by Ed Greenwood
Irlar screamed on the heels of the sickening crack. The dagger rang off the glass decanter somewhere underfoot.
He lunged upon her, grabbing at the table with his good hand. She held to it, but he jerked impatiently, tore it from her grasp, and flung it away. It crashed against the far wall.
Alustriel dodged away again, desperate now.
"Bitch!" Irlar hissed at her savagely. "I'll kill you for that!"
She knew his words for simple truth. His thoughts of abduction on horseback to a temple of Bane were gone. Nothing less than her blood would satisfy him now. He crashed into another table, toppling statuettes and jars, but did not upset it and stopped, holding to it to steady himself. Alustriel heard a jar roll across it with almost lazy slowness-before it toppled over the edge to the floor.
Then she was pulling at die bolt of her chamber door with all her strength. It squealed, and he roared at the sound. Some instinct made Alustriel duck away. An instant later a perfume bottle crashed into shards against the wall just above her head, showering her with glass and a stinging mist. Then came another and another. In her hampering skirts, she scuttled sideways seeking a weapon… or a refuge against his murderous fury… and knowing she would find neither.
A rushing, whistling sound in the darkness told with cold certainty that Irlar had found her riding whip.
She had to get out of these long skirts! With shaking fingers, she unlaced and tore at the garment, crouching low and biting her lip.
Irlar panted and thrashed the darkness furiously with the whip, seeking her.
Nearer he came, and nearer. Alustriel rolled out of her skirts at last. He heard her and charged with an exultant roar. She twisted on the floor and brought the cloth up before her in both hands, as a shield. The whip cut into them with a sharp crack, and one of her arms burned with sudden, stinging fire.
The whip came down again-and again and again, in a rain of blows too wild and rage-driven to be precise. Alustriel rolled and crawled and writhed on her luxuriant rugs, but could not elude him. When she got the edge of a table between her and the whip, Irlar kicked her savagely in the face and breast until she was out from under the table's shelter-and pressed on with his whipping, grunting with the effort of his stroke.
Alustriel sobbed as she made for the table. This time the whip missed her. She crouched motionless in the dark, gathered her tattered will, and bent it to her task.
In the darkness above, Irlar sneezed. Alustriel gave a little crow of triumphant laughter. Again she felt the surge- and again he sneezed, the whip swinging wildly. She rose swiftly under die table, catching it on her shoulders and driving it into him. Irlar stumbled back into furnishings and went down, losing the whip. Alustriel danced away from his flailing limbs. She headed for the door, her only chance.
She pulled on the bolt with sudden, rising hope-but the brass jammed in her haste and wouldn't budge. Looking back, she saw Irlar silhouetted against the dim torchlight of the window, leaning on the stone table and reaching for the bell-hood of her tiny oil lamp. She could not let him lift it, or she was lost! With light enough, he could stalk her at leisure….
His eyes must have recovered. As his hand settled on the hood, Alustriel ran at him with frantic haste, heart pounding. She crashed into him just as he saw her in the blossoming lamplight. He struck her on the brow with the hood. Alustriel reeled… but her hands were on the hot metal, and she swept the lamp up and out the window, heedless of the spilling oil-and the room was safely in darkness again.
She was too close to the window. Irlar could see her outlines in the faint torchlight. He shoved her away so he could land a blow with his good hand: a solid punch that sent her reeling, eyes stinging and wits dazed. Her jaw felt as if it was broken… gods, the pain! He was after her triumphantly, reaching out to throttle her.
Alustriel fled from him-had she been dodging him in the darkness forever? In sudden determination she turned and fled no more but ducked in under his arm, ramming her head into his belly as hard as she could, charging forward.
Irlar was in pain, and unsteady. She carried him before her rush, back, back to the window. He kicked out wildly as his back hit the low sill. He lost his balance. Alustriel punched his groin, grabbed his foot, twisted, shoved- and suddenly she was alone in the room.
There was a sickening crack from the courtyard below. Lord Irlar struck the stones and bounced, once. A moment later, Alustriel heard the sudden shout of a guard. Torches began to flicker and move.
