by Victor Milán
The last came out in a squall as light flashed and sharp thunder cracked. The mage jumped back, waving singed palms in the air. His dark eyes were wide with shock and terror.
She stuck her tongue out at him and ran away down the Street of Misfortune Tellers.
"Milady," a young voice called, clear and fresh as springwater. "A moment of your time?"
Zaranda's long-legged impatient strides had carried her into a district where the upper stories of buildings jutted out to overhang already narrow, twisty streets, so that it seemed they leaned their heads together to conspire against the traffic bustling below. She stopped and turned, dropping her hand inside the knuckle-bow that guarded Crackletongue's hilt. The voice had sounded fair, but Zaranda had little reason to take for granted the friendliness of anyone she encountered.
Two young people were approaching her, a youth and a maid, he with hair as bright and yellow as summer sun, she with hair of lustrous pale brown falling in kinky waves down over her shoulders. Both were dressed as simply as the poorest peasant or artisan or mendicant, in white smocks belted at the waist with knotted rope. Yet the fabric of the smocks was shim-mery stuff, white and evidently expensive to Zaranda's merchant eye; their hands were soft and pale, and she doubted the girl had been born with that delicate wave in her carefully tended hair. These, then, were children of wealth.
Such seldom had much use for rough-garbed adventuresses of Zaranda's ilk, her purchased patent of nobility notwithstanding-and naturally she did not walk the streets with an imp mincing after her, announcing to the world that she was Countess Morninggold. But their smiles were so friendly and open that Zaranda felt an urge to bundle them off the street before anyone saw them and took advantage of them.
"How may I help you?" she asked.
"We'd like to give you this flower," said the girl, holding forth a blossom as brilliantly blue as a civic guardsman's drawers.
"And what do you wish in exchange?"
The girl's face fell as if Zaranda had said something cruel. But her companion laughed a musical laugh. Like the girl, he wore a plain gold torque around his neck.
"You needn't speak that way," he said. "There's no necessity for payment. Please, lady, accept it as our love-offering."
"I've often found," Zaranda said, "that things called free often cost the dearest." But she suffered the white-clad girl to fasten the flower behind her ear.
"There," the girl said, stepping back with a smile. "You are even lovelier than before."
"Who are you people?" Zaranda asked.
"We are All-Friends," the boy said. "We serve and worship Ao the Universal."
"Ao?" Zaranda repeated, thunderstruck.
"We house the homeless and feed the hungry and go abroad spreading the message of Ao's universal love," the boy said.
"If you feel you must, you may make a contribution to our ministry," said the girl. "But we work and pray for a day when the needs of all are met by sharing, and no longer is there talk of buying and selling."
11
"I take it you've not heard of Armenides, then?" the old gnome said.
"No." Zaranda stood on tiptoe to study her reflection in an ancient warrior's mirror-polished basilisk-hunting shield, hung on the wall of the cluttered shop. "The flower looks good on me, does it not?"
"It does," the gnome agreed, blowing smoke from his pipe. He was dressed in a simple gown of emerald-green silk, with a stand-up black collar on which were embroidered dragons rampant in gold. He smoked a long, thin clay pipe. All his hair was white, including both of his bushy eyebrows, which was a pity, since it left no apparent sense to his name, White Eyebrow. In fact, when all his hair was black, his right eyebrow had been turned snowy-white by a brush with magic. "And the flower allows me to glimpse Zaranda Star's vanity, hitherto unsuspected."
She laughed without self-consciousness, examined herself a moment longer. "I'm vain enough," she said. "I can't always afford to indulge it, that's all."
She turned and propped her rump on a table in the clear space beside an ormolu clock. She paid it only cursory attention; though it was like nothing else she had seen on Toril, it was standard fare for the Curiosity Shop. Though White Eyebrow was no magician and scrupulously avoided trafficking in magic items, he cultivated extensive contacts among the better-intentioned of those who plied the dimensions in spelljamming ships. After all, to impress an inhabitant of Faerun as a curiosity, an object had to be curious indeed.
