It beckoned this day—and if men gave him odd looks as he trudged up to the doors, well… he was used to that.
On the threshold Beldrim coughed, spat, and then slowly set his feet on the dark stair down. They were uneven in pacing, just the thing to make tired feet trip, and then he’d be— Magic sang briefly around and within him, and his pace faltered. Things happened to men who strode into any embrace with magic.
Yet he was still alive and felt no pain. This might just be…
Beldrim took another step, very slowly. The light around him changed and the deafening silence gave way to voices. Amused folk—not many—talking together.
He stiffened, listening, and froze, taking firm hold of the rail.
Aye, so. He’d heard a-right.
And when the great and powerful laugh, sometimes castles tremble, and death reaches out to gather in many, many folk. All too swiftly to flee from, too. ‘Twould be best to be elsewhere, even more swiftly, and starting right now.
Quietly—as quietly as he knew how—Beldrim Taruster turned on the step and went back up the stair again, his going as unheralded as his coming.
Sometimes, in life, it’s better that way.
A DANCE IN STORM’S GARDEN
I. The Sword
The sword falls from the sheath, bounces once, and in the air twists from its glimmer-shiver into a silver-furred cat. Which pounces upon a handy flagstone to crouch with its tail switching angrily and its green eyes gleaming fury out at the pleasant garden around it.
Those eyes have gazed upon much grander entrances and more welcoming and attentive audiences than this sun-dappled, bird-chirping corner of kitchen garden. Here a profusion of thalusks not yet ripened, and there a prace-bell vine winding its intricate, curlicued way up a post that had once been a Zhentilar horseman’s lance. A thick brezick hedge behind, curving like encircling arms. No bowing servants, no hastening lackeys, not even— a noise.
Out of nothingness, and over the angry visitor, a spell falls with the tinkling of a thousand tiny, unseen bells.
“My, my,” a gently amused voice observes from behind a rosebush. “First a long sword, then a cat. Do you truly mislike your own shape so much?”
The cat freezes—then spins around and up, rising with a speed and angry shrieking of air that terrifies birds, voles, and even stinging flies into frantic flight—into a tall, darkly menacing form that towers in the sudden silence.
Though the rosebush seems unimpressed, the cat has become a woman in a dark, tattered cloak over a gown of similar hue and condition. Her eyes remain two emerald flames, her brows dark and lowered in a snarl that betokens no good will toward talking rosebushes—nor what lurks behind them.
“I know not who you are, and care less,” the former cat spits, “but the forms in which I choose to greet the world are my own business. As is the unfamiliar and puny spell you’ve so rudely dared to cast upon me—which I now break, thus. You may now beg me to spare your life, and tell me truly where I might find one Elminster of Shadowdale, and I may—if you beg very prettily, abasing yourself utterly, and promising me all manner of rewards—let you live. Or not.”
“Ah,” the voice from behind the rosebush replies merrily, “then I suppose I must beg you to step into my kitchen and share some moonweather tea. Or not, of course.”
II. The Rosebush
The dark-gowned woman hisses in rage and thrusts out one arm as if hurling a generous handful of empty air at the unseen voice. Sparks swirl as blue gouts of flame stab forth from her palm, sizzling across sun-dappled air at the rosebush—only to shiver into fading blue flickerings that surge furiously out and back in all directions, spreading across empty air, flowing into oblivion, and leaving every rose petal and dark delicate leaf untouched.
The sorceress who spent so many months as a sword cries out, aghast, and weaves a quick warding about herself before snapping, “Who are you?”
“So politely asked, saith Storm Silverhand, who then makes so bold as to prettily beg the same of you: what name do you bear?”
“Silverhand? One of the Seven?”
“The same.”
“By the banefire of—!” Fear is louder than fury in that hasty snarl, and its green-eyed, black-garbed owner does not add her name to it but instead casts another swift spell that makes her wink out of visibility—then, thrashing in real fear now, back into it, as if snatched up short by the thrumming sturdiness of a collar and stout chain.
“What cruel magic—?” This snarl is more of a shriek.
“Such an abundance of questions must weigh heavily,” Storm Silverhand observes gently, as she glides around the rosebush to confront the wildly-struggling sorceress. “I know mine do.”
Showing no outward signs of distress at her stated burden, she advances in patched and sweat-stained breeches, a cheerful wreck of a hat, and a dusty breast-scarf. Beneath are tall, lithe curves, and spilling out from beneath her hat, a wild splendor of thigh-length silver hair, tresses curling idly of their own volition, like lazy snakes.
She addresses her writhing visitor in calm tones. “I find myself wondering what manner of sorceress travels as a sword—a sword that plunges so abruptly from a sheath that appears within my wards without heralding, and departs again as swiftly—then becomes a cat, before adopting the shape of a woman who spits enough hauteur and venom for any six rulers. I also find myself still wondering what name such a being might bear. Heavy weights, indeed.”
“I… no! You’ll slay me anyway, so why should I surrender my name and nature to you?”
Storm sighs at this bitterness, and tells the rosebush, “Pride is so frail an armor. D’you not think so?”
III. The Wizard
The rosebush shakes all over, curls a thorny tendril back as if to scratch at itself, straightens, and grows both more solid and more brown. Brown boots, brown breeches, and a brown belt and sword scabbard, complete with impressively heavy-looking sword. All worn by a tall, slender man whose long, flowing beard and almost as long hair are as white as unspoiled snow. Blue-gray eyes sparkle—with mischief?—under slightly dark brows. A curved, glossy brown pipe fades into view out of nothingness, to hover helpfully near the bearded mouth. Which promptly crooks up into a wry smile.
“Increasingly I find it so, aye… but then, I’ve had an age more than most spell-hurlers to learn that. This particular malicious sorceress is no worse than most.”
He turns his head, lifts one eyebrow in a manner familiar to many Faerunians—most of them dead—and asks almost as gently as Storm frames her calm questions, “Think ye not so, Nathchanczia of Neverwinter?”
The struggling sorceress freezes once more, her face going bone-pale. Her bosom heaves with swift, fearful breaths, out of which emerges a query that is more gasp than snarl. “Y-you know my name?”
The white-bearded man draws himself erect, fixes her with a stern (yet still twinkling) gaze, and replies, “To try this pride of thine on like the cloak ye make of it: know, wench, that Elminster of Shadowdale knows many, many things. I tread the worlds, and see centuries pass, towers rise and castles fall, and yet retain my smile. I mate with dragons—suitably shapechanged, of course—and live to rue that whim. I dance with liches who are bones or less, I hurl down fortresses when they stand in the way of a pleasant view, trade places with rosebushes at a lass’s call, and even pay taxes with a smile. Truly, I am… a braggard and a dolt who’s somehow managed to stay alive longer than most, by sheer luck more than any sly skill. Yes, Nathchanczia, I know thy name—as I know that of thy mother Alaice and thy father Rorold, and their parents before them, and … but ye apprehend my drift. I even know why ye’ve come to Shadowdale seeking me, but ‘twould amuse me to hear it from thy lips. With, as ye charge, appropriate begging. Or not, of course.”