Cephas found that other thoughts ceased to press on him.
“Those genasi who take on more than one soul are one of the great proofs that we are all one people, despite the differences in our abilities and appearances,” she said.
“There are others? Other ‘great proofs,’ I mean?”
Ariella said, “The Firestorm Cabal actually makes one positive contribution. They have kept genealogical records that span centuries and track lineages across different worlds. They don’t publicize this, but their cabal was founded here, in the South. The genasi who first drew swords in the Second Era of Skyfire were Firestormers. They brought their records north and joined them with the annals of my people, and found that the clans and families are related in deep time. Their work is related to the third great proof.”
“What is that?” Cephas asked.
Surprising him, she blushed. Her silver cheeks turned the same blue iron shade that colored her crystal hair. “Genasi, no matter which soul they express”-she cleared her throat-“breed true.”
Cephas found he was at the edge of his experience. “Oh.”
She laughed. “The Cabalists believe the great clans of earthsouled and stormsouled and all the others should keep their lineages apart. They use words such as ‘pure’ and ‘inviolate.’ When couples of different expressions, well, have children together, for instance, the Firestormers say they’ve blurred the szuldar.”
Cephas asked, “This is widely believed?”
She shrugged. “It’s hard to say. There are many who find the idea repellant, this programmatic separation of the expressions. I know I do. And my parents. My father is watersouled, and my mother most often expresses as fire.”
“Yet you are windsouled?”
Again came the laughter like bells. “My mother was born windsouled but found the fire suited her better. She is a famous chef in our city. My father has always been watersouled, as has one of my brothers. He followed Father into the Waveriders, the Akanulan navy.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” said Cephas.
“I have two. The Waverider is the eldest. My younger brother is windsouled, and says he will join the Airsteppers’ Guild like me. I think he’ll change his mind once he learns it’s something more than an adult version of the races he and his friends run among the skymotes.”
“The motes of Airspur host better games than Jazeerijah, then,” Cephas said.
She looked at him. “It’s when you talk about that place that I hear the wind in you the loudest.”
Cephas despaired of finding the peace of mind she described. “How did your mother learn the firesoul?” he asked. “You said she was not born with that expression.”
Ariella blushed again, even deeper this time. “Mother’s story …” she said, hesitating. In the short time Cephas had known Ariella, he had never seen her hesitate. “It has to do with a man she knew before my father. She says it involved ‘certain fiery circumstances.’ ”
Cephas pursed his lips. He did not quite know why that caused Ariella to blush and hesitate, but it gave him an idea.
“Well,” he said, gazing up at the trees, “perhaps what we need is something related to the powers the windsoul grants. If I learn to fly, we could seek ‘certain heightened circumstances.’ Though I don’t know what those could be.”
He felt her hand on his chest and thought of lightning.
“I know something we could try,” she said.
A time passed that was as endless as the span of a heartbeat.
After, he felt weightless. Ariella was in his arms, her limbs wrapped around him. She was no burden, though. She did not bear him down, but up.
Eventually, he opened his eyes and dared to look at her. After the first giddy moments when they untangled each other from their clothes, she had filled up every sense. But still, he suspected that he would never see enough of her, never hear her enough, never feel her strong arms clasped behind his neck enough.
She was watching him with a smile on her face that was gentle and mischievous both. He twined his fingers in hers and drew her hand to his lips. The silver tones of their skin matched perfectly. Silver tones?
He looked at her again. She raised her eyebrows, then glanced down. “Maybe we should put our clothes on and go introduce you to the others.”
He started to ask what she meant, but his voice failed him when he saw their clothes strewn across the glade, far below where they hung, clinging to each other while slowly rotating in midair.
She kissed him. “Welcome,” she said, “Cephas Windsouled.”
The WeavePasha’s scrying room had no doors and no windows, and he could count on the ringed fingers of one hand the number of people aware of the chamber’s location: himself, a regrettably deceased apprentice, and the eldest of his grandchildren, the powerful sorceress who served as his chief vizar.
So he was confident that he was alone and unobserved as he took a cross-legged seat in midair before one of the room’s many untidy workbenches. He swept aside various instruments of minor magic, but he took more care in setting aside a tray of crystal fragments, the clay handle and spout of an inert lamp, and numerous scrolls half covered in his own spidery handwriting. Finally, he found his favored scrying device, a mundane brass-backed mirror of questionable taste and little monetary value.
He could use this mirror-he had used it-to spy out the secrets of the most powerful beings in Faerun. Now he breathed magic onto the scratched silver surface of the mirror and whispered syllables of power. “Where are you, Corvus?” he asked.
“Right here, Your Grace,” said the kenku from behind him.
The WeavePasha did not turn around. Instead, he found a pen, dipped it in a pool of gelid ink spreading from an overturned pot, and made a note to himself on the closest scroll. Self, dead apprentice, granddaughter, and kenku, he wrote. Aloud, he said, “Do you know, Corvus, that I believe you’re a sort of lodestone for hubris in the mighty? Where intemperate pride is at its greatest, well, there you are. Or rather, here you are.”
“An interesting theory, WeavePasha, but I have never been to Waterdeep.”
There was an unusual strained tone in the kenku’s mellifluous voice, and the WeavePasha turned, asking, “How about Calimport?”
He saw that Corvus bled freely down one leg, leaning on the grim-faced halfling adept, Shan. The spymaster said, “No need, Your Grace. Calimport has come to me.”
Cynda gave the kitchener’s apprentice a disapproving look and swung a sloshing pail back up onto the cart, using one knee to buck the heavy container over the sideboard.
“Please, mistress,” the disheartened boy said. “That is very valuable wine, a vintage of your own kin in the Purple Hills. The cost of what you spilled there would pay my wages for a year.”
Tobin reassured the apprentice. “It would have all been gone if we took it to Trill, now wouldn’t it? The WeavePasha is too generous. This brace of sheep is more than enough, and more like the simple fare she is used to. Though we are grateful for it all, to be sure.”
The boy still looked doubtful. “The mutton is no simple fare, sir. The spices and herbs the chef used in their preparation are very fine. Their flavors guided my choice of wine. Are you sure the dragon would not like just two or three of these casks?”
Cynda gave him a firm shake of her head. She spelled out a word in the sisters’ fingertalk.
“Nonthal?” said Tobin aloud. “That is a town-”
“In Turmish, yes!” the apprentice said. “They have a wonderful varietal of ruby that would go very nicely with the mutton. Is that the problem? I have plenty of it laid in.”
But Tobin recalled why Cynda had thought of the town. “Young fellow,” he said, “I am sure you are right about the wines. But you are wrong about Trill. She is a wyvern, not a dragon. And should you ever find yourself in Nonthal, there are many there who can explain why wyverns should never be given wine.”