by Ed Greenwood
Her master allowed her the black breeches and vest of a thief, and let her grow her hair long. He even taught her the spells to animate it so as to stroke him, when he took her into his chamber of nights and left Elminster floating furiously outside.
She never spoke to him of what went on in the spell-locked bedchamber, save to say that their master never took off his mask. Once, when awakening from a shrieking nightmare, she babbled something about “soft and terrible tentacles.”
The Masked not only never removed his mask; he never slept. As far as El could tell, he had no friends or kin, and no Cormanthan ever called on him, for any reason. His days were spent crafting magic, working magic, and teaching magic to his two apprentices. Sometimes he treated them almost as friends, though he never revealed anything about himself. At other times, they were clearly his slaves. Most of the time they worked as drudges, together. In fact, it seemed that the masked mage almost taunted his two apprentices with each other’s company, thrusting them into messy, slippery jobs half-naked to help each other lift, sort, or clean. But whenever they reached for each other, even to give innocent aid or comfort, he struck out with punishments.
These visitations of pain were many and varied, but the Master’s favorite punishment for apprentices was to paralyze the bared body of the miscreant with spells and set acid leeches on it to feed. The slow, glistening creatures excreted a burning slime as they slid over skin, or bored almost lazily in. The Masked was always careful to use his spells in time to keep his apprentices alive, but Elminster could attest that there are few things in Faerûn as painful as having a sluglike beast eating its way very slowly into your lungs, or stomach, or guts.
Yet El had learned true respect for The Masked during twenty years of learning deep-woven, complex elven magics. The elf was a meticulous crafter of spells and a stylish caster, who left nothing to chance, always thought ahead, and seemed never to be surprised. He had an instinctive understanding of magic, and could modify, combine, or improvise spells with almost effortless ease and no hesitation. He also never forgot where he’d put anything, no matter how trivial, and always kept himself under iron control, never showing weariness, loneliness, or a need to confide in anyone. Even his losses of temper seemed almost planned and scripted.
Moreover, after twenty years of intense contact, Elminster still did not know who the mage was. A male of one of the old, proud families, to be sure, and—judging by the views he evidently held—probably not among the eldest Cormanthans. The Masked spun and projected a false body for himself often, directing it in activities elsewhere with part of his mind, while he devoted some part of the rest to instructing Elminster.
At first, the last prince of Athalantar had been astonished by what powerful spells the anonymous elven mage had let him learn. But then, why should The Masked worry, when he could compel instant obedience from the body he’d given to his human apprentice? Elminster suspected he and Nacacia were among the very few Cormanthan apprentices who never left their master’s abode, and they were probably the only apprentices who weren’t pureblood elves, and who were never taught how to create their own defensive mantles.
Sometimes El thought about his tumultuous early days in Cormanthor. He wondered if the Srinshee and the Coronal thought him dead, or if they cared about his fate at all. More often he wondered what had become of the elven lady Symrustar, whom he’d left crawling in the woods, when he’d been unable to defend her or even to make her notice him. And what had become of Mythanthar, and his dream of a mythal? Surely they’d have heard from the Master if such a spectacular giant mantle had been spun, and the city opened to other races. But then, why would he tell news of the world outside his tower to two apprentices whom he kept as virtual prisoners?
Recently, even the attentive teaching of magic had stopped. The Masked was absent from his tower more often, or shut away in spell-sealed chambers scrying events elsewhere. Day after day during this most recent winter his apprentices had been left alone to feed themselves and follow a bald list of tasks that appeared written in letters of fire on a certain wall: drudge-work, and the spinning of small spells to keep the Master’s tower clean, well-ordered, and strong in its fabric. Yet he kept a watch over them; unauthorized explorations of the tower, or overmuch intimacy between them, brought swift and sharp retributive spells out of the empty air. Only two tendays ago, when Nacacia had dropped a kiss on Elminster’s shoulder as she brushed past him, an unseen whip had lashed her lips and face to bloody ribbons, defying El’s frantic attempts to dispel it as she staggered back, screaming. She’d awakened the next morning wholly healed. But a row of barbed thorns grew all around her mouth, making kissing impossible. It was more than a tenday before they faded away.
These days, when the masked mage put in one of his rare appearances in the rooms where they dwelt, it was to call on them for magical aid, usually either to drain some of their vital energies in an arcane—and unexplained—spell he was experimenting with, or to help him create a spell web.
Like the one they were working on now. Incredible constructions these were, glowing nets or interwoven cages of glowing force-lines that one could walk along as if striding along a broad wooden beam, regardless of whether one was upside down, or walking tilted sharply sideways. Multiple spells could be cast into the glowing fabric of these cages, placed in particular spots and for specific reasons, so that triggering the collapse of the web would unleash spell after spell at preset targets, in a particular order.
The Master rarely revealed all of the magics he’d placed in a web before its triggering displayed their true natures, and had never shown either apprentice how to start such a web. El and Nacacia didn’t even know the primary purpose—or target—of most of the webs they worked on; El suspected The Masked often used the aid of his two largely ignorant apprentices purely to remain hidden, so that the spells striking down a distant rival would bear no hint of who was behind them.
