The Wyvern's Spur

11 Selûne’s Stair

Samtavan Sudacar finished studying the last document in the cord of parchments Culspiir had piled before him. “Depleting resources necessitate troop inactivity,” he read aloud, though he was alone. He ran his fingers through the graying hair at his temples. Reading reports such as this one was turning his dark hair gray, he decided.

He read the phrase over again as if it were a riddle, which indeed it was to him. Suddenly he pounded his meaty fist on his desktop and chuckled with understanding.

“That boy has a way with words,” he sighed, shaking his head. While he admired his herald’s bureaucratic skills, there were times the local lord felt it would be better if Culspiir weren’t so clever that he made himself misunderstood.

In the document’s margin, beside the passage he’d just read, Sudacar scrawled: Azoun, I can’t send these boys out patrolling in freezing rain with nothing but watery porridge in their stomachs. I need those food rations!!!

Sudacar initialed the notation, scrawled his full signature at the bottom, and rolled up the scroll. He finished by slopping liquefied wax on the seam and pressing his signet ring into the resulting mess.

Stretching out his arms to ease the muscles in his broad shoulders, he muttered, “I’ve had enough of this stuffy little closet.”

The main reception hall of Redstone had been set aside for use by the king’s man. Pillars and arches two stories high rose all about him. Archery contests had been held along the length of the room, and the entire town had gathered within its walls in times of crisis and celebration. Sudacar’s desk was tucked at one end of the hall, with a view of the entire enormous chamber.

Sudacar, former giant-slayer, was a tall, burly man, though, and anywhere the wind could not blow felt stuffy to him.

Time to indulge in one of the prerogatives of office, he thought as he pulled on his coat. “Culspiir,” he bellowed in his booming voice.

Culspiir slid into the room, closing the door softly behind him. The herald’s face appeared so careworn it would have alarmed a stranger. Sudacar was aware, though that Culspiir wore that same expression for all occasions, from weddings to barbarian invasions.

“I’ve gone over all the reports you gave me, Cul,” Sudacar said. “Good work. I thought I’d break for the day,” he added, his brown eyes glittered with all the eagerness of a schoolboy asking for permission to play outside.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve granted someone an interview with you for this hour.”

“Now? Culspiir, how could you schedule someone now? Can’t you see it’s raining? Don’t you realize that the fish are out there searching for my lure?”

“I thought, considering the person and the nature of his problem, that you had best see him today, sir. I’ve kept him waiting more than an hour so you could finish your other duties.”

“Show him in,” Sudacar sighed. He sat back down, but he did not bother to remove his cloak.

Culspiir slipped out, and a moment later Giogioni Wyvernspur stepped in.

Sudacar’s face brightened. “Giogi!” he said with surprise. He rose and extended his hand to the nobleman.

Giogi strode up to Sudacar’s desk, accepted the handshake, and returned the smile. Sudacar’s welcome was a relief after being made to wait so long by the local lord’s herald.

“Culspiir was a dog to make you wait like that,” Sudacar said as if reading his thoughts. “Sorry.”

“Oh, no. I understand. You’ve got lots of work,” Giogi replied, though he suspected Culspiir had kept him waiting as a snub to the Wyvernspurs. The nobleman didn’t resent it too much. After all, the Wyvernspurs had snubbed Culspiir and his master often enough.

“Culspiir just wants to be sure I don’t have any excuses to put his boring papers aside,” Sudacar confided in a whisper. “He doesn’t like me to have any fun.” Sudacar’s expression became serious. “I’m sorry about your uncle, Giogi. He was a fine man. A good wizard, too.”

“Thank you,” Giogi replied softly. “It’s hard to believe. I don’t want to believe it.”

“That’s only natural,” Sudacar said, giving the younger man a comforting pat on the shoulder. “So, tell me,” the local lord said more boisterously, “what brings you here, boy?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, Sudacar,” Giogi said, “but, well, things have gotten rather confusing about the spur. I realize Aunt Dorath was a little huffy with Culspiir yesterday, not wanting to tell him about the theft, but the truth is, I could use your advice. I thought maybe there might be something you could tell me about the spur.”

