Azzudonna wiped the sweat from her face, her gray skin showing hints of the lavender blush that was so clear in her purple-streaked white hair and those haunting purple eyes.
Eyes so much like those of his son, Zaknafein thought, and he felt as if he was being transported back in time to those many sparring matches he had fought with Drizzt before and after Drizzt had gone to Melee-Magthere.
Zak chased the notion away, or at least tried to. He didn’t really want to be thinking of Drizzt right then, however, because he understood well the likely danger, the terrible danger, his son was facing.
He shook his head and set himself again, feet wide and balanced, hands up to defend.
“If your mind is elsewhere, I will defeat you easily,” Azzudonna teased.
Zak didn’t answer.
Azzudonna sighed and threw the towel aside, then surprisingly turned away. “We are wasting our time here,” she announced.
“You only say that because you know I will put you to the floor!” Zak called after her.
The woman stopped short and spun about, her almost perpetual smile nowhere to be seen. “When he is here mind and body, Zaknafein can do that . . . occasionally,” she said, with only the last word showing any hint of humor. But her expression became a scowl. “When he is here mind and body, Zaknafein shows himself worthy of a place on Biancorso. This distracted man before me now cannot compete in cazzcalci.”
Zak winced.
“If you doubt me, perhaps you can move to another borough and join another team, so that if you fool them enough to let you on their team, when we compete in the next event, I will show you the truth of my words.”
“Move to another borough?” he echoed, his tone revealing more anger than hurt.
When his family and friends had returned to the south, Zaknafein had stayed in Callidae, in the borough of Scellobel and the house of Azzudonna. She was his lover, mind and body, soon to be his wife. She was his partner in everything now, his forever companion, so he hoped. And more than anything, Azzudonna wanted Zak to join her in her life’s passion as a player on the Whitebears of Scellobel, the cazzcalci team known as Biancorso.
Cazzcalci was more than a game for the people of Callidae. Each of the four boroughs fielded a team of twenty-five battlers, and for those hundred Callidaeans, cazzcalci was their life. They trained all year for that battle of Twilight Autumn, when the summer sun gave way to the winter night above Callidae.
Zaknafein understood her anger with him—he deserved it at that moment. Since she had first met him on the day of his arrival in Callidae, she had mentioned him as a potential battler on her beloved Biancorso. She had watched him, even coached him that day when he battled against another woman who wished to become a member of Biancorso, and Azzudonna had looked at him even then as she looked at him now, her purple eyes sparkling.
The attraction had been mutual and instant, and it had multiplied many times over in the tendays they had spent together and the adventure they had shared. She had spent hours and hours at his bedside, bolstering his spirits when a slaad had infected him and his end seemed near, and now shared his bed. It was deeper than even that, though.
In the battle of cazzcalci, after her heroics on the rink, Azzudonna had been the one to start the chant “Perte miye, Zaknafein!” which had been echoed by the tens of thousands in the arena; the call, the pleading, that had brought the magic of the Merry Dancers, the magical lights of the northern night sky, swirling down to him, strengthening him, intoxicating him in their pure magical beauty, steeling his resolve to hold on and survive that which seemed mortal.
She had done that. Her love for him, expressed through the chants of all of Callidae, had done that, those eyes sparkling the entire time. Until now, when they didn’t shine, but rather glared.
And that was Zak’s conundrum.
He hated seeing those eyes look at him like that. Which meant he couldn’t leave her.
Yet it also meant he couldn’t return to the south, and from there to Menzoberranzan to join in the war against the Spider Queen, a war in which he—by fathering Drizzt, by sacrificing himself for Drizzt those centuries before, and unwittingly by being resurrected—had become a pawn.
His son was going to fight. Jarlaxle, his dearest friend, was going to fight. Dab’nay, once his lover, always his friend, was going to fight.
And he wouldn’t be beside them.
He heaved a heavy sigh, his shoulders slumping, and he noted Azzudonna’s expression and posture change. Her features softening, her stance shifting away from a fighting pose.
“Not today, then,” Azzudonna said, her voice full of sympathy.
It struck Zak deeply to see that she loved him enough to trust him, to recognize and understand that something was wrong with him, and trusting, obviously, that he would tell her when he was ready.
“Not today,” he agreed and began stripping off his fist wrappings.
Someone looking upon the lanky young man might think him no more than a tall child, and certainly not formidable. But those who watched Allefaero battling the polar worms beneath the ice-filled borough of Cattisola knew better. Even those around the young student who worked the library in the Siglig had thought him more of a sage than a spellcaster. Surely, he was intelligent—no one doubted that—and the value of his understanding of the remorhazes could not be denied.
Still, when Allefaero ventured into the crystal caves beneath the city’s lost borough on that initial descent beside Holy Galathae, even his biggest supporters had no hint that he would prove so potent an evoker, destroying many of the invading beasts, driving them back, indeed, saving the life of Galathae the hero.
