by Ed Greenwood
“So what is bravery?” Umbregard asked. “Standing in the path of danger?”
“Yes. Staying at one’s post or task, as diligent as ever, knowing that at any time the sword waiting overhead may fall, or seeing fast-approaching doom and not abandoning all to flee.”
“Please know that I mean no disrespect, but I must know: if such is bravery, how is it,” Umbregard whispered, fear in his own eyes at his own daring, “that Myth Drannor—Cormanthyr—fell, and you still live?”
Starsunder’s answering smile held sadness. “A race and a realm need obedient fools to survive, even more than they need brave—and soon dead—heroes.” He stood up, and made a movement with his hand that might have been a wave of farewell. “You can see which I must be. If ever you meet this Elminster of yours face to face, ask him which of the two he is—and bring back his answer to me. I must Know All; it is my failing.” Like a graceful panther, he padded up out of the hollow into the duskwood grove above.
“Wait!” the human mage protested, rising and stumbling up into the trees in the elf’s wake. “I’ve so much more to ask—must you go?”
“Only to prepare a place for a human to snore and a meal for us both,” Starsunder replied. “You’re welcome to stay and ask all the questions you can think of for as long as you want to tarry here. I’ve few friends left here among the living and this side of the Sundering Seas.”
Umbregard found himself trembling. “I would be honored to be considered your friend,” he said carefully and found himself trembling, “but I must ask this: how can you trust me so? We’ve but spoken for a few moments of your time, no more; how can you measure me? I could be a slayer of elves, a hunter of elven treasure—an elfbane. I give you my word I am no such thing … but I fear human promises to elves have all too often rung empty down the years.”
Starsunder smiled. “This grove is sacred to two gods of my kind: Sehanine and Rillifane,” he said. “They have judged you. Behold.”
The eyes of the human wizard followed the elf’s pointing hand to the moss-covered fallen tree and the wooden staff leaning there. Umbregard knew its familiar, well-worn length as well as he knew the hand that held it. That staff had accompanied him for thousands of miles, walking Faerûn, and was both old and fire-hardened, its ends bound shod with copper to keep them from splitting. Yet for all that, while he’d sat talking in the hollow, it had thrown forth green shoots in plenty up and down its length—and every shoot ended in a small, beautiful white flower, glowing in the shade.
In a colder darkness, a ghostly woman stopped laughing and let her hands fall. The echoes of her cold mirth rolled around the cavern for some time, while she looked around at its dark vastness almost as if seeing it for the first time, her eyes slowly becoming sharp and fierce and fiery.
They were two glittering flames when she moved at last, striding with catlike, confident grace to a particular rune. She touched the symbol firmly with one foot, watched it fill with a bright blue-white glow, then stood with arms folded, watching, as wisps of smoke rose from the radiance to form a cloud like a man-sized spark—a cloud that suddenly coalesced into something else. A legless, floating image of a youngish-looking man, eager and intense of manner, faced the empty throne, hanging in midair above the rune that had spawned it.
As the image began to speak, the ghostly woman strode around the runes to the throne, leaned on one arm of that seat, and watched the image’s speech.
It wore robes of rich crimson trimmed with black, and golden rings gleamed on its fingers—their hue matched by the blazing gold of the man’s eyes. He had tousled brown hair and the untidy beginnings of a beard, and his voice fairly leaped with eager confidence.
“I am Karsus, as you are Karsus. If you behold this, disaster has befallen me, the first Karsus—and you, the second, must carry on to glory.”
The image seemed to pace forward but actually remained above the rune. It waved one hand restlessly and continued, “I know not what you recall of my—our—life; some say my mind is less than clear, these days. Know that many mages of our people have achieved great power; mightiest of these, the archwizards of Netheril, rule their own domains. Mine, like many, is a floating city; I named it for us. I am the most powerful of all the archwizards, the Arcanist Supreme. They call me Karsus the Great.”
The image waved a dismissive hand, blazing eyes still fixed on the throne. The ghostly woman was murmuring along with the words she’d obviously heard many times before. Something that might have been a faint sneer played about her lips.
