by Victor Milán
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 blinked 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. Halflings 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 undead. 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. Stillhawk 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.”
The dark man plucked the razor-edged broad head from the shaft, licked the ash-wood arrow lightly, and ran a scarred thumb across it. When it passed the arrowhead, the split shaft was mended.
“And sundry minor magics as well,” Zaranda added. “Kindly forgive my answering for him. He cannot speak; an orcish raiding party cut out his tongue when he was a boy.”
Stillhawk nodded in satisfaction and returned both arrows to his quiver. The halflings made oohing sounds.
“Wasn’t that nice?” Father Pelletyr said, beaming. “Now, if you splendid little fellows could pull this tree aside—”
The spokesman began to sidle and roll his eyes at the heights. “Well, with all respect due a man of the cloth, Father, it ain’t perhaps so simple as that. No, not at all.”
Zaranda stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled.
Something arced out from the top of the cliff, something round and initially dark against the clouds. It showed a glint of metal in the sun as it fell, rebounded from a rock with a clang, and rolled until it almost touched the tips of the spokesman’s hairy toes.
It was a helmet. He gaped at it in dismay.
“Don’t fear, my friend,” Zaranda said. “Your comrade’s head is not within. Your fellows above are as safe as if they were home hiding behind their mothers’ skirts. But they won’t be pelting us with boulders from above.”
The halflings stared upward. A figure appeared, leaning precariously out over the rim, and gave them a jaunty wave of his hat.
“Permit me to introduce the noted bard Farlorn Half-Elven,” Zaranda said. “A man whose skills go quite beyond his gift for the making and playing of songs. Now, if you’d be so kind as to remove this barrier, gentlefolk, you and ourselves might be about our respective businesses in peace.”
“It is a long and dusty road we ride, Zaranda,” Father Pelletyr said. “Surely a more direct route to Zazesspur might be found?”
The dust was more metaphorical than real. It was the month of Mirtul, called the Melting, with the feast of Greengrass a few days past. Despite that, and the fact that snow still glittered like silver plate on the highest of the peaks behind them, most of spring’s runoff had flowed into the flat Tethyr lowlands a fortnight since. This far south, the climate was temperate, with mild seasonal variations. Tethyr was an “Empire of the Sand” by courtesy of the overworked imagination of northern cartographers influenced by the Calim Desert to the south. The grass was green, and rain had touched the land recently enough to lay the dust, and long enough ago that mud was blessedly absent.
“Indeed, Father,” Zaranda replied, “but in Tethyr the most; direct route is not always the quickest.”
“And there’s truth for you,” added Farlorn Half-Elven, who rode near Zaranda on his dappled gray mare. “Tethyr’s a land of anarchy. No one rules, since the royal family was destroyed years ago.”
“Rather, I’d say Tethyr suffers a surfeit of rule,” Zaranda said. “Behind every hedgerow lurks a would-be duke or baron, each determined to enforce his will on whomever he can catch—and his taxes too.”
“Our circumspection availed us little, sneaking through that secret pass in the Snowflake Mountains, if one so humble may be forgiven for pointing out the fact.”
Farlorn put back his head and laughed. His laughter had a pealing edge, like a golden bell ringing. He was a bit over average height, slim and supple as the rapier he wore at his belt. His hair was black and wavy. In his features the admixture of human blood had created not coarsening but leavening of a sort; the literally inhuman beauty of the elven-kind was softened, mitigated, rendered more accessible, more mortal. Instead of being forbidding, his good looks were almost magically appealing, at least to most human women he encountered—and not a few elfin women had been known to agree.
He was that rarest of rarities, a wild elf-human hybrid. His features were as dark as Stillhawk’s, but with a faint greenish cast, like patina on copper. W
hen he laughed, his teeth flashed like silver mirrors.
“Do you truly think, Father,” he asked, “that those poor foolish halflings were as great a danger as we might have faced? Indeed, they had even mislaid the pry bar intended to lever their boulders down upon your heads, and were all crowded together at the cliff edge on hands and knees, rapt with the spectacle. ’Twas child’s play to take them unawares.”
“Mountains are trickish places,” Father Pelletyr said with a touch of petulance. “Who knows but that we might have blundered into a hill giant or a manticore, straying so far from the beaten path?”
