by the god so his servants could feel as if they held the moral high ground in dealing with weaker souls.
'No, Father,' Zaranda said. 'I misdoubt, somehow, I'd be well served in knowing my future.'
The priest raised his eyebrows. 'Why, child, most of humanity and demihumanity alike would pay most handsomely for an accurate augury of what the future holds in store.'
'Not Zaranda,' the bard said, smiling halfway. 'She delights in differing from everybody else. Contrary is our Zaranda Star.'
She gave him a look. He had one leg, well-turned beneath her gown, thrown over an arm of the chair, and a golden goblet in his hand.
'I don't believe we travel fixed, immutable paths, like oxen yoked to a grindstone,' she said. 'And anyway nо stars, whether jewels in crystal or the suns of distant worlds, control my destiny. That I do myself.' Father Pelletyr shook his head almost mournfully. 'Ah, Zaranda, what if everybody felt the way you do? We'd have chaos.'
Farlorn laughed, a sound like a golden bell tolling, Zaranda remembered, fugitive, how once that laugh could. melt her heart. She wondered why it was no longer so.
'Chaos is Zaranda's natural element, like water to an eel,' he said.
She looked at him again, carefully, as if by the force of her gaze she could ascertain whether his words held a hidden sting. But her long-abandoned studies had given her no magic for that. For his part, the bard was adept at hiding his true feelings behind an easy smile.
She wondered, briefly, if it still rankled him that she, not he, had terminated their affair.
She yawned, covered her mouth with a hand that was slim and graceful for all its strength. Such speculation added no gold to her coffers. That brand of blunt practicality would have made Father Pelletyr sigh for the state of her soul. But she was, after all, a merchant. The bottom line was that she was tired.
'I'm going to bed,' she said.
And she left them there, the stout priest gazing contemplatively into the candle flame and Farlorn staring into the depths of his goblet as if he caught a glimpse of his own future there, among the dregs of Zaranda's wine.
3
Her own bedchamber nestled high in the tower, right beneath her top-level observatory. This served a multiplicity of purposes, not least of which was that if things went severely south in a hurry, she could defend her chambers single-handedly for quite a while. In Tethyr one couldn't take for granted that such things wouldn't happen. This fact accorded well with life as Zaranda had known it all along, so it caused her small discomfort.
'Good evening, Sorceress,' said the brazen head on her chest of drawers as she descended the steps — which had uncomfortably high risers, even for one possessed of her length of leg — from her observatory.
'Good evening, head,' she said.
The breeze through the open but bar-crossed window was cool and sweet and carried the song of a night- bird in with it.
'You are troubled,' the head said.
She let the comment pass. The head was quite correct, it was a very perceptive brazen head. She was al- lowing herself to worry about money and, in particular, her lack of it. If she didn't realize every farthing of the profit she anticipated from her current enterprise, she would at the least lose Morninggold. Her normal specific for such concerns was violent exercise, but the sheer exhaustion that hung on her shoulders like a leaden shroud precluded that.
Life was so much simpler when I was a mere warrior, with nothing to trouble myself over save whom I might next have to swing my sword against… As soon as she thought it, she knew it was a lie, and faintly ridiculous; the way of the sword, whether as adventurer, mercenary, or even successful war leader against the nomad Tuigan, was far from carefree. Someone, possibly resident of another world, plane, or even time-Faerun being uncommonly porous to artifacts, ideas, and even visitors from such places-had once de-scribed life as hours of boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror.
That expressed it rather well. Yet she knew that wasn't full truth either. The warrior's life had its re-wards. Battle was terrifying, but it was also exhilarating, filled with wild freedom and fury difficult to capture elsewhere. That was why Zaranda had not entirely forgone the sword when she made the latest change in her life and career- that and the fact that the world was, after all, a risky sort of place.
The truth, Zaranda, she told herself, is that you got bored with the life and decided to settle down. And look how that's turned out.
'I can help,' the head intoned. Its eyes flashed a beguiling yellow.
Zaranda glanced at it in irritation. It was her preference to sleep unclothed, a fondness she found impractical to indulge on the trail amid an exclusively male contingent of caravan guards and muleteers, and she had been looking forward to that luxury tonight in her own bed in her own secure keep. Now it occurred to her that she was hardly prepared to disrobe with that thing staring unblinking at her from her chest of drawers, which was ornamented with grinning goblin heads carved in bold relief.
'Be silent,' she told the head, 'or I'll put you back in your chest.'
She had ordered the chests containing the truly powerful magic items conveyed to her chamber for security. Perhaps the rarest, most powerful, and most nearly priceless of all was the brazen head. The product of a mage whose.bones had long decayed to dust and scattered on the winds a dragon's age ago, before Elminster was more than a gleam in his father's eye, the head was the bust of a man acerbly handsome, with a scholar's brow and an ascetic's narrow, bearded face. Unfortunately, it had also a satyr's sensibilities which was why Zaranda was going to be sleeping in her nightgown tonight.
Aside from lips and eyelids, which worked on cleverly crafted hinges, the head's cast-bronze face was immobile. Nonetheless it managed to convey both injured innocence and invitation.
'You have been good to me,' it crooned. 'Far more congenial than my previous masters for millennia-not to mention easier on the eyes. I would help you. I offer you. secrets.'
' 'Secrets,' ' Zaranda echoed in disgust. Statue it might have been, but the head was palpably alive, aware of self and surroundings. Zaranda had found herself unable to bear the thought of the thing riding in claustrophobic darkness for weeks without end, so she took it out discreetly whenever she could. And look where your soft heart gets you, she upbraided herself.
'Secrets,' the head repeated eagerly. 'Secrets of the ancients. Secrets of sorcery long forgotten. The arts mantic, necromantic, or just plain romantic, if that's what you prefer.'
'No,' Zaranda said. She sat at her dresser, unwound her hair from its braid, let it hang unbound down her back as she brushed it out.
'Come now,' the head said. 'Any mage alive would kill to know such secrets as I hold within this bronze conk.'
'Not me.'
'Yоu could gain great power.'
'Power doesn't interest me.'
'Wealth beyond imagining.'
Zaranda grimaced. 'At what cost?'
'I hardly expected to find such small-souled niggling within you, Zaranda Star. This merchant life has smirched your soul.'
'At least I still have my soul.'
'I cannot help noticing,' the head said in gilded tones that reminded her uncomfortably-in several ways-of Farlorn, 'that for a woman of such striking handsomeness you spend an uncommon percentage of your nights alone. All of them, in my limited observation-not to put too fine an edge upon it.'
She let that pass and brushed her hair with redoubled vigor.
'You could win the hearts of handsome princes.'
'I've done that,' she said tightly. She laid the brush down with exaggerated care to keep from smashing it against the dresser. 'I've never needed magic, either. And princes aren't worth the bother. Too full of themselves, expecting every whim to be instantly obeyed.'
