Akabar awoke with a stiff back from having spent an uncomfortable night in an overstuffed armchair. The morning light illuminated dancing dust motes in Lhaeo’s office. The scribe sat at the desk, still scribbling on parchment, just as he had been when Akabar dropped off last night.
Akabar yawned and stretched. “Noble scribe, I don’t suppose the sage is awake yet?”
“Oh my,” Lhaeo said as he looked up at the Turmishman with a startled expression. “He’s been here and gone. He rises early, when he does go to bed.”
“What!” Akabar shouted. “You mean he’s left?”
“Oh, yes, definitely. He’s gone on an extended tour of the planes. You just missed him.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Well,” the scribe replied matter-of-factly, peering over the rim of his wire-framed lenses, “I didn’t have the proper form.”
The door nearly snapped off its hinges as Akabar yanked it open and threw it against the wall. But, like many wizard-built things, its fragile appearance was deceptive. It had survived many men angrier than the mage and would survive many more in the future.
Lhaeo made a reproving tch-tch sound as the Turmishman stalked away from the building without closing the door behind him. With a wave of his quill pen, he closed the door quietly, and the scribe returned to his work.
Akabar stalked down the hill, cursing vehemently. He reached into the tongues of Calimshan and Thay to find the right invectives, pronouncing them all on the head of the Sage of Shadowdale. The availability, and hence usefulness, of any sage always seemed to be in inverse proportion to his learning. Dimswart had not exactly been a genius, but he had been a pleasant host and a useful resource. Elminster must be the most learned sage in the Realms, Akabar concluded, owing to the fact that no one could ever talk to him!
As he passed the warning sign at beginning of the path leading to Elminster’s, Akabar heard a voice coming from behind the weaver’s shop. Its tone was low and serious. Akabar would have ignored it, mired as he was in frustration and anger, but he caught the words, “Alias, the warrior woman.”
He froze in his tracks. He could not have been mistaken. The voice was unknown to Akabar, who prided himself on his recognition of voices as a way of remembering customers. The speaker’s voice was succinct enough for that phrase to carry over the high hedge. It was probably only a townsman reporting the story of how Alias had cleared the kalmari from the gap, but Akabar, his curiosity aroused, was overcome with the urge to peek through the hedge and see the speaker.
As Akabar crept up to the hedge, the scent of freshly baked bread wafted over him, setting his stomach rumbling and reminding him that he hadn’t eaten for over twelve hours. Then he heard the same voice say, “I think ye will find ye are mistaken,” then pause, then say, “I did not mean to question thy discernment—” then pause again. This led Akabar to the conclusion that there was a second speaker who spoke too softly to be heard by any but the first speaker. When the mage finally discovered a break in the greenery, that was not what he saw.
The first speaker was a tall man, taller than Akabar, and thin, with expressive hands withered with age. He wore a cloak with the hood pulled up, and his back was to the hedge, so Akabar would not have been able to identify him even if he had known him. But the person the hooded one spoke with was known to Akabar. It was Dragonbait.
The lizard knelt on a bench beside a vat of water he must have commandeered for a washbasin. He held a fluffy, brown towel up to his chest.
The hooded one stood opposite him on the other side of the vat. He asked Dragonbait a question, but all Akabar caught were the last words—“remain here?”
What puzzled Akabar, besides the lizard traveling down the road to wash, was that the hooded one stood before the lizard, still and attentive as though he were listening to the creature. Yet Dragonbait remained mute. The scent of roses from some garden caused the Turmishman’s nose to twitch irritably. He held his fingers up to his nostrils hoping to stifle the sneeze he felt coming on.
“I can offer ye much,” the hooded one said. Then his words grew more quiet. But the last one was clear to Akabar—home.
Dragonbait whistled, not with his lips as a human would, but from the back of his throat. It was really only a wheezing cry, but it conveyed the same sense of awe a human whistle would have.
“Once they’re removed, ye’ll be completely free,” the hooded one continued, pointing to the towel Dragonbait clutched to his chest.
Dragonbait dropped the towel on the bench.
Akabar gasped, fortunately not loudly enough to give himself away. There on Dragonbait’s chest was a snaking pattern entwining sigils by now quite familiar to the Turmishman. In the same bright blue colors, the same symbols Alias wore on her arm were imbedded into the lizard’s green scales!
Only the shape of the lizard’s tattoo was different. While the sigils on Alias’s arm lay in a straight line, those on Dragonbait’s chest were arranged at the points of a hexagram. At the top-most point, the joining snake pattern wound about an empty space. Clockwise from that lay the Flame Knives marking; then the interlocking circles once so aggressively defended by Zrie Prakis; at the bottom, Cassana’s squiggle; then Moander’s unholy symbol; and finally the unknown bull’s eye sigil.
Akabar’s mind raced. Is this the bond that keeps the lizard so close to Alias? If she knows of it, why hasn’t she told me? Of course she doesn’t know it. The lizard has kept it a secret from her. That’s why he’s come all the way down here to wash. No doubt he is afraid of losing her trust if he reveals that he too is branded. Is he truly just a benign companion helping her evade her enemies or is he one of the enemies’ servants helping to track her?
Akabar caught one last phrase spoken by the hooded one. “Sure ye will not accompany me?” he asked.
Dragonbait hissed and shook his head.
“Ye’ve chosen the hardest path. I’d wish ye Tymora’s grace, but I don’t believe in it.” The hooded one turned to leave.
Hastily, Akabar leaped back to the path and began walking toward the road to conceal his eavesdropping. But when the Turmishman rounded the hedge, the hooded one had vanished and Dragonbait’s back was turned as he pulled on a shirt of kelly green cotton.
Confused by the hooded one’s disappearance, but anxious to see Dragonbait’s reaction to his own sudden appearance, Akabar called out cheerfully, “Dragonbait? What are you doing here?” as though he’d just spotted the lizard.
Dragonbait wheeled about and went into a defensive crouch. Startled, Akabar fell back a step. Hardly the behavior of an innocent creature, the mage thought. Aloud, he chided the lizard, “Jumpy this morning, aren’t we? I just got through at the sage’s. Are the others at the inn?”
Dragonbait glared at him suspiciously and nodded curtly.
“Well, you had better come back there with me then.” The lizard continued to glare at him.
“Can’t have you dawdling about people’s backyards,” the Turmishman joked. He felt as though he were addressing a wall, and a hostile wall at that. Dragonbait’s gaze was like a snake’s, unblinking and unwavering.
Finally, the lizard turned and snatched up his towel and cloak from the bench by the water vat. Akabar could tell something long and stiff was wrapped in the cloak. Undoubtedly the creature’s sword. Dragonbait pushed past the mage without a sign or sound and headed down the road toward the inn.
As he followed Dragonbait through the town, Akabar marveled at the creature’s rudeness. In Alias’s presence, he was always the polite, servile clown. Perhaps he really is an arrogant servant of some sinister power, Akabar thought. His conversation with the hooded one must have upset him greatly. He’s dropped his guard and revealed himself.