“Such things are predators,” said Zaranda absently. “They stay close to where prey’s most readily found—as their human kindred do.”
She was riding along in a reverie, trusting Goldie to make her way on her own. The mare often made resentful noises about her occupation as a mount, but actually displayed great pride in her craft. The caravan was meandering along a trail that was no more than two parallel ruts left by generations of wagon wheels, vaguely following a sluggish creek toward its eventual meeting with the Shining Stream. The sun had fallen low along their back trail and seemed poised to plunge into the jagged if not particularly lofty Snowflakes, still prominent behind them.
They were in a broad, shallow valley. Late sunlight ran like honey along the high places and brought young plants, wheat and barley and oats, to illusory bloom; the year’s second crop had already begun to sprout. The water-smell and the aroma of good, rich bottom soil rose about them like a pleasant haze, with only the occasional whine of a mosquito to break the serenity.
“The good father is surely not complaining of the hardships of the trail?” Farlorn asked in a honeyed voice.
“Indeed not!” Pelletyr replied indignantly. “I think only of the welfare of our men and beasts, who have fared many a long and weary mile today—though certainly the gods gave us beasts to bear our burdens and will not be displeased to see us using them in this wise.” This last was directed to Goldie, who had quite forgotten teasing him earlier in the day, and paid him no mind.
The valley turned due east. As they came around the bend, they saw what appeared to be a golden beacon shining from the top of a hill perhaps half a mile ahead. A moment, and they saw it was the lofty keep of a castle or manor house, catching the light of the setting sun.
“It’s beautiful!” Father Pelletyr exclaimed.
“It is my home,” Zaranda Star said.
They turned off on a track that led between fields of rich grass. White and red-brown cows grazed with calves nuzzling their flanks. A skinny youth dressed in a simple homespun smock stood up and waved, a gesture that roused Zaranda to smile and wave in return. The boy clutched a staff-sling with his other hand.
“It grieves me to see one so young go armed,” the priest said.
“Maybe you’d rather he try to reason with the wargs,” Goldie said.
“Perchance a risky tendency to encourage in one’s vassals,” Farlorn said. “Especially in a land as given to anarchy as Tethyr.”
“No vassals in my valley,” Zaranda said. “There are only freeholders, and employees on my estate proper, which we’ve entered. When I bought the county, after the Tuigan incursion, I made pact with the peasants that they should buy the land they worked, paying in installments.” As I myself am paying for the county, she thought with something of a twinge.
Being finally shut of the burden of payments for her holding was a major goad that had driven her into this risky enterprise. The system had actually worked to her benefit, since she was still making hefty payments on Morninggold herself. She had had a very successful campaign against the nomads, but the booty she’d gained had gone only so far.
The priest sniffed. “That seems rather a radical notion, and subversive of the social order.”
Zaranda wants her people to be allies rather than adversaries, signed Stillhawk, who had ridden with her to the Tuigan War.
As they approached, the manor of Morninggold took on more detail. It was more fortified house than castle, lacking a surrounding wall or moat: a large, rambling structure of two stories here, three there. The walls were stoutly built of dressed granite from the Snowflakes, the roofs pitched and covered in half-cylindrical red tiles. It showed signs of having been built for defensibility, remodeled for leisure, and then subtly returned to its original purpose. Arched outlines of different-colored stone showed where broad windows on the ground floor had been filled in and replaced by long horizontal windows set above the level of a tall man’s head and too narrow to admit even a halfling thief. These were interspersed with arrow loops. The rosebushes budding out beneath the remaining windows were meticulously tended—and their thorns served to further deter intruders. A few outbuildings, likewise stout stone, clustered around the main structure, and a vegetable garden nestled by its flank.
From the back of Castle Morninggold rose the keep that they had seen from a distance. It was tall and round and built of some tawny fieldstone that the waning sunlight turned to pure gold. Networks of ivy clung to its lower reaches. The smooth rounded stones gave off an indefinable air of antiquity, leaving no doubt that the keep had been here long before the rest of the house—and likely would remain long after.
