Anthologies 13 - The Best of the Realms Book II by Forgotten Realms

Author:Forgotten Realms [Realms, Forgotten]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Published: 2012-09-01T18:12:36+00:00

BLOODBOUNP

It had taken the Master's little flying eyes half the day to find her.

Tace tried not to smile into their reproving glares as she uncurled herself from the shaded corner she'd found, where the bases of two stone wind-spikes sprouted from one end of a tower balcony. The eyes hovered right in front of her face, angry and unblinking. She tucked the two curved pieces of glass she'd been peering through to magnify distant things—scraps purloined from the floor of the Master's workchamber—into one of the many pockets of her dusty, clinging leathers, stretched, and murmured, "I come, Master."

The breeze hissed past her ears as Tace ran lightly along the balcony and sprang into the air at its far end, leaping across emptiness some hundreds of feet above the dusty stone courtyard that ringed

the tower to the round brass window she'd left open. She knew it was sturdy enough to take the weight of Maelarkh Throon's youngest and most slender house slave. Catching its swing-bar with deft fingers, Tace pulled hard, swinging herself feet-first back into Ironwind Tower.

A last, wild glimpse of sun-drenched, rocky Thayan highlands flashed past her gaze, then she was landing on the smooth tiles hard enough to bruise her feet in her soft shoes, but bouncing forward to—

Feel fingers as cold and hard as iron dig into her shoulder.

"Tantaraze," Old Sameera said in slow, scandalized outrage, "work is not to be hidden or run from. Slaves live to work. Slaves who do not work do not continue to live!" Old, iron-taloned fingers shook Tace like a dusty cloak.

"This," Sameera snarled, "you know full well, wherefore my words are wasted, so I'll let my goad speak for me and just say this: Run to the master, who awaits in his spellchamber! Run just as fast as you can!"

Tace sprang forward in a wild leap the moment Sameera's grip loosened, but she knew the red fire of the goad's barbed lashes would crack down her back and behind before she could get quite clear—and they did, sending her staggering. Sameera had been flogging slaves for a long, long time.

The slavemother's satisfied hiss followed her around the first bend of the passage, the bend that hid the rude "dig my dung" gesture Tace made back at Sameera, and also hid her shoulder-wrigglings to loosen and soothe the goad-fire.

Not from the Master, of course. The flying eyes were darting along by her shoulders as Tace raced. Like a quiet little wind she ran, ducking low at every turn and leaning so close to the crimson and goldglimmer wall hangings that they rippled with the haste of her passage.

She feared the Master, of course, and in a curious way, although she knew full well that she could die at his whim and that he was by far the most dangerous and powerful person in his tower, she also liked him.

More than that: He liked her... or at least was amused by her, and let her tease him, just a little, or betimes steal a sweet tart from the hearthside platters without informing Sameera.

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