by Ed Greenwood
“Not if you sit him down and give him the same blazing words Ithrythra gave us,” Alaglossa told her. “Even if he doesn’t agree, he’ll be so astonished at your thinking about such things, that he’ll probably argue with you like an equal—whereupon you tell him that such disputes are precisely what you’re for, and then take him to bed.”
Duilya stared at her for a moment, and then started to laugh wildly. “Oh, Hanali bless us all! If I thought I had the strength to carry it through …”
“Lady Evendusk,” Ithrythra said formally, “would you mind terribly if the four of us were linked to you with a spell or two, to—ah, assist with the words you need, at the awkward moments?”
Duilya gaped at her, and then looked slowly around the pool. “You’d do that?”
“We all might benefit from such a spell,” Phuingara said slowly. “Clever, Ithrythra.” She turned to Alaglossa. “Get that sherry, Lady Tornglara; I can feel a toast coming on.”
“Though in time to come I and others shall teach you some of the spells of our People,” the Srinshee said, “a time of great danger awaits you now, Elminster.” She smiled. “You didn’t need me to tell you that.”
El nodded. “That’s why ye brought me here.” He looked around at the dark and dusty walls and asked, “But what is this place?”
“A sacred tomb of our people—a haunted tower, once the home of the first proud and noble House to try to make themselves greater than the rest of us. The Dlardrageth.”
“What happened to them?”
“They courted incubi and succubi, seeking to breed a stronger race. Few survived such dealings, fewer still the birthings that followed, and all elven peoples turned against them. The few survivors were walled in here by our strongest spells, until the end of their days.” The Srinshee dusted her hand across a pillar thoughtfully, uncovering a relief carving of a leering face. “Some of those spells still linger, though daring young Cormanthan lords broke in more than a thousand years ago to despoil this castle of the riches of House Dlardrageth. They found little of value, and took away what they did find. They also took back word of the ghosts that linger here.”
“Ghosts?” Elminster asked calmly. The Srinshee nodded.
“Oh, there are a few, but nothing that need be feared. What matters most is that we won’t be disturbed.”
“Ye’re going to teach me magic?”
“No,” the Srinshee said, drawing close so that she stood looking up at him. “You’re going to teach me magic.”
El raised both brows. “I—?”
“With this,” she said calmly, as she spread her empty hands and they suddenly filled with—his spellbook.
She staggered a trifle, under its weight, and he automatically took it from her, peering at it. Aye, it was his. Left in a saddlebag, back in a fern-filled dell in the trackless forest where the White Raven Patrol had met with far too many ruukha.
“My deepest thanks, Lady,” Elminster said to her, going to one knee so that he was below her and not towering over her. “Yet at the risk of sounding ungrateful, won’t those of the People who are upset by one of my race being named armathor be turning Cormanthor over stone by tree, looking for me? And won’t the other elves of thy realm expect me to take up some duties to go with my rank … in other words, to be seen?”
“Seen you will be, soon enough,” the Srinshee said grimly. “The center of plots and schemes aplenty, even by those who do not wish you ill. We are jaded, in the fair city of Cormanthor, and each new interest becomes something to be sported over by the great Houses. All too often, their sport mars or destroys that which they toy with.”
“Elves begin to seem more and more like men,” El told her, sitting down on the broken stump of a pillar.
“How dare you!” the old sorceress snarled. He looked up in time to see her smile and reach out to tousle his hair. “How dare you speak truth to me,” she murmured. “So few of my race ever do … or have done. ’Tis a rare pleasure, to deal in honesty for a change.”
“How, now? Are not elves honest?” El asked teasingly, for there was a brightness that might have been rising tears in her old eyes again.
“Let us say that some of us are too worldly for our own good,” she said with a smile, strolling away from him on air. She whirled about and added, “And the others are too world-weary.”
At her words, a darkness rose behind her, and sudden claws flashed down. El started up with a cry but the claws flashed through her and raced on through the gloom between them, trailing a thin, high wailing that faded away as if into vast distances.
