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Ed Greenwood

The Best of the Realms, Book II

NOT THE MOST SUCCESSFUL OF FEASTS

It was the hour of the Casting of the Cloak, when the goddess Shar hurled her vast garment of purple darkness, all a-glitter with stars, across the sky. The last rosy embers of the day glimmered on the long hair of a lone rider who came out of the west, lengthening shadows creeping ahead of her. It had been a cool day, and the night promised to be clear and cold.

The woman looked around at the gathering nightdark as she rode. Her black, liquid eyes were startlingly large and framed by arched black brows—looks that betrayed a stern power and keen wits at odds with her demure beauty. Most men did not look past her regal figure and the warm, honey-brown tresses curling around her pert, bone-white face. Queens might lust after her proud beauty—one at least did, of a certainty. Yet as she rode along, her large eyes held no pride… only sadness. Wildfires had raged across all these lands in the spring, leaving behind legions of charred and blackened leafless spars instead of the lush green beauty she recalled. Such fond memories were all that was left of Halangorn Forest now.

As dusk came down on the dusty road, a wolf howled somewhere away to the north.

The call was answered from near at hand, but the lone rider showed no fear. Her calm would have raised the eyebrows of the hardened knights who dared ride that road only in large, well-armed patrols—and their wary surprise would not have ended there.

The lady rode easily, a long cloak swirling around her. Time and again gusts of wind made it flap forward around her hips. Only a fool-at-arms would hamper her sword arm so thoroughly—but this tall, lean lady rode the perilous road without even a sword at her hip.

A patrol of knights would have judged her either a madwoman or a sorceress, and reached for their blades accordingly.

The sigil worked in silvern threads on the shoulders of her cloak was not unknown in Faerun; those linked circles of magefire proclaimed her to be the sorceress Myrjala, called “Darkeyes,” feared for her wild ways as much as for the might of her magic. More farmers and townsfolk loved her than did proud lords in castles; she’d been known to hurl down cruel barons and plundering knights like a vengeful whirlwind, leaving their blazing bodies as a dark warning to others. In some places she was most unwelcome.

As night’s full gloom fell on the road, Myrjala slowed her horse, turned in her saddle, and did off her cloak. She spoke a single soft word, and the cloak twisted in her hands, changing hue from its usual dark green to russet. The silver mage-sigil slithered and writhed like an angry snake and became a pair of entwined golden trumpets.

The transformation did not end with the cloak. Long curls darkened and shrank about Myrjala’s shoulders—shoulders suddenly alive with roiling, moving humps of muscle as they broadened. The hands that drew the cloak back on were hairy and stubby-fingered. They plucked a scabbarded blade out from the packroll behind the saddle, and belted it on. Thus armed, the elegantly-bearded man in the saddle arranged his cloak so its newly-shaped herald’s badge could be clearly seen. He then scratched his nose thoughtfully, listened to the wolf howl again—closer now—and calmly urged his mount forward at a trot, over one last hill. Where the most feared sorceress in these lands might be met with arrows and ready blades, a lord herald was always welcome.