Swords of Eveningstar

Chapter 2

Grand adventures are tales full of wonder, daring, and peril. They all began as slapdash accounts of some folk having a horrible time, long ago and far away, and found a little lace and glimmer along the way.

Thus do sages solemnly record all ‘history.’ Whatever gods smile upon you grant that storytellers favor your tale, so that it displays you brightly, and twists you not so much that your very name and face are lost.

Arasper Ardanneth,

Sage of the Road

Arasper’s Little Book published in the Year of the Prince

T o the north of the scattered cottages of Espar, grassgirt hills rise west of the King’s Road, rolling like half-buried green leviathans for a long way north ere the woodlots scattered across their humpbacks rise and join together into true forest again.

To the west, the hills find close-tangled trees more swiftly. The folk of Espar are not so numerous as to hew firewood enough to swiftly thrust back the woods.

On the crest of the highest hill, at the edge of that close and familiar forest, stand the tumbled foundation stones of a ruined, long-fallen cottage. No man alive in Espar can recall who dwelt there, or when it fell into ruin. All know it as ‘the Stronghold,’ though it was never a keep. For generations it has been the playground of the boldest youths of Espar.

Two such bold youths, young lads in dusty breeches, boots, and homespun, were lounging against its weathered stones, watching the sun descend toward the trees. One had just arrived, puffing slightly from his eager trot up the hillside, and had been greeted thus: “Ho, Clumsum.”

“Hail, Stoop,” the arrival replied calmly. He rarely sounded anything other than calm, which was unusual in a youngling-or anyone else-who bore the silver Ladycoin about his neck and sought to be ordained in the service of Tymora. His name was not ‘Clumsum,’ though few in Espar called him anything else. “Saw you down by the creek this morn. Much luck?”

“Much luck, thanks to your tireless prayers,” came the gently sarcastic reply, “but not so much fish.” As if to punctuate that statement, the speaker’s stomach rumbled loudly. He added a sigh, tossed aside a tough blade of grass, and plucked another to chew upon. Though he was ‘Stoop’ to most of Espar, that wasn’t his real name either. And although he bore around his neck not a luck-coin of Tymora but a sunrise disk of Lathander he’d painted himself, the two Esparrans were firm friends, and always had been. Doust Sulwood and Semoor Wolftooth: Clumsum and Stoop.

“Sit, Doust,” Semoor said around his blade of grass, waving at an adjacent stone. “The shes will be late. As usual.” His boots were propped on a rock before him, and his words came floating lazily past them.

Doust grinned and sat, saying by way of reply, “Well, they do have more chores than we.”

His friend made a rude, dismissive sound halfway between a snort and a spit, and shifted his feet a trifle to give Doust room to prop his own boots up on the same handy rock. Semoor looked even more sleepy than was his wont. There was an easy smile on his rumpled face, and his shoulder-length hair was its usual dusty brown rats’ nest. His overlarge nose jutted out at the world as it always did, giving him something of the look of a vulture.

Just now, he was waving a disdainful hand at the hillside below.

As usual, the sward was dotted with Hlorn Estle’s flock of patiently grazing sheep-and as usual, Hlorn’s three sons were sitting here and there on the slope, eyeing the two lads up at the Stronghold suspiciously.

“ ’Tis so nice,” Semoor said sarcastically, “to be wanted.”

“Ah, I see the Morninglord’s rosy glow doth suffuse thee, this even,” Doust observed with a little smile, selecting his own blade of grass.

“Sabruin,” Semoor drawled, choosing the least polite way of saying ‘go pleasure yourself.’

“After you do the same, so I can watch and learn how,” Doust responded, and then pointed into the trees across the road below and added in satisfaction, “Ah! Islif comes!”

“Jhess’ll get here first,” his friend replied, pointing across the hillside to where the sheep were gathered most thickly.

Doust scrambled to his feet. “Huh! Belkur’ll set the dogs on her, if she goes walking right through the herd!”

“He already has-and she’s worked some spell or other; they won’t go near her,” Semoor said delightedly.

Belkur Estle’s snarled curses rose clearly into the evening air, amid canine whinings-and through them came a petite lass in long, gray skirts, striding as unconcernedly as if the field were hers and empty but for her strolling self. Fiery orange-brown hair fell free around her shoulders in a tumbling flood, and her eyes were large, gray-green, and merry.

“Ho, sluggards,” she greeted them, lifting her skirts to reveal wineskins hooked about both her garters. She proffered them with a wide grin.

