by Ed Greenwood
Ah! Aye! The golden symbol Mystra had put in his mind so long ago gleamed, wavering like a coin seen underwater. Then it shone steadily as he bent his will to capturing it.
The image of the Srinshee overlaid its spinning splendor as The Masked struggled to master El’s will, but the golden symbol burst through it.
As Nacacia shoved El’s head back down against the stone, he held to that blazing image and gasped, “Mystra!”
His body shuddered, squirmed, and … flowed. Nacacia tried to slap a hand over his mouth, clinging to him desperately, and El gasped, “Enough! Nacacia, let be! I’m free of him!”
They broke apart, and Nacacia rolled over and up again to find herself staring into the eyes of a human woman!
“Well met,” El gasped with a weak grin. “Call me Elmara, please!”
The half-elf stared at him—her—in utter disbelief “Are you truly … yourself?”
“Sometimes I think so,” El said with a crooked smile, and Nacacia flung her arms around her longtime companion with a shout of relieved laughter.
It was drowned out, an instant later, by shouts of, “For the Starym! Starym risen!”
The two former apprentices clambered to their feet, stumbling over the motionless body of the Lady Herald, and saw elves crowding into the east side of the hall from behind a tapestry. The last armathors of the court were dying under their swords—and their slayers were a swarm of elves whose maroon breastplates bore the twin falling dragons of House Starym, blazoned in silver.
“Make a stand,” someone snapped, near at hand. “Here. Guard the Herald, and keep them out from under the Srinshee.”
It was Mythanthar, and the sudden hard grip of his bony hands on their shoulders made it clear he was speaking to Elmara and Nacacia. Barely turning to acknowledge him, they nodded dutifully and raised their hands to weave spells.
As the Starym warriors burst across the hall, carving a bloody path through the fighting courtiers with complete disregard for whoever they might be slaying, El unleashed the bladecall spell into the throats and faces of the foremost.
Nacacia sent lashing lightnings over the falling, dying first rank of Starym warriors, to stab into the second. Elves in maroon armor staggered and danced to death amid the hungry bolts.
Then the Srinshee sent a spell down to aid them, a wall of ghostly elven warriors who hacked and thrust in complete harmlessness, but blocked the living elves from advancing until they’d been hewn down, one by one. El and Nacacia used the time that took to pour magic missiles into specific warriors, slaying many.
New faces peered in at the doors of the great chamber, as the heads of mighty Houses came to see for themselves what new madness was ruling the Coronal this day. Almost all of them gaped, turned pale, and hastily retreated. Some few swallowed, drew blades that were more ceremonial than practical, and picked their way cautiously forward through the blood and dust and tumult.
Across the great chamber, the ruler of Cormanthor was fighting for his life, slaughtering Starym courtiers like an angry lion. He was one against many, as they stood in a desperate, struggling wall against him. His blade sang and flashed around him, and only two thrusts had managed to slip past it to stain his white robes red. He was back in battle, where he belonged.
Lord Eltargrim was happy. At last, after twenty long years of whisperings and elf-slaying “accidents” and rumors of the Coronal’s corruption and setbacks in the mythal-work, at last he could find and see a foe. The spells in his blade and shielding the court were both beginning to fail, but if they kept off the worst of the magics these Starym were hurling just a few breaths longer …
“Hold him, you fools!” Llombaerth Starym snarled, striking angrily at the backs and shoulders of the retainers who were being driven back against him. The stormsword in his hand whistled as he plied it, using its flat to slap and spank elves who were failing him.
And when the time came, he had one magic no Cormanthan could stop, a dark secret he’d held for years now. He shook it down into his free hand and waited. One clear throw at Eltargrim’s face, and the realm would belong to the House of Starym at last.
Then something slapped across his mind, as brutally as he was striking his retainers. The surging scene of the battling Coronal in front of his eyes was blotted out by a scene in his mind—two dark, arresting stars that swam and flowed into the bleak, merciless old face of the mage Mythanthar, wrinkled and spotted with age, but with eyes that held his like two dark flames.
Going somewhere, young traitor?
