War in Tethyr

by Victor Milán

  She seized the heavy artifact up under one arm, threw open its ironbound chest, and dropped it in.

  “Wait!” the head exclaimed. “I can reveal secrets to you such as you cannot rrmmmpph!”

  What she could not do with the secrets was lost in a muffle as Zaranda dropped a wadded blanket over the head’s mouth. She slammed the lid shut and triple locked it. Then she went to bed.

  “But I don’t want to be served,” Zaranda said for what seemed the ten dozenth time.

  The orc—orog, in truth—trotted along beside Goldie on his bandy legs, apparently tireless despite the heat and the weight of his armor. Horses raised by men or elves had to be specially trained to abide an orcish rider, even a very clean one. Not surprisingly none such had been available. Fortunately the plodding of the heavy-laden pack mules kept the pace down.

  “I must serve someone,” said Shield, also for about the ten dozenth time. “You were sent to me. It is the will of Torm.”

  Zaranda sighed. No less than Father Pelletyr, she had trouble believing he was really a paladin. Yet she was at least convinced that if there were deceit to his claims, it was a deceit he practiced on himself

  Zaranda Star had little knowledge of paladins or paladinry. Though she had always fought for what she thought was right, the paladin life-path had never appealed to her. Shield did display certain characteristics of the breed. He was uncommon strong, being able to tie tenpenny nails in effortless knots with those black-taloned fingers, and he radiated a quiet force of personality that his ceaseless deferring to her did little to mask. He must have been a formidable war leader indeed among the orcs. Unless of course that gift was the result of whatever revelation had changed his life.

  He wasn’t very bright, as Farlorn had demonstrated the night before, which meant that debates such as this one were exemplars of futility, inasmuch as they always ended with his retreating behind a stout palisade of “It is the will of Torm” and refusing to budge.

  So who’s the simple one, Zaranda? a voice asked inside her mind. She sighed.

  They crested a rise and there before them, still blue with distance, the spires of Zazesspur floated in a pool of haze.

  “It’s beautiful!” exclaimed Father Pelletyr, who had never been to Tethyr before.

  Even Zaranda felt her breath catch in her throat.

  Shield stopped and stood with legs wide, seeming braced, gazing at the city. Then he nodded. “My destiny awaits there,” he announced. “I shall die in that city. Torm has told me this.” He seemed to derive satisfaction from his certainty.

  “And dare we hope,” Farlorn whispered, his breath tickling Zaranda’s ear, “that it will befall sooner rather than later?”

  Golden Dawn whipped her head around and snapped at the bard’s thigh. His mount caught the motion and shied away. “Back that little trollop away from me,” Goldie snarled, “or I’ll bite a chunk from her rump, you pimp.”

  Farlorn laughed as if in delight.

  “Goldie!” Zaranda said reprovingly, but she was too angry with the half-elf to put much weight behind it.

  What’s happening to us? she wondered. Is there really something dreadful in the city, drawing us in? She shuddered but kept on riding toward the far-off towers.

  A couple miles from the walls, Zaranda ordered the caravan off the main road one final time. That provoked the usual whining from Father Pelletyr, as well as an unusually vehement outburst from Eogast, who tore at his beard, stamped his feet upon the ground, and swore fearsome throat-tearing dwarven oaths that he had never in all his centuries known of so much pointless lollygagging.

  “The less used the entry,” she explained patiently during a breath break in his tantrum, “the less we’ll have to pay in bribes to gate guards and bureaucrats—and the larger the shares when we pay off.”

  As expected, an appeal to avarice soothed Eogast’s dwarven heart and stilled his outcries. Nonetheless, his outburst had held more than the usual edge. Leading the caravan down a brushy defile toward a breach she knew of by the old Dung Gate, she wondered if he shared her growing misgivings about their imminent arrival in the city.

  Stillhawk rode knee-to-knee with her. They were under the loom of tall buildings and the wall, which was here twenty feet high. The ranger kept casting apprehensive glances up at the masonry pinnacles.

  I don’t like this, he signed to her.

