Azure Bonds

28 The Crafter

Olive crept about the room, slipping some of the more pawnable and valuable items into her backpack and her pockets: ivory combs, a silver mirror, crystal perfume vials, a gold wine goblet. After scavenging for half an hour she noticed sounds of greater activity in the hallway.

Olive crept over to the door and pressed her ear against it. She could hear men in the hallway, panting as if from strenuous labor, accompanied by a dragging sound. Olive peeked out the keyhole. Two Fire Knives were hauling something behind them. Olive caught sight of a scaly, green arm—Dragonbait. A thumping noise came from the staircase—they were being none too gentle with the saurial.

Two more assassins flicked by the keyhole, carrying Akabar by the arms and legs. Cassana’s new toy, he was given preferential treatment. He was not thumped down the steps. Olive heard Phalse say, “Leave him in the cell next to the crafter’s.”

Last of all, Zrie Prakis floated by with Alias cradled in his arms. He paused by Olive’s door, blocking her view. Olive heard a bolt sliding across the door.

She waited until all noise in the hall had ceased and no sounds came from the stairway. Then she tried the door.

Prakis had unlocked it for her. The bard poked her head out of the doorway. The house was silent. After closing and bolting the door to Phalse’s room behind her, she crept down the hallway and tiptoed down the stairs. She dashed through the entry hall. The front door beckoned her. She twisted the knob, but it was locked.

Olive reached into her hair and drew out a pick, but before she began working on the bolt, she noticed a blue line drawn across the threshold, with three interlocking circles sketched above it. A magical ward—one of Prakis’s. Was it the type that warned the designer something had crossed over it, or the kind that disintegrated into dust whatever crossed over it? There was no way for Olive to tell.

“Boogers,” Olive muttered. “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me, Prakis, old bones?”

Dodging into the dining room, the halfling slipped behind the heavy curtains. The lock on the large windows was easily unfastened, but another blue mark was scrawled along the window sills. Grinding her teeth in annoyance, Olive dashed back into the entry hall and up the steps. There was a window in the upstairs hallway, but it, too, was warded.

Zrie Prakis had made sure she would stick to her side of the bargain. He’d unlocked her cell door, but he was not going to let her escape from the prison. As she saw it, she had one chance. Unlocking the door to Phalse’s room and slipping back inside, she examined the window within. Unguarded. The wards must have been a last-minute thought on the lich’s part, and he had neglected to come back to Phalse’s room to set one there.

Olive climbed out onto the window sill. The roof sloped away gently. She would have an easy time slipping down to the gutter—a perfect halfling’s footpath—and walking along that until she found a rain spout to slide down. But what then? she wondered as she sat with her feet dangling over the roof tiles.

She’d have to find another adventuring group to travel with, one that could help protect her from Phalse and family should they decide she was worth chasing.

Finding a new party wouldn’t be easy. Alias and Dragonbait were perhaps the finest sword wielders she’d ever seen, and Akabar had helped destroy a god, and the three of them had been defeated. Of course, she hadn’t been there to help them out, she consoled herself. She wondered idly if her presence would really have made a difference. According to Prakis, Cassana had been concerned that it might have. Is it possible, Olive wondered, that Cassana put me to sleep because she was afraid I might interfere somehow in this ceremony to remove Alias’s will?

Although Phalse had not told her, Olive knew the ceremony would involve the sacrifice of Dragonbait. Alias had said something about it to Akabar the day before, back at The Rising Raven. The loss of the paladin would not have made too much difference to the halfling before yesterday. Yet Olive had to admit, he hadn’t done her any harm so far, and his death would seal the fates of Alias and Akabar.

Akabar would remain in Cassana’s clutches, not something Olive would wish on anyone, certainly not on Akabar, whom she liked a little.

Alias was another matter. Olive found it difficult to like someone so perfect, but she felt more guilt about abandoning the swordswoman. For one thing, Olive realized, I owe her for rescuing me from the dragon and saving my life. She let me join her party, and she shared her songs with me. She stole my audience once, but she’ll never do that again. After the ceremony she’ll probably never sing songs again. Without a will she’ll be a zombie, and zombies don’t sing. All those lovely melodies and haunting lyrics would be lost to the world. That would be a crime, Olive sighed.

