The Dream Spheres (3 page)

Almost bright enough to eclipse his soul-deep resentment over the source of their many partings.

Danilo Thann thrust aside these thoughts. What part had they in such a night as this? Arilyn had returned to the city, as she had promised, in time for the Gemstone Ball-the first in the season of harvest festivals. Doggedly he pushed from his mind the last two such events

he had attended without her: markers of two more summers gone, reminders of promises as yet unfulfilled.

The room Arilyn kept for her infrequent visits to the city was in the South Ward, a working-class part of town, on the third floor of an old stone building that in better days had been home to some guildsman who’d since fallen out of fortune. Danilo shifted the large package he carried, tucking it under one arm so that he could tug open the oversized door.

He stepped into the front hall and nodded a greeting toward the curtained alcove on his left. The only response was a grunt from the hidden guard who kept watch there—an aging dwarf whose square, spotted hands were still steady on a crossbow.

Danilo took the stairs three at a time. The door to Arilyn’s room was locked and warded with magic that he himself had put in place. He dispatched the locks and the guardian magic, silently, but with more haste and less finesse than he usually employed. He eased the door open and found, to his surprise, that Arilyn was still sound asleep.

For a moment it was enough simply to stand and watch. Danilo had long taken comfort in watching Arilyn at rest and had spent many quiet hours doing so during the time they had traveled together in the service of the Harpers. Only half-elven, she found repose in human sleep rather than the deep, wakeful reverie of her elven forebears. It was a small thing, perhaps, but to Danilo’s thinking Arilyn’s need for sleep was a common link between them, one she could neither deny nor alter.

Danilo studied the half-elf, marking all the small changes that the summer had brought. Her black hair had grown longer, and the wild curls tumbled loose over her pillow. Though it hardly seemed possible, she was even thinner than she had been when they last parted on the road north from Baldur’s Gate. Asleep, she looked as pale as porcelain and nearly as fragile. Danilo’s lips

curved in an ironic smile as his gaze shifted to the sheathed sword beside her.

Resentment akin to hatred filled Danilo’s heart as he contemplated the moonblade, a magical sword that had brought them together-and torn them apart.

At the moment the moonblade was dark, its magic mercifully silent. No telltale green light limned it, signaling yet another call from the forest elves.

Danilo shook off his dark thoughts and slipped inside the room. With one fluid motion, he placed the wrapped package on the table and drew twin daggers from his belt.

The soft hiss of steel roused the sleeping warrior. Arilyn came awake at full alert, lunging toward the sound almost the very instant her eyes snapped open. In her hand was a long, gleaming knife.

Danilo stepped forward, daggers raised into a gleaming X. The half-elf’s knife sent sparks into the deepening twilight as it slid along the dual edges. Though Arilyn deftly pulled her attack, for a long moment they stood nearly face to face—a lover’s stance, albeit over crossed weapons.

“Still sleeping with steel beneath your pillow, I see. It’s comforting to know that some things never change,” Danilo quipped as he sheathed his daggers. He regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. Even to his ears, the intended jest sounded stilted—a challenge, almost an accusation.

Arilyn flung her knife onto the bed. “Damn it, Danilo! Why do you insist upon creeping up on me like that? It’s a marvel you’re still alive.”

“Yes, so I’m often told.”

The silence between them was long and not entirely comfortable. Arilyn suddenly seemed to remember her disheveled appearance. Her eyes widened, and her hands went to her tousled hair. “The Gemstone Ball. I don’t even have a costume yet.”

He was absurdly pleased that she remembered and that she cared enough about his world to consider such matters. “If you like, we need not attend. After all, you’ve only just got back.”

“Late this afternoon,” she agreed, “after a long trip, and the last two nights of it steady travel. You’re expected, though, and I promised to be with you.”

She seemed to hear her words as he might, for her eyes grew dark with the awareness of other promises she had made, and not kept. She cleared her throat and nodded at the table. “What’s in the package?”

Danilo allowed himself to be distracted. “When word reached me that you were delayed on the road, I took the liberty of acquiring an appropriately gem-colored costume.”

