“A Harper,” she admitted.
“I thought so,” the old man said smugly. “What was this Harper’s name?”
Alias thought very hard, but she drew a complete blank. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“I thought not,” the old man said.
“No, you don’t understand. I’m telling you the truth. I just don’t always remember things.”
“Oh, I understand, all right. More than ye know. I believe ye. Ye learned the song from a Harper, but he never told ye his name.”
“That’s not possible,” Alias said, wracking her brain for memories of the Harper. “We were close.…” Her voice trailed off. She could not even remember the Harper’s face, let alone where or how they had met. “He was a Harper,” she insisted.
“He was,” the old man echoed.
Warmed by the fire, Alias pushed her sleeves up to her elbows without thinking.
“An interesting tattoo you have there,” the old man said, nodding at her right arm.
Alias was about to pull her sleeve back down, but the old man snatched her wrist and pulled her arm toward him. The firelight flickered over the blue sigils. The markings remained still for the moment; they could almost pass as a normal tattoo. Yet, Alias felt uncomfortable revealing the sigils to strangers. “It’s not mine,” she said.
“Oh. Ye just rented it for the month of Mirtul?” the old man joked.
“Someone put it on me without my permission,” Alias explained. “I must have been drunk.” She shrugged.
The graybeard raised his eyebrows and squinted. “Nice work, nice work, indeed. I’ve seen naught like it. They aren’t very nice symbols, are they?”
“What would you know about them?” Alias asked, trying to yank her arm back, but the old man’s grip was surprisingly firm.
He tapped the sigil at the crook of her arm. “Flame Daggers,” he muttered.
“Fire Knives,” Alias corrected.
“Oh, right. Right. They’re a guild of Thieves and Assassins from Cormyr. Young Azoun sent ’em packing. They operate out of a warehouse in Westgate now.”
Surprised by the old man’s knowledge, Alias quit struggling and let her arm rest in his grip.
“And the two below,” she prompted him.
He snorted. “What do I look like? A sage?” he retorted.
“Well, yes, kind of,” Alias said.
The old man chuckled. “Ye can’t live in a town as small as this one without pickin’ up stuff. Elminster’s always out advisin’ on the lambin’ and the hayin’, always tellin’ stories. He could tell ye what these were without blinkin’.”
“We’ve never met,” Alias replied with a sniff.
“I suppose not. He doesn’t care much for adventurers.”
“Oh. I suppose he prefers greengrocers,” Alias retorted.
“Greengrocers?”
“Townfolk. Farmers. Traders. People more interested in profit than adventure.”
The old man chuckled again. “They’ve got land and a town to show for it. What have ye got?”
Alias had never thought about that before. She had some gold, but it would be gone before long. If she’d actually got a chest full of treasure from Mist, she could have bought herself some property. But then she’d be a greengrocer, too, and she had no intention of retiring, ever. All she wanted to do was travel freely throughout the Realms.
“My memories,” she answered, but she knew that wasn’t saying much, at least not in her case.
The old man grinned. “Ye are smarter than ye look.” He tapped her wrist where the snake pattern wound about empty space. “There’s nothing in this place.”
“I got lucky, escaped before they finished, I think.”
“Ye think so, do ye? Maybe.”
“Do you know the other sigils?” Alias asked.
The old man was quiet for so long Alias thought he had drifted off to sleep. He let her arm slip from his grasp. Suddenly, he said, “Zrie and Cassana!”
Alias started. The old fool couldn’t be just a goatherd and know that, unless … unless Olive had managed to babble something in the bar before Dragonbait could stop her.
“What do you know about them?” she asked.
“It’s an old story, one that happened before ye were born—quite a scandalous one.” The old man clucked his tongue and poked at the fire with a stick, sending sparks and flames flying.
“Well?” prompted Alias.
“A deep subject, that,” the old man teased.
“The story,” Alias insisted.
“Oh, the story of Zrie Prakis and Cassana?” the graybeard asked. “It’s quite common, ye know.”
“I’ve never heard it,” Alias said. “They didn’t know the story in Cormyr.”
“Oh, Cormyr,” the old man muttered. “Well, they wouldn’t. But around here, in the Dales and in Sembia, I think everyone knows the tale. They turned it into an opera in the Living City. It’s a long-winded piece where one character tells another to be quiet in a long, screaming five minute speech, and the other replies he’ll be quiet in another long, loud five minute speech. Absurd thing, opera.”
“The story,” Alias whined.
The old man clucked disapprovingly. “Not the patient type, are ye? Ye know, if ye just sit quiet and listen, ye’ll learn a lot more than if ye poke at people all the time.”
Alias remembered that Nameless had said something very similar. It was true. She wanted the information poured into her. She didn’t like the game of asking questions and then having to listen to all the roundabout replies people gave her. “Please,” she asked.
The old man sniffed. “I ought to make you travel to the Living City and listen to the opera.”
Alias glowered.
“Very well. I suppose that I’d better make it the short version before ye explode, hmm? Ye wouldn’t appreciate the poetry of the tale, or the subplots of the opera, would ye? I’ll cut to the heart of the matter.
“Zrie and Cassana met when they were both magelings. They fell in love, pledged their eternal faithfulness. Then they parted. In one version of the story their masters send them to the opposite ends of the Inner Sea for their journeyman quests. In another version, one of them lands in the ethereal plane and it takes him or her years to return. In the opera Cassana is kidnapped by pirates.
“Anyway, they each grow vain, proud, haughty, and very powerful. When they meet again, somewhere in the south, they end up burying their love for one another in an argument over who is the most powerful. They duel over it, and Zrie loses big. Cassana kills him. Not real tragic, considering what a mean-spirited cuss he was, but Cassana feels remorse over slaying her first and true love. Being, by this time, a basically sick, depraved person herself, Cassana packs Zrie’s charred bones in a glass sarcophagus that she keeps by her bedside for the rest of her life.”
The old man was silent for several moments. “That’s all?” Alias asked.
“Of course, that’s all,” the old man snapped. “I didn’t want to get ye all hot and bothered by going into too many details. In the opera ye’ve got to sit through a description of every pearl on Cassana’s gown when Zrie first meets her. I don’t imagine ye’re much interested either in the story’s symbolism or the implications it makes about the nature of power and evil, are ye?”
“No,” Alias admitted.
“Then what’s your problem?”
Alias shrugged. “Nothing. I was just hoping it would shed some light on how I got these things.” She held up her arm to indicate the sigils.
“Ye could always go to the Living City and catch the opera.”
“No, thanks.”
“Do ye wish to hear the story about Moander?” the old man asked.
Alias looked up, startled. He did know a lot. He wasn’t simply some old goatherd. To recognize most of the sigils on her arm he had to be some sort of wise man or mage. Probably an ex-adventurer himself. “I thought the elves banished him from the Realms,” she said.