Кейт Новак - The Wyvern's Spur

Having fought my way through Flattery’s minions to reach Mother Lleddew, I would feel rather foolish now not asking about the spur. I have an uneasy suspicion that I may need her knowledge not only to ensure the spur’s safety but my family’s safety as well.

Giogi laid his quill down on the desk and put his head in his hands. While he shared Olive Ruskettle’s thirst for justice and had no intention of backing down on his promise to do all he could to help her, he felt uncertain that he could really bring himself to use the spur.

There had to be something bad about the artifact if Aunt Dorath believed it to be cursed. Moreover, the fact that a wizard as evil as Flattery desired its power for his own did not bode well concerning the nature of that power. Hopefully Mother Lleddew could shed light on the mystery of the spur—perhaps on Flattery as well—as soon as she recovered from her wounds sufficiently to speak.

Olive sat all alone in the dining room of Giogi’s townhouse, wolfing down tea and crumpets. Giogi was in the parlor, scribbling in his journal. Cat was still changing into something clean. And Mother Lleddew, who had shaken off her bear shape before they’d arrived home, was still resting in the guest room.

The halfling leaned back and sighed with satisfaction. After helping Mother Lleddew to her room, Olive had managed to present Giogi with a brilliant explanation for having the spur and for giving it to Cat. It was an explanation that not only concealed her own ignorance of the spur’s appearance but convinced Giogi that her motives were completely noble. Cat hadn’t seemed too pleased with her story, but it had satisfied Giogi completely.

The door to the hallway opened, and Mother Lleddew stood on the threshold. With her massive frame, thick black hair, taut muscles, and shy eyes, her human appearance was still rather bearlike. She wore only her brown shift and leather sandals, but the dirt had been brushed from them, and as a further concession to society she’d tied her mane of hair back with a ribbon.

Few people could make Giogi’s house look small the way she does, Olive thought. The priestess walked stiffly into the room, though—not as spry as she’d been when engaged in combat. It was obvious that, despite the power her were-nature granted her, Mother Lleddew was a very old woman. Her face appeared all the more drawn and haggard for the wrinkles in it, and she twitched from aches and twinges in her muscles. She could heal the injuries she’d received in battle, but she would never recover from the ravages of time.

Alerted by the sound of the priestess’s tread, Thomas bustled into the dining room from the kitchen. “Master Giogioni asks that you not wait on his account, Your Grace,” the servant said as he pulled out a chair for the priestess.

Mother Lleddew sat and held her hands in her lap until Thomas finished pouring the tea. She dolloped honey into her drink and stirred it very carefully, sneaking a look at Olive, then back at her tea without speaking.

Finally, after a fourth furtive glance, she spoke. “I’m pleased to meet you at last, Olive Ruskettle,” she said. Her voice was almost too soft to hear. “Sudacar tells me you sing a song about Selûne.”

“Um, yes,” Olive answered with surprise. “The Tears of Selûne. A friend of mine wrote it.”

“The Shard said it’s been too long since it was sung in the Realms.”

“It’s sung other places than the Realms?” Olive asked.

“Other Shards sing it for Selûne.”

“Really?” Olive’s head swam. The Harpers ban all of Nameless’s music for centuries, and the gods listen to it anyway, she thought with amusement. Nameless would be pleased to hear that. Then again, that could be just a little too much for his ego to handle.

“My friend probably wrote that song here in Immersea,” the halfling told the priestess. “He was a Wyvernspur, you see.”

Mother Lleddew held her teacup with both hands and sipped slowly, keeping her eyes on the drink. She kept glancing at Olive without speaking.

At first, the halfling thought Lleddew just couldn’t think of anything to say and wondered if she shouldn’t try to carry the conversation herself. It dawned on Olive after a few minutes, though, that Lleddew was a little like Dragonbait, the Saurial paladin. He didn’t need words to communicate and could judge people by their silences, too. So Olive just smiled and bit into another biscuit the next time she caught the priestess looking at her.

Giogi came in with Cat on his arm. He was decked out in a tabard bearing his family coat of arms, a green wyvern on a field of yellow, and the small platinum headpiece around his forehead. Cat wore a green silk gown. The gown would not lace tight enough to fit her shapely form, so the mage had wrapped a yellow sash around her waist.

The couple’s color coordination did not bode well, to Olive’s way of thinking. Giogi was letting himself in for a lot of heartache. She thought of the nobleman’s ironic insistence that he would want to know if a woman he was involved with was “not so capital.”

The mage looked happy beside the nobleman, but anyone who could take one of Flattery’s blows calmly would have to be a superior actress. Olive wondered which had more to do with Cat’s returning the spur to Giogi, his kindness and generosity or fear of returning to Flattery.

Giogi bowed very deeply to Mother Lleddew.

“Giogioni, it is good to see you,” the priestess said. “I feared once that I might never see you again.”

Giogi rose and flushed. “I regret not having come to visit you before,” he stammered.

Mother Lleddew looked curiously at Cat, the priestess’s head tilted to one side in expectation.

“Allow me to present the mage Cat of Ordulin, Your Grace,” Giogi said.

Cat curtsied low and looked up at Mother Lleddew with wide-eyed awe. Olive couldn’t help but remember how Alias thought of all priests as fools. Did Cat think differently, or was this a display for Giogi’s sake?

The priestess motioned for both young people to be seated. “How is your Aunt Dorath?” Mother Lleddew asked.

“Um, fine,” Giogi answered with some surprise. He pulled a chair out for Cat to sit, then seated himself. When he looked up again at the priestess, she still had an expectant look in her eyes, so he continued. “She’s seems overjoyed to be a great-grandaunt. She likes taking care of the baby, apparently.”

The priestess nodded. “Poor Dorath,” she whispered, looking down at her teacup.

“I didn’t know you even knew my aunt.”

“We were very close once,” Mother Lleddew said. “Her mother and I adventured together.”

“Great-grandmother Eswip was an adventurer?” Giogi gasped.

“Oh, yes. Perhaps, Master Giogioni, I should start my tale in the middle. The beginning is very interesting, and just as sad, but it is the middle and the end of the tale that Flattery does not wish you to know. He has nearly exhausted his forces of undead trying to keep you from meeting with me. Now that we have overcome those obstacles, I should tell my tale without further delay.”

“You know about Flattery?” Giogi asked.

“Not just about him, Giogioni. I know him. I watched him kill your father.”

Giogi turned pale and clenched his fists. Cat looked numb.

Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me in the least, Olive thought, remembering the scorched portrait in the carriage house, and how Flattery had screamed, “Curse them all!” meaning all Wyvernspurs.

Since no one spoke, Mother Lleddew began the middle of her tale. “When your father first learned he could use the power of the spur,” she said, “he announced to me his intention to go adventuring to find a fortune that would finish the temple his grandmother and I had begun. I was too old by then to go tramping about the countryside bashing monsters, but Cole would go whether I joined him or not, and for the love I had for his grandmother, I agreed to accompany him. I thought I would be keeping him from harm.” Lleddew chuckled at the irony of her intentions.