by Ed Greenwood
“Lhaerand,” he said suddenly, “can you hurl fire?”
“Yes, of course,” the mage snapped. “At who? I—”
“At that!” Paeregur shouted, fear making his voice almost a scream. “Now!”
And as if it could hear his words, the mist thickened into bright smoke, and struck, snakelike, at Phostral. The giant warrior had raised his blade and moved to challenge it even before Paeregur’s cry; his companions could only see his back, and hear a faint sighing—was that a sizzle, at the heart of it? A gurgle?—in the instant before his blade fell from his hand. The gauntlet went with it, and nothing was left behind: the vambrace ended in a stump. Then, slowly, Phostral turned to face his companions.
His helm was empty, his head entirely burnt away, but something was filling it or at least holding it where it should be, above the armored wall of the warrior’s chest. The thing that had been Phostral staggered toward them, moving slowly and tentatively. The mage stepped back and started to stammer out a spell.
Instantly the gigantic armored form turned toward him and toppled, crashing down on its face—or where its face had been—as a white whirlwind boiled up out of it, chiming. Paeregur shouted in fear, waving his sword and knowing it would avail him nothing—but Lhaerand shrieked and sprinted the length of the spur, with the mist-thing in cold and chiming pursuit.
The mage never tried to turn and fight. He ran as fast as he could and leaped, high and far, out over the road to somewhere above the cliffs beyond—where he howled all the way down to a wet and splintering end.
So that was a despairing death. Paeregur swallowed. What better would a heroic one be?
And how would any minstrel know, once he was bones and ash?
The whirlwind came back along the spur slowly, chiming almost coyly—as if it was toying with him.
The tall warrior set his jaw and raised his sword. When he judged the mist was near enough, he slashed at it and danced to one side, then planted himself to drive a vicious backhand back through its chiming whiteness.
Unsurprisingly, his blade met nothing, though its edge seemed to acquire a line of sparks. Even as he noticed them, in his frantic trot along the spur, they winked out.
He circled, tripping on someone’s helm and almost falling, to lash out with his blade again. Once more he clove nothing, gasped his way aside from looming mist, and slashed through it again with the same utter lack of effect. The mist swirled, leaping over his head, and he dodged aside to avoid having it fall on him. It continued its sinuous rush, curving around his vainly thrusting blade to dart in along his sword arm.
At the last instant, it turned into him rather than grazing past—and blazing agony exploded through him. Paeregur was dazedly aware that he was screaming and staggering away vainly slapping at empty air with his arm.
His only arm.
Nothing remained on the other side but a twisted mass of seared flesh and leather, all melted together. There was no blood … but there was no arm left at all. His sword arm. Paeregur looked wildly about as the ribbon of mist floated almost mockingly past, and saw his sword lying atop a huddled mess that had once been a priest of Tymora. Much good Lady Luck had brought them all, to be sure. He ran unsteadily, not used to one side of him being a lot lighter than the other, over to his blade and scooped it up.
He was still straightening when the burning pain came again and he fell heavily onto his tailbone on the rock, watching an empty boot spin away. It had taken his leg.
He struggled to rise, to move at all, his remaining boot heel kicking vainly against the uneven stone, and waved his blade defiantly. The mist closed in and he made of himself a desperate whirlwind, spinning around and around with his blade constantly slashing the air. He rang it off the stone around him twice, once hard enough to chip the edge, and cared not. He was going to die here … what good is a pristine blade to a dead man?
The mist came at him again in an almost gloating dive, its chiming rising around him as he twisted and slashed desperately. When the burning came again, it was in his intact thigh and he was rolling helplessly over, flailing at nothing with his useless sword. One limb at a time—it was toying with him.
Was he going to be reduced to a helpless torso, unable to do anything but stare as it slew him very slowly?
A few panting breaths later, as he stared up at the uncaring stars through swimming eyes, he knew the answer was going to be—yes.
He wondered just how long the mist would make him suffer, then decided he was past caring. Almost his last thought was a rueful realization that all who die slowly enough to know what is happening must come to a place beyond caring.
