“I’m what?”
“Teasing him mercilessly, I believe I said,” Storm replied with impish calm.
Dove’s magic might have been weaker than that of her two younger sisters, but there was nothing wrong with her wits. Her eyes scarcely had time to narrow before she spat, “Laeral! She’s wearing my shape again, the little witch!”
She rolled over in midair so suddenly that the magic of The Place dropped her an armlength closer to its old stones, and added crossly, “I wish she’d stop that!”
“Ah,” Storm replied, smiling up at the high-riding moon, “like Uncle El wishes you wouldn’t come here?”
“Uncle El can thrust his pipe where he’ll feel its heat—and stuff the end of his beard in after it!” Dove snarled savagely, hurling herself out of the magic of The Place to strike the dead leaves and moss underfoot at full and angry barefoot stride. “I have plans for Andur Marlestur!”
Storm chuckled and said merrily to her older sister’s dwindling back, “Now fancy that. I daresay he has plans for you, too.”
“Little bitch!” Dove snarled, by way of greeting. Her eyes leaked silver sparks that eddied through her writhing hair, a sure sign of rage. At least, the Dove crashing through the trees looked that furious.
The Dove who wore nothing but torn and much-patched forester’s breeches and the ardently cradling young arms of Lord Andur Marlestur looked surprised—and a trifle alarmed.
A moment earlier, she’d been lifting her lips to those of the local lordling, the smooth swell of her front brushing velvet-soft against him, but now—…
Now she was suddenly hoping Uncle El would reappear.
For his part, Andur was looking down at her in horror and shame, wondering just who he was holding, if ‘twasn’t his Dove.
The voice of his beloved—the furious Dove who’d just arrived—rose in a swift, angry chant somewhere behind his shoulder, and Andur thrust the shapely softness in his arms away in fear and scrambled for the trees, fleeing blindly into the night with an unhappy cry.
Bright blue lightning lanced the night behind him, and Andur flung himself facedown into brambles with a shriek of terror.
“You bitch! You meddling little bitch!” Dove snarled, as her bolt struck the warding Uncle El had woven around Laeral and splashed harmlessly away, its only effect being to snatch away her youngest sister’s spell-spun disguise and reveal Laeral’s true looks to all moonlit Faerun around them.
Laeral shrugged, spread her hands, and pouted, “I was merely having a little fun—and doing you the service, I might add, of showing you just what Lord High and Mighty Marlestur is really after!”
Dove pounced, hands raised to rake and claw, but Laeral laughed and was—elsewhere. Standing halfway across the cottage glade in a whirl of spell-sparks, to be precise.
Her eldest sister glowered at her and snapped, “I know quite well what Andur is after, Laer—and it’s not cuddling with a fifteen-year-old who’s mastered only one thing in her short, twisted life thus far: playing cruel pranks!”
Seething, she whirled and plunged into the forest where Andur Marlestur had fled, bent branches dancing in her wake.
After a moment, Laeral shrugged and strolled over to retrieve the jerkin Andur had so fumblingly undone and drawn aside, a few breaths ago. Holding it up before her, she indulged in a single, brief giggle.
“That was cruel, Laer,” Storm said, from behind her.
Laeral turned around with a shrug that was almost angry. “So? Dove spends all her time defying Uncle El, being all sorts of cruel to him—and he’s everything to us! Our cook, our washerwoman, our seamstress, our woodcutter…”
Storm sighed. “Yes, but… well, I don’t like being told not to do things, either. And Uncle El tells us not to do so many things.”
Laeral shook her head in disgust. “And like Dove, you fall into his trap of defiantly rushing to do those forbidden things, just as he intended you to. For all your superior we’re-so-grown-up airs, the two of you are pretty stump-headed most of the time.”
Storm and Laeral were both angry now, standing almost nose-to-nose in the moonlight, their silver tresses stirring about their shoulders like annoyed snakes. Wherefore neither of them noticed the man they called their uncle, grinning to himself behind the nearest clump of thornbushes.
They were handfuls, these three—and the gods had, after all, only given him two hands. But sometimes they also provided delightful entertainment. Though poor young Andur probably didn’t think so, just now…
* * * * *
The dark woods were full of thorns and jabbing branches, and it wasn’t long before a panting, exhausted Andur Marlestur, Lord of Tharnwood, was utterly lost.
Lost and in much pain, sliced where he hadn’t been jabbed, bruised from precipitous falls down unseen banks onto unexpected stones, Andur groaned and gulped air and staggered frantically on. Something was crashing through the trees far behind him, and that brought cold fear up into his throat, almost strangling him. He had to get out of the forest, had to find the familiar tower of Tharnw—.
There was moonlight ahead of him, and an open area. Thankfully he thrust his way forward through crackling branches, and almost fell onto— the smooth stones of some old, vanished ruin. A tall woman with nightdark hair and darker eyes stood at their heart, bare and beautiful, awaiting him with a cold and hungry smile.
“There you are, Lord Marlestur,” she said, reaching out a welcoming hand.
Andur stared at her in disbelief, eyes caught by her smile and her—her… She stood proudly, smooth ivory skin glowing in the moonlight, and he stared.
“Yes,” she whispered softly, turning her head aside almost demurely. “What I can give is yours …”
Andur’s clumsy feet stumbled then and brought him staggering out onto the stones—and in a trice an arm was around him, soft flesh was pressed against him—and an icy fang was slicing through his throat.
The priestess held him firmly against herself as he gouted blood—Shar Above, so muck blood!—trembled, spasmed, and died.
Then Vrasabra the Anointed allowed the Devourer within her to manifest just enough to let many mouths swim up from beneath her flesh and suck. Their long tongues licked away all traces of Andur Marlestur’s gore before she let his body slump to the stones where magic went wild, and betook herself and her newly-cleaned dagger away.
Keeping the Devourer from stretching forth jaws to rend and bite down required all her strength, and she gasped and staggered as badly as Andur had done as she got herself back into the trees. But a Priestess of the Night is trained to be strong—and Vrasabra was a very good Priestess of the Night.
Andur Marlestur’s body must be intact enough to be recognized by the lass who daily dallied with him, for the lure to work.
And by all the Holy Darkness of Shar herself, the lure would work.
* * * * *
“Andur? Andur!”
There was nothing wrong with Dove’s night-sight, and she’d seen death before. Andur Marlestur was still warm, his wide eyes staring forever up at the moon in astonishment, his mouth slack and… bloodless. But how, in so few breaths, could— then, kneeling with the lad she might have loved in her arms, Ambara Dove saw the ragged slash across his throat, heard faint rustlings in the trees all around her… and knew the who, if not the how.
Tears made the moonlight so many shimmering stars, but through them she could see the men with knives—a dozen of them, and more. Hard of face and eye and dark-clad, they drew swiftly apart to surround her, forming a ring around the stones of The Place.
In a flare of heartfelt fury Dove lashed them with fire—or tried to. Her magic went wild, of course, becoming sparks that boiled up into bell-clear tones, a mocking music that drifted harmlessly into the trees and left the men in dark leathers grinning at her.