War in Tethyr n-2

  War in Tethyr

  ( Nobles - 2 )

  Victor Milan

  Victor Milan

  War in Tethyr

  Prologue

  Night Wings

  She sleeps, and as so often, dreams of flight.

  First comes the unfolding. She seems to open outward from herself, like a piece of paper folded to a small packet, expanding, becoming greater, becoming other, in a way she cannot comprehend.

  A moment poised between exaltation and uncertainty, and then she flies, rising into a sky full of stars, her wingbeats sure as a swimmer's strokes. High, and higher she rises, until the narrow grimy streets and al-leys, the city itself, are no more than shabby toys beneath her. Beyond its walls stretches the level countryside, black and silver and soft in starlight.

  She soars above neat peasant cots, their fields and or-chards laid out with mathematical precision like symbols on a wizard's scroll. Over stream and keep and sleeping herd she passes, high and silent and unseen.

  She knows two feelings strange to her in waking life: freedom and power. She can fly where she pleases, and no one can say her nay-and she senses, somehow, that her power goes beyond the ability to burst gravity's bonds. The sensations fill her with an almost terrible exhilaration.

  Yet even as she begins to realize and exult in those unfamiliar feelings, she is gripped by an awful unseen power that cancels both. Down she is drawn, and down, helpless now, plummeting into a black chasm that yawns in the earth itself, into a pit filled with darkness, the impression of waving tentacles blacker than despair, and a multitude of red-glowing eyes. A voice from below whispers sibilant obscenities in her ears.

  She screams, but her screams are as futile as her struggle and, screaming, she falls…

  The jarring impact to her ribs came like salvation.

  "Up, Scab," the stable owner said. "You were riding abroad on night's mare, and your caterwauling riled me steeds. Up now; time to be feeding, anyhow."

  She nodded, not trusting her voice. The stable owner turned and shuffled off, dragging a foot lamed in some forgotten skirmish. The land of Tethyr was plentifully supplied with those.

  She felt her ribs through the dirty, ragged smock she wore. No damage done; the kick had not been that hard. The stable owner was no brutal man, nor even a hard one, intentionally. But he had been raised to hard times, and hard ways, and knew none other.

  At least he didn't try to become familiar with her. She was overyoung, by Tethyrian standards, though not everyone was deterred by the fact. Likely as not, he didn't realize she was female. Her face was generally obscured beneath grime and matted masses of dark red hair, and there was nothing of her rag-wrapped scarecrow frame to suggest that she was a girl in her early teens rather than a boy.

  There was a handspan of open space between the brick walls of the stable and the eaves, to allow air to circulate in the stifling Zazesspurian summer. The slice of sky she could see had gone dawning purple, stained with the faintest of pinks. A night bird fluttered past the opening, or perhaps a bat, returning to its roost to sleep the day away. She felt a twinge of fear and longing.

  The tasks she must perform in return for a few crusts of bread and lodging in a vacant stall were not demanding: she must feed and water the horses, muck their stalls, brush them and comb their manes. Then she would be on her own through the heart of the day, free-as free as she got in waking hours-to continue her search for some wizard to accept her offer of apprenticeship.

  If my reputation hasn't spread too far.

  She picked herself up and felt her side again. The soreness was fading quickly. The hunger pangs that gnawed her every waking hour like a rat in her belly were already stronger. She tottered off to the pump between stalls redolent of horse-sweat and hay and manure, on legs that seemed to have atrophied from dreams of flight.

  Part I

  Astronomy Domine

  1

  The golden mare tossed her long white mane and said, "I sense trouble ahead, Randi Star."

  The woman who sat astride her in a high-cantled Calimshite saddle frowned. "Of course you do," she said. "We're about to enter Tethyr. And don't call me 'Randi.' It's far too young a name for me."

  The mare flared her nostrils and produced a ladylike snort. The slow sound of her hooves rebounded from natural walls of dark granite, lichen-splashed and forbidding, so high that, although it was midmorning, the day's first sunlight had yet to spill farther than halfway down them. Playing around their ears like schools of fish were the hoofbeats of burden beasts and outriders' mounts, the jingle-jangle of harnesses, the calls of the muleteers, all muted as the caravan wound through the secret pass across the Snowflake Mountains.