He was … he was Paeregur Amaethur Donlas, and he had come to his cold end here on a rock in the wilderlands of the accursed High Duchy of Langalos in the early summer of the year seven hundred and sixty-seven (as Dalereckoning ran) with no one to mourn or mark his passing, and his dead comrades all around him.
Well, have my thanks, all you vigilant gods.
Paeregur’s last thought was that he really should remember the name of that star … and that one, too.…
The Crypt of the Moondark family was overgrown with brambles, creepers, and contorted, curving trees deformed by warding enchantments that were still strong after centuries. The Moondark house, a happy mingling of elf and human blood, had been known for its fell sorcery, but no Moondarks had walked Faerûn for something like one hundred and sixteen winters … and Westgate was quite content about that. No more powerful spells that might challenge a king or discomfit self-styled nobles, and no more need to be polite to half-bloods who were graceful, handsome, learned, bright, all too merry—and all too insistent on fairness and honesty in ruling. There was even a sign, much more recent than the spell-locked gates: “Behold the ending of all who insist too much.”
Elminster smiled grimly at that little moral notice. It was the first thing to crumble into dust at the touch of his most powerful spell. The long-untested wards beyond were the next thing. Dawn was almost upon Westgate, and he wanted to be safely inside the tomb-house before folk took to the streets.
The guards at the corner were still yawning and dozing against the outer wall of the crypt as Elminster slipped inside. On his short walk along the statue-flanked path to the doors of the pillared tomb house, El’s magic burnt away an astonishing number of magical triggers and traps. An odd thing for one in the service of Mystra to practice … but then Mystra dealt in a healthy array of “odd things.” What he was here to do was one of his most important tasks as a Chosen, one he spent a lot of time at these days. One that seemed to awaken an almost girlish glee in the Lady of Mysteries.
Elminster Aumar would do anything to see her smiling so.
The door wards, falling beam trap, and weave-of-jutting-blades traps were all to be expected, were anticipated, and were dealt with in but a few seconds. The fact that folk from time to time had to enter a family tomb for legitimate purposes—burials, not thefts—meant that such defenses had to be of a lesser order. In a matter of a few calm breaths Elminster was inside the dark chamber, with the door shut and spell-sealed behind him, and a radiance of his own making awakening everywhere along the low, cobwebbed ceiling.
Moondarks lay crumbling on all sides of him in stacked stone coffers that must have numbered nearly a hundred. The oldest ones were the largest, carved with ornate scenes along the sides, their lids effigies of the deceased; the more recent ones were plain stone boxes, some lacking even names. Thankfully none were stirring in undeath; he was running late as it was and never liked to hurry the fun part.
The bright and wealthy Moondarks had even been considerate enough to leave a funeral slab in the center of the crypt—a high table on which the coffin of the most recently dead could lie during a last service of remembrance, before it was muscled onto one of the stacks of the dead that lined the walls, to be left undisturbed forever. Or at least until a clever Chosen of Mystra happened along.
Elminster hummed a tune of lost Myt
h Drannor as he laid out his cloak on the empty slab—a large but nondescript lined leather cloak that wasn’t much of any color anymore and sported more than the usual assortment of patches. The inside of the cloak bore several large, crude pockets, though they seemed flat and empty as El patted them affectionately then turned away to wander around the chamber peering at dark corners, particular caskets, and even the underside of the funeral slab.
When he returned from his stroll, he slid his fingers into an upper pocket and drew forth a lacing-wrapped flask full of an amber liquid. Holding it up, he murmured, “Mystra, to thee, as always. A pale shadow of the fire of thy touch.” A long, gasping pull later, El stoppered the flask, sighed contentedly, and put it away again—in a pocket that still looked empty.
