by Kate Novak
The creature gave one last plaintive groan and faded into the night. Even the torn earth where it had risen fell neatly back into place. Akabar and Olive ran toward Alias, shouting victory cries. Behind her, she smelled the woodsmoke scent that seemed to cling to the lizard. A clawed hand squeezed her numbed shoulder gently, and Alias felt warmth flow into the limb. Dragonbait looked up at her, and she felt sure there was concern in his eyes, though they looked as dead yellow as ever. The lizard drew back as the halfling and the mage reached Alias’s side.
“Did you see?” Olive asked. “While this one was struggling to remember his spell,” she jerked her head in Akabar’s direction, “I wounded it to the quick with two daggers to its heart. My aim was never better. What was it, anyway?”
Akabar looked down at the bard in disbelief. “Perhaps later you would care to hone your abilities by throwing at the side of a barn,” he suggested dryly. “That was some type of earth elemental, though not one of the standard breed normally called up by magic-users. Perhaps it was from the Plane of Minerals, which abuts the Earthen Plane. At any rate, it was a conjured creature, or my dispel magic chant would not have worked on it.”
He turned to address Alias. “I’m sorry I cast my spell before you could finish climbing down, but I judged you were safer falling than being crushed beneath the monster.”
“Quite right,” Alias answered, nodding her head, though she was obviously preoccupied with some other thought.
“Someone summoned something that big just to capture you?” Olive gasped. “You must be someone important.”
Akabar turned to study Dragonbait, who sat on a rock, studying his blade in the moonlight. The lizard-creature ran a clawed thumb along the edge and growled like a cat. “It seems you’ve nicked his blade,” Akabar said to Alias, pointing to the lizard. Dragonbait pulled something from his belt pouch. Alias watched as Dragonbait began sliding a whetstone along the steel edge.
“He seems more worried about his weapon’s condition than yours,” the halfling sniffed.
“Quite right,” Alias repeated. She shivered. Pulling her cloak about her, she headed back down the hill to the campfire. Her head still echoed with the stone creature’s hoarse laughter. Familiar, she thought, familiar as an old friend. Familiar as death.
The Wedding Reception
In the backyard of Dimswart Manor, two days journey from the mountains, in the countryside near Suzail, laughter and the clink of fine crystal filled the wedding tent. Now and then the multi-colored cloth walls shivered as some high-spirited child ran into the slender, black vloon wood rods supporting the sides. The white roof wafted alarmingly each time some tired or drunken soul leaned against the huge center pole that supported the tent roof.
Alias and Akabar had arrived late the previous night, mud-spattered and exhausted, but with a famous bard on the pony between them. Dragonbait loped along behind them since he refused to ride. Fortunately, he’d had no trouble keeping up with the group.
The lady of the house welcomed them with as much hospitality as she could, considering her home was already full of visitors, all certain of their supreme importance in the scheme of things. Small but comfortable rooms were found for the adventurers in the servant’s wing.
Their hostess insisted they attend the wedding, though it was obvious to Alias that she did so only because it would be awkward to ask them to leave. Gratitude for the service they’d just rendered was the last thing on Lady Leona’s mind. She had given Alias the distinct impression that, in her opinion, fighting a dragon was a snap compared to planning a wedding for three hundred people.
More suitable attire was found for the female guest—a sky-blue strapless gown with leggings and a capelet. One accessory had been added, a pair of arm-length, fingerless gloves, no doubt supplied to cover up her “affliction.”
Alias was uncomfortable in the gown, despite the good fit and excellent cloth. She felt naked without her armor, and she kept tripping over the skirt. You’d think I’d never worn a dress in my life, she chided herself the third time she’d neglected to lift the hem and stepped on it. After all, I wasn’t born in armor.
As far as her unreliable memory could recollect, she had worn dresses before becoming an adventurer. Even after she took up the sword, she’d risked teasing from the male members of her party and allowed herself the luxury of a more feminine wardrobe while she stayed in town.