“Well, whatever advice I have is yours, Giogi, but I’m afraid I’ve never seen the spur. I’ve seen others, still on the wyvern, as it were, but not the one you’re looking for.”

“I thought you might know something about it. You knew it was stolen before I—uh, before it got around town.”

Sudacar grinned. “Well, I don’t like to brag, but not all women are as immune to my charms as your aunt,” he said, giving Giogi the same wink that he had the evening before, when he’d admitted to having his own source of information. Giogi wondered idly if the woman in question was a parlor maid or a lady’s maid.

“But, you know some tales about my father,” the nobleman said. “Did you know he used the spur when he went adventuring? That the spur has some magical powers?”

“Does it, now? Well, well.” Sudacar stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. “I didn’t know that, but it might explain some things I’ve heard.”

“Like what?”

Sudacar abruptly stood. “Tell you what. Why don’t we take a little walk while we talk about it?” He led Giogi toward the door. On the way, the Lord of Immersea pulled a casting pole out of a rack on the wall.

“What’s this for?” Giogi asked.

“We’ll need it to defend ourselves, in case we run into any fish,” Sudacar explained.

“Oh,” Giogi replied as Sudacar held open the hall door for him.

Sudacar hoped to hurtle past Culspiir’s station before his herald could find another excuse to keep him confined, but Giogi stopped at the door, his finger to his forehead, trying to dredge something from the back of his mind.

At last it came to him. “Ah, yes,” the nobleman said. “You know my purse that was stolen?”

“Oh, that,” Sudacar said. “Any word on it, Culspiir?” he demanded of his subordinate.

“It still hasn’t turned up, Master Giogioni,” the herald said as he regarded Sudacar—and his casting rod—with suspicion.

“Well, it won’t,” Giogi said, “because it wasn’t stolen. I’d dropped it right outside home. Found it later,” he explained. “Hope I didn’t cause a fuss.”

Sudacar grunted. “Remind me to let you pick up the tab next time,” he said with a grin. “Culspiir, I’ll be out for the rest of the day in consultation with Master Giogioni.”

“Of course,” Culspiir said, his eyes not leaving the fishing tackle as the two men hurried through his office and out the door.

On the front steps of the manor, they bundled up their cloaks and pulled up their hoods against the rain, which was still icy but far less violent than it had been at noon. They left the castle walls.

As they trudged down toward the Immer Stream, Sudacar explained, “I never actually had the honor of adventuring with your father. To tell the truth, when I met him at court he was already a legend and I was just an apprentice sell-sword. By that time, Cole had single-handedly vanquished the hydra of Wheloon—walked into the beastie’s lair unarmed and walked out alive an hour later. He was all cut up and bleeding, but, as the saying goes, you should have seen the other guy. His Majesty’s troops went into the lair afterward and found the monster everywhere—diced into pieces.”

Behind the privacy of his hood, Giogi tried without success to picture the quiet, gentle man he remembered from his childhood killing anything, even something as fierce as a hydra. His imagination remained as gray as the soft sleet falling around him.

Sudacar began regaling Giogi with a tale of how Cole had let himself be kidnapped by pirates. By the time the local lord had reached the part where Cole sailed the pirate ship into Suzail’s harbor with all the sea thieves in irons, the local lord and the nobleman had reached the bridge where Giogi had encountered Sudacar the day before. The stream’s water was a little faster and the level a little higher. Patches of ice crusted over the stiller shallows near the banks.

Sudacar wasted no time whipping his line out over the water, but he continued with another story about Cole. This story was set, as Sudacar put it, “in ’aught eight,” when the gnolls came down from the north. Saboteurs had burned the bridge over the Starwater. The purple dragoons might never have marched to the Cormyr border’s defense in time had Cole not managed miraculously—and mysteriously—to repair the bridge overnight with no one to help him but Shar, the master carpenter—who later became Cole’s father-in-law.

Giogi’s gaze remained fixed on Sudacar’s lure as it flew out over the water, slithered downstream and jerked out, over and over again. The noble’s thoughts, though, were occupied with trying to figure out why Sudacar’s tales sounded so familiar. It wasn’t until the older man began a story with Giogi’s mother in it, that the reason came to Giogi in a flash.