He dug in the next empty pocket with both hands and drew forth a wand in a shabby, almost crumbling wyvernskin case. He’d spent two careful spells and a lot of running around trailing the case along the rough stone blocks of an old castle wall getting the case to look this elderly. He was even prouder of the wand, discolored by decades of handling that he’d accomplished in a few minutes with goose grease, sand, and soot. Now, Eaergladden Moondark had died destitute, begging his kin for a few coppers with which to buy a roasting-fowl … but who save one Elminster was still alive to remember that? So accomplished a mage as Eaergladden could quite well have had a wand, and of course a spellbook—El reached back into the empty pocket and pulled forth a worn and bulky tome with huge, much-battered brass corners—that he hadn’t sold in his last year of life, after all. Not to mention the usual dagger enchanted so as not to rust or go dull, and to glow upon command; these enchantments were made to last, say, three centuries by a hire-cast elven longlook spell, from one of the poorer Myth Drannan apprentices. Aye, so.
El calmly lifted the lid of Eaergladden’s casket, murmured, “Well met, Master Mage of the Moondarks,” and gently laid the wand, dagger, and spellbook in the proper places around the mummified skeleton that had been Eaergladden. Then he closed the casket and went back to the cloak for a few scrolls—on carefully aged parchment—and a battered little book of magical observations, copied runes, and half-finished spells that should lead even a half-wit to the creation of a spell that would temporarily imbue the non-magically gifted with the ability to carry and cast a spell placed in them by a mage.
This work took up much of his time in the service of Mystra, these days; at her bidding, Elminster traveled Faerûn visiting ruins and the tombs of dead mages, planting “old” scrolls, spellbooks, minor enchanted items, and even the occasional staff for later folk to find—and all such leavings were in truth items he’d just finished crafting, and made to look old. Almost always, part of the treasures he left for others included notes that should lead anyone with a gift for magic to experiment and successfully create a “new” spell.
Mystra cared not overmuch who found these magics, or how they used them—so long as ever more magic was in use and ever more folk could wield it, rather than a few archwizards lording it over the spell-poor or magically barren, as had happened in the days of lost Netheril. El loved this sort of work and always had to fight a tendency to linger in the ruins and crypts, mischievously letting his lights and spell-effects be seen by others, to lure exploring adventurers toward his leavings.
“About as subtle as an orc horde,” Mystra had once termed these tactics, pouting prettily, and El knew she was right. Wherefore today he firmly took up his cloak, worked the powerful spell Azuth had given him that obliterated all traces or magical echoes of his visit, and left in the form of a shadow. The thoughtful shadow restored a few of the wards and traps in his wake before he slipped back out onto the street, inches distant from the back of a guard whose attention was on a gold coin that seemed to have fallen from the sky moments before. Unnoticed, the shadow turned solid and strolled away.
The cloaked, hawk-nosed figure had been gone from sight around a corner for exactly the time it took to draw in a single good, deep breath when a dark horse came trotting through the steady stream of walking folk and clopped to a halt in front of the guard.
That worthy looked up, raising an eyebrow in both query and challenge, to see a young, maroon-robed elf in a rich cloak peering down at the coin in the guard’s weathered palm.
The guard closed his fingers around it hastily and said, “Aye? What d’you want, outlander?”
“Myth Drannan, was it not?” the elf asked softly. “Found hereabouts?”
The guard flushed. “Paid to me fair and square, more like,” he rumbled.
The elf nodded, his gaze now lingering long and considering on the overgrown crypt the guard was standing duty in front of. The Moondarks … that bastard house of dabbling mages. And all of them who’d found their way home to die now shared a stone tomb-house, such as humans favor. In good repair, by the looks of it, with its wards still up. It was closed up much too securely for inquisitive birds or scurrying squirrels to pluck up a gold coin and carry it outside the walls. His eyes narrowed, and his face grew as sharp as honed flint, causing the guard to warily raise his weapon and shrink back behind it.
Ilbryn Starym dropped the man a mirthless and absentminded smile and rode on toward the Stars and Sword.
Wizards who came to Westgate always stayed at the Sword, in hopes of being there when Alshinree wandered in and did her trance-dance. Alshinree was getting old and a bit gaunt, now; her dances weren’t the affairs they’d once been, with the house crowded with hungrily staring men. Her dance, too, was usually just so much playacting and drunken mumbling … but sometimes, a little more often than once in a month, it happened. An entranced Alshinree uttered words of spells not known since Netheril fell, advice that might have come from the Lady of Mysteries herself, and detailed instructions as to the whereabouts, traps, and even contents of certain archmages’ tombs, ruined schools of wizardry, sorcerous caches, and even long-forgotten abandoned temples to Mystra.
