Dawnbringer

Chapter Five

SANCTUARY OF SHADRUN-OF-THE-SNOWS

1584 DR-THE YEAR OF THE SKIRLING PIPES

Atall figure stood on the flat-topped Watcher’s Rock. Below, the crook of the road led to the hollow where the Sanctuary of Shadrun-of-the-Snows provided shelter. The figure, her form obviously that of a woman, set her feet shoulder-width apart and crossed her arms, her stance relaxed but watchful. A sword was strapped diagonally across her back, the hilt just behind her left ear where she could draw it either one- or two-handed at need. Thrust crosswise through her belt was a dagger in its sheath, larger than average with a simple but well-wrought hilt. The pommel of the hilt had a single, smooth, rounded ruby. The dark leather of the sheath was decorated with an elaborate pattern of intertwined snakes. Smaller stones, wine-dark like the pommel, made their eyes.

From a distance it looked as if she wore a mask: a wide strip of pale fabric across her eyes. Closer, it was clear the stripe was part of her natural coloring. Her hair was braided in rows away from her face, and the braids that touched her mask were the same pale color.

She stood still, surveying the view of the road that switched back and forth down the mountain and met the main road in the valley below. Occasionally a plume of road dust betrayed where travelers passed, some with trade goods strapped onto animals or in wagons, and some on foot, looking for adventure or simply a place to stay. Sometimes a lone figure was silhouetted in the distance, and only then did the woman stiffen slightly and narrow her eyes, watching them closely, relaxing when she determined they weren’t those for whom she waited.

Although she faced the road, she was acutely aware of the thick woods behind her and heard every rustle that the small animals of the forest made in going about their daily business. She was aware, as well, of the two pilgrims descending the path from the sanctuary, their visit at an end. By sound alone she marked each turn they took, hearing their sandals kicking up small stones, and knew exactly when they would emerge from behind the trees and pass the Watcher’s Rock. She heard them emerge from behind the trees and hesitate when they saw her, then continue again, their voices hushed. They were the two women from Turmish, she thought, from the sound of their footfalls and the few words she caught.

As they passed in front of the rock where she stood, she saw she was right. Almost shyly the pilgrims raised their hands in greeting, and she nodded in return. One looked as if she would like to stop and talk, but the other pulled her away, and they hurried down the path to the base of the mountain.

Lakini spotted them as they emerged on the road. She hoped they had the sense to ask to accompany a caravan, or at least to join with other pilgrims. Unless they had more command of defensive spellcraft or protective rituals than she suspected, they would be vulnerable once they were out of sight of one of the devas that protected Shadrun-of-the-Snows.

Her gaze ranged the road before them and froze as she saw the lone figure that passed the pilgrims, turning onto the road that led past her sentry post. The women gave him a wide berth as they went by, although he didn’t acknowledge them.

Lakini frowned. Lusk was still too far away for her to see the expression on his face, but she knew what it looked like. The mouth grimly set, the eyes that showed no trace of pity but stared through people as if they were made of glass.

She didn’t go to greet him but waited until he came to her. He strode quickly, making little sound nevertheless on the roadway. When he saw her standing on the Watcher’s Rock, he paused, then came to its base, staring up at her with the same near-unblinking stillness she possessed.

He had left the sanctuary four tendays since, and only this morning had the rising sun told her that this day he would return.

His hand lay on his own dagger, which, like Lakini’s, was secured crosswise in his belt. The gesture wasn’t either threatening or combative, but was that of a fighter who would touch his weapons to make sure they were in place and to seek reassurance. The sheath where his dagger rested was plain, but what was visible of the hilt was inscribed with flowing scrollwork and inset with sapphire cabochons. Instead of a greatsword, he had a longbow almost as tall as himself secured across his back, and a quiver full of arrows fletched with feathers so black, they gave no answering gleam to the sun that shone bright above them, reflecting on the snow that clung to the upper slopes of Shadrun’s mountain. His mouth was indeed grim, and the stripes across his face made him look the fiercer.

“Cserhelm,” said Lakini, placing her hand on her breast and inclining her head.

Lusk stood, regarding her a long minute before his lips curved upward in a small smile, and he did likewise.

“Cserhelm,” he replied.

Lakini jumped from the flat-topped rock to stand beside Lusk. She didn’t have to ask him to know that his journey had not given him the peace he sought.