The underestimation was inevitable and understandable, Allefaero knew. He was called “lanky,” but in truth, he was skinny, incredibly thin. His brain worked wonders and he could read and remember a large tome in a day. But he ate little, which certainly wasn’t a prescription for thickness in this cold climate. While other aevendrow his age trained physically, many hoping to one day serve on their borough team in cazzcalci, Allefaero read, and read, and read some more.
Knowledge was his power, quite literally, channeling his brainpower into his magical dweomers.
Yet even he had been surprised at the might of that in his first encounters with the polar worms, which were, indeed, the first battle encounters of his half-century of life.
Perhaps Allefaero’s greatest gift was that he knew that he didn’t know what he didn’t know, and so he guided his quests for knowledge based on outcomes of past events instead of on tradition. He read those less regarded tomes in the vast library of the Siglig. Instead of dismissing the spellcrafting work of perceived failures, he took the time to learn if he could discover where they went wrong, and more than that, to understand what had led them on this or that particular path to begin with.
Which is why he stood now before the door of an old human, an exotic-looking Ulutiun man who over the years had become the butt of many jokes between the other scholars and wizards working in the library.
The “crazy old windblown shelduck” named Nvisi had predicted the continuing encroachment of Cattisola’s ice wall many years before the stranger named Jarlaxle had figured out the secret beneath the canyon that housed the borough. But Nvisi’s explanations and prognostications were always written with such strange syntax and word choice as to seem to some as ambiguous, and his manner of speaking was very different than that even of the other Ulutiuns in Callidae.
And thus, he was dismissed and mocked.
By all but Allefaero.
He knocked quietly on the door and heard mumbling within, but nothing distinct.
Rather than disturb the man at his work, Allefaero spent a minute to cast a spell upon Nvisi’s metal doorknob, a spell Nvisi had taught him.
The knob shuddered and sprouted tiny limbs as it animated to life.
If Nvisi is not reading or writing, turn and open the door, he silently imparted to his tiny servant, and he smiled when the doorknob’s new legs began twisting and the latch pulled back.
Allefaero lightly pushed open the door and let it swing enough for him to take in the room, his gaze going immediately to the occupant.
Wearing ragged and ill-fitting clothing, and many layers of it, and with his sparse crop of still-black hair all disheveled and haphazardly cut into many different lengths and layers, Nvisi surely appeared more a houseless and penniless vagabond than a scholarly wizard. His head was bowed, left hand tap-tapping at his left eyebrow, while he rolled some items—his magical gemstones, Allefaero figured—before him in his clenched right hand.
If he had noticed the door opening, he didn’t show it.
“Master Nvisi?” Allefaero asked.
No response.
“Master?” he asked more loudly.
Nvisi’s left hand dropped to his side and he looked up, though in his pacing, he was then facing the wall opposite the door. He glanced around confusedly and Allefaero called to him again.
It still took the short Ulutiun some time to realize that the speaker was behind him, and Allefaero was reminded as to why so many of his peers considered the notion of “Nvisi the Great Clairvoyant” somewhat . . . wrongheaded.
Finally, Nvisi turned around, a smile appearing immediately on the wrinkled and ruddy skin of his round face.
Allefaero sucked in his breath, a slight gasp that always occurred when he first looked upon Nvisi after a time away from the man and saw again those eyes, one bright amber, the other crystal blue.
“Allefaero,” Nvisi greeted. “Too long, oh clever. Clever Allefaero. You listen to me. Allefaero listens to Nvisi.”
The young wizard had a hard time unwinding that greeting until he realized that Nvisi was looking past him, to the door, now with both knobs visible because of the angle of the partially opened portal, tiny legs kicking on the hallway knob, tiny arms flailing on the inner knob.
Nvisi cackled at the sight.
“You taught me well,” Allefaero said.
“Nvisi does not teach, no, no, no. Inform. Nvisi informs. He sees, he tells. He does not teach. No, no.”
“Of course,” Allefaero said with a bow.
“Nvisi is cursed, not blessed,” the Ulutiun said, waving his hands, one still clenched, to cut that bow of respect short. Nvisi wasn’t holding his fist tight enough, though, and a small purple stone flew from it as he waggled, bouncing across the room.
Allefaero moved to find it, but stopped at Nvisi’s scolding “Eh eh!”
Nvisi gave a soft but sharp burst of two whistles and a fuzzy white-furred rodent, hand-sized and with no eyes and a large pink nose, scampered out from under a chair, darting across the room. It disappeared under a pile of boxes and papers beneath a desk covered in parchments, then came back out a moment later with the purple stone in its mouth.
