Guenhwyvar Read online

  GUENHWYVAR

  R. A. Salvatore

  Josidiah Starym skipped wistfully down the streets of

  Cormanthor, the usually stern and somber elf a bit giddy

  this day, both for the beautiful weather and the recent developments

  in his most precious and enchanted city. Josidiah

  was a bladesinger, a joining of sword and magic, protector of

  the elvish ways and the elvish folk. And in Cormanthor, in

  this year 253, many elves were in need of protecting. Goblinkin

  were abundant, and even worse, the emotional turmoil

  within the city, the strife among the noble families—the

  Starym included—threatened to tear apart all that Coronal

  Eltargrim had put together, all that the elves had built in

  Cormanthor, greatest city in all the world.

  Those were not troubles for this day, though, not in the

  spring sunshine, with a light north breeze blowing. Even

  Josidiah’s kin were in good spirits this day; Taleisin, his uncle,

  had promised the bladesinger that he would venture to

  Eltargrim’s court to see if some of their disputes might perhaps

  be worked out.

  Josidiah prayed that the elven court would come back together,

  for he, perhaps above all others in the city, had the

  most to lose. He was a bladesinger, the epitome of what it

  meant to be elven, and yet, in this curious age, those definitions

  seemed not so clear. This was an age of change, of great

  magics, of monumental decisions. This was an age when the

  humans, the gnomes, the halflings, even the bearded

  dwarves, ventured down the winding ways of Cormanthor,

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  past the needle-pointed spires of the free-flowing elvish

  structures. For all of Josidiah’s previous one hundred and

  fifty years, the precepts of elvenkind seemed fairly defined

  and rigid; but now, because of their Coronal, wise and gentle

  Eltargrim, there was much dispute about what it meant to

  be elvish, and, more importantly, what relationships elves

  should foster with the other goodly races.

  “Merry morn, Josidiah,” came the call of an elven female,

  the young and beautiful maiden niece of Eltargrim himself.

  She stood on a balcony overlooking a high garden whose

  buds were not yet in bloom, with the avenue beyond that.

  Josidiah stopped in midstride, leapt high into the air in a

  complete spin, and landed perfectly on bended knee, his long

  golden hair whipping across his face and then flying out wide

  again so that his eyes, the brightest of blue, flashed. “And

  the merriest of morns to you, good Felicity,” the bladesinger

  responded. “Would that I held at my sides flowers befitting

  your beauty instead of these blades made for war.”

  “Blades as beautiful as any flower ever I have seen,” Felicity

  replied teasingly, “especially when wielded by Josidiah

  Starym at dawn’s break, on the flat rock atop Berenguil’s

  Peak.”

  The bladesinger felt the hot blood rushing to his face. He

  had suspected that someone had been spying on him at his

  morning rituals—a dance with his magnificent swords, performed

  nude—and now he had his confirmation. “Perhaps

  Felicity should join me on the morrow’s dawn,” he replied,

  catching his breath and his dignity, “that I might properly

  reward her for her spying.”

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  The young female laughed heartily and spun back into

  her house, and Josidiah shook his head and skipped along.

  He entertained thoughts of how he might properly “reward”

  the mischievous female, though he feared that, given Felicity’s

  beauty and station, any such attempts might lead to

  something much more, something Josidiah could not become

  involved in—not now, not after Eltargrim’s proclamation and

  the drastic changes.

  The bladesinger shook away all such notions; it was too

  fine a day for any dark musing, and other thoughts of Felicity

  were too distracting for the meeting at hand. Josidiah

  went out of Cormanthor’s west gate, the guards posted there

  offering no more than a respectful bow as he passed, and into

  the open air. Truly Josidiah loved this city, but he loved the

  land outside of it even more. Out here he was truly free of all

  the worries and all the petty squabbles, and out here there

  was ever a sense of danger—might a goblin be watching him

  even now, its crude spear ready to take him down?—that

  kept the formidable elf on his highest guard.

  Out here, too, was a friend, a human friend, a rangerturned-

  wizard by the name of Anders Beltgarden, whom

  Josidiah had known for the better part of four decades. Anders

  did not venture into Cormanthor, even given Eltargrim’s

  proclamation to open the gates to nonelves. He lived

  far from the normal, oft-traveled paths, in a squat tower of

  excellent construction, guarded by magical wards and deceptions

  of his own making. Even the forest about his home was

  full of misdirections, spells of illusion and confusion. So secretive

  was Beltgarden Home that few elves of nearby Cormanthor

  even knew of it, and even fewer had ever seen it.

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  And of those, none save Josidiah could find his way back to it

  without Anders’s help.