“Of course,” the image went on, “given your awakening, none of that may mean anything. I may not have been slain by a rival or suffered a purely personal doom—Karsus the city and the glory of Netheril itself may have fallen in a great war or cataclysm; we have made many foes, the greatest of them ourselves. We war among ourselves, we Netherese, and some of us war within ourselves. My wits are not always wholly my own. You may well share this affliction; watch for it, and guard against it.”
The image of Karsus smiled; arching a sardonic eyebrow, the ghostly woman smiled back. Karsus spoke on. “Perhaps you’ll have no need of these recording spells of mine, but I’ve prepared one for each speculum you see on the floor in this place; a series of spellcasting lessons, lest you face the perils of this world lacking certain enchantments I’ve found crucial. Our work must continue; only through power absolute can I—we—find perfection … and Karsus exists, has always existed, to achieve perfection and transform all Toril.”
The watching woman laughed at that, a short and unpleasant bark. “Mad indeed, Karsus! Destiny: reshape all Toril, Oh, you were certainly competent to do that.”
“Your first need may now be for physical healing, and I have anticipated the recurrence of this need in time to come, in a life where you may lack loyal servant mages or anyone you can trust. Know, then, that touching the speculum that evoked this image of me, while speaking the word ‘Dalabrindar,’ will heal all hurts. This power can be called upon as often as desired for so long as this rune remains unbroken, and can so serve anyone who speaks thus. The word is the name of the wizard who died so that this spell might live; truly, he has served us well, and—”
“Wasted words, Karsus!” the ghostly woman sneered. “Your clone was a headless mummy decorating this throne when I first saw it! Who slew it here, I wonder? Mystra? Azuth? Some rival? Or did the great and supreme sleeping Karsus fall to a passing adventurer-mage of puny spells, who thought he was beheading a lich?”
“… many another spell will serve where these do not, but I have here preserved demonstrations of my casting of enchantments of lasting usefulness and …”
The ghostly woman turned away from the words she’d heard so many times before, nodding in satisfaction. “They’ll do. They’ll do indeed. I have here a lure no mage can resist.” She strode across the rune again, and the image vanished in mid-word, the radiance winking out of the graven stone to let darkness rush back into the cavern.
“Now, how to let living mages know of it, without causing them to crowd in here by the elbowing thousands?” ghostly lips asked the utter darkness.
The darkness did not answer back.
A frowning ghost strode to the bottom of the shaft and began to blur, unraveling in a spiraling wind of her own making, until once more a whirlwind of flickering lights danced in the darkness, spiraling slowly up the shaft. “And how to keep my mage-catches here for more than one night?”
At the top of the shaft, the chiming whorl of lights hovered over the well ring, and a soft, echoing voice issued from it. “I must weave mighty spells, to be sure. The runes must respond only to me—and then only one a month, no matter what means are tried. That should cause a young mage to linger here long enough.”
With sudden vigor the mist darted to one of the rents in the walls and plunged through it, snaking through the trees trailing wild laughter and the exultant shout, “Long enough for a good feed.”
Thirteen
KINDNESS SCORCHES STONE
Cruelty is a known scourge, too seldom clever—for which we should all thank the gods. Kindness is the stronger blade, though more often scorned. Most folk never learn that.
Ralderick Hallowshaw, Jester
from To Rule A Realm, From Turret To Midden
published circa The Year of the Bloodbird
The tall, thin stranger who’d given them a cheerful smile as he’d gone into the Maid was back out again in far less than the time it took to drain a tankard.
The two old men on the bench squinted up at him a mite suspiciously. Folk seldom turned their way—which is why it was their favorite bench. It sat in the full shadow of the increasingly ramshackle porch of the Fair Maid of Ripplestones. A cold corner, but at least it wasn’t in the full dazzle of the morning sun.
The stranger was, though, his face outlined in gold as he tossed his nondescript cloak back to lay bare dark and dusty robes and breeches that bore no badge or adornment, as—wonders of the Realms!—Alnyskavver came bustling out with the best folding table, and a chair … and food!