Now the elf turned, his eyes flashing beneath the mask that never left his face. “Elminster, come here,” he said coldly, indicating a particular spot in the web with one finger. “We have death to weave, together.”
EIGHTEEN
IN THE WEB
There comes a day at last when even the most patient and exacting of scheming traitors grows impatient, and breaks forth into open treachery. Henceforth, he must deal with the world as it is, reacting around him, and not as he sees or desires it to be in his plots and dreams. This is the point at which many treacheries go awry.
The sorcerer known as The Masked was, however, no ordinary traitor—if one may think of an “ordinary traitor.” The historian of Cormanthor, reaching back far enough, can do so, finding many ordinary treacheries, but this was not one of them. This was the stuff of which wailing doom-ballads are made.
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
Elminster shook his head to try to banish mind-weariness; he’d been spinning spells with another, colder mind for too long, and almost staggered in the patiently humming web.
“Get clear now,” the thin, cold voice of the Master said into his ear then, though the elven mage was standing in the air at the other side of the spell chamber.
“Nacacia, hie you to the couch in the corner. Elminster, here to stand with me.”
Knowing his impatience was apt to flare at such times, both apprentices hastened to obey, dropping lightly out of the webwork as soon as they were low enough to do so without disrupting anything.
El had scarce reached the spot The Masked was pointing at when the elf hissed something and used one finger to bridge the gap between two protruding points at the end of the glowing lines. That set the web to working; its magic snarled forth, trailing sparks as the web dissolved itself, discharging spell after spell. The elven sorcerer looked up expectantly, and El followed his gaze to
a spot in the air high above them, where the air, encircled by an arching strand of the web, was flickering into sudden life. A scene appeared there, floating in the emptiness like a bright hanging tapestry, and growing steadily brighter.
It was a view of a house El had never seen before, one of the sprawling country mansions made by elves. A house that lived, growing slowly larger as the centuries passed. This one had been standing for more than a thousand summers, by the looks of it, at the heart of a grove of old and mighty shadowtops, somewhere in the forest deeps. An old house; a proud house.
A house that would be standing only a few moments more.
El watched grimly as the unleashed magics of the spell web shattered its magical shields, set off its attack spells and forced their discharges back inwards to strike at the heart of the old house, and snatched guardian creatures and steeds from their posts and stables, only to dash them back against the walls, right through the full fury of the awakened spells, reducing them to raglike, bloody tatters.
It took only a few minutes to alter the proud, soaring house of mighty branches and lush leaves to a smoking crater flanked by two splintered, precariously wavering fragments of blackened and splintered trunk. Misshapen things that might have been bodies were still raining down around the wreckage when the spell web drank its own scene, and the air went dark again.
Elminster was still blinking at the empty air where the scene had been when sudden mists snatched at him. Before he could even cry out, he was somewhere else. Soft soil and dead leaves were under his boots, and the smells of trees all around.
He was standing in a clearing deep in the forest with The Masked reclining at ease on empty air nearby, and no sign of Nacacia or of any elven habitation. They were somewhere deep in the wild forest.
El blinked at the change in light, drew in a deep breath of the damp air, and looked all around, delighting in being out of the tower at last, and yet filled with foreboding. Had his master espied his meeting with Mystra, or seen it in his mind since? She’d reclined in almost the same way.
The clearing they were standing in was odd. It was a semicircular bare patch perhaps a hundred paces across—completely bare, just earth and rock, with not a stump or lichen or pecking woodbird to enliven its barren lifelessness.
El looked at The Masked and raised inquiring eyebrows in silence.
His master pointed down. “This is what is left behind by a casting of the spell I’m going to teach you now.”
El looked at the devastation once more, and then back at the Master, stonefaced. “Aye. Something potent, is it?”
“Something very useful. Properly used, it can make its caster nigh-invincible.” The Masked showed his teeth in a mirthless grin and added, “Like myself, for instance.” He uncoiled himself from his reclining position and said, “Lie down just here, where the waste ends and the living forest begins. Nose to the ground, hands spread out. Move not.”
When the Master spoke like that, one didn’t hesitate or argue. Elminster scrambled down onto his face in the dirt.
Once he was there, he felt the icy touch of the Master’s fingertips on the back of his head. They only felt so cold when a spell was being slipped into his mind, stealing in without need for studying or instruction or …
Gods! This magic would fuel any spell you already possessed, doubling its effects or making a twin of it. To do so, it drained life-force—from a tree.
Or a sentient being.
And it was so simple. Powerful, aye, one had to be a very capable mage to wield it, but the actual doing was so hideously easy. It left utter lifelessness in its wake. And elves had wrought this?
“When,” El asked the moss under his nose, “would I ever dare to use this?”
“In an emergency,” the Master said calmly, “when your life—or the realm or holding you were defending—was in the most dire peril. When all else is lost, the only immoral act is to avoid doing something you know can aid your cause. This is such a spell.”
El almost turned his head to glance up at the masked elf. His voice, for the first time in twenty years, had sounded eager, almost hungry.
Mystra, El thought, he loves the thought of utterly smashing a foe, regardless of the cost!