  “I understand,” she said. “We’re a long way from your native woods.” Stillhawk was never comfortable in or even near a city. Surrounded by walls of wood, brick, or dressed stone, he always felt as if he were caged, even if he were walking in a broad open plaza. He tolerated exposure to cities from his long comradeship with Zaranda. She in her turn tried not to drag him into them any more than necessary.

  She might indeed have left him outside the walls while she took the caravan within and tended to business. That was their usual operating practice; he could certainly shift for himself, even in strange countryside, and he trusted her for his share of the payout. Not that he cared overmuch for such things.

  Zaranda was not entirely sure why he stayed with her as her comrade-in-arms and, technically, her employee. He had a restless craving for action, and knew that where Zaranda went, action tended to follow. Her escapades provided ample opportunity to loose arrows and swing his sword against those beings that worked evil in the world. In a way, she sensed, his association with her tempered those cravings; had he not accompanied her, he probably would have devoted his life to a grim and bloody-handed quest for vengeance, exacting installments on a blood debt that could never be repaid. Stillhawk had enough wisdom to foresee the loss of his humanity caused by such obsession, to see that he would, in time, become one of the monsters he lived to slay.

  Or so it seemed to her. Stillhawk was a man not much given to talking about himself.

  It’s not that, he signed. My heart is bad about this city, now. There is great evil here.

  Which is why I want you beside me, she signed. I’m sorry to drag you between walls of stone, old friend.

  She caught herself then, just on the verge of suggesting he stay outside anyway—which would be a slap in the face to his ranger pride. I’m beginning to feel the loss of sleep, she thought. It’s starting to affect my judgment.

  She wondered if Stillhawk’s sleep was troubled, too. If he had had a dream he regarded as a vision, he would likely have told her. But if his dreams were like the ones that afflicted her, they were vague and formless, whispering darkness and dread—nothing clear-cut.

  Zaranda thought of asking whether he was having nightmares or was simply edgy at the prospect of entering a city. She refrained. Vague as the dreams were, there was something personal about them, something obscene, so that in a way she could not define, she was ashamed to talk about hers, and reluctant to pry into his.

  For a time she had wondered if the brazen head were somehow responsible, and whether she ought to cast the thing in a millpond. But no, if the head had the power to invade her mind with suggestive visions, she suspected they would be explicit rather than vague.

  She looked around. Was Father Pelletyr yawning more than usual beneath his parasol? And the men: Eogast muttering darkly into his beard—nothing unusual about that—Balmeric with bags under his eyes so heavy he looked as if he’d already received his payout and drunk it all away. The guardsmen and drovers looked cagey.… Had they been dreaming too?

  Shield of Innocence strode tirelessly at Zaranda’s other hand, head high within its concealing cowl. He had expressed his own expectations clearly enough when he first caught sight of Zazesspur. His carriage suggested nothing of apprehension, as though he already accepted his fate, whatever it was.

  Alone in their cavalcade, Farlorn rode with head and eyes clear. Seeing Zaranda swivel her head, he kneed his mare and interposed her between Stillhawk’s bay and Golden Dawn, ignoring the warning way Goldie flattened her ears.

  “Why so somber, Zaranda Star?” he asked with a laugh. “Let me li
ft your spirits on wings of song.”

  She gave her head an almost convulsive shake. Normally she would welcome such an offer; clearly, hers was not a happy caravan right now, and the bard’s songs did wonders for morale.

  “Let it go,” she said. She looked at him sidelong. “How have you been sleeping?”

  “Never better. Desolate though this land is, it has a charm that soothes me. It’s a far cry from my native woods, but after all, ’twas I who chose to forsake them.”

  “ ‘Desolate,’ ” Zaranda echoed. Despite herself, she uttered a brief laugh. She had been thinking how green the coastal plains looked, after the interior.

  Then she shivered. For all the cloudless day and heat, she felt a chill. Farlorn’s senses are usually as keen as a hunting cat’s, she thought. How can he fail to feel the menace? For all that he was able to pass effortlessly in human society, the bard had much of his mother’s folk in him—and sometimes reminded Zaranda just how alien the elves really were.

