Elminster in Myth Drannor

by Ed Greenwood

  Floating here, in dark chaos …

  He sank back into his thoughts, which were running now like a river. Ardavanshee who defied the will of their elders but stood tall upon the pride of the houses of their birth. Ardavanshee who feared and yet spoke against the power of the High Court Mages and the Coronal and his old advisor the Srinshee.

  That title seemed to be another door opening in his mind, letting in a wash of brightness and fresh recollections and a stronger sense of being Elminster. The Lady Oluevaera Estelda, smiling up at him from that noble, wrinkled ruin of a face and then, incongruously, from one that looked like a little elven girl’s, yet retained those old and wise eyes … the Srinshee, older than trees and deeper rooted, treading the crammed Vault of Ages with reverence for the dead and vanished, holding the whole lore and long lineage of the proud Cormanthan elves in her mind—in the vault behind her eyes that was so much larger than the one she trod with an impatient, hawk-nosed young human …

  The hated human intruder sought across the realm for the murders he’d done by the ardavanshee—led by the houses of Echorn and Starym and Waelvor … Waelvor, whose scion was Elandorr … suitor and rival of the Lady Symrustar.

  Symrustar! That perfect face, those hungrily tugging blue tresses, that dragon on her belly and breast, the eyes like blue flames of promise, and lips parted in a waiting, knowing smile … that ruthless, ambitious sorceress whose mind was as dark a cesspit as any Magelord’s, who thought of elves—and men—as mere stupid beasts to be used as she clawed her way up through them, to some as-yet-unrealized goal.

  The lady who had almost torn his mind open to make him her plaything and source of spells. The lady he had in turn betrayed into the grasp of her rival, Elandorr, leaving both their fates unknown to him.

  Aye. He knew who he was now. Elminster, set upon by Delmuth Echorn and then by a band of ardavanshee led by Ivran Selorn, who hunted him through Castle Dlardrageth. Elminster the overconfident, careless Chosen. Elminster, who’d been drunk with power as he flew right into the waiting spell of the ardavanshan mages—a spell that had torn him apart.

  Was he whole again? Or was he but a ghost, his mortal life over? Perhaps Mystra had kept him alive—if this was alive—to carry out her purposes, a failure forced to complete his mission.

  Elminster was suddenly aware that he could move in the void, scudding in this direction or that as he thought of movement. Yet that meant little when there was nowhere to move to, dark emptiness on all sides, lights and noise scattering at seeming random, everywhere and nowhere.

  The world around him had once been a series of specific “wheres,” an unfolding landscape of different and often named locations, from the deep forest of Cormanthor to the outlaw wastes beyond Athalantar.

  Perhaps this was death, after all. Faerûn, and a body to walk it in, were what he was lacking. Almost without thinking he sent himself into a racing flight through the void, searching the endless for an end, a boundary, perhaps a rift where the light of Faerûn in all its familiar glory could shine in …

  And as this swift but vain movement went on and on he raised a prayer to Mystra, a silent cry in his mind: Mystra, where are ye? Aid me. Be my guide, I beseech thee.

  There was a dark and silent moment as the words in his mind seemed to roll away into endless distance. Then there came a bright, almost blinding burst of light, white and clarioned, with a sennet that echoed stridently through him, hurling him over and over in its brassy tumult. When it faded he was racing back the way he’d come, aimed exactly back upon his former course, though he could not tell how it was he knew that to be so.

  At long last, a horizon fell into his void, a line of misty blue with a node of brightness partway along it, like a gem upon the arc of a ring … and Elminster of Athalantar was headed for that distant point of brilliance.

  It seemed a long way off, but in the end he rushed up to plunge into it with dizzying speed, shedding something as he left the darkness, shooting out into the light. The light of a lowering sun, above the marching treetops of Cormanthor, with the dark ruin of Castle Dlardrageth in the distance, and something urging him in another direction. He followed that urging, unsure even if he could have chosen otherwise, and flew low above shadowtops and duskwoods, rose-needles and beetle palms, rushing as smooth and as swift as if outracing dragons.