In the story, Shar, the master carpenter, had come to Cole begging that he rescue Bette, the carpenter’s daughter. Bette had refused the mad red wizard Yawataht as a suitor, so Yawataht had kidnapped and imprisoned Bette on top of a glass mountain. He left her there to freeze, high above the tree line, up in the clouds. Cole flew up there—though Sudacar could not say how—but he looked so fierce when he arrived that Bette mistook him for one of Yawataht’s minions and smacked him on the head with a hammer.

The name “Yawataht” and the image of a woman striking a man with a hammer finally reminded Giogi why Sudacar’s tales sounded familiar. “Uncle Drone’s told me all these stories,” he said, “but the hero was someone named Callyson, and the woman he rescued on the mountaintop was named Sharabet—”

Sudacar laughed. “Wasn’t your grandmother’s name Cally?” he asked.

Giogi smacked himself on the forehead. “Callyson—Cally’s son! Sharabet—Shar’s Bette! Of course! Aunt Dorath made Uncle Drone swear he wouldn’t tell me my father was an adventurer, but Uncle Drone told me all about my father, anyway—only he disguised the truth as bedtime stories.”

“So, did he tell you how your father used the spur in the stories?” Sudacar asked.

“He—” Giogi hesitated. He racked his brains trying to remember any mention of a magical item in the Callyson stories. “I don’t remember for certain. He told me those stories more than ten years ago. I don’t think so, though.”

“Well,” Sudacar said, “since your father wasn’t a magic-user, it’s probable the spur gave him the power to fly.”

“There’s lots of other magic like that, though,” Giogi pointed out. “Why steal the spur just to fly?”

“It could also have been responsible for Cole’s strength and fighting prowess,” Sudacar suggested. “Killing a hydra is no small feat. Neither is chopping and carting the lumber for a bridge meant to span a river as wide as the Starwater.”

“That’s true,” Giogi agreed. “It might help if I could pin its powers down more exactly, though.”

“Wait a minute,” Sudacar said, stroking his chin. “There is someone you could talk to, someone I know traveled with your father at least once.”

“A rogue or a ruffian?” Giogi asked.

“Pardon?”

“According to Aunt Dorath, my father traveled with rogues and ruffians. Aunt Dorath is a little funny that way—”

“Yes, I’ve always found her amusing,” Sudacar admitted grimly. “The person I was thinking of, though, was Lleddew of Selûne.” The instant Sudacar mentioned Selûne, the goddess of the moon, he got a strike on his fishing line.

“Mother Lleddew?” Giogi echoed with astonishment. He’d been expecting Sudacar to name one of the adventurers who’d been at the Fish last night. Lleddew was a high priestess and older than Giogi’s Aunt Dorath. The idea of the ancient holy woman tramping about the countryside with Cole was a little hard for the nobleman to accept. “Are you sure?”

Sudacar grinned and nodded as he pulled in his line, playing his catch. “Your family dedicated Spring Hill to Selûne, but Lleddew built the temple, the House of the Lady, with the booty from her adventuring days. The trips she made with your father were her last. I’ve heard her call one of them ‘the roofing campaign’—Gotcha!”

Sudacar interrupted his story as he grasped at the gleaming bass on his line and slipped it off his hook. He poked a holding string through its gills, looped the string over a rock, and let the fish drop back in the water to wriggle before suppertime.

Giogi looked upstream toward Spring Hill. Strangers to Immersea often wondered why the Wyvernspurs hadn’t built Redstone Castle on Spring Hill. It was the tallest hill on their land; it had the best view of the surrounding countryside, and a natural spring of sweet water gushed from its peak. The family’s founder, Paton Wyvernspur, had dedicated Spring Hill to the goddess Selûne, according to legend, at the request of the goddess herself. None of his descendants was ever so foolish as to try to take it back.

These days, the spring’s water poured from Selûne’s temple, tumbled down the hill in a series of enchanting cascades, and ultimately became the Immer Stream. There was a road approaching Spring Hill from the north, which wound up the hill to the temple, but the hike alongside the water was far more interesting. The sun was getting low, but Giogi figured he had just enough time to make the climb and speak to Mother Lleddew before dark.