She leaned on the sill for a moment to catch her breath, watching them, and then turned deliberately for the door. The harp's song began as a few happy notes and swelled around her. She walked, uncaring of her appearance, down the long dark passage, through the heavy doors, and around the turn to her uncle's door. As she approached, it was thrown open.
Thamator came out into the night gloom, his sword drawn.
"Who be ye?" he challenged roughly, blinking into the darkness. The music of the harp swirled around him.
"I still want to be a Harper," Alustriel told him, surprised at how calm her voice sounded.
"Ye, girl? Must ye wake me with such tricks at this time of night? Hast aught else to do?" her uncle demanded thickly. She knew from his tone that her music reminded him of someone else, from long ago. The sword in his hands began to glow palely. In the growing radiance she saw his jaw drop.
His gaze was on her bloody state of undress, and roved to take in the red whip weal’s crisscrossing her body. He took a step forward, peering at her in disbelief. "What, in the name of all the gods, bef-"
Then there was a clatter of hurrying boots, and a waving torch came around the corner, its light gleaming on helms and spear points… and anxious faces. "My lord!" snapped one of the guards, his voice high with tension. "The Lord Irlar! He's dead! In the courtyard, belike he's fallen from a window!"
"Aye," Alustriel said into the astonished silence, "he did." Ignoring the startled looks from the men crowding around her, she added, "After he was pushed."
Meeting her uncle's eyes steadily, she added, "1 was disinclined to become a bride of Bane-and before my wedding night, too."
She turned her back on them all with newfound dignity and left then. Her uncle's astonished curses faded behind her as she sought her room again. His voice sounded, she thought, amazed and… and a little pleased.
Now to ask Gaerd how to become a Harper. Alustriel looked down at herself, shrugged at her state of dress, and turned her aching, whip-scarred legs down a different passage. Why not now? Why should her uncle be the only one roused this night?
When she knocked on the wizard's door, it opened, and Gaerd was smiling at her-sleepily, but smiling nonetheless.
There was a crystal sphere in his hand, and in it she saw, with a little shock, the open window of her room as seen from within… captured as a tiny scene within the.'j globe. The mage waved her to a chair, beaming at her proudly. On the table beyond the seat, a harp of silver hue was playing softly, by itself… and with a smile, she recognized her tune.
Chapter Thirteen
NERGAL SURPRISED
Adrift in a dream of pain, Elminster gradually came awake to the realization that it was real. He was floating, or falling, through a cloud of red and black smoky foulness shot through with crackling fires. Bolts of bright fury lanced out of it from time to time to transfix him. He was falling through Nergal's mind.
Awake, little worm? Wasted my time again, thank you kindly.
[mind bolt jabs repeatedly until the human writhes and curls in shuddering pain, and then jabs still more]
What did i think of it? Charming. [sneer] Defeat a man by luck, and take your reward from the goddess.
[gasp] Well, mind-slave, i've lost patience. Again. Prepare to he taken apart. I'm through dancing to your little games. I'm going to find and take the useful memories from you and be done. Die, mighty wizard!
[bright arc of mind bolts, raining down like fire and splashing back up to overwhelm all, searin
g the tumbling, howling, fading form of the human host]
Give me, fool! Give me what i seek!
[bright ring of fire, tightening into a noose around the falling, dwindling, limbless essence of Elminster]
Give me that silver fire!
***
In the void where stars fall endlessly, a head lifted, blue-black hair swirling behind it in a great wave. Stars shaped themselves into a frown. "Something is amiss."
The Weave quivered once more. Mystra's eyes blazed in sudden silver.
"Elminster! Old Rogue, what befalls?"
She reached out for the familiar sly warmth, the impudent whimsy that always met her touch with a wink and a caress… and found nothing.
"Elminster!”
Alarmed, the goddess of magic gathered her strength around her in bright array and quested forth in earnest.
Pain… the silver fire spilling… in the Hells!
Her teacher, the root of much of her power, her surest link to the Mystra who'd been before her-in peril!
"No!” Brightness blazed up amid the stars, and the void shook.
