Evermeet

by Elaine Cunningham

  He showed her the letter, and told her what he planned to do. He steeled himself for the girl’s fury. Maura did not disappoint him.

  “Why must you take the trouble and risk to bring this Kymil Nimesin back to Evermeet? Kill him outright, and have done with it. By all the gods—he killed your father! The right of vengeance is yours.”

  For a moment, Lamruil was honestly tempted to do as she urged. “But I am not the only one who has suffered loss. This matter is for the People to judge. I can best serve them by delivering the traitor to their judgment. I must also bide my time, and do what I can to uncover other threats to the throne.”

  The elf maid’s glare faded, pushed aside by dawning apprehension. “You’re starting to sound like a king,” she said, her tone wavering between jest and worry.

  A huge grin split Lamruil’s face. “There are several thousand elves on this island who would be happy to dispute that with you,” he said without rancor.

  “Still, it is possible.”

  Lamruil shrugged, puzzled by her uncharacteristic gravity. “I am a prince. In theory, yes, it is possible. But Ilyrana is much loved, and will probably take the throne. Even if she declines, it is likely that an elf from another noble house would be chosen over an untried youth.”

  “Perhaps to act as regent in your stead,” Maura persisted. “The result would be delayed, but it would be the same for all that!”

  The prince took her hands in his. “What is this about, really?”

  Her eyes were fierce when they met his; even so, twin tears glistened in their emerald depths. “A king will need a queen. A proper queen.”

  For a moment, Lamruil was at a loss for words. He knew the truth behind Maura’s words; even if the nobles accepted him as their king, they would certainly insist that he take one of their own to reign with him. They would not countenance a wild thing like Maura on the throne of Evermeet, not even if she were fully elven. Nor, he realized, would she be long content in the moonstone palace of Leuthilspar.

  The prince longed to wipe the silvery tracks from Maura’s cheeks, but he knew with the sure wisdom of love that she would not thank him for acknowledging her tears.

  “Wait here,” he said suddenly. Turning from her, he ducked out of the tree and sprinted off into the forest. In moments he found what he sought—wild laurel. A few flowers still clung to the plant, filling the air with a heady fragrance. He cut a few of the woody vines with his knife and hurriedly fashioned them into a circlet. The result fell far short of symmetry, but it would serve.

  He returned to the girl and placed the crown of leaves and flowers on her head. “You are the queen of my heart,” he said softly. “While you live, I will take no other.”

  “And why should you? You’ve already taken all the others,” she retorted.

  Lamruil lifted one brow. “Is it seemly to bring up my youthful exploits on this our wedding day? I think not—we are long past such discussions.”

  She crossed her arms and glared at him. “I will not wed you.”

  Lamruil grinned. Placing a finger under her chin, he raised her stubborn face to his. “Too late,” he said lightly. “You just did.”

  “But—”

  The elf stilled her protests with a kiss. Maura stiffened but did not pull away. After a moment her arms twined around his neck, and she returned his kiss with an urgency that bordered on desperation.

  Finally the prince eased out of her embrace. “It is past time. I must go.”

  Maura nodded. She walked with him to the forest’s edge. She watched as he descended the steep path to the harbor, and kept watching until Lamruil’s ship was little more than a golden dot on the far horizon. She watched with eyes misted with grief born not only of loss, but understanding.

  For the first time, she realized the truth of her love. Lamruil was meant to be a king—it was a role he was growing into, though in ways that few of Evermeet’s elves might recognize. The day would come when he would be ready. And on that day, she would lose him to Evermeet.

  “Long live Queen Amlaruil,” she whispered with a fervor that had nothing to do with her genuine respect for Evermeet’s monarch.

  More than two years passed before Lamruil returned to the island. To the elves, this was no great time, but every day, every moment of it weighed heavily upon Maura. She had a task to do. She and Lamruil were one in their purpose, and she did her part with a determination that bemused her elven instructors. She threw herself into sword practice with a fervor that rivaled that of the most dedicated bladesinger. She did so, not only because she was a fighter at heart and because she loved the dance of battle, but because she, unlike the elves, fully expected a war to come.

