by Kate Novak
“The Shard said it’s been too long since it was sung in the Realms.”
“It’s sung other places than the Realms?” Olive asked.
“Other Shards sing it for Selune.”
“Really?” Olive’s head swam. The Harpers ban all of Nameless’s music for centuries, and the gods listen to it anyway, she thought with amusement. Nameless would be pleased to hear that. Then again, that could be just a little too much for his ego to handle.
“My friend probably wrote that song here in Immersea,” the halfling told the priestess. “He was a Wyvernspur, you see.”
Mother Lleddew held her teacup with both hands and sipped slowly, keeping her eyes on the drink. She kept glancing at Olive without speaking.
At first, the halfling thought Lleddew just couldn’t think of anything to say and wondered if she shouldn’t try to carry the conversation herself. It dawned on Olive after a few minutes, though, that Lleddew was a little like Dragonbait, the Saurial paladin. He didn’t need words to communicate and could judge people by their silences, too. So Olive just smiled and bit into another biscuit the next time she caught the priestess looking at her.
Giogi came in with Cat on his arm. He was decked out in a tabard bearing his family coat of arms, a green wyvern on a field of yellow, and the small platinum headpiece around his forehead. Cat wore a green silk gown. The gown would not lace tight enough to fit her shapely form, so the mage had wrapped a yellow sash around her waist.
The couple’s color coordination did not bode well, to Olive’s way of thinking. Giogi was letting himself in for a lot of heartache. She thought of the nobleman’s ironic insistence that he would want to know if a woman he was involved with was “not so capital.”
The mage looked happy beside the nobleman, but anyone who could take one of Flattery’s blows calmly would have to be a superior actress. Olive wondered which had more to do with Cat’s returning the spur to Giogi, his kindness and generosity or fear of returning to Flattery.
Giogi bowed very deeply to Mother Lleddew.
“Giogioni, it is good to see you,” the priestess said. “I feared once that I might never see you again.”
Giogi rose and flushed. “I regret not having come to visit you before,” he stammered.
Mother Lleddew looked curiously at Cat, the priestess’s head tilted to one side in expectation.
“Allow me to present the mage Cat of Ordulin, Your Grace,” Giogi said.
Cat curtsied low and looked up at Mother Lleddew with wide-eyed awe. Olive couldn’t help but remember how Alias thought of all priests as fools. Did Cat think differently, or was this a display for Giogi’s sake?
The priestess motioned for both young people to be seated. “How is your Aunt Dorath?” Mother Lleddew asked.
“Um, fine,” Giogi answered with some surprise. He pulled a chair out for Cat to sit, then seated himself. When he looked up again at the priestess, she still had an expectant look in her eyes, so he continued. “She’s seems overjoyed to be a great-grandaunt. She likes taking care of the baby, apparently.”
The priestess nodded. “Poor Dorath,” she whispered, looking down at her teacup.
“I didn’t know you even knew my aunt.”
“We were very close once,” Mother Lleddew said. “Her mother and I adventured together.”
“Great-grandmother Eswip was an adventurer?” Giogi gasped.
“Oh, yes. Perhaps, Master Giogioni, I should start my tale in the middle. The beginning is very interesting, and just as sad, but it is the middle and the end of the tale that Flattery does not wish you to know. He has nearly exhausted his forces of undead trying to keep you from meeting with me. Now that we have overcome those obstacles, I should tell my tale without further delay.”
“You know about Flattery?” Giogi asked.
“Not just about him, Giogioni. I know him. I watched him kill your father.”
Giogi turned pale and clenched his fists. Cat looked numb.
Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me in the least, Olive thought, remembering the scorched portrait in the carriage house, and how Flattery had screamed, “Curse them all!” meaning all Wyvernspurs.
Since no one spoke, Mother Lleddew began the middle of her tale. “When your father first learned he could use the power of the spur,” she said, “he announced to me his intention to go adventuring to find a fortune that would finish the temple his grandmother and I had begun. I was too old by then to go tramping about the countryside bashing monsters, but Cole would go whether I joined him or not, and for the love I had for his grandmother, I agreed to accompany him. I thought I would be keeping him from harm.” Lleddew chuckled at the irony of her intentions.