“Doodles,” Nvisi said gratefully when the sightless glacial lemming ran up his leg, weaved in and out of one of the shirts and another of the vests he wore, and dropped the gem into his waiting hand.
Wizards conjured their familiars from spirits, Celestial, fey, or fiend, but Doodles was none of those. He, or she—how would one know?—was truly a lemming, a living lemming, or perhaps the spirit of a formerly living lemming that was alive once more through Nvisi’s magic, for the man had kept it by his side for as long as anyone could remember.
Or maybe Doodles had been many different lemmings. Some others whispered that Nvisi kept a lemming brood somewhere in the piles of papers and boxes and clothes strewn about his room, or perhaps somewhere else in the giant Siglig building. It wouldn’t surprise Allefaero.
Whatever the case, there was clearly a bond between this strange small bi-eyed man and that tiny rodent which did not seem to be simply a magical creation.
Nvisi put his right hand into the front right pocket of the outer pair of pants he was wearing, then removed it without the other gems. He reached across with his left hand to add the purple stone into his right pocket, but couldn’t quite manage it, so instead of simply transferring the stone to his right hand, he called to Doodles for help, and the lemming ran down his sleeve and deposited the stone for him.
All of that without sight, any sight, without eyes, even. Nvisi had once explained the seemingly miraculous efforts of Doodles the blind lemming to Allefaero as a matter of magic detection. He had cast that particular dweomer upon Doodles, so he claimed, over and over again until it became a permanent “sight” for the little lemming. Then Nvisi had bestowed magical auras, lines of varying energies, upon himself and everything in his private quarters.
Apparently it worked, for the lemming showed no signs of its blindness.
“Good, yes, very good, haha,” Nvisi said, looking up as Doodles scampered away. “What?” he asked Allefaero.
“What what?”
“You talk like that and they soon will call Allefaero crazy like Nvisi!”
That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, the young wizard thought but didn’t say. He understood the question then, and replied, “I need a foretelling.”
Nvisi’s nostrils flared and he straightened nervously.
“It is important,” Allefaero told him.
“Always they are, and always they are not what you think they are to be or not to be. The future is a trickster!”
“Please, I beg.”
“Not surprised. Uncertain times. Allefaero wants to know. Mona Valrissa wants to know. They ask, always they ask, and they harrumph and shake fists and heads at Nvisi when they cannot understand.”
“I know that the explanation of the visions are not your doing, not your fault,” Allefaero replied. “You tell what they tell you to tell.” As he heard the rolling cadence of his repetitive phrase, Allefaero realized that he might be turning more into Nvisi than he had imagined.
“A foretelling. Not Cattisola,” Nvisi said, closing his amber eye. It popped open and his blue eye snapped shut. “Not for Holy Galathae and our visitors.”
“For me,” said Allefaero. “And for all of us. There is a great war commencing in the Underdark city that gave to us Jarlaxle and Zaknafein and the other udadrow. The war will touch us.”
Nvisi gasped and nodded.
“I want to—”
“Stop!”
The young wizard went silent.
“One. One, only one! One vision, hour, image, explanation. I will not look to know too much. Such truths break the mind.”
Allefaero understood. Nvisi was often visited by Callidaeans who wanted to know when or how they would die, and those requests had always elicited nothing but horror from the clairvoyant magician. Allefaero had been told that the reason was that Nvisi had seen his own death, and that moment, above all others, had sent him into this strange and unraveled existence.
The Ulutiun looked to his mantel and whistled. A small bell sitting on the right end of the shelf sprouted sticklike arms and legs and tiny eyes. It hopped up on its feet, pulled up the front rim of the bell as if it were the hem of an impeding skirt, then quick-stepped to the other side of the long mantel and gave a little ring of its bell to the hourglass sitting there—which responded accordingly by sprouting a pair of legs underneath and rising up, then a second pair of legs from up top. It gave a great leap—for an hourglass, at least—and executed a perfect flip, landing on its second set of legs and immediately retracting its limbs, becoming in appearance a simple hourglass once more, only now the sand was in the upper half.
“Hour. Yes, one,” said Nvisi, and a pair of tiny arms popped out the side of the hourglass and adjusted the small butterfly screw accordingly for the fine sand to begin flowing to measure the requested length of time.
Then it seemed just an hourglass, and the bell flattened and seemed just a bell—except that it was a bell with eyes, staring intently and unblinkingly at the hourglass, ready to sound off when the sand had fully drained.
Allefaero watched it all with delight and found himself hoping that one day the others at the library would think of him as a “crazy old windblown shelduck.”
“Want?” Nvisi said to Allefaero. “You know not that what you think you want you do not want! Men who know such things . . .” The diviner began shaking his opened and empty hand at the side of his head, rolling his eyes, mimicking one who had gone mad.
“No particulars, then,” Allefaero agreed. “If you see my death, or those of a friend, tell me not.”