Sudacar followed Giogi’s gaze and guessed his intentions. “Could be a tricky climb in this weather,” he warned. “Maybe you should take the road instead.”

“It’s so far out of the way to reach the road,” Giogi argued. “Besides, I’ve climbed the stream path often enough as a boy.”

Sudacar shrugged. “I hope you find what you need to know,” he said as he cast his line out again.

“Thanks.” Giogi turned and began striding to the west.

At first, the going was not too difficult. The ground was level, and the muddy banks were frozen enough to hold his weight but rough enough to offer traction for walking. Ahead of him, the westering sun was breaking through the canopy of clouds. The red rays of the last light of day made the crystalline sleet at his feet shimmer like rubies.

Giogi had to slow down once he reached the lowest cascade of water at the base of Spring Hill. The red light had subsided to indigo; the marshy fields ended and thick woods began, and his path begin to climb a steep slope, over large rocks and boulders slick with ice. Giogi tucked his mittens in his pockets to keep them dry as he scrabbled for handholds to keep his balance.

A third of the way from the top of the hill, the stream crossed the road that wound around the hill to the temple. A simple but sturdy stone bridge spanned the water, high enough to allow someone moving up the stream to walk beneath it.

By the time Giogi reached the bridge, it would have been easier arid safer—and possibly faster—to climb the banks and take the road. Yet the nobleman couldn’t bring himself to abandon his original course, even though he was cold and tired and getting a little hungry. When he was a boy, other children called the cascades Selûne’s Stair, and they said that if a person climbed to the top of them, he or she was supposed to get his or her heart’s desire. Of course, one was supposed to climb them in the water by moonlight, but Giogi figured Selûne would make allowances considering the season and weather.

A tiny, niggling voice in his head told him he was wasting his time and energy playing silly games. The voice sounded suspiciously like Aunt Dorath, so Giogi ignored it and continued climbing, leaving the road behind.

So far, he’d been pretty impressed with himself. His skill at scrabbling up the slope and leaping from one rock to another had not deteriorated with maturity. He might not have looked quite as agile as a mountain goat, but he felt it—until he reached the final cascade.

The last cascade was larger and steeper than the rest, and at its base was a wide pool. More mist hung in the air, so the rocks were damper there. Giogi leaped between two large boulders in the twilight, hit a slick spot, and went sprawling on a ledge that hung out over the pool.

He was bruised but otherwise unharmed. The niggling Aunt Dorath-like voice inside his head said, “I told you so,” and Giogi began to think he would be lucky if he could reach the top before the light failed and he fell in the drink.

The sky at that moment grew very, very dark. Giogi hesitated. Maybe it’s just a darker than average storm cloud over the setting sun, he hoped. He waited on the ledge for a minute, then another, for light to return. The forest around him remained dark.

Giogi realized he’d miscalculated. The sun had set already, and twilight in the dense woods had been very short. The moon would be full tonight, though, he remembered. It should rise soon, now that the sun has set, he reassured himself.

In the meantime, the nobleman couldn’t help feeling there was something malicious about the darkness. It was filled with rustling and twig-snapping, which he could hear uncomfortably well over the rush of the cascade. Unwilling to wait for Selûne’s light, Giogi crawled toward the cascade and began climbing the rocks by feel.

Something scaly brushed against Giogi’s hand, and he pulled it back with a jerk, lost his balance, and tumbled sideways, landing with a splash in the pool of water below.

Giogi surfaced immediately, sputtering water and soaked to the skin. The water was only three feet deep, but that was more than enough to submerge his clodders, and the young noble could feel icy water creeping down his stockings.

A beam of moonlight broke through the clouds in the east, illuminating the pool around him. Giogi stifled a shriek and began to back away. In the hip-high water all around him bobbed the bloated corpses of men.

As he stepped backward, one of the corpses in front of him sprang to life, lunging out of the water at him like a trout striking at a lure. Rows of needle-sharp teeth gnashed inches from his face. Giogi shrieked without inhibition, terrified.

He recognized the creatures from Uncle Drone’s books. They weren’t just corpses, but lacedons, undead monsters that preyed on the flesh of the drowned. Giogi took another step backward, but the lacedons had him surrounded. The nobleman had just enough presence of mind to draw his foil.

