The Temptation of Elminster - Ed Greenwood [152]
Stop playing the swaggering warrior bitch for just a moment and listen. For once."
Rauntlavon froze, his head sunk between his shoulders, wondering if folk really survived the full fury of Great Lady Nuressa a-storming…and just how swiftly and brutally she'd notice him and have him removed from the room.
Very and with iron calm, it seemed.
"Master Rauntlavon," she said calmly, "you may leave us now. Close the door on your way out."
"Apprentice Rauntlavon," his master said, just as calmly, "it is my will that you abide with us. Send Master Rauntlavon out, and close the door behind him, remaining here with us."
Rauntlavon swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and turned around to face them, hardly daring to raise his eyes. "I-I've found nothing amiss at this end of the chamber," he announced, his voice higher and rather more unsteady than he wished it would be. "Shall I examine the other half of it now… or later?"
"Now will be fine, Rauntlavon," the ladylord said in a voice of velvet menace. "Pray proceed."
The apprentice actually shivered ere he bowed and mumbled, "As my Great Lady wishes."
"It's a wonderful thing to make men and boys fear you, Nessa, but does it really make up for your years under the lash? The escaped slave gets even by enslaving others?" His master's voice was biting, Rauntlavon tried not to let his momentary hesitation show. The ladylord had been a slave? Kneeling naked under a slaver's lash, in the dust and the heat? Gods, but he'd never have…
"Do you think we can leave my past careers in my own bedchamber closet, Iyrik?" the ladylord said almost gently. Her next sentence, however, was almost a battlefield shout. "Or is there some pressing need to tell all the world?
"I won't tell anyone, I won't…I swear I won't!" Rauntlavon babbled, going to his knees on the rug.
He heard the Great Lady sigh and felt ironlike fingers on his shoulder, hauling him back to his feet. Other fingers took hold of his chin and turned his head as sharply as a whip is flicked. The apprentice found himself staring into the Lady Nuressa's smoky eyes from a distance of perhaps the length of his longest finger.
"Rauntlan," she said, addressing him as he liked his handful of friends to…a short name he'd had no idea any of the lords even knew about, "you know that one of the most essential skills any wizard can have is to keep the right secrets, and keep them well. So I shall test you now, to see if you're good enough to remain in the castle as a mage-in-training… or a wizard in your own right, in time to come. Keep my secret, and stay. Let it out…and be yourself shut out of our lands, chased to our borders with the flat of my blade finding your backside as often as I can land it."
Rauntlavon heard his master start to say something, but the ladylord made some sort of gesture he couldn't see behind her back, and Iyriklaunavan fell silent again.
"Do you understand, Rauntlan?"
Her voice was as calm and as gentle as if she'd been discussing haying a field, Rauntlavon swallowed, nodded, squirmed under the hard points of her gaze, and managed to say, "Great Lady, I swear to keep your secret. I shall abide by your testing… and if ever I let it slip, I shall come to you myself to admit the doing, so the chase can begin at your convenience."
Her dark brows rose. "Well said, Master Apprentice. Agreed, then."
She took a quick step back from him and lifted her gown unhurriedly to display a tanned, muscular leg so long and shapely that he swallowed twice, unable to tear his eyes from it. Somewhere far, far away, his master chuckled, but Rauntlavon was lost in the slow but continuing rise of fine fabric, up, up to her hip…he was swallowing hard, now, and knew his face must be as bright as a lamp…where his eyes locked on a purplish-white brand. The cruel design was burned deep into her flesh, just below the edge of the bone that made her hip jut out. She traced a circle around it with one long finger and asked in a dry voice, "Seen enough, Rauntlan?"
He almost choked, trying to swallow