Jhessail looked up at the stars, brought the blue fire foremost in her mind, and when she was gazing at it and feeling a part of it, she looked quickly down into the dell, glared at a nightbeak, flicked her fingers in a swift circle, and with that hand pointed at the vulture.
Blue fire trembling inside her, she snapped, “Alavaer!”
Unleashed, something wonderful raced along her arm, coiling and surging arrow-swift, thrilling her though it left emptiness behind. It burst forth from her pointing finger as a deep blue bolt that streaked down into the darkness with the faintest of whispers.
One nightbeak looked up at the sudden flare of light. Approaching light, streaking Alarmed, it tried to flap its wings to leap into the air And died before it could even unfurl them, snatched off its talons and blasted, fire that wasn’t fire scorching through it, to bounce and flop among the cliff-bottom weeds and stones in loose-necked silence. Dead silence.
The other nightbeak looked up and squawked questioningly, expecting an answer that would never come.
“Yes!” Jhessail cried exultantly, shaking her fists in the air. “I did it!”
The sound of her cry sent the surviving nightbeak into the air, flapping heavily out of the dell in search of quieter meals.
Laughing, the delighted Silvertree lass raced to Doust and embraced him, whirling him around and around in the night shadows.
“I believe,” he observed with a grin, “it’s considered bad form to sound surprised that your spell worked. Wherefore: of course you did it. Well done!”
Ecstatic and drenched with sweat, Jhessail hugged him, relieved and delighted laughter bubbling over him in a flood. Nose buried in her bosom, Doust managed to say gruffly, “Careful, now. You’ll start giving me unholy ideas.”
“Hah,” she laughed, clutching him even tighter, “and you’d dare to do something about them, when I can blast you with magic? Hey?”
“A compelling point,” he said to her stomach, as her wild mirth made him slide downward, his voice muffled by warm and smooth Jhessail.
An instant later, his chin struck her knee, which was very hard, bouncing him back up to behold the stars for a crazed and whirling moment-before his chin met the stony ground, which proved even harder.
“Oww,” he said. “Aye, most compelling.”
“What was that?” Narantha hissed, as the strange hooting call came again.
“Owl,” Florin said, his voice just a murmur above a whisper. “Successful in its hunting.”
The noblewoman rolled onto her side to look up from the rough pillow of his pack. The forester — her forester-was sitting just as before, back to a tree and drawn sword across knees, staring into the night. Stars glimmered over his shoulder.
“Are you going to sit there all night?”
“Yes.”
She waited for him to say more. Waited for breath after breath, until the chirping night insects started up again. Then she sighed in exasperation. “But when will you sleep?”
“On the morrow.”
“But you said we’re going to walk through the forest all day. So when?”
“I’ll find plenty of time to slumber,” he replied, “while you’re talking.”
“What?” she sputtered, nettled.
“You talked more than half the sunlit day just past,” the forester observed serenely. “Don’t you ever get tired of talking?”
“You,” she hissed back at him, “are impossible! Such rudeness!”
“The curse of our generation, I’m told,” Florin told the night. “Wherefore Cormyr sinks sadly from what it was in the golden days of our grandsires.”
His mimicry of a gruff old whitebeard sounded so like her uncle Lorneth that Narantha found herself giggling. The giggle built inside her, into something that burst out and had to be muffled by biting her knuckles and rolling over to put her face into the ill-smelling pack.
Above the shaking bundle that was Narantha wrapped in her weathercloak, Florin smiled up at the stars.
“Father, I-”
“Not a word, Torsard,” Lord Elvarr Spurbright said quickly, in the tone of voice that meant he would brook no defiance. “Not a word. ”
He held up an admonishing finger, and his son was astonished enough to blink at it mutely for the few moments Lord Elvarr needed.
Plucking up the great polished wooden ball that crowned one of the low footposts of his bed, the head of House Spurbright plucked a fine chain out of a hidden recess in the post that the root-peg of the ball had been sitting in, like a giant tooth, and dropped the ball back into place.
Torsard’s mouth fell open. His eyes bulged in fresh astonishment as his father undid a fine silver clasp at one end of the chain and reached out to snap it around Torsard’s wrist. Closing the clasp at the chain’s other end around his own wrist, Lord Elvarr nodded toward the balcony.
Mutely Torsard trotted after him. It was not until they were out on the balcony, with the great bedchamber doors closed behind them and the night breeze ghosting past under the moonlight, that Lord Elvarr spoke again.
“Yes, the chain is magic. And it cost me more than our tallhouse in Suzail, so don’t pull away from me suddenly and go breaking it. It cloaks our speech from everyone. Your mother could step between us right now and we could put our mouths to both her ears and talk-and she’d not hear our words, only squawks and gruntings. Nor could a war wizard, with all his spells. This is a family secret, mind: not even Thaelder knows of it. Keep things that way.”
He walked to the stone rail, Torsard following. Together they gazed out and down at the night. Rolling wooded hills and verdant pastures stretched north into the night and the not-so-distant mountains, under a sky glittering with stars. Below the balcony, on the lawns and in the orchard garden, there were no signs of anyone still up and about. “Now, you wanted to ask me something?”
“Yes, Lord Father. Ah… at the Fallingmoon feast I heard Lord Delzuld talking with some of the older lords-Gallusk and Illance among them-about the king. He said the Obarskyrs are corrupt and it was high time we were free of them, and that they had no stronger claim to the Dragon Throne than any of us! Is this true? Why does he hate the Obarskyrs so? And why were so many lords agreeing with him?”
“Steady, son, steady. Ask, receive answer, then ask again, not this flood of why, why, and why! As to the first: Lord Delzuld-’twas Lord Creion, aye? Head of his house? I thought as much-says many things. Most aren’t true, but he believes that if he says them oft and loud enough, those who listen will begin to think they are true. For so it has worked before, on many folk in diverse lands. Truth is a surprisingly mutable thing.”
Lord Spurbright smiled wryly. “As to the second: the Delzulds are the wealthiest nobles in Arabel, and would swiftly become far richer if they paid no taxes to the Dragon Throne, and could crush trade rivals without the annoying hindrance of Crown law. More that that: most folk of Arabel-commoners as well as proud houses-would fain be free of Cormyr if they could. They were once a free city, and hunger to be so again; that will never change, in either of our lifetimes.”
Lord Spurbright turned to face his son directly. “As to why he’s gaining so much support: very few nobles are pleased with His Majesty at the moment. Nor have they been since the mage Vangerdahast rose from being just court wizard to also being royal magician, head of the war wizards and-in all but name-the real ruler of Cormyr.”
“Vangerdahast. They hate him, I know,” Torsard Spurbright said. “But why? Just fear of his spells?”
“That, and his use of the war wizards as his spies. More than one who’s spoken out against him-remember Lord Lorneth Crownsilver? — has vanished, probably permanently silenced by our beloved royal magician. It should come as no surprise to you that we hate anyone and anything that seeks to curtail our powers-just as farmers hate tax collectors, and outlaws hate Purple Dragons. Well, King Azoun and his Royal Magician Vangerdahast have steadily been making new laws, these last few years, that increasingly restrict the power of all nobles to do as they please with those who dwell on their lands. Dissatisfaction with Azoun’s rule is widespread, and growing.”