Stablehands emerged with welcoming shouts as the party rode into the yard. Zaranda greeted them by name, inquiring after health and families. Golden Dawn, Stillhawk’s bay, Farlorn’s gray, and the little donkey were led off to the stables. Goldie issued a stream of instructions as to her care, which the stableboy who held her halter ignored with an air of practice. The dozen armed escorts dismounted and began to tend their own mounts while the muleteers unloaded the packs from their beasts, preparatory to turning them out to pasture for the night. Zaranda led her three companions up the flagged path to the arched front door.
Before they reached it the door swung open. “Holy Father Ilmater!” Father Pelletyr cried, clutching his holy symbol. Farlorn’s rapier hissed free of its scabbard.
The doorway was filled by the bulk of a bugbear. It opened its mouth in a terrible fanged smile and stretched forth black-nailed hands.
As was customary, Zaranda Star came next-to-last to supper. The good father arrived first in the great hall, with fire laid but not lit in a hearth three heroes could stand abreast and upright in. As a servant of Ilmater, it behooved Pelletyr to be punctual—and it was, well, supper. Next came Vander Stillhawk. The dark, silent man had a ranger’s distaste for clocks and timetables and schedules, but he likewise had a knack of being at the proper place at the proper time.
At the very stroke of the eighth hour after noon came Zaranda, who despised tardiness. Having indulged a favorite vice by soaking her long limbs in a hot tub for an hour, she had arrayed herself in a gown of soft velvet a shade or two lighter than indigo. It clung to her slender form like moss to a forest oak. Around her hips she wore a girdle of three golden chains, caught together in clasps front and back and at the hips. Her hair hung free to her shoulders in back. The light of candles in the chandelier above the great dining table evoked witchfire in her gray eyes.
Father Pelletyr smiled and nodded. As a priest of the Cormyrean Synod, he was celibate, an obligation he took as seriously as his vows of poverty and abjuration of the shedding of blood. But he was a goodly man by nature, and polite.
“It is good to see you allowing the feminine part of you to come to the fore, Zaranda Star,” he said.
Stillhawk, who stood brooding by the dark fireplace, greeted his employer and comrade-in-arms with a nod, which she returned.
She smiled at the priest. “Thank you, Father. It’s an indulgence I enjoy as well, although I have little opportunity for it on the road.”
She walked to the chair at the table’s head. The priest’s face fell as he noticed the dagger—with jeweled hilt but eminently businesslike blade—that she wore in a gilded sheath at her girdle.
“Ah, but can’t you lay aside the implements of war, even for a moment, e
ven in the shelter of your home?” he asked sadly.
“Such implements won me this house, Father,” she replied, “and guard it still—as well as my guests within.”
“When you have traveled a bit farther with Zaranda Star, Father,” a voice said from the doorway, “you’ll realize she seldom strays far from her lethal toys.”
They turned. Farlorn had arrived, fashionably late, dressed in silken hose and velvet doublet with puffed-and-slashed sleeves, all in shades of dark green, as was his wont. He was a figure of striking elegance, with his hair hanging in ringlets to his shoulders and his yarting slung over his back. He walked to the foot of the table, unslung his yarting and rested it against the table, then flung himself into a chair.
“The battle-axes crossed beneath the ancient shield on the wall, the boar-spear over the fireplace … I’ve not guested in our hostess’s hold before, yet I can assure you, none of these is purely for show, Father.”
Pelletyr shook his bald head sadly. Zaranda smiled a slight smile and gestured. Flames roared suddenly to life in the fireplace. The father jumped, then looked sheepish.
“The beasts are tended, the men fed,” Zaranda said. “Shall we be seated, gentlemen?”
They sat. The door to the kitchens opened. The bugbear bustled in, wearing a leathern apron and carrying a tray laden with silver bowls and a great tureen of steaming soup. Father Pelletyr’s eyes bugged slightly, and Farlorn stiffened, one fine hand straying to the ball pommel of the dirk he wore at his own hip. Stillhawk showed no sign of reaction to the huge creature’s apparition.
“I swear, Zaranda, those men of yours eat like a herd of dragons,” the bugbear rumbled as he set the tureen down in the middle of the table and began to distribute bowls. “That’s the reason soup is late, in spite of all my efforts.”
“I don’t believe dragons come in herds, Gisbertus,” she said with a smile as he began to ladle out portions. “And you’re my chamberlain and chief steward. Don’t we have under-servants so that you need not serve us with your own hands?”