"So why this sudden fad for Ao?" she asked. "He's the preeminent god, I know, maybe the god the gods worship. But we mortals would be as well off venerating a tree stump, for all the interest he takes in us. He performs no miracles; he conveys no powers upon his priests."
White Eyebrow raised a scholarly finger. "And thus the tale leads us to Armenides the Compassionate, or the Pure, as he is sometimes called. He is spiritual advisor to our young Baron Hardisty. He came to Zazesspur a twelvemonth ago, claiming to bring a new dispensation from Ao. Ao has decided to take a more active role in the affairs of this world, Armenides avers. And he seems to have invested certain followers with the usual array of priestly powers."
"These All-Friends are priests of Ao, then?"
"Indeed not. Merely devotees who do good works in the god's name. Drawn from among the children of Zazesspur's first families, by and large, which I find good in and of itself. It gives the spoiled darlings something to occupy themselves with beyond their own selfish pleasure. But here, I forgot my manners." He hobbled to the rear of the shop, where despite the day's warmth he kept coals aglow in a small black brazier.
"I regret your loss, Zaranda," he said, setting a grille on the brazier and putting a copper kettle on to boil. "Yet perhaps it would be no bad thing, were magic banished from Zazesspur. It has brought much sorrow to the world. Perhaps it is best put away or reserved to wiser hands."
Zaranda frowned. Here was the heartmeat of a debate she and her old friend had often held before. "Put away all magic?" she contented herself with saying. "On a world such as Faerun? Easier to put away air."
He laughed. He had a merry, ready laugh, and round cheeks like apples tied up in the laugh lines of his face. "Our old dispute rears its head again. Some things never change, or do so but slowly." Turning from the kettle, he puffed his pipe and blew three smoke rings of descending size. The middle one drifted upward through the largest, and then the smaller floated up through both so their order was reversed.
"I wish I knew how you did that," Zaranda said.
"First you have to smoke," White Eyebrow said, "pipeweed or this new Maztican herb, tobacco. Plus it helps to have a gnome's lifespan to practice over." He puffed again, more conventionally.
"What of this Baron Hardisty? Is he the same Faneuil Hardisty who fought as a captain in the Tuigan War?"
The gnome nodded. "Just so."
Zaranda looked thoughtful. "He was a good man in those days. A brave warrior, though perhaps too much inclined to trust in bravery and luck."
"Why do you say was? He seems a good man still. He refuses a seat on the city council, and so holds himself above the infighting that disfigures the politics of this city. Many people are heard to say he's just what the city needs-aye, and Tethyr as well. A strong man to take it all in hand again."
He laughed and shook his head. "I see you looking skeptical, Zaranda. Ever the rebel! Authority is not always the monster you believe it to be."
There came a rustle from the rear of the shop, and a musical tinkling. A gnome woman came through the.hanging strands of silver bells that covered the door-Way to the back rooms and the stair to the apartment above. She was small and slim by gnomish standards, and beautiful by the standards of human and gnome Alike, though they did not often overlap. Her raven's-wing hair was parted in the middle and confined by a circlet of silver, on the front of which was fixed a tiny toothed wheel. She wore a saffron robe, and the brown sash around her narrow waist bulged as if packed with small hard objects of various shapes, marking her
as a priestess of Gond Wonderbringer.
"Ah!" White Eyebrow said cheerfully. "The pot's just begun to whistle. Perhaps you could make tea for us, Simonne."
The gnome woman looked at him a moment, then moved to obey. "Greetings, Zaranda Star."
"Simonne!" Zaranda exclaimed. "It's good to see you. The last time we met you were scarcely more than a child."
"She's no more than a child still," the old gnome said, frowning slightly, "though she has given herself much to the doings of this new sect of Gond Thunderblunder, or whatever he is called, who seek to better the world by tinkering with it."
"We hope to make the world better by gaining knowledge of it," Simonne said, pouring tea into dainty porcelain cups with flowers painted on them. "We don't presume to tinker with that of which we know too little; that's why we seek knowledge. And surely nothing is gained by turning our faces from the truth!"
She distributed the cups from a tray. "Our folk are pressed hard. You who have long been our friend should be warned that you'll do yourself ho good in this city by associating with us."