“Ah. Let me guess: sapphire?”

They exchanged a quick, cautious grin. In their early days together, when Danilo went to great pains to convince her and everyone else that he was a silly, shallow dandy, he composed a number of painfully trite odes comparing her eyes to these precious gems. To drive the knife a bit deeper, Arilyn lifted one brow and began to hum the melody to one of these early offerings.

Her dry teasing shattered the restraint between them. Danilo chuckled and pantomimed a wince. “The best thing about old friends is that they know you well. Of course, that is also the worst thing about old friends.”

“Old friends,” she repeated. The words were delivered in level tones, but they held a question. Was this what they were destined to be—old friends, and nothing more?

Danilo had long sought an answer, and he thought he had finally found one that might avail. Arilyn’s teasing comments made as good an opening as he could expect to get. Their lives might have changed, but one constant remained: the intense and often inexplicable love born on the day she had kidnapped him from a tavern. He

ripped open the paper that bound the package and lifted from it a length of deep-blue velvet—a gown of exquisite simplicity, elf-crafted and rare.

“Sapphire,” he confirmed with a grin, “with gems to match. I’ll spare you the song I prepared for the occasion.”

Arilyn chuckled and took the gown from his hands, then tossed it aside with the same casual disregard with which she had discarded the knife. Danilo opened his arms, and she came into them. “I have missed you,” she murmured against his chest.

It was a rare admission from the taciturn half-elf. In fact, Danilo could count on his hands the times they had spoken of such matters since the night, four years ago, when they had planned to announce their betrothal at the Gemstone Ball. Events had forestalled this, rather dramatically, and had set their feet upon a path of deepening estrangement.

That path, he vowed, was to end this night.

He took her shoulders and held her out at arm’s length. “Look further in the package. Look carefully at what you find, for you will never see it again so close at hand.”

Arilyn gave him a puzzled smile, then did as she was bid. Her eyes widened as she drew a black, veiled helm from the wrappings.

“A Lord’s Helm,” she murmured, naming one of the magical artifacts that marked and concealed the Hidden Lords, men and women drawn from every walk of life to rule the city. Understanding flooded her face. “Yours?”

Danilo nodded ruefully “An uneasy fit it has been. Khelben foisted it upon me four years ago. I would have told you long before this, but … “

His voice trailed off. Arilyn gave a curt nod of understanding. It was common knowledge that the secret Lords told no one of their identity but the person they wed—and even that degree of confidence was frowned upon. Only Piergeiron the Paladinson, the First Lord of the city, was known by name.

“Why do you tell me now?” She glanced over at the sapphire gown, and her face was clouded with memories of the pledge they had meant to speak at the Gemstone Ball four years ago.

Danilo had been prepared for this reaction, but even so his heart ached to see it. “I am free to tell you now, for it is my intention to give the thing up,” he said lightly. “There has been some trouble of late between the Harpers and some of Waterdeep’s paladins. Lord Piergeiron, as one might anticipate, came out fervently on the side of righteousness. He was graciously willing— one might even say eager—to relieve me of this duty. Likewise, I have given notice to the redoubtable Khelben Arunsun that I have no intention of assuming his mantle as future protector of Blackstaff Tower.”

Arilyn frowned at this mention of Danilo’s kinsman and mentor—and her former Harper superior. “I thought he had long ago given up that notion.”

She was hedging, noted Danilo, buying time as she absorbed the implications of his revelation. “On the surface, yes, but as you well know, the good archmage prefers to work in mist and shadows. Some time back, when I declared my intentions of becoming a bard in truth as well as in jest, he was all gracious agreement. Yet he continued to give me valuable spellbooks, to share crumbs of his power, to confide in me secrets that bound me to the Harpers and to him. Before I knew it, I was attending him almost daily. I even had other Harpers under my command.” He shuddered. “Insidious, our dear Khelben.”

Arilyn smiled at his droll tone, but there was a touch of anger in her eyes. “A better description of Khelben Arunsun could not be cast by his own shadow! You did well to break free. Do you still wear the pin?”