El watched where it had gone, and then turned back to the small sorceress. “One of the ghosts?” he asked, brow raised.
She nodded. “They want to learn your magic too.”
He smiled, and then, seeing her expression, let the grin slowly fade from his lips. “Ye’re not jesting,” he said roughly.
She shook her head. The sadness was back in her eyes. “You begin to see, I hope, just how much my People need you, and others like you, to breathe new ideas into us and awaken the flame of spirit that once made us soar above all others in Faerûn. Consorting with humans, with our half-kin and the little folk, and even with dwarves is the Coronal’s dream. He can see so clearly what we must do—and the great Houses refuse so adamantly to see anything except the dreaming days stretching on forever, with themselves at the pinnacle of all.”
El shook his head, acquiring a very thin smile. “I seem to bear a heavy burden,” he said.
“You can carry it,” the Srinshee told him, and winked at him impishly. “ ’Tis why Mystra chose you.”
“Are we not met to decide what best to do?” Sylmae asked coldly. She looked around the circle of solemn faces that hovered above the balefire; her own and the other five sorceresses who’d accompanied the Coronal to the Vault of Ages after the High Court Mages, Earynspieir and Ilimitar, had refused to do so.
Holone shook her head. “No sister; that is the mistake we must leave to the Houses and the other folk of the court. We must wait, and watch, and act for the good of the realm when the rash acts of others make it needful to do so.”
“So which rash act requires that we take action in our turn?” Sylmae asked. “The appointment of a human to standing in the realm as an armathor—or the responses that will inevitably follow?”
“Those responses will tell us who stands where,” the sorceress Ajhalanda put in. “The next set of actions on the part of those players, as this unfolds, may well require that we act.”
“Strike out, you mean,” Sylmae said, her voice rising. “Against the Coronal, or one of the great Houses of the realm, or—”
“Or against all of the Houses, or the High Court Mages, or even such as the Srinshee,” Holone said calmly. “We know not what, yet—only that it is our duty and desire to meet, and confer, and act as one.”
“It is our hope, you mean,” the sorceress Yathlanae said, speaking for the first time that night, “that we work together, and not be split asunder, hand against hand and will against will, as we all fear the realm will be.”
Holone nodded grimly. “And so we must choose carefully, sisters, very carefully, not to fall into dispute among ourselves.”
More than one face above the flames sighed, knowing how difficult that alone was going to be.
Ajhalanda broke the lengthening silence. “Sylmae, you walk among all folk, high and low, more than the rest of us. Which Houses must we watch—who will lead where others follow?”
Sylmae sighed gustily, so that the balefire quivered beneath their chins, and said, “The spine of the old Houses—those who despise and stand against the Coronal, and lady sorceresses, and anything that is new these past three thousand years—are the Starym, of course, and Houses Echorn and Waelvor. The path they cleave, the old Houses and all of the timid new ones will follow. They are the tide: slow, mighty, and predictable.”
“Why watch the tide?” Yathlanae asked. “However hard you scrutinize it, it
changes not—you only invent new motives and meanings for it, as your watching grows longer.”
“Well said,” Sylmae replied, “and yet the tide aren’t those we must watch. They are the powerful newer proud ones, the rich Houses, led by Maendellyn and Nlossae.”
“Are not they just as predictable, in their way?” Holone put in. “They stand for anything new that might break the power of the old Houses, to let them supplant or at least stand as equals. As all elves do, they grow tired of being sneered at.”
“There is a third group,” Sylmae said, “who bear the closest watching of all. They are a group only in my speaking of them; in Cormanthor they hew their own roads, and walk to differing stars. The reckless upstarts, some term them; they are the Houses who will try anything, merely for the joy of being part of something new. They are Auglamyr and Ealoeth, and lesser families such as the Falanae and Uirthur.”
“You and I are Auglamyr, sister,” Holone stated calmly. “Are you then telling us we six should or will try anything new?”
“We are already doing so,” Sylmae replied, “by meeting thus, and striving to act in concert. It is not something the proud lords of any House but those I’ve named last would tolerate, if they knew about it. She-elves are only for dancing, bedecking with gems, and begetting young on, know you not?”