  They were bound for Zazesspur on the Sword Coast, a city of fabled wealth and intrigue; the years of troubles had, in truth, little scratched its wealth and done nothing at all to diminish its intrigues. The caravan's hundred mules were laden with luxury goods, wizardry supplies of nonmagical nature, and specialty items for Zazesspur's demanding craftsmen, but the core of the profit Zaranda planned to realize on this expedition was a handful of rare and immensely potent magic objects.

  At that, the caravan and its riches-deceptively great for its size and unassuming appearance-were merely a facet of Zaranda Star's complex scheme to retire her debts, and then just retire.

  The mare, whose name was Golden Dawn, abruptly twitched her long, well-shaped ears and laid them back along her neck. From behind, one set of hoof noises detached itself from the rest and grew louder.

  "Behave, Goldie," Zaranda hissed under her breath.

  "Our fat father needs to wash his ass," the mare replied quietly. "The bandy-legged little brute stinks abominably."

  "I think Father Pelletyr regards the smell as something of a penance."

  The best kind," the mare said. That which doesn't interfere with stuffing his belly."

  The ass in question drew alongside, trotting to keep up with the longer-legged mare's walking stride. Zaranda Star twitched a nose that, while still long and fine, had been broken once in the past, and reset ever so slightly askew. The beast's rank smell made itself apparent even over sun-heated rock and the stink of man- and beast-sweat, leather and weapon-oil from the caravan behind. In truth, the priest's mount could have been kept cleaner. But the father had a wondrous way with healing magics, and for one in Zaranda's line of business, that counted for much.

  "Ah, Zaranda, child," said the priest. "How much farther through these beastly mountains, do you think?"

  She laughed. She had a good laugh, and strong, white teeth to laugh with, though she often thought her lips were on the thin side. There were even those who had thought them cruel, but most such had been ill-intentioned to start with.

  "Many hard years have passed since I've been a child, Father," she said. "And in answer to your question, not much farther at all."

  That's good to hear. The men and beasts are suffering in this heat." In truth, the day's heat had filled the chasm much more quickly than its light had.

  "You're suffering, you mean," Goldie said. "You'd be best advised to go easy on the elf-bread, Father."

  She gave him a meaningful sidelong look. The father was a man of substance, much of which was rhythmically jiggling inside a threadbare gray robe. He had a big florid face with a prominent nose and white hair radiating like the petals of half a sunflower from around the ample tonsure Nature had granted him, atop which was perched a gray skullcap, now mottled with sweat. A golden pendant bearing the bound-hands symbol of Ilmater hung around his neck by a strand of thumb-thick duskwood beads.

  He made a mournful face. "Ah," he said, "surely such a noble beast as yourself would not begrudge a mendicant servant of Ilmater the modest pleasures of his table?
" He had never entirely adjusted to the idea of conversing with an apparently normal mare, but then Faerun was a realm of wonder, and Ilmater a tolerant god.

  "Of course not," Goldie said in a honeyed tone that instantly made Zaranda's eyes narrow. "But still, I can-net help thinking of the burden on your poor mount's legs."

  Father Pelletyr's face collapsed like a souffle in an oven around which an ettin has just commenced a drunken clog dance. He began to fiddle with his beads and cast guilty downward looks at his ass. In so doing he neglected to keep switching at her flanks with the little fir bough he carried for the purpose, and the beast fell behind the longer-legged mare. "Goldie!" Zaranda said sotto voce. "Now you've made the poor man feel guilty."

  "Can I help it if he's oversensitive?" The priest caught them up again. The trail had begun to wend downward. Ahead, it bent right, around a knee of granite with a twisted scrub-cedar perched on its top.

  "Was it really needful," he asked in mournful tones, "to take such a strange and circuitous route? Surely there are easier roads into Tethyr."

