The Dream Spheres - Elaine Cunningham [95]
"True enough."
"It's settled, then," he said happily, taking her comment as assent.
Arilyn listened as he chatted on, full of plans for their time together and the life they would help his new-found sister build. It sounded so easy and hopeful that she could almost believe it might come true.
She glanced at the moonblade, almost afraid that it would be aglow with warning light or humming with silent energy. However, the elven sword was silent, as if content at last to reflect Danilo's high spirits and bright hopes.
Eleven
Midnight had not yet come, and already Danilo had borne witness to the death of some twenty barrels of wine and the subsequent birth of two new betrothals, a dozen covert business deals, and three challenges to duels scheduled to be fought upon the morrow. By these measures, Galinda Raventree's annual costume ball was its usual success.
Of course, there was the buzz created by Haedrak's arrival. A city obsessed with nobility could not resist the lure of the young man's claim to royalty. For many years, it had been common belief the royal house of Tethyr had been obliterated in the terrible wars. A few minor relatives survived, and from time to time one made a dubious claim, but Haedrak arrived in Waterdeep with unassailable credentials, not the least of which was the support of Elminster the Sage and the bard Storm Silverhand. Haedrak had expressed a desire to unite with Zaranda, the mage turned mercenary who had recently been acclaimed queen of the city of Zazesspur, and to join with her in uniting all of Tethyr. He was in Waterdeep gathering support for the Tethyr Reclamation from the wealthy, the bored, and the adventurous.
Danilo supposed Haedrak would do well enough. A dark, thin man with a serious face and a small pointed black beard, he looked more like a scribe than a warrior, but Waterdeep, enamored as she was by royalty, would no doubt flock to his banner. It was almost amusing how the nobles tripped over each other in their eagerness to be seen in Haedrak's shadow.
The most entertaining spectacle, in Dan's opinion, was Arilyn's participation in this frivolous event. The shopkeeper who'd supplied them both with costumes had outfitted Arilyn as Titania, the legendary queen of the faerie realm.
This had proven nothing less than inspired, for it built upon the half-elf's fey heritage, transforming her from somber warrior to a creature of heart-stopping beauty. The costume was a marvel of translucent wings and floating, glimmering silvery skirts, but the shopkeeper had not stopped there. She had dressed Arilyn's black hair in clusters of ringlets dusted with silvery glitter. The half-elf's eyes were remarkable to begin with-a deep vivid blue flecked with gold-but cosmetics made them appear enormous, exotically tilted at the outer corners, and startlingly blue against her white skin. Her face had been buffed with some iridescent powder, and it glowed like moonstone in the soft candlelight. In all, Danilo congratulated himself on having had the good sense to lose his heart to this marvelous woman years ago before the general rush began.
That was the second source of his private entertainment. More than a few of Danilo's peers had started to pay court to the apparent faerie queen, only to reconsider the notion when the half-elf turned upon them a flat, level gaze more appropriate to a battlefield than a ballroom. Faced with a forbidding Arilyn, even the most intrepid or inebriated man suddenly remembered pressing business on the far side of the hall.
This amused Danilo to no end. He supposed that evinced some serious character deficit, but he saw no immediate cure for it. He had always enjoyed Arilyn from their unpromising beginning to the complicated present, and he could not get out of the habit. He gave a nod of mock sympathy to the latest of her spurned suitors, then flicked a nonexistent bit of lint from the ruffle at his cuff.
"You're looking smug," remarked