And she wouldn’t ask. She and Lusk had been companions for much of her present lifetime, which now spanned almost two centuries. She knew they had traveled together in other lifetimes, before their current incarnations. Devas remembered very little of their previous existences, born innocent of what they were before-although in extremity devas could call upon their previous manifestations to guide or protect them. Still, Lakini sometimes had dreamlike glimpses of previous lifetimes, and visions of an entity she identified as Lusk. She knew he had like memories. Many decades ago they had met, recognized each other, and exchanged daggers-she giving him the sapphire-studded weapon and he giving her the dagger with the snake-inscribed sheath.

Since then they had ventured together, parting sometimes for days or months or years as their respective destinies took them. Their paths had always met again. Lakini knew what a rare gift this was, and that most creatures of her kind never had the privilege of meeting another deva, fated as they were to live only with the mortal folk of Faerun.

But, bonded by forces beyond their understanding, each deva held a solitude deep in his or her heart, a secret place no one else, not even a dagger-mate, could touch. Sometimes that solitude would cry out to one or the other of them, and cause them to step aside from the path they walked together, to quest alone, although they would eventually return to the same path.

There were places in a deva’s heart deep and sacred as the sea. Lakini would not ask after Lusk’s discontentment.

“The crofters say there’s a nest of gnolls denning near Rophile’s Crevasse,” she said at last. “Shall we go rout them out?”

Lusk grinned. “Nothing would delight me more.”

Rophile’s Crevasse was a deep slice in the side of the mountain where the ground had cracked open once, exposing the dark gray rock of the mountain’s substance. Jagged teeth of layered basalt and granite jutted over a chasm few had ventured far into, and precarious, little-traveled paths wound down, clinging to the sides of the cleft. Sun struck down the slopes only a few hours at midday, and moss and small ferns grew deep. Venturesome folk said one could hear water trickling below.

Rophile was not the name of the discoverer of the crevasse or of an adventurer who braved its depths, but of a sheep that had wandered in one day, never to be seen again. The crofter quickly gave up the errant Rophile as lost, but stories were told of a feral, incredibly tough breed of sheep that roamed the interior.

Lakini had heard, and dismissed, theories that the crevasse had no bottom; that it was a passage to the Underdark and its horrors. She didn’t fear attacks by the drow and their allies, not here. But it was an attractive hiding place for the dangerous creatures, sentient or not, that preyed on the merchants, travelers, and pilgrims who braved the road and the wilderness to come to Shadrun. Local rangers, hunters, farmers and crofters, let the sanctuary’s guardians know when something more than fairy tales and mythical monster sheep took refuge in the slash in the mountainside. Lakini had picked up a rumor three days ago that a passerby had barely escaped the fang-spike club of a gnoll.

As it turned out, rumor was wrong in this case. There were no gnolls in Rophile’s Crevasse.

Lakini kneeled on a boulder that overlooked the drop-off. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs with the air and scents of the wilderness. There was the clean, balsamic smell of the pines, as well as a musky smell from the moss that grew on the cliffside’s damp walls and from the leaves rotting on the forest floor. A dank scent rose from the maw of the rift, and she spared a thought for the mass of the bones of clumsy men and animals, ancient and new, that were probably tumbled together at the bottom together with fallen branches and vines. There was nothing unusual here, there being none of the carrion stench of a gnoll pack. She opened her eyes and felt for the lines and letters carved over the top of the boulder-it wasn’t uncommon for the area youth to come here to impress their friends, bleat in an attempt to call the flock of legendary feral sheep, and carve their signs or initials in the rock to prove they’d done it.

She sniffed again, catching just a trace of something strange. It was not like an animal, or the charnel smell of gnolls, but something almost like the reagents a mage would use, a whiff of an alchemical process. There was just a hint of it in the air, and then it was gone.

She tilted her head at a rustle in the leaves up the slope. Lusk was casting about, looking for spoor, tracks, or other signs of the gnolls. She leaped gracefully off the boulder and called out between the trees.

“See anything?”

“Not much.” His voice echoed, disembodied in the crisp fall air. “No gnoll sign, I think. I found the skull of a deer, but that could be from a big cat, even a wolf. Or it could have just died in the winter-it’s full-grown. Wait-no, a predator got it. There’s flesh still on it-fresh.”

A whisper of a boot on dead dried leaves told where Lusk cast about in the woods above. Lakini loosed her sword in its sheath across her back-ordinary predators were nothing like gnolls, but it was best to be cautious-and leaned against the grainy surface of the boulder, enjoying the heat that the stone had gathered through the day on her back.

