Azure Bonds Read online

  “Oops, sorry,” Alias said nonchalantly as Olive snatched the ring from the ground. “You know, that ring looks familiar,” she added before the bard had a chance to pocket it.

  “Oh, this? I picked it up in the dragon’s lair as well.”

  “I have one just like it. Same blue stone set in gold.”

  “Maybe you dropped it when you were fighting the dragon,” Olive suggested. “Can you prove it’s yours?”

  Alias regarded the halfling’s nervy challenge with considerable amusement.

  Olive slipped the ring on her finger. At first it jangled about, too large for her tiny digits, but a moment later it shrank to a perfect fit. “Oooo. It’s magic. Was yours magic? What did it do?”

  Alias was unable to reply since she had not bothered to experiment with the ring she’d looted from the assassins. But she knew now as well as Akabar just how safe her possessions were in the care of the halfling bard.

  Akabar looked up from his books, which he’d been checking for damage. “You had best be cautious with that thing, little one,” he warned.

  “Nonsense,” Olive said with a sniff. “There’s no danger as long as you know the right way to deal with these things. All you have to do is hold your hand over your head—” the halfling demonstrated, while Akabar stepped backward and Alias rose to her feet “—and command the ring, Show your power to me.’ If that doesn’t work then there are certain key words you should—”

  They never heard the rest of the bard’s lecture. Suddenly the ring’s power did indeed display itself. Akabar’s tome began to glow a soft blue, as did a ring on his finger and the one on Olive’s. Alias’s sigils outshone them all, emitting blue beams crazily about the pine forest.

  “Damn!” the swordswoman shouted, tears brimming in her eyes. She wrapped her cloak tightly around her body, though a blue glow peeked out at the hem and neckline.

  “What was that?” Olive gasped, her eyes glued to Alias.

  “Detect magic, I imagine,” Akabar answered, moving to the swordswoman’s side. “You aren’t in any pain, I trust?”

  “I’m fine,” Alias muttered between clenched teeth.

  Olive continued to stare at the swordswoman as though she’d grown a second head. “You have a magical arm!”

  “Ignore it,” Alias muttered.

  “But, it’s really magical! Incredibly magical! More magical than anything I’ve ever seen. I’ll bet you could have sliced Mist into pieces. Maybe we should go back and try it.”

  “I said, ignore it!” Alias shouted.

  For the next several minutes an embarrassed silence reigned in the camp. Akabar cleaned out the dinner pot and used it to heat water for tea. Olive finished her soup and polished the mutton bone nearly to ivory. Alias clutched her wrapped arm close to her until the sigils’ light began to dim.

  Dragonbait laid more wood on the fire, and then stepped outside the campsite to stand in the darkness, facing the hilltop, as though he expected danger from that direction.

  “So, tell me, mage,” the halfling piped up, obviously uncomfortable without chatter about her. “Where did you find your familiar?” She indicated Dragonbait by nodding her head in his direction. “I’ve seen nothing like him from the Sword Coast all the way south to magical Halruaa.”

  Alias snapped, “Dragonbait is my companion, Ruskettle, not the mage’s familiar. I did not find him. He found me. He has proved more than useful.”

  “Aye, I’ve noticed. Especially at pulling halflings out of the fire. I meant no offense, I assure you. It’s just that I’ve never heard of a lizard acting as a manservant before. But then I’ve never heard of a magical arm before either.”

  Alias gritted her teeth. If the halfling wasn’t going to give her curiosity a rest, it was time to go on the offensive. “You know, I’ve never heard of a halfling bard before.”

  “Well, that’s easily explained,” Olive smiled. “I gained my training in the south; things are very different there.”

  “I am from the south as well,” said Akabar. “And now that the lady mentions it, I have never encountered a bard of the halfling race, either.”

  “Ah,” replied Olive, staring sadly into her empty bowl. “Well, you are from Turmish, I seem to remember.”

  “Yeees,” the mage said, anticipating what was to come.

  “Well, I was trained farther south than that.”

  “Anywhere near Chondath?” Akabar asked.

  “Chondath? Yes, just a wee bit farther south than that.”

  “Sespech?”

