Blackstaff Read Free

streak of hair at his lower lip … a dark-skinned man with a dead right eye and a gold brand on his right temple … a toothless old woman awash in the filth of the gutters despite her rich robes … a black-haired man straining against chains, his elf lover tortured before him by a shorter man in a mask … a bald man with a green gem glinting where his left eye should be … and so many more. He struggled, wondering where all this came from.
    Hear me, dutiful one. We are the Weave. We are the Mysteries. We are Mystra. Know that you are Chosen
.
    The man smiled and let the fires kindle and grow from cinders of hints to flames of awareness.

CHAPTER ONE
28 Uktar, the Year of Lightning Storms

 
(1374 DR)
    “H ush, now … not a sound,” she whispered.
    The woman brushed a ginger-colored curl from her eyes, tucking it behind her slightly pointed ear. The only noises were the rustle of deadfall where a doe walked cautiously through the clearing and the tiny protesting groans of the bowstring as the woman readied an arrow.
    Crashing noises startled both the doe and the hunter and both froze in horror.
    “Tsarra, come see!” The boy’s yell preceded him as he trammeled through the underbrush toward them. At the same time, the woman’s bow sang and a whistle in the air was all that remained of her arrow. The doe leaped away from the clamor—too late. She fell dead, a white-fletched shaft piercing her heart.
    “Tarik!” Another boy kneeled at the woman’s side, but his face matched his flaming red hair. Hejumped up and grabbed the far-shorter boy by the heavy cloak. “You nearly lost us our deer, fool!”
    “Let him go, Lhoris. Close your eyes and breathe your bad humor out.” The woman stood and placed a hand on his shoulder to calm his temper.” Try to remember what an excitable boy you were at ten, before Danthra and I remind you of your first days in Blackstaff Tower,” she added with a wink. Lhoris exhaled loudly, but held onto the smaller boy. She looked at him and asked, “Now, what is all the noise for, Tarik? At the very least, I need to teach you how to move more quietly in a forest, little Myratman.”
    The Tethyrian boy shrugged himself from Lhoris’s grip, sticking his tongue out at the older boy. He looked up at Tsarra and beamed. “Chaid found it! Or it found him. Come see!” He pulled on her cloak, attempting to drag her in the direction from which he’d come.
    Tsarra smiled, trying to remember how long it had been since she’d been so impulsive. She looked over at the fifteen-year-old Lhoris, who stomped and kicked at the fallen orange leaves. She worried about the young man from Fireshear and what lay at the root of his bitterness and anger. Until he was ready to talk, she could do little beyond hold her curiosity in check. Tsarra guided his talents in both sorcery and wizardry away from spells his moods could fuel too explosively.
    “Lhoris, why don’t you take that rope, set up a noose over that big branch, and get the deer ready for dressing, please? We’ll be back in shortly. I think Tarik deserves the
fun
of doing that.” Tsarra was glad to hear Lhoris snort in response. As she let Tarik drag her away, she added, “And no magic to haul that deer up, boy. You need to build a little muscle, before you become a living skeleton.”
    Tsarra allowed Tarik to pull her along to the next clearing a little to the south. The boy was happily intent on showing her the source of his excitement. He chattered as he forced his way through the underbrush, not making any attempts to slow down and look where he stepped.
    “Chaid just sat there all night and this morning, justlike you taught him, but I got bored and Danthra was showing me herbs and how you chew on one leaf to stop a headache—boy she ate a lot of those!—and use another one to stop blood from flowing quick and there was this really fascinating seedcone, but that turned out to be a beetle of some kind I couldn’t catch