The bladesinger felt the hot blood rushing to his face. He had suspected that someone had been spying on him at his morning rituals-a dance with his magnificent swords, performed nude-and now he had his confirmation. “Perhaps Felicity should join me on the morrow’s dawn,” he replied, catching his breath and his dignity, “that I might properly reward her for her spying.”
The young female laughed heartily and spun back into her house, and Josidiah shook his head and skipped along. He entertained thoughts of how he might properly “reward” the mischievous female, though he feared that, given Felicity’s beauty and station, any such attempts might lead to something much more, something Josidiah could not become involved in-not now, not after Eltargrim’s proclamation and the drastic changes.
The bladesinger shook away all such notions; it was too fine a day for any dark musing, and other thoughts of Felicity were too distracting for the meeting at hand. Josidiah went out of Cormanthor’s west gate, the guards posted there offering no more than a respectful bow as he passed, and into the open air. Truly Josidiah loved this city, but he loved the land outside of it even more. Out here he was truly free of all the worries and all the petty squabbles, and out here there was ever a sense of danger-might a goblin be watching him even now, its crude spear ready to take him down? — that kept the formidable elf on his highest guard.
Out here, too, was a friend, a human friend, a ranger-turned-wizard by the name of Anders Beltgarden, whom Josidiah had known for the better part of four decades. Anders did not venture into Cormanthor, even given Eltargrim’s proclamation to open the gates to nonelves. He lived far from the normal, oft-traveled paths, in a squat tower of excellent construction, guarded by magical wards and deceptions of his own making. Even the forest about his home was full of misdirections, spells of illusion and confusion. So secretive was Beltgarden Home that few elves of nearby Cormanthor even knew of it, and even fewer had ever seen it. And of those, none save Josidiah could find his way back to it without Anders’s help.
And Josidiah held no illusions about it-if Anders wanted to hide the paths to the tower even from him, the cagey old wizard would have little trouble doing so.
This wonderful day, however, it seemed to Josidiah that the winding paths to Beltgarden Home were easier to follow than usual, and when he arrived at the structure, he found the door unlocked.
“Anders,” he called, peering into the darkened hallway beyond the portal, which always smelled as if a dozen candles had just been extinguished within it. “Old fool, are you about?”
A feral growl put the bladesinger on his guard; his swords were in his hands in a movement too swift for an observer to follow.
“Anders?” he called again, quietly, as he picked his way along the corridor, his feet moving in perfect balance, soft boots gently touching the stone, quiet as a hunting cat.
The growl came again, and that is exactly when Josidiah knew what he was up against: a hunting cat. A big one, the bladesinger recognized, for the deep growl resonated along the stone of the hallway.
He passed by the first doors, opposite each other in the hall, and then passed the second on his left.
The third-he knew-the sound came from within the third. That knowledge gave the bladesinger some hope that this situation was under control, for that particular door led to Anders’s alchemy shop, a place well guarded by the old wizard.
Josidiah cursed himself for not being better prepared magically. He had studied few spells that day, thinking it too fine and not wanting to waste a moment of it with his face buried in spellbooks.
If only he had some spell that might get him into the room more quickly, through a magical gate, or even a spell that would send his probing vision through the stone wall, into the room before him.
He had his swords, at least, and with them, Josidiah Starym was far from helpless. He put his back against the wall near to the door and took a deep steadying breath. Then, without delay-old Anders might be in serious trouble-the bladesinger spun about and crashed into the room.
He felt the arcs of electricity surging into him as he crossed the warded portal, and then he was flying, hurled through the air, to land crashing at the base of a huge oaken table. Anders Beltgarden stood calmly at the side of the table, working with something atop it, hardly bothering to look down at the stunned bladesinger.
“You might have knocked,” the old mage said dryly.
Josidiah pulled himself up unceremoniously from the floor, his muscles not quite working correctly just yet. Convinced that there was no danger near, Josidiah let his gaze linger on the human, as he often did. The bladesinger hadn’t seen many humans in his life-humans were a recent addition on the north side of the Sea of Fallen Stars, and were not present in great numbers in or about Cormanthor.
This one was the most curious human of all, with his leathery, wrinkled face and his wild gray beard. One of Anders’s eyes had been ruined in a fight, and it appeared quite dead now, a gray film over the lustrous green it had once held. Yes, Josidiah could stare at old Anders for hours on end, seeing the tales of a lifetime in his scars and wrinkles. Most of the elves, Josidiah’s own kinfolk included, would have thought the old man an ugly thing; elves did not wrinkle and weather so, but aged beautifully, appearing at the end of several centuries as they had when they had seen but twenty or fifty winters.
Josidiah did not think Anders an ugly sight, not at all. Even those few crooked teeth remaining in the man’s mouth complemented this creature he had become, this aged and wise creature, this sculptured monument to years under the sun and in the face of storms, to seasons battling goblinkin and giantkind. Truly it seemed ridiculous to Josidiah that he was twice this man’s age; he wished he might carry a few wrinkles as testament to his experiences.
“You had to know it would be warded,” Anders laughed. “Of course you did! Ha ha, just putting on a show, then. Giving an old man one good laugh before he dies!”
“You will outlive me, I fear, old man,” said the bladesinger.
“Indeed, that is a distinct possibility if you keep crossing my doors unannounced.”
“I feared for you,” Josidiah explained, looking around the huge room-too huge, it seemed, to fit inside the 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
