Victor Milan - War In Tethys

Life was so much simpler when I was a mere war-rior, with nothing to trouble myself over save whom I might next have to swing my sword against.... As soon as she thought it, she knew it was a lie, and faintly ridiculous; the way of the sword, whether as adven-turer, mercenary, or even successful war leader against the nomad Tuigan, was far from carefree. Someone, possibly resident of another world, plane, or even time—Faerun being uncommonly porous to artifacts, ideas, and even visitors from such places—had once described life as hours of boredom interspersed with mo-ments of sheer terror.

That expressed it rather well. Yet she knew that wasn't full truth either. The warrior's life had its re-wards. Battle was terrifying, but it was also exhilarat-ing, filled with wild freedom and fury difficult to capture elsewhere. That was why Zaranda had not en-tirely forgone the sword when she made the latest change in her life and career—that and the fact that the world was, after all, a risky sort of place.

The truth, Zaranda, she told herself, is that you got bored with the life and decided to settle down. And look how that's turned out.

"I can help," the head intoned. Its eyes flashed a be-guiling yellow.

Zaranda glanced at it in irritation. It was her prefer-ence to sleep unclothed, a fondness she found impracti-cal to indulge on the trail amid an exclusively male contingent of caravan guards and muleteers, and she had been looking forward to that luxury tonight in her own bed in her own secure keep. Now it occurred to her that she was hardly prepared to disrobe with that thing staring unblinking at her from her chest of drawers, which was ornamented with grinning goblin heads carved in bold relief.

"Be silent," she told the head, "or I'll put you back in your chest."

She had ordered the chests containing the truly power-ful magic items conveyed to her chamber for security. Per-haps the rarest, most powerful, and most nearly priceless of all was the brazen head. The product of a mage whose bones had long decayed to dust and scattered on the winds a dragon's age ago, before Elminster was more than a gleam in his father's eye, the head was the bust of a man acerbly handsome, with a scholar's brow and an ascetic's narrow, bearded face. Unfortunately, it had also a satyr's sensibilities, which was why Zaranda was going to be sleeping in her nightgown tonight.

Aside from lips and eyelids, which worked on clev-erly crafted hinges, the head's cast-bronze face was im-mobile. Nonetheless it managed to convey both injured innocence and invitation.

"You have been good to me," it crooned. "Far more congenial than my previous masters for millennia—not to mention easier on the eyes. I would help you. I offer you secrets."

" 'Secrets,' " Zaranda echoed in disgust. Statue it might have been, but the head was palpably alive, aware of self and surroundings. Zaranda had found herself unable to bear the thought of the thing riding in claustrophobic darkness for weeks without end, so she took it out discreetly whenever she could. And look where your soft heart gets you, she upbraided herself.

"Secrets," the head repeated eagerly. "Secrets of the ancients. Secrets of sorcery long forgotten. The arts mantic, necromantic, or just plain romantic, if that's what you prefer."

"No," Zaranda said. She sat at her dresser, unwound her hair from its braid, let it hang unbound down her back as she brushed it out.

"Come now," the head said. "Any mage alive would kill to know such secrets as I hold within this bronze conk."

"Not me."

"You could gain great power."

"Power doesn't interest me."

"Wealth beyond imagining."

Zaranda grimaced. "At what cost?"

"I hardly expected to find such small-souled niggling within you, Zaranda Star. This merchant life has smirched your soul."

"At least I still have my soul."

"I cannot help noticing," the head said in gilded tones that reminded her uncomfortably—in several ways—of Farlorn, "that for a woman of such striking handsome-ness you spend an uncommon percentage of your nights alone. All of them, in my limited observation—not to put too fine an edge upon it."

She let that pass and brushed her hair with redou-bled vigor.

"You could win the hearts of handsome princes."

"I've done that," she said tightly. She laid the brush down with exaggerated care to keep from smashing it against the dresser. "I've never needed magic, either. And princes aren't worth the bother. Too full of them-selves, expecting every whim to be instantly obeyed."

"Ah, but with the lore I can impart, they would live only to obey your every whim."

"If I wanted a pet," she said, rising, "I'd buy a dog. Good night."

The head tut-tutted. "Zaranda, Zaranda. Doesn't your curiosity tempt you, most of all?"

She sat on the edge of her bed, which had four spiral-carved oaken posts upholding a fringed silk canopy. It was booty from a Tuigan hetman, who had himself looted it from Oghma-knew-where. It was rather ludi-crous, but it secretly tickled Zaranda to have it.

"Yes," she admitted. "For example, if you know such secrets of ultimate potency, why don't the Red Wizards of Thay rule all Faerun? They're eager enough to do so."

"Ahh," the head said again. Had it an arm, Zaranda got the strong impression it would have laid one finger along its aquiline nose. "They were unworthy to wield such power. So I answered their queries in riddles until they grew tired of me and shut me up in a dusty, dreary warehouse." It sighed. "The sacrifices I make to main-tain the world's balance."

Zaranda sat regarding the head in the yellow candlelight. That was one of the legends that led her to Thay, whispers of a brazen head of immeasurable antiquity and knowledge, whose most recent possessors had been unable to wring any sense from it. Exasperated, they had left it on a shelf a hundred years or so and forgot about it. It had thus become available to anyone with sufficient enterprise, not to mention foolhardy courage. Along came Zaranda and her hardy band.

Once they had reached comparative safety outside Thay, Father Pelletyr had performed divinations on the head. Its nature was so arcane that the cleric had been able to learn little of it, other than that it was definitely not evil in nature, which was the thing Zaranda had been hoping to learn. There was enough unbridled evil in the world, and she didn't care to add to it. Neither did she want to have gone to such hair-raising lengths to obtain the head only to have to cast it into the Inner Sea. But all that left her with more than a slight suspi-cion that all the bronze skull truly contained was be-guiling badinage, that the head was nothing more than a practical joke, a long-dead mage's monument to him-self in the form of a last enduring laugh.

"Good night," Zaranda said again, and stretched her-self out on the bed. Its softness, just firm enough to avoid bogginess, enveloped her like an angel's embrace. She sighed with pleasure. Not for her was Stillhawk's notion that the best bed was hard ground.

"But you're a magician," the head almost whined. "I can teach you spells beyond imagining."

"I gave that up. Thank you. Good night."

"Don't you feel like taking your gown off? It's fear-fully stuffy in here."

For answer Zaranda rolled on her side, facing away from the head, and pulled the counterpane, which had been part of the Tuigan chieftain's trove and was inex-plicably covered with embroidered elks and penguins, to her chin.

"Surely you are not by nature so grim and cheerless, Zaranda Star."

"No," she said. "I'm not. Good night." And she ges-tured out the candles.

The tower of Gold Keep was still visible away up the valley behind them, shining like its namesake in the morning sun, when Vander Stillhawk turned the head of his blood bay back and signed to the column behind him, Smell smoke.