Two friends who saw priesthoods as their roads out of Espar. Even if they never dared adventure, there were shrines and temples to Lathander and Tymora in cities and towns all across Faerûn, and holy service could take them far from quiet Espar.
As could the sword. That glorious blade Islif had waved under their noses today … the blue sheen of the steel, the longsword so heavy, solid, and deadly sharp as it flashed so close to her face, the sword that could do more to foes with one swing of Islif’s brawny arms and shoulders than all her own halting cantrips and scraps of spells, with a day to fuss and prepare and hurl them in.
Yet every trudging Purple Dragon had a sword, and most every grown man in Espar, too. Battered old blades, most of them, dark and marred from use, probably most often used to hack vermin, slash stubborn knots, or poke fallen food out of the fire before the flames made it entirely ash, if truth be told.
Yet Islif’s sword was different.
It was a glittering thing, sleek and made to deal death, with nothing “everyday” about it. Just like Islif.
Islif was more man than lass, with her broad shoulders and rippling muscles, her eyes icy gray, her brows dark, and herself always alert. Close-mouthed, strong enough to hurl men back or trade blows with them and stand tall as the victor, breaking jaws and showing fear to no man. Slow to anger, genuinely amused by most insults, and more like a striding sword-commander than any Purple Dragon Jhess had yet seen; when cottages caught fire or the winter wolves came raiding, Islif snapped orders at men twice her age, and was obeyed.
Jhess was a little afraid of her, and had admired her hunting skills and the way she stood up to men for years. Those large, raw hands could whittle a knob of wood with surprising grace, too, using a belt knife as deftly as any man shaving his jowls for a wedding, to make a tiny bear, or boar, or deer with its head raised. And then, silently, Islif would toss it away, or find a child’s hand to drop it into. If Cormyr ever needed a warrior-queen, it had Islif Lurelake.
Yet taller than Islif, and far grander of voice, manner, and looks—yet free of the superior pride that such god-gifts usually awakened in men who owned them—stood the best among them all, Florin Falconhand.
Florin could be a king, if Cormyr ever needed one of those.
Jhessail sighed, opening her eyes to gaze at the moon again.
She saw its glow, but somehow that glow was around Florin’s square-jawed, handsome face. Blue-gray eyes, quiet yet forceful, curly brown hair and shoulders as broad and as muscled as Islif’s. Kind, dignified, never saying anything remotely as rude or jovial as Semoor at his usual.
Not that he talked much. “Silent,” they called him in Espar, and there were farmers who scarce knew the rest of them existed, yet respected “Young Silent” as a man among men, a bright hope for the years ahead, a man who’d lead and give wise counsel and end up an elder, a rock to stand against the storms.
Jhess sighed again, rolling over to clutch her coverlet against herself. She was a little in love with Florin, she thought, and a lot in awe of him. Tall, handsome—and there was something about his looks, his keen glances, that drew the eye.
The eyes of every lass, more like. She’d seen them watching him, just as she watched him. Florin came into her mind whenever she heard minstrels singing of heroes. Quiet of manner, never a swaggerer, but firm. And kind. And understanding. And probably not for her, ever, no matter how deeply she might long for it.
But did she? It was enough to call him true friend. Yes. No woman can ever have enough true friends.
She could see him now, standing in the Stronghold, saying firmly, “We must do what is right—and be very sure as to what ‘right’ is.” It was one of his favorite sayings. Purple Dragons must revere the king as she—as they all—revered Florin. A man you’d follow to your doom, knowing it, because he’d ordered it, and you wanted his respect more than anything else.
Jhessail looked at the moon again, Florin’s face suddenly gone, and asked it in a whisper, “And what will happen, if the king—if Florin—ever comes to know what power they hold over us? And ask us to follow? What then?”
In answer, the moon stared unblinkingly back at her, as silent as always.
Chapter 4
IN FOREST DEEP, A LADY FAIR
In forest deep
A lady fair
Her secrets keep
Though wolves dare
To hunt her down
To have her life
To taste a crown
Nobles have a certain spice.