The mocking words rang louder in his head than the clangor of the Coronal’s blade, and Llombaerth Starym found that he could not move, could not look away from the grim old mage who stood facing him in the heart of the chamber, with Starym warriors raging all around and elven blood staining the once-gleaming pave under the old sorcerer’s boots.
“Get … out … of my head!” The Masked snarled, thrusting desperately with his will.
He might as well have been trying to push an old duskwood tree aside. Mythanthar held him in an unyielding grip, and gave a smile that promised death.
Go down and feed the worms, worthless Starym. Go down to your doom, and trouble fair Cormanthor no more.
That grim curse was still ringing through LIombaerth Starym’s head as Eltargrim Irithyl, Coronal of Cormanthor, burst past the last reeling Starym warrior and thrust his glowing blade over the snarling stormsword. The two blades were outlined in fire as they struck the mantle of The Masked together, and breached it. With a sudden wet fire more terrible than anything he had ever felt before, the Lord Speaker of the Starym felt the blade of the Coronal slide into his left side, and up through his heart, and on through to strike his right arm upwards as it burst out of his body. The last thing he felt, as darkness reached up claws to spin him down into its cold and waiting grip, was an irritating itching washing out from where the hilt of the Fang of Cormanthor was nudging against his ribs.
He had to scratch it, he had to … the damned old mage was still watching and smiling … take him away, sweep him off, let him be …
And then Llombaerth Starym left Faerûn without even time for a proper farewell.
“He’s dead,” Flardryn said bitterly, watching the masked elf slump down out of sight. He turned away from the scrying sphere, not even bothering to watch as a spell of bright streaking stars rained down from the Srinshee to fell the Starym army, where they struggled to win past the human and the half-elf—too few, too feeble, and too late to win the day, whatever befell now.
Other Starym stared in white-faced, trembling disbelief at the glowing sphere, where it hovered above the pool of enchanted water. Tears ran down some of their chins, but they were older than Flardryn, and so did not think of turning away. The least one could do for those who wore the Starym dragons was watch them until the end, and mark what happened, to avenge them in time to come. It was simple duty.
“Killed—the Lord Speaker killed by the Coronal in his own court! The throne of the realm slapping the face of all Starym, that’s what it is!” one of the elder Starym hissed, nose and ears quivering in rage.
The eyes of another senior Starym, this one a lady so old that her hair had almost all fallen out, and was mounted now in a jeweled tiara, flickered across to her outraged kins-elf. She sighed and said sadly, “I never thought to see the day when a Starym elf—even an arrogant and foolish youngling, overblown by a rank we should never have given him—would stand in the Court of Cormanthor and denounce its ruler. And then to attack him openly, with spells, and plunge the folk of the court into all this bloodshed!”
“Easy, sister,” another Starym murmured, his own lips trembling with holding back the tears.
“Have you seen?” a sudden bellow rang off the rafters above them, as a distant door banged open against the wall with booming force. “This means war! To spells, Solonor damn you for witless old weak-knees, to spells! We must to court before the murderous Irithyl can escape!”
“Have d
one, Maeraddyth,” the broad-shouldered elf seated closest to the sphere said quietly.
The young elf didn’t hear him as he stormed up to the gathered Starym. “Move, you gutless elders! Where’ve you lost your pride, all of you?! Our Lord Speaker cut down in his blood, and you all stand around watching! What—”
“I said: have done, Maeraddyth,” the seated elf said again, just as quietly as before. The raging young male stiffened in mid-growl, and stared down past all the silent faces, each wearing its own shock and sorrow.
The senior archmage of House Starym looked back up at him with mild eyes. “There is a time for throwing lives away,” Uldreiyn Starym told his trembling young relative, “and Llombaerth has used it—more than used it—this day. We shall be fortunate if House Starym is not hunted down and slain, to every last trace-blood. Hold your anger, Maeraddyth; if you hurl your life after all those lost in yon chamber”—he inclined his head toward the sphere, where scenes of battle still flickered and flowed—“you will be a fool, and no hero.”
“But Elder Lord, how can you say that?” Maeraddyth protested, waving at the sphere. “Are you as craven as the rest of these—”
“You are speaking,” Uldreiyn said in a voice of sudden steel, “of your elders; Starym who were revered and celebrated for their deeds when your sire’s sire was still a babe. Even when he puled and wailed, he never disgusted me by his childishness as you are doing, here and now.”
