by Ed Greenwood
He fed her on mare's milk and such wine, fruit, and cheese as she could suck from his fingers. Later she ate bread and half-raw meat, and choked on the fiery wines he plundered from a hand's-worth of cities. Scarred and loud-voiced warriors tickled her and showed her tricks of knife-throwing and string-knotting and drawing in the dirt around a hundred campfires. She laughed a lot and grew to love the man who made her laugh so.
Winters passed, and Mirt's riding and fighting came less often. Asper finally lost count of the battles she'd been big enough to actually see and grew steadily sadder at what her eyes beheld. One after another, many warriors she knew and liked groaned or gasped their last moments away or lay twisted and still in the dust. Mitt grew older, too, and slower, and at last he came to vast, noisy Water-deep to stay, not just for a roaring ride of drinking and wenching and hiring on new swordsmen.
Asper grew taller. Mirt took to buying her gowns and fine slippers and one day awkwardly presented her with a canopied bed and a room of her own. He had held her, too, when she came howling from night-terrors or sheer loneliness to interrupt his snoring, and told her gruff and bracing truths and marched her firmly back to her own bed. He even took to calling her his daughter.
So she had been the first of Mirt's Maids, Asper reflected, even if he saw her more as his daughter and less as a consort. She would never leave his side, if she could manage that. She would die for him, gladly, if the gods willed it so. She would do anything-anything-to take the tears she saw now away, forever. But Resengar lay dead, and she could not bring the dead to life.
Mirt's angry prowl around the parlor ended on his knees beside his old friend. He carefully examined blood and wound and the body that bore them. He took a silver pin carefully into his hand.
Asper could see nothing more in the sudden, silent flood of her own tears.
A strong, familiar arm went around her shoulders. "Now, lass," Mirt rumbled in her ear, "smile! Remember Resengar leering at you and showing you that little cantrip he was so proud of, that made the circle of stars…. When Mystra thinks of her follower Resengar, she'll remember such things as those… and she'll be smiling, mark you!"
Asper did, despite herself. All, Mirt! she thought, the gods smile upon me, indeed, to give me you as father and lord and perhaps husband someday, all at once!
"No!" he whispered, slowly. "Gods, no! Tamaeril!" Asper spun to look up at him, blinking away tears in sudden foreboding. "Tamaeril.1"' Mirt cried suddenly, his voice sad and soft. Defeated. Axe and blade hung forgotten in his hands.
"Lord?" Asper whispered, hesitantly. Mirt looked off into the shadows a moment more. Then he turned his head slowly toward her voice, as if dragging himself back from a far-off place. His eyes were haunted.
"Tamaeril is dead," he said roughly. Anger burned in his eyes again. His chin came up. "Someone is slaying the lords of Waterdeep," he said, jaw set coldly, eyes dangerous. "Someone able to pass wards"-he waved his blade impatiently around the room-"whose magic should be impassable. Someone who may be a Harper or wants all to think him one. Or her. It may just as easily be a maid or an illithid or worse. It goes masked, is all I know." He shook himself, as if awakening, and strode toward the doorway with sudden energy. "Come, lass!"
"Where?" Asper asked, following him out of that room of death.
"To find Piergeiron. The lords must be warned." The Old Wolf strode down the worn stone steps toward Resengar's oval front door and the many-shadowed back alley beyond.
"Tamaeril? The Lady Tamaeril Bladesemmer?" Asper murmured her question, her back to Mirt's shoulder as he crouched by the door's way-slit, peering into the night beyond.
"Aye. She managed a sending to me as she died." Mirt kicked the door open grimly and thrust a cloak on his axe out into the alley. Silence. No shadows moved. He shrugged and tossed the cloak aside, crouching to hurl himself out into the night. "Fast, now," he whispered softly. "And stay low."
"My lord," Asper whispered back urgently, "shouldn't we go home for armor and friends, better weapons, magic? You are not the least of the lords! You stand in great danger!"
Mirt grinned wolfishly. "The gods must know I grow bored, these days. I would share that danger, lass! If this one who slays lords knows I am a lord, then let him find me! I want to be found… for if he finds me, then it follows that I will have found him?
