The Floodgate

Dhamari leaned back in his chair. "You have come well prepared. I had almost forgotten the time I spent with Kiva in this very tower."

This was news indeed! "How long ago?"

"I should say a good six and twenty years," the wizard reminisced. "We were both apprentices under the same mistress, a very talented wizard of the evocation school. It seems impossible that it could be so long ago!"

Matteo had intended to mention Kiva and work his way back to the elf's capture of Keturah. This was an unexpected shortcut! "Might this wizard, your former mistress, have knowledge of Kiva's life beyond this time of apprenticeship?"

"Would she? Oh yes, to her sorrow and mine!" The wizard took a long breath and sent Matteo an apologetic smile. "Forgive me. I speak so seldom of my lady Keturah. It is a great joy to do so and a great sorrow. Perhaps you know the name?"

"I heard it spoken in the Swamp of Akhlaur."

"I can see why." Dhamari leaned forward eagerly. "This girl, this untrained commoner whose voice held the laraken-tell me about her."

Matteo spread his hands in a negligent gesture. "There is little I can say. She is a street performer, a girl with a merry heart and a clever mind. She can imitate any voice she hears. Untrained in Art she certainly is, but she picked up a stray spell here and there. She possesses a strong wild talent, such as is seldom seen in these civilized times, but she is training now."

"Yes, with Basel Indoulur. I have heard," Dhamari said. "I was one of many wizards who offered to teach her, but both the council and the girl herself inclined toward Basel. He has had much experience as a teacher, you know."

Matteo didn't know, but he nodded politely. "Lord Basel is fond of apprentices," Dhamari went on. "He trains three at a time. He has done so ever since he left the Jordaini College."

This information hit Matteo like a barbarian's warhammer. "He was a master at the college?"

"Oh, yes. Before your time, I should think. Not much before, though. Eighteen, perhaps twenty years."

That was before his training, but certainly not before his time! Matteo remembered Tzigone's claim that one of his Jordaini masters was also his father. He had looked to the masters still at the school, never considering other possibilities. Apparently, Tzigone had.

It would be like her, Matteo mused. Tzigone had a strong if unconventional sense of honor. When he agreed to help Tzigone find her family, perhaps she decided to repay him in kind. She had found his mother for him. Perhaps she had taken an apprenticeship with Basel Indoulur to learn about his father.

Matteo realized that his host was regarding him with concern. He managed a smile that apparently looked as unconvincing as it felt. Dhamari poured a glass of wine and handed it to him, gesturing for him to drink. Matteo took an obliging sip and felt his composure begin to return.

"The day is unseasonably hot, and one must drink frequently to keep from growing lightheaded," the wizard said.

It was a gracious and convenient observation. Matteo nodded his thanks. "You mentioned a tale that concerns Keturah. I have not heard it."

After a long moment, Dhamari Exchelsor nodded. "I am not sure this tale will help you, but you can make of it whatever you will.

"Keturah, who was once my mistress in the art of evocation, became my wife," he began slowly. "We lived together but a short time, in this place, the very tower in which I trained. At first we were well content, but Keturah was ambitious, and she grew ever more daring in testing the limits of her power. She could bring the most powerful creatures to her side as easily as a shepherd might whistle up his dog. As time passed, she turned to creatures from dark places, monsters far beyond her strength. They strained her magic. They stained her soul," he concluded in a barely audible voice.

After a moment he cleared his throat and continued. "I sensed that not all was well with Keturah. She was often away, sometimes for days at a time. Even when she stayed at the tower, oftentimes she slept half the day away with terrible headaches, which came on swiftly and without warning. She became tempestuous, sharp-tongued, quick to anger. I turned a blind eye to her moods. Had I acted sooner," he said with deep and painful regret, "this tale might be very different. The last day I saw Keturah was the day a greenmage died, attacked in her tower by three starsnakes."

"That is impossible!" Matteo protested. "Such creatures avoid wizards and shun each other."

"Under normal circumstances, yes. It appears that these creatures were summoned."

The implication was disturbing but unmistakable. A greenmage was a midwife skilled in the herbal and healing arts, usually with a bit of the diviner's gift and always trained by the Azuthan inquisitors. Not quite a wizard, not quite a cleric, not quite a magehound, not quite a witch, but definitely more than a physician, a greenmage saw to the health of Halruaa's wizards. Since a wizard's magic and health were so entwined, such complex training was necessary.

"You said Keturah was feeling unwell. She visited this greenmage for treatment?"

"Yes. By the word of the greenmage's servants, Keturah was the last to see the woman alive." Dhamari heaved a ragged sigh. "Perhaps she summoned the starsnakes. Perhaps not. I will never know, for on that day she was lost to me."

Murder through magic was a grave crime, one that would certainly warrant Keturah's death. That alone would explain her flight. Nevertheless, Matteo suspected that there was more and said so.

"Yes," the wizard agreed sadly. "There always seems to be, doesn't there?"

The jordain nodded, returning his host's faint, rueful smile.

"Keturah eluded pursuit for several years. In Halruaa, that is an astonishing feat! Many sought her, and from time to time some word of her came to me." The wizard glanced at Matteo. "She bore a child. No one can name the father. You understand the seriousness of this."

"Yes."

In Halruaa the children of wizardly lineage were not born to random couplings, as in the uncivilized lands to the north. Wizards were paired through divination and carefully kept records, matched to ensure that the lines would remain strong. Dangerous magical gifts, instability of mind or weakness of body-to the wizardborn, such things could be deadly. So entrenched was this custom that few Halruaan children were born out of wedlock. Bastards carried a lifelong stigma. A wizard's bastard, if no father could be named, was killed at birth.

"Keturah knew the law, too," the wizard continued. "She ran, she hid, she protected her child. With her very life she protected her child!"

Dhamari rose and walked with quick, jerky movements over to a table. He took up a carved box and removed from it a small object wrapped in silk. Smoothing back the coverings, he returned to Matteo's side and showed him a simple medallion.

"This belonged to Keturah. Kiva ran her to ground, then brought me this talisman like a trophy. She told me how my wife died, and laughed." The eyes he turned upon Matteo were bright with unshed tears. "Since Kiva found Keturah, I assume she captured the girl, as well."

"I have heard it said," Matteo said carefully. He did not add that somehow a young Tzigone had also managed to escape.

The wizard looked away and cleared his throat several times before speaking. "You are a jordain. The hidden lore of the land is open to you. Things that no man can speak are entrusted to your keeping." He glanced up, and Matteo nodded encouragingly. "If the child survived, a man such as you could learn what became of her. Perhaps you could take this trinket just in case. If you should find her, give it to her and speak to her of her mother. Tell her as little or as much as you think she can bear to hear. A jordain must speak truth, but sift the grain from it and let the chaff blow away."