It was matched, with enthusiasm. Semoor plucked one skin and unstoppered it eagerly. “Ah, Flamehair, Lathander sent you!”

“No,” Doust disagreed, claiming the other skin and sitting down again, “I believe Tymora-”

“And I rather believe I managed to bring myself here — and steal the wine from Father’s end vat, too,” Jhessail told them tartly. “Don’t get drunk, now, holy men; I grow tired of slapping the both of you at once.”

“Ah,” Semoor told her slyly, “but we never tire of being slapped!”

“Sabruin,” Jhessail told him in a dignified tone, settling herself between them. Both promptly laid hands on her thighs in hopes of being slapped, but she gave them withering glances instead. They grinned, shrugged, and applied themselves to emptying wineskins.

A young woman taller and more heavily muscled than anyone on the hillside-including the sheep-was striding up the hill now, clanking as she came. As straight as a blade and as broad of shoulder as the village smith, Islif Lurelake was in a hurry. Some of the Estle dogs barked at her, but none dared rush her, because a drawn sword was gleaming in her hand.

The clanking was familiar; it came from her homemade battle-coat, an old leather jerkin onto which Islif had sewn castoff fragments of old plate-armor in an overlapping array. But none of the three in the Stronghold had ever seen that splendid sword before.

“Heyah, Islif!” Semoor Wolftooth called, when the striding woman was still a good ways below. “Where’d you get that? ”

The warrior woman lifted icy gray eyes that stabbed at him like two sword points and said flatly, “From Bardeluk.”

Doust frowned in thought. “Uh… oh, Lord Hezom’s new guard, aye?”

“Ho ho,” Semoor said teasingly. “ Persuaded him to give you his second-best blade, did you? Just like that?”

Islif Lurelake strode into the Stronghold and came to a halt, towering over them. When she was this close, broad-shouldered and buxom, her arms corded with muscles Doust and Semoor would have given much to call their own, the battle-coat lost all hint of the ridiculous. She was striking rather than beautiful, with a hard, long-jawed face that had caused her to be dubbed ‘Horseface’ more than once by unfriendly tongues, and her jet-black hair was cut short in a warriors’ helm-bob. With those piercing, almost silver eyes, she looked as dangerous as the sword in her hand.

“I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what you mean.”

The would-be servant of Lathander lifted his sunrise disk and told it, “Oh, I never thought you’d been sleeping, in all those half-days-half-days, lass! — you’ve spent behind closed doors with, ah, fortunate Master Bardeluk.”

Islif snorted, and nudged him with the metal-shod toe of a much-patched boot. “What a small mind you have, holynose! I’ve been shut up teaching him to read and write. This-” She hefted the long, slightly curved longsword, and they saw a blue sheen race down it-“was my price, from the beginning.”

“Stop waving that about,” Jhessail said quietly. “You’re… impressing me.”

Islif grounded the blade on the toe of one boot-and surprised them all by smiling broadly. “Well,” she said, bright teeth flashing, “that’s a start.”

“You’re certainly impressing the Estle boys,” Doust observed. “Their eyes are like roundshields!”

Jhessail looked downslope. “They look less impressed than suspicious to me.” She sniffed. “Afraid we’ll pounce on one of their precious sheep and butcher it right here, belike.”

“Huh,” Semoor grunted. “More likely they’re hoping we’ll start kissing, and you’ll take your clothes off. That’s what they use the Stronghold for.”

“Live in hope, don’t you, Wolf?” Jhessail replied, her words dripping acid.

The priestling of Lathander shrugged and spread his hands-an elaborate gesture somewhat spoiled by the half-empty wineskin wrapped around one of them. “Lady Flamehair,” he explained, as if to an idiot child, “that’s what holy folk do. Live in the hope that the gods grant us, every day.”

“Until, in the fullness of time, you die like everyone else,” Islif commented, extending an imperious hand for his wineskin.

Semoor pretended not to notice, and declaimed, “Islif Lurelake, Jhessail Silvertree, Semoor Wolftooth, and Doust Sulwood-adventurers bold!”

Doust sighed. “I’m not so sure ‘bold’ is telling truth. Say: restless for adventure.”

“And you neglected to mention the boldest of us all,” Jhessail said, from between the two priestlings. “Florin, who’s off somewhere tracking stags and exploring the King’s Forest right now!”

It was Semoor’s turn to sigh. “The man in whose shadow I dwell, day after month after season.”