A second lacedon breached directly in front of him with its hands raised over its head. Giogi could smell the fetid, mossy scent of the creature’s breath as it brought its decayed face close to his own. Then the monster’s sharp, algae-covered fingernails struck at his forehead. Giogi jabbed his weapon into the creature’s flesh, but the lacedon wriggled itself free and swam off.

The remaining lacedons swam slowly around him, thumping up against his legs, trying to knock him off balance, and occasionally breaking the surface to leer and gnash and slash at his face. They’re playing with their food, Giogi thought, fighting back his nausea.

Blood dripping from his wounded brow obscured his vision in one eye and splashed into the water—spurring the undead into a frenzy. Giogi screamed again and stabbed at the hideous beings, trying to clear a path to the shore. It was hard to lunge into the water accurately, though, and there were too many of them to concentrate on one direction at once, without risking attack in the rear.

One of the lacedons toward the back of the pack reared up and began walking forward, so Giogi had a better view of its scaly body, water-rotted face, and bulging, yellow eyes. Another lacedon adopted an erect stance, and another and another, until all the corpses advanced on him like soldiers.

The noble turned in the frigid water, unable to decide on a direction to run. He caught sight of the glimmering gemstone in the top of his boot. The light of the finder’s stone pulsed in the darkness, even beneath the water.

Giogi drew the finder’s stone out, hoping the light it would cast might frighten off the monsters, or at least hurt their eyes. He tried to recall the bit of rhyme he knew as a child: Vampires fear the morning’s lights, something, something, something, and wights.

The finder’s stone cast a bright beam to the shoreline, but its light had no effect on the undead monsters’ behavior.

The undead began gurgling like the drowned men they were. From the way they raised their claws in unison, Giogi guessed they were making some sort of battle cry. They all leered at him with their fanged mouths. I’m finished, the nobleman thought.

From the top of the cascade behind Giogi came a great roar. Before Giogi’s eyes, the lacedons’ bodies ignited into cool, blue flames. The corpses slumped back into the pool. The water in the stream sparkled with the blue fire still consuming the undead. The pool turned murky with the disintegrated bodies. Then the murkiness washed downstream, and the pool’s water was clear again.

Giogi saw that only two monsters remained in the water with him, both to his left. As the young noble splashed in the direction of the right-hand bank, praying the creatures would be unable to follow him on land, a dark, hulking shape plunged from the top of the cascade, over his head, and into the pool beyond. Giogi threw himself out of the water and landed with a thud on the rocky shore, knocking all the air out of himself.

More splashing and a second roar came from the pool behind him. It took a moment before Giogi could summon the energy to roll over to see what had joined the lacedons in the water.

The headless body of a lacedon floated past the near shore. The second lacedon lay on the opposite bank, pinned beneath the paws of a huge black bear. The monster struggled feebly before the bear ripped it, throat to belly, with a single swipe of its paw.

“Sweet Selûne,” Giogioni whispered.

The bear looked up at him when he spoke. Giogi froze. He’d never seen a bear so large in all of Cormyr. The creature’s coat was as dark as the night, except for two silvery gray, crescent-shaped patches, one on its underbelly, the other on its forehead.

The bear stared at the nobleman for a moment with its head tilted to the side. It snuffled, and great clouds of steam rose from the bear’s nostrils. Then it turned and bounded into the darkness of the woods.

Giogi pulled himself up the last cascade and left the dark woods behind him. Atop Spring Hill, a moonlit meadow surrounded the temple. Giogi collapsed on the grass beside the water, shivering and gasping for breath. His head was on fire, but the rest of him was freezing.

In all his years in Immersea, he’d never been attacked by undead. What were lacedons doing in a stream sacred to Selûne? Did Mother Lleddew know about them? Giogi wondered. Is it possible she’s getting too old to defend the hill from evil?

In the east, the sleet-filled clouds began to break up, as if evaporated by the full moon’s light. Moonbeams shimmered across the Wyvernwater, along the Immer Stream, and up Selûne’s Stair. The moonbeams continued past Giogi, turning the stream, which meandered through the meadow, into a silver ribbon.

