Rolling past her close enough that he could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek, Florin shouted suddenly nigh a noble ear, in as rough a voice as he could manage, “Ha! Creep away, king’s man? Die! ”
He sprang up, stamping his sodden boots hard and clanging his sword and dagger together like angry bells. His shouts and grunts of effort sounded convincing enough, he hoped, fighting down a sudden urge to laugh. He ran right at her, springing over her at the last moment and making sure his jerkin trailed along her body. She flinched away.
Good. Florin applied himself with enthusiasm to staging his mock battle until the Lady Narantha was either quivering in terror or shivering from the cold.
“Hide her!” he gasped then, close by her head. “Quick, now!” He flung his jerkin over her shoulders and tore up armfuls of ferns to cover her legs.
When he was done, he walked away and let his breathing steady and grow quiet again. The forest was still around him, and bared to the waist, he was none too warm himself.
Florin shrugged. The bed that awaited him was of his own building. And its name was “adventure.”
Smiling, he glided silently back to his captive, and sat down beside her in the moonlight, to guard her until she fell asleep. When her slumber deepened, he’d have to cut those wet thongs.
Obligingly, in a surprisingly short time, the Lady Narantha started to snore.
This was his favorite part of the garden. The little bower where his spells had shaped stone into smooth, unfissured frozen waves, sweeping up in graceful curls to seemingly enfold the flowers planted in them. Moonflowers, shining their pale grace back at the moonlight now touching them.
This was the first place he’d wrought after arriving in Evereska, and it was where he liked to linger and think. And if Erlevaun Dathnyar was far from being the most brilliant mage in the Hidden Realm, he was-he liked to believe-the moon elf mage most rooted there, where others traveled or used spells to spy afar to quell their restlessness.
Here he belonged, here he’d be quite content to perish, when Erlevaun stiffened, his eyes widening. He had just time to look up and stare his horror at the serene moon before gnawing darkness rose within him, racing through his very mind…
Mewing like a forlorn kitten, the helpless mage swayed, struggling to work a spell. Swirls of sparks came into being around his writhing, slowing fingers, he choked on an incantation that had never given his nimble tongue trouble before-then his staring eyes went empty and dark, and he started to topple.
Yet he never fell. His body took fire in midair, blazing up like a dry torch, bright flames roaring into a great ball of flame that sank in on itself and was gone into drifting smoke with terrifying speed.
By the time his two guards sprinted up, panting, there was nothing left but a few sharp-smelling wisps and a scattering of ash on Erlevaun Dathnyar’s smooth-sculpted stone.
Swords drawn, they knelt to peer at the ash, then gave each other grave glances.
“One of Dathnyar’s new spells, more spectacular than ever, that whisked him elsewhere?” the older one asked, tossing her head to banish long blue hair from her face. “Or did we just see him perish?”
“I… I don’t know,” the younger one replied, on her knees on the other side of the ash. “Yet there’s something I do know: I have a bad feeling about this.”
The two guards stared at each other grimly in the moonlight, their eyes large and dark in the curves of the scrying orb.
Above that enspelled sphere, the one who watched them broke into a long, soft chuckle.
“Ah, elves! So sneeringly superior-and beneath it all, just as helpless and hopelessly blundering as the rest of us!”
A deft hand swept across the orb, bidding it to go dark. Its radiance dwindled slowly, but had grown faint indeed before the softly exulting voice spoke again.
“Oh, even better spells! I’ll need some time to work with these… so every mantled elf in Faerun is safe for a few days more. A very few days more.”
The soft chuckle began again-and promptly soared into full-throated laughter.
The moon was riding high and clear, scudding through a few thin, clawlike tatters of cloud. Jhessail lay awake watching it, alone in her small bed, as she had on so many restless nights before this one.
No matter what she wished or whispered, the sky-sailing moon paid her no heed. As always.
The window around it was her window, her place. Home. Not the grandest cottage in Espar, but not the smallest, either. And Espar’s familiar, boring lanes and trees and muddy pastures were deemed fair, even by those from grander places in Cormyr; she’d heard some of them say so over the seasons, with the ring of truth in their voices.
Yet with the coming of every new spring, the restlessness grew within her. She needed more.
What, she wasn’t quite sure, though “adventure” had proved as handy a word as any. She had to see other places, look upon the sea, behold the tall spires of the Royal Palace in Suzail, look upon nearby looming mountains, and someday — some day-set foot on soil that was not part of Cormyr. See a unicorn, perhaps even a dragon, watch a wizard of power hurl a spell that did something dramatic… and above all, find someone who would be her guide to learning the Art.
If Faerun held anyone who would want Jhessail Silvertree to work magic, that is, or take the care and time to see that she did it well.
It was not as if she had anything of worth to give in payment. Her body and her hard work, aye, but backcountry lasses aching to follow their dreams dwelt in Cormyr by the caravan-load, and she could hardly hope they’d be scarcer elsewhere.
And she likely had things better than most. Espar was fair, and she had kind and keen-witted parents who loved her, good friends, and a rightful place.
Aye, a place-and a road ahead of her in life as sharp-hewn and high-fenced as a slaughter-chute to butcher sheep or hogs. She would be expected to marry a man of Espar, a longjack probably much her elder, and cook, bedwarm, sew, clean, and slave herself for him, until he died or she did. No matter how he treated her or wherever else he strayed. And if the gods took her longjack first, she’d be “Widow Longjack” the rest of her days, expected to live alone and be one of the local backlane crones blamed for all misfortune, never to remarry or even look at another man.
If she found no way out of Espar, such would be her lot. No choice and no escape. Her friends might dream large and dare little-but they were all she had. And, gods smile, they ached to get out of Espar just as much as she did.
Not to leave it behind forever, or shun its beauty. Just to have horse and coin and life enough elsewhere to ride in and out of it as she pleased, to go hither and thither, to make her own life and not be doomed only to being a man’s drudge. Or a lass-lover dwelling in some abandoned steading or other on the edge of the Stonelands with other women too bitter or scarred to want any man, drudging together to farm the days and seasons through, to have enough to eat.
Never to have the Art that stirred betimes thrillingly within her, even to glowing and crackling at her fingertips, be more than untapped restlessness, a wild might-have-been that would earn her the mistrusting spy-watch of the war wizards, a fell reputation among respectable folk… and yearnings unfulfilled.
Jhessail sighed and whispered to the moon, “Lady of Silver, I beg of you, speak of me to Mystra, that she show me what to do about the Art that kindles in me! I am not worthy to ask this, yet must, for the Art stirs in me and has firm hold of my heart and hopes. I, Jhessail Silvertree, beg this.”
It was an entreaty she had made so many nights before. And would again, for there was nothing so glorious as when the Art stirred in her and surged through her, and her mind and eyes flickered blue-white and alive with power…
She sighed again, a soft moan of longing that sent her plunging into memories of spell-sparks drifting from her, the cool fire coiling in her throat, the fear and awe on the faces of her friends as her first fumbling attempts to work spells did something, and ended their snorts and jeers forever.