The blade he held lifted a little, a snake eager to strike. "I feel in some need of finding this lord-slayer, right now," he added softly, and Asper shivered a little in spite of herself. Then he was gone, out into the night. She set her trembling lips together in silence, raised her blade, and followed. As always.
Chapter Eight
FRESH TORMENTS
Elminster stumbled forth over sharp stones into full wakefulness once more-and into the claws of a red haze of pain.
It seemed he'd been lurching and scrabbling and crawling along forever, his guts sick with agony, his thoughts a chaos of grim scheming and involuntary remembrances, goaded by the archdevil riding his mind like some exhausted, tatter-winged bat steed-
Your mind is larger than i've seen in a human before, Nergal mused, his mental-voice as silken-smooth as ever. Cruelty thinly cloaked in grace…
This reaming could take forever, and I weary of it.
Elminster drew himself up so he could lean against a stone thickly smeared with old, black blood. The cracked skulls of devils crunched and rolled under his feet. And so?
And so, defiant mage, 'tis time to burrow through your twisted tangle of a mind in earnest. Nergal said in a mind-voice that was a sharp biting sword. I spurn the visions you lay before me to waste my time. I cars nothing for long-ago adventures or romances. I desire mystra's power-I know you must have wielded it, and from your memories of such usages, i can learn so give me, man- yield and crawl.'
Shouldn't that be yield or crawl? All ye need do is- aaarggh!
[dark lances stabbing, bright pain flashing, tumbling, memories surging, falling, wild pain, screaming screaming amid devil's laughter, rising to outbellow all]
Little worm, i could have done this to you from the first!
[mind lash, raw screaming]
Hah! I should have done this to you from the first!
[bright whirling chaos of torn memories, shards and scraps a-tumble]
… Across the fields she saw him go, a bent and tattered gray form. He dwindled, striding steadily on, became a tiny figure, and was gone.
And she shivered, sighed, and turned away.
[images dwindling, falling, fading, lost and forgotten forever, now, in the wake of an archdevil's wrath]
The warrior looked down at the gathering vultures and the heaped bodies of the fallen and leaned on his spear.
Far they stretched from the height where he stood, far across rolling hills and the plain beyond; a hundred hundred souls and more this day. Davalaer thought on the wailing and grim sorrow that news of this battle would bring to the dales, even though victory had been theirs. Too many men would never return home. Too many were gone forever.
Aye, there would be lamenting in the houses of the dalefolk. Davalaer sighed, looking out at the still forms below. "But they will forget," he said heavily. "And then- somewhere, sometime-this will happen again."
Bah! Your mind isa cesspool of these misty-eyed moments! What care i for the tears of weak and fooush humans? [shards of remembrances hurled, broken, away…]
How can you hide what i seek, when magic is your power anf your life's work? How? How?
[red eyes glaring through the darkness of shattered chambers, memories strewn broken on the floor like shards of glass and torn cobwebs] mystra. That's it. Your goddess aids you.
[diabolic eyes raging up into pyres]
Snow yourself, goddess!
[darkness, silence, eddying dust] come forth, cowardly wench!
[darkness, memory shards sighing down to rest] elminster aumar, snow me mystra! Reveal to me memories of mystra! Show me!
[cringing, faltering, pain
-ridden]
Aye…
"The Starym are apt to be overproud fools," the Lady Laurlaethee Shaurlanglar said calmly, "but they are right in one thing: to allowing these stinking bears of humans into our midst is to sully and doom us. That's why I invited you here, plaything of the Srinshee. That moonwine you drained oh so elegantly was laced with enough srindym to kill a dozen overambitious human magelings."
The man they called Elminster cast three swift, hawklike glances behind and before him, gliding a pace to one side to peer behind a hanging as gracefully as any young warrior of the People.
The elf lady laughed lightly. "We are quite alone, doomed one. I've no need or desire for witnesses-no guards to keep at bay the paws of a dying brute. I am the last of a proud warrior line, and I can protect myself."