  “Yes, Sespech. There is a barding college there with a fine teacher who taught me all I know.” The halfling flashed Akabar a beaming smile.

  “How odd,” drawled the mage, tugging at the edge of his beard. “One of my wives comes from Sespech, on the Vilhon Reach, and while she is quite talkative about the merits of her native land, she has never mentioned halfling bards.”

  “Ohhh. No, no, no, no,” corrected Olive. “You’re talking about Sespech between the Vilhon and the Nagawater. I was referring to a place much farther south. How far south have your travels taken you?”

  “I’ve traded as far south as Innarlith, on the Lake of Steam,” the mage said. The halfling nodded.

  “Our company …” Alias wrinkled her brow, trying to dredge up memories as bright but as liquid as quicksilver. “Our company fought on the Shining Plains. Yes, that’s right, and we traveled through Amn once or twice.”

  The halfling looked at Alias a moment, confused by her interruption about places farther to the west and outside the realm of the discussion. She shrugged and continued her far-fetched explanation to the mage. “And in Innarlith there were dwarves from the Great Rift?” she asked.

  “Yes, from Eartheart,” Akabar replied.

  “Well,” Olive concluded triumphantly, “below the Great Rift, on the Southern Sea, is the land of Luiren. We have a Sespech there, and a Chondath, which are small but bustling towns, the namesakes no doubt of your larger nations. Anyway, in Sespech, the one in Luiren, I was trained, having made a long pilgrimage from Cormyr. I was attempting to return to my homeland when that fool wyrm plucked me from my wagon.”

  “Dimswart says you came from across the Dragon Reach,” Alias said, puzzled.

  “No, I come from Cormyr. You see, traveling by boat does not agree with me, so I journeyed to Luiren around the western edge of the Inner Sea. Desiring to see even more of the Realms, I returned from Luiren around the eastern edge of the Inner Sea, through many wild and dangerous lands. I made a name for myself in the nations of Aglarond and Impiltur. I had just entered Procampur when I received Master Dimswart’s most generous offer to entertain at his daughter’s wedding. And glad I was to come home, Procampur being a stuffy town, too restrictive for an artiste.”

  Alias and Akabar exchanged glances. Akabar looked frustrated, but Alias had to smile at the halfling’s tale. There had to be at least a dozen lies tangled up in her story, but it wasn’t worth the trouble proving it. Olive, like any other halfling, would only invent more lies to cover the originals. Better to wait until she accidentally let the truth slip out.

  Alias stood up and stretched. “Going to be a cold night. We need more wood.” She walked toward the clearing where the moonlight revealed fallen limbs.

  “So, what’s her story?” Olive whispered to Akabar, jerking her head at Alias’s retreating figure.

  “Story?” echoed Akabar. “To what are you referring?”

  “She has a magical arm!” Ruskettle’s voice rose half an octave.

  Akabar shrugged. He was taking a lot of pleasure in thwarting the woman’s unbearable curiosity.

  “Look, mage,” Olive sighed. “I owe her. I want to help.”

  Akabar’s feelings softened somewhat. “Not that I believe you for a moment,” he said, “but just in case your words are earnest, I will tell you. The glyphs on the lady’s arm are magical, not the arm itself. Some unknown power carved them into her flesh, but she cannot remember the event
. As a matter of fact, she cannot remember the events of several of the past months. In exchange for the meaning of the glyphs, she has agreed to deliver you safely to Master Dimswart. The best service you can do her is to come along peacefully and perform well at this wedding.”

  Olive pondered the information for a few minutes, then she speculated aloud, “So anything could have happened during the time she can’t remember. She could have been a slave, or a concubine to a powerful sorcerer, or married to a foreign prince—a princess dripping in jewelry.”

  “Or a wandering swordswoman,” added Akabar.

  “Or a princess,” Olive repeated to herself, “dripping in jewelry, her lover killed, her kingdom usurped, and her memory lost through the fell magics of her enemies.”

  Akabar shook his head at the bard’s wandering fantasy. He was reaching for another log to throw on the fire when a strong wind suddenly rushed down from the hilltop. The pines danced with alarming energy, and sparks from the campfire scattered across the ground. The ground shook, and over the howl of the wind came a malicious laugh that brought both mage and halfling to their feet.

