Rapture awakened him, greater shuddering pleasure than he'd ever felt before. The low sound he'd been hearing in the dreams that were falling away from him now, receding into forgetfulness like sun-chased mists, was his own endless moan of pleasure as he writhed on his back in the forest mold.
Dove was kneeling above him, clad in a simple white shift, armor and blood and racing blades all gone, one slender, long-lingered hand-dappled with blood no longer-was outspread in the air above his breast, and a gentle smile was tugging at the corners of her lips.
"Wh-what?" Mirt managed to ask, his throat rough. "Lie easy, Old Wolf, and let me finish. You've been a very bad boy, down the years. . but I suppose you're well aware of that."
Fresh waves of pleasure washed over him before he could reply, and he kicked his heels against the soft moss, needing some sort of release.
"What're you doing to me?" he groaned when he could find breath to shape words again.
"Healing you," Dove replied serenely, holding up something small in her other hand. It glinted between her fingers as she held it out. "Recognize this?"
Mirt shook his head, gasping as old, long familiar aches melted away. "What is it?"
"Part of someone's sword tip. You've been carrying it around for two score summers or so; that stiffness in your back, remember?"
The fat merchant twisted experimentally. His limbs were as supple as when he was a young lad. "'Tis gone," he rumbled in wonderment, feeling flesh that hardly felt like his, stripped of accustomed pain.
Dove nodded. "That, along with a lot of fat you didn't need, those crawling veins on your legs, a rupture in your gut I could put my hand through, balls of bone built up around your joints. . and I've forgotten how many places where your bones were broken, or once broken and poorly mended. You might have taken better care of yourself."
"And never been the great lord of adventures I am," Mirt growled up at her, "and so never met you, lady. Nay, I think I chose the right road." He patted at his belly, then ran his fingers over his chin and was reassured to find familiar girth, calluses, and hair. Ah, she hadn't made a boy of him-or, gods, a girl-or anything like that.
"No, Old Wolf," Dove murmured reassuringly. "You'll recognize yourself-wrinkles, scars, and all-when next you look in a glass."
Mirt lifted his head for a moment, saw shards of hacked black and silver armor strewn around them in the trampled moss, sighed, and let his head fall back.
"You give me a gift beyond measure," he rumbled, let shy;ting her see the love in his eyes. Then, because he had to, he added bluntly, "Why?"
Dove nodded, her smile gone now. "Because, in your own way, you serve Faerun as I do-a service for which you are all too unlikely to be otherwise thanked. I could hardly leave you to bleed to death in the center of my Dancing Place when you'd taken your wound trying to protect me."
She folded her fingers as if closing an unseen book, and acquired an impish smile as she drew her hand back from above his breast. "Even if doing so would greatly please a large and ever growing host of folk spread all across the continent of Faerun."
Mirt grunted at that and snaked out a hand to touch her knee. A surge of power washed through him, as if he'd been touched by a spell. His entire body jumped ere something happened inside Dove Falconhand, and the flow was cut off as if cut by a knife. . leaving him holding a knee. A shapely knee, but mere flesh and bone now, not some storage keg of stirring magic.
"My, but we're greedy," said the silver-haired woman in calm tones, firmly disengaging his stout fingers, with a hand that-for all its smooth slenderness-was stronger than his.
She rose in a single graceful movement and stood look shy;ing down at him. "I can see a question or three fairly bursting out of you," she said with a smile, and word shy;lessly beckoned forth his speech with two imperiously hooked fingers.
Mirt looked up at the woman who could kill him with just one of several dozen even smaller gestures, and asked in a raw, bemused voice, "If it pleases you to tell me, lady, I must know this: why, before all the gods, were you dancing with a dozen swords?"
She held out a hand to help him rise, Mirt rolled to a sitting position, marveling at a strength and a physical ease he'd not felt in himself for thirty winters, and took that proffered hand. He barely needed it, and stood flex shy;ing his arms in sheer pleasure.
"All of us Chosen," she replied gently, as they stood together in a glade where eerie spell-glow, drifting smoke, or darting sword kept the calling birds at bay no longer, "have our own magical pursuits-hobbies, even 'secret schemes,' if you will. What you blundered into was one of mine."
"I'm deeply sorry that I did so," the old merchant said quickly, "even if it did win me years of hurts healed. I-"
Dove laid two gentle fingers across his lips. "Please don't babble more thanks at me, Mirt. I have too few friends and too many admiring worshipers." Her lips twisted. "They almost outnumber the foes who'd dance on my dead body with glee."
The Old Wolf nodded. "Then say on about your dancing and the swords, lady," he bade gently.
"My name is Dove … or to certain angry Lords of Waterdeep, 'Clever Bitch,' " the silver-haired woman told him serenely, and Mirt flushed scarlet to the very tips of his ears.
"Ah, now, lass, I meant it not. Gods, 'twas years back, that! And how could you have heard me clear across the city? 'Twas just th-"
Those fingers tapped his lips again. "Just call me Dove, hmm? I hope you'll have sense enough not to cavort around like a youngling in days to come, or speak of what happened here. I don't want to end up leading a procession of wrinkled-skin lordlings around the North, all of them pleading to be made vigorous again. Nor do I want parties of axe-wielding, torch-bearing idiots blundering around in this forest seeking a glade where magic swords can be found flying around."
"Lady," Mirt said gravely, "you have my wor-I–I mean Dove, I promise you I'll tell no one at all. Truly."
Dove nodded, her eyes studying his face a trifle sadly. She was not smiling.
"Is-is anything wrong?" Mirt asked anxiously.
Dove shook her head. "Memories, Old Wolf, are per shy;sonal gems … or curses. I was just remembering another man who used almost the same words you just did, and what became of his promise-and him. And before you ask, no, I won't tell you his name or fate."
The old merchant spread helpless hands and took a restless stride away from her. "Of course not, great lady. Is there anything I can do for y-"
A firm hand took hold of his arm and turned him around. "Hear the secret you sought, and keep it," she replied simply. "Mirt, you saw no hostile spell at work on me, but merely my own sloth. I was enhanc shy;ing the enchantments of those blades the easy way, by borrowing powers from one to echo into another. I do such augmentations at Mystra's bidding, making the magic I spawn last by means of my own blood."
"The silver fire that legends speak of," Mirt whis shy;pered. "Tears of Mystra. . the blood of the Seven."
Dove nodded. "The Lady Steel used to do sword dances-alone, in remote forest glades-to swiftly transform blades of minor enchantment into duplicates of a more formidable weapon. I thought others avoided such practices because of the danger and their dislike of pain, but I've discovered another reason."
She waved a hand at the scattered armor, "That is now twisted in its magic," she explained. "What some folk called 'cursed.'"
Mirt nodded. "And if you hadn't worn it?"
"You'd have found my body lying here with a dozen swords in it," she replied calmly, "or blown to blood and dust. That many enchantments at once would hamper my own powers in strange ways."