  The arroyo ran close to the foot of the ill-maintained wall. The caravan came to a section of bank conveniently collapsed near the gap Zaranda was making for. She sent Stillhawk and four of the more alert crossbowmen to make sure the entryway was clear and secure. Meanwhile she hung to the side with Father Pelletyr, who fanned himself beneath his parasol and discreetly watched Eogast chivy the heavy-laden beasts up the slumped bank. Though dwarves were not usually noted for their communion with animals, the art of mule-driving had been raised to a high degree in their mining operations; the chief drover’s touch was sure, and when he wasn’t being peevish he was amply supplied with the patience of his long-lived race.

  The affair went smoothly, though Zaranda’s heart skipped when the mule carrying the locked chest in which the head reposed slipped on the loose dun soil. She thought to hear a muffled curse and looked nervously around. None of the guards or muleteers gave any sign of having noticed anything out of the ordinary. Of course, it was well enough known that trickish things were likely to happen around Zaranda Star, so perhaps they heard it and thought nothing of it.

  “Easy, Randi,” Goldie muttered under cover of a lip-smacking sigh. “If you grip me any tighter, your knees will leave dents in my flanks.”

  “You’re right,” Zaranda said. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to force her tension out with it. She relaxed her legs and steered the mare up a slope littered with loose gray plates of shale to the breach in the city walls.

  Eogast stood spraddle-legged just inside the hole, overseeing the mules as they came through one at a time. Though there was ample room to pass four mules abreast without rubbing flanks, he gave Zaranda a red-eyed glare as she walked Goldie through. She ignored him.

  Inside the city wall she stopped and gazed about. The sun had passed the zenith, and already the block was shaded. The street was much as she remembered it. It was perhaps thirty feet broad, with greasy-looking puddles where Zazesspurians had swiped cobblestones for their own purposes. The buildings were of several stories each, displaying close-fit stonework, elaborate ornamentation around doors and windows and along rooflines, and other signs of elegance.

  It was the elegance of a corpse lying in state in some wealthy tomb. The facades of certain buildings had slumped to the street, leaving the long-gutted chambers behind exposed and looking uncannily like the eye sockets of skulls. Cornices and friezes had flaked off to lie in sad piles of rubble chips along the bases of intact walls. A stone rooftop gargoyle crazy-canted on its back favored Zaranda with a cynical wink from the nearby gutter.

  “An uncanny sort of place,” Father Pelletyr said as he rode up on his little ass. An eerie moan rang down the street. He jumped and made the crossed-hands sign of Ilmater to ward off evil.

  “Why so nervous, Father?” asked Farlorn, riding by in apparent high spirits. “ ’Tis merely Sister Wind, blowing across a cavity in the masonry.”

  “What sort of person dwells here?” the priest asked.

  “None,” said Zaranda. “This was a wealthy residential district long ago, during an age when folk felt small need to dwell behind high walls topped with iron spikes or broken glass. When times became less orderly, it was the Street of the Seamstresses, and so it’s called to this day.”

  “The only seamstresses I can envision at work here,” the cleric said, “are the Norns who in legend spin, measure, and cut the fabric that is our destiny.”

  Zaranda laughed, alleviating a few nerves of her own. “The seamstresses left, too—at least the ones actually concerned with working cloth.” The priest gave her a quizzical look. “Most recently the fine structures were houses of pleasure—not the finest of establishments, you understand, but of reasonable quality and great pretension.”

  “Ahh!” breathed the priest, as solemn and great-eyed as a child. “Thus the name Zazesspur the Wicked!”

  “Well, Father, no. As with the term ‘Empire of the Sands’ for Tethyr, it’s a misnomer, although I suspect one concocted deliberately by the city fathers to pump up the tourist trade from the north. Actually Zaz isn’t unduly wicked as port cities go, though I grant you that leaves considerable latitude. This isn’t Calimshan, after all; with slavery not tolerated here for generations, you’d be hard-pressed to find sin here that wasn’t equally common in, say, Waterdeep.”

  The priest’s face fell so far that Zaranda felt guilty for disillusioning him. “But is not prostitution legal here?”

