Alias looked back at the Turmishman. “Don’t be a fool, Akabar,” she pleaded. “You’ve done more than your share. You should never have married this priestess. She doesn’t care about you. She’s only interested in what you can do for the glory of her goddess.”
Akabar’s jaw trembled and his face went livid. Instinctively Alias backed her chair away from him. Zhara laid one of her slender hands on her husband’s arm and said something in Turmish that Alias didn’t understand. Akabar closed his eyes and calmed his temper with several long, slow breaths.
Beneath the table, Dragonbait’s tail slapped warningly at Alias’s knee. The swordswoman shot an angry glance at the paladin. Dragonbait was rubbing his chin. He was asking her to apologize to Zhara, but Alias remained adamant. She didn’t care how Akabar felt about Zhara. Zhara was obviously using him.
A youth dressed in a page’s uniform, his hair dripping wet from the rain falling outside the inn, interrupted the uneasy silence that had settled over the table. “Excuse me, lady,” the boy said timidly.
Alias looked up. She knew the boy. His name was Heth, and he was one of Lord Mourngrym’s pages. She smiled to put the boy at ease. “Yes? What is it, Heth?”
“Alias of Westgate, the tribunal of Harpers requests that you come come before them,” Heth said formally.
Alias started. For a short while, she’d forgotten her anxiety about Nameless. Now it returned with double force. Her face went pale and her lips trembled. Nameless’s fate was in her hands. If she said or did the wrong thing, they would exile him again, send him away from the Realms, away from her.
“What tribunal?” Akabar asked.
“The Harper tribunal that is rehearing Nameless’s case,” Alias said, rising to her feet. “I asked to speak to them on his behalf.”
Despite his offended pride and the insult she had just delivered to his wife, Akabar couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the warrior woman. Alias had always had difficulty trusting other people and growing intimate with them, but she had accepted Nameless as her father. Akabar didn’t like to think of the grief she would suffer should the Harpers be so merciless as to recondemn the bard.
“I would have thought the Harpers had taken care of that last year,” Akabar said. “What’s taken them so long?”
“It took Elminster all last year to convince them that they should rehear the case,” Alias explained. “Now I have to go.”
Akabar stood up in front of the sell-sword. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “I, too, will speak on his behalf, for he saved my life.”
The page looked confused for a moment, uncertain how to respond to this stranger.
“Heth,” Alias explained to the page, “this is my friend, Akabar bel Akash. He knows all about Nameless. May he come with me?”
“He is welcome to accompany you, lady,” Heth replied, “but I do not know if the tribunal will hear him.”
“Then I shall speak very loudly,” Akabar said.
Alias looked up at Akabar with a grateful smile. At least Zhara’s influence was not so complete that the Turmishman could not spare time from his insane quest to help a friend.
Dragonbait chirped, and Alias turned her head to watch him sign. “Dragonbait says he’ll look after Zhara for you,” she explained to Akabar. Though I’m sure the shrew can handle herself, she thought, but she managed to resist saying so aloud. She wished the paladin would come along with her instead of remaining with Zhara, but she didn’t want to argue with him in front of Akabar.
Akabar motioned for the page to go ahead. Alias went to speak to Jhaele for a moment, then grabbed her cloak from a hook and joined Akabar and Heth at the door. The swordswoman and the Turmishman followed the boy from the inn out into the drizzling rain. They walked in silence down the main road that led west toward the Tower of Ashaba. Over the tops of the trees, they could make out the tower’s peculiar off-center spire, which gave it the nickname “the Twisted Tower.”
Despite its notoriety, Shadowdale was a small town, but the Tower of Ashaba was a massive and impressive structure nonetheless. It served as a home to not only the Lord of Shadowdale and his family, but also to most of his court and household staff, not to mention numerous adventurers friendly to his lordship. Mourngrym had invited Alias to winter there, but Alias could only think of the tower as Nameless’s prison, and she had declined. She wouldn’t have accepted at any rate. As much as she liked Mourngrym, becoming his guest would have meant giving up some of her independence. She felt more comfortable paying Jhaele for a room at the inn.
As they passed Elminster’s tower, Akabar glanced sidelong at Alias. She looked nervous. Having already swallowed his anger at her earlier behavior, the mage was determined to reestablish their friendship. He began with what northerners called “small talk.”
“Have you heard anything of Mistress Olive Ruskettle since she took her leave of us in Westgate?” the Turmishman asked.
Alias looked at Akabar and grinned. Olive, at least, was something the two of them had always agreed upon. The halfling thief had attached herself without invitation to their adventuring party the previous year, only to make a tremendous nuisance of herself, betraying them to Alias’s enemies and only at the last moment helping to rescue them from fates worse than death. Olive hadn’t actually taken her leave of them at the end of their adventure. She’d left in the middle of the night with a good deal more than her share of the treasure they’d taken from the sorceress Cassana’s dungeon. To the halfling’s credit, she at least left them all the gold and silver coin, preferring the more portable gemstones and jewelry for herself.
“I believe she’s in Cormyr,” Alias said. “Travelers who have passed through there speak of a halfling bard who sings some of the best songs they’ve ever heard and who claims to have been the mastermind behind the destruction of the Fire Knives assassin guild, the Darkbringer, a red dragon, a lich, an evil sorceress, and a fiend from Tarterus. She was aided, naturally, by her faithful assistants, an anonymous southern mage, a little-known northern sell-sword, and a mysterious lizardman.”
“That sounds like our Olive Ruskettle, all right,” Akabar agreed.
“I almost wish she were here now,” Alias said. “If anyone was able to talk her way around this Harper tribunal, it would be Olive.”
Akabar chuckled, “Remember the saying, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ ” He sensed the nervousness in her voice, and made an effort to reassure her. “Alias, Elminster is speaking on Nameless’s behalf. The Harpers will be influenced by the sage’s wisdom. Even if they are not, the Harpers are good people. They couldn’t be so cruel as to return Nameless to exile after what he has suffered. They may not forgive him, but they will realize that isolating him serves no further purpose. Don’t worry.”
“I can’t help it,” Alias replied in barely more than a whisper. “I know what you say is true, but I have this tremendous foreboding that something awful is going to happen to Nameless, that someone wishes him harm.”
The mage shuddered inwardly at the woman’s words. Alias had rejected so fiercely his quest to destroy Moander that Akabar had been reluctant to tell her any more about his dreams. She would learn soon enough, though, that he was not the only one chosen to battle the evil god. Nameless, too, was destined to be caught up in the final confrontation with the Darkbringer.
3
The Beast
While page Heth was fetching Alias, the Harper tribunal continued to discuss the matter of the Nameless Bard.
“Even if this Alias is the paragon you say, Elminster,” Morala said to the sage, “her existence does not mitigate the bard’s initial guilt. You would not speak on Nameless’s behalf at his first trial,” she reminded him. “What has changed between then and now?”