  And so she trained for it, watched for it, lived for it. Even so, when it came, she was unprepared.

  They were all unprepared, the proud elves of Evermeet. The threat came from the place they least expected, from an enemy that all assumed was too far removed for concern. From Below they came—the unthinkable. The drow.

  The attack came on the northernmost shore of the island. Throughout the long autumn night, the tunnels below the ancient ruins of Craulnober Keep echoed with the clash of weapons and the faint, instinctive cries that even the bravest of warriors could not hold back when a blade sank home. But the sounds had faded into grim silence, sure proof that the first battle was nearly over.

  Was nearly lost.

  Reinforcements came from Ruith’s Lightspear Keep and from the lonely strongholds of the Eagle Hills. Maura came with them, to stand beside the elves who had raised and trained her.

  The defenders struggled to regain the ancient castle from the dark-elven invaders that poured forth like seething, deadly lava from the depths of the stone. The approach of dawn brought a turn in the tide of battle, for as the drow began to fall back in anticipation of the coming light, the elves managed to breach the ancient curtain wall of the keep. With renewed ferocity, the elves took the battle to the dark elves who held the castle. Many dark bodies lay amid the fallen of Evermeet. With the coming of dawn, the surviving drow withdrew to the tunnels from whence they had come.

  Too soon, the proud elves counted their victory. Following the command of Shonassir Durothil, they pursued. Nearly all the elves abandoned their positions on the cliffs and hills beyond the castle and came into the abandoned keep, determined to pursue and destroy the invaders.

  No sooner had they entered the walls, however, than the doors swung shut behind them and sealed so completely that gates and walls seemed to have been melted into a single, unbroken expanse of stone.

  A cloud of darkness settled over the castle, shrouding the elven fighters in an impenetrable mist and a chilling aura of pure evil.

  Into this darkness the drow returned, silent and invisible, armed with terrible weapons and confusing magic. Here and there pinpricks of red light darted about like malevolent will o’wisps. Those elves who took these to be the drow’s heat-sensitive eyes found, in giving chase, that they followed an illusion. Their reward was invariably an invisible dagger in the spine, and a faint burst of mocking laughter—music as beautiful and terrible as the faerie bells of the Unseelie courts.

  The elves fought on amid the darkness and despair. They fought bravely and well, but they died all the same.

  A few of the warriors managed to find their way into the tunnels. These pursued the drow back toward the island of Tilrith, through tunnels that hundreds of years of dark elven work and magic had reopened.

  And in the darkness they died, for in the tunnels beyond the keep lurked the only two creatures that were perhaps even more feared than the drow. One of these, a beautiful dark elven female, shrieked with elation each time one of Corellon Larethian’s children perished.

  Lloth had come at last to Evermeet. Though magic barred her from setting foot upon the island itself, the tunnels below were hers to command.

  No such strictures were placed upon the creature with her, a terrible thing that resembled nothing so much as a gigantic
, three-legged cockroach. The monster surged toward the keep. Its probing snout swept along the tunnel walls, and the ironhard maw churned busily as the creature chiseled through the stone to make way for its bulk. Nearly as large as a dragon and covered with impenetrable armor, the monster was one that was all too familiar to many of Evermeet’s elves.

  Malar’s creature, the Ityak-Ortheel, had followed Lloth from her home on the Abyss. Finally, the Beastlord and the Queen of Spiders had found a way to unite their strengths in a strike against Evermeet. The dreaded elf-eater needed a gate from the Abyss and Lloth had been able to provide one.

  The elf-eater surged upward, exploding from the stone floor of the keep. Scores of tentacles probed the air, testing for the airborne taste of nearby prey. The creature was relentless, devouring both living and dead elves until the keep was silent and empty. With the speed of a galloping horse, the creature plunged into the ancient wall. The stone shattered, sending a cloud of dust and rubble hurtling out of the blackness that encircled the castle and threatened to engulf all of Evermeet.

