Red Magic - Jean Rabe [18]
It was dark when Galvin awoke. The moon and stars shone overhead, and the druid cursed himself for sleeping most of the day away. He felt the ground around his hands; the grass was dry, the earth only slightly damp. He ran his hands over his clothes-they, too, were dry. He cursed himself again, realizing his first guess was wrong-he had slept for more than a day and a half. His shoulder felt sore, but not nearly as bad as before. The herb poultice had healed it considerably. He flexed his fingers and rotated his shoulder. The numbness was gone.
Reasonably healed, the druid knew he would be able to travel. He stretched on the ground and was debating taking Brenna back to Glarondar tonight when he heard her voice-and Wynter's. He listened to pick up their conversation.
"It won't help my political career any to go jaunting off into Thay as a spy," he heard Brenna say. "My rivals will surely use it against me, claiming I have more interest in what goes on outside my country than in Aglarond."
"But if we uncover some plot against Aglarond, you'll be a hero," Wynter commented.
"Perhaps, but I think the negatives will outweigh it. Do you have any interest in politics?"
"I don't, and I don't care to," Wynter countered. "But I do know something about people. And-" there was a lengthy pause as Galvin strained to hear what came next- "you're going to have to find some other way to gain fame. Galvin says you're staying behind, and I trust his judgment. Thay's a harsh place-no place for you. I know. I was born there."
Galvin sat up to watch the pair. Brenna sat cross-legged on a straw mat outside her tent, her arms crossed defiantly. Wynter stood above her, looking amused.
"Can you keep up with us?" Galvin asked.
She looked through the centaur's legs at the druid and nodded emphatically.
The druid glanced up at Wynter. "We leave at dawn."
The centaur grinned broadly and joined Galvin. "I'm not sure about her motives, but she just might be an asset. At least she knows her way around cities."
Galvin frowned, hoping desperately that he hadn't made a mistake by allowing Brenna Graycloak to come along.
Three
Maligor reclined on a crimson-dyed leather divan in the center of his immense bath chamber, his head resting on a green silk pillow recently imported from Shou Lung. Although he was thin and stood only about five and a half feet tall, he looked large on the couch; he chose his furniture to make himself appear imposing. A half-dozen of his favorite pleasure slaves attended him. Two, who had been born on Maligor's slave plantation and were hardly more than children, massaged his feet, applying expensive, musky oils. The scent was sweet and heavy and permeated the air. Another pair, blond twin sisters kidnapped by pirates from their sea captain father in Orlumbor, worked diligently to manicure and polish his hard yellow nails. The fifth, the eldest of the human slave women, a buxom twenty-year-old from Ravens Bluff, sat on a stack of pillows near his right shoulder. Slowly rubbing a damp cloth across his forehead with one hand, she used the other to gently run a sharp blade over his temples and across the top of his head, shaving the fine stubble growing there. She took extreme care not to cut him; her predecessor had died horribly in the laboratory several days ago for just such an offense.
The women wore sheer, colorful fabrics that left nothing to Maligor's imagination. He dressed all of his female slaves thus to prevent them from hiding weapons that could be turned against him. The women's hair extended to the middle of their backs, while the children's hung about their shoulders. It was an indication they had been slaves for many years. However, the sixth slave, an elven woman in a short, rose-hued gauze tunic, had silvery-white hair that reached barely below the lobes of her pointed ears. Maligor had