Swords of Eveningstar

Chapter 1

Great things befall when one is brave enough to do something bold, strange, and unusual. Something off one’s daily trail, apart from one’s chosen character and station and presented-to-the-world mask. Great things-or terrible. Or merely pratfalls and troublesome chaos in their wake.

All of which proves one thing beyond all doubt: Whatever gods watch over us, they’re starved for amusement, and richly reward those who entertain them.

Ulvryn Hamdarakh, Sage of Saelmur

Musings On Mortality published in the Year of the Dying Stars

I t had been a bright and glorious day of listening to the new leaves rustle around her every time the gentle breeze set them to fluttering.

Yet the late Tarsakh sun stabbed through them, eager and hot. The Purple Dragon was glad to doff her helm and step into the roadside shade when the gruff old lionar led a dozen fresh blades to her post and told her she was done until next sunrise.

Though the bustle of Waymoot was just around the bend behind her, she went the other way, striding straight to the smells that had been tantalizing her.

The farmwife who’d been selling apples and fresh bread whisked aside the fly blankets from their baskets at her approach, her smile widening.

“Tummy trumpeting?”

“And how,” the warrior replied, fumbling for her purse. “Gods, I feel I could eat-eat-”

She stared past the end of the farmwife’s cart at something in the trees beyond, her jaw dropping open and her words trailing away forgotten.

The farmwife peered-and grinned. “Him? Aye, I think half the folk hereabouts could, given the chance. The female half.”

The Purple Dragon swallowed. “Who is he?”

They stood elbow to elbow, watching a tall, broad-shouldered man coming out of the trees as quietly as a passing breeze. His stride was long and liquid, his square-jawed face as handsome as “King Azoun,” the warrior whispered. “He carries himself like a king.”

The apparition’s level blue-gray eyes had noted the two women several soft strides ago, but flicked a glance at them again now. Their owner added a firm smile and a nod-and then was across the road and into the trees on its far side, his dusty brown leathers vanishing among them in a few strides.

The farmwife chuckled. “Nay, he’s not one of the king’s brood. Or so his parents claim. Prentice to the armorer Hawkstone these last few seasons, but seeking the king’s coin as a forester now, I hear. ‘The Silent,’ they call him hereabouts. You can see why.”

The Purple Dragon licked her lips, cleared her throat, and blinked as if banishing daydreams. “Now that,” she said almost regretfully, “was what a man should look like.”

The farmwife turned to her. “The Rebel Prince. Chapter Three. Boldgrim the Outlaw!”

The warrior nodded eagerly. “You read Goldghallow too?”

The farmwife beamed. “Aye, I’ve every one of his at home-including the ah, Blackcovers edition of The Nymph Said No. ”

The Purple Dragon’s jaw dropped open again. This time, one of the flies that had been buzzing around the food took a chance and flew into her mouth.

When she was done choking, the farmwife flung an arm around her and said, “Eat what you want for free, dear-and take latestew with me this night. Rhabran’s gone to market these two nights, now, and we can talk all we want. After you read the naughty bits.”

The shadows in the sun-dappled shade were deepening; sunset wasn’t far off. Florin moved quickly, gliding through ferns like a ghost. Queen of the Forest, but he loved these walks. The deep green shadows, the magnificent trees, gnarled and vast and patient, sentinels that had seen dozens of passing kings of Cormyr, and stags beyond number…

He was of the forest, he felt at peace here. This was where he belonged.

And yet as spring quickened toward summer in this Year of the Spur, there was a restlessness rising in Florin Falconhand.

Not the weariness of hot metal and forge-crash and ringing, numbing hammerwork that had driven him here from Hawkstone’s service, despite his passable skills, but… something else. Something that was riding him as eagerly as his fellow youngbloods of Espar were riding their lasses this spring, despite the peace of the forest. He gave the trees around him a smile. He didn’t want anything more than this.

But somehow, he needed something more than this.

Soft-footed and sure, Florin strode on, along a ridge that would bring him back to the king’s road again.

Unthinkingly, as he threaded his way around rocks upon rocks, he set enjoyment of the forest aside to wonder rather irritably what it was, this mysterious ‘something’ he yearned for… and abruptly became aware that a new sound had joined the whirring wings and chirping calls of the berrybirds all around.

A distant, faint, confused sound that didn’t belong here, in the deep stillness of the forest.

A few long strides took him close enough to know that it was a human voice-a high, furious woman’s voice, with the shrill, thin fluting accents of highnose Suzail. Someone rich, then, or even noble, but cursing like… like…

Well, like no one Florin had ever heard before. He was used to the snarled “tluin, sabruin, and hrast” of the exasperated, and everyone said “naeth” in surprise or dismay, but this…

This was something new.