  One warrior survived—the only one whose blood was not sufficiently elven to call to the elf-eater. Alone, Maura watched in despair as the elf-eater turned away from the keep, heading south with a linear intensity that even a crow’s flight could not match. Maura could guess all too well its destination, and its intent.

  The monster was heading for Corellon’s grave, the nearest elven settlement—not coincidentally, one of the seats of Evermeet’s power. Many of the most powerful clerics came together to study and pray, to cast clerical magic to aid the People here and now, and to contemplate the wonders that awaited them in the realms of Arvandor. There, amid the temples of Corellon’s Grove, the elf-eater would once again feed.

  This was horror enough, but one more thought added the extra measure of urgency needed to tear Maura from her exhaustion and despair: The Princess Ilyrana, a priestess of the goddess Angharradh, made her home in the Grove.

  A shrilling cry burst from Maura’s lips, a shriek that to human ears would have been indistinguishable from an eagle’s call. Maura, who had been raised among the Eagle Hills, knew of the giant birds and had heard the elves call them many times. Never had she summoned them, never had she ridden one. She wasn’t certain she could succeed at either. It would not be the first time, however, that an untried warrior had ridden such a steed into battle.

  She had not long to wait. An enormous bird dropped from the sky with unnerving silence, coming to rest on a pile of rubble that the elf-eater had left behind when it crashed through the keep. The eagle was as large as a war-horse, and beautiful. The slanting rays of the rising sun turned its feathers to gold. It was also fearsome, with a hooked beak larger than Maura’s head, and talons the size of the dagger she carried.

  The bird cocked its head in inquisition. “Who you? What want?” it demanded in a shrill voice.

  Maura’s chin came up proudly. “I am Maura of Evermeet, wife to Prince Lamruil and daughter by marriage to King Zaor. Take me into battle, as your ancestor once took the king. Evermeet’s need is greater now than it was then—greater than ever it was.”

  “You not elf,” the eagle observed.

  “No. But then, neither are you. Do you fight less fiercely for your home, because of this?”

  Her answer seemed to please the bird. The eagle spread its wings, until the golden feathers nearly spanned the bloodstained courtyard.

  “Up, up,” it urged her impatiently. “Get on back, hold tight. We show how fierce we the not-elves fight for Evermeet home!”

  Book Three

  Constancy and Change

  “Some legends say that Evermeet is a piece of Arvandor descended to the mortal world. Some consider it a bridge between the worlds, a place where the line between the mortal and the divine blurs. To some, it is merely a prize to be won. But this much is clear to all: from the day of its creation, Evermeet became the ancient homeland of Faerûn’s People. This is not a simple matter to understand or explain, but when has truth ever been utterly devoid of paradox?”

  —Excerpt from a letter from Elasha Evanara, Priestess of Labelas, Keeper of the Queen’s Library

  11

  Inviolate

  alar the Beast Lord considered no wild lands beyond his claim. The deep forests of Evermeet should have been his to rove, and all living things upon the island should have been his rightful prey. If elves were numbered among this prey, so much the better.

  But, the bestial god was barred from the elven retreat. A net of powerful magic covered the island and kept the gods of the anti-Seldarine from making a direct attack upon Corellon Larethian’s children. And this time, there was no treacherous elven goddess to open the way for him from within.

  No, Malar mused, he could not reach the island. But perhaps there were others who could. Once, long ago, a coalition had come near to defeating the elven pantheon in their own sacred forest. Why could he not gather a similar group of gods and direct the combined efforts of their mortal followers? Once and for all, he would crush the mortal elves whose very existence reminded him of his humiliating defeat at the hands of Corellon.

  The sea, Malar reasoned, was his first barrier to success, and a formidable one. For the most part his own followers were orcs, humans who gloried in the hunt, and beings from a score or so of the other predatory races. These hunters lived upon the mainlands and did not have the ships or the skills needed to cross the vast watery divide. In time, perhaps, he could find godly and mortal allies who could remedy this lack. But it seemed clear to him that the first, logical step in building such an alliance would be to enlist the powers and the creatures of the depths.

