"Wait," Steorf shouted after her. "Let me accompany you home."
"Don't bother," she snarled, without turning around. "The only thing you'd need to protect me from now is my rage against you." With that, she left.
Once out in the street, Tazi leaned against a wall, raising her hand to her mouth. The tears were so close, as were a collage of memories: times she and Steorf had spent together, near captures, jaunts, and larks. All of it seemed far away now, as if they were someone else's memories. Everything she had held true was thrown back in her face. She was more alone than ever now.
Somehow she managed to stumble the short way down Sarn Street to Stormweather Towers without being seen by anyone. It would have been hard, if not impossible, to explain her appearance now, looking both like a noblewoman and thief. She moved automatically. When she entered her family home, the party finished long hours past, she dropped into the first chair she found in the darkened parlor on the main floor. It was while she was in this near comatose state that Cale, still cleaning up after the departed guests, discovered her. The sight she presented shocked him mightily.
"Thazienne," he blurted out, "what has happened to you?" The sight she presented-torn and bloody, her hair restored to its former length-shocked him into calling her by her first name.
Tazi turned glazed eyes up to his pale visage. "Oh, Erevis," she choked out. His pale, gaunt face had never seemed so dear as it did now. But a seed of doubt had taken root, as well. She caught herself before she said anything, and after a moment, she asked, "Do you have a price, Cale? Aside from what my father pays you for your loyalty and your service, do you have a price?"
Cale was silent. Something had changed the normally laughing girl into something else tonight. He was unsure of how to proceed.
"Never mind, Cale," Thazienne continued wearily. "I know you are loyal to us. But I suppose, I must be careful. You could also be loyal to someone else one day."
She turned from the stunned Cale to carefully climb the grand staircase to her rooms above. Her whole body and soul ached tonight. She wouldn't have cared if anyone had discovered her as she was this evening, but no one did. It was too late in the evening for the rest of the family and servants. She arrived at her rooms unrevealed.
Once inside, she walked to her dressing table and sank onto the cushioned chair beside it. Some part of her mind knew she would have to clean herself up, rid herself of the blood and soil, cut the long tresses that hung in her way. But she was exhausted. She found herself staring at her face in the mirror and not recognizing the woman who stared back at her. The change was more than just the blood and hair; it ran deeper than that. She found herself remembering the boy and how she had ended his life.
Moving slowly, as if underwater, she reached out with her bloody hand to touch the face in the mirror. At what cost, she asked herself quietly, is this life of mine?
The woman in the mirror remained silent.
THE SECOND SON
Through the dark boughs of the Arch Wood, Talbot Uskevren fled for his life.
Black branches slashed at his face as brambles clutched at his cloak. A hideous force snagged it from behind, snapping his head back painfully. The clasp cut into his throat before tearing away with the cloak. Tal twisted and nearly fell, but his boots dug into the slippery ground, and again he ran. He dared not look back.
The creature was almost upon him. Tal heard its labored breath, felt its massive heat radiating through the darkness. He imagined the vice of its jaws on his neck, then thrust the thought from his mind and poured all his strength into his pumping legs.
He ran toward the only beacon he could see, a bright patch of moonlit clouds at the edge of the wood. If he remembered correctly, the moonlight marked the edge of a clearing. He hoped some of the others had escaped and waited there with spears.
Just as his hopes rose, Tal smashed into a solid branch. The blow slammed him flat onto the ground, blasting the breath from his lungs. His pursuer flew overhead, narrowly missing Tal as it briefly eclipsed the moonlit clouds. The branch that clobbered Tal snapped crisply under the creature's bulk, and the thing crashed to the ground, blocking Tal's path.
Tal couldn't discern the thing's shape, but he felt its coiled energy as it tensed for the attack. Fear gripped his body, but Tal rolled away just as the creature pounced. Too slow, he cried out as claws raked his back.
Tal tried throwing himself to the right, but snarling jaws clamped his arm and shook. Tal flopped as helplessly as a rag doll in the teeth of a vicious dog. He hurtled through the darkness to smash painfully back on the cold winter ground.
As he scrabbled to his knees, another blow buffeted his head. Sparks burst in his skull, and he felt a cool wetness on his scalp. The image of his exposed brain flashed briefly through his mind, and his mouth opened wide to scream, but then he was running again, saving the breath for flight.
Tal could no longer feel his legs, and his left arm hung uselessly at his side. He ran by force of will, by force of terror. He knew the thing was inches behind him, but it was death to glance backward. Not while he was still in the grip of the deadly Arch Wood, where the owlbears were clearly not hibernating after all.
Tymora, the goddess known as Lady Luck, must have heard one of his half-formed prayers, for Tal struck no more trees before exploding out of the choking forest.
He leaped into the clearing in a rapture of hope, only to realize that Beshaba, the Maid of Misfortune, must also have heard one of those prayers, for it wasn't a clearing that lay beyond the darkness.
It was a cliff.
Tal's body turned as he plummeted, and the brief instant of his fall stretched into one long moment of perfect clarity. He saw the huge figure of his pursuer silhouetted and silvered against the moonlit clouds. It perched at the very edge of the precipice over which Tal had run, seeming to debate whether to leap down after him.
"Rusk!" called a harsh voice from behind the beast. Before Tal could see whether the thing would turn away or leap down after him, the dark ground rose up to smash him senseless.
A pixie kept beating his skull with a tiny club, so Tal reluctantly opened one gummy eye. He tried to swat the pest but managed only to poke himself in the eye. His arm was feeble, and his fingers felt thick and limp as cold sausages.
That thought made the pixie's accomplices jump with laughter from their lair in his stomach. Tal rolled to one side and vomited onto the floor.
Blinking, he peered into the thin yellow mess, expecting to see the soggy little nuisances wringing out their caps and cursing. Maybe he could squish one.
There were no pixies in his vomit, and Tal began to realize that the rhythmic pounding came from outside.
He swallowed painfully. The vile taste in his mouth was familiar. What nasty medicine had he been fed? How long had he been sleeping? With an effort, he rolled onto his back and blinked at his surroundings.
He was in an unfamiliar cottage. Of course, any mere cottage should be unfamiliar to a scion of the Uskevren family, whose Stormweather Towers was among the finest mansions of Selgaunt. Instead of the warm scent of incense, Tal smelled the earthy odor of wood smoke. Rather than rich tapestries, he saw bunches of drying herbs and clusters of garlic, onions, and a confusing variety of other roots hung from the rafters. Amid it all was a squat stone fireplace, its flames dancing upon a trio of withering logs.
Cold fresh air and thin rays of morning light swept in from under the crude wooden door and through the simple shutters. Tal took a deep, cleansing breath. Even through the sickness, it felt grand to be alive, and better still that someone other than his father had rescued him from the disastrous hunting expedition. Recovering in a woodsman's home would give him time to put a better face on the fiasco.