  “Indeed, and as a consequence it’s a less rough and sordid business. Those who would patronize such establishments regardless can do so without consorting with the criminal element—or feeding it, either. Which is not to say it’s respectable, Father; to this day, joy-girls and -boys are called notch-tooth, in honor of the days when they plied their trade in the old Thread-Biters’ Lane.”

  The cleric brightened slightly—here at last was a lurid detail to relish. Zaranda shook her head and reflected that celibacy was a terrible thing—something she knew all too well of late.

  With another round of extravagant dwarven oaths, Eogast chivied the last of the burden beasts safely through the breach in the wall. He strode forward, browbeating mules and men into line. In a chaotic city such as Zazesspur, moving in good order became essential.

  “Why was the district abandoned then?” the priest asked.

  “A water main burst, cutting off supply to the district. This was back during the Troubles, the rioting that followed the murder of the royal family. Folk had little energy to tend to such details then, so the joy-houses moved out. Now the neighborhood’s given over to rats.” She glanced around at the doorways. “Not infrequently of the two-legged variety.”

  Goldie had her head up and was swiveling her impressive ears from side to side. “Ah, Zaranda,” she said. “Speaking of those two-legged rats …”

  At once there were uniformed men all around. They materialized in doorways, in the blind-eye windows of derelict buildings, along rooflines. A party suddenly emerged to block the road while a second group stole from the rubble to prevent escape through the hole in the city wall. The ones on street level bore halberds with bronzed heads, while those above leveled cocked crossbows at the startled muleteers and their escorts. All wore gorgeous puffed royal-blue sleeves, blue pantaloons, bronze cuirasses, and morions of the Zazesspurian civic guard.

  From the phalanx of halberdiers blocking the end of the street stepped a tall man in bronzed greaves, a scarlet egret plume nodding over his morion. He had a long face with a scar that ran from his right brow to the line of his jaw, crossing a dead, staring eye. The other eye was the near-colorless pale blue of northern sky.

  “You are Zaranda Star, who styles herself Countess Morninggold?” he demanded in a harsh voice. One gloved hand rested on a rapier’s swept hilt.

  Zaranda urged Goldie forward to meet him. She was aware of Stillhawk riding at her elbow. She could feel the heat of his embarrassment at allowing the caravan to be taken so by surprise.

  Rest easy, my friend, she signed to
him. Don’t blame yourself. You’re out of your element here.

  From the clot of halberdiers came alarmed cries, and the bronzed axe blades wavered as their bearers tried to make signs against evil while keeping grasp on the weapons.

  “Desist from this magic hand-waving!” the officer rapped. “We know of you. Gesture more, and my men will pierce you like Waterdhavian cheese!”

  Stillhawk growled deep in his throat.

  “No magic,” his employer said quietly. “I am Zaranda Star. Why do you block my way?”

  “I am Cangaro, captain of the guard,” the officer said, unrolling a parchment scroll. “In the name of the city council, I hereby impound this caravan and all the goods it carries!”

  It had not been a day to improve her composure. The scar-faced guard officer’s parchment declared that the caravan was being seized for unlicensed importation of magic artifacts into Zazesspur in violation of city council edict. Nothing she could say would dissuade him from executing it—and his troop of bravos had the drop on her own tiny guard force. Not that she would have fought, since she was trying to do business in an honest and aboveboard way.

  The rest of the day gave her leisure to repent that choice. It had been spent in fruitless wrangling with officials in the slab-sided Palace of Governance in the city’s middle, so new it was still under construction. There had been the usual block-faced indifference of officialdom: No, you’ll have to wait for things to take their course, like anyone. No, I can’t help you. There had also been the usual half-clever solicitations for bribes, with the odd sniggering suggestion—accompanied by a free wandering of the eye over Zaranda’s wiry but very feminine form—that they need not be paid in gold.

  Accustomed to dealing with bureaucrats across Faerûn, Zaranda had paid such squeeze as she thought would prove useful—in gold on the desktop. The bulk of her resources, not to mention her hopes of keeping her home, were of course locked up somewhere in the city coffers by now, but she retained her private stash of coin, choice gems, and jewelry that she carried on her person and in Goldie’s panniers for emergencies. Even after paying off the muleteers and escorts, she wasn’t destitute. Yet.