“Jarad was promised to Niamene Tresterfin. They meant to marry at Midsummer.”
“Burkel Tresterfin’s daughter?”
“Aye.”
Geran remembered Niamene-a pretty little slip of a girl, perhaps five or six years younger than Jarad. The Tresterfin farm was a good piece of land in the Winterspear Vale, three or four miles north of town. She’d been a young teenager when Geran set out from Hulburg. But it seemed that she’d grown up while he’d been away. Strange how ten years changed such things, he mused.
“How is she?” he managed.
“Heartbroken, what do you think? She and her whole family too. Burkel and his wife liked Jarad a lot, and he liked them as well. It would’ve been a good match.”
“I didn’t know.”
“No, you wouldn’t have heard.” Mirya glanced down the counter; the woodcutters were finishing their business with her clerk, who was busy writing out their order in a ledger. Satisfying herself that it was nothing she needed to worry about, she took a deep breath and looked back to him. “Where do you keep yourself now, anyway?”
“Tantras. A few years back I joined an adventuring band called the Company of the Dragon Shield. Tymora smiled on us, and we won a small fortune before we went our separate ways. My comrade Hamil and I bought owners’ shares of a small trading company, the Red Sail Coster. We buy and sell cargoes in the Vast.”
“I thought I’d heard that you were living in Myth Drannor.”
His hand tickled, remembering the feel of brushing dry leaves of orange and gold from Alliere’s midnight hair as she laughed and ducked away from him. Strange that his fingers recalled something his heart had no wish to, he mused. He looked down again to banish the memory from his mind. “I did for a time, but I’ve been in Tantras for more than a year now,” he said. He paused and changed the subject. “Listen, Mirya, I know you said that there isn’t much I can do, but…”
She crossed her arms and fixed her gaze on him. “You don’t need to worry about me, Geran Hulmaster. You’ve not been home in years, and you’re sure to be on your way again soon. Spend an hour by Jarad’s grave if you feel you should, visit with your family, take a ride in the Highfells if you still fancy the scenery. Then go back to whatever place you call home now. You’ve nothing more to do here.”
Geran retreated a step. Mirya had good cause to be angry with him, after all. He’d broken her heart when he left Hulburg ten years past. He’d always meant to come back after seeing more of Faerun, but after those first few years with the Dragonshields, he’d found himself enchanted in Myth Drannor, swept up in a dreamlike life that had made him feel like one of the Fair Folk himself, and the memories of his boyhood had seemed so faint and far away. He was still waking up from that strange dream.
“Mirya, I don’t know what to say,” he sighed. He couldn’t think of anything more.
“Mother! Mother! I finished my letters. Can I go play kick-stones with Dori and Kynda?” Geran looked to the doorway leading back to the family quarters, where a young, dark-haired girl stood. She wore a long-sleeved dress of blue wool and was already pulling a brown hood over her shoulders, expecting to go outside. She gave a quick smile and dipped in a shallow curtsey when she noticed him looking at her. “Well, can I?” she repeated.
Mirya has a daughter? Geran blinked in surprise. Of course, Mirya was wearing her hair in a long braid. In Hulburg that was something married women did. When did that happen? he wondered. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised. What did he expect after ten years, after all?
Mirya’s face softened for a moment. “Aye, go ahead, Selsha. But you be back here by noon. We’re taking a big delivery from the brewhouse, and you’re to help mind the store while I’m seeing to it.”
“Thank you, Mother!” Selsha bolted back the way she had come. Her footsteps clattered in the hallway, and a door slammed shut.
“You have children?” Geran asked. “I never knew.”
“Only Selsha,” she replied. She stared after her daughter with the same mixture of love and just a hint of worry that mothers everywhere seem to have. “Selune knows that she’s enough. She’s a wonder and a trial to me every day.”
“How old is she?”
“Eight last month.” Mirya glanced back at him. “She came about two years after you left Hulburg.”
He nodded. In other words, Mirya was saying, she isn’t yours. That would have been a few months after he’d returned home for his father’s funeral, but Geran had stayed in Hulburg only a couple of days before leaving again. He hadn’t seen Mirya then. “She’s beautiful. Are you-I mean, who is-?”
“No, I’m not married. Her father’s no one you know and no one that we’ll ever see again.” Darkness flickered across her face, and she looked away from him. “But we’ve got each other, and we make do.”
There’s more to it than that, Geran thought. Had she fallen in love with someone else after he’d left only to have her heart broken again? Or… well, there was not much point in speculating about it. Mirya had made it clear that it was none of his business. Strange, but the idea that she’d evidently moved on after he’d struck out on his own woke a small, bitter swell of resentment in him.
You have no right to feel that way, he told himself. You left her, after all. Was she supposed to remain chaste and forlorn until the day you decided to wander back into her life? And Alliere’s ghost still haunted him every day.
“I should be going,” he finally said. “I’d like… well, I’ll stop in to say good-bye before I leave town.”
She shrugged and started to say something, but then someone pushed the door open. Three men in mail shirts and tabards of green and white sauntered in. One ran his hand along the wooden counter as he paced toward Mirya, one closed the door behind him and leaned against it with arms folded, and the third wandered by the barrels and sacks stacked along the opposite wall. He studied Geran while feigning interest in the goods offered for sale.
“Well, now, Mistress Erstenwold,” the first man said. “You seem to’ve neglected this month’s council dues. We’re here to offer a friendly reminder.”
Mirya’s face tightened. She stood her ground, not moving. “I’ve not paid any dues because I haven’t joined the Merchant Council,” she said. “Nor do I mean to, so you and your men can see yourselves out anytime you fancy.”
“You certain about that, Mistress Erstenwold?” the first man asked. He was a big, round-faced fellow with the complexion of a ruddy ham. “These are dangerous times. It’ll be difficult to do business without council protection.” He nodded toward the man along the back wall, who drew a dagger from his belt and slashed open a sack of milled grain. It poured out onto the floor with a soft hissing sound.
“Enough,” Geran said. He turned to face the men in green and white. “She asked you to leave, so leave.”
“This isn’t your problem,” Mirya snarled under her breath.
“Mistress Erstenwold is right-this ain’t your problem, stranger,” the leader of the three said. He shifted his attention from Mirya to Geran and squared to face him. He rested one hand on the hilt of the long sword at his belt. “Why don’t you shut your damned mouth and think of some other place you ought to be?”
Geran smiled coldly, but his eyes were hard. This was something else that he hadn’t seen in Hulburg before. This makes twice in two days that I’ve faced foreigners wearing steel in my own hometown, he thought. “Whose colors are you wearing?” he asked the man.
The ruddy-faced man measured him for a moment before answering. “House Veruna. Lady Darsi’s helping the Merchant Council to establish order in this miserable town. Everyone who wants to do business in Hulburg is going to join, one way or the other. Now, you’re starting to annoy me, stranger. I’m telling you for the last time: Stand aside, and let me finish my conversation with Mistress Erstenwold here, or things won’t go well for either you or her.”
“Geran, you’re not making things any better!” Mirya hissed.
He ignored her. “I’m not moving,” Geran said.
Ignoring the dark looks the Veruna men shared with each other, Geran emptied his mind of distractions and concentrated on the secret arcane syllables he’d studied for so many months in the starlit glens of Myth Drannor. It was not enough to know the words; to invoke their magic, one also had to understand the strange associations of thought that gave the ancient words their power, then hurl the focused might of one’s will at the combination of symbol and meaning. “Theillalagh na drendir,” he said aloud, clearly, his voice strong and confident in the ancient