Florin headed toward the voice as swiftly as he could soft-stride, leaves dancing in his wake. It was rising into a screech, like the cooks did at Tlarnuth’s in Espar, savaging each other after emptying too many tankards, unfamiliar words coming out in a fluid rush, and

… yes, there, again: being answered by a deeper voice that spoke but little.

Florin ducked under a long-fallen tree cloaked in moss, slithered down a muddy bank beyond, and was close enough to hear properly at last.

“Lady, I-” It was a man’s voice, low, gravel-rough, and to Florin’s ear somehow familiar.

“ ‘Lady’ nothing, sirrah! ‘Oh, pretty lady,’ you mouth, but your words are empty, empty — and your head emptier still! Deeds, not words, knave! Deeds! Treat me as a lady and I am one-but insist I am one yet treat me as any common trull, some prettily dressed slave of yours, and you make me that!”

“Lady,” the man said heavily, “I have my orders. They’re quite clear and em-”

“ Hah! What care I for your orders, sirrah? You say I am a lady, and so I am-and that means I give orders, and you obey! O, watching gods above, why must I be saddled with such a hog-faced, slop-guzzling idiot dog of a miscreant?”

Florin winced, embarrassed by this venom almost into retreating back into the trees, yet fascinated.

The angry lady whooped for breath and went on. “Brutish in words and deeds and at your trencher, before all the gods! You call this food? Fare fit for dogs, aye, and for any passing hog, but not for a lady of the realm!”

The next word was a screech of pure rage, as if words had failed she who insisted so strongly on being a lady, and left her clawing the air in search of what next to say.

She found something.

“Villainous traitor! Seek to poison a Crownsilver? Sirrah, royal blood runs in my veins-I am Cormyr! When you seek to harm me, you harm all Cormyr! The next Purple Dragon I see, I’ll inform of your treachery, and have you put to the sword! Keep me captive, drag me into this horrible wilderness, feed me chopped and stirred offal — why, I’ll see you dead for it! Yet-yet-you’ll suffer first!”

There followed a violent wet sound akin to a wet fish being slapped on a riverside rock, a short, choked-off male growl of anger, and the furious feminine voice rose again, a little farther off.

“Whoreson! Rogue! You’ll die begging for my forgiveness-and I’ll not give it, and stand smiling as they lop off your head!”

“Lady-”

Florin had heard that tone of exasperated protest before, and knew who the man was, now: Delbossan! Horsemaster to Hezom, Lord of Espar, a man he’d known all his life. But who was this spitfire of the loud and murderous rage? Hezom had no daughter, to curse a man in the for “Oh, yes, Master Delbossan, you’ll die for this! I will have it so!”

With a final shriek of outraged dismissal, the harridan-by the Dragon, the Lady Harridan! — fell silent.

A smirking Florin ducked around the last few trees, crouching low to avoid thorncanes, and peered out onto a pleasant view of one of the old woodcutters’ glades beside the king’s road, long ago gone to grass and much used for camping.

Its well-trodden grass was dominated by a grand pavilion tent of flame-orange hue that had been pitched at the far end of the glade. Several horses had been hobbled at the near end, and a dainty coach sat in its trail between, with two of Hezom’s guardsmen wincing and grinning in its lee, not yet daring to peer around the conveyance at what sat glumly beyond.

Not far in front of the pavilion a tiny fire flickered on scorched stones, and sitting on a log before it was Irlgar Delbossan, wearing the remains of a-yes, a large bowl’s worth of stew that had been dumped all over his head.

Florin slipped out of the trees so swiftly and quietly that he was halfway across the glade before the two guards saw him. They came around the coach in a hasty scramble, swords singing out-but Delbossan looked up, gave Florin a hard stare that turned into a sour smile of recognition, and waved the men back whence they’d come.

Flies were already buzzing around the horsemaster. There was-Florin sniffed appreciatively-rabbit stew, still steaming and thick with toasted bread-ends and a thick herbed gravy, all over Delbossan’s shoulders and lap, and piled high on his head.

Some of it fell from brow to lap with a slow, inexorable plop as Florin came to a halt, trying very hard not to chuckle.

“New way of banishing baldpate, Del?” He couldn’t quite keep a smile off his face.

Delbossan scowled. “I suppose your four friends are trailing along behind ye, to come and laugh at me, too.”

“Nay, friend, Tymora smiles upon you: I’m alone.”

“Good. I wearied of Jhessail’s merry tinkling waterfall long ago.”

“Her-? Oh. When she laughs. Aye.”

Planting one boot on the battered strongchest the horsemaster had been using as a dining table, Florin leaned forward, chin in hand, and smiled down at his friend. “So give. Tell me why rabbit stew- good rabbit stew by the smell-ends up piled high on the head of Irlgar Delbossan, horsemaster bold!”

