Azure bonds - Kate Novak [78]
Her raging bellows carried across the Ashaba.
"Show yourselves, you cowards!" she shrieked, losing all control of her anger. "I'll teach you to make a puppet out of me! Come on, attack me! I dare you!"
"Well, I don't want to," a reedy voice answered her from the fireplace. "But if ye don't stop shouting, I will."
Alias whirled around, but all she could see in the dark was a shadow near the ruined stump of the hearth. She instantly came to her senses and reached down to grab the dagger from her boot.
"I'm… sorry," she whispered, still crouching, ready to cast the blade if the shadow made any sudden moves. It appeared to be an ordinary man, but then the kalmari had looked like an ordinary merchant in her dream until it was ripped asunder and the deadly cloud rose from its shell. "I thought I was alone up here."
"Talk to thyself often, do ye?"
"Well, I mean, I thought someone might be listening Someone far off-hopefully."
"Keep shouting like that," said the shadow, "and ye'll bring the entire dale up here. I was about to lay a watch-fire. Do ye care to help me tend it?"
Without waiting for an answer, the figure turned awav from her and knelt by the hearth. Alias stood up straight and the tension she'd felt eased as the cool metal hilt of the dagger warmed in her palm. The figure by the hearth hummed an aimless tune while piling the logs and tinder together. There was a spark, then a second flash, and the dry tinder went up, casting a circle of light and warmth from the center of the ruined hut.
Illuminated, the shadow transformed into a beanpole of a man, dressed in weatherbeaten and stained brown robes His gray beard was stringy and unkempt, and his hood was thrown back to reveal a balding pate which gleamed red from the flames of the fire. He seemed nothing more than an elderly, crotchety goatherd.
"If ve aren't going to take advantage of the warmth," the old man said, "at least come into the light so I can see ye use that dagger."
Alias stepped into the firelight, feeling foolish for having been caught raging at fate, but even more foolish for having threatened an old man. She sat down crosslegged before the hearth.
"I'm looking for the river witch Sylune," she explained
The old man sat down facing her and leaned his back against the broken fireplace wall. He pulled a ball of tobacco from a pocket and used his thumb to shove it into a thick, clay pipe. He looked at her thoughtfully. "She's dead" he said quietly.
"What?"
"She's dead," repeated the old man. "Deceased. Here no more. People die. Even here." He lit the pipe with the end of a burning twig.
"How?" Alias whispered. The news hit her like a blow to the gut. She had never been close to Kith's mentor, but everywhere she went, anytime she felt close to getting some answers, her efforts were thwarted. I'd been counting on Sylune more than I realized, she thought.
"She died battling a dragon," the old man explained. "A flight of 'em descended on the region a couple winters back. They destroyed a bunch a' towns. One of 'em took advantage of Elminster bein' out of the country. When this dragon attacked Shadowdale, Sylune was the only power around. She didn't stand a chance, but she had this staff."
Alias realized that the old man meant a magical staff, a staff of power.
"She broke it across the critter's nose, and everything went up in a pillar of flame-the dragon, the staff, and Sylune. It happened right across the way there." The old man pointed to the other side of the river.
By the moonlight, Alias's eyes could just pick out the naked, burned-out area of the woods. "Damn," she whispered softly.
"Aye."
There was silence between them for a while. Then the old man spoke again. "I heard thy singing at Jhaele's," he said. "I never thought I'd hear that old song again."
"You know it?" Alias's head snapped up.
"I heard it once."
"Where?"
"Ye tell me first," the old man insisted, "where ye learned it."
"I learned it from Jhaele," Alias said.
The old man laughed. "Jhaele! Impossible. The woman's