tower, even if it had consumed an entire level. The bladesinger suspected some extradimensional magic to be at work here, but he had never been able to detect it, and the frustrating Anders certainly wasn’t letting on.
As large as it was, Anders’s alchemy shop was still a cluttered place, with boxes piled high and tables and cabinets strewn about in a hodgepodge.
“I heard a growl,” the elf continued. “A hunting cat.”
Without looking up from some vials he was handling, Anders nodded his head in the direction of a large, blanket-covered container. “See that you do not get too close,” the old mage said with a wicked cackle. “Old Whiskers will grab you by the arm and tug you in, don’t you doubt!
“And then you’ll need more than your shiny swords,” Anders cackled on.
Josidiah wasn’t even listening, pacing quietly toward the blanket, moving silently so as not to disturb the cat within. He grabbed the edge of the blanket and, moving safely back, tugged it away. And then the bladesinger’s jaw surely drooped.
It was a cat, as he had suspected, a great black panther, twice—no thrice—the size of the largest cat Josidiah had ever seen or heard of. And the cat was female, and females were usually much smaller than males. She paced the cage slowly, methodically, as if searching for some weakness, some escape, her rippling muscles guiding her along with unmatched grace.
“How did you come by such a magnificent beast?” the bladesinger asked. His voice apparently startled the panther, stopping her in her tracks. She stared at Josidiah with an intensity that stole any further words right from the blade-singer’s mouth.
“Oh, I have my ways, elf,” the old mage said. “I’ve been looking for just the right cat for a long, long time, searching all the known world—and bits of it that are not yet known to any but me!”
“But why?” Josidiah asked, his voice no more than a whisper. His question was aimed as much at the magnificent panther as at the old mage, and truly, the bladesinger could think of no reason to justify putting such a creature into a cage.
“You remember my tale of the box canyon,” Anders replied, “of how my mentor and I flew owl-back out of the clutches of a thousand goblins?”
Josidiah nodded and smiled, remembering well that amusing story. A moment later, though, when the implications of Anders’s words hit him fully, the elf turned back to the mage, a scowl clouding his fair face. “The figurine,” Josidiah muttered, for the owl had been but a statuette, enchanted to bring forth a great bird in times of its master’s need. There were many such objects in the world, many in Cormanthor, and Josidiah was not unacquainted with the methods of constructing them (though his own magics were not strong enough along the lines of enchanting). He looked back to the great panther, saw a distinct sadness there, then turned back sharply to Anders.
“The cat must be killed at the moment of preparation,” the bladesinger protested. “Thus her life energies will be drawn into the statuette you will have created.”
“Working on that even now,” Anders said lightly. “I have hired a most excellent dwarven craftsman to fashion a panther statuette. The finest craftsman. . er, craftsdwarf, in all the area. Fear not, the statuette will do the cat justice.”
“Justice?” the bladesinger echoed skeptically, looking once more into the intense, intelligent yellow-green eyes of the huge panther. “You will kill the cat?”
“I offer the cat immortality,” Anders said indignantly.
“You offer death to her will, and slavery to her body,” snapped Josidiah, more angry than he had ever been with old Anders. The bladesinger had seen figurines and thought them marvelous artifacts, despite the sacrifice of the animal in question. Even Josidiah killed deer and wild pig for his table, after all. So why should a wizard not create some useful item from an animal?
But this time it was different, Josidiah sensed in his heart. This animal, this great and free cat, must not be so enslaved.
“You will make the panther. .” Josidiah began.
“Whiskers,” explained Anders.
“The panther. .” the bladesinger reiterated forcefully, unable to come to terms with such a foolish name being tagged on this animal. “You will make the panther a tool, an animation that will function to the will of her master.”
“What would one expect?” the old mage argued. “What else would one want?”
Josidiah shrugged and sighed helplessly. “Independence,” he muttered.
“Then what would be the point of my troubles?”
Josidiah’s expression clearly showed his thinking. An in — dependent magical companion might not be of much use to an adventurer in a dangerous predicament, but it would surely be preferable from the sacrificed animal’s point of view.
“You chose wrong, bladesinger,” Anders teased. “You should have studied as a ranger. Surely your sympathies lie in that direction!”
“A ranger,” the bladesinger asked, “as Anders Beltgarden once was?”
The old mage blew a long and helpless sigh.
“Have you so given up the precepts of your former trade in exchange for the often ill-chosen allure of magical mysteries?”
“Oh, and a fine ranger you would have been,” Anders replied dryly.
Josidiah shrugged. “My chosen profession is not so different,” he reasoned.
Anders silently agreed. Indeed, the man did see much of his own youthful and idealistic self in the eyes of Josidiah Starym. That was the curious thing about elves, he noted, that this one, who was twice Anders’s present age, reminded him so much of himself when he had but a third his present years.
“When will you begin?” Josidiah asked.
“Begin?” scoffed Anders. “Why, I have been at work over the beast for nearly three weeks, and spent six months before that in preparing the scrolls and powders, the oils, the herbs. Not an easy process, this. And not inexpensive, I might add! Do you know what price a gnome places on the simplest of metal filings, pieces so fine that they might be safely added to the cat’s food?”
Josidiah found that he really did not want to continue along this line of discussion. He did not want to know about the poisoning—and that was indeed what he considered it to be—of the magnificent panther. He looked back to the cat, looked deep into her intense eyes, intelligent so far beyond what he would normally expect.
“Fine day outside,” the bladesinger muttered, not that he believed that Anders would take a moment away from his work to enjoy the weather. “Even my stubborn Uncle Tale-isin, Lord Protector of House Starym, wears a face touched by sunshine.”
Anders snorted. “Then he will be smiling this day when he lays low Coronal Eltargrim with a right hook?”
That caught Josidiah off his guard, and he took up Anders’s infectious laughter. Indeed was Taleisin a stubborn and crusty elf, and if Josidiah returned to House Starym this day to learn that his uncle had punched the elf Coronal, he would not be surprised.
“It is a momentous decision that Eltargrim has made,” Anders said suddenly, seriously. “And a brave one. By including the other goodly races, your Coronal has begun the turning of the great wheel of fate, a spin that will not easily be stopped.”
“For good or for ill?”
“That is for a seer to know,” Anders replied with a shrug. “But his choice was the right one, I am sure, though not without its risks.” The old mage snorted again. “A pity,” he said, “even were I a young man, I doubt I would see the outcome of Eltargrim’s decision, given the way elves measure the passage of time. How many centuries will pass before the Starym even decide if they will accept Eltargrim’s decree?”
That brought another chuckle from Josidiah, but not a long-lived one. Anders had spoken of risks, and certainly there were many. Several prominent families, and not just the Starym, were outraged by the immigration of peoples that many haughty elves considered to be of inferior races. There were even a few mixed marriages, elf and human, within Cormanthor, but any offspring of such unions were surely ostracized.
“My people will come to accept Eltargrim’s wise council,” the elf said at length, determinedly.
“I pray you are right,” said Anders, “for surely Corman-thor will face greater perils than the squabbling of
