The Best of the Realms, Book II

A DANCE IN STORM’S GARDEN
I. The Sword

The sword falls from the sheath, bounces once, and in the air twists from its glimmer-shiver into a silver-furred cat. Which pounces upon a handy flagstone to crouch with its tail switching angrily and its green eyes gleaming fury out at the pleasant garden around it.

Those eyes have gazed upon much grander entrances and more welcoming and attentive audiences than this sun-dappled, bird-chirping corner of kitchen garden. Here a profusion of thalusks not yet ripened, and there a prace-bell vine winding its intricate, curlicued way up a post that had once been a Zhentilar horseman’s lance. A thick brezick hedge behind, curving like encircling arms. No bowing servants, no hastening lackeys, not even— a noise.

Out of nothingness, and over the angry visitor, a spell falls with the tinkling of a thousand tiny, unseen bells.

“My, my,” a gently amused voice observes from behind a rosebush. “First a long sword, then a cat. Do you truly mislike your own shape so much?”

The cat freezes—then spins around and up, rising with a speed and angry shrieking of air that terrifies birds, voles, and even stinging flies into frantic flight—into a tall, darkly menacing form that towers in the sudden silence.

Though the rosebush seems unimpressed, the cat has become a woman in a dark, tattered cloak over a gown of similar hue and condition. Her eyes remain two emerald flames, her brows dark and lowered in a snarl that betokens no good will toward talking rosebushes—nor what lurks behind them.

“I know not who you are, and care less,” the former cat spits, “but the forms in which I choose to greet the world are my own business. As is the unfamiliar and puny spell you’ve so rudely dared to cast upon me—which I now break, thus. You may now beg me to spare your life, and tell me truly where I might find one Elminster of Shadowdale, and I may—if you beg very prettily, abasing yourself utterly, and promising me all manner of rewards—let you live. Or not.”

“Ah,” the voice from behind the rosebush replies merrily, “then I suppose I must beg you to step into my kitchen and share some moonweather tea. Or not, of course.”