Siward's reaction was every bit as sudden as those of his companions. "Werewolf!" he screamed.
Siward ran three steps and promptly tripped over a chair that mysteriously slid beneath his legs. Dauna appeared, slapping the babbling Siward with the feathered cap. "Who's squashed now, little bug?" Whether to stanch the wound to his dignity or to preserve his dwindling sanity, Siward chose the better part of valor and fainted.
The rest was a boring parade of arriving watchmen, a tearful and huggy Betha, and plenty of questions. The earlier thrill kept us awake for the first hour or so, but then Dauna's yawns melted into sleep. King carried her home in his arms, and I barely made it back under my own power.
"You must stay the night here," said Betha to King. The hero opened his mouth as if to argue, then shut it again. Betha was still the bigger dog.
I had just enough strength to show King to the guest bedroom. We said good night, and I turned to leave. But I stopped a moment at the door to look back at him, thinking I had something to say but finding no words. He didn't see me.
I watched him lie down on the bed with a heavy sigh, then turn heavily onto his side. A few more uncomfortable shifts, and King climbed off the soft feather bed to crawl onto the rug, circle three times on all fours, then curl up to sleep comfortably.
Father returned four days after we rescued Dauna. He wouldn't let us out of his sight for days. The first time I saw King was at Chesley's trial. The court was crammed with people, and I couldn't get anywhere close to King. Even from a distance, I could see he was unhappy. He'd lost some of the silver gleam he'd had on the night of the rescue. He looked just gray and tired. And old.
Eventually, Father allowed me my freedom again, and I rushed to the streets to find King. I wanted to hear all of his stories, everything about why the witch had changed him into a dog and about all his adventures since then.
King could have been anywhere, so that's where I looked. After searching the docks, the circus grounds, the markets, and even the Ministry of Art-where the guards told me Carrague was away to supper-I found myself on Wicker Street, not far from the Barley Bowl. I smelled barley soup and knew Carrague must be inside. Surely he could tell me what had become of King.
There was the ambassador, all right. He leaned back against the wall, snoring softly. A long pipe rested near an empty soup bowl. One hand dangled at his side, idly stroking the silver fur of an aging, mixed-breed terrier.
THE COMMON SPELL
"This is a waste of time. I don't need to learn this," insisted Marl, the cooper's son.
Kith Lias glared at the boy, but she kept her temper in check. Marl was hardly the first to denigrate the skills she was trying to teach. He wouldn't be the last, either. Marl was a big boy, the kind whose lead the other boys would follow. While none of the other students said a word, some of them eyed Marl with admiration that he'd had the courage to voice what many of them were thinking. The rest of the students watched Kith curiously, waiting to see how the teacher would handle this challenge to her authority.
"Even a cooper may need to read and write sometimes, Marl," Kith answered, pushing a strand of her long, dark hair back behind her ear. "You may need to write down the orders for your suppliers and customers so you can remember them better."
The other students nodded at Kith's example, but Marl snorted derisively. "I'm not going to be a cooper," the boy declared. "Soon as I get enough money to buy a sword, I'm joining a caravan as a guard. I'm going to be an adventurer."
"A swordling without the common spell," Kith muttered sadly.
"What's a swordling?" asked Lisaka, the tavernkeep's daughter.
"What's the common spell?" Marl demanded.
"A swordling is an adventurer's word," Kith explained, "for a novice sell-sword. A mageling is a young mage who hasn't proven herself. The common spell is… well, actually it's a story I heard from Alias the Sell-Sword."
The children in the classroom leaned forward as one. Like all students throughout the Realms, they knew that their teacher could be distracted from the lesson if they encouraged her to reminisce. They were also eager to hear a story about Alias the Sell-Sword. Alias was a famous adventurer-she rescued the halfling bard Olive Ruskettle from the dragon Mistinarperadnacles and slew the mad god Moander-twice. Only last year she drove the thieves guild from Westgate. A story about Alias would be wonderful.
"Tell us, please," Lisaka asked.
"Yeah, tell the story," Marl demanded.
Kith shrugged. "I heard Alias tell this story in the village of Serpentsford in Featherdale. The people there were suspicious of all female strangers who passed through the town, even a hero like Alias, for the village was plagued by a penanggalan."
"What's that?" asked Jewel Weaver, the youngest student in the class.
"It's a female vampire," Marl said with a superior air.
"Not exactly," Kith retorted. "A penanggalan is undead, and it does drink the blood of the living, but there the sim-ilarity ends. A penanggalan appears as an ordinary woman in the daylight, and the sun's rays do not destroy it. But at night its head twists away from its body, trailing a black 'tail', which is all that remains of its stomach and guts. The body lies motionless while the head flies off and hunts for its victims. It prefers the blood of women and girls."
Jewel squealed, and several other students shivered. Even Marl looked a little pale.
"The people of Serpentsford had known enough to cremate the victims of the penanggalan so they would not become undead themselves," Kith explained. "But the villagers were beginning to lose hope that they would ever discover the monster, or even any of her secret lairs, for she was very cunning. Alias told this story to raise their spirits."
"So what's the story?" Marl growled impatiently.
Amused at the boy's attentiveness, Kith smiled ever so slightly. She sat back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. Marl squirmed with annoyance.
Kith began the tale. "This is a tale of the adventuring party known as the Swanmays. Their members included two swordswomen, Belinda and Myrtle; a pair of rogues, Niom and Shadow; a cleric, Pasil; and a mageling, Kasilith. In the Year of the Worm, the Swanmays wintered in the city of Westgate. Their landlord, a weaver woman, had an apprentice, an orphan girl named Stelly who was thirteen. Stelly and Kasilith, the mageling, became close friends, and Stelly wanted to leave the weaver to join the Swanmays.
"Now, although it was a master's legal obligation, the weaver had not yet taught Stelly to read or write. Belinda, the leader of the Swanmays, wasn't keen on taking responsibility for an illiterate girl whose only skills were with wool, and stealing an apprentice was a crime in Westgate. Yet Belinda liked Stelly. She promised Kasilith that if the mageling taught Stelly to read and write, Belinda would go to the city council, challenge the weaver's claim to Stelly, and petition to take Stelly on as an apprentice swordswoman,
"During the winter, Kasilith taught Stelly how to read and write her letters. Stelly believed what Kasilith was teaching her was actually magic; it was so awesome to the girl that scribbles on paper could mean something. Kasilith joked that if it was magic, it was the most common spell in the Realms.
"That same winter a penanggalan began to prey on the women of Westgate. Neither the city watch nor any of the adventurers inhabiting the town could discover the creature's lair. In life, the monster had been a noblewoman and her family and their power helped to hide her. By chance or fate, the undead noblewoman came into Stellas master's shop to have a tear in her cloak repaired and decided to make the weaver her next victim. Explaining she could not call for the cloak until later that evening, the penanggalan made arrangements to meet the weaver after the shop closed.