by Ed Greenwood
“Nay, think greater than that. Recall you nothing of the teachings of Mystra?”
“Her? You plan a chain a goddess?”
“Nay; a mortal, I said, and it’s a mortal I have in mind.”
“Stop all this grand questioning and tell us,” a sour voice said. “There’s a time for cleverness and a time for plain talk—and I think we’ve fast reached the latter.”
“Do you doubt my power?”
“Nay, Magelord, I believe you have magic to spare. I told you to stop lording it over us with arrogant word games and behave more like a great mage and less like a boy trying to impress with his brilliance.”
These words ended in a sudden cry of disgust, and a murmur followed. Elminster risked a quick glance above the parapet to peer down, and as quickly ducked back below it again. He’d seen a man sitting at the table gaping in horror at his plate—and on it had been a human head, staring unseeing at him.
“Behold the head of the last man who tried to steal from your warehouse, beheaded by a spell-blade I conjured. There, ’Tis gone now. By all means enjoy the rest of your dinner, Nalith; it was only an illusion.”
“I think you should tell us plainly, too, Hawklyn,” said another, older voice. “Enough games.”
“Well enough,” the mage royal replied. “Watch, then, and keep silent.”
There was a brief muttering, a flash of light, and a high-pitched sound like the jangle of clashing crystal or tiny ankle bells.
“Tell everyone who you are.” There was cold triumph in Hawklyn’s voice.
“I am called the Magister,” came a new voice, calm but quavering with age. There were gasps from around the table, and Elminster could not restrain himself. This was the wizard who wore the mantle of Mystra’s power. The greatest mage of all. He had to see. Slowly and cautiously he raised his head to peer over the parapet and froze, chilled by a sudden thought: if the magelords controlled the most powerful magic in all Faerûn, how could he ever hope to defeat them?
Below stretched the long, gleaming feast table. All the men seated around it were staring at a thin, bearded and robed man who stood upright in an area of radiance a little way down the hall. The hitherto empty spiral of chain was now revolving slowly around him. Little lightnings leaped and played among its coils as it turned, fed by the radiance around the Magister.
“Do you know where you are?” the mage royal asked coldly.
“This room, I know not—some grand house, surely. In Hastarl, in the Realm of the Stag.”
“And what is it that binds you?” Magelord Hawklyn leaned forward as he spoke those eager words. Lamplight caught gem-adorned ward-runes on his dark robes, and they flashed as he moved, drawing eyes to him. He looked lean and dangerous as he spread long-fingered hands before him on the table and half rose to challenge the wizard in the grip of the chain.
The Magister looked at the chain with mild curiosity, rather like a man surveying sale-goods after idly entering a shop with an unspectacular facade. He reached out to touch it, ignoring the sudden lightnings that spat and crackled, blinding white, around his wrinkled hand, tapped it thoughtfully, and said, “It appears to be the Crystal Chain of Binding, forged long ago in Netheril, and thought to be lost. Is it that, or some new chain of thy devising?”
“I shall ask the questions,” Neldryn Hawklyn commanded grandly, “and you will give answer—or I’ll use this crossbow, and Faerûn will have a new Magister.” As he spoke, a cocked and loaded crossbow floated into view from behind a curtained door. Startled looks sped between the merchants sitting around the table.
“Oh,” the old man said mildly, “is this a challenge, then?”
“Not unless you defy me. Consider it a threat hanging over you. Obey or perish—the same alternatives any king gives his subjects.”
“You must live in rather more barbaric lands than I am used to,” the Magister said in a dry voice. “Can it be, Neldryn Hawklyn, you have reshaped Athalantar into a tyranny of mages? I have heard things of you and your fellow magelords … and they were not good things.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Hawklyn sneered. “Now hold your tongue ’til I bid you speak—or a new Magister will speak, in your stead.”
“Do you then seek to control when and how the Magister speaks?” The old man’s tone seemed almost sad.
“I do.” The crossbow drifted nearer, rising menacingly to hang above the table, aimed at the old man’s face.
“Mystra forbids that,” the Magister said quietly, “and so I have no choice left. I must answer your challenge.”
His body suddenly boiled into billowing vapors, faded, and was gone. The chains hung around emptiness for a moment, and then crashed to the floor.