  It was a fair question. The secret path through the mountains had bееn rife with precipices and rockslides. At a higher elevation, an avalanche had swept two mules and their packs away, but no men had been lost, and the loss of goods had been minimal. Withal, the mountain crossing had been much easier than what Zaranda and her companions had gone through to get the most valuable of the goods they carried.

  "Surely there are," she replied, "and in consequence they're better attended by bandits and marauders of every stripe. I'm a merchant, Father. Trading away danger for discomfort strikes me as a favorable bargain."

  "But surely-oh, dear."

  This last was directed down the trail. Zaranda and the Ilmater priest had come around the granite knee to where they could see the end of the narrow defile, opening onto foothills rolling quickly away to the flat green landscape of Tethyr.

  The way was blocked by heaps of boulders, one to each side, and between them a dead fir sapling lay across the path as a barricade. Behind the barrier several polearms could be seen waving tentatively, like metal-tipped branches.

  "Oh, no," Goldie said. "Not another adventure."

  Reins and fir branch alike dropped from Father Pelletyr's hands. Like most of Ilmater's ilk, he was no fighting priest. With plump fingers, he began to fumble at his medallion.

  "O Holy Ilmater, О Crying God, Succorer of Tyr the Blinded God, who suffered for us upon the rack, friend to the oppressed, aid us your children now-"

  From behind his little ass came the crunch of weighty hooves on granite pebbles. The little beast scrambled to the side of the path with an agility that belied its burden to avoid being shouldered out of the way by a rangy blood-bay gelding.

  The gelding's rider, like the horse itself, was tall and spare, with long muscles that seemed to have been carved of oak and weathered dark. He wore a leather tunic laced up the front with a rawhide thong, trousers of muted leaf-green, knee-high boots of soft doeskin with fringed tops turned down. Across his back was slung a quiver and a strung longbow. His right forearm was encased in a leather armlet. Guiding his horse with his knees, the tall man touched the priest's arm gently with his left hand, while his right traced the elven signs for Bide, Father. Father Pelletyr nodded, swallowed, and interrupted his prayer. The newcomer gave him a grim smile.

  It was the only kind of smile he was equipped for. He was handsome in a heavy-browed, brooding way, with long black hair bound at his nape, a broad jaw shadowed with stubble the sharpest razor could prune but never clear, brown eyes dark as the woods around the Standing Stone of the Dalelands. He carried the twin messages of serenity and menace.

  With the silent man at her elbow, Zaranda rode to the barricade and stopped. Goldie tossed her head and danced a bit to let her rider know she was not happy. Ignoring her, Zaranda dismounted and strode forward, glad of the chance to stretch her longs legs; unlike most folk who, like Father Pelletyr, favored their ease, Zaranda preferred to be in motion, working the muscles of her lithe, pantherish body. The tall dark man followed, unslinging his longbow.

  Zaranda stopped ten feet shy of the abatis and stood to her full height, which was considerable-greater than that of most human men of Faerun. The wind off the Tethyr plains stirred in her hair, which was dark, a brown that was almost black save for a blaze of white over her right brow. It was a heavy, unruly mane, currently caught up in a simple bun in back and hanging square-cut before. The white hairs of the blaze refused to be tamed and tended to stand up in a lick. She had a long-boned athletic frame that spoke of power, grace, and resilience, much in the way of the yew longbow her ranger companion carried.

  Her face she would have called handsome and most others beautiful despite the broken nose. Her beauty was of the worn sort that resulted from seeing more of the world than was good for her.

  For a span of heartbeats she simply stood. From behind the barrier came a twitter of small voices.

  With a certain ostentation, she adjusted the saber she wore across her back, hilt projecting above her right shoulder for easy access, then dropped hands to hips. At last she deigned to speak.

  "Who dares impede the return of the Countess Morninggold to her home?" she called in a clear voice.

  The whispering from beyond the barricade rose to a crescendo. A commotion came from the branches of the tree, and with a certain amount of crackling and rustling, a small figure appeared, crawling between dead branches. Once clear it paused to haul forth a glaive-guisarme fully thrice its own length, then hopped erect with more swagger than conviction to confront Zaranda.