“Lakini?” Lusk’s voice had a quality that made her stand straight and reach for her dagger.

“What, Cserhelm?” she called.

“Keep watch, Lakini. I found the rest of the deer. All of them.”

A long, liquid snarl sounded behind Lakini, behind the boulder that overlooked the crevasse. She turned, crouching and reaching for her greatsword, in time to see an enormous wolf round the stone at speed, leaping for her with an intent that had nothing to do with a workaday predator. Caught off-guard, she had the vague impression of cruel, knifelike claws outstretched for her and a mouthful of wicked teeth before it bore her to the ground. Cursing herself for an inattentive fool, she rolled as soon as she hit, avoiding a swipe of claws aimed at her gut, and unsheathed her dagger. The length of her sword on her back pressed into her muscles. Still tumbling, she lashed out with her dagger and saw the creature flinch back. She came out of the roll into a one-legged kneeling position, knife extended, and faced the wolf that slavered a few feet before her, feeling her lips rise into a snarl in return. Dark blood dripped down the wolf’s leg where she’d slashed at it, but it wasn’t any kind of serious wound.

“Lakini!” called Lusk, somewhere behind her.

“I found the wolf,” she called back, not moving from her position, and not shifting her gaze from the creature in front of her. The thing’s mouth seemed to open wider in a grin, and saliva pooled in the corners of its lips.

Very slowly Lakini shifted her dagger to her left hand. The outsize wolf’s eyes-one brown, one an angry-looking red-followed her every movement. The smell of chemicals-sulfur and something like burned iron-filled the air.

With a smooth motion Lakini grasped the knife hilt in her left hand and reached for her sword with the other. The wolf leaped for her again. She rose to her feet and seized the sword hilt, drawing it and bringing it down in one fluid, powerful arc. The blade missed the creature’s skull by a hair, but it bit through the edge of its upright, pointed ear, taking off a third of it. At the same time, Lakini sliced the knife up in an undercut, protecting her left side and cutting deeply through the wolf’s forelimb.

The animal howled and jumped back, well out of the range of her sword, farther away than it should have been able to jump. The burned metal smell intensified. She watched as the bones of the wolf’s face seemed to melt beneath the surface of the skin and the thing stood upright, hind legs lengthening and forelimbs turning into long, burly arms, still tipped with black claws. Rearing to its full height, it topped her by two heads.

The thing snarled. Its eyes, one still scarlet, were sunk deep on either side of the broad nose. Its face and what parts of the body weren’t covered with thick leather armor were as hairy as the wolf. Its right arm was cut to the bone, dark blood coating fur and armor, and part of its left ear was lopped off, the side of its head wet and matted.

Sweet Selune served with parsnips, thought Lakini. It’s a barghest.

Quickly she sheathed the dagger and took the worn, familiar grip of her sword in both hands. “Lusk!” she called, not taking her eyes off the lycanthrope for a second. “Barghest! There might be more!”

“At least one,” he replied grimly, and she heard the furious scream of a wounded animal.

The barghest glared at her, and a coldness rose through her body like a tide. Her joints ached and she felt a dull despair, heavy as iron on her shoulders.

You’ll die here, a small voice whispered in her head. This thing will kill you, and you’ll never see the sun again.

She hesitated, confused. The hobgoblin moved a step closer. The smell of sulfur was almost overwhelming now.

It was an invisible attack, as deadly as that mouthful of teeth slashing at her-some barghests had the skill to project despair into the minds of their opponents, dulling their senses and making them easier prey.

Without letting the tip of her sword droop, Lakini concentrated. Part of her still focused on the threat before her, while another sought the river of Astral grace that ran inside her always, sustaining and illuminating. All devas, save perhaps those few who had become corrupted by their experiences in this plane, contained within their spirit the gift of Astral light, born as they were in the hallowed seas.

She visualized two hands scooping the luminous material into a sphere and hurling it at the barghest, straight through the miasma of doom it was inflicting on her. Her unseen counter was effective, and the beast staggered back as if struck.

She pressed her advantage, striking at its midriff, then swung again at its wounded right arm. It jumped back toward the boulder, and she pursued it, unwilling to let it take refuge in some cave in the chasm and heal. It would be madness to let such a dangerous creature survive so close to the sanctuary.

There was a narrow ledge where a person could stand between the boulder and the drop-off. The wounded barghest was crouched against it, grinning at her. She raised her sword to strike it down.

