would want the warmth and reassurance of nightlamps around her, of course.
Filigreed screens inside the tent cast intricate, pleasing patterns on the pavilion walls, concealing shapely silhouettes from prying eyes outside-but Florin could see enough to know that the Lady Narantha Crownsilver was still up on her feet and moving around. Barefoot, by the soft gliding sounds, rather than shod. Probably-if she were anything like the wealthy merchants’ wives who betimes stayed for a night at The Watchful Eye, Espar’s lone inn- she’d be brushing her hair. Brushing and brushing her hair. Long and glossy it would be, in the lampglow…
Florin swallowed, shook his head at himself for thinking such thoughts, and glided forward as silently as drifting night mist.
He grinned like a wolf as he went, lips drawn fiercely back from teeth. It might not be much, and was far from heroic, but Florin Falconhand was finally-after all these years of dreaming-having an adventure.
“Where’s Florin right now, I wonder?” Jhessail asked, halting outside her door.
Islif shrugged. “Safely abed somewhere, if he has any sense.”
Jhessail peered up at her and said softly, “But like me, you don’t think he has, do you?”
“No.” Islif’s teeth flashed in the moonlight as she turned to go. “No, I don’t. I think he’s awake and about in the night, right now, having an adventure.”
Florin Falconhand cast a last long look around, drew in a deep breath as he sank down into a crouch, and- face less than a handspan from the glowing canvas, gave throat to a horrible growl.
He heard a sudden intake of breath from inside the tent.
Grinning, he growled again, a long, bubbling beast-sound, trying to sound eager and… hungry. Then he made sniffing sounds, scrabbling with his knuckles along the canvas where it met the ground.
There was a tense silence from the pavilion, and he could hear the faint, close whistling of swift breathing.
He growled again, as horribly as he knew how-and there came the whisper of fast-moving bare feet, and a tremulous, “Delbossan?”
She’d gone to the front of the pavilion, and was no doubt standing just inside its door-slit now, staring at the hard-knotted lacings she’d so recently tied, and wondering whether to start untying them. “Master Delbossan?”
Florin put a gleeful chortle into his next growl, and clawed at the canvas with both hands, thrusting it inward. His reward was a little shriek followed by a full-voiced cry of Delbossan’s name.
The ranger drew his sword and used its pommel to thrust hard at the canvas, denting it in and leaning his weight on it while raking and scrabbling with his other hand. A tent-peg lost its hold, the pavilion buckled slightly, and the Lady Narantha Crownsilver screamed.
All dignity gone, she gave vent to a throat-stripping howl of terror, gulped breath, and shrieked another.
My, but Horsemaster Delbossan was hard of hearing this night.
The young noblewoman cried Delbossan’s name half a dozen times as Florin tugged out another tent-peg, and another, so he could bow the entire back wall of the pavilion inward, all the while clawing the canvas and snarling for all he was worth.
Sobbing in fear and rage, the Lady Narantha came rushing back across the pavilion, and Florin wisely ducked his head back from his outthrust sword.
“Oooh!” she gasped in effort, striking the canvas with something small and hard that set his sword to thrumming. He gave vent to a startled growl that began with a note of pain and rose into a terrible roar of rage-and the canvas in front of his nose punched and thrust groaningly at him, again and again, as the noble lady on its far side belabored it with-a gilded corner burst through the stretched and ravaged canvas-her jewel-coffer.
Lady of the Forest, she’d be through it and charging at him in a moment!
Between loud grunts of effort, young Lady Crownsilver was wailing Delbossan’s name repeatedly now, her voice growing steadily higher and more shrill in fury, leaving fear behind.
Then the canvas bulged with what was probably her descending head and shoulder, she made a startled sound, and Florin heard metallic slitherings and chimings. She’d overbalanced and fallen.
