by Ed Greenwood
“Do these hold power, do you think?” Tabarast asked, the black gown dangling from his fingers as Caladaster suppressed a smirk.
“Hmmph. Power or not, I’m not wearing this backless number,” Beldrune replied, turning the blue ruffles around again to face him. “It goes down far enough to give the cool drafts more’n a bit of help, if you know what I mean.…”
Twenty
NEVER HAVE SO MANY OWED SO MUCH
Never before in the history of this fair realm have so many owed so much to the coffers of the king. Never fear but that he’ll come collecting in short order—and his price shall be the lives of his debtors, in some foreign war or other. He’ll call it a Crusade or something equally grand … but those who die in Cormyr’s colors will be just as dead as if he’d called it a Raid To Pillage, or a Head Collecting Patrol. It is the way of kings to collect in blood. Only archmages can seize such payments more swiftly and recklessly.
Albaertin of Marsember
from A Small But Treasonous Chapbook
published in The Year of the Serpent
“Doomtime,” that deep voice boomed in Elminster’s head. “Mind you make the right choices.” Somehow, the Athalantan knew that Azuth was gone, and he was alone in the flood of blue sparks—the flood that he’d thought was Azuth—whirling him over and over and down … to a place of darkness, with a cold stone floor under his bare knees. He was naked, his gown and dagger and countless small items of magery gone somewhere in the whirling.
“Robbed by a god,” he murmured and chuckled. His mirth left no echo behind, but what happened to it as it died away left him thinking he was somewhere underground … somewhere not all that large. His good feeling died soon after his chuckle; Elminster’s innards felt—ravaged.
It was damp, and a chill was beginning to creep through him, but El did not rise from his knees. He felt weak and sick, and—when he tried to seek out magic or call up his spells—all of his powers as a Chosen and as a mage seemed to be gone.
He was just a man again, on his knees in a dark chamber somewhere. He knew that he should be despairing, but instead he felt at peace. He had seen far more years than most humans and done—so far as he could judge, at least by his own standards—fairly well. If it was time for death to come to him, so be it.
There were just the usual complaints: was it time for his death? What should he be doing? What was going on? Who was going to stop by and furnish him with answers to his every query—and when?
In all his life, there had only been one source for succor and guidance who wasn’t certain to be long dead by now, or entombed and asleep he knew not where … and that one source was the goddess who made him her Chosen.
“Oh, Mystra, ye’ve been my lover, my mother, my soul guide, my savior, and my teacher,” Elminster said aloud. “Please, hear me now.”
He hadn’t really intended to pray … or perhaps he had, all along, but just not admitted it to himself. “I’ve been honored to serve ye,” he told the listening darkness. “Ye’ve given me a splendid life, for which—as is the way of men—I’ve not thanked thee enough. I am content to face now whatever fate ye deem fitting for me, yet—as is the way of wizards—I wish to tell thee some things first.”
He chuckled, and held up a hand. “Save thy spells and fury,” he said. “ ’Tis only three things.”
Elminster drew in a deep breath. “The first: thank ye for giving me the life ye have.”
Was something moving in the gloom and shadows beyond where his eyes served him reliably?
He shrugged. What if something was? Alone, unclad, on his knees without magecraft to aid him; if something did approach him, this is how he’d have to greet it, and this was all he had to offer it.
“The second,” El announced calmly. “Being thy Chosen is really what I want to spend out my days doing.”
Those words echoed, where the darkness had muffled his words before. El frowned, then shrugged again and told the darkness earnestly, “The third, and most important to me to impart: Lady, I love thee.”
As those words echoed, the darkness disgorged something that did move and reveal itself and loom all too clearly.
Something vast and monstrous and tentacled, slithered leisurely toward him.
“Was it a god?” Vaelam asked, white to the lips. Shrugs and panting were the first answers he got from his fellow Dreadspells, as they lay gasping in the hollow. Scraped and scratched by tree limbs in their run and thoroughly winded, they were only now shedding the heavy cloak of terror.
“God or no god,” Femter muttered, “anyone who can withstand all we hurled down on his head—and swallow fireballs, for Shar’s sake!—is someone I don’t want to stand and face in battle.”