The tavern master shuttled back and forth, puffing, as the two old men watched a meal the likes of which they’d not seen in many a year accumulate under their very noses: a tureen of the hot soup that’d been making two old bellies rumble all morn, a block of the sharpest redruck cheese—and three grouse pies!
Baerdagh and Caladaster scratched at various itches and glared sourly at the hawk-nosed stranger, wondering why by all the angry gods he’d had to choose their bench as the place to set his mornfeast on. Everything they’d dreamed of being able to afford for months now was steaming away under their noses. Just who by the armpit of Tempus did he think he was, anyway?
The two old men exchanged looks as their all-too-empty bellies rumbled, then with one accord stared the stranger up and down. No weapon … not much wealth, either, by the looks of him, though his travel-scuffed boots were very fine. An outlaw who’d had them off someone he knifed? Aye, that would fit with all the money thrown out on a huge meal like this, coming down out of the wilderlands a-starving and with stolen coins in plenty.
Now Alnyskavver was back with the haunch of venison they’d smelled cooking all yestereve, all laid out cold amid pickled onions and sliced tongue and suchlike, on the platter used when the High Duke came by … it was too much to bear! Arrogant young bastard.
Shaking his head, Baerdagh spat pointedly into the dust by the stranger’s boots and started to shift himself along the bench, to get out and away before this young glutton tucked into such a feast as this under their very noses and drove him and his empty vitals wild.
Caladaster was in the way, though, and slower to move, so the two old men were still shifting their behinds along the bench when the tavern master came back again with a keg of beer and tankards.
Three tankards.
The stranger sat down and grinned at Baerdagh as the old man looked up with the first glimmers of amazement dawning on his face.
“Well met, goodsirs,” he said politely. “Please forgive my boldness, but I’m hungry, I hate to eat alone, and I need to talk to someone who knows a fair bit about the old days of Ripplestones. Ye look to have the wits and years enough … what say we make a deal? We three share this—and eat freely, no stinting, ye keeping whatever we don’t eat now—and ye give me, as best ye know, answers to a few questions about a lady who used to live hereabouts.”
“Who are you?” Baerdagh asked bluntly, at about the same time as Caladaster said under his breath, “I don’t like this. Meals don’t just fall out of the sky. He must have paid Alnyskavver to get even a quarter of this out here on a table, but what’s to say we won’t have to pay summat, too?”
“Our thin purses,” Baerdagh told his friend. “Alnyskavver knows just how poor we are. So does everyone else.” He nodded his head toward the tavern windows. Caladaster looked, already knowing what he’d see. Near everyone in the place was crowded up against the dirty glass, watching as the hawk-nosed stranger poured two full tankards and slid them across the table, emptying eating forks and trencher knives out of the last tankard and sliding them across too.
Caladaster scratched his nose nervously, raked a hand down one of his untidy white-and-gray mutton-chop whiskers—a sure sign of hurried, worried thought—and turned back to the stranger. “My friend asked who you are, an’ I want to know too. I also want to know whatever little trick you’ve readied for us. I can leave your food an’ just walk away, you know.”
At that moment, his stomach chose to protest very loudly.
The stranger ran a hand through unruly black hair and leaned forward. “My name is Elminster, and I’m doing some work for my Lady Master; work that involves my finding and visiting old ruins and the tombs of wizards. I’ve been given money to spend as I need to, in plenty—see? I’ll leave these coins on the table … now, if I happen to vanish in a puff of smoke before ye pick up that tankard, there’s enough here for ye to pay Alnyskavver yourselves.”
Baerdagh looked down at the coins as if they were a handful of little sprites dancing under his nose, then back up at the stranger. “All right, that tale I’ll grant,” he said slowly, “but why us?”
Elminster poured his own tankard full, set it down, and asked, “Have ye any idea what weary work it is, spending days wandering around a town of increasingly suspicious folk, peeking over fences and looking for headstones and ruins? By the first nightfall, farmers always want to thrust hayforks through me. By the second, they’re trying to do it in droves!”
