Azure Bonds

by Kate Novak

  Why did they choose clubs to attack? she wondered. Did they want to make my death look like an amateur job? She shook out the sack Dragonbait had cut from the mage. The standard assortment of magical spell-trappings skittered across the wooden desktop—moldy spiderwebs, bits of eyelashes trapped in amber, and dead insects. The only difference, she thought, between a magic-user’s pockets and those of a small boy’s is that there is less week-old candy in the mage’s pockets. After brushing away the debris, Alias found a few coins and a gold ring set with a blue stone.

  Something remained stuck in the sack. She shook the bag harder. A talis card fell out onto the desktop, face-down. It bore an insignia of a laughing sun on its back.

  Alias pocketed the coins and ring for later inspection and flipped the card over. She drew a sharp breath that caused Dragonbait to start in his sleep.

  The card was the Primary of Flames, here represented by a dagger trapped in entwining fire. The card’s pattern was twin to the uppermost symbol of Alias’s tattoo. Alias felt a twinge from her arm as she compared the two.

  She picked up the card and squinted at it. It was homemade. Though the laughing sun was made by an embossing stamp, the rest of the workmanship was pretty shabby. Were the other symbols on my arm from other parts of the deck this card came from? she pondered.

  At least that explained the assassins’ actions. Alias recalled how clumsily they’d wielded the clubs, as though they were swords. They were unused to the more primitive weapon, but were forced to wield it so as not to harm her accidentally with an edged weapon. They wanted to capture me alive, she concluded. That’s why they passed on the poison, too. They must have been keeping the peranox in reserve for anyone who got in their way.

  Like a five-foot lizard maybe?

  She rose from her seat and, stepping over the soundly snoozing Dragonbait, closed and secured the windows. Windows were open when I woke up this morn—evening. They could have got me then but didn’t. Maybe they didn’t know where I was until they spotted me on the street. Someone must have left me here to keep me safe. But who?

  She fished the ring from her pocket, twisted it, and said quietly, “I wish you’d tell me what in Tartarus is going on,” but no djinn issued from the ring to enlighten her, nor did Dragonbait break his rhythmic breathing, sit up, and explain all the mysteries troubling her. Frowning, she tucked the ring back into her pocket.

  She lay down on her bed and stared at the ceiling, fingers laced behind her head.

  * * * * *

  She was not aware she had fallen asleep until a bell from some temple signaled noon. She opened her eyes to see Dragonbait standing at her bedside with breakfast on a pewter tray—bread and slices of spring fruit with cream.

  Alias planned her next move while they shared the meal.

  “I could rent a horse and ride out to the sage’s home in half a day. Save a lot of time,” she said to Dragonbait. Even if he didn’t understand her, it helped her put her thoughts in order to say them aloud. “But if I purchase a horse and ride it out through the town gate, I might as well hire a loudmouthed herald to announce my departure. Besides, we have to conserve our meager funds. Sages aren’t cheap. And I don’t even know if you can ride.”

  Dragonbait watched her while she spoke exactly as if he understood her.

  “And I don’t want to leave you behind, do I?”

  The lizard stretched his neck forward and tilted his head as though he were confused.

  The swordswoman sniffed and laughed. Dragonbait returned to licking the cream out of his bowl.

  No, I definitely want to keep him around, she thought. He feels familiar—as though I’ve traveled with him before. Maybe he was on the sea trip with me. If I lose track of him, he might fade from my memory, too. Besides, I owe him for saving my life last night. Taking him into my service is the least I can do.

  After sending the barkeep’s daughter out for a cloak to hide her companion’s “lizardness,” Alias pulled on her boots and rearmored herself. When his cloak arrived, Dragonbait sniffed at it and growled, but when it became clear Alias was not going to let the creature out of the inn in daylight he relented and, seeming every inch the paladin forced to drink with thieves, he slipped on the garment.

  The idea of a lizard with vanity amused Alias. She wondered if he was some magical creature, bred to act as combination jester/servant/bodyguard, like something out of a childhood tale. With a shudder, she was reminded of the story of the golem supposedly responsible for the spreading Anauroeh desert, a creature ordered to shovel sand into the region and then forgotten by the wizard who gave the order. Why is it I can recall stupid old stories when last ride, last month, much of last year is a blank? Angrily, she shoved the legendary images into the back of her mind.