  Here and there, as he flew, El glimpsed trails and slim wooden bridges that leaped from tree to tree, transforming the forest giants into the living homes of elves. He was crossing Cormanthor in the space of a few breaths. Now he was descending and slowing, as if let fall by a vast and invisible hand.

  Thanks to ye, Mystra, he thought, fairly sure whom he should be thanking. He sank past the gardens of the palace, into the many-spired bustle of the central city, Cormanthor itself.

  He was slowing greatly now, as if he was but a leaf drifting on a gentle breeze. In truth, he could hear no whistle of wind nor feel any chill or damp as of moving air, at all. Turrets and softly luminous driftglobes rose past him as his plunge ended, and he began to move freely, hither and yon.

  He moved from here to there in accordance with wherever he looked that interested him enough to approach. As he flew, he passed among elves who saw him not, and—as he discovered when he blundered right into the path of several floats piled high with mushrooms, and they slid through him without him feeling a thing—felt him not. He was truly a ghost, it seemed; an invisible, silent, undetected drifting thing.

  As he drifted this way and that, peering at the busy lives of Cormanthans, he began to hear things as well. At first there was only a faint, confusing rumble broken by louder irregularities, but it grew to a deafening din of interlaced gabbling. It seemed to be the conversations and noises made by thousands of elves at once, as if he could hear all Cormanthor, without regard for distance and walls and cellar depths, laid all at once upon the ears he no longer seemed to have.

  He hovered for a time in a little tangle of shrubs growing between three closely spaced duskwoods, waiting for the din to subside or for his wits to flee entirely. Slowly the noises did die, receding to what normal ears would hear: the sounds nearby, with the gentle, incessant sighing of breeze-stirred leaves drowning out all else. He relaxed, able to think again, until thinking begat curiosity, and a desire to know what was befalling in Cormanthor.

  So he was invisible, silent, and scentless, even to alert elves. Ideal for prying into their doings. But ’twould be best to make sure of his stealth before seeking to enter any heart of watchful peril hereabout.

  El undertook to swoop at elves in the streets and on the bridges, screaming for all he was worth as he did so. He even passed through them whilst clawing at them and crying insults. He could hear himself perfectly, and even shape ghostly limbs to stab and slash with—limbs that he at least could feel, enduring painful scrapings as one limb struck another.

  His elven targets, however, noticed him not. They laughed and chatted in a way they’d never have done had they known a human was nearby. El drew himself up in midair after hurling himself through a particularly frosty-looking elven lady of high station and reflected that he might not have all that much time to make use of this state. After all, none of his powers since his awakening had remained unchanged for long. So he’d best be about his spying.

  One thing to check on, first.

  He remembered these streets dimly: he’d passed along that one, he thought, in his first stagger through the city, trying to search for House Alastrarra without seeming to do more than stroll. A particularly proud mansion, in the heart of walled gardens, should lie in that direction.

  His memory was correct. It was the work of an instant to pass through the gates unseen, and seek the great house beyond. He could pass through small items, especially wood, he discovered, but stone and metal hurt or deflected him; he could not burst or even seep through solid walls. A window served him amply, however, and he entered into the tapestried splendor of a lavishly decorated home. Furs lay everywhere und
erfoot, and polished wood sculpted into lounges and chairs rose in flowing shapes on all sides. Wealthy elven families seemed to love varicolored blown glass and chairs that rose into a variety of little armrests and shelves and curved lounging cavities. El passed among these like a purposeful thread of smoke, seeking a particular thing.

  He found it in an ornate bedchamber where a nude elven couple were floating in each other’s arms, upright above their bed, earnestly—even angrily—discussing the affairs of the realm. Elminster found the arguments advanced and parried by the aroused tongues of Lord and Lady Evendusk so fascinating that he lingered a long time listening, before a purely personal dispute about moderation and the consumption of tripleshroom sherry sent him swooping to the floor, and a little way across the furs there, to the visibly pulsing enchantments surrounding Duilya Evendusk’s gem bower.

