The Wizardwar

For some reason she had kept these small failures from Dhamari. This was not a difficult thing to do. He spent most of his time working alone. Potions fascinated him, and he was absorbed with the creation of a spellbook that would ensure the fame of the Exchelsor wizards. Oddly enough, since their wedding he had done nothing else that might establish his lineage and legacy.

Their first days of marriage, the traditional moon in seclusion, had been a puzzlement to Keturah. By day they had walked on the shore, calling creatures of the sea and watching them splash and play in the cresting waves offshore. She had shown Dhamari the spells for summoning giant squid and teasing from them sprays of sepia that could be captured and used as a component for wizard's ink. They had spoken with selkies, watched the dolphins at play, but it seemed that they had once again become mistress and apprentice. Dhamari was polite, respectful, detached. He left her at the door to her bedchamber each night and returned to his studies.

This pattern continued after their return to Halarahh and to Keturah's tower. Dhamari was unfailingly courteous. They ate together each evening, and he poured exquisite wine from the Exchelsor cellars and engaged her in learned conversation. Their association was not altogether unpleasant, but neither was it a marriage. It was not even a friendship, and Keturah could not bring herself to confide to this stranger her concern over her waning power.

Keturah watched the starsnake disappear into the sunrise clouds. She hadn't been able to gather enough magic to get its attention, still less compel its will!

She cloaked herself with magic and with a wrap of flowing silk, then quietly made her way across the city to the home of the greenmage Whendura. There were many such physicians in the city, minor wizards and priests who had studied the magehound's art as well as divination and herbal lore. The common folk had their midwives and clergy, but a wizard's health was so bound up in Art that a special set of diverse skills was needed. Whendura was well respected, but her home was far from the fashionable coast, a location deliberately chosen to give clients a sense of privacy and security-or, as much as such things existed in Halruaa.

Whendura, a small, plump woman who looked as if she ought to be plying grandchildren with honeycakes, met Keturah at the door with a warm smile. She ushered her visitor up two flights of stairs to a small room, chatting cozily as she pounded herbs and mixed them with watered wine. Keturah stripped down to her shift and set aside all her spell bags and charms and wands, so that nothing magical might confuse the greenmage's tests. She drank the green sludge Whendura offered, then endured a long list of questions and much magical poking and prodding.

At last Whendura nodded and began to gather up her wands and crystals. "So much magic within you," she said respectfully. "It is a great gift that you give Halruaa!"

Keturah frowned. "I don't understand."

The greenmage's busy hands stilled, and a flash of compassion lit her eyes. "Don't fret over it," she all but crooned. "It is often so. The potions can bring confusion."

"Potions," Keturah echoed without comprehension. "Confusion?"

Whendura gave her a reassuring smile. "It will be different when the babe is born," she said gently as she continued to gather up her tools. "May Mystra grant," she added under her breath.

Keturah realized that she was gaping like a carp. "Babe? What babe?"

It was the greenmage's turn to be astonished. "You are not with child?"

"No," she said flatly. "It is not possible." How could it be, when her "husband" had never once crossed the threshold of her bedchamber?

"Then why have you come for testing?"

"I told you," Keturah said impatiently. "My magic is diminishing in power and reliability. To whom should I come but a greenmage?"

Pity and comprehension flooded the woman's face. "It is always so, for a jordain's dam. Do not look so shocked, child," she said, clearly distressed by what she saw in Keturah's face. "You were told all of this, but sometimes a woman loses memory along with magic."

The truth slammed into Keturah with the force of a monsoon gale. She was being prepared to give birth to a jordain!

Keturah forced calm into her reeling mind and brought forward what she knew of such things. Though jordaini births did occur unaided from time to time, it was more often a rare and highly secret procedure, involving potions that stopped the hereditary transfer of magic from mother to child.

So that was the reason why Dhamari was content to leave her at her door each night! Their match had been granted because it had the potential of producing a jordaini child. Keturah thought of the spiced wine they drank during their shared evening meal. No doubt he'd been slipping her potions to shape the destiny of their eventual child. He would not risk disrupting the process before it was completed.

Why would he do such a thing? Never was this fate imposed upon a woman without her knowledge and consent!

Wrath, deep and fierce and seething, began to burn away her confusion. The parentage of the jordaini counselors was held in secret, but great honor was afforded wizards who gave a counselor to the land. It was a sure way for a wizard to advance in rank and status, and none need know the reason. Despite the vast power of Halruaa's magic-or perhaps because of it-many children died in infancy. A potential jordain was taken from his mother's arms and listed in the public records as a stillbirth, lost among the many babes born too frail to carry the weight of Halruaan magic. Never would the parents know the name or the fate of their child, and never would the public know why certain wizards acquired rare spellbooks, choice assignments, or even positions on the Council of Elders.

All this Keturah's friend Basel had told her late one night, shortly after the death of his wife and newborn child. His description of this secret process had carried the bitter weight of a confession.

Keturah heard the greenmage's voice in the next room and the soft, mellow chimes that opened the scrying portal. She crept to the door, pushed it open a crack, and listened.

"So great a sacrifice!" Whendura said, speaking into the scrying globe. "If Keturah has lost this much memory so soon, I fear her mind will not survive the birth of the child."

"You did well to contact me. I had not realized it was so bad with her." Dhamari's voice floated from the globe, resonant with earnest concern. "Childbearing does not come easy to Keturah, in the morning she wants no one near her. Sometimes her sickness lingers until highsun. Is there no potion that can relieve her suffering?"

The ringing sincerity in his voice made Keturah want to shriek with fury.

"You know there is not," the magehound said sternly. "She ca

Keturah's eyes widened as a grim possibility seared its way into her mind. Dhamari knew her devotion to Halruaa. If she were chosen as a jordain's dam, she would find a way to accept her fate. Yet he had made sure that she knew nothing of this.

"Keep my lady with you," Dhamari went on in his gentle voice. "She is too confused to travel alone. I will come presently and collect her."

Keturah hurried to the window. A tall iron trellis covered with pale lavender roses leaned against the wall, leading down into the greenmage's garden. As she eased herself out and began to climb down, she blessed Mystra that Dhamari had never had much talent for travel spells. He would have to depend upon their stables. The ride to the magehound's home and back granted Keturah some time.

Once she reached the ground, she conjured a travel portal and leaped through it. She emerged not in her own home but in the public gardens, near the pool where she had found the blue behir nearly a year ago.