The obese wrestler rubbed a pudgy hand over his newest bruise, trying to ignore the growing taunts of his colleagues.
"I have been too relaxed against you," he said to the young woman, "my being thrice your weight and you being a girl."
Danica brushed her hair out of her almond-shaped brown eyes and tried to hide her smile. She didn't want to humiliate the proud cleric, a disciple of Oghma. She knew his boasts were ridiculous. He had fought with all his fury, but it hadn't done him any good.
Danica looked like a wisp of a thing, barely five feet tall, with a floppy mop of curly strawberry-blond hair hanging just below her shoulders and a smile to steal a paladin's heart. Those who looked more closely found much more than "girlish" dressing, though. Years of meditation and training had honed Danica's reflexes and muscles to a fine fighting edge, as the clerics of Oghma, fancying themselves great wrestlers in the image of their god figure, were painfully discovering one after another.
Every time Danica needed information in the great Edificant Library, she found it offered only in exchange for a wrestling match. For the gain of a single scroll penned by a long-dead monk, Danica now found herself faced off against this latest adversary, a sweaty and smelly behemoth. She didn't really mind the play; she knew she could defeat tins one as easily as she had dispatched all the others.
The fat man straightened his black-and-gold vest, lowered his round head, and charged.
Danica waited until he was right in front of her, and to the onlookers it looked as if the woman would be buried beneath mounds of flesh. At the last moment, she dipped her head under the fat man's lunging arm, caught his hand, and casually stepped behind him as he lumbered past. A subtle twist of her wrist stopped him dead in his tracks and, before he even realized what was happening, Danica kicked the back of both his knees, dropping him to a kneel.
While the big man went down, his arm, bent backward and held firmly in Danica's amazingly strong grasp, did not. Sympathetic groans and derisive laughter erupted from those gathered to watch.
"Eastern comer!" the big man cried. "Third row, third shelf from the top in a silver tube!"
"My thanks," Danica said, releasing her hold. She looked around, flashing that innocent smile.
"Perhaps the next time I require information, you can fight me two against one."
The clerics of Oghma, fearing that their god was not pleased, grumbled and turned away.
Danica offered her hand to the downed priest, but he proudly refused. He struggled to his feet, nearly falling again for lack of breath, and rushed to catch up with the others. Danica shook her head helplessly and retrieved her two daggers from a nearby bench. She took a moment to examine them, as she always did before putting them back into their respective boot sheaths. One had a hilt of gold, twisted into a tiger's head, while the other had one of silver, bearing an image of a dragon. Both sported transparent crystal blades and were enhanced by a wizard's spell to give them the strength of steel and perfect balance. They had been a very valuable and treasured gift from Danica's master, a man whom Danica dearly missed. She had been with Master Turkel since her parents had died, and the wizened old man had become all the family she had. Danica thought of him as she resheathed the weapons, vowing for the millionth time to visit him when she had completed her studies.
Danica Maupoissant had been raised amid the bustle of the Westgate marketplace, five hundred miles to the northeast of the Edificant Library, on the neck between the Lake of Dragons and the Sea of Fallen Stars. Her father, Pavel, was a craftsman, reputably the finest wagonmaker in the region, who, like many people of Westgate, possessed a stubborn and fierce independence and no small amount of pride.
Theirs was a life of simple pleasures and unconditional love. Danica was twelve when she left her parents to serve as an apprentice to the aged, white-bearded potter named Turkel Bastan. Only months later did Danica come to understand her parents' reasoning in sending her to him: they had foreseen what was to come.
She spent a year shuffling back and forth across the city, splitting her time between her extensive duties with Master Turkel and those rare opportunities she found to go home. Then, suddenly, there was nowhere to go. The raid had come in the dark of night, and when the assassins had gone, so, too, were Danica's parents, the house she had grown up in, and the wagon shop that had been her father's lifelong toil.
Master Turkel showed little emotion when he told Danica the terrible news, but the young girl heard him crying later, in the solitude of his small room. Only then did Danica come to realize that Turkel and her parents had orchestrated her apprenticeship. She had assumed it an accidental thing, and had feared that perhaps her parents had simply shuffled her away for their own convenience. She knew that Turkel was from the far-off eastern land of Tabot, the mountainous region of some of her mother's ancestors, and she wondered if Turkel might be a distant relative.
Whatever their relationship, Danica's apprenticeship with the master soon had taken on a different light. He had helped her through her grieving, then had begun her true instruction, lessons that had little to do with making pottery.