  “Alias!” Akabar shouted, dashing toward the clearing.

  Olive Ruskettle grabbed a brand from the campfire and rushed after him. If Alias had some wealth, the halfling realized, she could prove profitable to have in one’s debt.

  * * * * *

  While Ruskettle was trying to persuade Akabar Bel Akash to tell her about Alias, the swordswoman was searching for Dragonbait. She’d assumed he had gone off to collect more firewood. If that were the case, Alias thought, he would have returned by now. He kept eyeing the hilltop. I’ll bet he’s gone to investigate that stone circle.

  With a sigh Alias began climbing the hill.

  A shadow at the edge of the clearing moved, accompanied by a scrabbling sound. The lightning-blue beams emanating from the sigils had died away, but the cursed patterns still gave off light enough to rival the moon. Alias drew her arm from her cloak and held it up. A large shape by the base of a pine tree, startled by the second light source, scampered down the hill into the darkness. Only a porcupine, peeling tree bark for dinner, O great warrior, Alias mocked herself. But don’t worry, you scared it off.

  Chuckling, she doubled her pace until she reached the center of the stone circle. The half moon hung overhead like a gold lion coin split apart by looting pirates. In the moonlight, the red stones appeared black and their edges and corners, dulled by the wind and rain, blurred into the darkness. She wondered why more enduring and brighter rock had not been used in the circle’s construction. All the druid temples she’d ever visited before had been built of granite, not sandstone, and placed among oaks, not pines.

  She jumped on a rock and surveyed the landscape. The tops of the encircling pines stood out against the moonlit sky like triangular crenelations of a castle wall. The original path to the temple was overgrown with brambles which reflected the moonlight. Of Dragonbait there was no sign.

  Some parts of the hill dropped away in miniature canyons, and Alias began to worry that perhaps he had slipped or fallen down one of these. She shivered in the cold air. She’d suddenly felt very vulnerable. Like a fool, she’d forgotten her sword. She jumped from the rock and headed down the slope toward the campsite.

  A glint of metal on the ground caught her eye. She veered from her intended path and moved toward it. At the foot of a larger than man-sized boulder lay Dragonbait’s oddly shaped sword. Alias leaped forward and lifted the gleaming blade off the ground. The weapon’s weight astonished her. It felt no heavier than a fencing foil, and its balance was not awkward in the least. It also felt warm to the touch—not just the grip, but the blade as well.

  A shadow stirred on the boulder. Alias spun about with Dragonbait’s sword raised, keeping the stone to her back, but there was no one there. Slowly, Alias turned back toward the boulder. Then she saw that, unlike all the other rock about the hilltop, this one was clear, like a huge hunk of quartz, and the shadow she’d thought moved across it had really moved in it. She pressed her face to the stone.

  Thrashing at the heart of the rock, like a fly caught in pinesap, was the lizard’s twisting form. “Dragonbait!”

  Suddenly, something heavy struck the back of her legs below the knees and she toppled backward, crying out in surprise. A violent wind sprang from nowhere, slapping the pines about the clearing.

  She tried to roll away from whatever enemy had felled her, but something held her ankles fast. She stared at her feet in horror. They were bound in crystalline manacles, and her horror grew into panic as the rock crept farther up her legs in a twisting motion, like a vine climbing a pole.

  Using Dragonbait’s sword, Alias beat on the stone bonds with fury, not considering what damage she might do to the weapon or even to herself. The blade did not shatter, but cut through the engulfing stone as though it were liquid. Like sap, or syrup, the clear stone oozed back over the hack marks and continued growing faster than she could chop. Soon the stone oozed beneath her legging plates where she could not reach it, miring her tightly in place.

  The ground trembled. With a squelching thulk a dome of earth rose before her, carrying with it the crystal boulder that imprisoned Dragonbait. Alias looked up in horror and realized that the rounded eruption was a huge, monstrous rock head. Dragonbait’s prison rested on top of the head, a lump above its temple. Farther down, two eye-disks glowed a sickening yellow. Below these was a gaping maw smelling of sulfur.