“For Shar’s sake, indeed, Dread Brother,” someone said almost pleasantly from the far side of the hollow, where the ferns grew tall and they hadn’t been yet. Five heads snapped around, eyes widening in alarm—
—and five jaws dropped, the throats beneath them swallowed noisily, and the eyes above them acquired a look of trapped fear.
The masked and cloaked lady floating in the air just above their reach, reclining at her ease on nothing, was all too familiar. “For there is a Black Flame in the Darkness,” the cruel Overmistress of the Acolytes purred, in formal greeting.
“And it warms us, and its holy name is Shar,” the five priests murmured in a reluctant, despairing chorus.
“You are far from the House of Holy Night, Dread Brothers, and unused to the ways of wizards—all too apt to stray, and in sore need of guidance,” Dread Sister Klalaera observed, her voice a gentle honey of menace. “Wherefore our most caring and thoughtful Darklady Avroana has sent the House of Holy Night … to you.”
“Hail, Dread Sister,” Dreadspell Elryn said then, managing to keep his voice noncommittal. “What news?”
“News of the Darklady’s deep displeasure at your leadership, most bold Elryn,” the Overmistress said almost jovially, her eyes two spark-adorned flints. “And of her will: that you cease wandering Faerûn at your pleasure and return to the place from whence you so lately fled. Immense power lies there—and Shar means for us to have it. I know you’d not want to fail Most Holy Shar … or disappoint Darklady Avroana. So turn about and return thence, to serve Shar as capably as I know you can. I shall accompany you, to impart the Darklady’s unfolding will as you return to the mission you were sent here for. Now rise, all of you!”
“Return?” Femter snarled, his hand darting to one of the wands still at his belt. “To duel with a god? Are you mad, Klalaera?”
The other Dreadspells watched silently, neither rising nor snarling defiance, as something unseen flashed between the Overmistress, at her ease with her head propped on her hand, and Femter Deldrannus, the wand still on its way out of his belt and not yet turned outward to menace anyone.
The priest shrieked and clutched at his head with both hands, hurling the wand away and staggering forward, his limbs trembling.
They watched him spasm and convulse and babble for what seemed like a very long time before Klalaera raised one languid hand and closed it in a casual gesture—and Femter collapsed in mid-word, falling in a sprawled and boneless heap like a dangle-puppet whose string had been cut.
“I can do the same to any of you—and all of you, at once,” the Overmistress drawled. “Now rise, and return. You fear death at the hands of this ‘god’ you babble of—well, I can deliver you sure and certain death to set against one that may happen … or may not. Would any of you care to kneel and die here and now—in agony, and in the disfavor of Shar? Or will you show the Flame of Darkness just a little of the obedience she expects from those who profess to worship her?”
As Dread Sister Klalaera uttered these biting words, she descended smoothly to the ground, drawing from her belt the infamous barbed lash with which she disciplined the acolytes in her charge. The Dreadspells turned their faces reluctantly back toward the ruins they’d left so precipitously and began to trudge up out of t
he hollow—to the serenade of her whip crashing down on the defenseless back of the motionless Femter.
At the lip of the hollow, they turned in unspoken accord to look back—in time to see Femter, head lolling and eyes glazed, rise to his feet in the grip of fell magic and stagger after them, his back mere ribbons of flesh among an insect-buzzing welter of gore, his boots leaving bloody prints at every step. Klalaera shook drops of his dark blood from her saturated lash and gave them a soft smile. “Keep going,” she said silkily. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Despite the floating menace of the Overmistress behind them, the five Dreadspells slowed cautiously as they climbed the last wooded ridge before the ruins. Blundering ahead blindly could mean swift doom … and a delay could well bring them to a shaft now empty of dangerous mages, leaving the ruins free for scavenging.
