The only item in the room not stone was its occupant. A woman stood with her back to Zaranda Star. She was a few fingers shorter than Zaranda and slen-der as a kobold's hope of redemption. Raven hair hung straight down the back of a gown of velvet the same shade as the midnight-blue star sapphire globe, as large as an orange, which she held contemplatively in one slim-fingered hand.
'You did not come to see me,' the woman said, replacing the sapphire sphere in its holder, carved from onyx in the shape of a claw, which stood atop a pedestal of self-luminous quartz. 'That's why I had to summon you thus, in the midst of night.'
She turned. Her face was as pale as marble and shaped like an idealized heart; her hair grew down in a widow's peak. Her eyes matched her gown and the globe in her hand. Her nose was thin, and so were her lips, features so perfect that the first impression was that she was plain. In fact she was beautiful, but her beauty was not the sort to inspire passion, nor the kind to haunt dreams, such as was often found in elvish folk. Rather it was the kind of beauty to inspire awe.
As to her age, Zaranda would have said she looked mature, but could have hazarded no further guess. Certainly the flawless features showed no wrinkles nor sign of drying on the high slanted cheekbones. She seemed ageless and precise as a drawn blade.
'I didn't have that which you bade me bring you,' Zaranda said with a shrug. She did not bother mentioning that the sorceress might as easily have summoned her in the daytime. Nyadnar had small patience with complaint, and heard no irony but her own. 'There seemed small point in paying a social call.'
'You were wise to forbear to waste my time. What do you plan now?'
Zaranda set her lips against her reflexive reply, which was to ask what business the sorceress had with hers. Unlike her wealth and age, Nyadnar's patience wasn't legendary. Rumor in Zazesspur, where she had allegedly dwelt, off and on, for centuries, held that she was as powerful as Elminster. Zaranda doubted that, but she was sorceress enough herself to sense that Nyadnar's power was great indeed; in the crawling of her skin she could sense enormous dweomer seeming to hover about the sorceress, as when Chen's emotions threatened to run away with her. Zaranda feared her, and for that reason had to guard against her own first reflex, which was defiance. The mage was not such to be either truly a friend or truly a foe of anyone, but her goodwill was much more to be coveted than her displeasure.
'At the moment I have few plans, but many possibilities,' Zaranda said.
'You are too scattershot in your approach to life, child. Too given to disorder. You never truly had the discipline to be a mage.'
'I lacked the patience, perhaps,' Zaranda said tartly. 'But I managed to advance so long as I stayed with it. And then I became a warrior, and had a certain amount of success at that. That's two careers I've made for myself-not bad for someone so disorderly.'
'And now you've gone and wandered into a third profession,' Nyadnar said imperturbably. 'One in which you've not been thriving of late.'
'I got your cursed head for you!' Zaranda flared, feeling cheeks grow hot. 'I winkled it away from the Red Wizards of Thay and brought it safely all the way here-listening to its sophomoric suggestions and innuendo every step of the way, I might add.' She made herself inhale deeply and struggled to be calm.
'Where is it now?'
'It seems that Baron Hardisty and his advisor Armenides have taken a personal interest in it. It is in their possession now, in the Palace of Governance.' Zaranda tried not to slump. 'I suppose you'll talk to them of buying it?'
'No such thing. You display again your propensity for irrationality. I do not wish my interest in the artifact advertised. Why else do you think I waited to summon you until such a time as it would seem nothing more than my well-known attention to all that goes on within the city walls?'
That was the way of Nyadnar: her eyes and spies were everywhere, but her actions, if any, she kept well hidden. As far as anyone could tell she hoarded facts for their own sake, as she did gems.
She asked for Zaranda's own account of what had happened to her recently. Zaranda gave it succinctly. Then she hesitated, and biting at a ragged scrap of cuticle on her thumb, said. 'If the council won't give it back-'
'They won't.'
'— then I could take it back. I stole it from the Red Wizards; I can steal it again.'
'That would not be acceptable. First, I do not deal in stolen goods; despite your flippant reference, you considered your removal of it from the Wizards as a legitimate act of war against long-standing foes, and so do I. Second, while the baron and Armenides may not be as potent as the Zulkir Baastat, neither are they as complacent. You lack the ability to recover it by stealth or force. If you failed and were compelled to talk, it would inconvenience me.'
She turned away, and her attention seemed to travel off among her treasures. Zaranda stood for a while, feeling a certain sardonic amusement at the blithe way Nyadnar talked about the possibility of her being put to torture. Eventually she turned to go. Nyadnar had no more use for the formalities of greeting and leave-taking than a cat.
'A moment.' The sorceress's dry, husky voice stopped Zaranda at the door. 'You recently acquired a new follower. The foundling girl from the stable. Why did you take her in?'
'Perhaps because I was a starveling orphan myself, once upon a time.'
'And what will you do with her?'
A shrug. 'I've cleaned her up, which was a necessary first step. If she'll let me, I'll civilize her. And then- who knows?'
'Will you teach her magic?' She was gazing at Zaranda again, eyes huge and bottomless as midnight seas.
'Perhaps. If she learns some kind of self-control. The powers she has already could do real hurt to her or others. Maybe if she studies a bit of formal magic she'll calm down. Why the interest?'
'These wild talents of hers, this innate ability to gather and-however ineptly-manipulate raw dweomer…' Nyadnar picked up the sapphire sphere and held it forth. 'Our world is a system in dynamic equilibrium, in which opposing forces strive against each other without one or another gaining the upper hand. Someone with such attributes as you describe might have the potential to throw the system badly out of balance, to destroy, perhaps, that equilibrium. Should that occur, the results would be-'
She let the globe fall. Zaranda gasped and took a step forward. Just before it hit the floor, the great gem seemed to dissolve into a cloud of dark mist.
'— unimaginable.' The mist swirled briefly around the sorceress's feet, hidden by the hem of her gown, and then began to twine upward about the glowing quartz pedestal to the top, where it coalesced slowly back into a flawless sapphire sphere.
'You have any advice you'd like to share with me about how to deal with her?' Zaranda asked, a little unsteadily. 'I mean, so I don't inadvertently help her blow up the universe or anything?'
'You must find your own way,' Nyadnar said serenely, stroking the now-intact gem like a favored pet.
'I appreciate the implicit vote of confidence,' Zaranda said. 'But there's something you should know.'
'Which is?'
'Before all this is over I may do a little unbalancing of my own. And while I think the universe is pretty safe from my efforts, I may just destroy an equilibrium or two.'
'Perhaps,' the sorceress said.
'You have been told your case would be handled via the proper procedures, Countess Morninggold,' Duke Hembreon, the most powerful member of the city council, told Zaranda as they stood in morning sunlight in his garden. He spoke the title as he might the words spoiled meat or gangrenous limb, as it were describing a state he found distasteful but was powerless to affect. 'I hardly see what you expect of me.'
In his day the duke had been a puissant warrior. But age had caught him up. His once-powerful frame was shrunken and stooped, his hair and immaculately trimmed beard were white as a gull's wing, and his blue eyes were red-rimmed and prone to prolonged bouts of blinking. Nonetheless, his gaze was clear, and his voice firm. He wore a simple cerulean gown and a soft bladder hat of the same color.
'Perhaps a measure of mercy, Your Grace,' Zaranda said. 'I stand to lose everything, and have committed no crime.'
'Ah, but that remains to be seen, pending the appropriate hearings and investigations.' He held up a long,