  Their walk out of Suzail was pleasant and uneventful. Alias deliberately set out in the wrong direction and doubled back twice in case anyone had followed her from the inn. Dragonbait proved to be as tireless a hiker as she, and they reached their destination just before dusk.

  Dimswart Manor was a sizable farm, an estate just large enough to be considered a suitable “summer home” by a Waterdeep noble. A red-tiled roof set with three chimneys crowned the solid stonework walls of the main house. Alias scowled, knowing that a sage who lived so well would not sell his services cheap.

  Despite the gathering gloom, there was a great amount of activity around the house as she approached, as if the grounds were the site of some tremendous siege. Gardeners were trimming hedges and lawns and reorganizing flowerbeds. At the rear of the house, canvasmen were laying out the poles of a huge tent. Dwarvish stoneworkers were arguing heatedly with elvish landscapers over the correct placement of their creations of rock and wood, while a tired-looking gnome tried to mediate between them.

  In the midst of the chaos stood a tall, straight-shouldered woman with a sunburst of red hair. She hustled about from worker to worker, consulting with each from rolls of plans tucked under her arms. As Alias approached the house, she could hear the woman shouting for some elves to start hanging lanterns in the newly replanted trees.

  Alias pounded on the front door with the hilt of her dagger. She had to knock twice before a parlor maid, loaded down with tapestries, opened the door. “Sorry, but the mistress isn’t hiring any more entertainment people.”

  Alias shoved her boot in the door before the girl could close it. “I’ve come to see the sage—on personal business.”

  “The master’s very busy. Perhaps you could come—”

  Alias stepped into the hall and gripped the girl’s shoulder. She smacked Winefiddle’s letter of introduction down on top of the pile of tapestries the servant was carrying. “Give him this. It’s from the Temple of Tymora. Urgent.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the maid nodded, showing a little more courtesy. “Would you take a seat and wait right here, please? I’ll send someone to stable your pet.”

  Alias squeezed the girl’s shoulder firmly, and hissed with annoyance, “He’s not my pet.” Then she sat down on a bench against the wall. Dragonbait sat beside her.

  The servant blanched, nodded, and hurried away.

  While she waited, Alias scowled at the opulence of her surroundings: an estate full of servants; new, gold-threaded tapestries hung in the hall, undoubtedly replacing the older, less stylish ones carried off by the parlor maid; landscaping that required the services of four separate races; a wedding tent big enough to billet an army, and likely enough food and drink to feed them as well.

  No wonder sages aren’t cheap. Dimswart should be delighted to see me. How else is he going to help defray all these costs? Whatever happened to ancient, cranky, unmarried sages who preferred pursuing knowledge over wordly goods?

  To keep from fidgeting, she studied Dragonbait. He waited more patiently than she did. The lizard sat with his tail over his shoulder, flicking the tip back and forth in front of his face, following it with his eyes.

  What is he? she wondered with aggravation. Maybe the s
age can shed some light on his origins. Not likely, though. If I’ve never seen anything like him in all my travels, what chance is there that he’s in any of the sage’s books?

  Despite the obvious chaos of the household, a butler finally arrived to escort her to the sage’s study.

  If Alias had met Dimswart before her visit to Suzail, she might have ungenerously described his build as chunky. But compared to the innkeep of The Hidden Lady and Winefiddle, the sage appeared broad-shouldered but lean. He rose from his seat by the fire and clasped her extended hand in both his meaty paws.

  “Well met, well met,” he said, smiling like a halfling with an extra king in the deck. “Sit down here by the fire, and tell me what a humble book-banger can do for a warrioress.”

  Warrioress? Now there’s a title you don’t hear every day, Alias thought. It marked Dimswart as a very old-fashioned sort of sage. “It’s a little complicated,” Alias began.

  “We should start with the essentials,” Dimswart cut in. “If you will indulge me, I’d like to exercise my skill. Leah, our maid, told me I was to expect a sorceress and her familiar. But this creature—” he nodded toward Dragonbait—“is too large to be a familiar, and few sorcerers carry quite so much steel about their person.”

