Evermeet

by Elaine Cunningham

“Even so, it is time.”

  It was time, and Rolim knew it well. He and Ava, bonded together by the soul-deep rapport that was rare even among the elves, had both felt the call of Arvandor for many years. So pressing were their duties, so firm was their sense of responsibility to the People, that they had delayed their departure for far too long. But the voice of Arvandor, sweet and compelling, had beckoned to them in every waking hour, and sung them into revery at night. The need for this final homecoming had become too strong for either to resist.

  The elves closed their eyes and sank deep into meditation. As he did, Rolim’s awareness began to sharpen. With ever-increasing acuity, he began to see and hear and feel in ways that far surpassed his mortal senses. As barriers slipped away, he noted with wonderment that the rapport he had shared with Ava was spreading, reaching out until it encompassed all of Evermeet. On he went, traveling out to touch the communities of People upon distant shores.

  It was a communion beyond anything Rolim had ever known or imagined, and he was awed and humbled. In his heightened awareness, he was exquisitely aware of Ava’s thoughts and emotions. She was more accustomed to such wonders than he, for she had spent a lifetime as a High Mage in the communion of her magical Circles. Yet she also took her place in the larger elven community with mingled joy and humility.

  Rolim understood at last what the call to Arvandor was: a summons into the very heart of magic, into the Weave of Life itself. As the centuries of their mortal lives began to press upon them, elves could no more disregard this call than an elven toddler could push aside the driving desire to walk and form speech. One way or another, the call to deeper community had to be answered. It was no marvel to Rolim, now that he saw the way of it, that more and more often the High Magi were found only among the aged—elders who deferred the call of Arvandor for centuries to serve the People upon the mortal world, finding the needed communion in the Circles. In these days, young practitioners of High Magic—such as his great grandson Vhoori, were becoming exceedingly rare.

  Vhoori. For a moment, Rolim’s thoughts slipped back into the mortal world, tugged there by his concern for the brilliant and ambitious young mage.

  Be at peace. The son of your son’s son will bring great wonders to the People, and power such as few who walk as mortals on this world have imagined.

  Oddly enough, Rolim was not particularly startled by the voice that sounded in his mind, soothing as the cadences of the sea. For he was reaching out now beyond the bounds of his mortal world, and entering communion with the Elders—those elves who had gone before him. Rolim sensed more of them now, but not as a cacophony of conflicting voices. It was rather like walking into a vast room, and being greeted with smiles of welcome by well-known friends. In this homecoming was a peace—a unity—that filled some unnamed corner of his soul, that place which gave birth to every yearning he had ever known.

  Dimly, Rolim felt Ava take his hand in hers. There was little sensation of warmth or pressure, though, for their bodies were fading away into translucent, glowing shadows. Yet he knew that Ava’s tiny hand was secure in his, for they were both truly one with their People.

  The morning sun broke through the canopy of leaves overhead, sending glowing shafts slanting down through the trees. The last few motes of silver and gold swirled together in a brief, giddy flurry, as if they danced to greet the light.

  The Durothil mansion was one of the finest and most whimsical in all of Leuthilspar. At a distance, it resembled nothing so much as a flock of swans startled into sudden, graceful flight. One only had to look at the leaping towers to know that many powerful mages dwelt herein, for it took great power to raise a building of any kind from the soil.

  The newest addition to the mansion was also one of the tallest and most imaginative. Two spiraling crystal towers wound around each other in a way that suggested, but did not precisely portray, a pair of entwined elven dancers. From the tower flowed gracefully curving buttresses, some of which rooted the structure to the sacred island, and others that reached seeking hands toward the starlight. The interior of the tower was less whimsical. It was divided into a number of small rooms, each devoted by its creator to a specific purpose.

  In one of these rooms, the young Gold elf warrior Brindarry Nierde paced the floor restlessly as he dredged his mind for some way to talk sense into the young wizard who sat calmly before him—floating in midair, his legs crossed and his hands resting on his knees. It was difficult for Brindarry to become too angry with his friend however, for Vhoori Durothil was the epitome of all that Brindarry held dear.

