The spell of flight? I have it, but gladly I'll accept yours. A true daughter of Thabrant Swordsilver to deal thus in honor. Fare you well, Caladnei, and have a good life.
Weeping, she kissed his cheek, whirled away, and fled. It took a good few teleports to reach upland Cormyr.
[Do we understand each other enough, yet?]
Yes. Damn you, yes.
[That's good. I like you, Narnra Shalace. I hope you can come to like me. But all is going dim around us because this is ... tiring. Very tiring. You've been thrashing like a hooked fish.
Caladnei, I FEEL like a hooked fish!
Up from the rushing darkness, like a fish swimming up to sunlight, up to the brightness and noise and—
Flash of silver, crash of cascading swirling water, bells and horns and bright burning . . .
Narnra found herself staring into the eyes of Caladnei—which were a deep brown-red, and royal blue at the center, she saw suddenly—and the Mage Royal was looking back at her.
They were both weeping silently, faces wet with tears, as they lay together on their sides, locked in a fierce embrace.
Over Caladnei's curves Narnra could see Laspeera and Rhau-ligan standing watchfully near, she holding a wand ready, he a drawn sword.
Trapped. Trapped and bound and cheated.
In sudden red rage Narnra tore herself free of Caladnei in a welter of shoves, slaps, and thrusting knees and hurled herself back into the air and away.
The Mage Royal's shielding spells flared into life like white flames, enshrouding Caladnei from view.
Narnra landed, rolled, and came up running. Laspeera and Rhauligan were moving—keeping between her and the doors!
She swerved away from them both, sobbing bitterly, and ran to the farthest empty corner of the chamber—where she slammed her fists against the unyielding wall until they hurt too much to go on pounding.
She sagged, forehead against a smooth and uncaring wall, and sobbed until she was empty. Empty and . . . alone.
"Well?" the Mage Royal asked softly, from behind her. "Not the usual training I give agents, but are you a mite more . . . content?"
Narnra whirled around to glare back at her. "Where's my freedom?" she snarled. "Mind-chains, you give me! What you choose to show of your past and what you want to take of mine! Content—hah!"
Caladnei's face looked as unhappy as her own. As Narna watched, a fresh tear welled out of her eye and ran down her pale cheek.
"And your choice?" the Mage Royal whispered, holding out her hand like a beseeching beggar.
Narnra looked at it and whirled to look away, breathing heavily.
What choice have I? Where in all Faerun can I run to?
What will she do to me if I refuse?
Her mind whirled an image back to her once more: that glimpse of Caladnei trembling with fear before the first portal she'd ever seen—then forcing a laugh and striding forward into its blue fire biting her own tongue in terror . . .
Caladnei, running toward a swooping wyvern with no spells left and only a broken sword in her hand, because her friends needed her . . .
Friends. Someone to laugh with. That brought a new scene: Caladnei laughing by a fire, laughing to cover her embarrassment and pain as old tuft-bearded Thloram gave her warm spiced wine and pulled back the sleeping furs to lay her bare for all to see and sew up the sword-gash she'd taken in their victory that day . . .
Thloram, lying broken and dead after a fall in the Great Rift, his jests and his comforting hands and his splendid hotspice stews gone forever in an instant. . .
She would have liked to have known Thloram.
This woman had lived so much more than she had.
Like the legends said Elminster had, and still did, after a thousand years of battles and monsters and fell wizard-foes.
It was a long, silent time before Narnra said slowly, not looking up, "I believe, Mage Royal, you've found yourself a new—and, gods curse you, loyal—agent."
Eighteen
REVELATIONS AND MISSIONS
Know thy traitors and who's the kin of whom, and that's half the deaths delayed. Averted, one more optimistic might say, but I've never been one of those. I'm the other sort of fool.
Szarpatann of Tashluta
Advice to the Doomed:
A Chapbook for Would-Be Rulers
Year of the Twelverule
In a high, narrow, and deserted hallway outside the Dragonwing Chamber, Huldyl Rauthur frowned thoughtfully. If the echoing spillover of the Mage Royal's mind-ream hadn't been wrinkling his face in pain, he'd have been grinning.
The backlash outpourings were making both the Highknight Rhauligan and Mother Laspeera herself wince. Huldyl could feel their pain, too. Between them, Caladnei and this sorceress Narnra must have minds to overmatch any twenty War Wizards of the realm combined. Mother Mystra, make that any twoscore mages of Cormyr.
So this little thief-lass was the daughter of the Great High Elmin-ster himself, eh? Small wonder Caladnei had rushed to make her an unwilling agent of the Mage Royal, a sort of "Highknight on probation." Well, well.
It would be best to tell no one, not even Starangh. Just in case Huldyl Rauthur needed something important to bargain with for his own life someday.
He'd better wait a few breaths and let everything settle down in there before knocking. Reporting the trouble at the sanctum to Laspeera was urgent, of course, but as the sayings went, prudence was prudence, and an overbold War Wizard is a swiftly dead War Wizard.
* * * * *
"Gods bless you, Narnra," Rhauligan said roughly from somewhere behind her.
They'd waited for her and kept silence while she made her choice.
Narnra drew in a deep breath, spread both of her hands on the cold wall, and pushed hard, forcing herself to turn around and face them without taking however long she might have needed to muster up enough courage.
Her choice was made, the first bend of her road ahead clear before her.