It was then that the tapestry fell on Llander. Tarthane stumbled back to avoid his friend's wild sword thrusts, then lunged, striking past the chaos of heavy cloth with his black war blade, hoping to stab whoever was beyond it and swarming all over the shrouded Llander.
That someone was already flat on the floor, tugging at the runner-rug under all their feet. Tarthane, already off-balance, flailed about, made a grab for the railing to keep upright missed his hold, and toppled over with a crash. The hawk-nosed man bounced up from behind the rolled tapestry and drove a dagger into Tarthane's face.
Llander's sword burst blindly out of the tapestry to stab at the man, who jabbed his dagger through the fabric in response, then vaulted over the railing to land lightly in the feast hall, give the Iron Fox a cheery wave, and race away toward the front of the tower.
Enraged, the Iron Fox gave roaring chase, then stopped two strides short of leaving the hall and put up his blade. No ... he'd be running alone into a part of the keep he'd sent his men away from, an area offering all too many places where a man with a knife could get above an armored foe and leap down. No, it was time to see if Llander was still alive and go find Durlim, and the three of them could find some defensible room to hold against leaping madmen with knives.
He lumbered back across the feast hall, slashing backhanded behind him twice on the way, and mounted the stairs where Tarthane lay crumpled and the tapestry was rippling slowly and wearily.
"Llander?" he called, hoping not to get a sword thrust in the face. "Llander?"
He heard a small sound behind him and lashed out viciously with his blade, hacking so hard that the steel rang off the stone wall with numbing force, shedding a few tinkling shards of metal in its wake.
He was rewarded with a gasp. When he turned to see who it was, the Iron Fox found himself face to face not with a hawk-nosed man or a bleeding corpse but with a young lass he'd seen a time or two before about the Starn. She was three safe steps down the stair, beyond his sword tip, and looked very stern, a hand at her throat. As the Fox gazed at her, still startled to see this wench here in his locked and barred tower, she brought her hand slowly and deliberately down, and the front of her gown open with it.
His eyes followed her movement until the halberd smashing into his ankles from above sent him cannoning helplessly down the stairs. He screamed out a curse as he swung his blade around to hack away this latest attack. The Fox found himself once more nose to nose with the grinning, hawk-nosed man. A slim dagger driven by a slender but firm arm plunged into the Iron Fox's right eye, and Faerun whirled away from him forever.
Breathing heavily, Immeira sprang away from the huge armored carcass and let it clang and slither a little way down the stair, gauntlets clutching vainly at empty air.
Then she looked quickly away and up at the man who was smiling down at her. "Wanlorn," she moaned, and found herself trembling...a moment before she burst into tears. "Wanlorn, we've done it!"
"Nay, lass," said the soothing voice that went with the arms that held her then. "We've but done the easiest part. Now the hard and true work begins. Ye've slain a few rats, is all... the house they infested must still be set in order."
He plucked the fouled and dripping dagger from her hands and tossed it away, she heard it ring against the floor tiles below.
"The Realm of the Iron Fox is broken, but Buckralam's Starn must be made to live again."
"How?" she moaned into his chest. "Guide me. You said you would not stay...."
"I cannot, lass...not more than a season. 'Twould be better for thee if I left this night."
Her arms tightened around him like a vise.
"No!"
"Easy, lass," he said. "I'll stay long enough to see you take old Rarendon...and whichever of the orphans and farmers ye can trust as an escort on the road -- to Saern Hill. I'll write ye a note to give to a man there, a horse breeder named Nantlin, ask him if his harp sounds as sweet as ever, and he'll know who the note is really from. He'll bring folk to dwell here and women and men of honor and ready blades to keep laws all Starneir approve of, to make the Starn strong again. There is a doom laid upon me though, lass... I must be gone before he or any of his folk come into the valley."
Immeira stared up at him, her face drenched with tears. She could see plain sorrow in his eyes and tight-set lips, reaching up two timid fingers to trace the set of his jaw.
"Will you tell me your true name, before you go?" "Immeira," he said solemnly, "I will." "Good," she said almost fiercely, reaching up her hands to his neck, "for I'll not give myself to a nameless man."
A smile that did not belong to Immeira swam through his dreams and sent Elminster into sudden, coldly sweating wakefulness. "Mystra," he breathed into the darkness, staring up at the cracked stone ceiling of the best bedchamber in Fox Tower. "Lady, have I pleased thee at last?"
Only silence followed...but in it, sudden fire appeared, racing across the ceiling, shaping letters that read: "Serve the one called Dasumia."
Then they were gone, and Elminster was blinking up at darkness. He felt very alone...until he heard the soft whisper against his throat.
"Elminster?" Immeira asked, sounding awed and frightened. "What was that? Do you serve the gods?
Elminster reached up his hand to touch her face feeling suddenly close to tears. "We all do, lass, he said huskily. "We all do, if we but know it."
Three: A Feast In Felmorel
If human, dragon, orc, and elf can in peace sit down anywhere together in these Realms, it must be at a good feast. The trick is to keep them from feasting on each other.