Giogi pulled himself to his feet and followed the stream to the temple, water squelching in his boots with his every step. Silvery, moonlit water flowed from inside the temple and down a channel cut into its steps. Giogi climbed the steps beside the channel and entered the House of the Lady.

The House of the Lady, the temple Mother Lleddew had built to Selûne, was really not a house, but an open-air shrine. A circle of white stone pillars rose from the temple’s floor and supported the domed roof. There were no walls. The rising moon’s light shone past the pillars and silvered the spring-fed pool bubbling in the center of the temple.

A slender young girl in an acolyte’s robes sat beside the pool, gazing into the spring’s depths. The ends of her long tresses trailed along the surface of the water. By some trick of the light, her hair appeared as silver as the water, so it seemed that water flowed from her hair into the pool.

Giogi rang the silver bell hanging from one of the pillars beside the water channel.

The girl looked up without surprise. She had dark skin, a lovely smile, and radiant eyes. She was very pretty, but seemed far too young for her calling. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. “Blessings of the full moon,” she greeted Giogi.

“Blessings of the full moon,” he responded. “I’m looking for Mother Lleddew.”

“Are you sure you’re not looking for your heart’s desire?” the girl asked with a grin.

“What?” Giogi replied with confusion.

“You did just climb Selûne’s Stair by the full moon,” the girl pointed out.

“Well, yes, I did,” Giogi admitted. “All I really wanted, though, was to see Mother Lleddew.”

“She’s on a night-stalk,” the girl said. “I’m here to watch over the temple until she returns.”

Giogi sighed with frustration. A night-stalk was a sacred ritual practiced by devout worshipers of Selûne. Lleddew would be walking in solitary communion with her goddess until the moon set. Suddenly Giogi remembered the lacedon attack. “Look, I don’t mean to alarm you, but there were evil things out in the woods tonight. You shouldn’t be alone here, and Mother Lleddew shouldn’t be walking alone out there.”

The girl smiled with amusement as she stood and drifted toward him. She shimmered like a moonbeam when she moved, and her hair glittered like a cascade of water. “You are the one in danger, Giogioni,” she said earnestly. “You can speak with Mother Lleddew tomorrow, after noon. For now, though, I think I’d better send you home.”

“I can’t leave you alone here,” the nobleman argued.

“Kneel,” the girl directed him, “so I can have a look at that cut on your head.”

Giogi obeyed, curious to see if so young an acolyte really had power to heal his wound.

The girl bent over Giogi and kissed his forehead.

The fire in his head flared momentarily, then subsided completely. Giogi swayed dizzily, then looked up, relieved of all discomfort. “That was wonder—” The noble halted in midsentence. His head spun around in confusion and dripped water all about the Calimshan carpeting.

He knelt in his own bedroom before a roaring fire.

“I must be dreaming,” said Giogi, “or hallucinating because of my head wound.”

The nobleman pinched and shook himself, but he didn’t wake to find himself dying of exposure on the side of Spring Hill. He was still in his own bedroom. The bedclothes held the family coat of arms, a green wyvern on a yellow field. The portrait over the fireplace was of his mother and father. The indigo seashells he’d brought from Westgate lay strewn about the dresser. “It must be my room,” he said.

Still confused, he muttered to himself as he stripped off his soaked clothing. “First I was there, and now I’m here. She kissed me, and I appeared here. I didn’t know acolytes could do that, but if she wasn’t an acolyte, what was she doing in the temple in an acolyte’s gown, telling me when I could see Mother Lleddew? And how did she know my name?”

Giogi slid into bed beneath the covers. He lay there wondering if he hadn’t just dreamed all about Spring Hill, Selûne’s Stair, the lacedons, the crescent-marked bear, and the girl acolyte. When the chill had worn off his flesh, he slid out of bed again and padded over to the pile of wet clothing.

Giogi shook his head as he pulled a robe on. He slipped from his bedroom, tiptoed down the hall to the red room, and knocked softly on the door. He had to share his story with someone.

“Mistress Cat?” he whispered. When no one answered, he knocked again.

“Whuzzah? Come in,” a sleepy voice called out. Giogi opened the door.