That thought reminded her of her purpose in remaining here. Dimswart had uncovered information on the sigils, but wouldn’t have time to review it with her until after the wedding. She scanned the crowd anxiously for the father of the bride, hoping that he might have a moment to give her some clue, something that would make the wait, in this warm tent full of frivolous people, bearable.
Dimswart was mingling through the crowd, looking as jolly as a trader who has deceived the tax collector. When Alias spotted him, he was lending a friendly ear to a gathering of his daughter’s friends, no doubt hearing a saintly version of the bride’s last night of freedom. Shrieks and giggles emanating from the bride’s quarters had kept Alias awake into the small hours of the morning. Yet, the bride looked fresh as morning, and though she was important enough to warrant a seat, she would not stay in it. Instead, she roamed the tent and the lawn in her white gown, with the crest of her upswept hair bobbing like peacock feathers.
Nothing holding that girl up but the stays in her bodice, and nothing keeping her moving but nervous energy, Alias thought. The bride, Gaylyn, had greeted everyone, even taken a moment to thank Alias for all her help. It was doubtful she knew exactly what Alias had done, since she’d greeted many people with the same platitude, but she seemed in earnest. She’d go far in court, Alias decided, even without help from her new in-laws.
The groom, Lord Frefford Wyvernspur, towed along by his new bride, sparkled almost as brilliantly, dressed in the green and gold of his family, the Wyvernspurs of Immersea.
The wedding was the social event of the season and, in a spirit of festive goodwill, the imported nobility bumped elbows against the local hoi palloi. His Majesty, Azoun IV, remained in court in Suzail on the advice of the court wizard, Vangerdahast. However, a number of lesser Cormyrian lords and ladies were present to benefit from meetings and conversations with the heads of rising Suzail merchant households and local freeman leaders.
Alias caught a glimpse of swirling crimson and white on the far side of the tent. Akabar’s head poked above the press of shorter Cormyrians. Tired of being a stranger among so many, she decided that even the foreigner’s company would be preferable to standing alone. Elbowing her way through the crowd, she caught fragments of conversation.
“Well, if you ask me,” said one bass voice, “they should have had a cleric of Ilmater there. God of endurance, suffering, and perseverance.”
Alias gave a derisive snort. Considering the confusion caused by having four clerics at the marriage ceremony, a fifth might just have helped start a jihad. The swordswoman recalled the moment when both the bishop of Chauntea and the patron of Oghma stepped forward at the same time to offer the blessing. For seven heartbeats the priest and priestess stood, staring stonily at each other until the male bishop bowed deeply and surrendered the floor.
“If you must know,” a disconnected whisper confided, “we dressed in blackface and wrote filthy slogans on the side of the citadel. Horrible, horrible things about Princess Tanalasta and a centaur.”
A strong political statement, Alias thought sarcastically.
“Go ahead, Giogi,” a slurred female voice encouraged some unseen gentleman. “Do your impression of His Majesty. Giogi does the most on-target imitation, you can just close your eyes and picture the old stuffed codger. You know that line he always uses, ‘Let me state, O people of Cormyr, my people.’ Everyone says that even Azoun himself would do a double take. Pleeease, Giogi.”
Yes, please, Giogi, the swordswoman begged silently. Anything to keep the woman from whining.
“No, you’re quit
e wrong,” a gravelly male voice replied in a different conversation. “The problems in the Moonshaes are completely local. The rise of their goddess has nothing to do with the tenets of Chauntea’s faith.”
Alias shook her head incredulously at the speaker’s arrogant assurance. As a traveled adventurer she knew better. No problem was ever completely local; problems rippled through the Realms from shore to shore. Now where did I hear that line before? she wondered.
“Lady Alias?” a familiar voice addressed her. “I trust you’re having a fine time?”
Alias turned and blinked twice to accustom her eyes to the shadowed side of the tent. Dimswart stood, his comrade-in-ale, the priest Winefiddle, right behind. Each held a foaming mug of beer.
“Yes, yes I am,” Alias replied politely, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face. “I was just trying to cross the room, but it’s like wading through soft sand.” She could not meet the eyes of the cleric. In addition to trying to kill him, she had also cheated his church of his fee.