Selbryn the Sage
from Musings From A Lonely Tower In Athkatla
published in The Year of the Worn
"And just who," the shortest and loudest of the three gate guards asked with deceptive cheerfulness, "an you?"
The hawk-nosed, neat-bearded man he was staring coldly at...who was standing out in the pelting spring rain, on foot and muddy-booted, yet somehow dry above the tops of his high and well-worn boots...matched the guard's bright, false smile and replied, "A man whom the Lord Esbre will be very sorry to have missed at his table, if ye turn me away."
"A man who has magic and thinks himself clever enough to avoid answering a demand for his name,” the guard captain said flatly, crossing his arms across his chest so that the fingers of one hand rested on the high-pommeled dagger sheathed at the right front of his belt, and the fingers of the other could stroke the mace couched in a sling-sheath on the left front. The other two guards also dropped their hands ever so casually to the waiting hilts of their weapons.
The man out in the rain smiled easily and added, "Wanlorn is my name, and Athalantar my country."
The captain snorted, "Never heard of it, and every third brigand calls himself Wanlorn."
"Good," the man said brightly, "that's settled, then."
He strode forward with such calm confidence that he was among the guards before two hard shoves...from gauntlets coming at him from quite different directions...brought him to an abrupt halt.
"Just where d'you think you're going?" the captain snarled, reaching out his hand to add his own shove to Wanlorn's welcome.
The bearded man smiled broadly, seized that hand, and shook it in a warrior's salute. "In to see Lord Esbre Felmorel," he said, "and share some private converse with him, good lad, whilst I partake of one of his superb feasts. Ye may announce me."
"And then again," the captain hissed, leaning forward to glare at the stranger nose-to-nose, "I may not." Blazing green eyes stared into merry blue-gray ones for a long moment, then the captain added shortly, "Go away. Get gone from my gate, or I'll run you through. I don't let rude brigands...or clever-tongued beggars..."
The bearded man smiled and leaned forward to land a resounding kiss on the guard's menacing mouth.
"Ye're as striking as they said ye'd be," the stranger said almost fondly. "Old Glavyn's a fire-lord when he's angry, they said. Get him to spit and snarl and run ye away from his gate...oh, he's a proper little dragon!"
One of the other guards sniggered, and Guard Captain Glavyn abandoned blinking, startled, at the stranger to whirl around with a snarl and thrust his glare down the throat of a more familiar foe. "Do we find something amusing, Feiryn? Something that so overwhelms our manhood and training that we must abandon our superiors and fellows in the face of danger whilst we indulge ourselves in a wholly inappropriate and insultingly demeaning display of mirth? The guard blanched, and a satisfied Glavyn whirled back to fix the hawk-nosed stranger with a look that promised swift and waiting death hovering only inches away "As for you, goodman... if you ever dare to...to violate my person again, my sword shall be swift and sure in my hand, and not all the gods in this world or the next shall be enough to save you!"
"Ah, Glavyn, Glavyn," the bearded stranger said admiringly, "what flow! What style! Splendid words, stirringly delivered. I'll tell Esbr...the Lord so, when I sit down to dine with him." He clapped the captain on one shoulder and slipped past him in the same movement. The guard captain exploded into red rage and snatched out his weapons to ... or, rather, tried to. Somehow, strain and struggle as he might, he couldn't make either mace or dagger budge, or uncross his arms to reach for the short sword slung across his back or his other dagger beside it. He couldn't move his arms at all. Glavyn drew in breath for what would have been a hoarse, incoherent scream, but for...
"My lords, what is all this tumult?" The low, musical voice of the Lady Nasmaerae cut through Glavyns gathering wind and the rising alarm of his fellow guards like a sword blade sliding through silk. Four men moved in silence to place themselves where they could best...that is, without obstruction...stare at her. Slender she was, in a gown of green whose tight, pointed sleeves almost hid her fingers but left supple shoulders bare. A stomacher of intricate worked silver caught the gleam of the dying day, even through the rain and mist, as she turned away slightly in the darkness and worked some small cantrip that made the candelabra in her hand burst into warm flame.
By its leaping light eyes that were dark pools grew even larger, and indigo in hue...indigo with flecks of gold. Lady Nasmaerae's mouth and manner seemed all chaste innocence, but those eyes promised old wisdom, dark sensuality, and a smoldering hunger.
A smile rose behind her eyes as she measured her effect on the men at the gate, and she added almost lightly, "Who are we, on a night such as this, to keep a lone traveler standing in the wet? Come in, sir, and be welcome. Castle Felmorel stands open to ye."
The hawk-nosed stranger bowed his head and smiled. "Lady," he said, "ye do me great honor by thy generosity to a stranger...outpouring, as it is, of a trusting and loving manner that thy gate-guards would do well to emulate. Wanlorn of Athalantar am I, and I accept thy hospitality, swearing unreservedly that I mean no harm to ye or to anyone who dwells within, nor to any design or chattel of Felmorel. Folk in the lands around spoke volubly of thy beauty, but I see their words were poor, tattered things compared to the stirring and sublime vision that is...ye."