  It was the Cormanthan custom for elven ladies of means to have a pod-shaped, walk-in portable closet, something like the canopy surrounding a sedan chair. In this closet their jewels were hung or kept in little drawers individually carved to fit into the flowing wooden walls. Gem bowers were equipped with little hanging mirrors, tiny glass light-globes that shone when tapped with a forefinger, and little seats. They also contained powerful enchantments to keep out the wandering fingers of those overwhelmed by the beauty of the gems contained therein; enchantments that in theory could be tuned to keep out all except their lady owner. These “veilings” were so strong that they glowed a rich blue, quite visible to the eye, as they crawled and ebbed around their bowers in a close-clinging sphere of magic.

  They were strong enough, El recalled dimly from the Srinshee’s comments, to hurl intruders across a room, or stand immobile against the charge of the strongest warrior—even a charge preceded by a spear, or augmented by a second or third warrior, racing shoulder to shoulder. Would they likewise rend a drifting human phantom? Or rebuff him?

  Gingerly he drifted closer, moving with infinite patience, extending the thinnest thread of himself cautiously outward to touch the pulsing blue glow.

  It rippled unchanged, and he felt nothing. He thrust it in further, reaching with the smokelike finger for three gems hanging on fine chains from the curving ceiling of Duilya Evendusk’s bower.

  He felt nothing, and the enchantment seemed unchanged. Reluctantly he spread himself out along it, brushing against the blueness. No sensation of pain or disruption, and no change in the enchantment. Drawing himself back across the room from the bower, he swirled around Lord and Lady Evendusk for a moment, as they murmured gentle words to each other with slow but building hunger. Then he raced across the room, charging right at the magical barrier.

  He was almost up t—he was through!—bursting through the heart of the bower without disturbing so much as a ring and storming on out its other side, piercing the barrier again and flashing into a silent, unseen turn inches shy of a wall.

  Behind him the veiling glowed on, unchanging. El turned and regarded it with some satisfaction. Glancing beyond it, at the langorous midair dance of the amorous elven couple, he smiled—or tried to—and soared away, out an oval window into the mossy gardens beyond, seeking information.

  He wanted to find the Coronal, to be sure the bloodthirsty ardavanshee—or worse, the elder mages of the haughty houses to which the reckless younglings belonged—hadn’t so lost their senses as to strike at the heart and head of the realm.

  Then, assuming the Revered Lord Most High of Cormanthor was unharmed, ’twould be time to seek out the Srinshee and get a certain much-maligned human armathor of the realm his body back, if this condition hadn’t passed away by then.

  El turned in the direction the palace should be, rose until he was among treetops and spired towers, and sped among them, looking down as he passed at the unfolding beauty of Cormanthor.

  There were circular gardens like little green wells, and trees planted in crescentiform arcs to enclose little moss lawns in their encircling shelter. There were stone spires around which gigantic trees spiraled in living helices of leaves and carefully-shaped branches and little windows opening in the bark, with the forms of young elves at play dancing and wrestling visible within. There were banners of translucent silk that rode the winds as lightly as gossamer threads, and trees that held those banners on boughs shaped like the fingers of an open hand, with a domed upper room squatting like an egg in the palm of that hand. There were houses that revolved, and sparkled back the sun from swirling glass ornaments hanging like frozen raindrops from their balconies and casements.

  El looked at it all with fresh wonder. In all his tearing about and fighting, he’d forgotten just how beautiful elven work could be. If the elder elven houses had their way, of course, humans would never see any of this—and those few intruders who did, such as one Elminster Aumar, would not live long enough to tell anyone of such splendors.

  After a time he came out of a knot of tree homes and spired, many-windowed houses, passing over a wall that bore several enchantments. Beyond was a garden of many pools and statues. The garden, El realized as he drifted onward and onward, was big.

  And yet it didn’t look like the Coronal’s palace garden. Where were the … ?

  No, that wasn’t the palace. It was a grand house, yes—a mound of greenery pierced by windows and bristling with slender towers. Its ivy-covered flanks fell away to the lazy curves of a stream that slid placidly past islands that looked like huge clumps of moss linked by little arched bridges.

  It was the most beautiful mansion El had ever seen. He veered toward its nearest large upper window. Like most such openings it was bereft of glass, and filled instead by an invisible spell field that prevented the passage of all solid objects, but let breezes blow unchecked. Two well-dressed elves were leaning against the unseen field, goblets in their hands.