“I can’t think, Master, that I’ll ever trust my own judgment enough to be comfortable using this spell,” El said slowly.
“Comfortable, no; not one thinking, caring being would be, knowing what this magic can do. Yet capable you can become. That’s why we’re here. Up, now.”
El rose. “I’m going to practice?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. You’ll be unleashing the spell in earnest against an enemy of Cormanthor. By decree of the Coronal, this spell is only to be used in direct defense of the realm or of an imperiled elven elder.”
El stared at the ever-present enchanted mask his master wore, wondering for perhaps the ten thousandth time what its true powers were—and just what he’d find beneath it, if he ever dared snatch it away.
As if that thought had crossed the elf’s mind, the masked mage stepped back hastily and said, “You’ve just seen our spell web destroy a high house. It was an abode used by certain conspirators in the realm who desire that we trade with the drow. They are so hungry for the wealth and importance the dark ones have promised will flow to them personally that they’ll betray us all into becoming vassals of some matron of Down Below.”
“But surely—” Elminster began, and then fell silent. Nothing was sure about this tale beyond the fact that his masked Master was lying. That much Mystra had given him in the meadow. He could now tell when the thin, cold voice of the elven sorcerer was straying from the truth.
It was doing so with almost every word.
“Soon,” the Masked went on, “I’ll transport us to a place that is specifically warded against me. It is a place I can enter only by blasting my way through its shields, alerting everyone within to my arrival and wasting much magic besides.”
The elven sorcerer’s pointing finger shot out to indicate El. “You, however, can step right in. My magic will bring a chained orc to your side—a vicious despoiler of human and elven villages whom we captured while he was roasting elven babies on spits for his evening meal. You’ll drain him to power your spell, and then hurl your antimagic shell—augmented by this magic in both area and efficacy, of course—into the house you’ll be facing. I can then summon a few loyal armathors with ready swords, and the deed will be done. The traitors will lie dead, and Cormanthor will stand safe for a while longer. With that deed under your belt, you should be ready for presentation to the Coronal at last.”
“The Coronal?” Elminster felt almost as much excitement as he put into that gasp. ’Twould be good, indeed, to see old Lord Eltargrim again. Still, that did nothing to drive away the uneasy feeling he had about this whole arrangement. Who would he really be slaying?
The Masked saw his dislike in his face. “There is a mage in the house you’ll be striking at,” he added slowly, “and a capable one at that. Yet I hope that any apprentice of mine will go up against true foes with the same bravery as we transform toadstools and conjure light in dark places. The true mage never allows himself to be awed by magic when he’s using it.”
The wise mage, Elminster thought silently, recalling the words of Mystra, pretends to know nothing about magic at all.
Then he wryly added the corollary: When he gains true wisdom, he’ll know that he wasn’t pretending.
“Are you ready, Elminster?” his master asked then, very quietly. “Are you ready to undertake a mission of importance at last?”
Mystra? El asked inwardly. Instantly a vision appeared in his mind: The Masked pointing at him, just as he’d done a moment ago. This time, in the vision, El smiled and nodded enthusiastically. Well, that was clear enough.
“I am,” Elminster said, smiling and nodding enthusiastically.
The mask did not hide the slow smile that grew across the face of his master.
The Masked rai
sed his hands and murmured, “Let us be about it, then.” He made a single gesture toward El, and the world vanished in swirling smoke.
When the smoke curled away to let the human mage see clearly again, they stood together in a wooded valley. It was probably somewhere in Cormanthor, by the looks of the trees and the sun above them. They stood on a little knoll with a well beside them, and across a small dip that held a garden stood a low, rambling house of trees joined by low-roofed wooden chambers. Except for the oval windows visible in the tree trunks, it might have been a human home rather than an abode of elves.
“Strike swiftly,” the Masked murmured beside Elminster’s ear, and vanished. The air where he’d been standing promptly spun and shimmered. Then an orc was standing beside him, wrapped in a heavy yoke of chains. It stared at him, pleading with its eyes, trying frantically to say something around the thick gag clamped into and over its jaws. All it managed was a soft, high whimpering.
A babe-devourer and raider, eh? El set his lips in distaste over what he had to do, and reached out to touch the orc without hesitation. The Masked was sure to be watching.
He worked the spell, turning to thrust one spread hand at the house, and settle his antimagic over every part of it, willing it to seek down into even the deepest cellar, and blanket even the mightiest of realms-shaking magics. Let that building be dead to all magic, so long as his power lasted.
The orc’s keening became a despairing moan; the light in its eyes flickered and went out, and it buckled slowly at the knees and crashed to the ground; El had to step aside hastily as the chained bulk of its corpse rolled under his feet.
The air shimmered again, nearby; he looked up in time to see elven warriors in gleaming, high-collared plate armor rushing out of a rent in the air. None of them wore helms, but they all waved naked long swords—enchanted blades that flickered with ready, reaving magic—in their hands. They spared no glances for El or the surroundings, but charged at the house, hacking at shutters and doors. As the blades breached those barriers and the elves plunged inside, the radiances dancing on their blades and armor winked out. From inside, the muffled shouting and the ringing of striking steel began.