  And Josidiah held no illusions about it—if Anders wanted

  to hide the paths to the tower even from him, the cagey old

  wizard would have little trouble doing so.

  This wonderful day, however, it seemed to Josidiah that

  the winding paths to Beltgarden Home were easier to follow

  than usual, and when he arrived at the structure, he found

  the door unlocked.

  “Anders,” he called, peering into the darkened hallway

  beyond the portal, which always smelled as if a dozen candles

  had just been extinguished within it. “Old fool, are you

  about?”

  A feral growl put the bladesinger on his guard; his swords

  were in his hands in a movement too swift for an observer to

  follow.

  “Anders?” he called again, quietly, as he picked his way

  along the corridor, his feet moving in perfect balance, soft

  boots gently touching the stone, quiet as a hunting cat.

  The growl came again, and that is exactly when Josidiah

  knew what he was up against: a hunting cat. A big one, the

  bladesinger recognized, for the deep growl resonated along

  the stone of the hallway.

  He passed by the first doors, opposite each other in the

  hall, and then passed the second on his left.

  The third—he knew—the sound came from within the

  third. That knowledge gave the bladesinger some hope that

  this situation was under control, for that particular door led

  to Anders’s alchemy shop, a place well guarded by the old

  wizard.

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  Josidiah cursed himself for not being better prepared

  magically. He had studied few spells that day, thinking it too

  fine and not wanting to waste a moment of it with his face

  buried in spellbooks.

  If only he had some spell that might get him into the room

  more quickly, through a magical gate, or even a spell that

  would send his probing vision through the stone wall, into

  the room before him.

  He had his swords, at least, and with them, Josidiah

  Starym was far from helpless. He put his back against the

  wall near to the door and took a deep steadying breath.

  Then, without delay—old Anders might be in serious trouble

  —the bladesinger spun about and crashed into the room.

  He felt the arcs of electricity surging into him as he

  crossed the warded portal, and then he was flying, hurled

  through the air, to land crashing at the base of a huge oaken

  table. Anders Beltgarden stood calmly at the side of the table,

  working with something atop it, hardly bothering to look

  down at the stunned bladesinger.

  “You might have knocked,” the old mage said dryly.

  Josidiah pulled himself up unceremoniously from the

  floor, his muscles not quite working correctly just yet. Convinced

  that there was no danger near, Josidiah let his gaze

  linger on the human, as he often did. The bladesinger hadn’t

  seen many humans in his life—humans were a recent addition

  on the north side of the Sea of Fallen Stars, and were

  not present in great numbers in or about Cormanthor.

  This one was the most curious human of all, with his

  leathery, wrinkled face and his wild gray beard. One of Anders’s

  eyes had been ruined in a fight, and it appeared quite

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  dead now, a gray film over the lustrous green it had once

  held. Yes, Josidiah could stare at old Anders for hours on

  end, seeing the tales of a lifetime in his scars and wrinkles.

  Most of the elves, Josidiah’s own kinfolk included, would

  have thought the old man an ugly thing; elves did not wrinkle

  and weather so, but aged beautifully, appearing at the

  end of several centuries as they had when they had seen but

  twenty or fifty winters.

  Josidiah did not think Anders an ugly sight, not at all.

  Even those few crooked teeth remaining in the man’s mouth

  complemented this creature he had become, this aged and

  wise creature, this sculptured monument to years under the

  sun and in the face of storms, to seasons battling goblinkin

  and giantkind. Truly it seemed ridiculous to Josidiah that he

  was twice this man’s age; he wished he might carry a few

  wrinkles as testament to his experiences.

  “You had to know it would be warded,” Anders laughed.

  “Of course you did! Ha ha, just putting on a show, then.

  Giving an old man one good laugh before he dies!”

  “You will outlive me, I fear, old man,” said the bladesinger.

  “Indeed, that is a distinct possibility if you keep crossing

  my doors unannounced.”

  “I feared for you,” Josidiah explained, looking around the

  huge room—too huge, it seemed, to fit inside the tower, even

  if it had consumed an entire level. The bladesinger suspected

  some extradimensional magic to be at work here, but he had

  never been able to detect it, and the frustrating Anders certainly

  wasn’t letting on.

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  As large as it was, Anders’s alchemy shop was still a cluttered

  place, with boxes piled high and tables and cabinets

  strewn about in a hodgepodge.

  “I heard a growl,” the elf continued. “A hunting cat.”

  Without looking up from some vials he was handling, Anders

  nodded his head in the direction of a large, blanketcovered

  container. “See that you do not get too close,” the old

  mage said with a wicked cackle. “Old Whiskers will grab you

  by the arm and tug you in, don’t you doubt!

  “And then you’ll need more than your shiny swords,” Anders

  cackled on.