The red room was well furnished, but Thomas kept it empty of personal items, like a room at an inn. The red velvet hangings and the oaken bed, dresser, chair, and chest were all new and sturdy—not an heirloom in the lot. The guest room belonged to no one, which is how it felt to those who stayed in it.

By the light from the lamp flickering on the dresser, Giogi could see Cat curled up in one corner of the bed, the blankets all wrapped tightly around her. Her coppery hair was strewn over the pillows. Her robes lay draped over the chair before the fireside.

Cat sat up in the bed, looking drowsy but lovely. “I asked Thomas to wake me when you returned,” she said, pushing her hair out of her face.

“Um, he doesn’t know I’m back yet. I fell in the Immer Stream and a bear saved me from lacedons, and then this lovely girl kissed me and teleported me here.”

Tying a sheet around her body, Cat slid out from under the covers and walked to the doorway, where Giogi stood. She put a hand to his forehead, her brow knit with concern. “You don’t have a fever,” she said after a moment.

“I’m fine, really. You know, your hand is so nice and warm.”

Cat smiled and said, “Perhaps you ought to lie down, anyway.” She took Giogi by the arm and steered him back to his own room.

Giogi, babbling on, let himself be led. “You know, the guardian said that I’d been kissed by Selûne. I think she’s just done it again, Selûne that is, through one of her priestesses. You see, the kiss cured the scratch the lacedons gave me, which was nice, the kiss, not the cut, I mean. It also brought me home, though, which was strange but nice, too.”

“Here we go,” Cat said, steering him into his own room.

“But still, it’s rather disturbing to be kissed by Selûne,” Giogi said with a sigh, “since it is one of those things the guardian is always making a fuss about. I know I’m going to dream tonight about all those things—death cry of prey, and so on. Aunt Dorath says she just ignored the dreams, but I don’t see how she could,” Giogi said with annoyed disbelief.

“Lie down, Master Giogioni,” Cat ordered, pressing him down on the bed. “You can rest and talk.” As he lay back on his bed, Cat fluffed up his pillows and propped them behind him.

“Did you find anyone who knew about the spur?” Cat asked lightly, seating herself at the foot of the bed.

“Well, Aunt Dorath knows something, but she won’t tell me what. She’s being absurdly stubborn. I get the idea she wants to carry her secret to the grave. I talked with Sudacar. He didn’t know about the spur, but he knew a lot about my father.” Giogi’s eyes shone when he asked the mage, “Did you know my father was a hero? Not just an adventurer, but a real hero? I went on a mission for the crown, but it’s not really the same as adventuring. It must be interesting being an adventurer.”

“Why don’t you try it and find out?” Cat asked with a smile.

“Oh, I couldn’t. It’s just not done. Aunt Dorath would have kittens,” the nobleman explained.

“But your father did it,” Cat pointed out.

“He must have been very brave,” Giogi said, shaking his head slowly as if to deny he had that much courage.

“To go out into the wilderness or to defy your Aunt Dorath?” Cat asked with a chuckle.

Giogi laughed, too. “Both,” he said.

“What could your aunt do?” Cat asked. “Cut off your money?”

“No. I have my own money,” Giogi explained. “Aunt Dorath is family, though. I can’t just ignore her.”

“But if you were off adventuring, she couldn’t bother you,” Cat said slyly.

“But she would pounce on me whenever I returned to Immersea,” Giogi retorted.

“Then don’t ever return,” Cat suggested.

“Never return?” Giogi said with shock. “Immersea’s my home. I couldn’t stay away.” Giogi’s face fell in disappointment as he realized he’d just talked himself out of a dream. He justified his inaction further by saying, “Besides, I wouldn’t know how I should go about adventuring. Not the first thing. Do you have to register for it or something?”

Cat laughed. Brushing her hand through her hair, she slid up the bed so that she sat much closer to Giogi. “First thing you should do is try to look the part. Hold still,” she ordered.

The mage reached her hand behind Giogi’s ear, and Giogi felt a pinch at his earlobe. When Cat took her hand away, Giogi reached up to rub his earlobe. Attached to his ear was one of Cat’s small hoop earrings. He tried to pull it off.

“Ow!” he whined.

