Elminster in Myth Drannor

by Ed Greenwood

  There was a stir of fresh excitement in the Court when the large, burly, grandly robed form of Lord UIdreiyn Starym appeared suddenly within the ring, standing near the human Elminster. His boots were firmly on the pave, only inches from something small, dark, and dusty, that was crawling slowly toward the young human mage. It stopped for a moment, and wavered, reaching toward the Starym sorcerer’s boot, but then seemed to come to some sort of decision, and resumed its humping, inching progress toward the last prince of Athalantar.

  Holone was not a Sorceress of the Court for nothing. Something was happening behind her, something wrong. She spun around. Gods! A Starym!

  He was standing still, though, his eyes as vacant as all the rest, and from his mouth and raised hands white fire was streaming, back and forth … he was as much a part of the building Mythal as any of them. Starym could never be trusted, but … was he a foe?

  Holone bit her lip. She was still standing watching, ruled by indecision, when a tapestry and the window behind it burst inward with a crash. Out of the dust and falling rubble a slim figure flew, hands outstretched to spit fire—real fire!

  Holone’s gasp was echoed by many of the watching Cormanthans. Symrustar Auglamyr—alive? Where had she been these twenty years? Holone swallowed and raised her hands to weave a barrier, knowing there was no time.

  That gout of flame was already snarling ahead of the flying lady, headed straight for the unseeing Starym. There were shouts and screams and oaths in the Chamber of the Court once more as fire struck Lord Uldreiyn Starym, and spun him around. He staggered, went to one knee, and his eyes flamed in dark fury. He looked at his foe.

  The Lady Symrustar Auglamyr was only a few feet away from him, still plunging down on him at full speed, her lips pulled back from her white teeth in a snarl of anger, her eyes aflame. She was shouting something.

  “For Mystra! A gift for thee, sorcerer, from Mystra!”

  The senior Starym sneered in reply as he activated the full force of his mantle.

  Elves had swords in their hands, now, and were uncertainly approaching the ring—while armathors and the court sorceresses warned them to stay back, for the love of Cormanthor!

  They watched, aghast, as the flying lady smashed into something unseen that splintered her arms like dry branches, flung her head back, and then broke her legs and spine almost casually as it spun her around in the air, in a tangle of unbound hair, and flung her back whence she’d come.

  Many of the watching elves groaned as they saw that twisting, arching, shuddering body aimed firmly sideways, toward the statue of the elven hero. Steered, and turned about with cold, exacting precision, to face them in the last moments before it was thrust onto the hero’s stone sword.

  Symrustar Auglamyr threw back her head to cry out in hoarse agony as the sword burst forth under her breast, dark and wet with her own blood. Lightnings sang and played around her as her magics began to fail.

  Uldreiyn Starym put his hands on his hips and laughed. “So perish all who dare to strike a Starym!” he told the Court, and lifted his hands. “Who shall be next? You, Holone?”

  The court sorceress blanched and fell back, but did not flee from her place in the ring. She drew in a deep breath, tossed her head, and said, voice trembling only a little, “If need be, traitor.”

  He had called, and Mystra had sent Symrustar, and she was dying for him! Writhing in agony, El could find no time for grief. Mystra! he shouted, as a warrior bellows in battle. Send me something to aid her! The Starym prevails! Mystra!

  Something golden shone in his tattered mind—a thread, a ribbon, moving and turning. His eyes could not help but follow it, and the image of his unleashing it that overlaid it briefly. It twisted, to form a shape thus, and so! Set that upon the foe!

  Thanks be, Mystra, El thought with all his heart, and seized on the shape firmly as he lashed out with another bolt, straight at Uldreiyn Starym. This would hurt.

  The Starym arch-sorcerer stiffened, turned with slow menace, and smilingly dealt a counterblow, sending a mocking message with it.

  Not crazed yet, human? You will be.

  Oh, you will be. Oh? Eat this, arrogant elf! Elminster replied in UIdreiyn’s mind—and unspun Mystra’s weaving.

  The watching Cormanthans saw Beldroth shriek first, snatching his hand away from the child to clutch at his head with both hands, clawing at his ears and howling in raw pain.