Anonymous
Nobles Have A Certain Spice
minstrels’ ballad, first popular in
The Year of Silent Steel
The world wafted back to her on woodsmoke. Sharp and thick, from a fire that was snapping a little … sloth of sleeping dragons, would she never find capable servants? Oh, but Khalandra was being unforgivably careless this morning! No bedchamber fire should ever snap like that, spitting sparks on what could be a priceless Athkatlan rug! Why, the room’d be ablaze in a breath or two, if—
Someone touched her feet, gently. The light, deft handling made pain stab through her, jolting the Lady Narantha Crownsilver rudely awake.
She blinked up at green leaves blazing emerald in bright morning sunlight, and a blue and cloudless sky above them, over her head. Where by all the watching gods—?
In a wild forest somewhere, it seemed, but how …?
A forest stream was chuckling softly past, somewhere beyond her pain-wracked feet, the smoke she’d smelled was wafting from a small fire yonder, mingled now with smells of cooking meat and fish, and—and one of the most handsome young men she’d ever seen was washing and bandaging her feet.
Her bare, scratched, and cut feet!
In a sudden rush the night came back to her: the fear, the horrible growls, her frantic flight into menacing darkness, crashings close behind her, being cruelly bound and carried, blindfolded as men lugged her like a sack, pawing her—she was unbound now, thank the Dragon!—and some sort of fight around her in the dark, between outlaws and the king’s men …
Outlaws would be cruel, murderous rapists, unshaven and filthy, hardly likely to wash anyone’s feet. Nor would they untie a captive.
So this man had probably rescued her, and must serve the king. Or did he?
He’d not looked up at her, though her sudden fast and hard breathing as she remembered it all must have told him she was awake. The Lady Narantha raised herself on one elbow, suddenly acutely aware that she was wearing only her crumpled and torn, once-splendid nightrobe, and a strange man was kneeling at her feet, where he could see more than enough of her!
Fear and fury surged in Narantha, and she wanted to kick him and shriek at him for being the lustful villain that he was … but he wasn’t done binding her feet yet, and … gods, yes, her back was aching. Oooh. Worse, she was beginning to feel bruises and stiffnesses all over herself. Gods above, she probably couldn’t even stand without his help.
Narantha clenched her fists until she felt the sharp twinges of her own nails digging into her palms, and choked down the furious words she’d been about to spit. She needed this peasant, whoever he was, just to find her way back to a road and some Purple Dragons to escort her to Lord Hezom—that thrice-cursed, stinking backwoods lowlife that Father had for some insane reason decided she needed to be tutored by! Why, the only tutoring she’d allow—
A particularly strong stab of pain brought her attention back to the here and now. Wincing, Narantha looked around.
She was lying on a fern-cloaked sandbar beside a forest stream. A snared—she sniffed; yes, rabbit and two river brownfin; those were smells she knew—were roasting on arched-over saplings, tied just above a small fire that had been lit on a bare rock.
Beside the fire lay the largest leaf she’d ever seen, heaped with fresh-picked buds of some sort that small brown birds were swooping and darting at. The man at her feet was shooing them away with long sweeps of one brown-tanned hand, without
seeming to even look their way. A long white scar cut across the palm of that hand.
He wore dusty, dirt-smeared leather armor—foresters’ garb—yet looked like a king. Not like a blood-son of King Azoun, Narantha told herself hastily. Rather, he had the same quietly commanding manner and air of alert intelligence as Duke Bhereu or Baron Thomdor … or the king himself.
Then he looked up at her, this dirt-smudged stranger, and Narantha was lost.
Fearless yet friendly blue-gray eyes gazed at her out of a square-jawed, quietly regal face—that split suddenly with a warm, welcoming, kindly smile.
A smile, somehow, that she wanted to earn again and again. Her heart started to beat faster.
“Well met, Lady Fair,” he said quietly. “I am Florin Falconhand, son of Hethcanter and Imsra of that name, of Espar.”
He looked aside, and made a swift lunge that sent a bird whirring away with a bud falling from its beak. Deftly he caught the little green orb out of the air, and put it back on the leaf. “Forgive me,” he added, “but the wood-riskins are intent upon stealing our morningfeast.”