  Josidiah wasn’t even listening, pacing quietly toward the

  blanket, moving silently so as not to disturb the cat within.

  He grabbed the edge of the blanket and, moving safely back,

  tugged it away. And then the bladesinger’s jaw surely

  drooped.

  It was a cat, as he had suspected, a great black panther,

  twice—no thrice—the size of the largest cat Josidiah had

  ever seen or heard of. And the cat was female, and females

  were usually much smaller than males. She paced the cage

  slowly, methodically, as if searching for some weakness,

  some escape, her rippling muscles guiding her along with

  unmatched grace.

  “How did you come by such a magnificent beast?” the

  bladesinger asked. His voice apparently startled the panther,

  stopping her in her tracks. She stared at Josidiah with an intensity

  that stole any further words right from the bladesinger’s

  mouth.

  “Oh, I have my ways, elf,” the old mage said. “I’ve been

  looking for just the right cat for a long, long time, searching

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  all the known world—and bits of it that are not yet known to

  any but me!”

  “But why?” Josidiah asked, his voice no more than a

  whisper. His question was aimed as much at the magnificent

  panther as at the old mage, and truly, the bladesinger could

  think of no reason to justify putting such a creature into a

  cage.

  “You remember my tale of the box canyon,” Anders replied,

  “of how my mentor and I flew owl-back out of the

  clutches of a thousand goblins?”

  Josidiah nodded and smiled, remembering well that

  amusing story. A moment later, though, when the implications

  of Anders’s words hit him fully, the elf turned back to

  the mage, a scowl clouding his fair face. “The figurine,”

  Josidiah muttered, for the owl had been but a statuette, enchanted

  to bring forth a great bird in times of its master’s

  need. There were many such objects in the world, many in

  Cormanthor, and Josidiah was not unacquainted with the

  methods of constructing them (though his own magics were

  not strong enough along the lines of enchanting). He looked

  back to the great panther, saw a distinct sadness there, then

  turned back sharply to Anders.

  “The cat must be killed at the moment of preparation,”

  the bladesinger protested. “Thus her life energies will be

  drawn into the statuette you will have created.”

  “Working on that even now,” Anders said lightly. “I have

  hired a most excellent dwarven craftsman to fashion a panther

  statuette. The finest craftsman . . . er, craftsdwarf, in all

  the area. Fear not, the statuette will do the cat justice.”

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  “Justice?” the bladesinger echoed skeptically, looking once

  more into the intense, intelligent yellow-green eyes of the

  huge panther. “You w
ill kill the cat?”

  “I offer the cat immortality,” Anders said indignantly.

  “You offer death to her will, and slavery to her body,”

  snapped Josidiah, more angry than he had ever been with

  old Anders. The bladesinger had seen figurines and thought

  them marvelous artifacts, despite the sacrifice of the animal

  in question. Even Josidiah killed deer and wild pig for his

  table, after all. So why should a wizard not create some useful

  item from an animal?

  But this time it was different, Josidiah sensed in his

  heart. This animal, this great and free cat, must not be so

  enslaved.

  “You will make the panther . . .” Josidiah began.

  “Whiskers,” explained Anders.

  “The panther . . .” the bladesinger reiterated forcefully,

  unable to come to terms with such a foolish name being

  tagged on this animal. “You will make the panther a tool, an

  animation that will function to the will of her master.”

  “What would one expect?” the old mage argued. “What

  else would one want?”

  Josidiah shrugged and sighed helplessly. “Independence,”

  he muttered.

  “Then what would be the point of my troubles?”

  Josidiah’s expression clearly showed his thinking. An independent

  magical companion might not be of much use to

  an adventurer in a dangerous predicament, but it would

  surely be preferable from the sacrificed animal’s point of

  view.

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  “You chose wrong, bladesinger,” Anders teased. “You

  should have studied as a ranger. Surely your sympathies lie

  in that direction!”

  “A ranger,” the bladesinger asked, “as Anders Beltgarden

  once was?”

  The old mage blew a long and helpless sigh.

  “Have you so given up the precepts of your former trade in

  exchange for the often ill-chosen allure of magical

  mysteries?”

  “Oh, and a fine ranger you would have been,” Anders replied

  dryly.

  Josidiah shrugged. “My chosen profession is not so different,”

  he reasoned.

  Anders silently agreed. Indeed, the man did see much of

  his own youthful and idealistic self in the eyes of Josidiah

  Starym. That was the curious thing about elves, he noted,

  that this one, who was twice Anders’s present age, reminded

  him so much of himself when he had but a third his present

  years.

  “When will you begin?” Josidiah asked.

  “Begin?” scoffed Anders. “Why, I have been at work over