“Your father didn’t want keeping from harm, though,” she said with a grin. “With the spur’s power, he was nearly indestructible. We spent a summer season in Gnoll Pass—that was long before His Majesty started building Castle Crag to station the Purple Dragoons. When we finally returned to Immersea, we were carrying enough wealth to embed diamonds in the ceiling of the House of Selune.”
“But what was the spur’s power?” Giogi asked.
“Dorath would not let Drone tell you even this, would she?”
“Tell me what? Please, tell me,” Giogi asked.
“Each generation the guardian chooses a favorite,” Mother Lleddew explained. “The favorites can use the spur to shape-shift into the form of a wyvern. A very large wyvern.”
“A wyvern. My father could turn into a wyvern. You mean he fought as—as a wyvern?”
“Of course,” Cat said to herself. “Wyverns can fly. It’s a wyvern’s spur.”
“But why did Flattery go to so much trouble to keep me from meeting you and learning that?” Giogi asked.
“It is the rest of my story that Flattery did not wish you to hear,” Mother Lleddew explained.
“Oh, sorry. Please, continue,” Giogi said.
“The next spring, your father went out again, but, having seen him in action, I did not feel a need to accompany him. He could take care of himself. He built himself a reputation throughout Cormyr, though he kept his wyvern form a secret for the most part. He might have traveled further and grown more famous, but he met and married your mother at the end of his second summer season, and he did not like to leave her for long. He only left Immersea to accomplish such services in Cormyr as the crown requested of him.
“Then, one day, fourteen years ago, late in the fall, after your father had returned home from a summer journey, a small tribe of elves passed through Immersea. They were refugees from a settlement in the Border Forest. A terrible wizard had come out of Anauroch, the Great Desert, and stolen their riches, destroyed their city, and enslaved many of their people.
“When these elves saw your father, they went mad with hatred and attacked him. They mistook him for the wizard, you see. Of course, your father’s companions restrained them and convinced them after much arguing that he was not this evil mage.
“Cole realized, however, that the wizard must be a lost Wyvernspur. The family honor was at stake, so he thought, and he swore he would set things right, vanquish this wizard, and return what had been stolen to the elves. Two of the elves agreed to guide him back to their homeland and lead him to the wizard’s fortress.
“Your mother had many horrible premonitions. Just for him to be traveling in the fall and winter was dangerous enough. That he was planning to attack a powerful wizard drove her to distraction. When she could not talk him out of it, she begged me to accompany him.
“There were nine of us, including your father and the elves. We made good time to Shadow Gap and beat the snows. The people of Daggerdale were most inhospitable, so we pressed on quickly through that land as well. At length, we reached the Border Forest and the elven settlement.
“Our elven guides, and indeed all of us, wished we had never seen the remains of the elvish city. Flattery had turned all the enslaved elves into zombies and left them in the city to guard it as an outpost
of his desert kingdom.
“The Wyvernspur family resemblance was our greatest asset. Mistaking Cole for their new master, the undead let us pass through the city unharmed. Thus we approached Flattery’s fortress unheralded.
“The fortress was only half the size of Immersea, but its walls were twice as high as Suzail’s. Only Flattery lived within, waited upon by undead. Cole deceived the zombies at the gate as easily as the ones in the elvish city, so we were able to enter Flattery’s stronghold and destroy many of his servants before he was even aware of our presence.
“We cornered the wizard alone, and Cole demanded to know Flattery’s father’s name. Flattery laughed and declared his father would remain nameless unless Cole agreed to single combat. Cole accepted, engaging the power of the spur to change his shape and taking to the air. The sun had not yet risen, but we could watch the battle in the early dawn light.”
When the priestess paused for a moment, Olive took the opportunity to interrupt with a question. “Excuse me, Mother Lleddew. Was that the exact phrase Flattery used—his father would remain nameless?”