“Where’s Delbossan?” she blurted. “And where am I?”
Florin looked back at her and spread his hands. “As to your first, I know not, though if you mean the Master Delbossan who is Horsemaster to Hezom, Lord of Espar, I know him. As well as any Esparran does; Espar is not so large a place. A good man. As to your second: here. In the forest. The King’s Forest, to tell larger truth, hard by the stream called the Dathyl.”
“Wherever that is,” she snorted. “The King’s Forest covers half the kingdom!”
“So it does,” he agreed with a smile, reaching out one hand as swift as a striking snake to grasp a diving riskin, turn, and throw it out over the stream. The bird chirped shrilly, obviously astonished to find itself no longer racing at a tempting heap of buds, but headed in quite a different direction.
Florin gave it a bright chirp in return, and it answered him, sounding almost rueful, as it vanished across the Dathyl into a dark stand of trees.
Narantha stared at him. Could he speak with birds? Or was he crazed-headed, and—
Then this Esparran forester brought the same hand that had just caught a bird—the same unwashed hand—down on her own ankle. “You’re fair cut up, and no doubting,” he said, and shifted aside on his haunches, as graceful as any dancer, to reach behind himself and pluck something from a pack.
“ ’Tis unwise,” he added gently, “to go out into the forest—into any woods—without good boots on your feet, Lady. Yet fair fortune is with you this day: I never travel without a spare pair.”
He was gently pulling boots on over her bandaged feet: great horrible heavy man’s boots, made for feet half again larger than hers. His feet, of course. And what was he doing now?
Stuffing … yes, stuffing more bandages into the boots! Wadded roll after none-too-clean-looking roll, into the open, gaping tops of the boots, thrusting them firmly down around her feet (fresh pain). Whereupon he started bending her feet with his hands—
“Owww!”
—twisting them around, his fingers sliding past her aches and bandages like deft talons, shoving wadded cloth here, and there, and everywhere around her ankles and calves—
“What’re you doing?”
“Pray pardon, Lady, but the boots are too large for your feet. They must be packed tight so you don’t wobble as you walk, or they’ll rub you raw and you’ll probably very swiftly step right out of them, or turn an ankle and fall.”
The forester shoved a last rolled-up bandage in, thrust it down with two firm fingers, and sat back, satisfied. She need never know that boots, pack, and bandages had all come from the foresters’ cache. Not that there was much worry, that oh-so-high-and-mighty Lady Narantha Crownsilver would know anything at all about foresters’ caches—to say nothing of foresters. Still, even if she’d already deemed him a faceless servant, that was no call for him to give her rudeness. “I must warn you further, Lady. Don’t keep walking if your feet begin to hurt in one place repeatedly. We’ll be stopping betimes; I’ll have to wash and dress them often.”
The Lady Narantha’s eyes blazed. “You expect me to walk? With my feet all cut up?”
Florin shrugged. “You must,” he told her quietly. “Once the wolves and owlbears catch your scent, they’ll follow you. If you can’t keep ahead of them, they’ll eat you. Slowly, if it’s an owlbear that catches you. They like cruel sport with their food.”
“What?” Narantha shrieked, in a decidedly unladylike scream that must have been heard by owlbears in the most distant reaches of the kingdom. “Get me out of here! I am a Crownsilver, man—a Crownsilver! Oldest and highest of all noble families in Cormyr! Get me out of here at once! I command you, in the name of the king, whose Decree of Rights Noble obligates you to the very cost of your life: Take me forthwith back to Suzail! I desire to be out of this horrible wilderness without delay!”
The forester rose, as liquid-graceful as any sword-dancer Narantha had ever seen at any family revel, and stood tall and broad-shouldered above her. Frowning.
“I’ve never been to Suzail,” he murmured, telling her plain truth—and then turned to look across the Dathyl in case his face betrayed his great falsehood as he added, “I know not the way.”
Even a child would know that if he could find the road—that lay everywhere in that direction—he couldn’t fail to reach Suzail along it. The royal roads were not so winding as all that. South through Waymoot to Suzail, following clear and well-maintained signposts all the way.
Even a child, aye … but a young noble lass?