Not that people like Cassana, who liked kidnapping, torture, and murder, would care about such a loss to the musical world. Of course, I’d be just as responsible if I didn’t do anything to stop the witch and her merry band, Olive acknowledged.

Jump, Olive-girl, the halfling told herself, before you wind up doing something you may regret later. The halfling could not get out of her head the image of Akabar being beaten and the sound of Dragonbait’s head hitting each step as the Fire Knives dragged him downstairs.

But the thought of Alias never singing again was even worse.

Olive swung her feet back into the building, jumped to the floor, and left the room. The upper hallway was still empty, but she heard men’s voices coming from somewhere below. Pausing to listen, she noticed great drops of red dotting the steps below her. Blood. Akabar’s or Dragonbait’s? she wondered. She followed the red spatters down the stairs.

The voices were coming from the kitchen. The trail of blood went through the entry hall in the opposite direction. Olive tracked it to an alcove that featured a particularly obscene statue of an overly endowed succubus.

The trail ended in a pool of blood at the base of the statue, as if the prisoner had been left there for a moment. Olive made a “tch” sound. Why didn’t they tell the world there was a secret passage here somewhere? she scoffed.

Footsteps and voices approached from the dining room. Olive ducked behind the statue of the succubus.

“—unfair. That’s all I’m saying,” the first protested.

“Unfair doesn’t mean a thing to Her Ladyship,” the second voice argued. “We don’t have the seniority, we don’t have the clout. The rest get to play clerics and gods in a few hours. We don’t rate. So what?” Here the speaker’s words became incoherent as his mouth was occupied with chewing and swallowing, “—prefer raiding Her Ladyship’s larder to standing outside in the cold and damp. What?”

“Something by the dungeon door. Watch.”

Olive’s intestines cramped uncomfortably. Of all the stupid things—I’ve chosen the exact spot they’re heading for!

A soft footstep then a second crept closer to the alcove. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, Olive would have giggled at the picture of a burly human trying to creep like a halfling across the floor. She didn’t even need to guess how close he was, she could feel the floorboards shift slightly under his weight. Pressing her back against the wall, she thrust against the statue’s pedestal with her feet.

The top-heavy statue rocked, then toppled from its pedestal. The crash of stone against stone blended with the sickening thunk of flesh and bone being crushed by a great weight, as the succubus claimed the life of the first Fire Knife. The stonework ran with fresh blood.

The other Fire Knife, a grossly overweight human with a stubby short sword in one hand and half of a melon in the other, had been standing ten feet away when his partner had met his demise. His eyes were wide with shock, but he approached the pedestal. Olive slipped out of the alcove to face her attacker.

“Murr,” muttered the Fire Knife. Whether this was the name of some god or his late companion, Olive did not know. “Ya just a girl. C’mon, kid, I’ll make it fast. We’ll just lock ya up until …”

The halfling didn’t wait to find out how long she’d be locked up. She dropped to one knee, grabbed a piece of the broken statue, and threw it. Clunked square in the forehead with a succubus breast, the assassin rocked back on his heels. Olive grabbed the sword from his dead partner’s hand and charged.

The Fire Knife dropped the melon and swung his blade downward. Olive dove to the right, and the steel blade sparked off the stonework, sending a ringing peal of doom through the hall and up the stairs. The assassin whirled and slashed in a cross-cut. Olive dipped her head slightly, and the blade swiped over her. The man’s reflexes were trained in battling opponents his own size.

Olive slipped inside his guard and thrust his partner’s short sword upward in the all-too-ample space between his leather jerkin and his belt. The blade sank deep into the flesh. Blood welled from the wound. The Fire Knife stepped backward, but Olive moved with him like a bulldog, wriggling and twisting the sword.

The assassin grabbed at her hair with his left hand, but before he could take advantage of his grip, he gurgled and collapsed on top of his enemy. It was several moments before Olive could get any air into her lungs and wriggle out from beneath her vanquished foe.

Blood stained the entire length of her gown.

“Like falling off a log,” she muttered to herself. “Nothing to it. Done it lots of times.” She tried to pant more quietly, listening for others. If anyone else was still in the house, they would have heard the fight.

There was no other sound but her labored breathing.

