fingers, tried not to tmnk of the cold.
The acquaintances she loosely referred to as her peers would be hard pressed to recognize her here. The twenty-four year old woman had traded in her sumptuous, Sembian gowns and jewels for more practical wear. Tazi, as her family and most trusted friends called her, was well over thirteen hundred miles from her comfortable rooms in Stormweather Towers. The daughter of a noble family of Selgaunt, arguably one of the most powerful families in the governing body of that commerce-driven city, should have been out of place in this frozen tomb-but she wasn't.
She sported well-tailored woolen pants tucked into short leather boots with sturdy, gripping soles and a shirt with a high collar that masked her nose and mouth for additional warmth. Over her coarse shirt, Tazi had a heavy, leather vest. Matching bandoliers crisscrossed her chest, with various and sundry bits of climbing gear and tools strapped tight. A sack, coil of rope, and one of her Sembian guardblades all hung from her wide belt. The only concession she refused to make to the bitter cold was that she sported no cap over her jet-black hair, which she had tied back. It wasn't an issue of vanity, though. Years ago, Tazi had proven she cared little enough about that when she cut her then-waist-length wavy hair to a style a bit more boyish. Tazi, who enjoyed any and every opportunity when she could be contrary, had done it for two reasons. The first was to irk her mother, who was always aware of their family's station and need for proper appearance. The cut was more suited to the styles of Cormyr at the time, a very gauche look anywhere in the fashion-conscious Sembia, and that act set her mother's blood boiling. The second reason was a bit more practical.
As a young girl, Tazi began to pilfer items from the family coffers and the servants' pantries. She normally returned the goods, simply enjoying the challenge of the theft. As she matured, Tazi did not outgrow her love of thievery. In fact, she turned to her peers as a source of challenge and entertainment, each job a little grander and more daring. She embraced it as another life and disguised herself accordingly. With the short hair and appropriate thieving leathers, Tazi did a more than fair job of concealing her identity and even her sex when she explored the night. But she loved these 'wildings,' as she liked to call them. Each success made her feel more alive and more in control of her own destiny, a security Tazi valued above all else. Mostly ignored at home except by a special few, she longed to feel safe in who she was. Her wildings provided that and more.
Her thieving ways eventually caught the attention of two unique men. Tazi, who tormented and tossed aside every eligible bachelor her mother sent before her, found that she could not ignore either of them. One, a mage-in- training close to her age, actually shared her adventures of the corrupt life. He appeared to enjoy thumbing his nose at his destined station as much as Tazi did hers. However, when one of her wildings went horribly.awry, she discovered he had been a hired bodyguard on her father's payroll all along. Tazi was more devastated by that betrayal than by the fact that that same night she had to take her first life in an act of mercy. The sense of security that she had fought for in her own manner was horribly fractured.
She turned away from him and the other one, a family servant, no longer certain who to trust. The second man, several years her senior, had mentored and tutored the young Thazienne in the finer art of theft and had even given to her her first quality set of lock picks. But circumstances had taken Tazi from her home a year ago on a heartbreaking quest, and the situation had driven her closer to the mage while wedging her farther away from her mentor. It was only upon returning to her family estate that she discovered the man she always sensed was more than just a servant had given over his heart to her as well as his loyalty. But by then, a family tragedy changed everything for her. And here Tazi was.
She peered down from her frozen perch, and narrowed her sea-green eyes. The large vault in front of her glowed an icy blue. Tazi wasn't sure just where the light originated, whether it was from an external source or from within the icy blocks that formed the room itself. The chamber, larger than a cavern, was roughly three hundred feet across and at least half as high, with various tunnels that emptied into it. Between the tunnel openings was a section of frozen wall that ran in an unbroken line except for a few shelves that had obviously been hewn out of the ice. There was a series of waist-deep ruts that ran the length of the vault, and Tazi suspected ancient streams must have cut those ages ago. Stalactites sporadically hung from the ceiling, ranging in size from three to thirty feet in length and a few stalagmites jutted up from the vault floor. Tazi noted them carefully, as it would be easy to turn an ankle or worse around them.