  For one thing, the wizard was the quintessence of Gold elven beauty, with his pale tawny skin, night-black hair, and large, almond-shaped eyes the color of a summer meadow. His hands were long-fingered and graceful, and his sharp, finely molded features and triangular face called to mind the ancient, enchanted sculptures of the gods that their ancestors had brought from Aryvandaar. Vhoori Durothil was tall, like his illustrious grandfather Rolim, and as lithe as that famous warrior. But his was a different talent. He had come to magic at an early age, and had already proven to have exceptional potential. Already he was acting as the Center of a small circle, and he received from his peers a deference that was out of proportion to his age and accomplishments. Most elves assumed that Vhoori Durothil would in time become the most powerful High Mage on all of Evermeet, and treated him as such. Yet in Brindarry’s opinion, the young mage was content to settle for far too little.

  “It is an outrage,” Brindarry burst out when his patience reached an end. “By Corellon’s sacred blood! The Gray elves rule in Evermeet, and you simply drift along with events, as unconcerned as the clouds on a summer breeze.”

  The mage lifted one brow, and Brindarry flushed as he remembered that his friend’s great-grandmother, the High Mage Ava Moonflower, had been a member of that maligned race.

  “Gray elf” was more than a mildly derisive term for the People who were usually called Moon or Silver elves. A slight inflection of Elvish transformed the insult to the word for “dross,” that which was common and low, the waste product left over when objects of precious metal—by implication, the “Gold” elves—were created. From the lips of another elf, “Gray” was a deadly insult.

  But Vhoori seemed inclined to let it pass. He gracefully unfolded his limbs and stepped down to stand on the floor. “And what would you have me do, my impatient friend? Strike down the new High Councilor with a fireball, or perhaps lay him low with a single blow from a phantom sword?”

  “It would be better than doing nothing at all,” muttered Brindarry. “You certainly have the power to take action!”

  “No, I do not. At least, not yet.”

  Those cryptic words were as close as Vhoori had ever come to giving voice to the ambitions they shared. Brindarry’s eyes glinted with excitement as he regarded his friend.

  “It is about time you thought of taking your due!” he exulted. “You have been playing the role of messenger boy for far too long!”

  A wry smile lifted the corners of Vhoori’s lips. “A messenger boy. Never have I heard it put quite that way,” he said mildly. “I suppose I should point out that the sending of messages from one tower of High Magi to another is an important part of the Circles’ work. It is true that this is my primary task, but considering my youth, the Elders think it best that I learn one thing very well before moving on.”

  Brindarry threw up his hands in exasperation. “How do you expect to rule in Evermeet if all you ever do is chat with the magi of Aryvandaar?”

  “Ah, but there is power in information.”

  “Power that is shared by every other elf in your Circle,” the warrior retorted.

  “Even so,” Vhoori said with a small, secretive smile. “But there will come a time when that is no longer true. Come—there is something I want you to see.”

  The mage led the way up a tightly spiraling stair to the very top of the tower. In the center of the small, dome-shaped room was an alabast
er column, from which rose a scepterlike object. It was about the length of an elf’s arm and made of some satiny metal that was neither gold nor silver in color, but some subtle shade for which even the precise esthetics of Elvish had no name. Intricate carvings seemed to lie beneath the surface, which appeared to be utterly smooth. It was a marvelous work of art and magic, justly crowned by a large, golden gem.

  “The Accumulator,” Vhoori said, stroking the smooth metal with a lover’s hand. “With this, I can store power from each spell that I cast. In time, I will have stored so much power that I can act alone, and cast High Magic as a Circle of one.”

  Brindarry let out a victory whoop. “And then you need no longer answer to the dotards who rule and restrict the use of magic! Your power will be tremendous. It will be an easy matter to oust the Amarillis pretender,” he concluded happily.