Elminster gazed silently down at the slender wisp of gowned elven beauty in the chair. The Lady Laurlaethee was frail even as elves measure such things. Standing tall, she'd be little more than half his height. Sapphire-bright eyes looked coolly back up into his with no trace of fear. He gave her the slightest of smiles and asked, "And ye did this thing-why?"
"Hatred," the matron said, rising with supple grace. "For you and the likes of you. Beasts who seek to steal what they haven't the wits to learn. If the Srinshee wasn't so besotted with lust, you'd still be scrabbling and straining to call forth a little glow from your fingertips-in the brief moments before you found your corpse decorating the end of a Cormanthan spear."
"Well, that's certainly blunt enough," Elminster observed. "Being a thirsty beast-and one of course quite devoid of proper manners, I wonder if I might have some more of this excellent wine. I believe the srindym improves it somewhat."
Sapphire eyes flashed. "She protected you!"
Elminster bowed his head. "Lady, she did."
"That traitoress!" the Lady Laurlaethee spat, striding to a corner where large and small spheres of crystal turned slowly, chiming faintly as they spun. "Once word of thi-"
"Lady, I must guard ye against thy own foolishness," Elminster said swiftly, raising his voice a trifle. "Ye seem to think I speak of the Srinshee. I do not. She neither knows of our meeting nor provides me with any defenses. My spell cloak is my own."
The exquisite beauty of an elven face is shattered when perfect lips twist into a sneer. "You presume me foolish indeed, ape-thing. You wield no magics of any accomplishment that you did not seize, steal, or cozen from this elf or that. Who is this 'she" who protects you, if not one of the People?"
“Divine Mystra, the goddess I serve," Elminster said quietly. He watched for her response as calmly as if he feared nothing.
"Pah!" The Lady Laurlaethee spat, coming to a halt behind her crystals and glaring at the guest she hoped to slay over them. Their radiance lit her face strangely from below. "All sorcery streams from those we reverence- the True Gods! If this 'Mystra' of yours has any power at all, she must be but a face and a name extended to you unwashed humans by divinity that cleaves to elves, the Chosen Folk!"
"And if this is so," Elminster said with a smile lurking in his eyes that did not-quite-touch his lips, "and my magic triumphed over thy magic, it would mean that a goddess we both revere, by whatever name, has chosen me over ye-would it not?''
"Be still, ape!" his hostess snarled. "Lie down and die! How clare you profane the air of my home, to say nodi-ing of my own ears, with such a suggestion!"
She made a clawlike gesture with one hand, and the air seemed to sparkle and freeze in place, just for a moment, around Elminster. He gave her a lazy smile and strode forward.
The Lady Laurlaethee stiffened and went white, her eyes blazing. There was a sighing in the air around the advancing human. Her eyes widened, and she drew back a pace.
Elminster Aumar stepped gently around the spheres of crystal and continued to advance on her. Furiously she wove magic with nimble fingers and hissed incantations. The air became alive with tiny silver lances and curling, half-seen dragons… but still he came on.
"Back, beast!" the elf matron said, her voice rising in real fear. "Stay back, or-or-"
A ring on her finger winked and vanished. Suddenly great hands reached up from the floor beneath her guest's boots, and down from the ceiling… hands that faded into trailing dust before they could close on the human.
Laurlaethee's lips tightened. Other rings flashed. She shouted a sudden incantation and dashed one hand across her other palm, gashing it with the thorn-barb on a ring. A swift word made the drops of blood she flung into the air catch fire and hang motionless between them.
Elminster smiled gently and stepped through them, wincing not at all as they exploded.
The Lady Laurlaethee was almost in a corner now, her mouth trembling with fear. The next words made the room rock and roar. They left her visibly wrinkled and withered… but seemed to touch the advancing human not at all.
Slender shoulder blades brushed a flower-girt wall, and the last of the Shaurlanglars shuddered, drew in a deep breath, and closed her eyes. She did not need or want to see what she did next.
Her hand swept down like a striking adder, plucking the tiny dagger from its sheath at her loins and bringing it back up to her breast in one flashing movement. As it went home, she would spit her death blood in his face and bring down a curse on him that no mage shield could turn aside. Laurlaethee Shaurlanglar did not want to live in a world where beasts rose to rule. To think that it had come to this, that-
She knew just where to strike, but she'd not thought it would feel so icy.