  “All I said to your maid,” Alias interjected, “was that Dragonbait wasn’t a pet.”

  “Quite,” Dimswart agreed, motioning for her to have a seat opposite him. “We are very reclusive out here in the country, though, and Leah, never having seen such a creature, leaped to the conclusion that if it wasn’t a pet, it must be a familiar, so you must be a sorceress. You are not. You’re a hired sword. From your lack of old scars, I’d say you were either a very new one or a very good one, and you have strange tastes in traveling companions.”

  Dragonbait cleared his nostrils in a noticeable hwumpf, as he stood by the fire, watching the sage.

  Dimswart continued. “You’re a native of … let’s see, brown hair with a tinge of red, hazel eyes, strong cheeks, good carriage … Westgate, I’d say, though from your fair complexion I’d guess it’s been a while since you’ve lived there.”

  Alias tried to interrupt, but the smiling sage pressed on.

  “Furthermore, you’re not some hot-blooded youth looking for information to lead you to riches beyond belief; you have a problem, personal and immediate. A serious problem, otherwise you would never have come to consult with an over-priced, over-educated land-grubber.”

  Alias spied Winefiddle’s letter of introduction lying on the table beside the sage with its seal still intact. “What method do you use, wire under the wax, or do you just hold the letter up to a strong light?”

  “You wound my fragile ego, lady. I swear to you I have not yet opened the good curate’s letter. I prefer to start afresh. That way nothing can prejudice my reasoning.”

  Alias shrugged, willing to take the sage at his word—for now, at least.

  Dimswart resumed. “You sit at ease, but you keep your right arm beneath a cloak. Hmmmm.”

  Alias waited for him to give up guessing and let her explain, but after a theatrical beat the man snapped his fingers, saying quickly, “You have a tattoo, or a series of tattoos, that resists all normal magical attempts to cure. They are on your right arm and … they are blue, aren’t they?”

  Alias’s brow knit in a puzzled furrow. Winefiddle had shown her the letter before he’d sealed it. There was nothing in it about the color of the tattoo. “How do you know that?” she asked with astonishment—certain he had some sort of trick, but completely unable to guess what it was.

  “Good artists never reveal their secrets.” Dimswart winked. “But maybe, if we hit it off, I’ll let you in on this little one. Now, how about giving me a look at that arm.”

  Alias, feeling like a much chewed bit of marrowbone, held out her arm in the firelight. The room was warm, and drops of perspiration beaded the skin over the symbols.

  “Hmmm,” was all Dimswart said for several moments, and he said it several times. He reached for a magnifying glassware and studied the symbols on her arm even more closely. Dragonbait positioned himself behind Alias’s chair and tried to see what the sage did. Dimswart raised his head so the lizard could peer once through the glass, watching bemused as Dragonbait pulled back, apparently astonished at the sight of human flesh in such detail.

  “A nice piece of work, that,” said Dimswart, snapping his magnifier into its case and leaning back in his chair. “The sigils aren’t composed of mere pinprick punctures in the flesh like an ordinary tattoo. Each one is made up of tiny runes and patterns packed close together. They appear to have great depth as well, and yet—” the sage kneaded her forearm gently, like a surgeon feeling for a broken bone “—there doesn’t seem to be any substance to them. They look as though they are buried beneath your skin. Your flesh above must be invisible, or we could not see the symbols. They also seem to move. All in all, a most fascinating series of illusions. Very artistic. And positively unique. I’d stake my reputation on it. Do they hurt?”

  “Not now, no. The tattoo ached some when detect magic spells were cast on it though, and it burned like the Nine Hells when Winefiddle cast a remove curse on it.”

  “How about when magic is cast on you in general? Like a curative spell?”

  Alias thought of the assassin’s magic missiles from the previous evening. Fat lot of good the signs did for her then. Why hadn’t it flashed into the eyes of her assailants when she really needed it to? “No effect, as far as I know.” She shrugged. “I’m really not in the mood to experiment on which spells do what,” she added.

