War in Tethyr (3 page)

Father Pelletyr shook his head almost mournfully. "Ah, Zaranda, what if everybody felt the way you do? We'd have chaos."

Farlorn laughed, a sound like a golden bell tolling. Zaranda remembered, fugitive, how once that laugh could melt her heart. She wondered why it was no longer so.

"Chaos is Zaranda's natural element, like water to an eel," he said.

She looked at him again, carefully, as if by the force of her gaze she could ascertain whether his words held a hidden sting. But her long-abandoned studies had given her no magic for that. For his part, the bard was adept at hiding his true feelings behind an easy smile.

She wondered, briefly, if it still rankled him that she, not he, had terminated their affair.

She yawned, covered her mouth with a hand that was slim and graceful for all its strength. Such speculation added no gold to her coffers. That brand of blunt practicality would have made Father Pelletyr sigh for the state of her soul. But she was, after all, a merchant. The bottom line was that she was tired.

"I'm going to bed," she said.

And she left them there, the stout priest gazing contemplatively into the candle flame and Farlorn staring into the depths of his goblet as if he caught a glimpse of his own future there, among the dregs of Zaranda's wine.

"Good evening, Sorceress," said the brazen head on her chest of drawers as she descended the steps-which had uncomfortably high risers, even for one possessed of her length of leg-from her observatory.

"Good evening, head," she said. The breeze through the open but bar-crossed window was cool and sweet and carried the song of a night-bird in with it.

"You are troubled," the head said.

She let the comment pass. The head was quite correct; it was a very perceptive brazen head. She was allowing herself to worry about money and, in particular, her lack of it. If she didn't realize every farthing of the profit she anticipated from her current enterprise, she would at the least lose Morninggold. Her normal specific for such concerns was violent exercise, but the sheer exhaustion that hung on her shoulders like a leaden shroud precluded that.

Life was so much simpler when I was a mere warrior, with nothing to trouble myself over save whom I might next have to swing my sword against… As soon as she thought it, she knew it was a lie, and faintly ridiculous; the way of the sword, whether as adventurer, mercenary, or even successful war leader against the nomad Tuigan, was far from carefree. Someone, possibly resident of another world, plane, or even time-Faerun being uncommonly porous to artifacts, ideas, and even visitors from such places-had once described life as hours of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror.

That expressed it rather well. Yet she knew that wasn't full truth either. The warrior's life had its rewards. Battle was terrifying, but it was also exhilarating, filled with wild freedom and fury difficult to capture elsewhere. That was why Zaranda had not entirely forgone the sword when she made the latest change in her life and career-that and the fact that the world was, after all, a risky sort of place.

The truth, Zaranda, she told herself, is that you got bored with the life and decided to settle down. And look how
that's
turned out.

"I can help," the head intoned. Its eyes flashed a beguiling yellow.

Zaranda glanced at it in irritation. It was her preference to sleep unclothed, a fondness she found impractical to indulge on the trail amid an exclusively male contingent of caravan guards and muleteers, and she had been looking forward to that luxury tonight in her own bed in her own secure keep. Now it occurred to her that she was hardly prepared to disrobe with that thing staring unblinking at her from her chest of drawers, which was ornamented with grinning goblin heads carved in bold relief.

"Be silent," she told the head, "or I'll put you back in your chest."

She had ordered the chests containing the truly powerful magic items conveyed to her chamber for security. Perhaps the rarest, most powerful, and most nearly priceless of all was the brazen head. The product of a mage whose bones had long decayed to dust and scattered on the winds a dragon's age ago, before Elminster was more than a gleam in his father's eye, the head was the bust of a man acerbly handsome, with a scholar's brow and an ascetic's narrow, bearded face. Unfortunately, it had also a satyr's sensibilities, which was why Zaranda was going to be sleeping in her nightgown tonight.

Aside from lips and eyelids, which worked on cleverly crafted hinges, the head's cast-bronze face was immobile. Nonetheless it managed to convey both injured innocence and invitation.

"You have been good to me," it crooned. "Far more congenial than my previous masters for millennia-not to mention easier on the eyes. I would help you. I offer you
secrets."

" 'Secrets,' " Zaranda echoed in disgust. Statue it might have been, but the head was palpably alive, aware of self and surroundings. Zaranda had found herself unable to bear the thought of the thing riding in claustrophobic darkness for weeks without end, so she took it out discreetly whenever she could. And look where your soft heart gets you, she upbraided herself.

"Secrets," the head repeated eagerly. "Secrets of the ancients. Secrets of sorcery long forgotten. The arts mantic, necromantic, or just plain romantic, if that's what you prefer."

"No," Zaranda said. She sat at her dresser, unwound her hair from its braid, let it hang unbound down her back as she brushed it out.

"Come now," the head said. "Any mage alive would kill to know such secrets as I hold within this bronze conk."