  And so the Beast Lord sought out a remote and rocky island, far to the north of Evermeet, and took on his bestial avatar form. He sent out a summons and then he settled down upon a high and ragged cliff to wait.

  The sea winds that swept the island quickened to gale force as the sky darkened to indigo. Waves reared up and dashed themselves against the cliff below, growing higher and higher until the Beast Lord’s black fur was drenched by the salty spray. Just as Malar thought the angry waters might engulf the island, and his avatar with it, a massive wave rose straight up from the sea and formed itself into a beautiful, wild-eyed woman.

  The goddess Umberlee loomed over the island, quivering in the crest of that great, dangerously undulating wave. “What do you want of me, land dweller?” she demanded in a thrumming voice.

  Malar eyed the sea goddess with a touch of apprehension. Her powers and her watery domain were far beyond his experience or understanding. Yet it might be that he could find a common ground, or at least some blandishment that would catch her fancy and mold her purposes to his. This would not be without risks. By all accounts, the goddess of the waves was dangerously capricious.

  “I come in peace, Umberlee, and I bring warning. The elves travel your oceans to settle the island of Evermeet,” he began.

  Lightning sizzled forth from Umberlee’s eyes, and the gnarled beach plum bushes on Malar’s left exploded into flame. “You presume to summon me, and then speak as if I know not what happens within my own domain?” she raged. “What does it matter if the elves travel the seas, as long as they pay proper tribute to me?”

  “But they do not merely travel your seas. They think to rule the ocean, with Evermeet as their base,” Malar persisted. “This I know from a goddess of the elves.”

  The water goddess retreated a little as if in surprise, and a different sort of wrath kindled in her eyes. “No one rules the oceans but Umberlee!”

  “The seagoing elves do you homage, that is true, but they revere only their own gods. Even the Sea elves do not worship you, but rather Deep Sashales.”

  “That is the way of things,” the goddess said in a sullen voice. “Many are the creatures that inhabit my oceans, and all worship their own gods. But all they who live within or venture upon the waves pay tribute to me, and they say prayers to win my forbearance and stave off my wra
th!”

  “Do the elves who now live upon Evermeet so entreat you, or are they too content with the protection of their own gods?” Malar asked slyly. “Aerdrie Faenya has cast about the island wardings such that no ill wind or weather can ever destroy the island. The elves of the Seldarine believe that Evermeet is beyond the power wielded by other gods. And yet, surely there is something that Umberlee, one of the great Gods of Fury, can do to thwart these presumptuous elves!”

  Malar watched as this shot sank home, as Lloth had predicted it would. He would have preferred to bring Umberlee into line with brute force and rending talons, but, as the dark goddess had pointed out, there comes a time in many a hunt when the prey must be herded to a place of the hunter’s choice.

  “There are many things I could do,” the proud goddess boasted. “If there is chaos enough in the seas surrounding Evermeet, the elves will come to know and revere my power!”

  The Beast Lord listened as Umberlee began to spin her plans for the Coral Kingdom, a vast and disparate group of enemies who would trouble the elves whenever they set sail. Some of these creatures could even venture onto the island itself, for the protection of the elven gods did not—could not—exclude all the followers of other gods. For such revenge as Malar had in mind, mortal beings would do what the gods could not.

  And as he listened to the sea goddess boast and plot, Malar marveled at the cunning of Lloth, who had so deftly planned how to bring Umberlee’s power against their elven foe. He tried not to dwell overlong on the end results of the dark goddess’s last campaign, or on his dawning suspicion that he himself might have been as handily manipulated, both then and now, as was Umberlee.

  Such dark thoughts served him best when they were turned into anger—a fine and killing rage that Malar could focus utterly against Corellon’s children.

  In the years that followed, large communities of strange and evil creatures began to gather in the warm waters surrounding Evermeet.