Nvisi huffed and shook his head, as if the wizard wasn’t playing fair with such a request. “But I see it,” he muttered.
Sympathy hit the young wizard hard when he heard those words. Still—he must know. “I wouldn’t ask this if it wasn’t importa—” Allefaero started, but held up when Nvisi lifted a hand and nodded.
“One. Hour,” the diviner said. He closed his eyes and began to whisper to himself, a babbling line that Allefaero couldn’t begin to decipher—he knew the words, but their order, or rather, the lack of structure, made it impossible.
Still whispering, sometimes guffawing, the diviner shook his hand with the stones as if they were dice. A long while passed with Nvisi dancing about, singing, chanting, whispering, and often stopping as if he had lost himself in whatever spellcasting he might be attempting. But finally, he tossed the seven gemstones, each a distinct color of the rainbow, into the air before them, where they floated and rolled about, sparkling in different patterns, darting about each other to form different shapes, as if they were dots to be connected. Allefaero found himself wholly outmatched in trying to decipher those shapes, however, for they each lasted but a moment.
With each one, Nvisi gave a grunt and a nod.
“Endless fiends,” the diviner remarked. “Abominations!”
Allefaero sucked in his breath, but this was no surprise to him, of course, for he had heard of the expected combatants in Menzoberranzan.
The gemstone dance continued. More mumbling and singing from Nvisi accompanied them.
“The web cannot be broken.”
Allefaero didn’t like that one, but then remembered that a web began all of this, and it was one that was cast against Lolth, and one that had reversed the Curse of Abomination, freeing driders from their torment and making of them udadrow once more. “Which web?” he asked, but Nvisi didn’t hear him. The wizard recalled the warnings of ambiguity in Nvisi’s prognostications and grit his teeth to force himself to just listen.
“Blood . . . betrayal, so much betrayal. Teetering, teetering, uncertainty. Loyalty against betrayal. Fear against hope. Which is stronger?”
Allefaero chewed his lip.
“A battle of flesh, a battle of truth and heart and . . .”
Nvisi was gasping, and trembling.
The gems began to move all about once more, and Allefaero understood those last remarks to be a question Nvisi was asking of the divination spell.
He looked right at Allefaero and gasped again, eyes popping wide in horror.
The wizard nearly swooned—had Nvisi just seen his death? Or the death of another?
Or worse?
“The overview,” he said to Nvisi, though he had no idea if the man, dancing and singing softly in his trance, could even hear him, or was even aware that there was someone else in the room. It went on for a long while, so long that Allefaero glanced at the hourglass repeatedly, watching the sand draining away. He tried to intervene more than once, asking questions. He resisted the urge, for this was truly maddening, to reach out and grasp one of the stones and pluck it away to force Nvisi to give him something, some bit of information, anything.
The sand drained, the tiny bell hopped up and dinged.
“Callidae,” the diviner said as the gemstones fell to the floor. “A chin lifted high, droplets falling from it.”
With a great heave, Nvisi opened his eyes.
“What does that mean?” Allefaero asked.
“What?”
“‘A chin lifted high, droplets falling from it.’”
“Where did Allefaero hear that?”
“You just . . .” he started to answer, but stopped when Nvisi bent low to gather a stone or two and called out, “Doodles!”
“Nvisi?”
“You must go,” the diviner said.
“What did you see?”
“I saw war.”
“Yes, yes, of course, but what does that mean?”
“It means ugly.” Nvisi shuddered and shook his head. “Ugly more than Allefaero knows.”
“I’ve been fighting beneath Cattisola,” Allefaero argued. “I’ve seen death.”
“Have you seen . . . have you seen?” Nvisi asked. “Shake and scream, shake and scream, forevermore, shake and scream.” He furiously tapped his finger, quite hard, against his forehead. “The wounds in here? Haunting!” He held his hands up before his face, one opened like a claw, the other fisted, holding a couple of the gemstones. “The blood that cannot wash! Brother’s blood on the murderer!”
He came forward as he spoke, forcing Allefaero to backpedal.
“My death?” the wizard asked, though he had promised not to. “Did you see my death?”
“Go! Go!” Nvisi shouted at him, bulling forward, chasing him back toward the hallway. The animated doorknob turned the latch, then kicked off with its tiny feet to swing the door open as Nvisi forced him through it.
“Ugly!” he shouted, grasping the door to slam it closed. “A chin lifted high, droplets falling from it!”
Nvisi gasped at his own words, as if shocked by remembering them, or by whatever it was that had incited them initially. He swung the door shut, the doorknob securing it.
Allefaero stood there for a long while, committing every utterance the diviner had made during and after the spell to his memory.
Trying to sort them out.
Fearing that their apparent ambiguity would leave him knowing less than he had before he had come to see his friend, his crazy old windblown shelduck friend.