The young warrior stared at him in genuine astonishment. The archmage’s eyes thrust into his like twin spears, keen and merciless. Uldreiyn gestured to the floor, and Maeraddyth, swallowing in disbelief, found himself going to his knees.
The mightiest archmage of House Starym looked down at him. “Yes, it is right to be aghast and angry that one of our own has perished. But your fury should be sent to him, wherever what remains of Llombaerth is wandering now, for daring to drag down all of House Starym into his treachery. To work against a misguided Coronal is one thing; to attack and denounce the ruler of all Cormanthor before all his court is quite another. I am ashamed. All of these kin you deem ‘craven’ are sad, and shocked, and shamed. They are also thrice your quality, for they know above all that a Cormanthan elf—a noble Cormanthan elf—a Starym Cormanthan elf—keeps himself under control at all times, and never betrays the honor and pride of this great family. To do so is to spit upon the family name you are so hot to uphold, and besmirch the names and memories of all your ancestors.”
Maeraddyth was white, now, and tears glimmered in his eyes.
“If I was cruel,” Uldreiyn told him, “I would share with you some of the memories of Starym you’ve never known, drowning you in their prides and schemes and sorrows. These kin you ridicule carry such weights, when you are too young and stupid to know true duties. Speak to me not of war, and going ‘to spells,’ Maeraddyth.”
The young Starym burst into tears, and the old mage was suddenly out of his chair and kneeling knee-to-knee with the weeping Maeraddyth, enfolding his shaking arms in a grip like old iron. “Yet I know your rage, and grief, and restlessness, youngling,” he said into the young warrior’s ear. “Your need to do something, your ache to defend the Starym name. I need that ache to be in you. I need that rage to burn in you. I need that grief to make you never forget the foolishness Llombaerth wrought. You are the future of House Starym, and it is my task to make of you a blade that does not fail, a pride that never tarnishes, and an honor that never, never forgets.”
Maeraddyth drew back in astonishment, and Uldreiyn smiled at him. The shocked young warrior saw tears to match his own glimmering in the giant elf’s eyes. “Now heed, young Maeraddyth, and make me proud of you,” the archmage growled.
“You—all of us”—the warrior on his knees was suddenly aware that he knelt in the center of a ring of watching faces, and that tears were falling around him like raindrops in a storm—“must put this dark day behind us. Never speak of it, save in the innermost rooms of this abode, when no servants are about. We must work to rebuild the family honor, pledge our fealty anew to the Coronal as soon as is safely possible, and swallow whatever punishments he deems fitting. If we are to pay wealth, or give up our young to the Coronal’s raising, or see retainers who fought today put to death, so be it. We must distance our House from the actions of those Starym who have defied the Coronal’s wishes. We must show shame, not proud defiance … or there may soon be no House Starym, to rise to greatness again.”
He rose, his firm grip dragging Maeraddyth to his feet also, and looked around at the ring of silent faces. “Do we have understanding?”
There were silent nods.
“Do we have disagreement? I would know now, so that I can slay or mind-meld as necessary.” He looked around, eyes hard, but no one, not even the trembling Maeraddyth, said him nay.
“Good. Disturb me not, but dress in your best and wait my return. The Starym who flees this abode is no longer one of us.”
Without another word Uldreiyn Starym, senior archmage of the House, strode out from them and marched across the room, face set.
Servants fled at the sight of his face, on the long walk through the halls to his own spell tower. When its door closed quietly behind them, he laid a hand on it and said the word that released the two ghost dragons from the splendid wyrms of the Starym arms emblazoned on the outer surface of the door.
They prowled up and down the last little stretch of corridor all night, ready to keep even those of House Starym out, but no one came to try to win a way past them. Which was just as well, for ghost dragons are always hungry.
