The Magehound - Elaine Cunningham [18]
She was certain that she would explode like one of her globes if she didn't speak out. Soon. Tonight!
But she waited until all the dancing lights were spent. They left the roof and took shelter for the night in the crowded upper room of a dockside inn. The child always felt safest in such places. Nocturnal "adventures" seemed to occur more frequently when they took solitary refuge. She felt reassured by the sonorous snores coming from the trio of ale merchants who shared a bed by the shuttered window, and took comfort in the sword that lay, bright and ready, beside the earnest young man her mother had described as a questing paladin.
She waited while her mother emptied the common washbasin into the back street and refilled it with fresh water from the pitcher. She sat stoically while her mother wet a square of linen and scrubbed off some of the dirt that the child seemed to attract, much as spellcasting drew cats. She waited until her mother took out their greatest treasure, a small brush with a silver handle engraved with climbing roses, and began to ease it through her daughter's tousled dark hair.
Usually she loved this nightly ritual, often she wished she could purr throughout the brushing like a petted cat Tonight, though, she would have answers or she would burst.
"Who is following us?" she demanded.
The brush paused in mid-stroke. "Great Lady Mystra!" her mother exclaimed in a low, choked voice. "You know?"
She gave an impatient little shrug, not sure how to answer this. "Who?" she repeated.
Her mother was silent for a long moment. "Many are the tools, but the hand that wields them is that of my husband."
The little girl picked up an oddly discordant note in the music of her mother's voice. It occurred to her, for no reason that she could yet understand, that Mother did not name their shadowy pursuer as her child's father. Perhaps this was because in Halruaa the two were ever the same. Children were born within marriage. Marriages were arranged by the local matchmaker, who was always a minor mage of the divination school. She had yet to live out her fifth summer, but she knew that much. Even so, the same puzzling instinct that sensed her mother's hesitation prompted her to leave the obvious question unasked.
She settled for another. "Is your husband a great wizard?"
"He is a wizard."
"Like you?"
The brush resumed its rhythmic stroking, but the effect was no longer soothing. The girl absorbed with each stroke her mother's emotions: tension, grief, longing, fear. The temptation to pull away was dizzying, but she fiercely pushed aside the impulse. She wanted answers. Perhaps this pain was part of the knowing.
"Once he was my apprentice," her mother said at last. "There is a proverb that warns masters to beware ambition in their students. Words of nonsense can be repeated as often as sage wisdom, but this one held true."
The little girl shrugged off the lesson, her mind on the recent miscast spells, the wandering magic. "You are the master still," she said stoutly, as if she could deny what was becoming clearer with every day.
Her mother's smile was sad and knowing. "How long has it been since you asked me to summon Sprite? It is a difficult casting. Surely you know that."
The girl's eyes dropped and her lower lip jutted. "He teases me. That's all."
"Really. That has never bothered you before."
"I've tired of it," she said, implacably stubborn. "And I'm tired of talking about that silly Sprite. Sing another song, one that will summon something fierce and strong. A starsnake!"
"They do not fly at night, child."
She folded her arms. "Then the name is stupid."
Her mother laughed a little. "Perhaps you are right. What fierce creature do you desire? A night-flying roc? A jungle cat, perhaps?"
There was a playful tone in her mother's voice. The girl understood that she was being humored, and she liked it not at all. "A behir," she said darkly,