She returned to the pedestal and began exploring its carved edges for a catch to open the secret door. Badly rattled, her fingers ran over the surface for almost three minutes before she managed to press just the right bit of fluting. The wall in the back of the alcove slid open, revealing a spiral stairway leading down.

Stealing a torch from a wall sconce and the obese assassin’s short sword, the bard pattered down the steps. The air grew chill and damp as she descended. At the bottom, a passage was cut deeply into the bedrock. The passage was lighted by a magical glow issuing from statues of demons mounted on the walls—magical light that did not flicker, but shone in steady red beams from the red glass eyes and in white fans from the tops of their heads. Along the right side of the passage were three archways blocked by cage bars. The passage continued on, lit by a pearl-like string of red and white lights.

Beyond the first archway lay an empty cell, clean but for a dark red smear streaking the back wall. The second cell caged a mass of rotting cloaks and blankets. Akabar hung in the third cell, the chains of his manacles attached to a hook in the ceiling. The Turmishman’s toes dangled three inches from the floor. The assassins had left him in the cold and damp with nothing but a sheet wrapped around his waist. His face was puffy and discolored. Blood trickled from his mouth and welled in the troughs of four-fingered scratches across his right cheek and chest. Ruskettle could not remember Cassana’s nails being particularly long. Then she recalled the sharpened finger bones of Zrie Prakis, and shuddered.

“Akabar,” she hissed, wondering if there were any other Fire Knives left behind to guard the prisoners. She searched the bars for a door or a lock, but they ran from ceiling to floor without a break.

“Akabar!” she said louder.

In the cell next door the mound of furs and cloaks stirred. Olive started and watched the pile closely. A man’s head poked out. His hair and beard were shaggy and black, with splotches of gray and white. His eyes were blue and rheumy. His face was lined with cracks of old age and cold. Cocking his head he chirped, “Hullo.”

Olive cast a glance back at Akabar, but the mage had not moved. “Uh, greetings. You must be the crafter. Are we alone here?” she whispered.

“No,” the crafter said, shaking loose the furs and cloaks. He rose slowly to his feet, and his legs wobbled as if he’d been bedridden for a long time. He wore a tattered tabard that must have once been purple and green, but was now faded to gray and yellow. “There’s a new prisoner next door,” he replied, pointing toward Akabar’s cell.

“I mean, are there any guards?”

“Let me check. GUARDS!”

Olive toppled backward in shock. Scrambling to her feet, she sought desperately for a bolt hole. She could run farther down the corridor or back up it. The crafter’s cry echoed back to her from both directions, but the sound of human feet did not follow it.

“Sorry. No guards. I think they’re away. That way.” The graying crafter pointed farther down the passage.

Prakis warned you the fellow was mad, Olive-girl, she berated herself. Obviously, he wasn’t joking.

“Where are the locks?” she demanded.

The crafter’s eyes became sharp points. “There are no locks here.”

“How did they put you in there?”

“Through the bars.”

Olive cursed. She didn’t have time to play riddles with crazy people. “Must you be so cryptic?”

“As long as I’m here, yes. Otherwise, I’d shed light on the subject for you.”

Olive considered continuing down the passage to search for Cassana’s hoard and then leave when she’d found enough treasure to keep her in flight for a year. But the hoard might be similarly barred, and who knew how many Fire Knives were stationed to guard the end of the tunnel?

The light from her torch, dropped when the madman had bellowed, fizzled out and died. Only the magic light of the demon statues illuminated the corridor now. Light. Shed some light on the subject, she thought. What was the subject? The bars. Of course!

It took the halfling several tries to climb up the smooth walls. Reaching behind the head of one of the demon figures, she found a glass sphere, cold as ice, but with a magical light that shone with more brilliance than any candle or torch. Olive withdrew it gently and jumped down.

She held the light in front of Akabar’s cell. “Nothing’s happening,” she growled, putting the sphere down to retrieve her sword.

“Why should anything happen?” the madman shrugged. “You’re just standing there.”

“So I am,” Olive nodded. She stepped forward—and passed right through the bars.

“Hey, that’s great. Thanks,” she called back to the crafter. She set the sword on the floor and checked on the mage’s condition. He was still breathing, but she would never be able to lift him off the hook. She might have tried climbing up the mage’s body and picking the locks on his manacles, but the wrist bindings had been welded, not snapped on.

