Elminster's Daughter - Ed Greenwood [113]
Rush of fear, heart hammer-beating, laughter, springing aloft, and turning a cartwheel on a flat bit of roof ere landing to strike a wide-armed, defiant pose. "Yes! Here I am! Come and get me!"
Excitement like fire in her veins, leaping from roof to roof, and finally back home to her waiting sill and in-in to wash filthy feet so she'd not be caught come morning. Looking back at the window knowing a whole new world- herworld-lay waiting now. every night she wanted it.
[Ah. See then my moment of bold venture.]
Dimmer moonlight and Thloram murmuring, "Easy, now. The rest of us have come this way before, and returned. 'Tis safe."
Caladnei's hand trembling with fear as she holds it out to him then turns to face the cold, steady blue fire that bides so impossibly between the two ancient stone pillars. Cracked and vine-covered, nothing like the splendor she'd envisaged: no glowing runes on gleaming metal nor sinister guardians…
The first portal she'd ever seen, and merely being this close to it left her wet and shaking in terror.
"Where's our Caladnei of the Scrolls?" Thloram murmurs.
From somewhere she finds just enough will to force out a laugh and stride forward into waiting blue fire, biting her own tongue in terror to keep from sobbing…
[Now, d'you recall your first theft? Show me.]
The next summer, a night just as warm, Narnra better at tumbling, bolder now. Often perching gargoyle-like on gables and around corner-spires, watching folk of Waterdeep through their bedchamber windows-and learning much more than some young lasses do.
Brawls and drunken fights and hurried little deals in dark streets and alleys, a knifing or two, many snatch-and-run thefts… and this night, one such that leaves a fat merchant on his backside grunting in pain and a fleet-footed, desperate loader-of-wagons pelting down an alley, heavy purse in hand… turning right beneath Narnra's perch and racing up a rickety, groaning outside stair, gasping raggedly for breath, snatching out a hand to a door-catch-and freezing to peer in the narrow lit sliver of window, stand uncertainly for a moment with a whispered curse at someone recognized within, and strain up on tiptoe to perch the stolen purse up on the edge of the roof overhead. Going inside, door banging closed, to raised voices and Narnra so excited she thinks she's going to be sick.
Dare she? Watch-lanterns down below and armed men tramping, clouds blotting the moon… and like a night-viper, Narnra crawling chin-first down the steep roof, grazing the tiles with her body as she keeps low, Watch officers calling closer… down to where she can put her hand on the purse, heavy and excitingly solid. And draw it oh-so-slowly back and up to where she turns and steals away with it. Opening it on another rooftop a safe distance away, when a cloud rolls on to let the moon stab down and show her coins galore between her hands!
[But things have gone darker for us both, haven't they?]
Great batlike wings and loose brown scales bristling from a gigantic bulk, shoulders like shifting boulders as the wings spread in a banking glide down…
Down toward her, great jaws gaping wide, stinging tail lashing the air.
"Help! Help!" Bertro calling weakly, blinded by his own blood, Umbero sprawled senseless or dead over him.
Caladnei cursing just for something despairing to say as she starts to run right at the swooping wyvern with no spells left and only a broken sword in her hand, running like a mad thing into the jaws of doom because her friends need aid…
[No, I'll spare you those deaths. Every bloodletting leaves a stain on those who see it. What of the death that overturned your world?]
No! No, damn you, mage! I don't WANT to-don't-
Her mother working late that last night, before the great blast that left her broken and burned amid the shattered shell of her front parlor. Magic killed her, of course, but whose? A wizard who hated her? No, someone hired to slay-but by the House of Arte-mel, or the Lathkules, or another?
Bresnoss Artemel himself had brought the tiara to her shop, ringed by eight bodyguards