“Cooking,” Ajhalanda said. “You forgot cooking.”
Sylmae shrugged and smiled. “I was ever a poor dutiful she-elf.”
Yathlanae shrugged. “There are males in this land who are poor dutiful lords, if it comes to that.”
“Aye, too many of them,” Holone said, “or making one human an armathor would be no more than idle news.”
“I see Cormanthor in peril of destruction, if we act not wisely and swiftly, when the time comes,” Sylmae told them.
“Then let us do so,” Holone replied, and the others all echoed, “Aye, let us do so.”
As if that had been a cue, the balefire went out; someone had sent scrying magic their way. Without another word or light, they parted and slipped away, leaving the air high above the palace to the bats and the glittering stars … who seemed quite comfortable there until morning.
EIGHT
THE USES OF A HUMAN
The elves of Cormanthor have always been known for their calm, measured responses to perceived threats. They often consider for half a day or more before going out and killing them.
SHALHEIRA TALANDREN, HIGH ELVEN BARD OF SUMMER-STAR
FROM SILVER BLADES AND SUMMER NIGHTS:
AN INFORMAL BUT TRUE HISTORY OF CORMANTHOR
PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR OF THE HARP
They’re so beautiful,” Symrustar murmured. “See, coz?” Amaranthae bent to look at the silktails, circling and wriggling in the glass cylinder as they danced for the best position below Symrustar’s fingers, from which they knew food would soon fall. “I love the way the sun turns their scales into tiny rainbows,” she replied diplomatically, having resolved long since that whatever it took, her cousin would never learn just how much Amaranthae hated fish.
Symrustar had over a thousand finned and scaled pets here. From the crowning bowl where she now scattered morsels of the secret food she mixed herself (Amaranthae had heard it said that its chief ingredients were the ground flesh, blood, and bones of unsuccessful suitors), Symrustar’s glass fish tank descended more than a hundred feet to the ground, in a fantastic sculpture of pipes, spheres, and larger chambers of hollow glass shaped like dragons and other beasts. Amaranthae wanted to be around—but not too close—on the day Symrustar’s father discovered that a certain large tank, out near the end of the branch, resembled him in all-too-unflattering detail.
Lord Auglamyr was not known for his gentle temper. “A thundercloud of towering pride, sweeping all before it” was the way one senior lady of the court had once described him, and her words had been overgentle.
Perhaps that was where Symrustar had acquired her utterly amoral ruthlessness. Amaranthae was very careful to remain supportive and helpful to her ambitious cousin at all times, for she had no doubt that Symrustar Auglamyr would betray her in a twinkling instant, best friends notwithstanding, if Amaranthae ever got in her way in even the smallest degree.
I’m no more free than all these fish, Amaranthae thought, leaning out from the bowl-shaped bower where they sat, at the base of the longest branch left in this westernmost shadowtop of House Auglamyr. Pipe after column after sphere of glass gleamed back the morning light, in the fantastic assemblage that housed Symrustar’s finned pets. The servants knew better than to disturb them—or rather, Symrustar—here, and used the speaking chimes instead.
Morning after morning they spent here, reclining on cushions and sipping cool fermented forest fruit juices, while the Auglamyr heiress schemed and plotted aloud how to further her every ambition—and some of them seemed to heart-weary Amaranthae to be no more than manipulating acquaintances for the sake of deft manipulation—and her cousin listened and said supportive things at the right moments.
This morning Symrustar was truly excited, her eyes flashing as she set aside the food, waving a dismissive hand at the tiny gasping mouths in the bowl as she turned away. By all the gods, but she’s beautiful, Amaranthae thought, staring at her cousin’s fine shoulders and the long, smoothly curving lines of her body in its silk robe. A striking eyes and face, even among the beauties of the court. No wonder so many elven lords straightened their ears at the sight of her.
Symrustar lifted one perfect eyebrow and asked, “Are you thinking along the same lines as I am, coz?”
