“I don’t know exactly,” Giogi said. “I haven’t seen her since I was a boy. My parents took me up to the temple a few times to have tea with her. After my parents died, Uncle Drone only took me up there to watch eclipses, and then there were so many people there that I never really got to see much of her. When I got sick or hurt, Aunt Dorath took me to the shrine of Chauntea. I think Aunt Dorath disapproves of Selûne, but I don’t know why.
“Anyway, from what I remember, Mother Lleddew was a big woman, older than Aunt Dorath, with shaggy black hair and funny brown eyes. Her temple is all open, just pillars and a floor and a roof. I never figured out where she lived. When we came for tea, my parents and I, it was more like a picnic. We’d sit in the surrounding meadow beside a little fire. Mother Lleddew would serve berries and fresh herb teas.
“There’s a silver bell you ring, and she shows up. Mischievous kids used to sneak up the hill, ring the bell, and run off, watching from the woods, but she always seemed to know when it was a practical joke, and never showed up.”
“Any of those mischievous kids used to live at Redstone?” Olive asked.
Giogi grinned. “Some of them. According to Sudacar, Lleddew adventured with my father, but she never travels anymore. Frefford said he tried to get her to go down to Suzail to officiate at his wedding, but she wouldn’t leave the temple.”
“There was a priestess of Selûne at the wedding, though,” Olive recalled.
Giogi nodded. “She was someone from Suzail. Couldn’t have a Wyvernspur wedding without Selûne’s blessing. Paton Wyvernspur—our family’s founder—was said to be favored by her.”
They reached the intersection of the two main roads that ran through Immersea. Giogi steered the horses west and had to slow the carriage for the tradesmen, teamsters, and fishmongers who crowded the streets.
“Mistress Ruskettle, could I ask your advice on something?” the noble asked.
“Never play dice with anyone named High-Roll,” Olive said.
“Pardon?”
“Just a little joke. Sorry. Of course, Master Giogioni. Please feel free to confide in me at any time.”
“Well, if you had someone who was a friend, not someone you knew really well but someone you thought was a capital fellow, and he became involved with someone else who you thought might not be so capital but who was a member of your family, for instance, do you think you would tell the capital fellow?”
“No,” Olive replied at once.
“No?” Giogi asked.
“No,” Olive repeated.
“But, I mean, maybe he would want to know. I would want to know.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Olive said, thinking of Cat and Flattery.
“Yes, I would.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Believe me. As for telling Samtavan Sudacar that you think your Cousin Julia is a schemer, I think you should butt out.”
Giogi stared at Olive as if she’d just sprouted wings. “How did you know? What are you? Some kind of mind reader?”
Olive laughed. “No, just a student of human nature. Men never want to hear anything bad about women they think they’re in love with. Period. Besides, Sudacar seems to be a good influence on her.”
“You don’t know, though—Steele wants to find the spur first so that he can keep it for himself, and Julia’s already done something that wasn’t very nice to help him.”
“Does Steele have anything to hold over her?” Olive asked, already knowing the answer.
“Just his bullying,” Giogi said.
“What about money?” Olive suggested. “Halfling sons and daughters inherit equally in their parents property, but you Cormyrian nobles have this barbarous practice of cheating your daughters out of their inheritance by marrying them off with a pittance of a dowry.”
“Julia’s father left her a very large dowry,” Giogi objected.
“And she can just hand this dowry over to any husband she chooses?” Olive asked.
“Well, no. As her older brother, Steele would have to approve—” Giogi broke off, finally getting the gist of Olive’s argument. “And Steele doesn’t care for Sudacar,” he recalled aloud. “But Sudacar wouldn’t care if Julia had a dowry or not,” Giogi insisted. “He’s not that kind of man.”
“So certain of that, are you?” Olive said, finding it hard to believe that any man would be just as happy with a poor wife as a rich one. Humans had such romantic notions. “That’s not the point, though, Master Giogioni,” Olive explained. “It would matter to Julia. She’d be too proud to go into a marriage penniless. Most women would be.”
“That shouldn’t matter if she’s really in love,” Giogi said.
“Ever been penniless, Master Giogioni?” Olive asked.
“Um, well, no,” Giogi admitted.
“Now, some women, myself for instance, know that their worth has nothing to do with money. I don’t suspect anyone has ever told that to your Cousin Julia, though. Certainly not her brother.”
Giogi considered Olive’s words silently for a few minutes. Finally, he said, “You must be awfully wise, Mistress Ruskettle.”
“Just experienced,” Olive replied.
If only I’d been turned into an ass earlier and had witnessed the theft of the spur, the halfling thought, he’d be proclaiming me Cormyr’s greatest sage.
Giogi passed his townhouse and continued west out of town.
“Isn’t the town graveyard out this way?” Olive asked.
“Yes, but we turn off before then. The temple road is that one on our left, just up ahead.”
Olive’s eyes followed the temple road’s progress south through fields of winter wheat, to the base of a high tree-ringed hill, where it began its ascent, winding to the west. Olive squinted in the sunshine at the cleared hilltop. She could just make out a blob of white that might be the temple. One lone cloud, an ominous shade of gray, hung in the sky to the east of the hill’s peak—a blot on an otherwise perfect picture.
Giogi turned the carriage off the cobbled main road and onto the muddy temple road. The wheels sank a few inches into the mire, but not so deep that the horses were unable to cope. Once they entered the woods and reached the hill’s slope, the going got even slower. The forest around them grew dark. Olive craned her neck to look up at the sky. The lone cloud she’d noticed before was now overhead, visible through the barely budding branches.
A large black bird swooped down from the cloud and disappeared behind the tree line, on their uphill side. Toward the temple.
“What was that?” Olive asked.
“What was what?” Giogi asked.
“There,” Olive said, pointing up to the cloud as a second dark shape plummeted earthward. There’s another, and another—a flock of somethings.”
“I’ve never seen anything like them before, “Giogi admitted, squinting at the creatures far overhead. “They all seem to be carrying something.”
“Maybe Mother Lleddew trains giant crows or bats or something,” Olive muttered.
Trees overhanging the road obscured their line of sight until they reached the high stone bridge crossing the Immer Stream. The woods were thinner along the stream bed, and now Olive could make out the pillars and roof of the House of the Lady, above the cascading waters. The hill was entirely shaded by the lone cloud, so that, despite the afternoon sunshine, it was as dark as twilight.
Olive could just make out several shadowy figures surrounding the temple, milling about in the meadow around it.
“Could those be people arriving extra early for the memorial service?” the halfling asked Giogi.
“Maybe,” the nobleman replied uncertainly.
Once across the bridge, the road became firmer and the trees thicker, and human and halfling lost sight of the hilltop again. On the hillside above them, something large rustled and snapped through the undergrowth. Olive kept her eyes wide, expecting a deer or bear to come bounding across the road.