  “Not so easy as you seem to think,” Vhoori cautioned him. “Tradition, my friend, is a powerful thing. Tammson Amarillis is armed not only with his own merits, which are considerable, but also all those of his illustrious forebears. Even if every disgruntled Gold elf upon this island were to rally under my standard, we would have little hope of staging a successful coup—at least, not by traditional methods of warfare. No, it is time to find not only new powers, but new ways. And perhaps,” he mused, “new allies.”

  The Nierde snorted. “And where will you find these allies?”

  “By doing what I do best,” Vhoori said dryly, “by being the very best ‘messenger boy’ that Evermeet has ever known.”

  The elven ship was dying. Captain Mariona Leafbower knew that even as she gave the order for a reciprocal attack.

  She felt its death as a physical pain. Not in all her decades of travel among the stars had she known a ship that was its equal. In appearance it was rather like a titanic butterfly, with its two sets of sails that glimmered every shade of green known to her verdant homeworld. So vast were these winglike sails that the body of the ship—a sturdy structure with a keel length of over one hundred feet—was almost lost from sight among them. Mariona had inherited the graceful man-o-war from her uncle, who had grown and nurtured it himself, and she had carried on the Leafbower tradition of exploration, trade, and travel for the sheer joy of the journey. She knew this ship as well as any mounted warrior knew her pegasus, and she felt its dying agonies as keenly as if it were in fact a beloved steed.

  The captain watched stoically as her crew cranked the ballistae into firing position and loaded the catapult with grape shot. Hers was a well-armed ship, with two mounted ballistae that shot enormous metal bolts with the accuracy of an elven archer’s longbow, and a catapult capable of delivering a large load of scattershot missiles with devastating force. Even so, it would not be enough, and she knew it. The ship would die, that was certain, and the elven crew, as well. But at least they would take a few of the Q’nidar with them.

  Mariona cursed under her breath as she watched the next approach of the Q’nidar. A flock of them flapped toward the ship in precise, single-line formation. The Q’nidar—hideous, batlike creatures with a fifteen-foot wingspan and long, barbed tails like those of a wyvern—were as black as the wildspace in which they hunted, but on their crystalline wings glittered every color within both the light and heat spectrums. Q’nidar were heat-eaters who traveled the vast spaces between the stars. They spoke by breathing intricate patterns of heat and energy that were detected and understood by others of their kind. Disaster usually occurred whenever they attempted to “speak” with star-traveling ships. Indeed, they were often drawn to such ships, attracted by the heat and light and activity.

  These Q’nidar, however, were not merely curious. This was a hunting party, and they desperately needed to feed. Mariona could tell this from the unusually close-knit formation of the flying monsters. They flew nearly nose-to-tail, so that each Q’nidar could feed upon the heat emitted by the creature in front of it.

  Their first attack on the ship had been unexpected—from a distance they unleashed a blast of breath so hot that it had ignited the protective bubble that surrounded the ship and kept the life-giving envelope of air and warmth in place. The off-duty helmsman, a wizard of considerable power, had drained his magic to put out the flames. He had succeeded—but not before their air supply had been dangerously heated and thinned.

  It was still hot on the ship. Mariona’s hair clung to her scalp in lank silver strands, and the pain in her blistered hands and face was intensified by her keen awareness of the ship’s ills. The ship’s crystal hull had been cracked by the sudden burst of heat, and the wings were seared and brittle. Her ship yet lived, but barely. It could not survive another hit. And the Q’nidar were closing in, eager to ignite the ship and feed upon the energy of the flames.

  Mariona waited until the lead Q’nidar was within range, and then screamed out the order to fire. The first ballista thudded, sending a giant bolt streaking toward the creature. The weapon caught the Q’nidar squarely in the upper chest, sending it hurtling back into the ranks of its followers. A few of the Q’nidar at the far end of the formation managed to peel off in time, but for several moments most of the creatures struggled and thrashed in a tangle of bat wings and barbed tails.