"That's strange news indeed," Zaranda said, sipping, "for though it has its share of vices, Zazesspur has never been an intolerant place."
"There is some new evil that invades our dreams and robs us of our sleep. Many blame us for that-not to mention more earthly ills."
"What's this about dreams?" Zaranda asked sharply through the steam.
"Nonsense, is what it is," White Eyebrow said, puffing furiously. "A shared fancy, a passing fad. Folk have nightmares betimes, which they always have and always will; only the notion is abroad that there's some fell design behind it all, so that anyone who suffers troubled sleep must tell all his friends, and they too remember they have at some time known bad dreams; and so it all gets built up into some dark conspiracy of sleep."
With a tinkle of a different timbre, the larger bells affixed to the front door announced the entrance of customers. Though perhaps customers was the wrong word. Zaranda's fine nose wrinkled to a whiff of dirty hair and stale sweat as two young male humans came into the shop, shabbily dressed in black and gray, with hair hanging in their eyes in great unwashed clots. Short, dark-stained wooden cudgels hung from their belts.
Simonne's dark eyes narrowed. "Be calm, my daughter," murmured White Eyebrow. "This, too, shall pass." He glided forward. "How may I help you, young gentlemen?"
The huskier of the two, whose hair was dark, laughed nastily. "It speaks," he said to his partner in mocking wonder. He put a hand against the old gnome's chest and pushed him reeling back. His friend, who was skinny and dark blond, giggled shrilly through a prominent nose.
"You and your foul kind can leave this city, if you want to help me," the husky boy said. "Nothing else will do, in fact."
He picked up a vase glazed a deep, lustrous blue. Tiny flecks of light shimmered, seemingly deep within its slick surface: gold and white and blue and red. When the youth turned it this way and that in his unwashed hand, the points of light shifted as if they flowed within the very finish-or like the constellations in the sky when one turned one's head.
"Now, my young friend," White Eyebrow said, "that comes from a far world, on a vessel borne on wings of magic. If you care to hear, I'll tell you of it-"
"I'm not your friend, rodent!" snarled the boy. "Magic! The source of all our problems, no?"
"Surely enough, Fredaro," his companion said, bobbing his head. "Surely enough."
"This reeks of magic," Fredaro said. "What will please me is to make an end of it." He raised it to the level of his brows and let it drop.
A slim but scarred hand caught the priceless vase before it struck the carpet-covered stone of the floor.
"Clumsy of you," murmured Zaranda Star, replacing the object on its shelf with her right hand. "But then, as careless of your appearance as you are, it need not surprise us, I suppose."
"Zaranda!" murmured White Eyebrow in alarm. The boy's face purpled. "Bitch! I'll teach you to interfere." He raised a beefy fist.
"Will you?" She smiled, then pressed forward with her left hand. Color gushed from the youth's face as the tip of the poniard her hand held dug into his groin.
"I think not," Zaranda continued in pleasantly conversational tone. "You'll not even teach me disgust for those of your ilk; I learned that long ago."
"Zaranda!" Simonne cried. The blond youth had snatched his cudgel, its head shod in gray iron. He lunged at Zaranda with weapon upraised.
With a slithering whisper like a metal snake on stone, Crackletongue slid from its sheath. Zaranda extended her arm so that the saber's point found the notch of the youth's collarbone. He braked abruptly to avoid spitting himself, then dropped his cudgel, fell to his knees, and began to weep and plead for his life. "You'll regret this," hissed his burly friend. She pressed the dagger harder. "I suspect all I'll regret is not slaying you both. But that would distress my friend and spoil his fine rug, so I'll refrain. As long as you leave us in peace."
"You can't threaten us!" the boy exclaimed through gritted teeth. "Lord Ravenak-"
"— Is a cur unfit to sniff at honest dogs that go upon four legs. You may tell him. so, with the compliments of the Countess Morninggold. Up, now, and quit sniveling. It's tiresome." The latter was spoken to the blond youth, whom she urged up with Crackletongue's tip beneath his chin.