  “I don’t doubt you’re not,” Dimswart replied sympathetically. “Who have you crossed recently? Any dark lords from deep within the pits of the Nine Hells? Steal any unholy artifacts? Break the hearts of any cavaliers whose older siblings dabble in the dark arts? No?”

  Dimswart sat back and pulled a pipe from inside his vest and began stuffing it with tobacco. He leaned toward the fire for a brand, but Dragonbait beat him to it, holding a flaming twig up to the pipe bowl as the sage puffed on the mouthpiece. The sage might have been waited on all his life by scaly servants, his reaction to the lizard was so casual.

  “You have him well trained,” Dimswart noted. “Where did you get him?”

  “We met at the seaside,” Alias answered.

  Dimswart lapsed into a thoughtful silence, forgetting to puff on his pipe, so that it went out. Finally he asked, “When did you notice this … condition?”

  “When I woke up last night.”

  “From a long sleep?”

  “Three days, I’m told,” Alias admitted. “Though I’ve slept nearly as long after overindulgences with ale. When I first woke, I thought I’d been drinking, but now I’m not so sure. I have a lot of missing memories, several months worth, and that’s unusual for me.”

  “No doubt, no doubt.” Dimswart pulled his pipe from his mouth and leaned toward her. “What’s the last thing you remember before you picked up this little token?”

  Alias sighed. “I don’t really know. I clearly remember leaving my company, the Adventurers of the Black Hawk, on good terms about a year ago. They were going south. I never liked the warm climes, so I took my share and left. Drifted. Light work, you know. Caravan guard, body guard, challenges in bars. When I woke up I had a vague memory of a recent sea voyage—but it’s all too hazy. I …” Alias halted for moment, trying to pull her memories out of the darkness. “I met Dragonbait last night, but I think I knew him from before.” She shook her head. “I just don’t remember.”

  “Does Dragonbait talk?” Dimswart asked.

  Alias shook her head. “What about these symbols? You called them signals?”

  “Sig-ils,” corrected the sage, spreading out the pronunciation. “Sigils are a higher kind of symbol. They’re like a signature symbolizing a greater power. Clerics use the ones belonging to their churches. Mages invent their own and protect them, sometimes quite jealously. They aren’t real
ly magical, but on a document they carry the authority of their owners, and on any other object they indicate uncontestable ownership of a valuable property.”

  Alias felt herself growing hot, hotter than could be accounted for by the fire. It was a heat from anger burning within. “I’ve been branded as someone’s slave?”

  “Possibly,” said Dimswart, “though that’s a very special brand. Something that intricate could only have been done with the help of magic—magic that resists its own diminishment. I suspect it’s responsible for clouding up your memories. If you knew how you got it, you might be able to remove it. That’s probably the way it thinks.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it thinks’? You mean it’s alive?”

  “Not in the sense that you or I or this polite lizard is, no. But in terms of a magical creation with its own will to survive, given the desires of its creators, yes. Just as an automaton or golem or summoned creature is alive.”

  Alias slumped in her chair. “So where does that leave me?” This might be more expensive than she had anticipated.

  “Quite frankly, it leaves you in trouble,” said the sage, pulling on his pipe and finding that it had gone out. He waved away the fresh brand Dragonbait offered. “Unless we find out what those sigils are.”

  Alias drew her gaze away from the fire and fixed it firmly on the sage. “What will it cost?” she asked. Her look warned she was in no mood to haggle.

  “You’re not that rich.” Dimswart held up a hand. “Yes, I know that, too. You do seem a fairly competent adventuress, however, and I need someone like that at the moment.

  “You’ve undoubtedly noticed the hubbub outside.” The sage jerked his thumb toward the study door, and Alias nodded. “My daughter, Gaylyn, is getting married. Last of the brood, thank the gods. I may finally get some peace and quiet. Anyway, her young squire is from a noble family here in Cormyr—the Wyvernspurs of Immersea, some distant relations of the crown. The upshot is, in order to impress these new in-laws, I have to lay out quite a spread indeed, and to that end I’ve worked wonders: big tent, finest chefs liberated from the crown’s kitchens, silver wrought for the occasion, and four clerics for the ceremony. Stuff from which boring songs are written.” He gave a cynical laugh.