Mother Lleddew nodded. “Yes. An odd choice of words, isn’t it?” she asked.
Quick on the uptake, Giogi asked, “Mistress Ruskettle, are you thinking of the Nameless Bard you mentioned in your tale about Alias?”
Olive nodded, but waved her hand to defer any more of Giogi’s questions. “Let Mother Lleddew continue her story. Sorry for the interruption, Mother Lleddew,” she said.
The priestess nodded and launched into a description of the battle between Flattery and Giogi’s father. “Flattery first cast a lightning bolt at Cole, but the shot went wide. Then Flattery cast a wall of fire in the air, but Cole easily evaded it. The mage attempted a third spell as Cole swooped down upon him, but it had no effect that any of us could discern. You see, in addition to transforming Cole into a wyvern, the spur made him immune to magic cast against him.
“Cole snatched the wizard from the ground and flew high, stinging and biting Flattery until the wizard ceased his struggling. It looked as if Cole had won, but then …”
Mother Lleddew closed her eyes as if she could shut out the sight of what she had already seen. “As Cole flew back toward us, a black cloud drifted toward him, moving against the wind. By the time we noticed its strange movements and shape, it was too late for Cole.
“The cloud was a pack of wraiths, fifteen or twenty in number. They may have been acting on their own, but I believe Flattery summoned them, and in doing so broke the rules of single combat. Whichever is the truth, the wraiths fell upon Cole as a single body. Your father shrieked from their icy, life-draining touch and dropped the wizard.
“I invoked Selune to turn the undead away from your father. The wraiths fled, though possibly it was the swift sunrise that sent them away and not I.
“Cole was very weak when he landed, but he began to search for Flattery’s body at once. None of us had seen the wizard land.
“Then Cole was challenged from above by a sky-blue dragon. Since his magic could not directly harm Cole, Flattery had taken a shape that could. Cole took to the sky again.
“With all the wounds the wizard had taken in the first combat, and from the awkward way Flattery fought, we did not think he would win. But the wraiths had drained more of Cole’s energy than we’d realized. Still, the battle seemed evenly matched, until another set of Flattery’s minions interfered.
“Ju-ju zombies, more powerful than most, fired upon Cole with crossbows. Our party’s mage cast a fireball at the undead, obliterating them before they could get off a second round.
“It was hard to see the blue dragon against the sky. He dove on Cole, and they fell earthward, tearing one another apart. At the last moment, they parted. Flattery soared off, badly wounded, but Cole crashed to the ground.”
Mother Lleddew brushed tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Giogi tried to swallow the lump in his throat. The priestess finished her tale.
“Flattery did not return to his city, nor did we find his body. We were sure, though, that if he was not dead, he was so grievously wounded that he had fled for his life.
“Cole was dead. I would have carried his body home myself, on my own back, but he did not change back to human form at death, as a lycanthrope would. We did not know how to change him back and had no way to transport a wyvern’s corpse. We had to send for Drone. We waited ten days and nights for him to arrive.”
“What did Uncle Drone do?” Giogi asked.
“It was so simple, I was a fool not to have thought of it,” Mother Lleddew said, shaking her head, “but it was also ghastly.”
“What?” Giogi repeated.
“He sliced off the wyvern’s right spur. It transformed back into the mummified spur, and Cole returned to his human form.”
Giogi felt a little nauseated. Poor Uncle Drone—having to do such a gruesome thing. Of course, only Uncle Drone could have thought of that.
“I’m not sure that I want to know, but I suppose I ought to,” the nobleman said with a glance at Olive. “How did my father make the spur work?”
“I’m not sure. He kept it in his boot, and whenever he needed to change, he would concentrate on it.”
“Pardon me, sir,” Thomas interrupted, “but you don’t have the spur in your boot, do you?”
“Why, yes,” Giogi said, patting his right calf, “it’s right here beside the finder’s stone. Why do you ask?”
“I might recommend that you avoid thinking about wyverns until you step outside. Perhaps, just to be on the safe side, you might want to leave the spur on the table for the duration of the discussion. A transformation in the house might be a trifle uncomfortable.”