“Careful,” Elryn murmured, the moment he heard the creak of leather that marked Dread Sister Klalaera bending forward to bring her lash down hard on someone’s shoulders … probably his. “There’s no need for anyone to strike alone in the fray, if we work together, and—”
“Avoid making pretty little speeches,” Klalaera snapped. “Elryn, shut your mouth and lead the way! There’s nothing between us and the ruins save a couple of stumps, a lot of waste lumber, your own fears, and—”
“Us,” a musical voice murmured; an elven voice. Its owner rose up from the other side of the ridge, a scabbardless sword made of wood held in both his hands. “A walk in the woods these days holds so many dangers,” Starsunder added. “My friend here, for instance.”
The human mage Umbregard rose up from behind the ridge on cue and favored the Sharrans with a brief smile. He held a wand ready in either hand.
The Overmistress snapped, “Slay them!”
“Oh, well,” Starsunder sighed theatrically, “if you insist.” Magic roared out of him then in a roaring tide that swept aside wand-bolts, simple conjurations, and the lives of struggling Hrelgrath and dumbfounded Vaelam alike.
Femter screamed and fled blindly back into the trees—until Klalaera’s unseen magic jerked him to a halt as if a noose had settled about his neck, and spun him around, thrashing and moaning, for the slow stagger back into the fray.
Beams of light were stabbing forth and wrestling in the roiling air as Elryn and a snarling Daluth sought to strike down the elf mage, and Umbregard used his own wands to disrupt and strike aside their attacks.
Daluth shouted in pain as an errant beam laid bare the bone of his shoulder, flesh, sinews, and clothing all boiling away in an instant. He staggered back a pace or two, at about the same time as Umbregard went over backward in a grunt and a shower of sparks, leaving the elf standing alone against the Sharrans.
The Overmistress of the Acolytes found her coldest, cruel smile and put it on. It widened slowly as Starsunder’s shielding spell darkened, flickered, and began to shrink under the bolts and bursts streaming from the wands of the Dreadspells.
“I don’t know who you are, elf,” Klalaera remarked, almost pleasantly, “or why you chose to get in our way—but it’s quite likely to be a fatal decision. I can slay you right now with a spell, but I’d rather have some answers. What is this place? What magic lies here that makes it worth you losing your life over?”
“The only thing that amazes me more about humans than their habit of splitting up fair Faerûn into separate ‘places,’ one seemingly having no connection to the next,” Starsunder replied, as casually as if he’d been idly conversing with an old friend over a glass of moon-wine, “is their need to gloat, threaten, and bluster in battle. If you can slay me, do so, and spare my ears. Otherwise—”
He sprang into the air as he spoke, leaving Sharran wand-blasts to ravage elfless stumps and ferns, and collapsed his shield into a net of deadly force that clawed at the Overmistress.
She writhed in the air, sobbing and snarling, until her desperate mental goading dragged the wild-eyed Femter over to stand beneath her. Then she collapsed her own defenses—and Starsunder’s attack, still gnawing at them—down into the helpless Dreadspell, in a deadly flood that left him a tottering, blinded mass of blood and exposed bone.
The joints of Femter Deldrannus failed, and he sought his last, eternal embrace with the earth, ignored by all. He hadn’t even been given time to scream.
A gasping Overmistress tumbled away through the air as her flight spell began to collapse.
Elryn roared in wordless victory as his wand-bursts found Starsunder at last, spinning the elf around in a swarm of biting bolts. Umbregard was struggling to rise, his face sick with pain as he watched his friend beset.
Daluth leveled his own wand at the human mage at point-blank range, across the smoking bodies of fallen fellow Dreadspells, and smiled a slow and soft smile at the horrified human.
Then he spun around and smashed Dread Sister Klalaera out of the air with all the might the wand in his hand could muster.
It crumbled away, leaving him holding nothing, as the lash all of the House of Holy Night hated and feared so much blazed from end to end and spun high into the trees, hurled by a spasming body in black leather that was crumpling into smoking ruin.
Crumpling—then snarling into a standing stance once more, surrounded by crackling black flames, the face that had been Klalaera’s working and rippling beneath dead, staring eyes as her lips thundered, “Daluth, you shall die for that!”
The voice was thick and roaring, but the two surviving Dreadspells recognized it, Elryn’s head snapping around from the task of rending the convulsing, darkening body of the elf mage.