  The sound that issued from the mouth sent an ice dagger slicing down Alias’s spine. The head laughed, a familiar, hoarse, wheezing laugh. Familiar, she was sure, to her old self, the self whose memory was missing, lost in whatever darkness this monster had sprung from.

  A moment later, a great stone arm rose from beneath the earth. The creature’s chest rose from its mossy bed as well, dark red earth set with a glowing blue symbol of interlocking rings—just like the set on her arm.

  With a sickening lurch, Alias felt herself hoisted above the ground. The stone about her legs proved to be part of the amorphous fist attached to the arm of the monster. The monster held her up to its face. As she swung upside down in the hellish yellow glare of its eyes, she felt her sigils jump and writhe and flare as brightly as they had when Winefiddle had tried to dispel them, until an aura of near blinding blue shone all about her, the monster’s head, and the crystal prison holding Dragonbait.

  The creature laughed again. Its chortle unnerved her, and she hacked at its fist, its face, its eyes, anything she could reach with Dragonbait’s blade. The sword passed through the creature’s body; its “flesh” was the consistency of peat, but neither the creature’s eyes or voice registered any pain. The hoarse laughter brought a lost memory fluttering across her inner vision, but like a bat in the darkness, she felt it but could not grasp it.

  The monster raised her up to its temple and held her against its head so that she stood next to Dragonbait’s crystal cell. The lizard gestured to himself, a motion that caught her attention. She took a deep breath in an effort to calm herself while she watched him miming the same motions over and over. First he would raise his hands together over his head, then pound them against the transparent wall of his trap, then slap himself on the forehead.

  Huh?

  Raise, pound, slap. Raise, pound, slap.

  The creature of earth tugged its other arm from the soil. The newly freed fist held a gemlike twin of Dragonbait’s prison. The earthen giant brought this second crystal up to where it caught the blue rays from Alias’s sigils and scattered them into the dark night. Then the great stone cracked and split along its center. The blue light of her cursed runes revealed a clear, rippling slime within the crystal’s open heart. Any moment she would become another bug in amber.

  Raise, pound, slap.

  Why does Dragonbait keep slapping himself on the head? she wondered.

  Dragonbait pointed at her. She slapped herself on the head. He shook his head furiously and pointed at t
he crystal over his head.

  “Not my head!” she yelled excitedly, finally understanding. “The creature’s head!”

  Clenching both her fists about the hilt of Dragonbait’s weapon and twisting her body, Alias smashed Dragonbait’s sword against the lizard’s crystal prison.

  Steel screeched on rock, and the force of the blow traveled up Alias’s arm, leaving it numb. The crystal split like an eggshell, and Dragonbait spilled out of the jagged hole, followed by a mucky ooze that poured down the monster’s face.

  The monster shrieked, a baneful cry that carried leagues on the wind and seemed to set off a gale that bent large pines and snapped their heavy branches. A moan issued from the earth, echoed by the rocks of the stone circle, and then the huge beast’s shoulders slumped and began to flow back into the ground.

  Patting her hand gently, Dragonbait took his sword from her numbed grip. He slashed at the rock hand that held her, and the stone flowed away from her legs like sand. They were free, but there was a forty foot drop from the monster’s head to the ground, and Alias was reluctant to make the leap.

  She spotted Olive Ruskettle below, throwing daggers at the behemoth. The halfling’s weapons buried themselves in the monster’s chest. The tiny blades couldn’t possibly hurt the monster more than a bee sting would harm a human warrior, yet the monster cried out again like a feral child.

  More goo oozed from the shattered crystal on the monster’s head. The wound was undoubtedly mortal, but Alias worried now that she and Dragonbait might be crushed by the monster’s death throes. Dragonbait tugged on Alias’s arm and forced her to half-leap, half-slide to the rock monster’s shoulders.

  Akabar’s voice rose in a chant, and a lance of rainbow light struck the creature in the chest above the dimming rune of interlocking circles. The rainbow broke into a thousand small motes, spreading across the creature in a dancing, swirling pattern.

  With one arm about Alias’s waist, Dragonbait began climbing down the monster’s back, using his hand and foot claws to keep his grip. Dragonbait jumped the last ten feet just as Akabar’s magic consumed the creature’s torso and slid up its head and arms. The moon shone through the stone wherever the rainbow light covered it.