At last she stroked his hair a few times, lifted his head up to look into his face, and said, 'Now go to your father.'
As Tal walked slowly down the hall to his father's study, he heard the whisper of slippers and a gentle tinkling of silver bells. A servant had withdrawn to a side passage ahead of him, no doubt to avoid the conflict between Thamalon and his wayward son.
As he reached the narrow hallway, however, Tal saw that the servant stood waiting for him, hands folded demurely beneath her breasts. Her gaze was locked deferentially on the carpet.
She wore the knee-length white dress of the Uskevren domestic staff, the family colors shown in the slashes of her sleeves and a tight gold vest. From a turban of the same gold dangled the bells he had heard, a device to warn family members of a servant's intrusion.
'Master Talbot,' she said, looking up at him. Her pale hazel eyes looked yellow in the steady golden light of the corridor's enchanted sconces.
Tal summoned his best look of exaggerated disappointment, then looked pointedly up and down the empty hallway. 'Where is the audience that makes me 'Master Talbot'?' he asked. 'Have you forgotten our promise?'
Four years his senior, Larajin had been with the Uskevren for as long as Tal could remember. As children, they were frequent playmates. One summer night, after escaping the flustered adult servants at an Uskevren family picnic, they tramped about the nearby fields until the fireflies rose from the ground. Exhausted, they lay upon the heather and gazed at the stars. After a long silence, Larajin told Tal this was their last night together. Upon returning to Stormweather Towers, she must assume the respectful demeanor of the other servants. She was no longer a child.
'But we're friends,' protested the six-year-old Tal. 'That isn't fair.'
'I'll always be your friend, in here,' replied Larajin, placing the tip of a finger over her heart. 'But now I must call you 'Master Talbot' and answer only when you speak to me.'
'That's stupid,' said Tal crossly. He furrowed his brow and considered the options.
'If I don't, I'll be punished,' she said reasonably.
'Not if nobody else hears you,' argued Tal. 'When we're alone, you can call me Tal, and we can be friends, and nobody will know.'
Larajin looked ready to protest, but then she agreed. 'We'll be secret friends, then.'
Tal reached for her hand in the secret pirate handgrip. It was secret because pirates was the one game that would win him a thrashing if he were discovered. Father hated pirates.
'Promise,' said Tal. 'We'll be friends forever, even if it has to be a secret.'
'Promise,' agreed Larajin, returning the secret sign, her hand gripping Tal's wrist, then making a fist inside his own hand, already almost as big as her own. 'Forever.'
Thirteen years later, Tal remembered that promise.
'I haven't forgotten,' she replied, 'but we aren't children anymore.' A beat later she added, 'Tal.'
'No,' agreed Tal, 'but a promise is a promise.' He gently covered her shoulders with his massive hands, intending to embrace her as he did his sister. Before he could, however, he felt a most unbrotherly stirring and dared not draw her close.
Larajin must have seen something on his face, for she took his hands from her shoulders. 'Lord Thamalon the elder awaits you,' she reminded him. Her tone was formal, but she took the sting away with a last, warm squeeze of Tal's hands.
Tal smiled in agreement, took a deep breath, and turned to enter the library.
The Uskevren family library was not by any means the most comprehensive in Selgaunt, but what it lacked in volume it made up in comfort and beauty.
Besides the inevitable shelves of scrolls and books, the library contained a fantastic collection of artwork. What separated it from the many other collections in the city was that each piece was distinctly elven.
Most citizens of Selgaunt would rather rub shoulders with Red Wizards or Tuigan barbarians than consort with the elves of the great forest north of Sembia. Centuries of rivalry and conflict had burned deep resentment into the hearts of Sembians, so much so that their scorn was not limited to the elves of the kingdom of Cormanthor. Very few elves of any sort lived in Sembia, and any association with their kind was considered disgraceful.
While Thamalon Uskevren did not share the bigotry of his countrymen, he was wise enough to confine his love for things elven to the privacy of his library. Tal was not surprised to find him there, surrounded by the fabulous masks of the green elves, the wondrous dreamcatchers of the gold elves, and the excruciatingly beautiful crystal of the moon elves.
Amid all these beauties, Thamalon Uskevren sat beside a chess table. Upon it were arrayed exquisite figures of ivory and mahogany, no doubt carved by an elven artisan.
Tal could tell by his father's expression that there would be no small talk.
'Start from the beginning,' said Thamalon Uskevren. The white-haired patriarch had already made his standard opening, pawn to queen's four. He frowned intently at the ivory pieces before him, his black brows forming a dark chevron above his deep green eyes.
Tal took the seat behind the mahogany pieces and opened with his knight, a move that invariably irked the elder Uskevren, who considered it reckless. 'After some debate, we decided that the owlbears would be hibernating.'
Thamalon moved to protect his pawn without hesitation.
Tal knew at once that this would be a match of lightning chess, which he preferred. He soon became bored during a longer, more considered match. He advanced his other knight, a dragon rampant. 'We decided to hunt boar. There's little for them to eat in winter, so they root for yams.'
Thamalon advanced a pawn, threatening Tal's knight. Still, he didn't speak.
'Right after a kill, you gut the boar and make sausages. They're filled with sweet yams, you see, and you roast them on an open flame.' Tal advanced his knight again, looking at his father's face for a reaction. 'You slice them while they're still steaming hot.'
At last the elder Uskevren's patience cracked. 'Unless you've been missing for nigh on a month because of food poisoning, I fail to see the point.' He pressed the attack against Tal's first knight with another pawn.
'We killed a boar on the first day,' said Tal. He retreated the knight. 'It was when I left the camp to relieve myself of some of the your Usk Fine Old that we were attacked.'
'So, you were drunk,' said Thamalon. He followed the retreat relentlessly, intent on showing Tal the folly of his twin knights' attack, as he had done so often.
'I wasn't drunk,' said Tal with a hint of indignation. His knight safe at last, he advanced his own pawn. 'Being away from camp probably saved my life. I heard shouting, not all of it from the other hunters. By then it was dark, and men were screaming. I ran back to the campfire. Before I could reach it, something began chasing me.'
'An owlbear?' Thamalon freed his king's bishop by advancing another pawn.
'I think so.' Tal opened the outer line of his own king's bishop.
'Did you see an owlbear?' persisted Thamalon.
'No, I didn't see it. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, I didn't have a spear, so I ran.' Tal described his terrified flight through the Arch Wood in unadorned terms, pausing only briefly to respond to the ever-changing board. 'Eventually, I escaped.'
'And how was that?' asked Thamalon Uskevren.
'By cleverly throwing myself over a cliff,' said Tal dryly.
At last the old man's eyes met Tal's, suspecting a jest.
'Honestly,' said Tal. 'I couldn't see where I was going, but it probably saved my life.'
Thamalon pressed an attack on Tal's king's flank, threatening his second knight with pawns while advancing his own king's knight, an ivory unicorn. 'Tell me the rest.'
The rest of the story unfolded much like the game of chess, quickly and in short bursts. Tal told the story, and Thamalon interjected a question here and there. The elder Uskevren explained that Chaney and the other survivors had already given their accounts to the city guard, and Thamalon had interviewed them afterward, learning little more.
