This was the first discernible picture Gnarfling had ever seen on Ursault's loom. For some reason that worried him. So did the intense expression on the wizard's face as he tossed colors haphazardly into the pattern, only to have them swallowed by the strange, shadowy void that separated and defined the silvery Weave.
In short order a small tapestry hung on the loom. Ursault studied the weaving intently, and Gnarfling studied Ursault.
"You see something, don't you?"
"Everything," the wizard responded again in wondering tones. "Everything."
The response was familiar, but there was a new note in his voice, something that sent tiny fingers of cold dancing down Gnarfling's spine.
After a moment, Ursault moved one hand in a flowing circular pattern. The unseen colors shifted, and a man's face took form in a gap between the glowing silver threads, a face depicted with precision and clarity that the best of Ashtarahh's weavers could not match.
The man was young and exceedingly lean. His high, sharp cheekbones leaned precariously over the deep hollows below, and the thin black mustache on his upper lip looked as tremulous and impermanent as a perching moth. His face was exceedingly pale for a Halruaan, and a sharp contrast to the feverish brightness of his black eyes.
"Trouble coming," muttered Gnarfling. He was well acquainted with trouble and plenty familiar with wizards-which, to his way of thinking, were two words for the same thing. "When?"
In response, Ursault merely shifted his gaze from the loom to the market square.
The square was filling rapidly. Visiting merchants strolled along the paths, eyeing the tapestries and sampling bits of cheese. The trundle of carts over the corduroy filled the air with a pleasant rumble. Already two of these carts had been hauled off the path to languish by the wheelwright's shop, listing heavily over shattered wheels. A young man stood by one of them, arguing with the apprentices and punctuating his complaints with overly dramatic gestures.
Gnarfling's eyes went straight to a thin young man, narrowing as they took in the too familiar theatrics. The newcomer didn't have the look of a merchant or artisan. He was tall and thin, not much past twenty summers, and obviously possessed more money than sense. He traveled alone in an expensive covered cart drawn by matched horses. His emaciated form was draped with fine robes of purple-trimmed black, and jewels flashed on his gesticulating hands. All of these things fairly screamed "wizard."
Even without the trappings, there was an intensity about the newcomer that suggested magic, yet Gnarfling could sense no hint of Mystra's Art about the young man. His nose for such things was as keen as any hound's, and, more to the point, as keen as any magehound's. These instincts, and the permanent disguise offered by his stunted form, had kept him alive for over thirty winters.
Why then, he wondered, was he so uneasy?
"He's looking for you," Ursault said, as mildly and as matter-of-factly as if his companion had spoken aloud, "that's why."
The small man shot to his feet as if he'd just sat on a hedgehog. The sudden movement seemed to draw the newcomer's eyes. Recognition flared in his strangely burning gaze, and for a moment Gnarfling stared into the youth's face like a hare mesmerized by a hawk.
Then, suddenly, the young man was standing directly in front of Ursault's stall.
Gnarfling blinked once in surprise, and a few times more to adjust his vision. He instinctively sniffed for the scent of magic, but all he smelled on the newcomer was the cumulative effect of several days on the road: the faint odor of wet cashmere, the musty stench of dirty clothes, and a perfume that smelled of dangerous herbs and pending lightning-a scent no doubt meant to mask the other, more mundane smells.
"I am Landish the Adept," the young man announced grandly.
Gnarfling collected himself and folded his stubby arms. "Good for you. Me, I got no business with the outlandish or the inept. You want I should ask around, and see if someone else might?"
Pure fury simmered in the man's intense gaze, a rage out of scale with the small insult. "Are you certain you have no business with me?" he said meaningfully. "Absolutely certain? Tell me, jordain, what am I?"
A small sizzle of panic raced through Gnarfling, quickly mastered. Surely this revelation was nothing new to Ursault the All-Seeing, and no one else was close enough to hear the damning secret.
"What are you?" he echoed scornfully. "The back end of an ox, so far as I can tell."
The man's eyes narrowed. " 'Outlandish and inept,'" he repeated. "A strange choice of words for someone who purports to be an itinerate field hand."
Gnarfling stared for a moment, then his shoulders rose and fell in a profound sigh.
"You're a magehound," he said in disgust. "Well, even a slow and stupid hound sometimes blunders into a vhoricock's nest."
"A jordaini proverb," Landish said smugly, clearly enjoying himself. "You should guard your words more carefully."
"Don't see what harm it could do at this point. A magehound," Gnarfling repeated in disgust.
"No," stated Ursault.
There was a conviction in that single word that dismissed all other possibilities. Gnarfling sent a puzzled look at the wizard, and was astonished at the simmering wrath in the old man's usually vague, mild eyes.
"Mirabella," Ursault said grimly.
The small man's heart seemed to leap in his chest like a breaching dolphin. Mirabella was the woman who'd saved an outcast jordaini babe, one whose stunted form was deemed unsuitable for the rigorous physical training given Halruaa's warrior-sages. But there was nothing wrong with his mind, and the soft-hearted midwife charged with his destruction knew enough of jordaini ways to give him a bit of the training, enough to keep him alert and alive-until now, at least.
Landish's gaze snapped to the wizard's face and for a moment he looked deeply troubled. His face cleared.
"Ah. A diviner, I suppose. You see the results of my work, if not the actual workings."
"Your work? What'd you do with Mirabella?" roared Gnarfling.
He threw himself into a charge, his stubby hands leaping like twin hounds for the man's skinny throat.
Then he stopped, stunned by the white, leprous growth that had appeared on his short digits. As he stared, the small finger on his left hand listed to one side, then broke off entirely and fell to the muddy ground.
"That," Landish said succinctly. "She won't be missed. Just as you won't be missed."
"Mirabella is not yet dead," Ursault said as he rose to his feet. "She may not die. The old speckled hen, the one destined for the soup pot, is going to lay her first egg since the last new moon. If she lays it in the hencoop, Mirabella will die. If the hen ventures into the gardens, a tamed hunting kestrel will see her and swoop. This will draw the eye of a passing hunting party. They will follow their hawk and find Mirabella. The hunter has a terrible fear of the plague. If he is the first to see the woman, he will flee in panic and the others will follow, never knowing what he saw. But if his horse throws a shoe-there is a loose nail and the shoe could be lost any time today or tomorrow-his greenmage daughter will be the first to find Mirabella. She can mix the herbs and pray the spells that will cure the woman. The herbs grow near Mirabella's cottage. She may find them, provided that-"
"Enough!" howled Landish, his dark eyes enormous in his too-pale face. "What madness is this?"
"He's mad, that's for sure and certain," Gnarlish said, jerking a leprous thumb toward Ursault, "but that don't stop him from being right. His way of telling the future is like throwing a really big fireball-the target can be found somewhere in the big, smoking black hole. If there's anyone left to look for it."