“Nothing. I just felt like walking.”
“The idea! Sinister forces have dealt our family a tragic blow while you’ve been gadding about the Realms. I summon the family together, and you just stroll over here as if nothing’s wrong. It’s just like you. You are a fool,” Aunt Dorath chided.
Giogi stood frozen, afraid that anything else he might say would only dig him deeper into his great-aunt’s contempt.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Dorath ordered. “Come take a seat.”
Giogi bowed before Gaylyn and Julia and positioned himself in a chair where he could attend to Aunt Dorath as well as address the younger women, should they address him.
Giogi glanced at his Cousin Julia. Her tall, well-proportioned body was clad in the latest velvet fashions, jewels glistened in her silky black hair, and gold rings flashed from her long, slender fingers. She, too, had the aristocratic Wyvernspur features, which were more striking on her youthful face than they were on Aunt Dorath’s. In addition, she sported, from her mother’s side of the family, a tiny mole to the right of her mouth. As far as Giogi was concerned, though, Julia was too haughty to be beautiful.
The nobleman preferred to gaze on Gaylyn. Her golden hair lit up the room, and her pink, glowing complexion reminded him of a wild rose. Her gown and jewels were as remarkable as Julia’s but Giogi didn’t notice them. It was impossible, though, for him to miss her swollen abdomen. According to Thomas, Freffie and Gaylyn’s firstborn was due any time now. So, Giogi thought, the family is going to continue another generation despite the loss of the wyvern’s spur.
Gaylyn, unaware that the tradition of her new family was to generally ignore Giogi, turned her sweet smile on him and asked, “How was your journey home, Cousin?”
“Just marvelous. Very exciting,” Giogi replied, grinning back at the young woman.
“Exciting,” Aunt Dorath scoffed. “Traveling is never exciting. Only tedious. Waits, delays, ruffians, strangers, and highwaymen. Only someone as foolish as yourself would revel in it. You’ll end up like your father,” she added darkly.
Giogi debated asking his aunt exactly what she meant by that, trying to work in some reference to what he’d just learned from Sudacar, but just then the parlor door swung open and the gentlemen entered. Frefford made a beeline to Gaylyn’s side and took her hand in his own, looking down on her with solicitous devotion. Uncle Drone scuffled over to a tomcat in the window seat and began feeding it drippy tidbits of venison from his cupped hand. Steele remained in the doorway, leaning against the jamb and sizing up Giogi with an evil grin.
Like his sister, Julia, Steele had the Wyvernspur face with a mole to the right of his mouth. Many people would have called him tall, dark, and handsome, but his grin reminded Giogi of the red dragon Mist—an impression heightened by the way the firelight caught Steele’s blue eyes and made them glint red. As he had in Mist’s presence, Giogi winced when Steele spoke.
“So the exiled family jester has returned. Everyone in Suzail was talking about your remarkable impersonation at the wedding last season. And, of course, about the “duel” that followed. I trust you have fresh entertainment lined up for us this year. Maybe you can debut at Gaylyn’s baby’s blessing ceremony.”
Giogi winced again. It didn’t look as though the family was going to forget the wedding incident any time soon. Wondering if Gaylyn could ever forgive him, Giogi shot her a guilty glance. The bride had the most right to be angry.
Gaylyn laughed, though. “I thought I would just die when that tent collapsed on all of us,” she said. “Remember what fun we had crawling out from under it? It was such a relief to have an excuse to leave that stuffy old canvas and just revel in the garden.”
Steele squinted with annoyance at Gaylyn, and Aunt Dorath raised an eyebrow at the woman’s frivolous attitude, but Lord Frefford smiled at his wife’s high spirits.
A stranger might have guessed Frefford and Steele were brothers and not just second cousins, because Frefford, too, sported most of the Wyvernspur features. Frefford’s face was always softened by a friendly smile, though, and his eyes were more hazel than blue. He whispered something in his wife’s ear, and she giggled.
Giogi smiled at the couple with gratitude.
Aunt Dorath sniffed. “Now that we’re all here, it’s time to get down to business,” she announced imperiously. “Drone, leave that infernal cat and join your family.”
It was hard to believe, watching Uncle Drone shuffle across the room, that Aunt Dorath’s wizard cousin was eight years her junior. If time had avoided Dorath, it made up its loss by visiting Drone twice over. His black hair and beard, besides being shaggy and unkempt, was splotched with gray and white, much more so than Aunt Dorath’s hair. His blue eyes were rheumy, and his Wyvernspur features were lost in the cracks and wrinkles that lined his face. Magic had taken its toll on him.
Years of puttering in his lab, brewing magic potions, had also left Drone a little careless of his appearance. Forgetting he did not wear a lab apron, he wiped his hand on his chest, leaving a venison blood stain across his yellow silk robe. He offered his hand to Giogi, saying, “Welcome back, boy. Heard you’ve been jousting with red dragons.”
Giogi held out his own hand nervously, afraid he was about to be censured again. A cloud of Tymora’s blackest luck seemed to hang over him this evening. It hadn’t been his fault that he’d been kidnapped by the red dragon Mist. Giogi then saw that his uncle’s eyes twinkled with amusement. The young man relaxed and jokingly replied, “Uh, actually, it’s a little difficult jousting with them, don’t you know, because they tend to eat your horse first.”
Dorath, Steele, and Julia glared frostily at Giogi for treating the incident so lightly, but Drone wheezed out a cackle and plopped down beside Dorath.
Giogi used his handkerchief to wipe the blood from the hand Uncle Drone had shaken.
“Did you really joust with a dragon?” Gaylyn asked, her eyes shining with excitement.
“Well, actually I—”
“Of course he didn’t,” Aunt Dorath snapped. “Giogi could no more joust with a dragon than he could match his own stockings. Enough of this nonsense. Drone, it’s time you explained to all of us what happened to the spur.”
Uncle Drone sighed a deep sigh, like a bellows letting out all its air. When he spoke, it was in a measured, professorial voice, his tone as dry as the ancient paper scrolls he kept in his lab. “Last night,” he began, “an hour before dawn, someone got into the family crypt, where the wyvern’s spur has been stored for years. Awakened by a magical alarm, I immediately attempted to scry into the crypt, but a powerful darkness obscured my vision. I teleported to the graveyard and found both the mausoleum door and the crypt door within locked. There was no sign that anyone had broken in or out. All the magical wards I had placed to keep spell-casters from by-passing the locks were intact. However, both the spur and its thief were gone.”
“Why was the spur kept in the family crypt?” Gaylyn asked. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to guard it in the castle?”
“The guardian lives in the crypt,” Frefford explained softly to his wife.
“What’s ‘the guardian’?” she asked.
“The spirit of a powerful monster, which will slay any being in the crypt that is not a Wyvernspur by blood or marriage,” Aunt Dorath said.
“So it had to be a Wyvernspur who stole the spur,” Gaylyn reasoned.
“One of us,” agreed Uncle Drone, pausing for a moment to let the thought sink in. Then he added, “But probably a long-lost relative. We’ve never been able to discover any before, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”
“Why steal the spur? What good is it to anyone?” Giogi asked.