The crossbow jerked as it fired—but the quarrel sped through emptiness, leaping across the room to strike a hanging shield and rebound. It cracked against the stone wall in a corner, fell, and flew no more.
“Let all that is hidden be revealed!” Mage Royal Hawklyn thundered, standing with his arms raised. Then he recoiled; the old man melted out of the air right in front of his face, sitting calmly on nothing in the air just above the table.
Half a dozen spells lashed out as alarmed wizards saw a clear chance to slay. Amid the leaping magic, terrified merchants upset chairs in their haste to bolt from the table. Food sprayed into the air as ravening flame, bolts of lightning, and mist-shedding beams of coldness cut the air, meeting in hissing chaos where the old man—had been. He was gone, instants before deadly magic struck … if he’d ever been there at all.
“Those who live by the slaying spell,” the Magister said mildly from the balcony—Elminster whirled and gaped in terror as the man in robes suddenly appeared beside him—“must expect, in the end, to die by it.”
He raised his wrinkled hands. From each finger a ruby ray of light stabbed out across the room. Solid things they touched boiled silently away. El gulped as he saw legs standing with no body left above them—and beyond, a sobbing wizard crash to the floor as his frantically running feet were suddenly gone from under him. Amid the screams and crashes the rays slowly faded, leaving only spreading flames behind, where they’d scorched wood or singed tapestries.
The rays were still dying away as men all over the room started to rise into the air—whole or in remains, floating slowly straight up, regardless of their struggles or frantic spellcastings. Glass tinkled and sang as the chain also rose into the air, gliding and coiling like a gigantic snake.
From somewhere nearby, Hawklyn snarled an incantation in a high, frightened voice. The old man ignored him.
The rising men came to a smooth halt at the same height as the balcony, and the chain wove its way among them, gleaming in the light of the fires below.
There was a flash and a roar. Elminster dived for his life as Hawklyn’s spell smashed half the balcony into a splintered ruin of paneling and shattered stone. Desperately the young thief clawed his way along a stone floor that was crumbling and collapsing under and behind him.
With a shudder and then a gathering roar, most of the tiles of the broken balcony floor slid down to the stones of the feasting hall amid a cloud of dust. The rubble piled up in a heap around a lone, leaning pillar that had supported that end of the balcony moments before. Sprawled on the surviving remnant of the balcony, Elminster turned in haste to see the Magister unconcernedly standing on empty air, surrounded by a ring of helpless, floating, frightened men.
“Is that the best you can do, Hawklyn?” The old man shook his head. “You had no business even thinking you could ever grow mighty enough to challenge me, with such feeble powers … and dull wits driving them.” He sighed. Elminster saw the crystal chain had wrapped itself around the neck of one floating man.
The man’s head was turned with slow, terrible, unseen force, until he hung helplessly staring into the old man’s eyes. “So you are a magelord, Maulygh … of long service, I see, and you fancy yourself too cunning to appear openly ambitious. Yet you desire to rule over all and
await any chance to smite down these others, and take the throne for yourself. And you have plans; your reign would not be gentle.”
The Magister waved a hand in dismissal, and the crystal links around the wizard’s neck burst apart in tinkling shards. Maulygh’s headless body jerked once and then hung limp and dripping. The shortened chain glided on to the next man.
“Only a merchant, eh? Othyl Naerimmin, a panderer, smuggler, and dealer in scents and beer.” The quavering voice seemed almost hopeful, but when it came again, it was a low, bitter tone of disappointment. “You arrange poisonings.” The coil of the chain burst again, leaving another hanging body behind.
Someone wailed in terror, almost drowning out the frantic mutterings of several spellcastings. The Magister ignored it all as he watched the chain wind its deadly way on through the air. One man—a fat merchant, gasping and staring in horror, was spared. He floated gently down to the floor, fell when the magic released him, and then scrambled up, whimpering, and fled from the hall.
The next man was another mage, who spat defiance and went to his death raging. When he was headless, pulses of purple radiance flared around the body. The Magister studied them. “An interesting web of contingencies—don’t you think, Hawklyn?
The mage royal spat a word that echoed and rolled around the hall, and there was a sudden burst of flame. Elminster shrank back into the corner and hid his face, feeling a sudden wash of heat. Then it was gone, and amid the creaking of cooling stone and the rush of tortured air, they heard the old man sigh.