The enormous curved edge of a battle-axe chopped down between her and the wounded barghest. Only by scrabbling backward uriously did she escape the blow that would have sunk deep into her knee. The blade bounced off a stone in front of her, drawing sparks.

Idiot, Lakini thought. He was luring you into a trap.

The second barghest, a female slightly smaller than the first, was covered entirely with black fur, save for two white blazes that started high on the wide, flat scalp and extended down both sides of the body. It growled and lifted the battle-axe again, and Lakini deflected the downward blow with an upstroke of her greatsword. The weapons met with a clash that made the metal ring and sent a great jolt of pain through her shoulder.

Stupid. She had fallen so easily into the assumption that there would be two, that the beast Lusk battled upslope would be the only other danger. Partnering with Lusk and patrolling the limited demesne of the sanctuary had made her soft. She had forgotten about the sheer variety of evil that made Toril its home.

She had thrust the white-striped barghest back with her sword, and while it regained footing, the first darted under her guard and slashed at her with its claws. She cried out as pain knifed into her side. It had penetrated her side armor, leather, skin, and muscle, and opened a gash along her ribs. The blow had flung all her weight onto her right leg, and Lakini used that, delivering a solid kick to the creature’s knee with her booted foot. It yipped and sprawled on the ground.

Nausea took her, and the wound in her side throbbed. She was going to die here, and Lusk as well. Shadrun would be cracked open like an egg and the bones of those that sheltered there left to weather under the sky. Lakini looked up to see the female barghest glaring at her, gripping the axe at the ready.

Lakini tried to find the river of light inside her to counter the barghest’s psychic attack, but this time it eluded her.

It swung the axe and she leaned back, letting it whistle through the space where her torso had been a second before. When it backswung, she countered it, fighting to remain strong through the pain of her lacerated side and the despair that bore down on her. The thing snarled in her face and its head flattened. Its ears rose on either side, and the snout lengthened. Teeth bristled in the open mouth, and the stench of sulfur was overwhelming. It was changing into a wolf, with its white stripe still blazing down its lupine body.

It raised the battle-axe again, and she struggled to counter, to get in a blow of her own. Something whistled over her right shoulder, and the black fletch of Lusk’s arrow brushed her cheek. The bolt buried itself in the beast’s furry neck. The barghest froze, a look that might have been astonishment in the beast’s eyes. It staggered backward, swayed at the edge of the chasm, and vanished over the side.

The first barghest had recovered its footing and stood at the lip of the cliff, staring down at where its companion had vanished. Slowly it turned its massive, maimed head and pierced her with a look of purest hatred, its red eye glowing like a bloody ruby. With a scream, it leaped for her, a tremendous jump that spanned three of its own body lengths. Ready for it, she braced herself for the attack. Her greatsword pierced the abdomen, and she thrust as hard as she could, feeling the blade part sinew and muscle and then grate against the creature’s backbone. It froze for a second, the hairy, bloody head almost lying on her shoulder. Then, without a sound, it collapsed to the ground, sliding off her blade.

A freshening wind came from the mountaintop, blowing away the smell of sulfur and leaving the iron tang of blood behind.

Lakini limped to the edge of the chasm to make sure the other barghest was dead. Half-wolf and half-goblin, the white-blazed body sprawled broken over a root that jutted out of the cliffside. She shivered at the sight of the monstrous hybrid, neither one species nor the other.

Lusk called her away, examined her wound, and wrapped it tightly. “It’s not as bad as it might have been,” he remarked. “Make sure it’s cleaned out well and it’ll heal quickly.”

She nodded, forbearing to point out to him that after centuries in this incarnation, she was well aware of the necessary care of battlefield wounds.

Together they hiked through the trees to recover Lusk’s dagger, stuck firmly between the ribs of the third barghest, a smaller goblinoid sprawled next to a pile of deer bones picked clean.

“Where did they come from?” she said. “How did we not know they were here?”

Lusk, meticulously wiping the barghest’s black, sticky blood from his dagger, shrugged. “We’re in the wilderness, Cserhelm. We can’t control every handbreadth of the mountain.” He sighed. “I suppose I should get my arrow back, but I don’t want to crawl down after that thing.”

She stared at the beast’s body and at the remains of the deer. There must have been fifteen or twenty. “We should have been aware of this kind of predation. And I didn’t expect there to be three.” She still heard the big male barghest’s last scream, before it impaled itself on her sword, full of rage but also a kind of despair. It was the same kind of despair a barghest could inflict upon its prey, but heartfelt within itself. Why? Was the skunk-striped barghest its mate?