“Need some help?” a voice beside her asked. Olive whirled around and would have skewered the speaker if he had not so agilely sidestepped her attack.

The halfling gasped. The crafter stood next to her in Akabar’s cell. She had set the glowing sphere down in such a position that it had shed light on the bars of his prison as well. He held the globe now in one hand.

“Keep back,” Olive ordered, brandishing her sword.

The crafter’s lips curled up in a wry smile. His eyes were now clear and piercing. He stood straighter and looked stronger. “If I keep back, how are we going to get your friend down?” His voice was now firm and reasonable.

Olive wrinkled her brow in puzzlement. “You’re not mad.”

The crafter harumphed. “So I have always maintained.”

“I mean … well, you’re different than you were a moment ago.”

“The cell I was in works a spell of enfeeblement on its occupants.”

“Oh.” Suddenly remembering that the crafter was still one of Alias’s would-be masters, Olive took another step backward and held out her sword. “Why should you want to help?”

“Look, are you going to stand there all day demonstrating your incompetence with a short sword, or climb up on my shoulders and unhook this unfortunate southerner?”

The halfling frowned at the insult, but the crafter had a point. She sighed and set her sword down behind her, then approached him cautiously.

The crafter stooped, set the sphere of light on the ground, and made a foothold for her with his hands. Olive put her hand on his shoulder and stepped up. He was a big man, as tall as Akabar, and even broader at the chest. She climbed nimbly to his shoulders, and he stood up smoothly.

“When I lift him, you detach the chain,” he said.

Once Akabar had been released, Olive scrambled down the crafter’s back. Cradling the mage in his arms, he carried him from the cell and set him on the ground outside. Olive followed with her sword and the sphere of light.

The man frowned at the mage’s wounds. “Can you heal?” he asked Olive.

“What do I look like? A paladin?”

“Upstairs there’s a bureau in the dining room. It’s trapped, but there’s a small button along the base that deactivates it. Unless Cassana has changed, there will be a number of potions there. Fetch them and some clothing for this one and come right back. Oh—and leave the sword.”

Olive obeyed without question, suddenly relieved to not be making all the decisions. She was back within fifteen minutes, laden with the potions, Akabar’s spellbooks—which had also been in the cabinet—one of Zrie Prakis’s robes, two kitchen knives, and a sack of food.

The crafter was seated by Akabar’s side, using the sword to scrape away his ratty beard. His face was deeply careworn, like a general who’d been at war too long or a king’s wisest but least heeded adviser.

He rummaged through the tablecloth that served as a sack, pulled out two potions, and mixed them together to form a gummy poultice, which he smeared over the cuts on Akabar’s chest and face. Akabar moaned, but the wounds began to close. The crafter slipped the rest of the potions into his tabard pockets.

“His wounds will take about an hour to heal,” the crafter said. He turned a stern eye on Olive. “Now, who is he, and who are you, and how did you come to be in this foul place?”

“He’s Akabar Bel Akash, a mage. I’m Olive Ruskettle the Bard. I’m trying to rescue Alias the Swordswoman from Cassana, who is trying to enslave her—”

“I know all about Cassana’s business with Alias,” the crafter interrupted. “Who are you really?”

“I told you. This is Akabar Bel—”

“I mean you, halfling. You cannot be a bard.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, you cannot be a bard. You might use it as a cover for your other activities, but you cannot be one. There are no halfling bards.”

“Well, you are very much mistaken,” Olive huffed. “I am a halfling, and I am a bard. I sing, play the yarting and the tantan, compose music and poetry, and weave tales.”

“That makes you a troubadour or a minstrel. Your skill may be such that you can impress and entertain people, but to be a bard you must be trained. Without training, the power of the calling will never be yours. And I know, better than any three of my colleagues and better than any sage, that no halfling has ever been trained.”

“And how would you know?”

“Because I am a bard. The Nameless Bard.”

“The Nameless Bard? Just what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means they took away my name. In much the same way that barbarian kings wipe out the wives and children of their enemies, they banned my songs and erased my name from history—and from my own mind.”

“You mean Cassana?”

The Nameless Bard laughed. “Hardly. It would take a power far greater than hers to overcome even a single melody of mine.”

