The Best of the Realms, Book II

II. The Rosebush

The dark-gowned woman hisses in rage and thrusts out one arm as if hurling a generous handful of empty air at the unseen voice. Sparks swirl as blue gouts of flame stab forth from her palm, sizzling across sun-dappled air at the rosebush—only to shiver into fading blue flickerings that surge furiously out and back in all directions, spreading across empty air, flowing into oblivion, and leaving every rose petal and dark delicate leaf untouched.

The sorceress who spent so many months as a sword cries out, aghast, and weaves a quick warding about herself before snapping, “Who are you?”

“So politely asked, saith Storm Silverhand, who then makes so bold as to prettily beg the same of you: what name do you bear?”

“Silverhand? One of the Seven?”

“The same.”

“By the banefire of—!” Fear is louder than fury in that hasty snarl, and its green-eyed, black-garbed owner does not add her name to it but instead casts another swift spell that makes her wink out of visibility—then, thrashing in real fear now, back into it, as if snatched up short by the thrumming sturdiness of a collar and stout chain.

“What cruel magic—?” This snarl is more of a shriek.

“Such an abundance of questions must weigh heavily,” Storm Silverhand observes gently, as she glides around the rosebush to confront the wildly-struggling sorceress. “I know mine do.”

Showing no outward signs of distress at her stated burden, she advances in patched and sweat-stained breeches, a cheerful wreck of a hat, and a dusty breast-scarf. Beneath are tall, lithe curves, and spilling out from beneath her hat, a wild splendor of thigh-length silver hair, tresses curling idly of their own volition, like lazy snakes.

She addresses her writhing visitor in calm tones. “I find myself wondering what manner of sorceress travels as a sword—a sword that plunges so abruptly from a sheath that appears within my wards without heralding, and departs again as swiftly—then becomes a cat, before adopting the shape of a woman who spits enough hauteur and venom for any six rulers. I also find myself still wondering what name such a being might bear. Heavy weights, indeed.”

“I… no! You’ll slay me anyway, so why should I surrender my name and nature to you?”

Storm sighs at this bitterness, and tells the rosebush, “Pride is so frail an armor. D’you not think so?”