“Perhaps the chasm does extend to the Underdark,” remarked Lusk, giving the blade a final polish and sheathing it, “where the eldritch spawn of Rophile roam. Listen!” He put his hand to his ear. “Can’t you hear them?”

On the breeze came the faint bleating of sheep, probably from a herd grazing in the meadows below. Lakini laughed, ignoring the pain in her side. At least the lycanthropes wouldn’t be preying on the crofter’s flocks.

Lakini knew the gouge in her side would heal quickly, but she suspected it would be a long time before the baffled roar of the barghest faded from her mind.

“Come home,” she said, laying her hand briefly on Lusk’s arm. “You’ve not even paid respects to Shadrun yet, and the Vashtun will want to see you.”

The Vashtun had not always been the Vashtun, of course. His birthname had been discarded and forgotten long before. The sanctuary keeper of Shadrun-of-the-Snows was always called the Vashtun; the name of the first keeper had become a title over the length of years.

Years before, in the Year of Azuth’s Woe, that first Vashtun, a quiet, unassuming city scribe, had laid aside his transcription of the bloated history of a rich merchant’s ancestors, tied his ink pot and quills at his side, and walked away from the busy streets and commerce of his native place, walked into the heart of the country, down a road teeming with market folk, private guards, and weary would-be adventurers in search of coin to be made honestly or not. He passed dwarves bound for town to negotiate trade treaties, halflings in search of a day’s labor and mischief afterward, and farmers taking their town goods home. At night he would sleep by the side of the road in the travelers’ shelters raised by local lordlings or town councils for the public good, drinking from public wells and sharing food with fellow journeyers if they had it to spare.

He walked roads farther and farther away from human habitation, and when he came upon a crooked mountain path that pleased him, he turned aside from the main road and climbed up, past oaks clustered thick and twisted at the mountain’s foot, past thickets of pine and deep, white-barked, rustling birch to where ferns grew in a sunny meadow stretched in the sun beneath the peaks and ravines of the summit. There he found the remains of a forgotten temple, little more than blocks of moss-grown marble tumbled around the warm trickle of a mineral spring. He found the carved onyx head of some ancient, obscure godling, cleaned the dirt from its time-worn features, and propped it up against the ruins of a retaining wall. He washed his road-sore feet in the warm, slightly sulfurous waters of the spring and found himself a comfortable seat in last season’s fallen leaves. Vashtun sat contemplating the long and crooked snakelike road that coiled between the cities of the plains.

He had spent so many days putting one foot before the other in such a steady rhythm that the simple action had become hypnotic. Gone was the strange impulse that made him set aside the heavy parchment, filled with line after line of neat writing, push back the chair from the slanted desk, and leave the rich man’s library to walk ceaselessly. Now he wanted nothing but to make his mind a blank, like a blown glass bulb containing a perfect vacuum. He wasn’t bored, or frightened. Sometimes he felt a little hungry or thirsty, but to stir from his perch to find berries or water would stir the still, cold waters of his mind, so he pushed such sensations away.

As the sun reached its zenith, a crofter a few miles away spotted crows circling, curious, over the ruins and sent his child to see what went forward. The boy returned an hour later to say a man was there, with strange clothing and nothing but a pouch at his hip, and he had found an old god in the dirt and restored it to the spring. The strange man said nothing but watched the horizon with an abstract smile.

The crofter’s wife sent the child back with a bottle of mead and a basket of bread and fruit paste, as well as an old patched cloak against the night chill, for it was clear to her a holy man had been sent to guard the old spring at Shadrun. Word spread to the other crofters in the foothills, keepers of the mountain cattle that thrived on the rough brush and stiff grasses of the slopes, the rangers that wandered the woods, and finally to the villages rooted below, the same villages the scribe had passed in his journey. Folk came to see him, to bring him food and what few items he seemed to need. He looked upon everyone with the same dispassionate smile, and he did not resist placing his hand on their heads when they kneeled before him and asked it.

Some of the men built him a simple shelter with the cracked, chipped blocks of the old shrine. Others restored the retaining wall around the spring, and the steps going up to it, so that again it pooled, warm and steaming, before trickling away between moss-blanketed boulders. Passive as a child fed his dinner and tucked into bed, he watched as these things were done, but anyone who kneeled before him and looked into his eyes knew that behind their benign, blue-sky expression, an encompassing intelligence moved.