With the loudest roar he could muster he pounced atop her, clawing and biting at the canvas, trying to make sure she felt the hard edges of his pommel and belt buckle and still-sheathed dagger-and her next shriek was pure fear again, stabbing higher and shrill right through his eardrums, the canvas heaved under him frantically…
And Florin Falconhand, head ringing, was on his knees amid tangled canvas, his prey fled across the sagging pavilion and shrieking wordlessly as she tugged, tore, sobbed, and tugged again at its door-lacings.
He growled as he caught his breath and got to his feet, shaking his head to clear it-and he’d barely caught his balance and hefted his sword before something barefoot that streamed long, unbound hair burst out into the night, splendid nightrobe fluttering.
“Delbossan!” she screamed as she ran to the turf-covered fire and stared wildly around, clawing the air and stumbling in her haste. “Delbossan!”
Florin ducked back behind the tent and roared again.
The young noblewoman shrieked and ran away from him, toward the road. There was nothing in her hands, and nothing on her feet-so she’d not get far before she’d be limping and would look back.
Florin dragged his jerkin up and half over his head to conceal his face, waved his sword, and loped after her, growling and snarling.
Lady Narantha screamed again and sprinted down the road, in the direction of distant Suzail. Florin pounded after her, making sure she heard deadwood snapping under his boots, and she wept and shrieked and ran.
When the ranger reached the vast, moss-covered trunk of a long-fallen, rotten shadowtop that told every traveler the camping place was nigh, he sprang onto it and raced along it into the trees, outpacing his noble prey as she stumbled, sobbed for breath as her wind was jarred from her, and stumbled again.
Then he burst out of the trees right beside her with a horrible roar, a great hulking headless shape with a sword in its paw-and she shrieked again and fled blindly away, west off the road into the trees.
Toward the Dathyl, just as he’d planned. His tunic hid Florin’s wolfish smile from the world as he ran after the fair blushing flower of House Crownsilver.
She was panting like a deer on its last legs-and he was almost choking on a delicious thrill. Adventure at last!
Cormyr had always been a safe place of warmth, good food, and scurrying servants, of beauty, fine clothes, and coddling, of bright banners, and of airy graces. Oh, it was the Forest Kingdom, of course — but its forests had never been anything more than a distant green line beyond Jester’s Green, and the place where all the stags whose heads adorned more mansion and highkeep walls than she could count had come from. Narantha half-remembered fearsome nursery tales of outlaws, owlbears, and wolves, foresters simply vanishing in the dark leafy depths, and the fell magic of malevolent faeries and elves who saw humans as foes or even food… Oh, why had Father ever fallen upon this foolish, nasty, hateful idea that she needed tutoring of some sort by some backwoods bumpkin? Hezom wasn’t even a proper noble, but one of the king’s appointed lordlings-why, he might be an old drunkard of a Purple Dragon, or an outlaw and stag-poacher given a title by Azoun to keep younger, wilder rivals in check!
An outlaw! But what mattered it, when she was going to die here, alone in the dark, with no one to even know she’d fall- oooh!
The Lady Narantha caught an ankle between two unseen branches and crashed through a thornbush to fall on her face in something scratchy that left burrs all over her as she rolled frantically, sobbing for breath, and scrambled to her feet again. It was the third time she’d fallen, and every step now brought a stab of pain-she’d have been weeping non-stop if she’d dared spare breath for doing so. Branches whipped across her face and breast often, some of them slashing her or tugging at her with their horns-and she’d left a lot of hair behind on them.
Yet she dared not stop, because not far behind her in the darkness there was always the growling thing, its footfalls, occasional crashings…
“Tymora deliver me,” she gasped, “Torm defend me, Father Silvanus send away your… your… things that hunt-”
She ran hard into a horizontal branch that caught her low in the ribs. All the breath whuffed out of her, the night spun in a swirl of crazy yellow motes of light, and Narantha was falling… falling…
The moonlight went away, and the darkness that awaited hungrily all around her flooded forward and dragged her down…