Turkel was a Tabotan monk, a disciple of Grandmaster Penpahg D'Ahn, whose religion combined mental discipline with physical training to achieve harmony of the soul. Danica guessed Turkel to be no less than eighty years old, but he could move with the grace of a hunting cat and strike with his bare hands with the force of iron weapons. His displays more than amazed Danica; they consumed her. Quiet and unassuming, Turkel was as peaceful and contented a man as Danica had ever known, yet underneath that outward guise was a fighting tiger that could be brought roaring forth in times of need.
So, too, grew the tiger in Danica. She learned and practiced, nothing else mattered to her. She used her constant work as a litany against her memories, a barricade against the pain with which she could not yet come to terms. Turkel understood, Danica later realized, and he chose carefully when he would tell her more of her parents' demise.
The craftsmen and merchants of Westgate, along with, or perhaps because of, their fierce independence, were often bitter rivals, and Pavel had not escaped this fact of Westgate life.
There were several other wagonmakers- Turkel would not tell Danica their names-who were jealous of Pavel's continuing prosperity. They went to Pavel on a few occasions, threatening him with severe consequences if he would not share with them his long backlog of orders.
"If they had come as friends and fellow craftsmen, Pavel would have shared the wealth," Turkel had said, as though he and Danica's father had been much more than the slight acquaintances they pretended to be in public. "But your father was a proud man. He would not give in to threats, no matter how real the danger behind them."
Danica had never pressed Turkel for the identity of the men who had killed her parents-or, rather, had hired the dreaded Night Masks, the usual means of assassination in Westgate, and to this day, she did not know who they were. She trusted that the master would tell her when he felt she was prepared to know, prepared to take revenge, if that was her choice, or when he believed she was willing to let go of the past and build on the future. Turkel had always indicated that to be his preference.
The image of the aged master came clearly to Danica's mind as she stood there, holding the magnificent daggers. "You have outgrown me," he had said to her, and there was no remorse, only pride, in his tone. "Your skills surpass my own in so many areas."
Danica remembered vividly that she had thought the time of revelation at hand, that Turkel would tell her the names of the conspirators who had killed her parents and tell her to go out and seek revenge.
Turkel had other ideas.
"There remains only one master who can continue to instruct you," Turkel had said, and as soon as he mentioned the Edificant Library, Danica knew what was to come. The library was home to many of Grandmaster Penpahg D'Ahn's rare and priceless scrolls; Turkel wanted her to learn directly from the records of the long-dead grandmaster. It was then that Turkel had given her the two magnificent daggers.
So she had left Westgate, barely more than a child, to build on her future, to attain new heights of self-discipline. Once again Master Turkel had shown his love and respect for her, placing her needs above his own obvious despair at her departure.
Danica believed that she had accomplished much in her first year at the library, both in her studies and in her understanding of other people, of the world that suddenly seemed so very large.
She thought it ironic that her education of the wide world would come in a place of almost monastic seclusion, but she couldn't deny that her views had matured considerably in the year she had spent at the library. Before she had lived in the private desire for revenge; now Westgate and the hired assassins seemed so very far away, and so many other, more positive, opportunities were opened to her.
She dismissed those dark memories now, left them with a final image of her father's calm smile, her mother's almond eyes, and the many wrinkles of Master Turkel's wizened old face. Then even those pleasing images dissipated, buried beneath Danica's many responsibilities to her craft.
The library was a massive room supported by dozens and dozens of arched pillars, which were even more confusing because of the thousands of distracting bas-reliefs carved into each one. It took Danica many minutes to determine which was the eastern comer. When she finally got there, moving down a narrow isle of tightly packed books, she found someone waiting for her.
Cadderly couldn't hide his smile; he never could when he looked upon Danica, since the very first time he had seen her. He knew she had come from Westgate, several hundred miles to the northeast.
That alone made her worldly by his standards, and there were so many other things about her that piqued his imagination. Although Danica's features and mannerisms were mostly Western and not so different from the norm in the central realms, the shape of her eyes revealed some ancestry in the far and exotic East.
Cadderly often wondered if that was what had initially attracted him to Danica. Those almond eyes had promised adventure to him, and he was a man sorely in need of adventure. He had passed his twenty-first birthday and had been off the grounds of the Edificant Library only a few dozen times-and on those occasions, he had always been accompanied by at least one of the headmasters, usually Avery, and several other priests. Sometimes Cadderly thought himself pitifully bereft of any real experiences. To him, adventures and battles were events to be read about. He had never even seen a living orc, or monster of any kind.
Enter mysterious Danica and those alluring promises.
"It took you long enough," Cadderly remarked slyly.
"I have been at the library just a year," Danica retorted, "but you have lived here since before your fifth birthday."
"I had the library figured out in a week, even at that age," Cadderly assured her with a snap of his fingers. He fell into step beside her as she walked briskly toward the comer.
