Thanks for the loan of your parlor again.” Smiling grimly, he started down the shaft himself. As sure as the sun would set this night, Ondrin was one of the biggest loose tongues in the kingdom, word of this oh-so-secret meeting was sure to spread rapidly.
Chapter 14: The Pupil
Year of the Leaping Hare (376 DR)
“Moriann, Tharyann, Boldovar the Mad, Gantharla, Iltharl…”
The elder wizard clicked his tongue at her.
“Moriann, Tharyann, Boldovar the Mad, Ilthan, Gantharla, Roderin the Bastard, Thargreve…”
“Which Thargreve?” interrupted Baerauble.
“Thargreve the Lesser,” spat Amedahast, and the older wizard nodded, allowing her to continue through the catechism of royal heads of Cormyr.
Baerauble was a teacher of the rote-and-repetition school, whether the subject was history or spell theory. Amedahast hated it. The crowned heads. The noble families. The lands about the Sea of Fallen Stars, past and present. The dead and dry tales of the Cormyrean legend. All the detritus that must be learned for her to serve as his scribe and apprentice in the court of King Anglond.
Baerauble needed a scribe these days. The wizard was skeleton-thin now, and his head was as smooth as glass. The only hair he had left consisted of a few long, white strands that marked where his beard and eyebrows had once been. He needed a gnarled staff to walk, had to be carried by chair from place to place, and was severely taxed by spellcastings. He needed at least an assistant, and at best an heir. Cormyr had always had its High Wizard and would need a new one in days not long to come.
That would be Amedahast, summoned from distant Myth Drannor at Baerauble’s request. The young woman had Baerauble’s blood in her, that much was certain. She was lean in form and sharp-featured in face, her light red-blonde hair gathered in an ornate, ordered braid halfway down her back.
She claimed Baerauble’s mantle through his mating with the elven ancestor of the family line, Alea Dahast. There would be a tale she’d want to hear, of elf and human falling in love on first sight, and a life of adventures during which they’d saved each other’s lives time after time. Not this droning repetition of facts and lists.
“To serve Cormyr, you must understand Cormyr,” said the elder wizard hoarsely. “Facts are merely tools and must be familiar to be utilized effectively.”
Amedahast was fully human, the result of many years of mortal blood watering down her elven ancestry. Even so, she had a fey, dangerous look about her, a look that she hoped would make her look even more dangerous among these rustics than she truly was. One lesson that Baerauble did not have to teach her was that if you looked like a tough fight, you did not have to be a tough fighter.
The lesson continued through most of the afternoon. Great battles. The legendary blades of the kingdom, starting with Faerlthann First-King’s legendary sword, Ansrivarr. How many times Arabel has seceded from the kingdom (three) and how many times rival Marsember has been abandoned (twice). The legend of the Purple Dragon and his reported sightings in recent times.
There was magical training as well. Visualization and meditation. Schools of spells and theories. Spell ingredients and suitable substitutions. Personal runes and godly interference. Amedahast wondered if she were ever going to see the country that she was supposedly being trained to defend.
In midafternoon a summons came for Baerauble from the king. With much grumbling and cursing, the ancient wizard hobbled to the waiting chair and, snarling at the bearers, set off for the reception hall. His last words to Amedahast, before he was borne around a corner, were that she should study her geography until he returned. His pupil nodded obediently and watched him disappear behind a wall. His now incoherent shouts at the bearers continued for another minute.
Amedahast pulled down the appropriate scrolls and stared at them for all of twenty minutes before she blinked, shook herself, and realized she had not absorbed the least whit of information. The words and descriptions registered through her eyes, but some goblin intercepted the knowledge before it reached her mind and memory. She sighed deeply and looked out the window. It was an early spring afternoon, and the apple trees in the orchard beyond were just starting to bloom.
Amedahast closed the scrolls and looked out the window for another twenty minutes. Baerauble had said to study the geography scrolls. He had not said where she should study them.
She gathered the scrolls up and put them in a small satchel, along with a pair of rolls from the larder and a small bottle of port, then left the wizard’s quarters in the royal castle.
The original keep had sprawled in a more or less haphazard fashion along the rolling hillock that dominated Cormyr. Most of the aristocrats, courtiers, and bureaucrats had been banished a hundred years ago for some rebellion or scheme or faux pas and now occupied a sprawling tumbledown chaos of stone buildings at the base of the hill called the Noble Court, or simply the court. The keep was home to the royal family, the important offices of state, the treasury and mint, and the court wizard. The Obarskyr castle loomed over the surrounding countryside, much like the Obarskyrs themselves.
Amedahast ignored the sprawling city and headed in the opposite direction, down the other side of the hill. This side had been left more pastoral, much of it a well-mannered garden. Orchards of apple, pear, and peach trees marched in neat rows along one side, and there were wide, stepped banks of primroses, marigolds, and stunted lilies. There was also a low garden hedge maze, a whitewashed gazebo, and a sprinkling of statuary, some of it imported from Myth Drannor itself. In the distance, rising above the trees, she saw roofs of colored slate, the homes of some of the highest-ranking nobles. There lived the Truesilvers, Crownsilvers, and Huntsilvers, surrounded by a sprinkling of lesser lights: Turcassans, Bleths, and the upstart Cormaerils and Dheolurs.
Amedahast chose the gazebo as her destination. It had a good view of the surrounding area and should provide sufficient warning of Baerauble’s return. As she approached, she made a face at the thought of more interminable study and pulled one of the scrolls out of the satchel.
And that’s when she struck him as she rounded a corner with her head down, her satchel swinging around in front of her, one hand pawing through the scrolls. He rounded an epic piece of statuary from the other direction, and the two collided solidly.
Amedahast teetered back three steps, as if she had struck a massive wall. She would have fallen, but strong, quick hands took her firmly by the shoulders.
“I’m sorry… are you all right, good lady?” asked the young man.
Amedahast regained her footing, and the youth removed his hands from her shoulders. He was as tall as she, and broad-shouldered. His face was open and smiling, his smile framed by the well-trimmed silkiness of a first beard. He was dressed in simple riding pants and a voluminous white shirt and bore a short, broad blade on his right hip. On his forehead, he wore a simple circlet, a gold band unadorned by ornament.
“You could look where you’re going,” she snapped as her brain slowly yielded information about the significance of the coronet. Worn by the lesser royals in Cormyr, the tomes had said, such as the princesses and princes. And Cormyr had but one prince at the moment. “If you would be so kind, Your Majesty,” she added, realizing whom she must be addressing.
“I’ll try,” said the young prince, and his smile deepened. Amedahast felt herself reddening. Her first encounter with one of the royal family, and she had chewed the man out. Though from the tales Baerauble had told her, yelling at the king seemed to be a required duty of the court wizard.
The youth did not move away. “May I ask why you’ve come to the royal garden?” he asked, and the young mage was struck with the softness of his voice. She had thought a man so muscular would have a deep, booming voice, but these tones were soft and cultured.
“I-I was studying some scrolls for my master, Baerauble, and thought I’d do better in the open air,” Amedahast began, then stopped as the young man’s face lit with surprise and glee.
“So you’re the old scarecrow’s secret project!” he shouted. “The servants’ve been wondering about you for two weeks now. You’re the mysterious figure Baerauble smuggled into the castle in the dead of night and kept imprisoned in his quarters! Some said you were a creature from the pits and the old wizard was going to trade the realm for eternal life. Others said you were a goddess he’d rescued from the Purple Dragon himself. I see that the
