common thistle, so I've to oversee the cooking in addition to all my other chores.'
Father Pelletyr glanced up sharply, having found something even more alarming than the immediate presence of a monster in an apron. 'Are we liable to attack here?'
The bugbear's eyebrows crawled up its flat skull. 'Good heavens, no, Father! This is Zaranda Star's house. None would dare attack it, never knowing when she might return to avenge such a slight.' And he turned and went out with the empty tray.
'Not to mention the fact that the premises are guarded by a bugbear,' Farlorn murmured. 'How did you manage that, Zaranda?'
'Gisbertus? Oh, he's harmless. He's been with me forever.' She attacked her soup with her customary appetite.
Seeing that no further explanations were forthcoming, Father Pelletyr picked up his own spoon.
'How is it that you came to forswear the practice of magic, Zaranda?' he asked.
'The practice of magic?' She glanced up from her own spoon. 'I never did, Father.' 'I realize that, child; I saw how you lit the fire, and I've seen you in action. Let me say, the study, then?'
She shrugged. Too sedentary a life. I like being able to stretch my limbs betimes.'
'Few even attempt the transition from the way of the wand to the way of the sword.' 'It's never been my ambition to be like anybody else, Father.'
Gisbertus came back, bearing small fowls baked in clay vessels. These he cracked open with deft strokes of a mallet, leaving neither shards nor dust, then served out the steaming birds.
'What are the tidings, Gisbertus,' Zaranda asked, 'aside from the difficulties entailed in keeping a domestic staff?'
'Banditry on the rise, and the roads are nowhere safe. Your larger inland cities yet harbor dreams of conquest, but after the fall of Ithmong's tyrant Gallow-glass, they've grown quite circumspect. And from Zazesspur comes great talk of restoring the monarchy.'
Zaranda laughed. 'I asked for fresh tidings, Gisbertus, not the same news as last time I visited, and the time before.'
The bugbear sniffed, tucked the serving tray beneath his furry arm, and rose to his full height, endangering the age-blackened timbers of the high ceiling. 'The change winds are blowing, Zaranda, mark my words. From every street corner in Zazesspur, halflings preach redistribution of the wealth while the Earl Ravenak preaches the expulsion by force of all nonhumans from the land. Bands of darklings ravage the streets by night, fell creatures who spring from no-one-knows-where to sow terror and dismay.'
The bugbear hugged himself and shivered as if to a thrill of horror, eliciting wide-eyed glances of surprise from Farlorn and Pelletyr and, perhaps, the flicker of a smile from Stillhawk.
'The people cry out for a strong man, a Man on Horseback to bring order from chaos.'
Zaranda laughed and flared the nostrils of her aristocratic but somewhat skewed nose. 'Such a man is like a shooting star: he may portend great fortune or may crash through your roof.' She picked up her fowl and tore at it with strong white teeth, and no great daintiness. 'I've seen more roofs in need of mending than folk blessed with fortunes fallen from heaven,' she added, chewing thoughtfully.
'Nonetheless,' Gisbertus said huskily, 'great things are expected from Baron Faneuil Hardisty. He himself seems one of those so blessed. Or so I hear it said. He's the man, not just for Zazesspur, but for all Tethyr. Or so the travelers say.'
Zaranda put down her bird and gave him a look of surprise. 'Oh, so? Such talk might have gotten a body torn asunder by a mob not so many years ago.'
'The change winds, Zaranda. They blow and blow.'
'Ah, well.' She shrugged and picked up her fowl again. 'Air grows stale where no winds blow, as water grows stagnant where there's no flow. Though I've no love for men on horseback, myself.'
The bugbear went out again.
Tour help is rather familiar,' Farlorn said.
'He's pretty much all the family I have-save my comrades of the road.' She glanced at' his plate. 'You're picking at your food. If you don't want it, I'll take it.'
Farlorn's laugh sounded a trifle forced. 'Oh, no you don't, Zaranda. It's just that the presence of such a fell creature throws off my appetite.'
'Very little throws off mine.'
'If Zaranda vouches for him,' said Father Pelletyr, biting off the end of a thighbone and sucking out the marrow, 'that's good enough for me. The gods have gifted her with sound judgment.'
'Well, sometimes,' Zaranda said.
'Besides,' the priest said, 'good Stillhawk eats with fine appetite, and he's suffered more at the hands of evil things than the rest of us combined.'
The meal ran to several more courses. Farlorn got over his momentary squeamishness and fell to as eagerly as the others. All four were famished after a long day on the road and the brief excitement at the halfling roadblock. Conversation dwindled, first because the serious business of eating took precedence and then bеcause bellies filled with good food and wine from Ithmong, the fatigue of the trip across the Vilhon Reach-and the more vigorous preliminaries-began to lay hold of them, weighing down their eyelids as well as their tongues.
Stillhawk, who tried for Zaranda's sake to ape the civilized courtesies to which he was unaccustomed, rose first from the table. She looked up at him and nodded.
'The night is warm and fair,' she said. 'You'll be sleeping outside?'
The ranger nodded. He had little use for feather beds, less for walls and roofs. 'In the unlikely event it rains, there are empty stalls in the stable. If Goldie's gambling with the grooms again, run them out. She cheats abominably, anyway.'
Stillhawk nodded again and withdrew.
'With your permission, fair lady,' Father Pelletyr said, stifling a yawn behind a pudgy hand, 'I shall retire to my evening prayers as well.' Despite this announcement, he made no move to leave the table.
'My house is yours,' she said.
'What of you, Zaranda?' asked Farlorn, lounging with apparent artlessness in a chair-of age-stained oak.
'I'm off to my tower, and then to bed.'
The half-elven bard pushed a laugh through his fine nostrils. 'So that's why you bought yourself a manor with a fine high keep.'
'In part,' she said, rising and smoothing her gown. It was a gesture of surprising femininity from one whose hands were callused from gripping a sword-hilt.
'Ill never understand the fascination the tiny lights in the sky hold for you, Zaranda,' Farlorn said, shaking his head. 'They're lovely, aye, and suitable for illuminating lovers and inspiring song. But they're no more than jewels set in a crystal sphere; all know this.'
'Perhaps,' said Zaranda, frowning slightly. Master of words as well as melodies, Farlorn seldom said anything without good reason, perhaps reasons in layers. The remark he tossed off about the stars illuminating lovers cut close; she'd been sleeping alone for a long time.
Once, long ago, Farlorn the Handsome had been Zaranda's lover. Briefly. They had parted ways and not seen one another again for years. Then, when she was gathering up the risky expedition to Thay that pre-ceded her current journey in the bustling Sembian port of Urmlaspyr, she had chanced to meet him again in an open-air market.
He professed himself willing to undertake an adventure or two. He seemed changed, not quite as ebullient, a shade more somber. But he was a master of strata-gem and diplomacy; his jests and songs and tales of wonder could do as much for morale on a long, hard trail as a thrown-open cask of gold; he had the elven stealth in his feet, and his fingers were as nimble wielding his sword and dagger as they were at plying the frets of his yarting. Perhaps the change was due to nothing more than age, though the years lay almost as lightly on him as his wild elf kinfolk-more lightly.even than on Zaranda, who wore her winters well. In any event, she had invited him to join her company readily enough, and had already had several occasions to be glad of her choice. And still… and still, something about him troubled her.
'Perhaps she seeks to read her fortune in the stars,' said the father indulgently. In a mild sort of way, II- mater disapproved of astrology. The common folk of Faerun suspected it was one of those proscriptions laid down