  Lord Nelaeryn Mormnist spasmed and kicked out. His lady was hurled back, bowling over two anxiously watching servants. One of the others rushed forward to aid his convulsing lord, who was shrieking like nothing the servant had ever heard before. Droplets of blood were gouting from his mouth, his eyes, and from under his fingernails. He thrashed in midair like a struggling fish, then slumped, crashing to the ground and smashing the servant senseless beneath him.

  Ithrythra Mornmist struggled to her feet. “Nelaer!” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Nelaer, speak to me!” With frantic fingers she rolled him over, staring at the working face of her lord.

  “Get a mage!” she snarled at the servants who were still standing. “All of you go! Get twenty mages! And hurry!”

  There was a splashing, and a heavy weight tumbling on top of her. Alaglossa Tornglara came back to awareness with a shock as the waters of Satyrdance Pool closed over her head. She kicked out and thrust herself up to the air again, tumbling a stiff body off of her—Nlaea! Gods, what had happened?

  “Help!”

  The gardener looked up from his watering. That was the lady’s voice!

  “Help!”

  He hastened, kicking over the waterspout he’d just set carefully down in his haste. It was a long run to Satyrdance Pool, Corellon curse it! He got up onto the path and put some leg into it, only to come to a halt, staring.

  The Lady Alaglossa Tornglara, naked as the day she was born, staggered along the path toward him, her feet cut open on the flagstones, leaving a trail of blood behind her as she came. She was cradling her maid Nlaea in her arms, her eyes wild. “Help me!” she roared. “We must get her to the house! Move, Corellon curse you!”

  The gardener swallowed and scooped Nlaea out of his lady’s arms. Corellon, he reflected wryly, as he turned around to run, was going to have a busy day.

  Uldreiyn Starym opened his mouth in surprise—the first time it had worn that expression in earnest in some centuries.

  And the last. White fire surged through him and stripped him bare just as he had burned out Lord Orbryn earlier, leaving nothing behind his eyes but a rushing nothingness. A new potency raced through the Mythal, crashing through the heads of mages all over Cormanthor, as the hungry white fire drank the life and wits and power of the Starym archmage.

  The elves standing uncertainly in the Court, not knowing where or how to strike, saw the tall, broad body of the great Starym lord blaze forth yellow flames, for all the world as if he were a tree struck by lightning.

  He burned like a torch before their shocked faces, while the web of white fire hummed on serenely overhead and profound silence reigned in the Chamber of the Court. Hundreds of elves held their breaths, until the blackened body of the archmage toppled, collapsing into swirling ashes.

  The backlash spun Elminster away, whirling him like a leaf in a gale, the golden symbol around him like a protective hand. When the whirling stopped at last, the symbol faded, the light leaving him at last in darkness.

  He was floating in a void, a sentience without body. Again.

  Mystra? His first call was little more than a whisper. It seemed he’d done a lot of demanding of the goddess recently, managing nothing without her aid or guidance.

  Think you so? Her voice, in his mind, was warm, and gentle, and utterly overwhelming. He felt loved and utterly safe, and found himself basking silently in the warmth coiling around him, floating in timeless, endless joy. It might have been hours before Mystra spoke again, or only moments.

  You have done well, Chosen One. A brave beginning, but only t
hat: you must abide in Myth Drannor—the new Cormanthor—for a time, to nurture and protect. While you do so, you will also be learning as much as you can of the wielding of magic from those who will come to this bright new fellowship. I am pleased with you, Elminster. Be whole once more.

  Abruptly he was elsewhere, floating upright amid many strands of humming white fire, with the shattered stone of a fallen pillar below him and the bloody, pain-etched face of Symrustar Auglamyr in front of him.

  There was a chorus of excited whisperings from the elves crowded into the Chamber of the Court, but El scarcely heard it. Mystra had left extra spell energy tingling in his hands, far too much for him to carry for long, and he thought he knew why.

  She was a broken thing, her body slumped atop the stone sword that impaled it. Only the failing magics around her had kept her alive this long. With infinite care Elminster lifted the dying elven lady in his arms and drew her off the bloody blade.

