by Victor Milán
The bugbear went out again.
Tour help is rather familiar," Farlorn said.
"He's pretty much all the family I have-save my comrades of the road." She glanced at" his plate. "You're picking at your food. If you don't want it, I'll take it."
Farlorn's laugh sounded a trifle forced. "Oh, no you don't, Zaranda. It's just that the presence of such a fell creature throws off my appetite."
"Very little throws off mine."
"If Zaranda vouches for him," said Father Pelletyr, biting off the end of a thighbone and sucking out the marrow, "that's good enough for me. The gods have gifted her with sound judgment."
"Well, sometimes," Zaranda said.
"Besides," the priest said, "good Stillhawk eats with fine appetite, and he's suffered more at the hands of evil things than the rest of us combined."
The meal ran to several more courses. Farlorn got over his momentary squeamishness and fell to as eagerly as the others. All four were famished after a long day on the road and the brief excitement at the halfling roadblock. Conversation dwindled, first because the serious business of eating took precedence and then bеcause bellies filled with good food and wine from Ithmong, the fatigue of the trip across the Vilhon Reach-and the more vigorous preliminaries-began to lay hold of them, weighing down their eyelids as well as their tongues.
Stillhawk, who tried for Zaranda's sake to ape the civilized courtesies to which he was unaccustomed, rose first from the table. She looked up at him and nodded.
"The night is warm and fair," she said. "You'll be sleeping outside?"
The ranger nodded. He had little use for feather beds, less for walls and roofs. "In the unlikely event it rains, there are empty stalls in the stable. If Goldie's gambling with the grooms again, run them out. She cheats abominably, anyway."
Stillhawk nodded again and withdrew.
"With your permission, fair lady," Father Pelletyr said, stifling a yawn behind a pudgy hand, "I shall retire to my evening prayers as well." Despite this announcement, he made no move to leave the table.
"My house is yours," she said.
"What of you, Zaranda?" asked Farlorn, lounging with apparent artlessness in a chair-of age-stained oak.
"I'm off to my tower, and then to bed."
The half-elven bard pushed a laugh through his fine nostrils. "So that's why you bought yourself a manor with a fine high keep."
"In part," she said, rising and smoothing her gown. It was a gesture of surprising femininity from one whose hands were callused from gripping a sword-hilt.
"Ill never understand the fascination the tiny lights in the sky hold for you, Zaranda," Farlorn said, shaking his head. "They're lovely, aye, and suitable for illuminating lovers and inspiring song. But they're no more than jewels set in a crystal sphere; all know this."
"Perhaps," said Zaranda, frowning slightly. Master of words as well as melodies, Farlorn seldom said anything without good reason, perhaps reasons in layers. The remark he tossed off about the stars illuminating lovers cut close; she'd been sleeping alone for a long time.
Once, long ago, Farlorn the Handsome had been Zaranda's lover. Briefly. They had parted ways and not seen one another again for years. Then, when she was gathering up the risky expedition to Thay that pre-ceded her current journey in the bustling Sembian port of Urmlaspyr, she had chanced to meet him again in an open-air market.
He professed himself willing to undertake an adventure or two. He seemed changed, not quite as ebullient, a shade more somber. But he was a master of strata-gem and diplomacy; his jests and songs and tales of wonder could do as much for morale on a long, hard trail as a thrown-open cask of gold; he had the elven stealth in his feet, and his fingers were as nimble wielding his sword and dagger as they were at plying the frets of his yarting. Perhaps the change was due to nothing more than age, though the years lay almost as lightly on him as his wild elf kinfolk-more lightly.even than on Zaranda, who wore her winters well. In any event, she had invited him to join her company readily enough, and had already had several occasions to be glad of her choice. And still… and still, something about him troubled her.
"Perhaps she seeks to read her fortune in the stars," said the father indulgently. In a mild sort of way, II-mater disapproved of astrology. The common folk of Faerun suspected it was one of those proscriptions laid down by the god so his servants could feel as if they held the moral high ground in dealing with weaker souls.
"No, Father," Zaranda said. "I misdoubt, somehow, I'd be well served in knowing my future."
The priest raised his eyebrows. "Why, child, most of humanity and demihumanity alike would pay most handsomely for an accurate augury of what the future holds in store."
"Not Zaranda," the bard said, smiling halfway. "She delights in differing from everybody else. Contrary is our Zaranda Star."
She gave him a look. He had one leg, well-turned beneath her gown, thrown over an arm of the chair, and a golden goblet in his hand.
"I don't believe we travel fixed, immutable paths, like oxen yoked to a grindstone," she said. "And anyway nо stars, whether jewels in crystal or the suns of distant worlds, control my destiny. That I do myself." 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.
3
Her own bedchamber nestled high in the tower, right beneath her top-level observatory. This served a multiplicity of purposes, not least of which was that if things went severely south in a hurry, she could defend her chambers single-handedly for quite a while. In Tethyr one couldn't take for granted that such things wouldn't happen. This fact accorded well with life as Zaranda had known it all along, so it caused her small discomfort.
"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 al-lowing 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 Tuig
an, 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 de-scribed 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 re-wards. 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."
"Yоu 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.
The tower of Gold Keep was still visible away up the valley behind them, shining like its namesake in the morning sun, when Vander Stillhawk turned the head of his blood bay back and signed to the column behind him, Smell smoke.
"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.
