Realms of Magic - Brian Thomsen King [115]
What are you getting into, indeed?
As we approached the stair, I saw a woman of equal swank to my boss, only that instead of demure silk, this lady wore scant furs that clung to her with all the impossible suspension of the stairs.
"Keep your eyes on me, Mr. Quaid, and you'll do better," – Olivia said without turning – "Yes, ma'am," I said, coughing to show myself chastened.
We mounted the stairs. The cold beneath my shoe leather made me think the steps weren't glass, but pure, clean ice. I almost blurted my surprise, but had dealt the lady a strong enough hand already.
She led me through the red iron arch and up three floors, then out along a gaslit hallway with guest rooms. Like the rest of the palace, this hall had elegant, rounded lines-more a ribbed windpipe than a door-lined corridor. I knew the rooms would be the same, organ-shaped chambers where lurked Faerun's beautiful and wealthy and powerful, sleeping and eating and defecating like flies inside a corpse.
Beautiful and wealthy and powerful… I'd been riding in midblizzard above the seventeen onion-shaped domes of the palace before I'd realized just how far out of my league I'd be. Still, flies usually don't mind an ant pulling off his own hunk of flesh.
"Voila!" said she, halting. Her pronouncement seemed to swing wide the silver-edged door before her. The room beyond was incredible.
Unlike the great room, cold and stark, this place was as warm and soft and red as a dragon's heart. The door gave onto a railed landing above a velvet-walled sunken parlor. A fireplace, complete with blaze, stood on one wall, and opposite it was a steaming, bubbling bath large enough to bathe two war-horses. Through an open door on the far side of the parlor, I saw a velvet-covered bed that could sleep the two mounts, and in another room, a table where their knights and squires and retainers and a few bards could play a game of poker while their steeds slept. The wide, lead-glazed window above the table showed the teeth of the storm outside.
"For me?" I asked innocently, though truthfully there wasn't much acting in my delight.
"For you, Bolton Quaid." She started down into the room, and I didn't know whether to look at the brocade chairs or the bright chandelier or the tasseled drapes or those swaying hips.
I stammered after her. "The Dock Ward's my usual digs. A street rat like me is-"
She spun around and placed a finger on my lips to silence me. "If you're half the street rat I think you are, you'll be worth the room, and much more."
Those words, those eyes, that touch-suddenly the magic of the place seemed not so amazing, but a mere extension of her. She shone with power.
Her hand dropped from my lips, and like a schoolgirl, she clutched my fingers and drew me after her. "You must see this view."
I nodded, and after a few stumbling steps, did. Through the wide window, I saw her wintery palace, glowing cold and blue like a rock-stranded moon. The towers stood fearless and alien in the blizzard, and the curving curtain wall was draped in icicles; but the courtyard within was hot and bright and sandy.
Now I did blurt my amazement. In the midst of this waste of rock and snow, the lady had made a garden. From this height, the palm trees looked like ferns, the green bunches of Chultan flowers like field clover. And in the midst of the garden lay a winding, sandy lagoon, overarched here and there with footbridges, surrounded by paths and benches, peopled by folk so beautiful and powerful and rich that they seemed fey creatures, seemed to glide above the sand without leaving footprints.
I started to speak-what words, I do not know-and found I couldn't because I had not breathed in moments, perhaps minutes. But I needed no words; Olivia was speaking for us both now.
"You haven't even got the chill out of your poor Water-dhavian bones yet. Look how you shiver." She spoke like a doting mother to a child. Some part of me knew