“Well, that’s because you’re not-in truth-bold enough,” Islif pointed out, firmly plucking the wineskin from his grasp as a breeze rose at her back, setting the leaves rustling. “Florin is. Which is why he’s elsewhere, whilst we sit here watching the last of the day fade, talking and dreaming-and no more than that.”

“But we can’t just go tearing off into the woods hacking at things and telling everyone we’re adventurers!” Semoor’s growl was as fierce as it was sudden. “Or ’tis the inside of one of the king’s jails we’ll be finding, soon enough! We need a charter-and charters cost coins none of us have!”

Doust looked at his friend, his eyes even darker blue than usual. “Coins we could scrape together, but we still have to convince someone we deserve a charter, and by all Tymora’s holy kisses, I don’t know how! Would you grant a bunch of restless younglings license to wander about the realm, hacking at things and looking for trouble?”

Semoor snorted. “Of course. Stupid question. Fortunately for the realm-and ill luck for us-I’m not King Azoun.”

“Stoop, don’t say that. Tymora frowns on those who speak of… ah, ‘poor fortune.’ ”

“ ’Tisn’t Lady Luck’s frown that makes me despair of ever managing to convince any court official to grant us a charter,” Jhessail snapped, her face going red. “I mean, look at us! Bored, restless younglings, yes? Get apprenticed, they’ll say! Learn a trade! Earn an honest day-coin! And send word back to us that you’ve done so, to save us the trouble of sending a war wizard by to peer at you as we serve all the malcontents!”

She stopped waving her arms suddenly, snatched the wineskin Doust was holding, and took a long, deep drink.

The two priestlings exchanged glances. Semoor spoke first.

“Let’s just go to Sembia, and to the Nine Hells with a charter!”

Jhessail gave him a fierce look. “And bid farewell to Cormyr? ” She waved down the hill at its ripples of waving grass, then swung around to indicate the gently dancing leaves in the great gnarled trees above. “Our home? Leave this? ”

“Well,” Islif said dryly, “I haven’t noticed any great mustering of outlaws in Espar. Or heaps of treasure, dragons’ caves, or evil wizards, for that matter. And if we walk around our neighbors’ lanes and pastures trying to stir up adventure, there soon will be outlaws hereabouts: us.”

“Aye,” Doust said slowly, gazing out across the fields, “Espar’s a fair and pleasant place… but watching sheep wander is about all the excitement any who dwell here can expect, most days.”

“Most years, ” Semoor corrected sourly.

Islif shrugged. “If we ever-somehow-become adventurers, staying dry and warm and fending off hunger may well become daily excitements.”

“Always the cheery merry-maid, aren’t you?” Semoor sighed, turning his sunrise disk of Lathander over and over in his fingers.

“I’m easier on the ears than some always-sharptongues I could name,” the warrior-lass replied, hefting her sword meaningfully.

“Oooh,” the priestling of Lathander gasped in mock-terror, recoiling with all the subtlety of old Laedreth the Lute playacting a frightened queen in the greatroom of the Eye, with a few tankards inside him. “You’re so- menacing! Oooo!”

Islif sighed. “With just one good kick, holynose, I could really make you squeal!”

Semoor leered, “Ah, but I can do the same to you with naught but my tongue!”

Islif rolled her eyes. “Semoor, your mind outreeks a cesspit. It’s a wonder to me your prayers don’t make the Morninglord spew his guts out!”

Semoor’s smile went away in an instant. “Don’t jest about that. Holy Lathander blesses new ventures-and that’s just what we’ll be, if we set off adventuring!”

“Aye,” Jhessail agreed grimly. “If.”

“And if not,” Doust said quietly, “ ’tis temple-field farming for Wolf and for me, separate somewheres in the upcountry, while the two of you grow gray hairs here in Espar as farmwives, birthing calves, tilling fields, having babies, and cooking, cooking, cooking.”

“ Don’t remind me,” Islif snapped.

“Florin,” Jhessail said wistfully. “We need Florin to show us the way clear of this.”

The wind rose around them with a sudden howl, as if in agreement.

“Lad, both of the lord’s jacks’re deep in dreams,” came the hiss out of the darkness on the other side of the tree. “Still game for this?”

“Of course, Del,” Florin murmured, from his side of the great duskwood. “I’d not miss this for all Lord Hezom’s gold.”

The dark shape of the horsemaster moved in the still-faint light of the rising moon; Delbossan was shaking his head. “Huh. If she gets hurt-or if yon pair of jackblades wake-’twon’t be Hezom’s gold the two of us’ll have to be worrying over! He already owns rope enough for our hangings!”