Delbossan sighed and leaned out to reclaim one of the discarded bowls. The loud lady who’d presumably flounced off into the pavilion had obviously slammed her own bowl of stew down over his head, flung it aside, and plucked up his own to season him a second time. Holding the bowl glumly under his chin, he raked a goodly amount of stew down off his head into it.

Florin fought the urge to laugh quite successfully this time.

With gravy running in rivulets down his face, Delbossan looked up and muttered, “I’m at my wit’s end, lad. Yon flaming chit of a noble lass-ye heard her, I know ye did-Horns of the Hunt, half the King’s stlarning Forest heard her! — has driven me half mad already. I can see why her parents have had it to here with her!”

“Nobles, aye? Who is she? And what’re you doing with her out here, in the trees? Aren’t her sort all ‘prithee dance me around my great hall’ types, all gowns and gaudy airs in heart-of-all-Faerun Suzail?”

Delbossan grinned despite himself and licked stew from the back of one hairy hand. Then, as if remembering his manners, he held out the bowl with a dainty flourish. “Stew, lad?”

Florin almost choked, trying not to roar with laughter, but managed to wave the offer away.

Delbossan grinned and got up, stamping his feet to shake great clumps of stew from himself, and headed for the trees. To wash himself clean in the stream that looped and wandered back there, of course. Florin followed, even before the horsemaster’s beckoning wave.

Delbossan sent the two guards out into the glade with a quick hand signal, waved away their grins good-naturedly, and strode along a little trail that led to a privy, and past it, toward the faint tinkle of moving water.

“She’s a fair demon, lad,” he said, wading out into the stream and sitting down. Fish glided away as the horsemaster winced-this creek ran fast and cold-and lowered himself onto his back. “As ye doubtless heard. Like I said, even her parents are fair tired of her high-handed, haughty-to-all behavior. ‘Despairing,’ was the word our lord used. She’s a Crownsilver, and wants all the world to know it.”

“That much I heard. One of the three ‘royal noble’ houses, aye? Yet I must confess, Del, I know nothing much about them. ‘Proud Crownsilvers, fierce Huntsilvers, and Truesilvers bold/Give Obarskyr silver and trouble enough, but no gold.’ Her parents sent her away? To Lord Hezom? ”

“Sent her to be trained so she’ll not shame them the more. And aye, Lord Hezom sent me down to throne-town to fetch her back up to Espar for his tutoring. The Lady Narantha Crownsilver, as charming a lass as ever kicked me, dumped my best rabbit stew all over me, slapped me, raked my face with her nails, and shrieked at me worse than any drunken lowcoin lass! Lad, it seems nobles don’t bridle their younglings, these days!”

Florin shook his head in disbelief. “So this banishment is to be punishment for her?”

“Belike they want her temper trained in private, instead of before all Suzail-so ’tis the upcountry backwoods, where stride the likes of ye and me, and no highnose gowned lady goes!” The horsemaster raked the last of the stew out of his hair. Now that it was gone from his face, Florin could see two crisscrossing rows of fresh bloody scratches the Lady Crownsilver had left on Delbossan’s cheek, by way of loving adornment.

Their eyes met, and both men shook their heads in unison.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this, lad,” said Delbossan.

“ I can’t see Lord Hezom taming her-not unless he’s planning on using you, Tarleth, and all your whips and bridles to break her!”

“Ha ha, lad, tempt me not,” Delbossan replied, rising and shaking himself like a dog to be rid of a dripcloak of water.

Florin waved an arm at the stream. “So, has she an oh-so-haughty servant to bathe her, or are you expected to do that, too?”

“Dismissed all her maids, or they fled,” the horsemaster growled. “She half-slew the last one, I hear. And no, I don’t expect to be plying any backscrapers or holding out any drycloaks this trip, young Florin! Don’t be spreading word I have been, either!”

“Del,” Florin said reprovingly, “that’s not my way.”

“I know it, lad,” the horsemaster growled, wading out of the stream and squelching past Florin. “ ’S just I’ve got troubles enough, about now, without half the King’s Forest thinking I’m bedding this dragon!”

“Dragon, is it? Face full of fangs, has she? Ugly as an old toad?”

“Oh, she’s beautiful enough-if ye like ivory curves mated with the tongue, temper, and nails of a snarling wardog!”

The horsemaster turned, shaking his head, and added, “Must be rooted in being reared noble-no woman of Espar behaves thus!”

Florin surprised himself then. Without really knowing why, he found himself clasping Delbossan’s forearms, leaning down over the older man in his urgency, blurting, “Let me do it, Del. Let me take her on a-a little foray through the forest, then back to meet up with you again. I can follow the Dathyl here up past Espar, and join you at Hunter’s Hollow!”