This was a sore spot, for they both had reason to cherish the pins that marked them as Harpers, members of a semi-secret organization dedicated to keeping

Balance in the world and preserving tales of great deeds. Arilyn had grown increasingly uneasy with the direction of the Harpers in general and the directives of Khelben Arunsun in particular. After their last shared mission, the rescue of Isabeau Thione, Arilyn had broken with Khelben and the Harpers.

Danilo, however, was not quite ready to renounce either. He touched his shoulder where, pinned to his shirt and hidden beneath his tabard, a tiny silver harp nestled into the curve of a crescent moon.

“A good man entrusted this pin to me. I will wear it always in his honor and try to be worthy of his trust.” And his daughter.

The words were left unspoken, but the deepening conflict in Arilyn’s eyes marked them as heard. “I, too, wear the Harper pin in honor of my father, but for no other reason. My allegiance is elsewhere.”

“Yes, I am all too aware of that,” Danilo said with more bitterness than he intended. He lifted a hand to forestall her explanation. “No, don’t. We have traveled this road. What you did, you did for love of me. I wish the result had been different, but I cannot fault your intentions.”

Again his gaze shifted to the moonblade, a hereditary elven sword to which each wielder could add one magical power. For Arilyn’s mother it had formed a magical gate between her human lover’s world and the distant elven island of Evermeet. This had led to tragedy for the elven folk, and many years later it led to a long string of events that had brought Arilyn to the attention of the Harpers of Waterdeep. Danilo had been assigned to follow and watch her. In the course of this mission, he and Arilyn had formed their own bonds: trust, friendship, and something deeper and infinitely more complex than love. Arilyn had ceded to him the right to her moonblade and its power. In doing so, she had broken a tradition of many centuries, that none but a moonblade’s true inheritor could wield the blade. In doing so,

she had unknowingly committed him to eternal service of the magic sword.

It was a price Danilo would gladly have paid for the bond it gave them, but he had never had that choice. When confronted by the results of her decision, Arilyn had taken it upon herself to free her friend from a service he never chose. In doing so, she had broken the mystic, elven bond between them. Once that bond was broken, the sword had granted Arilyn a different power and forged another allegiance.

Now the moonblade warned her when the forest folk were in need of a hero’s sword. There were small bands of elves scattered through many forests in Faerun, and many were in danger and decline. Arilyn’s sleep had become dream-haunted, and her sword gleamed with verdant light more often than not. Though she understood that hers was but a single sword and that she could not stand beside every beleaguered elf, the calls were too strong for her to ignore. Elf and moonblade shared soul-deep bonds. Since that day she had been on the road almost constantly and could not do otherwise.

“You do what you must,” Danilo said softly. “I have had my duties here. However, there is nothing more to hold me in Waterdeep. There is no reason why I cannot travel with you.”

There was, and they both knew it. Arilyn was an oddity among the forest elves, who seldom had anything to do with strangers among their own kind, much less moon elves with human blood. In the eyes of the forest elves, though, she had become part of the centuries-old legend of the moonblade she carried. Thus she had finally achieved what she had longed for all her life: true acceptance from the elven folk. No human was likely to manage such a feat.

“No. No reason at all,” she said faintly and unconvincingly. She met his eyes and manufactured a rueful smile. “You seem to have broken free of all things but

one. This night you must meet family obligations. When does this ball start?”

Danilo squinted at the window. Twilight had passed, and the faint glow of lamps rose from the streets below. “An hour, I should think. If you hurry, we can be fashionably late.” He punctuated this remark with a sly smile. “If we take our time, we could be scandalously late.”

“A tempting suggestion, Lord Thann,” she said with prim tones but laughing eyes. “I am in accord with the spirit of it but not the timing. You go on without me, and I’ll follow as soon as I can. Since this is your family’s party, your absence would be noticed and remarked.”

“The Lady Cassandra sees all,” he murmured, naming the formidable woman who had given him life and who managed the Thann family fortunes with an iron will and a capable hand.

Arilyn’s blue and gold eyes took on the hard, flat gleam common among warriors who heard their nemesis named. “True enough. Even without delay, I’m sure we’ll manage to cause some sort of scandal.”