Across Faerun, altars to the Lady of All Mysteries erupted in blue fire that consumed nothing and seared no hand caught in it but jolted all sworn faithful into full, restless wakefulness. Locks on spellbooks failed, and tomes boomed open. Runes blazed up to trace spinning mirror glows of themselves above their pages, and dragons rumbled and growled and looked this way and that for foes or visitations.
In a clearing in Neverwinter Wood, the young mage Dethaera Matchlass drifted wonderingly in the grip of her first Magefire ritual. She soared in sudden bright array high above the astonished heads of her fellow worshipers. She sobbed in pain and wonder as spell after unfamiliar, mighty spell unfolded in bright glory in her mind.
In the green depths of Myth Drannor, a lone and leaning tower collapsed with a roar.
In Waterdeep, a young girl staring up at Ahghairon's Tower walked through the hitherto-impenetrable barriers around it. Its door swung open at her approach. Eagerly she stepped inside and came not forth again.
In Luskan, one of the overwizards of the Arcane Brotherhood, in the midst of ordering a cruel fate for a clumsy apprentice, suddenly acquired the head of a lion in place of his own. In baffled horror, he commenced to roar helplessly, his means of working magic and of conversing both snatched from him in an instant.
In Suzail, while stepping curtly past a barely concealed Harper spy in a little-known passage in the palace of the Purple Dragon, Vangerdahast stiffened. The lady almost stepped out of hiding to steady him as he reeled, but the gruff old wizard strode on, slamming a door hastily behind him. In the chamber beyond was a chair, a writing-desk, a cloak stand, and a mirror. He leaned on the desk, wondering why his blood was afire, and happened to look into the mirror. The face that looked back was not his own, but female, with eyes both wise and beautifully young. Breathing heavily, Vangerdahast blinked-and the mirror shattered. He turned away grimly, knowing that at last it was time.
In Avernus, a ball of fire raced down to burst amid scorched pinnacles. It suddenly veered aside. Out of the air before it stepped a tall, slender female form, as bright as a beacon.
In a hundred gorges and on a thousand mountainsides below, devils lifted their heads, stiffening. They took wing in great hosts and saw a human woman standing alone in midair, as tall as a dozen devils and cloaked in her own blue-black hair.
" Where is he?" her voice rolled out across all Avernus.
Pit fiend generals winced and growled. Lesser devils cringed. Those flying against her faltered. Black whips lashed them on. The intruder watched them come and did nothing.
Forks and lances and fire-daggers plunged into her as if into nothing, tearing her bright raiment. Where bared flesh should have leaked blood, there was only darkness in the air, shot through with rushing stars. The eyes of the floating lady flared silver.
"Where is he?" she said, more urgently." What have you done with him?"
Dragons came, flying hard and fast, jaws agape in hunger. They were goaded by archdevils whose hosts mounted the skies in their thousands and tens of thousands, blotting out die bloody vault with their bodies.
Mystra glared at those who thrust their weapons into her. They blazed away in wisps of silver smoke. Magic snarled and spat at her. She twisted it and struck back through it. More devils died.
Died forever, seared away as though they'd never been, gone in their hundreds. Beneath the converging hosts. Avernus trembled as archdevils deeper in the Hells looked up in real alarm and gave orders. From the very rocks of Avernus, pit fiends erupted, leading armies of winged devils.
Hell was aroused. The sky split with lightning and the smoking mountains roared fire. In the heart of a million devils and more, Mystra glared and slew, glared and slew, until those flying three ranks back of the vanished were singed. They fell from the skies onto Avernus in a dark, wet rain of broken bodies, cloaking the peaks and choking the blood rivers.
Terrible trumpets sounded. Dark chariots ascended the skies. From their fanged maws poured hordes of winged monsters, horrible hydras seldom seen in Avernus.
Mystra slew and slew, a bright silver flame against a tightening sphere of black bloody death. The air itself began to shatter and fall away around her like smashed glass. Rifts opened around the embattled goddess. When she saw Faerun bright and fair through them, below and behind her, Mystra knew that she must go or lose Toril in her trying. The harrowing of Hell-and the snatching of Elminster-must wait for another day and another way.