  She gasped and opened her eyes at his touch, and then sagged against him, her ravaged body quivering once when she slid entirely free of the stone. El thrust a hand against the terrible hole through her ribs and let healing power flow out of him.

  She caught her breath and shuddered then, daring to hope—and breathe—for the first time in a long while.

  El turned her in the air until he was cradling her in his arms, and drifted very slowly down to the floor. As his knees touched the pave, he could feel the regard of many elven eyes, but he bent his head forward and kissed Symrustar’s bloody mouth as if they’d been ardent lovers for years. Holding her lips with his, he thrust life into her, letting all the power Mystra had given him flow into her shattered body. Then he gave of his own vitality, holding his mouth on hers, until trembling weakness made him rise to breathe at last.

  She spoke for the first time then, a ragged whisper. “ ’Tis you, isn’t it, Elminster? I certainly had to wait long enough for that kiss.”

  El chuckled and held her against him as the light in her eyes came back.

  Almost lazily her eyes found Faerûn again, and the shattered ceiling of the Court, and then him. Slowly, wincing and working her mouth, she managed a smile. “I thank you for making my passing easier … but I am dying; you cannot stay that. Mystra snatched me from death that night in the woods—the death Elandorr planned for me—for a task. I have served her, and ’tis done. I can die.”

  Elminster shook his head slowly, aware of the anxious faces and raised hands of the sorceresses Sylmae and Holone waiting above him—waiting to blast Symrustar with spells should she try any last treachery.

  “Mystra does not treat folk so,” El told her gently.

  Symrustar grimaced as a fresh ripple of pain ran through her. A rivulet of bright blood ran from the corner of her mouth. “So you say, Chosen One. I am an elf, and one who misused magic, at that. I tried to enslave you—I would have stolen your magic and slain you. Why should she have a care about my fate?”

  “For the same reason I care,” El said gently.

  Those pain-ridden eyes flickered. “Love? Lust? I know not, man. I cannot tarry to think on it … life slips away.…”

  “One life,” Elminster told her urgently, as he realized Mystra’s plan at last. “But not all that is Symrustar.”

  He pulled open the bloodsoaked ruin of her bodice, and upon the ravaged flesh beneath traced the first golden symbol Mystra had put in his mind; the one that would shine there forever.

  Her breath caught, and she sat up, eyes shining. “I—I see at last. Oh, human, I have wronged you from the start. I have—”

  She wasted no more time on words, as blue-white fire stole out of her skin to claim her, but turned into his embrace to kiss him tenderly.

  Her lips were still on his as she faded away. A few motes of blue-white light swirled where she’d been, and then flickered and were gone.

  El looked up, and saw four of the weavers, their limbs still ablaze with white fire and linked to the web above, standing above him, looking down with love and concern.

  He looked up and told the Srinshee, Lady Steel, the Herald Alais, and the Coronal, “Mystra has claimed her. She will serve the Lady of Mysteries now.”

  Something crawled up his arm, then, and he snatched at it and held it up, bewildered. A scrap of something dusty, bloodstained, and moving—the mask that Llombaerth Starym had worn for so long. It tingled in his grasp, warm and somehow welcoming.

  As he stared at it, there was a sudden flare of rainbow-hued light from overhead, and all the gathered elves gasped in awe. The Mythal was born!

  Elminster felt a stirring in his throat, and rose with all the others, to join in what he could already hear echoing through the streets. All over Cormanthor, every elf and half-elf and human was breaking into song. The same swelling, involuntary song of the Mythal’s birth—high, radiant, beautiful, and unearthly. And as the singers turned to embrace each other in wonder, every face was wet with tears.

  “Yes,” Lord Mornmist whispered, his eyes on something far away. The servants looked from his vacant face to that of their lady. Tears ran in floods down her face, dripping from her chin, as she bent over her lord.

  “Why?” she whimpered frantically. “Why do the mages not come?”