Sometimes when someone sat beside him, breathing the same way and able, over the course of hours or days, to focus on nothing, they felt a tickle in their mind, a sense of someone outside of them possessing their senses. Some heard a whispering in an incomprehensible language, drifting through their brain like the cold insinuation of the winter wind. Most who sat and meditated with the holy man Vashtun did not attempt it again, leaving the task of communing with the gods to those with the inclination for it. One, the dreamy son of a stolid crofter, began weeping after an hour of sitting at Vashtun’s feet and refused to ever go near the spring again (on the positive side, he became far more industrious in the fields and sheep pens then he ever had been before). But there were those few who seemed to thrive on the same strange state the holy man manifested, who stayed with him as the air thickened with cold and the snows came. With the help of the locals, they added to the shrine shelter, making it a warm place to stay throughout the winter, heated with steam from the spring.

When the thaw came, a trickle of pilgrims, some from the cities of the plains, some from far beyond them, began to arrive. The locals were glad to guide such visitors up the crooked mountain paths for a small fee, and also to house and feed them, likewise for a small fee. Over time, the mountain path became a decent-sized and passable road, and small houses and inns sprang up beside it to take care of the travelers’ needs. The tiny ruined shrine beside Shadrun spring was expanded and rebuilt to become Shadrun-of-the-Snows, a refuge for the weary traveler as well as the questing pilgrim. The lords of cities and estates, as well as forward-looking merchants, sent tribute and manpower to Shadrun-of-the-Snows, for here was a sanctuary and safe resting place for those journeying between domains and kingdoms, where one could rest and recover, safe from mercenaries, beasts, and bandits, before proceeding on one’s way.

Vashtun became the Vashtun, served and protected by those who found comfort in always being in his presence. After the length of his days was done and he was buried on the slopes above the sanctuary, another took his place. Having spent long hours meditating with the Vashtun, the thrumming, insistent whisper that pervaded the holy man’s mind possessed his as well. Never himself a scribe, he tied the old pouch of scribes’ tools at his belt, and all called him the Vashtun. He was protected and served in his turn, as was the case with the one who came after him, and the one who came after her. There were many who thought, hundreds of years later, that the same silent and meditative Vashtun sat in a quiet room at the shrine of Shadrun-of-the-Snows, and in some ways they were correct.

NONTHAL, TURMISH

1584 DR-THE YEAR OF THE SKIRLING PIPES

“Ridiculous!” Sanwar Beguine, overcome by anger, paced the modest confines of his brother’s study.

Unperturbed and ensconced behind the sturdy and ancient desk his great-great-grandfather had brought back from a then-extant Mulhorand, Nicol Beguine watched Sanwar measure the length of the thin, finely made carpet, its ancient, intricately knotted patterns supposedly spellcast with good luck.

“Reasonable, rather,” he said mildly, as Sanwar frowned at him. “A fit conclusion to a feud that has spanned generations, hurting both our Houses. A feud I consider, to use your own word, ridiculous.”

Sanwar ceased his pacing and turned on his brother. “Their treachery, their sabotage, that is nothing to you? I’ve devoted my time and what talent I possess in magic to protecting our caravans, trade routes, merchandise, employees and partners, from their machinations. If we lower our guard … they could very well wipe us off the face of Toril.”

Nicol sighed and wove his fingers together before him on the surface of the desk-a gesture familiar to those who did business with him. It meant he was prepared for a long round of negotiations and would not leave the table until a deal was struck.

“We have taken advantage of them in our turn, whenever possible. And just like you, I’ve had legends of the great feud dished into my ears since I was a babe. The villainy of the Jadarens is endless, I’ve been told, and we can never be at peace. Well, I’m weary of this so-called vendetta. Over what trifle, so many generations ago, did it start? No one remembers. And no one cares. And yet, the harm resulting from it has been immeasurable.”

“The Jadarens were born of a pirate, and they are still pirates at the core,” Sanwar spat. “However they may hide beneath a veil of respectability. Wed one of our own to their ill-bred spawn, and you pollute our House.”

Nicol let an expression of impatience pass across his features. “Really, Sanwar. We’re not the ruling family of Cormyr. Surely we don’t need to pretend that our bloodlines have anything of the sacred about them.”

“They might,” returned his brother. “They might, if you could bother to pay attention to such things.”

“What? Are we to breed ourselves like a pack of yuan-ti? Do calm yourself, Brother. Both our businesses will benefit from this bargain.”