But Winefiddle smiled absently at her, and the sage nodded in blank agreement. Their faces were both more flushed than the heat in the tent warranted, and they swayed from side to side, bumping into each other.
Giving her elbow a little fatherly squeeze, Dimswart bellowed over the noise, “We’ll talk about your little problem just as soon as Leona and I get the children off. That way I’ll get out of the clean-up.” He laughed, and some of the ale sloshed from his mug. “Have you eaten? Had a mug?”
Alias shook her head, and Winefiddle pressed his flagon into her hands. “Hardly touched,” he slurred.
Alias smiled nervously and, not wishing to give the curate any further cause for offense, took a swig. The ale was as vile as The Hidden Lady’s.
“No more, thanks,” Alias said, passing the mug back to Winefiddle. “I think I’d better keep keep my wits about me.”
The curate shrugged and took a long, hearty draught. Alias excused herself and plunged back into the crowd in the direction she’d last seen Akabar’s head. She spotted Olive Ruskettle seated on a small bench in front of the wedding table, leaning low over her yarting as she tuned it so she could hear the strings over the noise of the crowd.
Alias’s attention was drawn away to Akabar, who was watching something with great amusement. Empty crystal cups rose and fell above the heads of the crowd in an ever increasing number. How odd. I would have thought jugglers too common for Lady Leona, Alias puzzled.
“Higher taxes will be the death of me,” complained a voice in the milling crowd.
“A lovely couple,” an elderly woman declared. “I wonder if he’s told her about his second cousin. The one who went quite mad and became an adventurer, you remember?”
“Oh, go ahead, Giogi,” wheedled the slurred female voice Alias recognized from earlier. “Just once. He really does sound just like King Azoun.”
Finally, Alias squeezed between the multi-hued bodies and stood beside Akabar. Upon spying the juggler though, she growled with annoyance. Dragonbait lay on the ground dressed in fool’s motley, tossing and catching seven pieces of Lady Leona’s crystal with all four feet and his tail. Akabar was just tossing an eighth cup into the fray.
The clear hemisphere landed in the lizard’s right front claw and scribed a complicated journey behind its mates from right front to left rear to right rear to left front to tail, and finally bounced up in a high arc by the tail to land again in the right front claw. Already an admiring crowd had gathered, allowing the lizard more open space in the mob than anyone else had received.
“What’s he doing here?” Alias hissed to Akabar.
“It’s called juggling. Don’t you have that in the north?” The mage grinned as he added a cup to the bobbing glassware.
“I can see that,” Alias replied, beginning to lose her patience. “Why?”
Akabar shrugged. “Some northern women assumed he was a pet and began tossing him food. In their excitement, they began bombarding him, actually. Rather than appear impolite he began juggling what he couldn’t eat. I thought it would be easier and cleaner to toss cups than fruit salad.”
“But he’s not supposed to be here,” Alias insisted through clenched teeth. “I told him to stay in my room.”
Suddenly, Lady Leona broke through the crowd, and the party-goers went deathly quiet. The noisiest members of the group turned away hastily to engage themselves in the more civilized pastime of conversation.
The mother of the bride gave a polite but firm cough, such as a god might make on the last day’s dawning. Dragonbait lost his concentration, and eight cups tumbled to the grass. The ninth cup bounced off his nose, and he looked up sheepishly at Lady Leona.
Dimswart’s wife glared at Alias. “If you are quite through with your pet, I would like to signal for the professional entertainment to begin.”
“He’s not my …” began Alias, but Lady Leona swirled about and headed for the wedding party’s table. The crowd parted for her as a rank of archers breaks at the arrival of a formation of lancers.
Alias hustled the lizard to his feet. “Where did you get that ridiculous getup?” she asked, tugging on the silk motley.
Dragonbait smiled and spun about so she could see the whole outfit. Little bells attached to the costume jangled.
Alias sighed. “Pick up the cups,” she ordered, pointing to the crystal on the ground.
With exaggerated care the lizard obeyed, stacking the glittering hemispheres on the table with the punch bowl.