Amaranthae shrugged, smiled, and said the safe thing. “I was thinking about this human male our Coronal has named armathor … and wondering what you’d do with this most unlikely of surprises, most sprightly of ladies!”
Symrustar winked. “You know me well, ’Ranthae. What do you think a human would be like to dally with? Hmmm?”
Amaranthae shuddered. “A man? Ughhh. As heavy and lumbering as a stag, with the stink to match … and all that hair!”
Her cousin nodded, eyes far away. “True. Yet I hear this unwashed brute has magic—human magic, far inferior to our own, of course, but different. With a little of that in my hands, I could surprise a few of our over-proud young mages. Even if the human’s spells are but little wisps of things suitable for impressing gullible younglings, I’ve one such who could use a little impressing: Lord Heir Most High Elandorr Waelvor.”
Amaranthae shook her head in rueful amusement. “Haven’t you tormented him enough?”
Symrustar raised one shapely brow again, and her eyes flashed. “Enough? There is no ‘enough’ for Elandorr the Buffoon! When he’s not grandly proclaiming to all the city that this or that spell he’s created is greater than anything that bad-tempered maid Symrustar Auglamyr can craft, he’s crawling in my bedchamber window with fresh blandishments! No matter how firmly—”
“Rudely,” Amaranthae corrected with a smile.
“—I refuse him,” her cousin continued, “he’s back a few nights later trying again! In between, he hints to his drinking companions about the unmatched sweetness of my charms, remarks to ladies in passing that I worship him in secret, and flits about the libraries of men—men—stealing bad love poetry to pass off as his own, wooing me with all the style and grace of a laugh-chasing gnome clown!”
“He came last night?”
“As usual! I had three of the guards throw him from my balcony. He had the brazen gall to try transforming spells on them!”
“You countered them, of course,” Amaranthae murmured.
“No,” Symrustar said scornfully, “I left them as frogs until morning. No guard worthy of my bedchamber balcony should be unprepared for a simple twice-trying transformation!”
“Oh, Symma!” Amaranthae said reproachfully.
Her cousin’s eyes flashed again. “You think me harsh? Coz, you spend a night in my bed, and be pestered by the Love Lord of the Waelvors come calling, and we’ll see how charitable
you feel to the guards who should have kept him out!”
“Symma, he’s a master mage!”
“Then let them be master guards, and wear the turnback amulets I gave them. What matter if they must draw blood to work? They’ll turn back Elandorr’s oh-so-masterful spells on himself! A few scars should be worth that—to say nothing of their professed loyalty to House Auglamyr!”
Symrustar rose and paced restlessly across the little bowl-shaped hollow, the morning sun glinting on the gem-adorned chain that spiraled up her left leg from anklet to garter. “Why, three moons ago,” she burst out, waving her arms, “when he got as far as the very curtains of my bed, I found a guard hiding and watching, by the Hunt! Watching, to see me swoon in the arms of Elandorr! Oh, he claimed he was there to protect me against the ‘last humiliation,’ but he was lying atop the very canopy of my bed, clad in black velvet so as not to be seen, and wrapped about with so many amulets that he practically staggered! He got them from my father, he said, but I’d not be surprised to find that some of them came from House Waelvor!”
“What did you do to him?” Amaranthae asked, turning her head away to hide a yawn.
Symrustar smiled chillingly. “Showed him what he’d been trying to see, took off every last thing he was wearing, too, and—the fish.”
Amaranthae shuddered. “You fed him to—?”
Symrustar nodded. “Umm-hmmm, and sent off all his gear in a bundle to Elandorr the next day, with a love note telling him that such trappings were all that was left from the last dozen lords who thought themselves worthy of wooing Symrustar Auglamyr.” She sighed theatrically. “He was back trying the next night, of course.”
Amaranthae shook her head. “Why don’t you just tell your father, and let him go roaring to Lord Waelvor? You know how the old Houses are; Kuskyn Waelvor would be so mortified that a son of his was wooing a lady of such an ‘unknown’ House as ours—or wooing any high-house lady, without his permission—that Elandorr would find himself in a spell cage for the next decade, before you could draw another breath!”