A flash of inspiration struck Olive. “You wrote the songs Alias sings. You’re her Harper friend.”

The Nameless Bard turned a piercing look on the halfling. Olive grew uncomfortable beneath his gaze and turned away. “Didn’t mean to pry,” she mumbled.

“I remember a bard, a true bard, named Ruskettle. Olav Ruskettle. Had a bad gambling habit. Would have staked his own mother on the roll of a die. I suppose by the time you ran into him, he had nothing left but his name.”

Olive glared at the Nameless Bard. “He was situated very comfortably as a tavernkeeper in Procampur. He couldn’t gamble away the tavern—his wife held the title.”

“So he offered you his name.”

Olive shrugged. “He couldn’t play anymore—lost his right hand. His voice was beginning to fade.”

“So you accepted. Loaded dice?”

“No!”

“Very well. You won the name fair and square. But all the rights, privileges, and immunities thereunto appertaining, you never earned.”

“Just because humans don’t recognize a halfling’s talents doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

“Did you even try applying to a barding college?”

The halfling was silent for a moment. “No,” she admitted.

“Why not? No, don’t answer me. I’m really not interested in your excuses. Answer to yourself. Now, tell me, would-be bard, how did you come to be a companion to the swordswoman, Alias?”

Olive bridled some at the title, but she needed the Nameless Bard’s help to free Alias. She began with Mist’s abduction of her from the caravan in Cormyr, then explained how Dimswart had come to hire Alias. She described their battle with the crystal elemental, the disastrous brawl at the wedding, all that Dimswart had discovered about the sigils, and the destruction of the kalmari. She began slowly and nervously, like a schoolchild asked to recite, but she was not naturally a taciturn person, and her tale flowed smooth and clear by the time she described the events in Shadowdale.

To her own astonishment, she told the truth about her dealings with Phalse. She knew the story would not make much sense if she left out crucial elements. She related all Akabar had told her about the events in Yulash, how Dragonbait had subdued Mist, the battle with Moander, and finally how all of them came to be captured by Alias’s enemies, the others by force, she by stupidity.

Olive had never had such a polite and riveted audience in her life. He interrupted her tale only once, when she was describing how Cassana had made Alias batter Akabar.

“You say she wept?” the true bard asked.

“Of course she wept,” Olive said. “Akabar is her friend, and the witch was using her to pulp his flesh. I could see the streaks her tears left on her cheeks and the dark spots where they landed on the floor. Cassana thought it was pretty funny and made a stupid joke about it. She said, ‘Look Zrie, she’s crying. I’ll bet I know who taught her that trick.’ Then she used her wand to knock Alias out.”

The true bard’s lower lip quivered for a moment. He clamped it shut. “Finish. Quickly. Your friend is coming around.”

Olive told how Cassana had put her to sleep, and the deal Zrie had offered her. “He unbolted the door for me. There were only two guards upstairs. I killed them and came down here looking for Akabar.”

Akabar awoke slowly. Though weak, he was still strong enough to grab Ruskettle by the throat and throttle her. The Nameless Bard pulled the mage’s hands away with his own sure grip.

“You’ve signed her death warrant, you greedy, little bitch!” Akabar shouted.

“I think there has been a misunderstanding,” the Nameless Bard said calmly. “Your friend was using a ruse to win your enemy’s trust.”

Akabar’s eyes squinted with disbelief, but he could not fight the strength of the true bard’s hands.

Olive felt a rush of gratitude toward the bard. She had told him the whole truth, that her reasons for accepting Phalse’s offer had been as much for greed as for a desire to play at espionage, but he had given her the benefit of the doubt.

“Look, Akash. I came down here to get your help to rescue Alias.” That much was half true. “If you’d rather go back to your cell and wait for Cassana …”

Akabar spat on the halfling’s gown.

“He’s very emotional,” she explained to the crafter.

“Look at me, Akabar Bel Akash,” the Nameless Bard said. The power of his voice drew Akabar’s eyes unwillingly from Olive.

“Do you want to rescue Alias?”

Akabar took a deep breath, almost a sob. “Yes.”

“So does this creature. So do I. Contain your anger. It is a waste of your energies. You should know that.”

Akabar took another deep, slow breath. He relaxed his muscles. The true bard released his wrists.