The Pool of Remembrance shone white again, and the Coronal, looking weary, raised his hand to the Srinshee where she stood on air beside the throne. “None of them understand,” he said quietly. He touched the gleaming blade that hung at his side. “For twenty years and more the foolish younglings of the great houses struggled to seize the throne. But even had they triumphed, the victor would have gained no more than the opportunity to submit to the blade-right ritual.” He looked at Elmara, now Elminster again, standing with Nacacia and the Lady Herald. “Many may try that ritual, but only one will be chosen, surviving tests of talent, head, and heart.” He sighed. “They are so young, so foolish.” Mythanthar stood listening, a little smile on his face, and said nothing. His eyes were on the elves busily cleaning the Chamber of the Court of blood and bodies.
The Coronal said quietly to the Srinshee, “Do it now. Please.”
Above them, the aged child-sorceress touched the floating Throne of Cormanthor, cast a spell, and then stood trembling, her eyes closed, as the great sound of the Calling rolled out through her.
Light lanced from every part of her body. From where those beams touched its walls and ceiling and pillars, the whole vast chamber hummed into a great rising chord.
It built to a soaring height, and then died away as slowly. When it was done, the leaders of all the Houses of Cormanthor stood before the throne, and lesser elves were crowding in the doors.
Eltargrim sheathed his sword and rose slowly through the air until he stood before the throne. When the Srinshee reeled in the aftermath of the mighty magic she’d awakened, he put an arm around her shoulders to support her, and said, “People of Cormanthor, great evil has been done—and undone—here today. Mythanthar declares that he is ready, and I will not wait longer, lest those who seek to control the realm as their private plaything find time to make another attempt, and cost us more Cormanthan lives. Before dusk, this day, the promised Mythal shall be laid, stretching over all the city from the Northpost to Shammath’s Pool. When it is deemed stable—which should befall by highsun on the morrow—the gates of the city shall be thrown open to folk of all races who embrace not evil. Envoys shall go out to the known kingdoms of men, and gnomes, and halflings—and yes, dwarves. Henceforth, though our realm shall remain Cormanthor, this city shall be known as Myth Drannor, in honor of the Mythal Mythanthar shall craft for us, and for Drannor, the first elf of Cormanthor known to have m
arried a dwarven lass, long ago though that be.”
He looked down and the Lady Herald caught his eye, stepped forward, and announced grandly, “The wizards have been summoned. Let all who abide here keep peace and watch. Let the laying of the Mythal begin!”
EPILOGUE
The Mythal that rose over the city of Cormanthor was not the most powerful ever spun, but elves still judge it the most important. With love, and out of strife, it was wrought, and was given many rich and strange powers by the many who wove it. Elves still sing of them, and vow their names will live forever, despite the fall of Myth Drannor: the Coronal Eltargrim Irithyl; the Lady Herald Aubaudameira Dree, known to minstrels as “Alais;” the human armathor Elminster, Chosen of Mystra; the Lady Oluevaera Estelda, the legendary Srinshee; the human mage known only as Mentor; the half-elven Arguth of Ambral Isle; High Court Mage Lord Earynspieir Ongluth; the Lords Aulauthar Orbryn and Ondabrar Maendellyn; and the Ladies Ahrendue Echorn, Dathlue Mistwinter, known to bards as ‘Lady Steel’ and High Lady Alea Dahast. These were not all. Many of Cormanthor joined in the Song that day, and by the grace of Corellon, Sehanine, and Mystra some of their wants and skills found mysterious ways into the Mythal. Some did not, for treachery never died in Cormanthor, whether it was called Myth Drannor or not …
ANTARN THE SAGE
FROM THE HIGH HISTORY OF FAERÛNIAN ARCHMAGES
MIGHTY
PUBLISHED CIRCA THE YEAR OF THE STAFF
Armathors who had run from their guardposts at the Coronal’s palace hastened into the Chamber of the Court, led by the six court sorceresses. Grim-faced, they drew their blades and made a ring, shoulder to shoulder and facing outwards, on the pave before the throne.
Into that ring stepped the Coronal, his Lady Herald, Elminster, Nacacia, Mythanthar, and the Srinshee. The warriors drew their ranks closed.
Their swords lifted in readiness almost immediately, as a mage hesitantly approached, looking to the Coronal. “Revered Lord?” he asked cautiously, trying not to let his eyes stray to the bloodstains on Eltargrim’s white robes. “Have you need of me?”