Lady Leona’s voice rang out from the wedding table. “Attention, everyone. Lords and ladies.” The tent quieted to a low hum, and the mother of the bride continued. “I am very pleased to introduce Olive Ruskettle, master bard and songsmith. Mistress Ruskettle has composed an ode to commemorate the joining of our two families.”
Polite applause followed, and then people were still again.
Alias decided to take advantage of the temporary emptiness of the doorway to escort Dragonbait back to their room. She grabbed a handful of the baggy motley and began tugging him away from the crowd. Whimpering slightly, he pointed at Olive.
“I think he wants to hear the bard sing,” Akabar said.
Alias sighed in resignation.
Dragonbait folded his arms and tilted his head, the very archetype of a music connoisseur. Except for being a lizard.
Ruskettle began strumming the yarting. The opening chords sounded to Alias like those the bard had used to taunt the dragon three days ago.
Though the halfling sang well and her tune was catchy, conversations continued about the edges of the tent, out of earshot of the hostess.
Alias caught the words of a nasal voice. “As I said to Sir Rafner, taxes. Raise taxes.”
“She seems awfully short for a bard,” remarked one of the bride’s girlfriends, “but I wouldn’t know good music if it attacked me in the dark.”
“Not much, just fourteen or fifteen mugs,” a drunken voice insisted from the ale table.
“Giogi, do it for me, please?”
For gods’ sake, Giogi, Alias thought, would you just get it over with?
Giogioni Wyvernspur sighed. Minda would not quit asking him to repeat the imitation until he complied. He should never have done it for her in the first place. Giogi was not a young man of much sense, but he had enough to realize that his cousin Freffie’s wedding reception was not the sort of place one did imitations of one’s sovereign king. His only hope lay in getting it over with quickly and quietly.
Alias heard a young man’s voice reply, “All right.”
“Hooray, Giogi!” the woman cheered.
“Finally,” Alias mumbled.
“Let me gather myself,” Giogi said. Then his voice changed, becoming deeper, huskier, masking the squeakiness of youth and taking on a mountain lander’s burr.
“My Cormytes. My People. As your king, as King Azoun, and as King Azoun IV, I must say that the need to raise your taxes is a result of the direct depravations of …” The
voice dropped to a whisper. “Vangy, who is being depraved this time?”
Alias’s breath quickened. She focused her attention on Giogi’s altered voice. To her, the rest of the chatter died away, leaving only the husky tone. A powerfully sinister feeling swept over her, leaving her dizzy. The crowd was suffocating her. Her arm began to ache miserably. Nearby she heard a growl.
Panic rose in Alias. Her body was moving of its own accord, just as it had when she nearly killed Winefiddle. She tried to hold herself still, fight the urge to lunge at the Wyvernspur noble, but without success. Far off she heard women screaming and men shouting. Something nearby was burning.
Standing right beside Alias, Akabar felt her stiffen. He noticed the smell of smoke almost immediately. With horror he watched the glove that covered her tattoos blister and burn away. Then he heard Alias snarl like a dog, and saw her face contort into a mask of rage.
Dragonbait turned to look at her in confusion. When Akabar laid a hand on her left arm to offer his assistance, she shoved both man and beast away with unbelievable strength, propelling herself in the opposite direction. With murder in her eyes, Alias leaped onto Giogi.
She landed on top of him with a scream, her hands about his throat in an instant. She might have wrung his neck, but she caught sight of a long, sharp knife used to cut pies and cake. She reached for it, but lost her grip on the young man as she did so. Giogi managed to twist away from her, and she plunged the pastry blade into the table where he’d been pinned only a moment before.
“I say, I wasn’t that bad,” the green-and-gold-clad noble sputtered. “I didn’t want to do it, really. It’s just that Minda kept begging me, you know?”
Alias yanked the blade from the tabletop and drew a fresh bead on her target. Giogi backpedaled furiously. Women screamed and several Wyvernspur menfolk, seeing their kin beseiged, shouted a battle cry and moved in on the attacker. Alias kept them all at bay with the knife. One cocky fellow got too close and received a slash across his cheek to show for it.