"Not me."

"You could gain great power."

"Power doesn't interest me."

"Wealth beyond imagining."

Zaranda grimaced. "At what cost?"

"I hardly expected to find such small-souled niggling within you, Zaranda Star. This merchant life has smirched your soul."

"At least I still have my soul."

"I cannot help noticing," the head said in gilded tones that reminded her uncomfortably-in several ways-of Farlorn, "that for a woman of such striking handsomeness you spend an uncommon percentage of your nights alone.
All
of them, in my limited observation-not to put too fine an edge upon it."

She let that pass and brushed her hair with redoubled vigor.

"You could win the hearts of handsome princes."

"I've done that," she said tightly. She laid the brush down with exaggerated care to keep from smashing it against the dresser. "I've never needed magic, either. And princes aren't worth the bother. Too full of themselves, expecting every whim to be instantly obeyed."

"Ah, but with the lore I can impart, they would live only to obey your every whim."

"If I wanted a pet," she said, rising, "I'd buy a dog. Good night."

The head tut-tutted. "Zaranda, Zaranda. Doesn't your curiosity tempt you, most of all?"

She sat on the edge of her bed, which had four spiral-carved oaken posts upholding a fringed silk canopy. It was booty from a Tuigan hetman, who had himself looted it from Oghma-knew-where. It was rather ludicrous, but it secretly tickled Zaranda to have it.

"Yes," she admitted. "For example, if you know such secrets of ultimate potency, why don't the Red Wizards of Thay rule all Faerun? They're eager enough to do so."

"Ahh," the head said again. Had it an arm, Zaranda got the strong impression it would have laid one finger along its aquiline nose. "They were unworthy to wield such power. So I answered their queries in riddles until they grew tired of me and shut me up in a dusty, dreary warehouse." It sighed. "The sacrifices I make to maintain the world's balance."

Zaranda sat regarding the head in the yellow candlelight. That was one of the legends that led her to Thay, whispers of a brazen head of immeasurable antiquity and knowledge, whose most recent possessors had been unable to wring any sense from it. Exasperated, they had left it on a shelf a hundred years or so and forgot about it. It had thus become available to anyone with sufficient enterprise, not to mention foolhardy courage. Along came Zaranda and her hardy band.

Once they had reached comparative safety outside Thay, Father Pelletyr had performed divinations on the head. Its nature was so arcane that the cleric had been able to learn little of it, other than that it was definitely not evil in nature, which was the thing Zaranda had been hoping to learn. There was enough unbridled evil in the world, and she didn't care to add to it. Neither did she want to have gone to such hair-raising lengths to obtain the head only to have to cast it into the Inner Sea. But all that left her with more than a slight suspicion that all the bronze skull truly contained was beguiling badinage, that the head was nothing more than a practical joke, a long-dead mage's monument to himself in the form of a last enduring laugh.

"Good night," Zaranda said again, and stretched herself out on the bed. Its softness, just firm enough to avoid bogginess, enveloped her like an angel's embrace. She sighed with pleasure. Not for her was Stillhawk's notion that the best bed was hard ground.

"But you're a magician," the head almost whined. "I can teach you spells beyond imagining."

"I gave that up. Thank you. Good night."

"Don't you feel like taking your gown off? It's fearfully stuffy in here."

For answer Zaranda rolled on her side, facing away from the head, and pulled the counterpane, which had been part of the Tuigan chieftain's trove and was inexplicably covered with embroidered elks and penguins, to her chin.

"Surely you are not by nature so grim and cheerless, Zaranda Star."

"No," she said. "I'm not. Good night." And she gestured out the candles.

"Me, too," Goldie said. "Wood, cloth, straw."

"A farmhouse," Zaranda said grimly. Her eyelids were ever-so-slightly puffy. For all the welcoming softness of her bed, her sleep had been fitful, troubled by dreams of blackness gathering like a thunderhead on the western horizon, and whispers at once seductive and sinister.

Father Pelletyr came jouncing up on his little donkey. Zaranda's stablehands had bathed the beast and plaited colorful ribbons into its mane and tail. Goldie forbore to pin her ears at it.

"Zaranda, what seems to be the difficulty?" the priest asked.

She pointed. A sunflower of smoke was growing rapidly in the sky to the northwest, pale gray against pale blue.

The priest clutched his Ilmater medallion. "Merciful heavens," he said.

Zaranda turned Goldie sideways on the wagon-rut path that wound its way through short spring-green grass. "Balmeric! Eogast!" she shouted to her sergeant of guards and her dwarven drover-in-chief. "Get the mules off the road and the men into a defensive circle around them. If any armed strangers come within arbalest range, drop them!"

"Must it then be raiders, Zaranda?" Farlorn asked in his lilting baritone, riding up on his gray mare. "It could be some farmer's been dilatory about cleaning the chimney of his cot and set his thatch alight."