“Who are you?” Akabar asked.

“The Nameless Bard.”

“Nameless? No one is nameless.”

“They took his name away,” Olive explained.

“Who?” Akabar asked.

The Nameless Bard sighed. “Eat” he said, motioning toward the food that Olive had taken from Cassana’s larder. “You’ll need your strength very soon. I will tell you my story while you dine.”

Akabar noticed his books in Olive’s bundle and motioned for them. Olive slid them to his side. She remembered how he had asked for them after being freed from Moander and took this as a sign that he was prepared to carry on—and put the past behind him—at least for now.

“You have no doubt heard of the Harpers,” the Nameless Bard began. “They were established in the north long before you were born. Their members are primarily bards and rangers, though not limited to such. All are good and true men and women devoted to preserving the balance of life, opposing all that threatens the peace of the Realms, protecting the weak and innocent. You might recognize them by their small silver pin of a harp and a moon.

“One of their number was a bard, a master of his craft, with a voice and a memory like polished ice. A creator of songs that could move people to action, or calm them to slumber. None heard his music but that they were impressed. The bard himself was often astonished by his own skill and wished for all his works to be preserved for eternity.

“Yet songs are so easily changed, their lyrics tampered with, their melodies maligned. The bard’s own colleagues had done this to his works, substituting a phrase to suit a particular audience, quickening the tempo to end an evening’s entertainment sooner. Or simply forgetting a line. And though such things are only natural, the bard was obsessed with preserving his works as he’d intended them to be sung.”

“Prickly sort, wasn’t he?” Olive asked with a tiny grin.

The corner of the true bard’s mouth turned up in a half-smile. “We all have our faults.

“Rejecting human singers as the preservers of his art, he turned to mechanical means. Paper and stone would not suffice—the written word could not convey the meaning as well as spoken words, and written notes describe only the melody, not the spirit of the music. And paper and stone can be destroyed. Even magical attempts to reproduce his music dissatisfied him. They could not demonstrate the full interaction of the bard with his audience.

“Finally, he determined a mixture of these methods that would fulfill his requirements. A human shell, unwilling, even unable, to stray from the original rendition, a repository for his tales and music that could render them unto generations.”

“Alias,” Akabar said.

“Alias?” Olive chirped.

“Alias,” the true bard said. “The price to make such a creature, however, was very great, involving dealing with powerful mages and extra-planar powers. The price was also horrible. It would cost the life of a noble innocent, both pure and true, by brutal means.

“The master bard, with his apprentices, men and women of lesser power but great talent, tried to create this shell on their own. The attempt failed, costing one assistant his life and another her voice, so that she was silent for the rest of her shortened, painful days.

“Many men and women of the Realms might have shrugged off such a tragedy. But the Harpers considered themselves better men and women and were horrified by what the bard had done. They summoned him to judgement.

They stripped him of his name, stole it from his memory. His name being a given thing, this was easy to do. But knowledge discovered is like an efreet let out of a bottle: it cannot be forced back in. The struggle to discover it makes it part of the discoverer’s soul. They could not destroy the knowledge in him. They feared he would try again, or pass the knowledge to another. So they could not let him go free, yet they would not slay him, for he was one of their own, and they did not want his blood on their hands.

“They decided he would have to be imprisoned, but no ordinary prison would do. They could not risk his ever passing on the method he had developed. So they shackled and exiled him beyond the bounds of the Realms, in the lands where reason fails and the gods roll like storm fronts across the sky. All his songs, his words, and his ideas were expunged in a sweeping attempt to cover up what he had achieved. Those who knew his songs were told to sing them no more, and such was the respect and fear of the Harpers in those days that many complied.

“So that which the master bard feared most came to pass: the songs he sought to preserve were dead things, unremembered in the Realms. The Harpers had been thorough, indeed. The newer members know nothing of the story. Only the old remember the tale.”

“So how did you escape?” Akabar asked.

“Some vestige of the tale survived. A scrap of a letter I’d written to an apprentice fell into Cassana’s hands—something about how my human shell could be made indistinguishable from the real thing. Cassana went to great lengths to track me down. She put a bounty out on an old Harper and tortured him for the information on my whereabouts. I hear he did not submit until she began torturing other creatures as well.