“And what does Kestrel say to your proposal? What if she doesn’t want to become bound to a pirate’s spawn? Will you give her a choice in the matter?”

“Sanwar, what kind of a tyrant do you think I am? Of course, ultimately it’s her decision-and that of the Jadaren boy, this Arna.” Sanwar winced, as if the given name of a Jadaren scion could wound him. Nicol did his best to ignore his brother’s melodramatics. “But Kestrel is a sensible girl. I’m sure she’ll see the benefit to both our Houses.”

“I pray she’ll see reason, and that you’ll come to your senses, Brother,” said Sanwar, sweeping out of the chamber and slamming the door behind him.

Before he did, however, he glanced at the tapestries behind Nicol’s chair, which hid a small arras where the private papers of the Beguine family were kept. A ripple in the fabric betrayed where someone hid, and he would bet the entirety of the latest caravan’s profits that it was his niece. He hoped she had taken his words to heart and would take the path of sanity, and not sacrifice herself to his brother’s insane desire to treat with the Jadarens.

And if she proved as mad as her father, well-there were precautions he was prepared to take. And any bad situation could, in the end, be made into an opportunity.

Sanwar’s heavily booted footsteps had faded down the hall outside the chamber door before the tapestries were pulled aside and a small girl with chestnut hair to her waist stepped out. She wore a simple dress, well made but worn at the cuffs and hem, for Kestrel Beguine was a practical girl. As was customary for the women of her House, she worked diligently at the accounting and record keeping necessary for a merchant family to prosper, as well as taking her turn with kitchen and housekeeping work. Knowing she was there, Nicol didn’t look around, but she touched her father on the shoulder as she passed his desk, and he glanced up at her and smiled.

“You heard all, I trust?”

Calmly, Kestrel paced the same length of carpet that her uncle had before her.

“Of course. Uncle Sanwar’s not shy about his opinion of the Jadarens.”

“You should know there are many who share his views and would be equally shocked-although perhaps not as personally offended-at the idea of your wedding Arna Jadaren. And there are those within his House who despise the Beguine family deeply. We have done much injury to each other over the generations. I disagree with your uncle, but I would have you consider all the disadvantages as well as the benefits of this bargain.”

Kestrel clasped her hands behind in unconscious imitation of one of her father’s habitual poses, and faced Nicol across the desk.

“I have, Father. By my reckoning, we stand to lose two profitable alliances if I marry Arna Jadaren. House Andula’s matriarch has cared little for Bron Jadaren since she thought he cheated her out of a shipment of cedars ten years ago, and the Spicer’s Guild helped us in that little matter in the Year of the Wicked Jailor and will not look kindly upon a reversal of our loyalties.”

“Well reasoned. The question is whether the advantages of the match make the price worth it. And if so, is it worth it to you, personally, to sacrifice yourself in such a way?”

Kestrel smiled. “I’m sure House Jadaren considers it as much a sacrifice. I’m sure Arna has an uncle Sanwar of his own, shouting his outrage at the idea of polluting their sacred halls with my unworthy presence.”

Her expression grew serious. “I am of a mind with you, Father, in this matter. It’s time this feud and the hurts it inflicts ended. I will consent to the match, on one condition.”

“Only the one? Name it.”

Kestrel looked at the woven patterns of the rug and blushed. “On the condition that I like the boy.”

In his elegant and simple chambers, Sanwar fumed, furious at Nicol’s dismissal of the consequences of a Jadaren alliance and at his seeming incomprehension of the harm it would do. He was furious at his willingness to unite the proud name of Beguine with the despised name of Jadaren, and furious at his eagerness to sell a Beguine daughter as he would a whore.

He was furious most of all at Nicol’s ignoring his arguments against the scheme. In his heart of hearts, that was what smarted the most. His objection should be enough to overcome any kind of argument for the mad plan.

Sanwar had dedicated his life to the family business his brother headed, never demanding the trappings of leadership himself. He took a fierce pride in the Beguine legacy, and for the chief of the House to dismiss his concerns was like a slap in the face. And it hurt. This was his blood, his brother. Raised together, they had learned their numbers and the intricacies of the merchant trade together. It hurt to be ignored.

His pacing took him past the door of his chambers. A solid panel of oak, it was unadorned, save by a small and beautifully carved eye in the exact center. Beside the door he paused, frowning, and listened intently.