Bad things happened to mages who so much as spoke to Alshinree outside the Sword or who tried to coerce or pester her within its walls, so they contented themselves with booking rooms at the inn so often that some of them could be considered to have been living there. Even if a certain human mage—one Elminster, formerly Court Mage of Galadorna, before the fall of that realm—had not taken a room at the Sword, it held the best gathering of folk in Westgate who might just have seen him hereabouts or heard something of his deeds and current doings.
The hard looks thrown his way by every guard and many merchants he’d passed suddenly hit home; Ilbryn blinked, looked all around, and found that he was galloping his startled mount down the street, its hooves slipping and sliding on the cobbles. He reined in and settled the horse into a careful walk thereafter. The bright, sparkling spell-animated sign of the Stars and Sword loomed ahead, and the champion of Starym honor steered his mount through the bustling folk to—he hoped—some answers, or even the man he sought.
As he gathered the reins together in one hand to free the other for the bellpull that would summon hostelers to see to his horse, Ilbryn discovered that something he carried in a belt-pouch had found its way into his hand, and was now clenched there: a scrap of red cloth that had been part of the mantle of office of the Court Mage of Galadorna. Elminster’s mantle.
The elf looked down at it, and although his hand remained rock steady, his handsome face slowly slipped into a stony, brooding mask. His eyes held such glittering menace that both hostelers recoiled and had to be coaxed back.
As he swung himself down from the saddle and reached for the handle of the Sword’s finely carved front door, Ilbryn Starym smiled softly.
And as one of the hostelers put it, “That were worse than ’is glaring!”
Still smiling, Ilbryn put one hand—the one flickering with the risen radiance of a ready, deadly spell—behind his back, and with the other opened the door and went in.
The hostelers lingered, half-expecting to hear a terrific crash, or smoke, or even bodies hurled out th
rough the windows … but their hoped-for entertainment never came.
Twelve
THE EMPTY THRONE
It must bother most wizards a lot that for all their spells, they can’t seize immortality. Many try to become gods, but few succeed. For this, let us all be very thankful.
Sambrin Ulgrythyn, Lord Sage of Sammaresh
from The View From Stormwind Hill
published circa The Year of the Gate
Far to the east of Westgate, even as a smiling elf slipped into an inn expecting trouble, a mist drifted through an old, deep forest.
It was a mist that sparkled and chimed as it went, moving purposefully through the trees. Sometimes it rose up into an almost humanoid, striding form, bulking tall, thick and strong; at other times it moved like an ever-leaping, undulating snake. No birds called in the shade around it, and nothing rustled in the dead leaves underfoot. Only its own whirling breezes stirred the creepers and tatters of hanging moss it wound its way through; silence ruled the forest it traversed.
This was no wonder; earlier chiming hungers had left not a creature alive in that part of the forest to witness its haste. The chiming mist had left the graveyard of the Frostfire Banner far behind, moving for miles along the deserted road to a place where most eyes would have missed the sapling-studded, overgrown remnants of a lane turning off into the woods.
The mist drifted along the dips and turns of that road, passing like eager smoke across crumbling stone bridges that took the road across rivulets, to the deep green place where the road ended … and the ruins began.
The lines of gigantic old trees flanking the overgrown road gave way to a litter of creeper-shrouded, sagging wagons and coaches. Beyond lay thickets, at their hearts overgrown mounds that had once been stables and cottages. Beyond the thickets rose shadow-tops so tall that their gloom choked away thickets and lay in endless shadow over the rotting ruin of a drawbridge across a deep, muddy cleft that had once been a moat … and the stone pillars or teeth within the moat, that had once been the stout buttresses of mostly fallen walls. Walls that had once frowned down on Faerûn from a great height, formed a massive keep.