Aye, she wasn’t snarling disbelieving curses at him for being a liar, now. She was staring at him in dismay.
“I can and will get you to Espar,” he told her solemnly, “but—”
“Villain! Sneaking, lying whoreson of an outlaw! Dung-faced peasant! Disloyal, impudent dog of a thieving, maiden-ravishing dolt! How dare—”
“But it will take a few days,” Florin continued, raising his voice effortlessly to override hers without shouting in the slightest, “because we’re way out in the wilderness, out where the big beasts roam.”
Another great lie … but the Lady Narantha was staring at him in fresh despair, aghast.
“A few days?” she echoed, disbelievingly—and then found her feet in a hobbling rush and started to hit him, slapping and pummeling his unyielding chest wildly with her small, pale fists. “Incompetent! Ignoramus! Wretched, slug-ignorant stonehead of a lazy, useless fool of a servant! Whoring, cheating, horsefaced (gasp) good-for-nothing—”
Ignoring her rain of blows, Florin shrugged and calmly turned away to lace up his pack, paying no heed when she belabored his backside, nor even when she kicked him hard up between the legs from behind, jarring her toes on what had to be a hard metal codpiece.
Straightening and swinging the pack onto his shoulder with a hummed tune, for all the world as if she weren’t there at all, the tall forester strode away along the bank of the stream, his legs long and his gait eerily quiet.
“Where d’you think you’re going? Come back here! Come back, I say, you worthless—”
The silent lout strode on, and with a snarl of outraged exasperation Narantha started after him in a wobble-booted rush, launching herself into a stumbling, splay-footed trot that carried her over one dead tree, caught and scraped her damp-gowned leg painfully on another, and hurled her through a thorny and thankfully dead and crackling-dry bush into a hard nose-first meeting with the ground.
The very muddy, reeking ground, all roots and hurriedly slithering leaf-worms and—
“Come back!” she cried, suddenly terrified of being left alone in this vast forest, lost and … and hunted …
“Please!” she sobbed. “You—man! Forester!” Frantically she fought to recall his name, and in tears shrieked, “Florin, I beg of you! A rescue! Succor! Aid!”
Weeping openly as she struggled up to her knees, blinded by tears and truly m
iserable in her helplessness, the Lady Narantha Crownsilver did not hear her departing rescuer half-smile and murmur very quietly, “What? All of those? Do I look like an army? Lazy, good-for-nothing peasant whoreson that I am?”
“Please come back,” she pleaded, choking on her tears. “Good Florin, please!”
Good Florin grinned, took another long step as he carefully wiped away his mirth and assumed a stern look instead—and whirled around and stalked back the way he’d come.
Gods, he hoped he’d be able to keep this act up until he got her back to Delbossan. This was an adventure, all right, but …
His face was calm and his expression gravely unreadable as he walked right past her, back to the sandbar. “By the Queen of the Forest, where are my wits? I was so appalled at your lowborn rudeness that I almost forgot morningfeast.”
Wallowing on her knees with fresh rage rising inside her, Narantha Crownsilver stared at the forester, dumbfounded. My … lowborn rudeness?
Lowborn?
Rudeness?
“All praise Mielikki, they’ve not yet started to burn,” Florin said, plucking the sizzling fish away from the fire.
Narantha went on staring at him, open-mouthed. How dare he—
Was that really how she seemed to him?
Florin turned. “Lady,” he said pleasantly, holding out a great green leaf with a slab of brownfin steaming on it, “morningfeast is served.”
Narantha found her mouth suddenly flooded and aching. So hungry was she, really smelling the fish now, that she came crawling mutely back to him, almost clawing aside branches in her haste.
“Don’t eat the leaf,” Florin told her, “but use it as a platter, to keep the hot juices from scalding you or staining your gown. Hold its edge up—so—and nothing will run out. ’Tis safe to lap and lick at the leaf, to get all the juice. Eat merrily; there’re no fishbones left.”
Fearing being burnt, Narantha nipped tentatively at one end of the fillet. Ye gods, ’twas good! Overly hot, yes, and she found herself gobbling to keep her lips from searing, but … ahh, wonderful.
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