War in Tethyr Read Online Free PDF Page B

sorcery long forgotten. The arts mantic, necromantic, or just plain romantic, if that's what you prefer."
    "No," Zaranda said. She sat at her dresser, unwound her hair from its braid, let it hang unbound down her back as she brushed it out.
    "Come now," the head said. "Any mage alive would kill to know such secrets as I hold within this bronze conk."
    "Not me."
    "You could gain great power."
    "Power doesn't interest me."
    "Wealth beyond imagining."
    Zaranda grimaced. "At what cost?"
    "I hardly expected to find such small-souled niggling within you, Zaranda Star. This merchant life has smirched your soul."
    "At least I still have my soul."
    "I cannot help noticing," the head said in gilded tones that reminded her uncomfortably-in several ways-of Farlorn, "that for a woman of such striking handsomeness you spend an uncommon percentage of your nights alone. All of them, in my limited observation-not to put too fine an edge upon it."
    She let that pass and brushed her hair with redoubled vigor.
    "You could win the hearts of handsome princes."
    "I've done that," she said tightly. She laid the brush down with exaggerated care to keep from smashing it against the dresser. "I've never needed magic, either. And princes aren't worth the bother. Too full of themselves, expecting every whim to be instantly obeyed."
    "Ah, but with the lore I can impart, they would live only to obey your every whim."
    "If I wanted a pet," she said, rising, "I'd buy a dog. Good night."
    The head tut-tutted. "Zaranda, Zaranda. Doesn't your curiosity tempt you, most of all?"
    She sat on the edge of her bed, which had four spiral-carved oaken posts upholding a fringed silk canopy. It was booty from a Tuigan hetman, who had himself looted it from Oghma-knew-where. It was rather ludicrous, but it secretly tickled Zaranda to have it.
    "Yes," she admitted. "For example, if you know such secrets of ultimate potency, why don't the Red Wizards of Thay rule all Faerun? They're eager enough to do so."
    "Ahh," the head said again. Had it an arm, Zaranda got the strong impression it would have laid one finger along its aquiline nose. "They were unworthy to wield such power. So I answered their queries in riddles until they grew tired of me and shut me up in a dusty, dreary warehouse." It sighed. "The sacrifices I make to maintain the world's balance."
    Zaranda sat regarding the head in the yellow candlelight. That was one of the legends that led her to Thay, whispers of a brazen head of immeasurable antiquity and knowledge, whose most recent possessors had been unable to wring any sense from it. Exasperated, they had left it on a shelf a hundred years or so and forgot about it. It had thus become available to anyone with sufficient enterprise, not to mention foolhardy courage. Along came Zaranda and her hardy band.
    Once they had reached comparative safety outside Thay, Father Pelletyr had performed divinations on the head. Its nature was so arcane that the cleric had been able to learn little of it, other than that it was definitely not evil in nature, which was the thing Zaranda had been hoping to learn. There was enough unbridled evil in the world, and she didn't care to add to it. Neither did she want to have gone to such hair-raising lengths to obtain the head only to have to cast it into the Inner Sea. But all that left her with more than a slight suspicion that all the bronze skull truly contained was beguiling badinage, that the head was nothing more than a practical joke, a long-dead mage's monument to himself in the form of a last enduring laugh.
    "Good night," Zaranda said again, and stretched herself out on the bed. Its softness, just firm enough to avoid bogginess, enveloped her like an angel's embrace. She sighed with pleasure. Not for her was Stillhawk's notion that the best bed was hard ground.
    "But you're a magician," the head almost whined. "I can teach you spells beyond imagining."
    "I gave that up. Thank you. Good night."
    "Don't you feel like taking