The horsemaster blinked at him in utter astonishment.

“Wha- why? ”

“I–I think I can break in yon highnose-lass a bit, without whips, lead-reins, bowls of stew, or Lord Hezom made miserable for a summer, with… well, a walk in the woods!”

Delbossan stared at Florin. His jaw had dropped open.

“Let the mud, the thorns, the stinging insects-and feeling lost, cold, and hungry, to say nothing of the little matter of having to walk a good distance,” Florin said swiftly, shaking his old friend, “break her high-and-mightiness, or at least tire her out a bit and make her a shade more grateful for having shelter and riches. I could pretend to be a beast or outlaw after dusk, and chase her out of her tent-and then rescue her, as Florin the wandering forester, the moment she’s in the deep trees.”

“ Lad! She’s not to be touched! If-” Delbossan’s voice was raw with horror.

“I can control my lusts, thank you, Master Delbossan,” Florin said firmly. “And I believe you know me well enough to be sure I’m chasing no ransom here. Nor rescue-coin.”

“But why by all the gods would ye want to get mixed up in this? She’s-”

“Del, I’ve never even seen a noble, let alone talked to one! And beautiful, you say! Silks, velvet, facepaint, and airy graces-all here, not in stinking Suzail with me trying to peer past half a hundred glaring guards, to even get a glimpse of her!”

“But if she’s harmed-if she even thinks ye’ve pawed her, whate’er the truth, lad, your life is forfeit and so’s mine! I dare not-”

“Let her starve on the road to Espar because your bald head is so greedy for rabbit stew!”

The horsemaster shook his head and plucked himself free of Florin’s grasp.

“Ye’re wanderwitted, lad. Wild-crazed!”

“I’m… perhaps I am. Del, hear me! I-don’t you remember when you were young? I’m like that now, aye?”

The horsemaster’s look of horror deepened. “Ye want to bed half Espar, without any of them knowing about the oth-?” Then, as Florin’s expression changed to one of amazement, Delbossan flushed a deep red, shut his mouth like a poacher’s trap, shook his head violently, and whirled around to stamp back down the trail.

“Del!” Florin hissed urgently, grabbing at his arm. “Del, listen! ”

The horsemaster kept walking.

“Del,” Florin said quickly, into the older man’s ear, “you trained me! As a little lad, with smiles, apples, and letting me ride: you trained me. I’m a steed you schooled and sent into the world seeing things your way. My parents told me what was decent and right, aye, but you made their words true by showing me they weren’t just trying to sway me with empty speeches-just by being yourself, you showed me what it is to be of Cormyr. You know what I will and won’t do.”

The horsemaster swung around again.

“Lad,” he said heavily, “ye’re what they call ‘handsome.’ I’d hate to be the cause of the two of ye-both young, both headstrong-rutting because ye’re alone together. What if ye get her with child? Hey? What then? I say again: her life would be ruined, but thine and mine’d be ended, short and sharp! If not by blade by the king’s decree, then by bow or dagger, some night soon, on Lord Crownsilver’s orders!”

“Thaerefoil,” Florin said firmly, fingers busy at one of his belt pouches. He held out the leaves for Delbossan to see. “You know what it does.”

“Makes even a stallion less than a man,” the horsemaster murmured, bending to smell the leaves. “Fresh. Ye just gathered these.”

“I did. Not with this in mind, but…”

Delbossan looked up at the young forester. “Ye’d drink a tea made with this-of my making, and with me watching?”

Florin put the smallest leaf in his mouth, chewed, opened his mouth to show the horsemaster its crushed paste on his tongue, swallowed, and opened his mouth again for inspection.

“Gods above,” Delbossan murmured, “that much’ll unman ye for days!” He gave Florin a long look. “And if she runs off and breaks her neck, or gets eaten by wolves?”

Florin drew his dagger. “This shall defend her. No harm will come to her, and I’ll demand no coin of her family nor spread falsehood about her. I swear by the Purple Dragon and by the honor of the Falconhands. I swear by the Lady of the Forest I serve.”

His last sentence seemed to roll away among the trees, echoing weirdly, and as Delbossan stepped back in amazement, leaves everywhere seemed to glow, for just a moment. The older man caught his breath as he watched them fade.

Florin seemed unaware of both glow and voice-thunder, but stood eyeing the horsemaster, his gaze steady. “Well?”

Teeth flashed in Delbossan’s sudden smile. “Lad, I begin to feel delighted. Mind ye tell me all about it, after.”

They clasped forearms, as one warrior to another, and the horsemaster leaned forward and muttered conspiratorially, “Do nothing until nightfall-and then wait ’til ye hear yon two jackblades snoring…”