“You are cast out of the favor of Shar—die friendless, false priest!” Darklady Avroana thundered, through the lips that were not hers.
The bolt of black flame that the body of the Overmistress vomited forth then swept away the errant wizard-priest, an old and mighty tree beyond him, and a stump that dwarfed them both, shaking the forest all around and hurling Elryn to the ground.
The last Dreadspell was still struggling to his feet as Klalaera’s dangling body, still streaming black flames, floated forward. “Now let us be rid of meddling mages, elf and human both, and—”
The sphere of purple flame that came out of nowhere to hit what was left of the Overmistress tore her apart, spattering the trees around with tatters of black leather.
“Ah, fool, that’s one thing none of us will ever be rid of,” a new voice told the dwindling, collapsing sphere of black flames that hung where Klalaera had been.
Elryn gaped up at a human who stood holding a smoking, crumbling amulet in his hand, a black cloak swirling around him. “Faerûn will always have its meddling mages,” the newcomer told the dying knot of flames in tones of grim satisfaction. “Myself, for instance.”
Elryn put all of his might into a lunge at this new foe, swinging his belt mace viciously and jumping into the air to put all his weight behind the strike.
His target, however, wasn’t there to meet the blurred rush of metal. The newcomer slid a knife into the priest’s throat with almost delicate ease as he stepped around behind the last Dreadspell, and said politely, “Tenthar Taerhamoos, Archmage of the Phoenix Tower, at your service—eternally, it appears.”
Choking over something ice cold in his throat that would not go away as the pleasant world of trees and dappled shade darkened around him, Elryn found he lacked the means to reply.
Purple flames exploded over the Altar of Shar with a sudden flourish, scorching the bowl of black wine there. The chosen acolyte held the glowing knife that was to be slaked in it aloft and kept fervently to his chanted prayer, not knowing that bursts of purple fire weren’t part of this most holy ritual.
So intent was he on the flowing words of the incantation that he never saw the Darklady of the House stagger and fall past him across the altar, her limbs streaming purple fire. Wine hissed and sputtered under her as she thrashed, faceup and staring at the black, purple-rimmed circle that adorned the vaulted ceiling high above. Avroana was still arc
hing her body and trying to find breath enough to scream as the prayer reached its last triumphal words … and the knife swept down.
With both hands the acolyte guided the consecrated blade, the runes on its dark flanks pulsing and glowing, down, down to the heart of the bowl, the very center of—Darklady Avroana’s breast.
Their eyes met as the steel slid in, to the very hilt. Avroana had time to see triumphant glee dawning in the acolyte’s eyes amid the wild horror of realizing his mistake before everything grew dim forever.
Gasping, Starsunder managed to raise himself on one arm, his face creased with pain. Large, weeping blisters covered all of his left flank—save where melted flesh glistened in dangling droplets and ropes of scorched sinew. Umbregard half staggered and half ran to his side, trying not to look at the Archmage of the Phoenix Tower, his foe of many years.
Fear of what Tenthar might do, standing so close at hand behind him, was written clearly on Umbregard’s face as he knelt by Starsunder and carefully cast the most powerful healing spell he knew on the stricken elf. He was no priest, but even a fool could see that an unaided Starsunder hadn’t long to live.
The elf mage shuddered in Umbregard’s arms, seemed to sag a trifle, then breathed more easily, his eyes half closed. His side still looked the same, but the organs only partially hidden beneath the horrible seared wounds were no longer wrinkled or smoking. Still …
A long hand reached past Umbregard, its fingers glowing with healing radiance, and touched Starsunder’s flank. The glow flared, the elf shuddered, and the last fragments of something that had hung on a chain around the archmage’s neck fell away into drifting dust. Tenthar rose hastily and stepped back, his hand going to his belt.
Umbregard looked up at the wand that hand had closed around, and hesitantly asked its owner, “Is there going to be violence between us?”
Tenthar shook his head. “When all Faerûn hangs in the balance,” he replied, “personal angers must be set aside. I think I’ve grown up enough to set them aside for good.” He extended his hand. “And you?”