  “My Lord Maendellyn,” someone was saying in thin, superior tones, “you can hardly think it usual for one of my House to so swiftly find common cause with those of younger heritage and lesser concerns; this is truly something that strikes at us all.”

  “Have we then, Llombaerth, the open support of House Starym?”

  “Oh, I don’t think that is yet necessary. Those who wish to reshape Cormanthor and stand proud in doing so must occasionally be seen to do things for themselves—and bear the consequences.”

  “While the Starym watch, smiling, from the sidelines,” a third voice said in dry tones, “ready to applaud such bold Houses if they succeed, or decry their foul treachery if they fail. Yes, that would make a House live long and profit much. At the same time, it leaves those of the House in question standing on uneasy ground when presuming to lecture others on tactics, or ethics, or the good of the realm.”

  “My Lord Yeschant,” the thin voice said coldly, “I don’t care for the tone of your observations.”

  “And yet, Lord Speaker of the Starym, you can find it in you to make common cause with us—for you have the most to lose of us all.”

  “How so?”

  “House Starym now holds the proudest rank of all. If this insane plan the Coronal is urging on Cormanthor is allowed to befall, House Starym has more to lose than, say, House Yridnae.”

  “Is there a House Yridnae?” someone asked, in the background, but El, as he drifted nearer, heard no reply.

  “My lords,” the Lord Maendellyn was saying hastily, “let us set aside this dissension and pursue the stag we’ve all seen ahead: to whit, the necessity of ending the rule of our current Coronal, and his folly of Opening, for the good of us all.”

  “Whatever we pursue,” a deep voice said despairingly, “won’t bring my son back. The human did it; the Coronal brought the human into the realm—so, the human being dead already, the Coronal must die, that my Aerendyl be avenged.”

  “I lost a son, too, Lord Tassarion,” said another new voice, “but it does not follow that the death of my Leayonadas must needs be paid for by the blood of the ruler of Cormanthor. If Eltargrim must die, let it be a reasoned decision ma
de for the future of Cormanthor, and not a blood evening.”

  “House Starym knows better than many the pain of loss and the weight of blood price,” the thin voice of Llombaerth Starym, Lord Speaker of his House, came again. “We have no desire to belittle the pain of a loss felt by others, and we hear the deep—and undeniable—call for justice. Yet we, too, believe that the matter of the Coronal’s continued rule must be treated as an affair of state. The misruler must pay for his shocking ideas and his failure to guide Cormanthor capably, regardless of how many or how few brave sons of the realm have died from his mistakes.”

  “May I propose,” a lisping voice put in, “that we resolve and work toward the slaying of the Coronal? With that as a commonly held goal, those of us who see revenge as part of this—myself, Lord Yeschant, Lord Tassarion, and Lord Ortauré—can agree among ourselves who shall have a hand in the actual killing, so that honor may be satisfied. That in turn allows House Starym and others who’d rather not be part of actual bloodshed to work toward our common goal with hands that remain clean of all but the work of loyally defending Cormanthor.”

  “Well said, My Lord Bellas,” Lord Maendellyn agreed. “Are we then agreed that the Coronal must die?”

  “We are,” came the rough chorus.

  “And are we agreed on when, how, and whom shall ascend to the throne of Coronal after Eltargrim?”

  There was a little silence, and then everyone started to speak at once. El could see them, now: the five heads of Houses and the Starym envoy, sitting around a polished table with goblets and bottles between them, the slowly revolving flashes of an anti-poison field winking among those vessels.

  “Pray silence!” Lord Yeschant said sharply, after a few moments of babble. “It is clear that we are not agreed on these things. I suspect that the matter of who shall be our next Coronal is the issue of most contention, and should be dealt with last—though I must stress, lords, that we do Cormanthor a grave disservice if we do not, before striking, choose a new Coronal and support him with the same united resolve we show in removing the old one. None of us benefits from a realm in chaos.” He paused, and then asked in a quiet voice, “My Lord Maendellyn?”