Down the table, someone sighed, someone else loudly stifled laughter, and Lord Thael covered his eyes.
"I apologize for this wild-tongued kin of mine," he rumbled. "Pray, forgiveness, Lady Storm!"
He turned blazing eyes to Oburglan. "Lad, lad, one never asks a lady her age, unless perhaps you're her suitor and must needs know what ground you walk upon! And even then,'tis best to ask her brother, or father, or anyone else!"
"Your advice is good, Lord, and should be followed by all men of breeding," Storm agreed cheerfully, "and yet there are exceptions to every rule… and I am one of them."
She caught Oburglan's eyes again, and gave him the easy grin of a sister. "Never trust a minstrel or bard who speaks of times and ages, for they're always stretching a year here and a year there, speaking of long-ago battles or fair ladies as if they'd witnessed them themselves. But this once, and before all this table, I'll tell you truth: I am half a dozen years shy of my six hundredth summer."
Oburglan gulped, stared at her, started to sneer… then gaped. "You're serious," he whispered.
Storm nodded. With one slim hand she indicated the shoulder that her gown left bare. "Not bad, eh?" she said in perfect mimicry of Lord Thael's gruff tones.
The table erupted again, and this time Oburglan joined in the general mirth. Lord Thael was practically weeping with laughter, his head nodding almost into his platter.
At the other end of the table, Hawklan saluted her with his goblet and said, "Remind me never to say anything before you, Lady, that I would not want to hear parodied!"
"A good rule for every man, Sir Hawklan, when dealing with any man or maid," she returned, raising her own glass. Did his eyes rest on it just a trifle too long?
Ah-no. They were fixed a little lower down. This gown hadn't been such a bright idea after all. But then, sophistication has its price. Moreover, if all of us change what we are and what we do because of the threat of Malaugrym attack, shapeshiflers have won the victory without ever having to fight the battle!
"In that time, I have seen Hillsfar governed in many ways," Storm said, turning to the envoy as the laughter started to die. "I'd be interested to hear what you can tell us of Lord Maalthur's publicly stated aims and intentions."
Thorlor Drynn inclined his head. "I thank you for your diplomacy and understanding, Lady Storm, in the wording you just employed. In reply, I can say only: very little. Lord Maalthur has often promised to make Hillsfar great and to cleanse it of all hardship, suffering, and corruption. Laudable goals that none, I daresay, could seriously contest. By his actions, I think you can safely add to those general aims his intent not to let Zhentil Keep have possession of Yulash, nor to suffer Mulmaster or Zhentil Keep to have control of the river Lis, or Moonsea shipping in general. For what it is worth-my words as a mouthpiece of Hillsfar being, of course, suspect by definition-I see no great preparations for armies to march, nor intentions on my lord's part to seize any other city or territory of Faerun."
"I'm relieved to hear it," Loth Shentle said dryly, "as should be all neighbors of Hillsfar. Two cities of rampaging warlords are more than enough hereabouts."
"You speak overcautiously, Sir!" the priest of Tymora told him, refilling his own goblet for perhaps the fortieth time, his face flushed with its effects. "Strife brings change, and change is the natural order of things. It makes men and maids able, and quick, and alert! Bold, and-"
"Forced to rely on Lady Luck," the seneschal put in from the end of the table. "I've heard the litany a time or two before you were born, good Dathtor!"
The priest turned his red face around slowly to fix Hawklan with a bright-eyed gaze. "Then you should know e'en better than I that 'tis true!"
"I know no such thing," Hawklan said firmly. "I am a simple soldier; I swing my sword, obey orders to the letter, and let others worry about causes and outcomes and grand strategies."
"And on your off days, you drink too much and wench too much-beg pardon, Lady-and let life carry you on, on to the grave without disruption or excitement," Loth Shentle said.
"A summation that sounds familiar, Nephew?" Lord Thael said meaningfully. Oburglan flushed.
"No, Uncle! I mean-" his eyes darted to Storm, then back to Thael with an almost pleading look.
"Don't embarrass me in front of the lady, Uncle?" Storm asked the youth. "Is that what you want to say, but dare not find the words?"
Oburglan stared at her, opened his mouth, and shut it again, turning ruby to the tips of his ears.
"Oburglan," Storm said, setting down her goblet to lean forward, "never be embarrassed to admit truth, or think and talk about life, in front of anyone. I'd be more embarrassed to lie about my life or refuse to admit that things are as they are. I'm not upset to learn that you're drifting the days away here-it's not my life wasting away. If you're upset talking about it, that shows you're not satisfied in doing so, and that's gods-be-damned good."
Heads turned along the table at her language, but Storm kept her eyes locked on Oburglan's. "What you'd best do, when we're all gone, is take a walk in that beautiful garden out there with your uncle, and talk about what you want to do in life. Not to do what he says, but to decide for yourself. We all have to, sooner or later. If it makes you feel better to hear it, I'd passed away almost seventy years before I stopped my wild, witless pursuit of fun and started wondering what I wanted to do for myself."
Oburglan gulped. "Seventy years?" he said faintly. "I didn't know there was that much fun."
The table roared with laughter once more. When Lord Thael could speak again, he slapped Oburglan's arm, "Well said!" He turned to Storm and added quietly, "And very well said, Lady. I don't think I've a tongue nimble enough to thank you rightly for saying those words. I've never heard it said better, in all my… er, sixty-eight years."
Storm smiled at him. "Shall I come back in two years to ask you what you've decided to do with your life?"
There were uneasy chuckles around the table, and Thael shook his head with a rueful smile. "I'd forgotten that the tongue can be sharper than a sword."
"I think you have the quotation wrong, Lord," the priest offered jestingly, but Storm turned on him with a smile.
"What, Hand of Tymora? You stand in service to a goddess and don't know for yourself the truth of that maxim? Truly, you must be a very good priest! All the clergy I know would much rather face the swords of foes than the lashing tongues of their superiors!"
Dathtor Vaeldeir winced. "I begin to see the truth of another maxim, Lords and Lady: 'If thou art captured, do and say anything to keep yourself from the hands of your foe's womenfolk.'"
Deep laughter rolled out around the table, and more than one eyebrow in the room rose to see Storm laughing as heartily as the others.
She raised her glass of newly filled, still-poisoned wine, her heart light, and bid the night continue long.
When the table did rise, her wish had been fulfilled; they'd talked away most of the time until dawn, and the first shift of servants had been replaced at table by a second. Most of the men were stumbling with drunken weariness as they sought out the jakes; Dathtor the priest was roaring drunk, and Oburglan had been emboldened enough by his imbibing to ask her how one best chose a wife. Storm was still smiling and shaking her head over that as she went to the women's garderobe-which, of course, she had all to herself.
No one attacked her there. Afterward, she went for a walk in the gardens in the last faint moonlight, avoiding the torchlit areas. Someone at that friendly table was a shapeshifter… and a Malaugrym dare not leave her alive, when she could call down the Simbul upon him or point him out to half a hundred wizards. The poison raging through her veins was proof enough of that.