The Wyvern's Spur - Kate Novak [113]
With nowhere to go, she wandered the streets after dark and ran afoul of one of the Keeper press gangs. After the briefest of struggles, she became their prisoner. She foolishly bragged of her magical power, hoping to coerce or frighten the recruiting thugs into letting her go. Instead she'd found herself drafted into an army unit headed for Yulash.
An ugly little spider of a Zhentarim wizard tested her powers. He gave her a slender book, containing only such spells as slave mages could be trusted with. From the tiny size of the book, and the bloodstains on its cover, it was obvious that her masters did not expect her to survive, much less excel at combat.
After five days of forced marching, her unit engaged in its first battle, against a unit of Hillsfar's Red Plumes. The battle was a mutual slaughter-only officers on the sidelines survived. Cat's magic power was quickly spent as the enemy overran her position. Powerless and exhausted, she lay down in hopes of passing for one of the dead and escaping after dark. That was when Flattery had rescued her.
Maybe rescued wasn't the right word, Cat thought. Collected would be more accurate, she decided.
As soon as the army officers had quit for the evening, retiring to their tents and dinners, Flattery's zombies stumbled onto the battlefield and began collecting bodies for Flattery's experiments-and as food for some of his more disgusting undead minions. A particularly mindless zombie, unable to distinguish between the dead and the unconscious-for Cat had fallen asleep-collected her and brought her to its master in his fortress.
Cat remembered how impressed she'd been at her first sight of Flattery as he stood on a parapet overlooking the rolling fields far below. She thought his hawklike features and wolfish smile quite handsome. His capability and power were equally alluring.
But Flattery guarded his power and secrets jealously. He had no apprentices, no familiars, no companions, but surrounded himself with undead servants. He isolated himself from the outside world and everyday life, using his minions to gather everything he needed to work and live. The wizard had erratic fits of temper, which might explain why he chose to work with blindly obedient slaves. On the other hand, working with such slaves might have contributed to his quirkiness.
The wizard could have made Cat a zombie, or fed her to the ghouls, or resold her to the Zhentarim. But he didn't. Instead he took her under his wing-kept her in pleasant surroundings, taught her some new magic, and worked on a spell to help her regain her memory. Cat was not averse to being sheltered and trained, but most especially she wanted her memory back.
A gnawing desire to fill the void in her head grew in her daily. Regaining her forgotten history was worth everything to her- enduring Flattery's mad temper, living among the undead servants, reconciling herself to the confinement of Flattery's fortress. After all, she told herself, slavery to the Zhentarim could be much worse.
Finally, one evening many months later, Flattery finished the spell creating the dark jewel that held her missing past. He presented it to Cat with a proposal of marriage. Cat had looked at the gem, yearning to hold it. Afraid of Flattery's reaction should she refuse him, she agreed. She'd flattered herself into believing he'd come to prefer her company to the undead, that he found her beautiful, that he wanted to take care of her. After all, she told herself, he was handsome and clever and very powerful-she could do worse.
After the hasty wedding ceremony with the only attendant being a wobbly priest of Mystra, goddess of magic, Flattery had become irrationally angered by her request to have the gem. He demanded she prove her worth before he restored her memory to her. Then he assigned her the task of sneaking through the Immersea