Like her faithful Chosen before her, she bent her attention to closing rifts between Toril and Avernus. Unlike Elminster, she passed through the last, closing rent with a parting gift in her wake.
The blood-red sky of Avernus flashed silver and then blue-white. All over that tortured land, every flying devil fell, torn apart in an instant.
Black, smoking blood drenched and drowned the land. Mystra never knew that she almost drowned the man she'd come to save. An erinyes had swooped out of the slaughter moments earlier to embrace and shield a blindly crawling Elminster… and when she fell away from him, torn apart and dying, he was unscathed. He staggered to his feet to see the last silver glow fade.
"Mystra," he whispered. "Great Lady… all this, for me?"
Weeping, he fell back among the dead. The air for as far as the eye could see was filled with dark explosions. Countless pit fiends arrived from Nessus, full of the fury of Asmodeus to slay the lone intruder who no longer stood in the sky. Hell shook with dark rage from below. The flames rose high. The sky became blood-red for another eternity.
***
Azuth.
In the drifting darkness of a space that was not a plane, formed by the magics of all the enchantments of Candlekeep, the Lord of Spells glided like a bright serpent from one rune to another. They stood like sculptures in a void. He restored the fire of this one, and subtly reshaped that one, shifting its powers and meaning slightly to safeguard the fabric of Toril and to guide mages in slightly new directions, thus…
The voice in his blood, as he drifted as a thing of fire and risen magic, was so soft that it might have been an imagined thing.
High One, I have need of you. This time the mind-voice was dear and strong. Mystra, near at hand, sought him.
"Great Lady, I hear. How may I serve?"
The void suddenly blazed with silver fire. A blue-white glow rolled to the horizon like a wave seeking a far shore. Two eyes, as dark and star-shot as a warm summer night, regarded him from a spot within easy reach of his hand.
Azuth restrained his sudden desire to embrace the goddess and taste of her love; it was a feeling that washed over him at their every meeting, the call of her power to his.
"Great guide," she said softly, "our most mighty Chosen is fallen into Avernus, and Hell is risen against me. We must take him back. How?"
Startled, Azuth shaped himself into a tall, young mage with robes of shimmering white and eyes both lar
ge and dark. "You're sure-but of course." There was a flash as Mystra shared with him what had befallen her, her mind-touch with Elminster… and how feeble the mightiest of her Chosen had been. The Lord of Spells frowned.
"Well?"
Azuth winced. "Great Lady," he murmured, "with Hell roused, force is not the way. Stealth, too, is doomed for a time. If he survives, a small, swift rescue might succeed- but know, and forget not, that whomever we send, we shall be throwing away. Even those who escape Hell physically are often driven mad."
***
So your mystra has missed you and wants her little lapdog returned. Yet even goddesses find hell too warm in its welcome and flee empty-handed, she'll never have you now.
You're mine, little chained wizard.
Mine, while your sniveling ruin of a mind still Totters along, vainly trying to hide things from me. There's not much of you left to resist me, is there?
Let's see if we can uncover your memories of control over magic by seeing you teach novices, hmmm?
Glass burst into the room in a thousand sparkling shards. Sighing, Elminster put one hand over his teacup.
"Die, cursed mageling!" The mage in the window thrust her hands forward in claws, and lightning burst from her long fingers.
They snarled across the room amid the customary blinding flashes and spitting sparks, and struck something unseen a foot or so shy of the Old Mage's nose. He calmly watched them rebound and waved cheerily to the Red Wizardess as her own spell smashed into her and drove her-shrieking-back out of the room.
"Lhaeo," Elminster announced calmly, "the window. Again. An ambitious Thayan, as usual."
"I know," a sour voice floated in from the gardens outside. "My roses-why must they always land in my roses? Half an acre of lilies and wort to lie and smolder in, but oh, no, into my roses it is, enthusiastic plunge and all the thrashing…"
"It's thy turn for the casting," El reminded him sweetly. He stuck a thumb into his teacup to do some serious stirring.