“I knew none of this when her allies completed a bridge to my place of exile. If I had not been half mad with loneliness and grief for the death of my songs, I might have seen through Cassana’s unholy alliance immediately. But Cassana used her sweetest manner, and Phalse played on my desire for retribution. Zrie cloaked himself in the illusion of a living mage. I was not told of the Fire Knives or Moander or Phalse’s master.

“I gave up all my secrets, and they helped me build Alias. Later, I learned that the money for the project came from the Fire Knives, and that Moander provided the life energy needed to start Alias breathing. Cassana provided the body, Zrie the power to keep death from her, and Phalse’s master the power to bind a soul in her.”

“Dragonbait’s soul,” Akabar breathed.

“The saurial, yes.”

“And you taught her to sing,” Olive said.

“Oh, more than that. I spun her entire history, her thoughts, her feelings, her beliefs. A full personality that could interact with others. She was to be my redemption, my justification, of all I had done. I wanted to be sure that no one could see the beauty of my achievement without forgiving the evil means I used to accomplish it.

“But my allies had their own purposes, something I should have realized when each gave her a different name. I named her Alias because I could not give her my own. All I wanted was for her to live in peace and sing my songs.

“Then they branded her and the saurial, which Phalse’s master had provided as sacrifice to give her a soul, and I understood they intended her to be a slave.

“I argued with Cassana, and for the first time she showed me her true nature. She’d left the empty space in the brand to represent me—another of her cruel jokes. I walked out on her and came down here, for this is where Alias and Dragonbait were being kept. I tried to convince myself to destroy Alias rather than bring her into this world bonded to so much evil.”

The former Harper looked in the cell where Akabar had hung as though he still saw someone there. Tears welled in his eyes. “I am too reasonable a man to believe in miracles, but I suppose they must occur in spite of what I believe. When we’d left her in the cell that evening she was breathing but unconscious. Our calculations said she would not awaken until the saurial was slain. He was very near death already. He had killed many Fire Knives in one attempt to escape, and they beat him every chance they got. They’d left him hanging by the same hook you occupied, mage.

“When I returned here that night, the lizard was lying on the straw, wrapped in Alias’s cloak. She had taken him down and was tending his wounds, singing him a lullaby, like a child with a doll.

“I sneaked upstairs to fetch the sword I had bought for Alias and some healing potions for the saurial. I also sought his sword, which Cassana had given to me because I was the only one who could pick it up without pain. I wasn’t certain I could trust Alias with the swords. She was like a very little child. So I gave her the potions and told her what to do with them. When the saurial regained consciousness, I told him I would free him if he would help Alias escape—that he must take her as far from Westgate as possible. He readily agreed.

“I had to remain behind to cover their escape. An hour before dawn, when we were all preparing to leave for the sacrifice of the saurial, Cassana realized what I had done. She would have destroyed me that moment, but Phalse ordered that I be spared. He thought I might know where they had gone, and he interrogated me in his own fashion. I thought I was safe because I had given the lizard no specific instructions, but I planted in Alias a great nostalgia for Shadowdale. I wanted her to sing there. Phalse learned this, and that is how he knew where to wait for you.”

“That’s where you met him,” Akabar accused Olive.

The halfling shrugged. “You knew Alias wasn’t human, but you never told me.” She turned back to the true bard. “Phalse let you live then?”

“That was Cassana’s decision. She changed her mind about destroying me. She left me in this chamber, where my thoughts would wander and my strength fade so I would grow more pliable. She wanted my help on other projects and … my company.”

“Piggish, isn’t she?” Olive said. “Just think, Akash, you could have been co-concubine with an ex-Harper.”

Akabar fixed the halfling with a cold stare.

“Well,” Olive Ruskettle said with a grin, “she may be a witch, but I can’t knock her taste in men—living ones that is. Shouldn’t we be leaving soon if we’re going to stop this saurial sacrifice?”

“We wait only until moonset,” the true bard explained. “To avoid the patrols of Fire Knives.”

“You’ve been babbling away in that cell for a month now. How do you know when moonset is?” Olive asked.

The crafter picked up a drumstick and took a bite of the meat, chewed, and swallowed before he smiled sweetly at her. “You forget, Mistress Ruskettle, a bard never loses count of the measure.”