“You can’t just yank it off,” Cat warned. “It’s pierced through. You have to slide it out.”

“You put a hole in my ear!” he said, disbelieving, touching the maimed lobe delicately.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Cat chided. “If you want, you can take the earring out, and the hole will heal over.”

Giogi sniffed. “How do I look?”

Cat leaned back and eyed him critically. “Like a merchant. You need something else.” She took a lock of Giogi’s brown hair and plaited it, fastening it together with some green beads she took off a chain hanging about her neck.

“Well?”

“Not quite right,” Cat said. “You look like a sailor.”

From the open doorway came a polite cough. Giogi looked up in surprise.

“Oh, Thomas. I took a dive in the Immer Stream, I’m afraid. Could you see to those wet things, please?”

Thomas slipped into the room and began gathering up Giogi’s dripping clothes, surveying the damage to each article. He made a special point to keep his eyes averted from the bed.

Last year, when his master’s aunt had tried her best to match Giogi with Minda Lluth, Thomas had not approved. The lady had been far too frivolous, but at least she had been a lady. He wasn’t sure where he would classify this Cat person, but he knew ladies did not sit on gentleman’s beds, wrapped in nothing but bed sheets.

“I’m afraid these boots may be beyond cleaning, sir,” Thomas reported, trying to sound regretful about it.

“Oh, no. We can’t lose the boots,” Cat said with mock alarm. She jumped from the bed and took the clodders from Thomas. She set them down before the fireplace and whispered an incantation. A small whirlwind of steam began to rise from inside each boot and danced up the flue. After a minute, the steam dissipated. Cat brought them to Giogi’s bedside. “There you are, Master Giogioni. As good as new.”

“I say. What a neat trick. Wasn’t that a neat trick, Thomas?”

“Most entertaining, sir,” Thomas replied coolly, holding the other soaked articles. “I’ve been keeping dinner warm. Will you be down to dine shortly, sir, or shall I bring up trays?”

Something in Thomas’s tone warned Giogi that it would be unwise to choose the more amusing course. “We will be down as soon as we’ve dressed,” the nobleman replied, trying to sound cool and undaunted by his servant’s disapproval.

“Very good, sir.” Thomas bowed and exited.

“Trays would have been just fine with me,” Cat said.

“Perhaps, but not with Thomas. Dinner tends to be formal when we have guests. We’ll have to do him proud and dress to the nines, or he’ll be—disappointed.”

Cat looked down at the carpeting. “I washed out my robes, but they’re still wet. I’m afraid they didn’t get too clean in any case.”

Giogi struck his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Oh, of course. Forgive me. I should have thought of it before. We’ll dig something up from the chest in the lilac room.”

Giogi picked up a lamp and led his guest out into the hall. He opened the door to the lilac room.

“How lovely,” the mage whispered, stepping inside. She ran her fingers along the delicate silk wall hangings, the crepe bed curtains, the intricately carved dressing table, and the mother-of-pearl jewelry box. “This was your mother’s room, wasn’t it?” she whispered.

“Yes. Do you like it?” Giogi asked hopefully.

“I’ve never seen any place so lovely,” Cat said softly.

“Thomas thought you might be more comfortable in the red room for some reason. Shall I tell him to light a fire and turn down this bed for you, instead?” Giogi offered.

“Oh, you needn’t bother him about it. I can do that myself,” Cat insisted.

“All right, then. There are scads of pretty things in that chest there. Several years out of fashion, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sure it’s all perfect,” Cat said, smiling gratefully at the young nobleman.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Giogi said, backing out of the room.

He returned to his own room to dress. Pulling on his breeches, he caught sight of his bare-chested reflection in the leaded window glass. The nobleman posed menacingly, half shutting his eyes, trying to imagine campfires burning instead of a cozy fireplace, and nervous horses staked to ropes instead of comfortable chairs. At length he grimaced and turned away.

“I do look like a sailor,” he said with a sigh. He tugged the window drapes closed to avoid catching another glimpse of his scrawny, unheroic figure.

Had Giogi looked out the window instead of at his reflection, he would have seen two furtive figures slipping into his carriage house. The young noble’s mind was on his wardrobe, though, and far from the machinations of his relatives.