All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [92]
"Forced to rely on Lady Luck," the seneschal put in from the end of the table. "I've heard the litany a time or two before you were born, good Dathtor!"
The priest turned his red face around slowly to fix Hawklan with a bright-eyed gaze. "Then you should know e'en better than I that 'tis true!"
"I know no such thing," Hawklan said firmly. "I am a simple soldier; I swing my sword, obey orders to the letter, and let others worry about causes and outcomes and grand strategies."
"And on your off days, you drink too much and wench too much-beg pardon, Lady-and let life carry you on, on to the grave without disruption or excitement," Loth Shentle said.
"A summation that sounds familiar, Nephew?" Lord Thael said meaningfully. Oburglan flushed.
"No, Uncle! I mean-" his eyes darted to Storm, then back to Thael with an almost pleading look.
"Don't embarrass me in front of the lady, Uncle?" Storm asked the youth. "Is that what you want to say, but dare not find the words?"
Oburglan stared at her, opened his mouth, and shut it again, turning ruby to the tips of his ears.
"Oburglan," Storm said, setting down her goblet to lean forward, "never be embarrassed to admit truth, or think and talk about life, in front of anyone. I'd be more embarrassed to He about my life or refuse to admit that things are as they are. I'm not upset to learn that you're drifting the days away here-it's not my life wasting away. If you're upset talking about it, that shows you're not satisfied in doing so, and that's gods-be-damned good."
Heads turned along the table at her language, but Storm kept her eyes locked on Oburglan's. "What you'd best do, when we're all gone, is take a walk in that beautiful garden out there with your uncle, and talk about what you want to do in life. Not to do what he says, but to decide for yourself. We all have to, sooner or later. If it makes you feel better to hear it, I'd passed away almost seventy years before I stopped my wild, witless pursuit of fun and started wondering what I wanted to do for myself."
Oburglan gulped. "Seventy years?" he said faintly. "I didn't know there was that much fun."
The table roared with laughter once more. When Lord Thael could speak again, he slapped Oburglan's arm, "Well said!" He turned to Storm and added quietly, "And very well said, Lady. I don't think I've a tongue nimble enough to thank you rightly for saying those words. Fve never heard it said better, in all my… er, sixty-eight years."
Storm smiled at him. "Shall I come back in two years to ask you what you've decided to do with your life?"
There were uneasy chuckles around the table, and Thael shook his head with a rueful smile. "I'd forgotten that the tongue can be sharper than a sword."
"I think you have the quotation wrong, Lord," the priest offered jestingly, but Storm turned on him with a smile.
"What, Hand of Tymora? You stand in service to a goddess and don't know for yourself the truth of that maxim? Truly, you must be a very good priest! All the clergy I know would much rather face the swords of foes than the lashing tongues of their superiors!"
Dathtor Vaeldeir winced. "I begin to see the truth of another maxim, Lords and Lady: 'If thou art captured, do and say anything to keep yourself from the hands of your foe's womenfolk.'"
Deep laughter rolled out around the table, and more than one eyebrow in the room rose to see Storm laughing as heartily as the others.
She raised her glass of newly filled, still-poisoned wine, her heart light, and bid the night continue long.
When the table did rise, her wish had been fulfilled; they'd talked away most of the time until dawn, and the first shift of servants had been replaced at table by a second. Most of the men were stumbling with drunken weariness as they sought out the jakes; Dathtor the priest was roaring drunk, and Oburglan had been emboldened enough by his