“They won’t wake ’til morn,” Florin muttered close by Delbossan’s head. “Trust me.”

“Oh. Another of your herb-powders in their tankards?”

“Now if you ask not, I’ll not have to say, aye?” The ranger grinned. “Yet I’ve a strong hunch, somehow, they’ll be unharmed when they rise… around highsun. Mind you pretend to have been affected, too-and scare them enough that they agree to help you search along the road to save all your hides, rather than running straight to Espar to cry the alarm. Somewhat south of Hezom’s guardpost you ‘find’ a trail, and follow it through the woods around Espar to Hunter’s Hollow. I’ll meet with you there by highsun, three days hence.”

“Done, lad. Don’t make me rue this.”

“Trust me, Del. Now take my place here behind the tree, and keep hidden. She’ll probably run to where the moonlight’s strongest, but who can say for sure?”

“With that dragon, lad, there’s no surety-trust me. ”

They chuckled together, foreheads almost touching, and parted, clapping each other’s shoulders in the nightgloom. In the words of the old song: ’Twas time to be taming the lady…

The pavilion glowed like a bright jewel in the night, which surprised Florin not at all. A city-reared noble lass would want the warmth and reassurance of nightlamps around her, of course.

Filigreed screens inside the tent cast intricate, pleasing patterns on the pavilion walls, concealing shapely silhouettes from prying eyes outside-but Florin could see enough to know that the Lady Narantha Crownsilver was still up on her feet and moving around. Barefoot, by the soft gliding sounds, rather than shod. Probably-if she were anything like the wealthy merchants’ wives who betimes stayed for a night at The Watchful Eye, Espar’s lone inn-she’d be brushing her hair. Brushing and brushing her hair. Long and glossy it would be, in the lampglow…

Florin swallowed, shook his head at himself for thinking such thoughts, and glided forward as silently as drifting night mist.

He grinned like a wolf as he went, lips drawn fiercely back from teeth. It might not be much, and was far from heroic, but Florin Falconhand was finally-after all these years of dreaming-having an adventure.

“Where’s Florin right now, I wonder?” Jhessail asked, halting outside her door.

Islif shrugged. “Safely abed somewhere, if he has any sense.”

Jhessail peered up at her and said softly, “But like me, you don’t think he has, do you?”

“No.” Islif’s teeth flashed in the moonlight as she turned to go. “No, I don’t. I think he’s awake and about in the night, right now, having an adventure.”

Florin Falconhand cast a last long look around, drew in a deep breath as he sank down into a crouch, and-face less than a handspan from the glowing canvas, gave throat to a horrible growl.

He heard a sudden intake of breath from inside the tent.

Grinning, he growled again, a long, bubbling beast-sound, trying to sound eager and… hungry. Then he made sniffing sounds, scrabbling with his knuckles along the canvas where it met the ground.

There was a tense silence from the pavilion, and he could hear the faint, close whistling of swift breathing.

He growled again, as horribly as he knew how-and there came the whisper of fast-moving bare feet, and a tremulous, “Delbossan?”

She’d gone to the front of the pavilion, and was no doubt standing just inside its door-slit now, staring at the hard-knotted lacings she’d so recently tied, and wondering whether to start untying them. “Master Delbossan?”

Florin put a gleeful chortle into his next growl, and clawed at the canvas with both hands, thrusting it inward. His reward was a little shriek followed by a full-voiced cry of Delbossan’s name.

The ranger drew his sword and used its pommel to thrust hard at the canvas, denting it in and leaning his weight on it while raking and scrabbling with his other hand. A tent-peg lost its hold, the pavilion buckled slightly, and the Lady Narantha Crownsilver screamed.

All dignity gone, she gave vent to a throat-stripping howl of terror, gulped breath, and shrieked another.

My, but Horsemaster Delbossan was hard of hearing this night.

The young noblewoman cried Delbossan’s name half a dozen times as Florin tugged out another tent-peg, and another, so he could bow the entire back wall of the pavilion inward, all the while clawing the canvas and snarling for all he was worth.

Sobbing in fear and rage, the Lady Narantha came rushing back across the pavilion, and Florin wisely ducked his head back from his outthrust sword.

“Oooh!” she gasped in effort, striking the canvas with something small and hard that set his sword to thrumming. He gave vent to a startled growl that began with a note of pain and rose into a terrible roar of rage-and the canvas in front of his nose punched and thrust groaningly at him, again and again, as the noble lady on its far side belabored it with-a gilded corner burst through the stretched and ravaged canvas-her jewel-coffer.