  "We represent an autonomous collective of demihumans of diminutive stature," the apparition announced in the deepest voice it could muster. It was a halfling male, no more than three feet tall, wearing a morion helmet easily three sizes too large and a brigandine corselet that came down almost to the hair on the tops of his feet. "We demand toll of all who would pass this way."

  The morion spoiled the effect by slipping abruptly down, covering his face to his snub nose. Goldie pawed the earth and whickered laughter. The halfling pushed up the helmet and looked aggrieved.

  A half dozen other halflings had clambered up in the branches on the abatis's far side, or onto the piles of boulders, to observe the proceedings from relative safety. Like the spokesman, they were all got up in a parody of brigands.

  "Do you maintain this road?" Zaranda asked.

  Carefully holding his helmet in place, the halfling blinked innocent blue eyes at her. "No," he admitted.

  "Then by what right do you demand toll?"

  This provoked another flurry of conversation in the piping halfling tongue instead of the accented Common the spokesman used with Zaranda; though most humanoids in Tethyr spoke Common, few would consent to do so without a heavy dose of regional or racial accent, to prove they weren't that familiar with it. Zaranda had a smattering of Halfling, and could have followed the conversation had she chosen to do so.

  "Because we're an autonomous collective," one of the onlookers finally said. The spokesman turned back to her with renewed purpose.

  "Because we're an autonomous collective," he said.

  "So?" Goldie asked.

  The halfling goggled at her. "It talks!"

  "Bites, too." Goldie stretched her fine arched neck and with a considerable display of teeth pulled up a clump of tough trail grass. "Best mind your manners," she added, munching significantly.

  Zaranda noted that the watchers in the gallery kept casting covert glances to the sheer heights above; the cliffs dropped a hundred sheer feet before they gave way abruptly to foothills.

  One of the spectators, clearly dissatisfied with the spokesman's polemical talents, called out, "This road belongs to the people."

  Zaranda flashed a smile. It was a smile with considerable flash to it, too, which smoothed away the years and the cares and made her seem a maiden girl again. When she wasn't angry.

  "Just so," she said. "And we're
people, aren't we?" The halflings bunked at her.

  From behind strode, or rather waddled, Father Pelletyr. Even a noncombatant clerk of Ilmater had a hard time taking this lot as a serious threat. All the same, he held his holy symbol prominently out before him. Half-lings were reputed to have a wicked way with stones of the slung or flung varieties.

  "Let us remain calm, my children," he said in a sonorous and only ever-so-slightly quavering voice. Zaranda had to remind herself that in fiend-haunted Thay of the Red Wizards, not so very long before, she had seen this man face rank upon rank of ghouls and animated skeletons without flinching, and make mighty specters flee his wrath. The father was a man of enormous and sincere piety, and, well, death to the un-dead. It was living threats he could use some stiffening on. "Surely we can settle this matter in amicable wise."

  "Surely we can, Father," Zaranda said.

  "Pay us!" several halflings offered helpfully.

  "And while it goes against my principles as a merchant to pay tribute to casual banditti on the high road, I was about to ask my comrade-in-arms, here, to provide an entertainment to our hosts. Stillhawk?"

  Quick as thought, the dark man had an arrow from his quiver and nocked. He aimed his longbow skyward, scarcely drew back the strength. Yet when he released, the shaft shot a good two hundred yards straight up toward the puffy white cumulus mounds overhead.

  When it reached the top of its trajectory and fell sideways to begin its return to earth, Stillhawk's second shot struck its shaft in the middle and transfixed it. The conjoined arrows fell to ground not a score of feet from Zaranda.

  The halflings goggled. "Is that not an elven bow?" one asked in wonder.

  "That is indeed an elven bow," Zaranda replied. Still-hawk walked over to retrieve his arrows. His soft-booted feet scarce made impressions on the earth. "Made for him by the elves of the Elven Woods, who raised him and taught him archery."