Both old men barked short and snorting laughs at that.
“So I thought I’d save a lot of time and suspicion,” the stranger added, “if I just shared a meal with some men I liked the look of, with years enough under their belts to know the old tales, and where so-and-so lies buried, and—”
“You’re after Sharindala, aren’t you?” Caladaster asked slowly, his eyes narrowing.
El nodded cheerfully. “I am,” he said, “and before ye try to find the right words to ask me, know this: I will take nothing from her tomb, I’m not interested in opening her casket, performing any magic on her while I’m there, or digging up or burning down anything, and I’d be happy to have ye or someone else from Ripplestones along to watch what I do. I need to be able to look around thoroughly—in good bright daylight—and that’s all.”
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?”
“Come with me,” Elminster said, doling out platters and cutting into one of the pies. “See for thyselves.”
Baerdagh almost moaned at the smell that came out of the opened pie with the rush of steam—but he’d no need to; his stomach took care of the utterance for him. His hands went out before he could stop himself. The stranger grinned and thrust the platter bearing the slice of pie into his hands.
“I’d rather not go about disturbing dead sorceresses,” Caladaster replied, “an’ I’m a bit old for clambering around on broken stones wondering when the roof’s going to fall down on my head, but you can’t miss Scorchstone Hall; you came—”
He broke off as Baerdagh kicked him under the table, but Elminster just grinned again and said, “Say on, please; I’m not going to whisk away the meal the moment I hear this!”
Caladaster ladled himself a bowl of soup with hands that he hoped weren’t shaking with eagerness, and said thickly, “Friend Elminster, I want to warn you about her wards. That’s why no one plundered the place long since, an’ why you didn’t see it. Trees and thorn bushes an’ all have grown around it in a wall just outside the shimmering … but I recall, before they grew, seeing squirrels and foxes and even birds a-wing fall down dead when they so much as brushed Sharindala’s wards. You came right past it on your way in, just after the bridge, where the road takes that big bend; it’s bending around Scorchstone.” He took a big bite of cheese, closed his eyes in momentary bliss, and added, “It burned after she died, mind; she didn’t call it Scorchstone.”
Baerdagh leaned close
across the table to breathe beer conspiratorially all over Elminster and whisper roughly, “They say she walks there still, you know—a skeleton in the tatters of a fine gown, still able to slay with her spells.”
El nodded. “Well, I’ll try not to disturb her. What was she like in life, d’ye know?”
Baerdagh jerked his head in Caladaster’s direction. The older man was blowing on his soup to cool it; he looked up, stroked his chin, and said, “Well, I was nob-but a lad then, do you see, and …”
One by one, overcome with curiosity, the folk of Ripplestones were drifting out of the Maid or down the street to listen—and, no doubt, to enthusiastically add their own warnings. Elminster grinned, sipped at his tankard, and waved at the two old men to continue. They were plowing through the food at an impressive rate; Baerdagh had already let out his belt once, and it lacked several hours to highsun, yet.
In the end, the two old men were content to let their good friend Elminster go alone up to Scorchstone Hall, though Caladaster gravely asked the hawk-nosed mage to stop by their neighboring cottages on his way out, if’n he needed a bed for the night, or just to let them know he’d fared safely. El as gravely promised he would, guessing he’d find deafening snores behind barred doors if he returned before the next morning. He helped the old men carry home the food their groaning-full bellies wouldn’t let them eat and bought them each another keg of beer to wash it down with. They looked at him from time to time as if he was a god come calling in disguise but clasped his hand heartily enough in almost tearful thanks and wheezed their way indoors.
El smiled and went on his way, waving cheerfully to the scattering of Ripplestones children who came trailing after him—and the mothers who rushed to drag them back. He turned and walked straight into the thick-standing trees that hid Scorchstone Hall from view. The last watchers from afar, who’d wandered down from the Maid with their tankards in their hands, spat into the road thoughtfully, agreed that Ripplestones had seen the last of another madman, and turned away to drift back to the tavern or about their business.