"Zaranda," White Eyebrow said hollowly, "you know not what you do. When you're gone, they'll just return, with more of their kind."
"He's right!" shrilled the blond youth, getting his courage back now that Zaranda had promised not to kill him. His nose was quite red. "We'll fix you, you little monster! Well-"
"What's your name, dung-blossom?" Zaranda inquired. The blond boy shut up and glared at her from red-rimmed eyes. She gouged the flesh beneath his chin. "Your name! You let slip that of Fredaro here, for which I'll let him thank you in his own way and time. Now I'll have yours."
"I'll say naught!"
"Oh, yes, you'll speak. But if I have to put a compulsion on you, I'll have you turning cartwheels naked down the street as well."
"You lie! You're a fighter, not a wizard!"
The lights in the shop blazed intolerably high, then all went out, plunging the room into darkness so abruptly it should have made a crashing sound. Then a single lantern flared out again from the wall above the youth's ragged hair, casting rainbow-edged light through crystal facets.
"Your name?"
"G-Gonsalvo, my lady!"
"Attend me well, Fredaro and Gonsalvo, as if your lives depended on it, which they do. Should any harm befall this shop or its proprietor or his daughter or any customer arriving or departing, I shall hunt you down and cut your hearts out. On my soul I swear it. Now, begone."
All the lights came back on. By the time the illumination had found its way back to all the crannies of the shop, the door was banging shut on its frame, and the bells were jingling.
"Zaranda, Zaranda," White Eyebrow said, shaking his head. "Do you think all problems can be solved at swordpoint?"
"Not at all, old friend. Most of the problems life heaps on us are susceptible to no such solution, in fact. Yet some will answer to nothing else. It's vital to learn to recognize them in such times as these."
"If you stoop to violence, are you really any better than they?" the gnome asked.
"Yes," Zaranda said. "If I do it to defend myself and those dear to me."
She sheathed her cutlery and looked to Simonne, who said nothing, though her eyes blazed like lanterns, dark though they were.
"But I cannot always be here to help, as you and they both saw," she said. "And that you must deal with as you see fit. I bid you good day."
That night Zaranda's sleep was tormented by dreams, and a whispering Voice.
She was not the only one to dream, nor to hear words spoken in those dreams. And unlike her, some heeded what was said.
12
Unseasonable overcast trailed tendrils down into Zazesspur like arms clad in d
irty, wet wool sleeves. They brushed Zaranda's face with clammy familiarity as she hustled along narrow Hostler Alley to her early morning appointment. The air was given added presence by the smells of last night's grease, this morning's breakfast, and fresh horse dung.
The buildings' upper stories cantilevered over the already narrow alley so that they threatened to pinch off the dangling arms of cloud. This was a district given over to hostelries of the middle grade and lower and served the Other needs of travelers: stables, provisioners, and taverns. There was also the inevitable water-fluid population of demimondaines, barkeeps, scullery maids, back-alley bones-rollers, charm-vendors, cutpurses, rogues, bards, alley-bashers, and joy-girls and — boys, few of whom could be found abroad at this hour. The visitor to Zazesspur must seek elsewhere for fixed places of entertainment. There were theaters of various sorts in the Players' Quarter, and gambling palaces and brothels in their own discreetly fortified precincts. There, well-paid sworders and the odd mage kept at bay the riffraff, whether jack-rollers and strong-armers, social activists who followed the brothers Hedgeblossom and Earl Ravenak, or even the individual city councilors' uniformed goon squads. The very lowest ranks of such establishments were to be found in Bayside, the waterfront district, where the genuine riffraff held sway.
Tourists were at something of a premium these days. The harbor traffic, which was all that kept the city alive and reasonably prosperous, provided some custom for the inns, but nothing like what they had been accustomed to before the troubles began. Some hostelries had simply converted themselves into apartment blocks serving those displaced by the nomad invasions or the discord in the countryside, but it was still a buyers' market for short-term accommodations. Which was how Zaranda was able to keep herself and her comrades quartered in reasonable comfort despite the state of her finances, which were eroding like an arroyo bank in a heavy rain.
