"How may I help you?" she asked.
"We'd like to give you this flower," said the girl, hold-ing forth a blossom as brilliantly blue as a civic guards-man's drawers.
"And what do you wish in exchange?"
The girl's face fell as if Zaranda had said something cruel. But her companion laughed a musical laugh. Like the girl, he wore a plain gold torque around his neck.
"You needn't speak that way," he said. "There's no necessity for payment. Please, lady, accept it as our love-offering."
"I've often found," Zaranda said, "that things called free often cost the dearest." But she suffered the white-clad girl to fasten the flower behind her ear.
"There," the girl said, stepping back with a smile. "You are even lovelier than before."
"Who are you people?" Zaranda asked.
"We are All-Friends," the boy said. "We serve and worship Ao the Universal."
"Ao?" Zaranda repeated, thunderstruck.
"We house the homeless and feed the hungry and go abroad spreading the message of Ao's universal love," the boy said.
"If you feel you must, you may make a contribution to our ministry," said the girl. "But we work and pray for a day when the needs of all are met by sharing, and no longer is there talk of buying and selling."
11
"I take it you've not heard of Armenides, then?" the old gnome said.
"No." Zaranda stood on tiptoe to study her reflection in an ancient warrior's mirror-polished basilisk-hunting shield, hung on the wall of the cluttered shop. "The flower looks good on me, does it not?"
"It does," the gnome agreed, blowing smoke from his pipe. He was dressed in a simple gown of emerald-green silk, with a stand-up black collar on which were embroidered dragons rampant in gold. He smoked a long, thin clay pipe. All his hair was white, including both of his bushy eyebrows, which was a pity, since it left no apparent sense to his name, White Eyebrow. In fact, when all his hair was black, his right eyebrow had been turned snowy-white by a brush with magic. "And the flower allows me to glimpse Zaranda Star's vanity, hitherto unsuspected."
She laughed without self-consciousness, examined herself a moment longer. "I'm vain enough," she said. "I can't always afford to indulge it, that's all."
She turned and propped her rump on a table in the clear space beside an ormolu clock. She paid it only cur-sory attention; though it was like nothing else she had seen on Toril, it was standard fare for the Curiosity Shop. Though White Eyebrow was no magician and scrupulously avoided trafficking in magic items, he culti-vated extensive contacts among the better-intentioned of those who plied the dimensions in spelljamming ships. After all, to impress an inhabitant of Faerun as a curios-ity, an object had to be curious indeed.
"So why this sudden fad for Ao?" she asked. "He's the preeminent god, I know, maybe the god the gods wor-ship. But we mortals would be as well off venerating a tree stump, for all the interest he takes in us.
He per-forms no miracles; he conveys no powers upon his priests."
White Eyebrow raised a scholarly finger. "And thus the tale leads us to Armenides the Compassionate, or the Pure, as he is sometimes called. He is spiritual ad-visor to our young Baron Hardisty. He came to Zazesspur a twelvemonth ago, claiming to bring a new dispensation from Ao. Ao has decided to take a more ac-tive role in the affairs of this world, Armenides avers. And he seems to have invested certain followers with the usual array of priestly powers."
"These All-Friends are priests of Ao, then?"
"Indeed not. Merely devotees who do good works in the god's name. Drawn from among the children of Zazesspur's first families, by and large, which I find good in and of itself. It gives the spoiled darlings some-thing to occupy themselves with beyond their own self-ish pleasure. But here, I forgot my manners." He hobbled to the rear of the shop, where despite the day's warmth he kept coals aglow in a small black brazier.
"I regret your loss, Zaranda," he said, setting a grille on the brazier and putting a copper kettle on to boil. "Yet perhaps it would be no bad thing, were magic ban-ished from Zazesspur. It has brought much sorrow to the world. Perhaps it is best put away or reserved to wiser hands."
Zaranda frowned. Here was the heartmeat of a debate she and her old friend had often held before.
"Put away all magic?" she contented herself with saying. "On a world such as Faerun? Easier to put away air."
He laughed. He had a merry, ready laugh, and round cheeks like apples tied up in the laugh lines of his face. "Our old dispute rears its head again. Some things never change, or do so but slowly." Turning from the kettle, he puffed his pipe and blew three smoke rings of descending size. The middle one drifted upward through the largest, and then the smaller floated up through both so their order was reversed.
"I wish I knew how you did that," Zaranda said.
"First you have to smoke," White Eyebrow said, "pipeweed or this new Maztican herb, tobacco. Plus it helps to have a gnome's lifespan to practice over." He puffed again, more conventionally.
"What of this Baron Hardisty? Is he the same Fa-neuil Hardisty who fought as a captain in the Tuigan War?"
The gnome nodded. "Just so."
Zaranda looked thoughtful. "He was a good man in those days. A brave warrior, though perhaps too much inclined to trust in bravery and luck."
"Why do you say was? He seems a good man still. He refuses a seat on the city council, and so holds himself above the infighting that disfigures the politics of this city. Many people are heard to say he's just what the city needs—aye, and Tethyr as well. A strong man to take it all in hand again."
He laughed and shook his head. "I see you looking skeptical, Zaranda. Ever the rebel! Authority is not
al-ways the monster you believe it to be."
There came a rustle from the rear of the shop, and a musical tinkling. A gnome woman came through the hanging strands of silver bells that covered the door-way to the back rooms and the stair to the apartment above. She was small and slim by gnomish standards, and beautiful by the standards of human and gnome alike, though they did not often overlap. Her raven's-wing hair was parted in the middle and confined by a circlet of silver, on the front of which was fixed a tiny toothed wheel. She wore a saffron robe, and the brown sash around her narrow waist bulged as if packed with small hard objects of various shapes, marking her as a priestess of Gond Wonderbringer.
"Ah!" White Eyebrow said cheerfully. "The pot's just begun to whistle. Perhaps you could make tea for us, Simonne."
The gnome woman looked at him a moment, then moved to obey. "Greetings, Zaranda Star."
"Simonne!" Zaranda exclaimed. "It's good to see you. The last time we met you were scarcely more than a child."
"She's no more than a child still," the old gnome said, frowning slightly, "though she has given herself much to the doings of this new sect of Gond Thunderblunder, or whatever he is called, who seek to better the world by tinkering with it."
"We hope to make the world better by gaining knowl-edge of it," Simonne said, pouring tea into dainty porce-lain cups with flowers painted on them. "We don't presume to tinker with that of which we know too little; that's why we seek knowledge. And surely nothing is gained by turning our faces from the truth!"
She distributed the cups from a tray. "Our folk are pressed hard. You who have long been our friend should be warned that you'll do yourself no good in this city by associating with us."
"That's strange news indeed," Zaranda said, sipping, "for though it has its share of vices, Zazesspur has never been an intolerant place."
"There is some new evil that invades our dreams and robs us of our sleep. Many blame us for that—not to mention more earthly ills."