Slender and agile, the Master of Ironwind Tower cut a striking figure. Everything about him was alert, awake, and sharp.
His hair was jet black, its edges cut into dagger-sharp swashes and points and its flow brushed straight back and kept that way with sarradder oil. As usual, Tace could smell the quace and lemons of that oil from this close. Throon’s forehead was high, his eyes very large and a deep, striking golden in hue, like those of a falcon, and the brows above them were fierce, tufted into points. His black beard curved into its usual blade-sharp point, and his ring-adorned fingers were long and thin. His fingernails had been cut to razor-points in the manner affected by many Red Wizards to show that they need not sully their hands with work and, Tace had overheard Rauksoun say once, to arm themselves with deadly painted-on poisons with which to doom a foe with a mere scratch.
He tossed his head as if aware of the awe in her scrutiny, and strode toward the arch that led into the next tharm, the golden threads of the warding-sigils woven into its curtain flaring briefly at his approach. “Come, Little Imp.”
The Vaedren drifted after the wizard and Tace scampered right behind it, knowing the curtains that could kill would draw aside for it and let her into the Master’s library.
Tall and bronzen, black robes swirling, Maelarkh Throon swept into the tharm both he and his youngest house slave loved the most, of all the grandtharms in Ironwind Tower.
Its shelves rose like so many pillars, guardian spells crackling unseen before the wizard’s pacings. Rows of mauve, dark purple, and darker green fabric spines, as soft as fur, met Tace’s eager gaze, but the shelves hid the metal corners and clasps she knew each book sported.
Most of the tomes were tall and narrow rectangles, their pages of spell-hardened hide guarded with metallic ink glyphs. The Master had once indulgently told Tace that those glyphs were meaningless writings—poetry, quotations, or just gibberish—inked over the real contents of each book. The glyphs would turn invisible for a time if touched while the right word was spoken, or by a finger wearing the correct enspelled ring. If a glyph was touched otherwise, its magic would slay. Some of the glyphs did other things to those disturbing them, though the Master never specified just what.
Maelarkh Throon drew on the special glowing gloves he always wore to handle books and selected one of his most valued tomes.
Even if he hadn’t handled it so reverently, Tace knew how much he treasured it by its intricate lock, and because its pages were of polished electrum, the writings etched and stamped therein, with illustrations cut with acids to yield iridescent hues.
It was a book she’d seen before, not so long ago, when—.
“You, Little Imp,” the Master said gently, “took the opportunity to hang head-downward from above yon window arch two days back, and tried to read this tome while I had it open. Yes, I did see you. Now tell me. When you gazed on these pages, what did you see?”
Standing facing him, Tace licked her lips and knew by the warm rushing feeling in her face that she was blushing, but wasted no time with half-truths. “Runes I could not read, Master. They twisted as I looked at them, as they always do, and—”
“Ah. As they always do.’ My Swiftfalcon, am I going to have to have you blinded? Or just flogged raw?”
Tace trembled, and the wizard waved a dismissive hand between them and said, “No such nonsense. Not this time. Say more. The runes twisted and—?”
“N-nothing, Master. I could not read them. They gave me a head-pain and forced my eyes away to… look at other things.”
The wizard nodded. “Yet you stayed up there, Little Imp. Did you try to look at the pages again?” “I—I did.”
“And then?” he asked swiftly.
Tace shrugged. “I felt… warm. Like there was a fire in my head. I saw things, like windows opening in darkness, but they all faded right away, before I could really see anything.”
“Ah,” was all the Master said then, and turned away.
He waved a hand, and there was a sudden fire in Tace’s forehead and her right buttock, where her brands were—a fire to match the small flame dancing above the back of the Red Wizard’s hand.
Flames that, as she watched, took on the shape of her brands: a “Z” with outward-pointing arrows of flame floating above and below its two crossbars.
She was burning…
She bit her lip and trembled with the pain, staring at the dancing reflections on the Master’s bronze skin, striving to remain still and silent as sweat drenched her and … the flames died away.
The pain faded with them, and he closed the book, nodding as if that brief magic had told him something, and put it back in its place.
Then he drew off his gloves, leaving them on his lectern. Their g\aws flowed down over the lectern and became invisible, leaving them just… gloves.
Tace knew that he needed them to handle most of the books because of the talisman he never took off—except in the spellchamber. That little star next to his skin made things of metal fall right through him, which was why almost every drinking-goblet, bowl, spoon, fork, or knife in Ironwind was not of metal, but of carved bone or fire-hardened, worked wood.
Smiling faintly, the Master came toward her.
“Mmaster,” she whispered, fear rising to become a cold flame in her every bit as searing as the heat of his magic had been, “I—I—”
“Hush, Little Imp,” he said softly. “I come not to punish, but to learn truth. Stand very still.”
He loomed over her, closer than he’d ever been. Tace could smell him, a dusky scent mingled with the familiar hair-oil. Above her trembling head, the wizard murmured something.
Then, without warning, he thrust two of his long fingers up her nostrils. They reeked of spicy smoke and Tace almost choked.
His other hand was suddenly a claw around the back of her neck, holding her against his probing fingers, not letting her pull away … and something like blue-white fire, only gurgling like rainstorm water gouting out of an Ironwind waterspout, was racing through her head.
She screamed, or thought she did, as the library swam and tilted around her.
As if someone had heard her, golden radiance blossomed in the soft gloom of the library as warding-spells parted and their curtain with them—and Varlbit, her Master’s younger apprentice, was striding through them with a message scroll in his hands and a puzzled frown on his face.
His eyes fixed on her and widened—then Tace was stumbling as the Master turned to face his arriving apprentice.
Who gaped at him and blurted, “I–Is this not a good time, Master? Should I return later?”
* * * * *
“So, Sir Zhent,” Storm said in a voice as cold as the steel against his throat, “you will make demands of me in my own cucumber patch now, is that it?”
The warrior felt the cold prickling of his own enchanted steel, choking him as he tried to swallow.
Fear, rage, and incredulity warred and wrestled in him: This woman should not have the strength to hold him back! The magic on his blade should slice her weavings like cobwebs—else that snakeguts priest of Shar had lied to him!
Lied.
Well, of course.
“Have you any last words?” the Bard of Shadowdale murmured, her hand tightening around his neck. Steel to slice his throat in front, her fingers like stone talons behind …
Whimpering, the Zhentarim shuddered in her grasp, teeth chattering.
“Can you give me good reason not to end all your deeds now? ” she asked softly, her blood still running down her breast in streams from the slashes he’d dealt her at his first strike.