Cold, so cold, the blood spurting and-and-sudden glory! Warmth, a rising song, ecstasy such as she'd not felt for years, since the arms of her gone and gathered beloved Touor had last clasped her close…
She blinked her eyes open-and stared into those of the hated human, inches away. His hand was on her breast, the magic that had healed and restored her curling up from his fingers. Those fingers trailed down to her wrist with infinite gentleness and captured her fingers.
He knelt and kissed her fingertips. "Lady," he said from his knees, looking gravely at her, "I came here hoping to win a friend, not to shatter a foe. Does it matter who we worship if we do good to each other? I hope to call on ye again… and that ye never have proper cause to use this on me."
He rose as swiftly as her hand had sought her own death, and dropped something into her palm: her blade of honor, still dark with her blood. As she watched, that gore vanished like smoke, leaving the silver-steel as bright as before.
She closed her hand around it and raised it, ashamed at her trembling. He stood regarding her, well within her reach, and did nothing but look into her eyes.
Laurlaethee Shaurlanglar flung her blade away blindly and was sobbing as hard as she'd ever wept in her life, almost blinded by the flood of her tears. Through them, she dimly saw the human walk away across the room, through the tatters of her mightiest spells, to the balcony whence he'd first come.
The human Elminster stood there, looking back at her, and raised his hand in a salute used by elves of older times to show respect to their elders.
As he did so, every spell he'd broken whirled once more to life, restored and singing bright and mighty around her. The room rocked once more with the force of their contesting powers. He held them in check, one doom upon another, and then, with a wave of his hand, spun them all back to nothingness. Her ring reappeared on her finger, undrained. Her spells and her spilled blood returned to her, thrilling her once more with their waiting power.
Laurlaethee gaped at him in astonishment. No one could do thus. No one.
"Mystra is nothing if not merciful," he whispered, the sound carrying loudly to her ear. "Be at peace and of good cheer, Lady Shaurlanglar. Neither of us is angry with thee."
Then he was gone. The ancient elf raised her fingers to her cheeks to brush away tears. For the first time in centuries-long, long centuries of lonely pride-she felt wonder.
She turned her head to look at herself in the lone mirror in that room,
and stood a long time lost in thought. Even the withering was gone. She looked-younger! She turned to show one flank to the glass, and then the other. Younger, firmer, taller… she threw back her head and laughed, caring not if it sounded a little wild. Then, impatiently, she did off her gown and let it fall behind her, striding bare to the balcony where she sniffed at the decanter of moonwine, and found it, of course, purged of all srindym.
Laurlaethee shook her head, smiling a little, and leaned out to watch birds flit and whir and sing. A cool breeze had risen from the shadows to ghost past the rail, but she stood proud against it, not chilled in the slightest.
Wonder makes a very warm cloak.
Ljttle mumbling gods, more prettiness? My heart trfmbues, but my gokge risks/ flke of the pit, human, but you try me sorely! I suppose that was mystra working through you, and thus-by the thinnest, most twisting thinking-a fulfillment of my command.
Indeed.
Silence! When i have need of your cleverness, wizard, i'll not fail to inform you. You can avoid torment right now by showing me yourself wielding-openly and as a weapon in a banner useful to me and clearly revealed-power granted you ii y mystra. Impressive. Power, mind, not identifying the fragrance of flowers or some such frippery!
Thy command becomes my wish.
And thy mouth remains far too smart fob thy comfort, idiot wizard! Do as i command-now!
[flow of bright images, like stars poured down a well, quickening and growing broader, deeper… slowing, slowing… one radiance wells up to outshine all]
The line of blue fire blazed down the doors, sealing them. Ancient magics girded the hall, for all its ruined state, against wider Faerun outside. Here the most mighty had contended in formal duels for centuries upon centuries, fusing the stone into glassy flows, embedding desperate radiances… and leaving behind the smell of fear and the prickling tension of watching, bound and helpless spirits.