"This is Tethyr," she said grimly. She turned Goldie and booted her after Stillhawk, who was already riding at a slant up the ridge to their right. The ranger had unslung his elven longbow from his shoulder. Farlorn shrugged and spurred his mare to follow.

"What of me?" the priest called.

"Stay and watch the caravan," Zaranda called back over her shoulder.

"Be careful, Zaranda!"

"You're wasting your breath, good father!" Farlorn shouted cheerfully back.

She charged for a quarter mile across country that had not entirely settled from the Snowflake foothills into Tethyrian flatland. The ground rolled like gentle ocean swells. Zaranda crested a rise and saw a prosperous farmhouse of at least three rooms. The walls were stone, but the insides and most of the thatch roof burned fiercely.

A woman ran toward Zaranda, rough brown homespun skirts hiked high, round cheeks flushed with fear and exertion. As Zaranda watched, a horseman in blood-sheened leather armor rode up behind her and drove a lance into her back. She uttered a despairing wail and pitched forward on her face.

Zaranda gave forth a wordless falcon-scream of fury, whipped her sword from her scabbard, and spurred Goldie forward. Blue witchfire crackled along the saber's curved blade.

The mounted man had his back to her, tugging at his lance and laughing at the way it made the woman's body move across the ground. Intent on his game, he had no hint of danger. Three rough-clad men in the hen yard, though, spotted Zaranda and loosed a volley of arrows at her from their short bows.

It was a fatal mistake. Like the elves who had raised him and trained him, Stillhawk was no horse-bowman. He had already dropped to the grass without reining in his bay, and was running off his momentum with his long brown lean-thewed legs. Even as he ran, he nocked an arrow and released, then, running, reached into his quiver for another.

The arrows that struck the second and third short bowmen down were already in flight when the two men turned their heads to gape at the broad-headed arrow that had transfixed the first one's throat.

The short-bow volley fell wide, arrows hissing into the grass like snakes. "Randi, they're shooting at us," Goldie panted. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

They were almost upon the horseman, who still hadn't freed his weapon from his victim. Ignoring her mare, Zaranda screamed, "Look me in the eye before you die, you scum!"

The horseman was quick on the uptake. He let go his trapped lance immediately, and was drawing his broadsword even as he turned. He saw Zaranda charging not twenty feet away, bared yellow teeth, and flung his sword high for a downward stroke.

Zaranda dug her heels into Goldie's flanks, urging her into a final surge of speed. As the mare dashed past the larger horse, Zaranda slashed forehand beneath the upraised arm. Her magic-imbued blade sliced almost effortlessly through stained leather, meat, and bone with a humming, crackling sound.

The raider fell, his final expression one of bewilderment. "I hate that sour-milk smell," Goldie complained as Zaranda reined her in, almost in the burning cottage's yard. "Why did you have to get a magic sword imbued with lightning? It's not as if it actually throws bolts or anything… Uh-oh."

The last remark was elicited by the fact that, in spite of being well and truly on fire, the cot was disgorging marauders, half a dozen of them, casting away loot bundled into pillowcases in order to draw their blades. They were dirty, unkempt, and unshaven, dressed in rags and tag ends of armor, and their weapons were in as dire need of cleaning as their teeth. The armaments looked serviceable enough, despite their lamentable condition.

Three more horsemen came drumming out from around the far side of the burning house. One of them had two wing-fluttering hens, one black, one white-and-black checked, tied by the feet to the pommel of his saddle. He brandished a sword, as did one of his mounted fellows. The third swung the spiked, fist-sized ball of an aspergillum-style morningstar on its chain about his helmeted head.

Zaranda winced; they were devilish things to defend against.

The riders showed cunning. Rather than rushing straight at the mounted interloper, they spurred their horses wide, hoping to pin her against the house and the semicircle of footmen. Zaranda just had time to wheel Goldie about and dart for safety.

But that was never her style.

"Head down, babe," she murmured to her mare, and nudged her hard with her heels.

"You don't want me-"

"Go!"

The golden palomino mare put her head down and lunged forward-straight for the doorway of the flaming cottage. Zaranda laid her magic saber about her, looping left and right so that the blade formed wings that shimmered silver gossamer in the morning sun. Utterly astonished by her mad forward rush, the footmen broke to either side. She felt Crackletongue's enchanted steel bite flesh gratifyingly as she passed.

Then she laid her body forward along Goldie's arched neck, and the mare lunged into the building, trailing a despairing cry of "Za-
ran
-daaa!" Smoke drooled upward over the lintel of the doorframe, caressing Zaranda's nose and eyes with stinging fingers. Then they were inside, hooves thumping on earth packed hard and soaked with beasts' blood in classic Tethyrian country fashion, dried into a smooth hard maroon surface like glazed tile and covered with rush straw. Flames ran like dancing rat spirals up the ornately carved posts that upheld the roof, and wound about the roof beams a handspan above Zaranda's unarmored back. She felt their heat, heard their lustful crackle, felt embers fall on the back of her neck, smelled her own hair start to burn.