Lady of the Forest, she’d be through it and charging at him in a moment!

Between loud grunts of effort, young Lady Crownsilver was wailing Delbossan’s name repeatedly now, her voice growing steadily higher and more shrill in fury, leaving fear behind.

Then the canvas bulged with what was probably her descending head and shoulder, she made a startled sound, and Florin heard metallic slitherings and chimings. She’d overbalanced and fallen.

With the loudest roar he could muster he pounced atop her, clawing and biting at the canvas, trying to make sure she felt the hard edges of his pommel and belt buckle and still-sheathed dagger-and her next shriek was pure fear again, stabbing higher and shrill right through his eardrums, the canvas heaved under him frantically…

And Florin Falconhand, head ringing, was on his knees amid tangled canvas, his prey fled across the sagging pavilion and shrieking wordlessly as she tugged, tore, sobbed, and tugged again at its door-lacings.

He growled as he caught his breath and got to his feet, shaking his head to clear it-and he’d barely caught his balance and hefted his sword before something barefoot that streamed long, unbound hair burst out into the night, splendid nightrobe fluttering.

“Delbossan!” she screamed as she ran to the turf-covered fire and stared wildly around, clawing the air and stumbling in her haste. “Delbossan!”

Florin ducked back behind the tent and roared again.

The young noblewoman shrieked and ran away from him, toward the road. There was nothing in her hands, and nothing on her feet-so she’d not get far before she’d be limping and would look back.

Florin dragged his jerkin up and half over his head to conceal his face, waved his sword, and loped after her, growling and snarling.

Lady Narantha screamed again and sprinted down the road, in the direction of distant Suzail. Florin pounded after her, making sure she heard deadwood snapping under his boots, and she wept and shrieked and ran.

When the ranger reached the vast, moss-covered trunk of a long-fallen, rotten shadowtop that told every traveler the camping place was nigh, he sprang onto it and raced along it into the trees, outpacing his noble prey as she stumbled, sobbed for breath as her wind was jarred from her, and stumbled again.

Then he burst out of the trees right beside her with a horrible roar, a great hulking headless shape with a sword in its paw-and she shrieked again and fled blindly away, west off the road into the trees.

Toward the Dathyl, just as he’d planned. His tunic hid Florin’s wolfish smile from the world as he ran after the fair blushing flower of House Crownsilver.

She was panting like a deer on its last legs-and he was almost choking on a delicious thrill. Adventure at last!

Cormyr had always been a safe place of warmth, good food, and scurrying servants, of beauty, fine clothes, and coddling, of bright banners, and of airy graces. Oh, it was the Forest Kingdom, of course — but its forests had never been anything more than a distant green line beyond Jester’s Green, and the place where all the stags whose heads adorned more mansion and highkeep walls than she could count had come from. Narantha half-remembered fearsome nursery tales of outlaws, owlbears, and wolves, foresters simply vanishing in the dark leafy depths, and the fell magic of malevolent faeries and elves who saw humans as foes or even food… Oh, why had Father ever fallen upon this foolish, nasty, hateful idea that she needed tutoring of some sort by some backwoods bumpkin? Hezom wasn’t even a proper noble, but one of the king’s appointed lordlings-why, he might be an old drunkard of a Purple Dragon, or an outlaw and stag-poacher given a title by Azoun to keep younger, wilder rivals in check!

An outlaw! But what mattered it, when she was going to die here, alone in the dark, with no one to even know she’d fall- oooh!

The Lady Narantha caught an ankle between two unseen branches and crashed through a thornbush to fall on her face in something scratchy that left burrs all over her as she rolled frantically, sobbing for breath, and scrambled to her feet again. It was the third time she’d fallen, and every step now brought a stab of pain-she’d have been weeping non-stop if she’d dared spare breath for doing so. Branches whipped across her face and breast often, some of them slashing her or tugging at her with their horns-and she’d left a lot of hair behind on them.

Yet she dared not stop, because not far behind her in the darkness there was always the growling thing, its footfalls, occasional crashings…

“Tymora deliver me,” she gasped, “Torm defend me, Father Silvanus send away your… your… things that hunt-”

She ran hard into a horizontal branch that caught her low in the ribs. All the breath whuffed out of her, the night spun in a swirl of crazy yellow motes of light, and Narantha was falling… falling…

The moonlight went away, and the darkness that awaited hungrily all around her flooded forward and dragged her down…