Danica glanced up at him, then bit back her sarcastic reply, not certain if the amazing Cadderly was teasing her or not.
"So you are fighting the big ones now?" Cadderly asked. "Should I be concerned?"
Danica stopped suddenly, pulled Cadderly's face down to her own, and kissed him eagerly. She moved back from him just a few inches, her almond eyes, striking and exotic, boring into him.
Cadderly silently thanked Deneir that neither he nor Danica were of a celibate order, but, as always when they kissed, the contact made both of them nervous. "Fighting excites you," Cadderly remarked coyly, stealing the romance and relieving the tension. "Now I am concerned."
Danica pushed him back but did not let go of his tunic.
"You should be careful, you know," Cadderly went on, suddenly serious. "If any of the headmasters caught you wrestling ..."
"The proud young loremasters do not leave me much choice," Danica replied, casually tossing her hair and pulling it back from her face. She hadn't really worked up much of a sweat against her latest opponent. "In this maze you call a library, I could not find half of what I need in a hundred years." She rolled her eyes about to emphasize the vastness of the pillared room.
"Not a problem," Cadderly assured her. "I had the library figured out ..."
"When you were five!" Danica finished for him and she pulled him close again. This time Cadderly decided that her attention might bring some added benefits. He prudently moved around to Danica's right side-he scribed left-handed, and the last time he had attempted tins with his left hand, he had not been able to work for several days. Cadderly had been thrilled by what Danica called her
"Withering Touch" for many months, considering it the most effective nonlethal attack form he had ever witnessed. He had begged Danica to teach it to him, but the skilled monk carefully guarded her fighting secrets, explaining to Cadderly that her fighting methods were but a small part of her religion, as much a discipline of the mind as of the body. She would not allow others to copy simple techniques without first achieving the mental preparation and philosophical attitudes that accompanied them.
In the middle of the kiss, Cadderly rubbed his hand across Danica's belly, under the bottom of her short vest. As always, the young priest was amazed by the hard, rolling muscles of her stomach. A moment later, Cadderly started moving his hand slowly upward.
Danica's reaction came in the blink of an eye. Her hand, one finger extended, snapped out across Cadderly's chest and drove into his shoulder.
Under the vest, Cadderly's hand stopped immediately, then fell lifeless to hang by his side. He grimaced for a moment as the burning pain became a general numbness the length of his arm.
"You are such a ..." Danica stammered, "a ... a boy!"
At first, Cadderly thought her anger just the expected reaction to his bold advance, then Danica stunned him completely. "Can you never forget your studies?"
"She knows!" a horrified Cadderly muttered to himself as Danica stormed away. Expecting the attack, he had carefully watched out of the comer of his eye and believed he knew precisely where Danica's finger had struck. Until that moment, he had considered this attempt a success, despite the continuing pain. But now Danica knew!
The young scholar paused a moment to consider the implications, then was relieved when he heard Danica's soft laughter from just beyond the next bookshelf. He took a step toward her, meaning to amend things, but Danica spun as soon as he rounded the corner, her finger poised to strike.
"The touch will work on your head as well," the young woman promised, her light brown eyes sparkling eagerly.
Cadderly didn't doubt that for a moment, and he surely didn't want Danica to prove her words. It always amazed him that Danica, barely half his weight, could so easily take him down. He looked upon her with sincere admiration, even envy, for Cadderly dearly wished that he possessed Danica's direction and dedication, her passion for her studies. While Cadderly went through his life busy but distracted, Danica's vision of the world remained narrowly focused, based in a rigid and philosophical religion little-known in the western realms. That passion, too, enhanced the enchantment Danica had cast over Cadderly. He wanted to open her mind and her heart and look into both, knowing that only there would he find answers to fill the missing elements of his own life.
Danica embodied his dreams and his hopes; he didn't even try to remember how sorely empty his life had been before he had met her. He backed away slowly, lifting his palms and holding them open and out wide to show that he wanted no part of any further displays.
"Stand!" Danica commanded as sharply as her melodious voice allowed. "Have you nothing to say to me?"
Cadderly thought for a moment, wondering what she wanted to hear. "I love you?" he asked as much as declared.
Danica nodded and smiled disarmingly, then dropped her hand. Cadderly's gray eyes returned the smile tenfold and he took a step toward her.
The dangerous finger shot up and waved about, resembling some hellish viper.
Cadderly shook his head and ran from the room, pausing only to grab a scrap of parchment and dip the quill he kept stuck under his hat band into an open inkwell. He had witnessed the Withering Touch perfectly, and he wanted to sketch the image while it was fresh in his mind. this time, Danica's laughter was not so soft.