She absently brushed a stray hair away from her face and finally saw what she had been waiting for. About seventy-five feet away, Tazi caught a glimpse of what looked like a humanoid figure, pale skinned in the blue light and of average build, nearly nude and devoid of any hair at all. She squinted for a better look at the lean and lanky man, but there wasn't enough light for more details than that. She could see, however, that he was filling a recessed ledge with an armful of something that glinted dully in the weak light, and he had some type of weapon dangling from his waist. Tazi dropped a little lower and began to mark the time. She frowned slightly when she realized how stiff her legs had become while crouching there, and she berated herself for her carelessness. While she counted off silently, she began to tense and relax the large muscles in her thighs and calves, readying herself.
When the first figure had left and another one similarly burdened replaced him, Tazi knew approximately how many minutes she had. She passed her hands over her gear. After taking a quick inventory of supplies, she freed her coil of rope and knotted it around the frozen stalagmite to her right. She let the other end of the rope drop to the vault floor and snapped a clip from her bandolier onto it. She threaded the rope behind her waist, grabbing the tied-off side with her left hand and the free end with her right. She tugged once to test the knot and, satisfied that it was secure enough, she launched herself over the ledge.
Tazi dropped down in an arc that curved back to the ice wall. She braced her legs for the impact and launched herself back out as soon as she made contact. As she pushed away, she let another ten feet of rope play out before she touched the wall again. Tazi rappelled down the icy face in less than a minute before her feet touched the bottom. She undipped herself from the rope and moved silently toward the cache set in the wall.
Tazi glanced once in the direction where the figures had disappeared to verify she was alone. The diffuse light in the large cavern didn't accommodate much of a view, so she had to satisfy herself that she had their timing down. Tazi hurried over to the recessed ledge and the pile of rocks that twinkled in the sick light. She gave the wall a cursory glance for traps, but couldn't discover a single one. She suspected there wouldn't be any considering how haphazardly the two humanoid creatures had dumped their loads, but Tazi always checked.
She moved up to the natural-rock shelf and slowly pulled down her muffler in awe. Lumped in a pile was what appeared to be a mound of gold. But this was no ordinary metal. Even in the half-light, Tazi could see that the odd- shaped pieces had a red cast to them and also emitted a faint, crimson glow of their own. She used her teeth to pull off one of her gloves and tucked it into her belt. She picked up a piece in her bare hand and smiled a little at the slight tingle she felt from the ore. It should have been freezing to the touch, but a gentle heat radiated from it. Tazi tossed the chunk in the air a few times and judged its weight. Finally, she pulled a small dagger from her left boot and tried to knick the gold, to no avail. Satisfied, she smiled and filled the sack at her hip with a few pounds of the stuff. Caught up in her success, Tazi didn't notice the pale figure that emerged from the tunnel to her left.
But he saw her.
Fastening her pouch shut, Tazi nearly dropped the whole sack as a high pitched whine echoed throughout the frozen chamber. She slipped her glove back on while she whirled in a circle to discover the source of the noise. She eventually spotted the pale creature, whose cache she was robbing, near the entrance to the tunnel off to her left. Tazi realized his cry was one of alarm. She didn't know how many of the creatures she might face and had no intention of waiting around to find out. With a lopsided grin plastered to her face, she made a mad dash back to her rope, over a hundred feet away.
Tazi didn't bother to look back and see if any were gaining on her; she knew they would be eventually. The series of icy hedges were all that lay between her and her rope. Tazi didn't miss a beat. Placing both hands on the waist-high barrier, she swung her legs together as one over the side, easily clearing the hurdle. She cleared the second swinging her legs the other direction Цке a pendulum, but felt something grip her left ankle at the third hurdle. Tazi let the subterranean dweller spin her around by her foot. As soon as she was facing his direction, she braced her hands on the ice hedge, now behind her, and brought her right leg around in a powerful sweep. She heard the crack as she made contact with the thing's jaw. Caught unaware, the thing was knocked backward off his feet by the momentum of her blow. Glancing past the fallen creature, she could see he was no longer alone. At least four or five more of his kind ran from the far tunnel in her direction. Tazi wasted no more time and sprinted the remaining distance to the rope.
Casting safety to the wind, Tazi leaped the last few feet for the line and started to shimmy up the coil, now
