'He is weak in ways that serve us. Likewise is he mighty in rationalization.'
'He must become king soon. Only then can the transformation take place.'
'I assure you no one is more eager to see Baron Hardisty made king than Baron Hardisty.'
'And the girl? What of the girl? Why do you not bring her to me?'
'Sweet Tatrina? She's more useful as she is, another golden cord binding him to me. He's quite infatuated with her.'
'All the more reason to make sure of her.'
'Come, now, we've been over this before. She can scarce beguile him if she starts acting like a zombie. And she's eager enough to do anything I ask, not that I've requested anything too controversial.' He chuckled. 'It's for the love of Ao, after all.'
'You had best be right.'
'I am. Now: attend. Trouble not the sleep of Zazesspur tonight. I have a message I need sent over some distance. It will take concentration, even for you.'
'Do not command me! I command! Do not dare command me!'
'Forgive me, О mighty L'yafv-Afvonn, I beseech thee. I abase myself, I grovel, I truckle, I'm lower than dirt. Now will you please just do it?'
'What do you want?'
The cleric explained briefly. When he finished, the fire went out of the head's eyes and mouth. Both closed.
After a moment the bronze eyelids opened. 'You can't imagine how vexing that is,' the head said in its customary voice, 'serving as mouthpiece for that thing in the cellar.'
'I don't care to try,' the priest said.
'Why don't you just listen to me? I can reveal unto you secrets-awful, indescribable secrets. All I ask-'
Armenides silenced it with a hand wave. 'Little that is awful and indescribable,' he said, 'is secret from me.'
So saying, he passed on into his innermost room. This was occupied by a fire pit, over which bubbled a great black iron caldron. From a hook set in the ceiling he took a large ladle and stirred the contents, infant limbs and organs aboil in spices. It was time for lunch.
In the waters of the river Ith, the stars were tiny streaming pennons. 'I dream about flying a lot,' Chenowyn said as they walked along the red-brick river path.
The night air was charged with the scents of lilac and honeysuckle. The river, which sprang with considerable violence out of the Snowflake Mountains, had matured considerably by the time it reached Ithmong; it was broader about the middle, but had replaced frantic force with deliberate power. It chuckled to itself, complacent over what it had become, and slapped the stones that reinforced the banks. Zaranda turned her face so the girl couldn't see her grimace. She, too, had dreamt last night, but not of flying. It was as if she heard that whisper again, the hated sibilance that had made her nights in Zazesspur so hideous.
She sought refuge in a different subject: 'If you keep applying yourself as you've been-and also get lucky, since I don't know any such spells-you just might someday get to fly.'
Chen shook her head. 'Not like that, by magic. I feel as if I have wings. I spread them and drive myself into the sky like a bird. But I'm not a bird. I'm something different. But I'm still me, and it feels… right.' She noticed that she and Zaranda had fallen out of step, skipped to synchronize herself with the older woman. Zaranda frowned. Chen wasn't the only person she knew who was obsessive about staying in step with whomever she was strolling with. Her concern went beyond that.
From an urban feral child-ragged, gaunt, and filthy-Chenowyn had grown into a healthy, lovely young woman. She had put on an amazing growth spurt in the near-year since Zaranda first found her in that Zazesspurian alley, becoming more than a hand taller. Which should be small surprise, Zaranda re-fleeted; Chen ate like a half-starved owlbear.
She now traded banter freely with Goldie, though the mare admitted privately to spotting the girl points in order to encourage her. Goldie had also taught her to ride. Otherwise, Chen was still pretty oblivious to those people who did not actively engage her interest: Still-hawk, Shield, the boys-and men-who increasingly sought to catch her dark maroon eye. However, if still not a diplomat, Chen had learned at least a modicum of manners, and while Zaranda herself had little use for altruism, she had guided the girl to a point where she was no longer self- absorbed to the point of being a men-ace to navigation.
Chen had also begun to take some trouble with herself. She kept herself scrupulously clean now without Zaranda having to remind her. And she seemed to have gotten past believing anything she could wrap or hang around her was suitable garb.
Tonight, for example, she was quite handsomely turned out, in white linen blouse with deerskin lacings up the front. Just like the one Zaranda wore. She had on form-fitting dark blue breeches and soft boots with fringed, downturned tops. Just like Zaranda's. Her heavy hair swept out behind her head like a dark red comet tail, confined by a silver fillet… just as Zaranda's straighter dark hair was.
Clearly, a problem existed.
Chen pointed heavenward, where the few lazy-drifting slate clouds weren't bothering to obscure many stars. 'What's that group of stars there called? Like an hourglass, sort of, with three bright stars across the middle?'
'Kind of a lopsided hourglass-but as it happens, that's what they call it down here in the Empires of the Sands. In the north it's the Huntsman, to the Tuigan the Horse-Bowman.'
Chen gave her a skeptical look. 'That's about the tenth constellation you've told me the Tuigan have named after something to do with horses,' she said in that very prim way she had when she thought she was being made fun of.
Zaranda laughed and hugged her. There was a time when such a suspicion would have brought on a concentration of uncontrolled dweomer to lift the hairs at Zaranda's nape. Sometimes she dared hope she might actually civilize the girl.
'Honey,' she said, 'to the Tuigan, everything has to do with horses. Most of their constellations are named for them, and those that aren't have names from the 'hunt or war: the Hare, the Falcon, the Yataghan. But mostly, it's horses, horses, horses. Did you know that one major tribal group has an epic poem a quarter of a million lines long about a hero whose horse is smarter than he is?'
Chen's underlip jutted, most fetchingly. Zaranda felt the faint tingle of power in the air around them. 'Now you're teasing me!'
'No. Really I'm not. The Tuigan have some strange and wild ways-wonderful ways, I can see now that they're out of our hair. They're very different from us.' 'Oh.' Interest fell like a veil from the girl's face. When talk turned to people, she quickly grew bored. In-stead she pointed again to the sky. 'How about that star away up there, that big red one?' Zaranda smiled. Was the girl genuinely interested, or merely trying to emulate her in yet another way? But the air was warm and sweet, the stars seductive in their brilliance. Chen could not be called a sweet child, yet she did lack malice. Her mind was quick and keen, and now that the soot had been rubbed away from the outside of her, her spirit shone clear and bright as any star. In her way she adored Zaranda, and Zaranda, in her way, loved her.
So they walked and talked beside the wide, complacent river, and left unpleasant necessities to the province of a different day.
Through lengthening shadows Zaranda walked back to the Ith-Side Inn with long-legged strides. Nothing had been decided in the day's negotiations with the town council-but, of course, nothing was intended to be. That was the way of negotiations, that they dragged on, and while that fact was little to Zaranda's taste, it was nonetheless a fact, and she could as readily draw the moon down from the sky as alter it. Striding the brick walkway that ran alongside the river and was flanked by weeping willows, she was not displeased with the talk's progress, such as it was.
The Ithmong council would come around to her way of thinking, she was confident. Right now they had trouble seeing past the short-term pain of losing the income tolls brought. However, they and all Ithmong stood to gain from increasing trade-had already profited from the new commerce Star Protective Services had helped set flowing. Cutting Ernest Gallowglass's tolls for the Ithal Bridge and river passage would serve the economy of Tethyr like a healing spell cast on a wounded warrior.
Of course, the town council would not be unique in the history of Faerun if they attempted to have it all-