  The servants shot anxious looks at each other, not daring to answer. Then Nelaeryn Mornmist rose up out of their gentle hands as if torn aloft by some invisible hand. Ithrythra screamed, but her shrieks turned to sobs of joy an instant later, as her lord opened his eyes and cried out, “Yes! At last! The glory is come to Cormanthor!”

  His voice rang like a trumpet as he hung in the air above them, and blue flames spurted from his eyes. He looked down.

  “Oh, Ithrythra,” he called, “come and share this with me. All of you, come!” He held out his hand, and there were gasps as the Mornmist servants below felt themselves lifted with infinite gentleness, and awesome power, up into the air to join the man whose laughter rang out, then, like triumphal horns.

  Nlaea moved in the gardener’s arms, and made a small, satisfied sound. He looked down, slipped on the path, and almost dropped her.

  “Careful!” the Lady Alaglossa Tornglara snapped at his elbow, her strong arms steadying both him and his burden.

  Nlaea moved again, stretching almost luxuriously, and her weight was suddenly gone. The gardener stumbled, overbalanced by its sudden disappearance, and slid into a galamathra bush.

  “Nlaea?” Alaglossa cried in terror. “Nlaea!”

  Her maid turned in the air and smiled down at her. “Be at peace, Lady,” she said softly, and blue flames seemed to blaze in her eyes as she spoke. “Cormanthor is crowned at last.”

  And as her maid hovered over her, the Lady Alaglossa went to her knees on the path and started to pray through happy floods of tears.

  Galan Goadulphyn looked around in disbelief. On all sides, elven bodies were floating up into the air, and there was much laughter, and weeping—happy weeping. Here and there shouts of exultation rose. Had all Cormanthor gone mad at once?

  He hastened toward a richly appointed house whose door stood open. Well, if everyone was going to be lost in celebration, perhaps they’d not notice the loss of a few baubles.

  He was almost inside when firm fingers took hold of his left ear. He wrenched himself free and spun around, hand snatching out a dagger. “Who—?” he snarled—and then fell silent, gaping.

  The lady some had known as the most beautiful and deadly in all Cormanthor smiled almost dreamily at him as she floated in the doorway, blue fire playing about her limbs. “Why, Galan,” Symrustar Auglamyr said delightedly, “you please me greatly. To think that at long last you’ve put thieving behind you, and have come to the houses of Myth Drannans to repay them in gems for all that you’ve stolen!”

  Galan’s face twisted in utter incredulity. “What? Repay? ‘Myth Drannans’?”

  Those were the last words he uttered before lips that blazed came down on his—and gems started to fly out of his boots like angry wasps l
eaving a nest, away into the bright air of Myth Drannor.

  Moonrise over Myth Drannor that first night was a time of joy. Horns blew and harps were struck in a delighted cacophony, as if a year’s festivals and revels had been rolled into one frantic celebration. Thanks to the silent, invisible wonderwork that overlaid the city like a domed shield, those who’d never been able to fly before could do so now, without need of spell or item. The air was full of laughing, embracing elves. Wine flowed freely, and troths were plighted with eager abandon. The moon was full and bright, and spilled down through the riven roof of the Chamber of the Court in a bright flood.

  An elven lady glided alone into the empty room, her jeweled slippers treading air above the bloodstained pave. The hems of her low-cut gown glittered with a breathtaking fall of gems, and on her breast diamonds sparkled in the shape of twin falling dragons. Only streaks of white and gray at her temples betrayed her age as she moved sinuously through the stillness, coming at last to where a small pile of ashes lay in the bright pool of moonlight.

  She looked down at them in silence for a long time, the quickening rise and fall of her breast the only difference between her and a statue. A tattered song floated in through the rent in the roof above as joyous elves soared past, and the silent lady clenched her fists so tightly that blood dripped from where her long nails pierced her palms.

  Lady Sharaera Starym raised her beautiful head to look at the moon riding high above, drew in a deep breath, looked down at what little was left of her Uldreiyn, and hissed fiercely, “The Mythal must fall, and Elminster must be destroyed!”

  Only the ghosts were there to hear her.

  At the time of the laying of the Mythal, some of the elves of Cormanthor thought opening their realm to other races was a mistake. I’m sure some still do.