Night Wings

She sleeps, and as so often, dreams of flight.

First comes the unfolding. She seems to open outward from herself, like a piece of paper folded to a small packet, expanding, becoming greater, becoming other, in a way she cannot comprehend.

A moment poised between exaltation and uncertainty, and then she flies, rising into a sky full of stars, her wingbeats sure as a swimmer's strokes. High, and higher she rises, until the narrow grimy streets and al-leys, the city itself, are no more than shabby toys beneath her. Beyond its walls stretches the level countryside, black and silver and soft in starlight.

She soars above neat peasant cots, their fields and or-chards laid out with mathematical precision like symbols on a wizard's scroll. Over stream and keep and sleeping herd she passes, high and silent and unseen.

She knows two feelings strange to her in waking life: freedom and power. She can fly where she pleases, and no one can say her nay-and she senses, somehow, that her power goes beyond the ability to burst gravity's bonds. The sensations fill her with an almost terrible exhilaration.

Yet even as she begins to realize and exult in those unfamiliar feelings, she is gripped by an awful unseen power that cancels both. Down she is drawn, and down, helpless now, plummeting into a black chasm that yawns in the earth itself, into a pit filled with darkness, the impression of waving tentacles blacker than despair, and a multitude of red-glowing eyes. A voice from below whispers sibilant obscenities in her ears.

She screams, but her screams are as futile as her struggle and, screaming, she falls…

The jarring impact to her ribs came like salvation.

"Up, Scab," the stable owner said. "You were riding abroad on night's mare, and your caterwauling riled me steeds. Up now; time to be feeding, anyhow."

She nodded, not trusting her voice. The stable owner turned and shuffled off, dragging a foot lamed in some forgotten skirmish. The land of Tethyr was plentifully supplied with those.

She felt her ribs through the dirty, ragged smock she wore. No damage done; the kick had not been that hard. The stable owner was no brutal man, nor even a hard one, intentionally. But he had been raised to hard times, and hard ways, and knew none other.

At least he didn't try to become familiar with her. She was overyoung, by Tethyrian standards, though not everyone was deterred by the fact. Likely as not, he didn't realize she was female. Her face was generally obscured beneath grime and matted masses of dark red hair, and there was nothing of her rag-wrapped scarecrow frame to suggest that she was a girl in her early teens rather than a boy.

There was a handspan of open space between the brick walls of the stable and the eaves, to allow air to circulate in the stifling Zazesspurian summer. The slice of sky she could see had gone dawning purple, stained with the faintest of pinks. A night bird fluttered past the opening, or perhaps a bat, returning to its roost to sleep the day away. She felt a twinge of fear and longing.

The tasks she must perform in return for a few crusts of bread and lodging in a vacant stall were not demanding: she must feed and water the horses, muck their stalls, brush them and comb their manes. Then she would be on her own through the heart of the day, free-as free as she got in waking hours-to continue her search for some wizard to accept her offer of apprenticeship.

If my reputation hasn't spread too far.

She picked herself up and felt her side again. The soreness was fading quickly. The hunger pangs that gnawed her every waking hour like a rat in her belly were already stronger. She tottered off to the pump between stalls redolent of horse-sweat and hay and manure, on legs that seemed to have atrophied from dreams of flight.

Part I

Astronomy Domine

The golden mare tossed her long white mane and said, "I sense trouble ahead, Randi Star."

The woman who sat astride her in a high-cantled Calimshite saddle frowned. "Of course you do," she said. "We're about to enter Tethyr. And don't call me 'Randi.' It's far too young a name for me."

The mare flared her nostrils and produced a ladylike snort. The slow sound of her hooves rebounded from natural walls of dark granite, lichen-splashed and forbidding, so high that, although it was midmorning, the day's first sunlight had yet to spill farther than halfway down them. Playing around their ears like schools of fish were the hoofbeats of burden beasts and outriders' mounts, the jingle-jangle of harnesses, the calls of the muleteers, all muted as the caravan wound through the secret pass across the Snowflake Mountains.

They were bound for Zazesspur on the Sword Coast, a city of fabled wealth and intrigue; the years of troubles had, in truth, little scratched its wealth and done nothing at all to diminish its intrigues. The caravan's hundred mules were laden with luxury goods, wizardry supplies of nonmagical nature, and specialty items for Zazesspur's demanding craftsmen, but the core of the profit Zaranda planned to realize on this expedition was a handful of rare and immensely potent magic objects.

At that, the caravan and its riches-deceptively great for its size and unassuming appearance-were merely a facet of Zaranda Star's complex scheme to retire her debts, and then just retire.

The mare, whose name was Golden Dawn, abruptly twitched her long, well-shaped ears and laid them back along her neck. From behind, one set of hoof noises detached itself from the rest and grew louder.

"Behave, Goldie," Zaranda hissed under her breath.

"Our fat father needs to wash his ass," the mare replied quietly. "The bandy-legged little brute stinks abominably."

"I think Father Pelletyr regards the smell as something of a penance."

The best kind," the mare said. That which doesn't interfere with stuffing his belly."

The ass in question drew alongside, trotting to keep up with the longer-legged mare's walking stride. Zaranda Star twitched a nose that, while still long and fine, had been broken once in the past, and reset ever so slightly askew. The beast's rank smell made itself apparent even over sun-heated rock and the stink of man- and beast-sweat, leather and weapon-oil from the caravan behind. In truth, the priest's mount could have been kept cleaner. But the father had a wondrous way with healing magics, and for one in Zaranda's line of business, that counted for much.

"Ah, Zaranda, child," said the priest. "How much farther through these beastly mountains, do you think?"

She laughed. She had a good laugh, and strong, white teeth to laugh with, though she often thought her lips were on the thin side. There were even those who had thought them cruel, but most such had been ill-intentioned to start with.

"Many hard years have passed since I've been a child, Father," she said. "And in answer to your question, not much farther at all."

That's good to hear. The men and beasts are suffering in this heat." In truth, the day's heat had filled the chasm much more quickly than its light had.

"You're suffering, you mean," Goldie said. "You'd be best advised to go easy on the elf-bread, Father."

She gave him a meaningful sidelong look. The father was a man of substance, much of which was rhythmically jiggling inside a threadbare gray robe. He had a big florid face with a prominent nose and white hair radiating like the petals of half a sunflower from around the ample tonsure Nature had granted him, atop which was perched a gray skullcap, now mottled with sweat. A golden pendant bearing the bound-hands symbol of Ilmater hung around his neck by a strand of thumb-thick duskwood beads.