Giogi slid the spur from his boot and laid it beside his plate. “Good thinking, Thomas,” he said. “I’d be the proverbial wyvern in an alchemist shop, eh?”
“Precisely, sir.”
Giogi covered the spur with his napkin. The very idea of transforming into something else, even out-of-doors, where there was plenty of room, frightened him. It would be awful, he thought, having wings instead of arms and a horrible stinging tail, loaded with poison, and scales all over one’s body. How could Cole have done it?
“Pardon me, Mother Lleddew,” Olive asked. “But you said you traveled with Giogi’s great-grandmother. She didn’t happen to use the spur as well?”
“Yes, she did. That’s the beginning of the tale. Lady Eswip’s father was Lord Gould the Third. He’d used the spur himself, but he had no son and Lady Eswip proved to be the guardian’s favorite. She married her Cousin Bender Wyvernspur, who inherited the family title from his Uncle Gould. They had two sons, Grever and Fortney, and a daughter, Dorath. The guardian didn’t care for the boys. She chose Dorath as her favorite.”
“Dorath, I take it, did not reciprocate her affection,” Olive guessed.
“No,” the priestess said, shaking her head. “Eswip died in combat when Dorath was still a young girl. Dorath resented the loss of her mother. Years later, the season Dorath was introduced at court, some haughty fools snubbed her. They called her the beast’s daughter. When His Majesty heard about it, he had the idiots banned—Rhigaerd was always sensitive to a pretty girl’s tears—but the damage had already been done. No matter that twelve generations of Wyvernspurs before her had won the crown’s gratitude protecting Cormyr as wyverns. Dorath perceived the spur’s powers as something vulgar and depraved and, of course, the reason her mother had died.”
“That’s why she didn’t want anyone to know about them,” Giogi said. “Why the story of the spur passed out of the Wyvernspur family.”
“Worse than that,” the priestess said, “that’s why she never married. She struggled for years to resist the guardian’s call to use the spur. It was not easy. She believed the “curse,” as she called it, would be passed down to one of her children, like lycanthropy, so she swore to have no children. I could not convince her of her folly. We argued, and she stopped visiting the House o
f the Lady. She said my advice was tainted because of my were-nature. It must have come as a tremendous blow to her when she learned that the guardian took her Nephew Cole as the next favorite. She blamed the guardian for Cole’s death, and Drone for helping the guardian.”
Mother Lleddew rose from the table. “I’ve told you all I know. I must be getting back to the temple.”
“Alone? But won’t it be dangerous?” Giogi objected.
“The Shard should have finished clearing away all the undead by now,” the priestess said.
“Flattery could return and drop some more from that cloud,” Giogi pointed out.
The priestess shook her head. “Flattery will waste no more energy on me. It is you he fears. You have the spur, you can wield its power, and now I have told you that he murdered your father. Now you know that your father would have destroyed Flattery with the spur if the wizard had not cheated in combat.”
“So Giogi stands a chance, too,” Olive said.
Mother Lleddew nodded. “Remember, though, that Cole was a tried and experienced fighter in the wyvern shape. I would not suggest issuing a challenge without practice.”
Giogioni had no comment about fighting Flattery as a wyvern. The idea left him numb.
“I must leave now, Giogioni,” Mother Lleddew insisted. “I have a memorial service to prepare for your uncle. Selune smile upon you.”
Giogi snapped out of his daze and rose to his feet. He scooped up the spur and escorted the priestess from the room. Thomas followed.
“Well, well,” Olive said when the dining room door had closed behind them.
“Mistress Ruskettle,” Cat said, with a challenging tone to her voice, “there are still some things I don’t quite understand.”
“I’ll do my best to explain them to you” Olive offered helpfully, secretly praying to Tymora that she could.
“I knew you would,” Cat said with just a hint of sassiness. “Well, first, if your partner Jade had the spur, why did she go to the trouble of picking Flattery’s pocket to see if he had it?”
