied, “but he did not hesitate to act against these evil beings when he finally recognized their true nature. He did his best to keep them from gaining control of the simulacrum. He freed her so that she and her companions were able to return and destroy all of the members of the consortium, the sorceress Cassana, the li
ch Prakis, the Fire Knives Assassins Guild, the Tarterean fiend Phalse, and even Moander the Darkbringer.”
“She? You mean the simulacrum?” Breck asked.
“He succeeded in animating it, then?” Morala asked with a defeated sigh.
“Actually, she’s more than animated. She’s very much alive and possessed of her very own soul and spirit. Not even ye, thy grace, could tell she was unborn.”
“Impossible!” the priestess declared.
“Impossible for Nameless and the evil beings who backed him, but not impossible for a god.”
“Moander is the Darkbringer. He could not give her a soul,” Morala insisted.
“I did not speak of Moander,” Elminster said.
“What god, then, Elminster?” Kyre asked.
“I’m not certain. The fiend Phalse kidnapped a paladin from another world to supply the simulacrum with a soul, but the paladin still lives. Somehow his soul doubled, and a shard of his spirit broke off. Both grew inside Nameless’s creation. It is possible one of the paladin’s gods made this possible. I also suspect that the goddess of luck, Tymora, may have interfered in the creation. Nameless still invokes her name on occasion, and the simulacrum seems to have an affinity for Lady Luck. Perhaps it was a joint effort of these gods. Whatever the case, the woman lives.”
“Why did Nameless make this creation a woman?” Breck asked.
“For her own vile reasons, the sorceress Cassana insisted it be made in her image,” the sage explained. “Perhaps that was for the best. Nameless gave the simulacrum much of his personality, but in an effort to make her a more ‘ideal’ woman, in his own view, he created in her a tender and nobler side Nameless himself had never displayed. She has already made a name for herself as a brave and clever sell-sword. The paladin I mentioned before, a noble saurial known here in the Realms as ‘Dragonbait,’ travels in her company, totally convinced of her goodness.”