A small brindle pup ambled by, not far from the wizard's stall. Vilma gave a good-natured chuckle. 'That's Dammet's mongrel pup, and the closest thing we got to a white dog hereabouts. Not much of a threat there.'
'Not for several seasons, no, but then the dog will wander far from the village and mate with a renegade wolfwere. Their offspring will have pure white fur and look more dog than wolf. In human form, she will be a comely maid.'
Vilma responded with a thin smile. 'My man Tomas will enjoy this tale, that's for sure and certain! His eye for a pretty girl will be the death of him.' She shook her cleaver, an unconsciously lethal gesture.
'True enough, but his death will not come at your hands,' Ursault replied.
The woman's smile faded, and fear crept into her eyes. When a wizard-even a mad wizard-spoke of death, it was time to start kindling the funeral pyres.
'Of course, if your boy Dammet remembers to tie the brindle dog when the harvest moon blooms full, the white maid will never be. A lot of trouble that will save.' Ursault cocked his head, as if listening to unseen voices. 'But on the other hand, a lot of trouble that will cause. This same wolfwere maid could bring doom to the floating city. A lot of trouble that will save. On the other hand-' He broke off with a grunt, momentarily silenced by a sharp, warning nudge from Gnarfling's elbow.
The woman's smile returned, edged with both relief and pity. 'Floating cities now, is it? Here in Halruaa?'
Ursault shrugged. 'Sometimes yes, and sometimes no.'
'That ought to cover it,' Gnarfling said meaningfully.
Vilma's gaze darted toward the short man and moved quickly away. Her tolerance did not quite embrace the odd little man. Everyone in Ashtarahh knew most everything about everyone else, and found comfort in this universal lack of privacy. But not even the most imaginative gossip among them could invent a story that could in satisfactory fashion explain Gnarfling, or define his purpose in coming to Ashtarahh. Vilma had a limited imagination and a healthy suspicion of anything than lay beyond its bounds. She gave Ursault a tentative smile, then hauled up her basket and took off at a brisk pace.
Gnarfling reached for his flask and gestured with it toward the loom. 'What else you see in there?'
A forlorn expression touched the wizard's face. 'Everything,' he said softly, his voice sad and infinitely weary. 'Everything.'
The small man cleared his throat, uneasy with his friend's pain. 'Well, how about you start a new weaving, and let's see where it goes.'
Ursault obligingly drew a small knife and cut the tangle from his loom. He made a complicated arcane gesture, and a new set of vertical threads appeared on the crooked frame. For a long moment he studied the warp threads, as if examining and discarding many possibilities. Finally he took up a shuttle and began to layer in the weft.
His hands flashed with a wizard's exquisite dexterity, adding a thread here and a new color there. Before long a pattern began to emerge. Glowing, silvery threads connected in a fine web. The fabric between this web, however, remained a dark and indeterminate color, deep as moon-cast shadows. Gnarfling frowned in puzzlement as he noted that Ursault was threading in some mud-splattered crimson. Even this bright color disappeared into the shadowy gloom.
'What do you make of that?' he demanded.
'That's the Weave,' Ursault replied, naming the web of magic that surrounded and sustained all of Halruaa, and for all Gnarfling knew, the rest of the world as well. 'At least, it's Ashtarahh's place in the Weave.'
Gnarfling leaned in and squinted. Sure enough, he could make out the faint outline of the village, as it might appear to a soaring hawk, carved out of the tightly packed web that represented the jungle. Fainter, thinner silver threads connected the fields and buildings, and tiny glowing dots seemed to mill about the open area-an uncanny representation of the market square and the people who readied it.
This was the first discernable picture Gnarfling had ever seen on Ursault's loom. For some reason that worried him. So did the intense expression on the wizard's face as he tossed colors haphazardly into the pattern, only to have them swallowed by the strange, shadowy void that separated and defined the silvery Weave.
In short order a small tapestry hung on the loom. Ursault studied the weaving intently, and Gnarfling studied Ursault.
'You see something, don't you?' 'Everything,'' the wizard responded again in wondering tones. 'Everything.'
The response was familiar, but there was a new note in his voice, something that sent tiny fingers of cold dancing down Gnarfling's spine.
After a moment, Ursault moved one hand in a flowing circular pattern. The unseen colors shifted, and a man's face took form in a gap between the glowing silver threads, a face depicted with precision and clarity that the best of Ashtarahh's weavers could not match.
The man was young and exceedingly lean. His high, sharp cheekbones leaned precariously over the deep hollows below, and the thin black mustache on his upper lip looked as tremulous and impermanent as an alighting moth. His face was exceedingly pale for a Halruaan, and a sharp contrast to the feverish brightness of his black eyes.
Trouble coming,' muttered Gnarfling. He was well acquainted with trouble and plenty familiar with wizards- which, to his way of thinking, was two ways of saying the same thing. 'When?'
In response, Ursault merely shifted his gaze from the Iqom to the market square.
The square was filling rapidly. Visiting merchants strolled along the paths, eyeing the tapestries and sampling bits of cheese. The trundle of carts over the corduroy filled the air with a pleasant rumble. Already two of these carts had been hauled off the path to languish by the wheelwright's shop, listing heavily over shattered wheels. A young man stood by one of them, arguing with the apprentices and punctuating his complaints with overly dramatic gestures.
Gnarfling's eyes went straight to a thin young man, narrowing as they took in the too-familiar theatrics. The newcomer didn't have the look of a merchant or artisan. He was tall and thin, not much past twenty summers, and obviously possessed more money than sense. He traveled alone on in an expensive covered cart drawn by matched horses. His emaciated form was draped with fine robes of purple-trimmed black, and jewels flashed on his gesticulating hands. All of these things fairly screamed 'wizard.'
Even without the trappings, there was an intensity about the newcomer that suggested magic, yet Gnarfling could sense no hint of Mystra's Art about the young man. His nose for such things was as keen as any hound's- and more to the point, as keen as any magehound's. These instincts, and the permanent disguise offered by his stunted form, had kept him alive for over thirty winters.
Why then, he wondered, was he so uneasy?
'He's looking for you,' Ursault said, as mildly and as matter-of-factly as if his companion had spoken his question aloud.
The small man shot to his feet as if he'd just sat on a hedgehog. The sudden movement seemed to draw the newcomer's eyes. Recognition flared in his strangely burning gaze, and for a moment Gnarfling stared into the youth's face like a hare mesmerized by a hawk.
Then, suddenly, the young man was standing directly in front of Ursault's stall.
Gnarfling blinked once in surprise, and a few times more to adjust his vision. He instinctively sniffed for the scent of magic, but all he smelled on the newcomer was the cumulative effect of several days on the road: the faint odor of wet cashmere, the musty stench of dirty clothes, and a perfume that smelled of dangerous herbs and pending lightning-a scent no doubt meant to mask the other, more mundane smells.
'I am Landish the Adept,' the young man announced grandly.
Gnarfling collected himself and folded his stubby arms. 'Good for you. Me, I got no business with the outlandish or the inept. You want I should ask around, and see if someone else might?'
Pure fury simmered in the man's intense gaze, a rage out of scale with the small insult. 'Are you certain you have no business with me?' he said meaningfully. 'Absolutely certain? Tell me jordain, what am I?'
A small sizzle of panic raced through Gnarfling, quickly mastered. Surely this revelation was nothing new to Ursault the All-Seeing, and no one else was close enough to hear the damning secret.
'What are you?' he echoed. 'The back end of an ox, so far as I can tell.'
The man's eyes narrowed.' 'Outlandish and inept,'' he repeated. 'A strange choice of words for someone
