Cormyr_ a novel - Ed Greenwood [55]
"Why now?" asked Ondeth. Faerlthann started at the dreadful quiet in his father's voice. "After all these years, why did the elves attack now?"
* * * * *
The center of the settlers' universe was Suzail, and the center of the Suzail was Ondeth's manor
The town, named after Ondeth Obarskyr's now departed wife, had slowly crept its way up the low hillside behind the original glade. The lumbering had been carefully supervised by Baerauble Elf-friend, with the felled trees being used immediately for housing. Most of the original homesteads had been given over to farming, the buildings Ondeth and Villiam had erected now home to tools and coops and shearing floors. Newly arriving families moved upward, inside the sprawling wooden wall that embraced the entire hill. Its height was claimed by the Obarskyrs by right of first arrival, and none argued with that. Three hundred and fifty or so folk called Suzail home, a muster that could live in a single block of a packed city in Chondath or Impiltur, or even in the mercantile outposts of nearby Sembia.
Yet they were prospering. A dock had been built four seasons ago, allowing ships safe moorings along the rocky coast. Previously waterborne visitors had to make landfall at Marsember, then trek along the coast to Suzara's City, Suzail. Merchants were now bypassing the swampy town in favor of the Obarskyr settlement. Baerauble's contacts with the elves made it possible for the port to ship out elven cloth, nuts, and beast hides, receiving in return tools, weapons, and various fine mongery from the human cities on more southerly shores of the Sea of Fallen Stars.
Ondeth's manor looked out over the city. Despite its two floors, it was a low, solid rampart of rough-cut stone and gray slate shingles, set partially into the hillside behind. Its stone foundation had been the first in Suzail, and envy of it had spurred the other families to build likewise.
Ondeth had talked of raising some towers at the ends of his home, but had been too busy to commit time enough to do so. When he built the manor, most of it was a single great hall, and here most of the populace of Suzail was wont to gather in the early evenings around the great fire pit in the center of the chamber. The families would come to cook their evening meals, gossip, and trade tales, lies, and legends. With the rising popularity of Suzail, even an occasional bard or minstrel would join those at the fireside, to swap sweet tales in exchange for a roof to sleep under.
And from a great chair close to the fire, Ondeth Obarskyr was the center of his own universe. He, too, had grown in the past decade, the heaviness of advancing years settling firmly around his waist. And though there were plenty of young and unattached women in town, particularly the daughters of the Silver brothers, he never stepped beyond mild flirtation with any of them. At least not at first.
Knowledge held him in check-the knowledge held by the folk of Suzail. Most knew Suzara, and knew about the heated rows she and her husband had shared. Ondeth had never convinced his wife that this was a place worth staying in, and all the stone foundations and swelling population in Faerun would not keep her here. Once, early on, there'd been a chance Ondeth might change his mind about carving a home from the wilderness, but that chance had died in one afternoon of elven horns and lights in the trees… and with it, their relationship.
Suzara took the youngest lad and returned to Impiltur, sailing away on the first boat to moor at the new dock. Ondeth did not see her off, but Faerlthann did. In the new settlement, he'd grown to be taller than his father, his muscles hardened by work, his face tanned by the sun, and his eyes keen. And there was something else in those eyes from time to time: a faraway misty look the young man would