  At that moment, the elven fighters fired the catapult. A spray of small spiked metal balls, lengths of chain, and odds and ends of nails and scrap metal burst toward the tangle of Q’nidar. The shrieks of wounded and dying monsters reverberated through the ship’s atmosphere like a chorus from the Abyss. Some of the less-wounded Q’nidar took off in rapid, desperate flight toward the nearest star. A few of the creatures, torn and silent, began to drift off into the blackness of wildspace. One of these floated directly toward the man-o-war.

  “Hard astern!” Mariona shouted into the speaking tube that led from the deck down to the navigation room. The helmsman—the wizard whose magic combined with the power of the magical, thronelike helm to give power to the ship—acknowledged her order. Mariona noted with deep concern that his voice sounded thin and weary. Passilorris had been at the helm for much too long. His strength and his magic were nearly depleted.

  The ship began to trace a leisurely arc toward the right as the helmsman urged the ailing vessel in an evasive maneuver. Not fast enough. The Q’nidar flopped down onto the ship’s envelope, its black wings spread wide like a pall over the ship, its body bouncing slightly from the impact with the protective shield. So diminished was the air envelope that the creature hung low, bobbing gently between the ship’s paired wings.

  To Mariona’s horror, the creature’s eyes opened, focused, and then narrowed with malevolence as they glared directly into hers. The Q’nidar’s chest slowly expanded as it prepared to expend its last breath in a killing blast.

  “Fire!” she shrieked, pointing up toward the Q’nidar.

  The ballista crew threw their weight against the massive weapon, swiveling it around and tilting it up to aim at the new threat. The bolt tore upward and plunged through the creature’s heart.

  A shimmering glow spread outward from the dead Q’nidar to engulf the protective bubble. The bubble’s surface began to seethe and bulge like water just coming to a boil. A blast of hot air burst down through the opening, scalding the ballista crew before the magical shield could close in to repair the gap.

  Mariona noted with grim relief that the ballista bolt had gone clear through the creature, thus allowing much of the hot air from its lungs to escape into wildspace. Had it not, the full force of the blast might have killed many more elves. Either way, however, they were better off than if the creature had “screamed.” At such close range the force from such a heat weapon would have reduced the ship to ash.

  But the threat did not die with that single Q’nidar. The creatures who had scattered and fled were regrouping. Mariona could see the distant flash of reflected starlight on their wings as they hurtled in for the final assault.

  The final assault. Of that, there could be no doubt.

  “Captain, we’re
receiving a communication!”

  The navigator’s voice echoed up through the speaking tube, shrill with excitement and hope reborn.

  Mariona’s heart quickened. To the best of their knowledge, there were no spelljamming ships in this section of wildspace, and no civilization on the nearest world capable of star travel. It would be wonderful to be proved wrong!

  “On my way,” she said, taking off at a run for the narrow steps that led down into the hold.

  Her eye fell first upon the helmsman, a Silver elf of middle years. He was nearly gray with exhaustion, and his white-knuckled hands gripped the armrests of the helm as if to squeeze from it just a few more drops of power. Mariona rested a hand on his shoulder, briefly, and turned to the navigator.

  Shi’larra was bent over a scrying crystal, her black eyes intense in her tattooed face. She glanced up at the captain. “The crystal has been pulsing, as if receiving a message. It is powerful magic—definitely elven—but subtly different from anything we know. According to the latest report from the Imperial Fleet, there are no elven ships in this area.”

  Mariona understood at once the implications of the navigator’s words. From time to time, an elven civilization upon some outpost world found its own way to star-flight. The first contacts between these fledgling ships and the well-established elven navy that ruled wildspace was usually jarring in the extreme to the newcomers. There were strict protocols concerning how these encounters should be handled. Protocol, however, was a luxury that the desperate crew could not afford.

  The elf woman lay her palm on the crystal, letting the powerful material absorb her personal magic. And powerful it undoubtedly was—the globe had been fashioned from the crystallized remains of a Q’nidar that had flung itself into a star. Such artifacts were rare and powerful, and she’d considered herself fortunate to have happened upon it in the debris that floated along a common trade route. Now the crystal offered a chance to stave off the utter destruction of ship and crew. Later, perhaps, she would ponder the irony of this.