For years he had studied the arts of sorcery, independent and alone, knowing most of his House frowned upon the study of dark magic and resentful of the fact that his father-and Nicol’s-had forbidden him to travel to such a place as Netheril to study them properly. Despite his application and his ever-growing library of arcane books and scrolls, his skills were nowhere near where he’d like them to be.

He was not yet a master of magic, but his senses had been honed by study, and he was aware that someone lingered on the other side of the door, someone who either hesitated to make him- or herself known or who intended to lie in wait for him to emerge.

Sanwar held out his left hand, palm up and fingers spread, and murmured the first few words of a spell. Heat prickled down his fingers and began to gather in the hollow of his palm. But before he could engage the graven eye and before the spyspell worked upon it, before he could see who lurked on the other side, there came a gentle tap at his door.

Still holding his left hand out in readiness, he jerked the door open abruptly. With a muffled gasp, Vorsha Beguine, his sister-in-law, stumbled into the room amid a flurry of embroidered silks.

With a quick flick of his wrist, Sanwar dismissed the defensive spell gathering in his left hand and caught Vorsha by the elbow with the right. He quickly pushed the door shut, muttering a short silencing cantrip as he did so. It would not do for some curious servant to spy out what he and Vorsha got up to in his chambers.

Sanwar and his brother shared more than Nicol knew or suspected.

Vorsha Beguine was a wide-eyed wisp of a woman, with the thick chestnut hair that her daughter had inherited and a timid manner that Kestrel had not. Sanwar had found, however, that despite her shy manner and diffident nature, she was completely different in bed-passionate and sometimes surprisingly inventive.

Vorsha tried to be a good wife, if not a faithful one. She had remained true to Nicol during the first few years of their married life, but he was distracted much of the time conducting the business of one of the most far-reaching merchant enterprises in Faerun. It was the custom for the Beguine women to learn and to manage the accounts of the House, and such work wasn’t to Vorsha’s taste. Her talent was for the small domestic arts that most ignored yet, unknowingly, took great comfort from. She couldn’t discuss trade routes or profit margins with her husband, but she could make his House a home. Fortunately, her children-her two daughters and a son now absent in the service of House affairs-had favored their father in their business acumen.

If Nicol was disappointed that his wife didn’t share his interest in the intricacies of trade, he never showed it. He was kind to her, always, and had been since their wedding night.

But over the years, they had begun to grow apart. And to her great shame, for Vorsha had been raised a virtuous woman, even in the beginning of their marriage Nicol couldn’t excite her as his brother could.

For a long time she’d known Sanwar looked at her with desire. She felt the heat of his gaze as she passed him in the halls, or from across the rooms where he lurked apart while company gathered. For a while, to an inexperienced young wife, it was exciting enough to feel his longing touch her like questing fingers.

And then, finally, he touched her. In a dark corridor in the family quarters of the House, she had turned to find him behind her, his eyes hot on her body. He had pushed her into a secluded corner, almost roughly, and she didn’t resist. No-she seized him and pulled his hard maleness against her. The step of a servant down the hallway made them spring apart, both breathing heavily, lips parted and eyes shining.

She had sworn it wouldn’t happen again, but it did. Then she had sworn that she would never go to his bed.

But she did. Again, and again, until she finally reconciled herself to leading two lives in House Beguine-as virtuous wife to the master and as wanton mistress to the master’s brother.

Today she came to find out for herself the extent of the argument between her husband and her lover, and had sworn to herself-as she did before almost every encounter with her brother-in-law-that she would only talk to him, and resist tumbling into his bed. But it was no use-enflamed by his conflict with Nicol, Sanwar pushed her against the wall, pressing his body against hers with an urgency that could not be denied.

“Stop,” Vorsha managed, feeling her limbs melt beneath her and clinging to Sanwar’s shoulders in response. “We must stop this madness. It can only hurt us, and hurt the House.”

In answer, he cupped her breast with one hand and felt her nipple harden against his palm in response. “Do you really want me to stop, Vorsha?” he whispered, his breath hot on the curve between her neck and shoulder. “Tell me to stop again, Vorsha, and I’ll do it.”

He pulled away from her a fraction, still leaning against the wall. She snaked a hand around his neck and pulled him against her. “No, please don’t,” she managed. “Don’t stop.”

He scooped her up by her thighs and, when she wrapped her legs around his waist, he carried her to the bedchamber with no more preliminaries. Let Nicol have the last word in business matters. Let him hold his brother’s wishes of no account. Here in the bedroom he was in control, and he could make his brother’s wife respond in ways Nicol had never imagined.