As she hoped, there was a kitchen door. They burst through into the relative cool of open. Woman and mare released the breath they had been holding and filled their lungs with blessed clean air. Zaranda let go the reins, which she held only from long equestrian habit, to bat away the sparks lodged in Goldie's mane and her own hair.

"Aren't you getting too old for this, Randi?" gasped the mare.

Zaranda threw back her hair and laughed like a schoolgirl. "No!"

Two horsemen appeared around the stone corner to Zaranda's left. Zaranda brought Goldie round to meet them. Then the sudden backward pivot of the mare's long ears alerted her that the third one had circled to take her from behind.

"Not so
fast,
buster," Goldie said as the third horse, a white stallion, ran up on her. "We hardly know each other."

She launched a sudden savage kick with both rear feet. The stallion screamed and shied back as a steel-shod hoof gouged a divot from his shoulder. His rider, the man with the mace-on-a-stick, groaned and sagged, clutching his thigh. Goldie's other hoof had caught him square, with luck breaking the femur or at the least giving him a deep bone bruise and an excellent set of cramps.

With one foe out of the fight, however temporarily, Zaranda charged the other two. The rider on Zaranda's left sat a stubby little pony a hand shorter than Goldie, who wasn't as dainty as she effected to believe. Zaranda put her mare's shoulder right into the smaller beast's chest, rocking the pony back on its haunches and fouling its rider's sword strokes, while Zaranda traded ringing cuts with the man to her right.

The bandit swordsman had greater strength, but Zaranda was used to that. Though she was tall and strong, most men were stronger. Skill and speed were her edges. In an exchange that flashed with more than sunlight, she took a nick in the shoulder but left the man's right side in ribbons and his cheek laid open, streaming blood into a matted gray-flecked beard. Frantically, he sidestepped his horse away from the blade storm.

All this time Goldie had been driving the pony back, trying to force its rump against the house's stone flank, and grunting mightily to let Zaranda know how hard she was working. The rider, who had a gap in his teeth and a right eye that looked at random out across the bean-fields, finally hit the notion of yanking his mount's head to the right and trying to slide past the mare.

As he did so, he hacked cross-body at Zaranda's face, hoping to down her while her attention was on his comrade. "Randi, duck!" shouted Goldie.

Zaranda threw herself to her right, letting her left foot slip from the stirrup, snagging the knee on the pommel to keep herself from leaving the saddle entirely. She whipped Crackletongue over and across her body, deflecting the broadsword so that it skimmed her rump and thunked into her saddle's cantle. With a backhand slash, she laid the man's face open. He screamed and dropped his sword, clutching his face with his hands.

With a bellow of triumph, the grizzle-bearded man spurred his horse at her, bringing his own blade up for the kill. A hissing sound, and he crossed his eyes to look at the bright, slim tip of Farlorn's rapier, which suddenly protruded from his breast. The blade slid inside him like a serpent's tongue, and out his back. He slumped from the saddle.

The cockeyed man had fallen to the grass beside the kitchen stoop and lay curled in a ball, sobbing.

"Thanks," said Zaranda with a nod to Farlorn. The bard grinned and saluted her with a flourish of his blade.

Zaranda looked at the man with the morningstar, who sat a wary ten yards off, massaging his thigh. "Surrender, and we'll let you live," she told him, "as long as you're willing to answer a few questions."

The man grimaced in pain and licked greasy lips. "Does that means
just as long
as I'm answering questions?" he asked.

"Zaranda," a familiar voice called timidly from the farmhouse's far side. "Could you, ah-could you show yourself, please?"

Zaranda turned and frowned at Farlorn. "Father Pelletyr?" she said. He shrugged. The morningstar man took advantage of their distraction to spur his horse away behind some apple trees covered with tiny green buds of fruit.

Farlorn dismounted to see to the man Zaranda had struck down. She rode Goldie back around the side of the cot, swinging well wide to avoid flames billowing from window and roof.

On the last grassy rise Zaranda and her comrades had crossed before hitting the farmhouse, a lone rider sat. He was a vast man, a good eight feet tall, astride a horse at least eighteen hands high and as broad as a beer-cart, which might have served a northern knight as a destrier but more likely was born to pull a plow. The man wore a hauberk of tarnished scale armor and, across one mountainous shoulder, bore a great double-bitted battle-axe with a six-foot helve. The restless wind made the hair of his topknot stream like a greasy black pennon.

Beside him, four ragged men on foot had Father Pelletyr by the arms. One of them held a knife blade, crusted with rust and ominous dark stains, against the cleric's throat.