“Fireballs … always fireballs. Can’t the young cast anything else?”
The Magister stood unharmed on empty air, watching the chain—much shortened now, its surface cracked and blackened from fire—move to the next man. He proved to be dead already, of fright or self-spell or a stray glass shard, and the chain drifted on.
Twice more it burst, and then another merchant was spared. He fled sobbing, leaving only the mage royal of Athalantar hanging alive before the Magister. Hawklyn looked right and left at the headless things in the air around him and snarled in fear.
“I must confess that killing you will bring me satisfaction,” the old man said. “Yet I’d be more pleased still if you renounced all claims to this realm here and now and agreed to serve Mystra under my direction.”
Hawklyn cursed, and with trembling bands tried to shape one last spell. The Magister listened politely and then shook his head, ignoring the shadowy taloned beast that appeared in the air before him.
Its cruel claws passed right through the old man, and then faded away as the last links of the Chain of Binding burst. Blood spattered on the stone floor far below.
Leaving the corpses hanging in grisly array, the Magister turned to regard the youth crouched watching in the surviving corner of the balcony. There was a dangerous glint in his eyes as they met Elminster’s awed gaze. “Are you a magelord, boy, or a servant of this house?”
“Neither.” Tearing his gaze free with an effort, Elminster leaped from the balcony, landing hard on the blood-spattered stones below. The old man’s eyes narrowed, and he lifted a finger. A wall of flames sprang up in a ring around the thief, who spun around, the sharpened stub of an old war-sword suddenly in his hand.
Fear lent Elminster anger; his voice trembled with both as he faced the old man standing on air above him. “Can ye not see I’m no wild-spells wizard? Are ye no better than these cruel mages who rule Athalantar?” He waved his blade at the roaring flames around him. “Or are all who wield magic so twisted by its power that they become tyrants who delight in maiming, destroying, and spreading fear among honest folk?”
“Are you not—with these?” the Magister asked, spreading his hand to indicate the bodies hanging silently around him.
“With them?” Elminster spat. “I fight them whenever I dare—and hope one day to destroy them all so men can walk Athalantar free and happy again!” His face twisted at a sudden thought. “I sound a bit like a high minstrel, don’t I?” he added, more quietly.
The Magister regarded him thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad way to think,” he said quietly, “if you survive the dangers of talking the same way.” A sudden smile lit his face, and Elminster found himself smiling back.
Unseen by them both, down the hall, a pair of eyes appeared amid swirling points of light, in the flames flickering around the canted wreckage of the collapsed feast table. They watched the boy and the floating mage, and looked thoughtful.
“Can ye really see all that men are, and think?” Elminster asked, awkwardly blurting out the question.
“No,” the Magister replied simply. His old brown eyes looked down into unflinching blue-gray ones as he made the crackling wall of flames die away to nothing.
Elminster looked once to see what had befallen, but made no move to flee. Standing on the rubble-strewn, blood-spattered floor, he looked back up at the old wizard. “Are ye going to blast me or let me go?”
“I have no interest in destroying honest folk—and very little at all in the affairs of those who have no magic. I see you have magesight, lad … why don’t you try your hand at sorcery?”
Elminster gave him a dark look. His voice was scornful as he said, “I’ve no interest in such things, or in becoming the sort of man who wields magic. Whenever I look upon mages, I see snakes who use their spells to make folk fear them—like a whip to drive others to obey. Hard, arrogant men who can take a life, or”—he raised hard eyes to look at the destruction all around; the eyes watching from the flames shrank down to avoid notice—“destroy a hall in a few breaths, and not care what they’ve done, so long as their whims are satisfied. Leave me out of the ranks of wizards, lord.”
Then, staring up at the old man’s calm face, Elminster knew sudden fear. His words had been harsh, and the Magister was a mage like any other. The mild old eyes, though, seemed to hold … approval?
“Those who don’t love hurling power make the best mages,” the Magister replied. His eyes seemed suddenly to bore deep into Elminster’s soul like seeking, darting things, and sadness was in his voice again as he added, “And those who live by stealing almost always rob themselves of their own lives, in the end.”
“The taking gives me no pleasure,” Elminster retorted. “I do it to have enough to eat—and to strike against the magelords where and when I can.”
The Magister nodded. “That’s why ye might listen,” he said. “I’d not have wasted my breath otherwise.”
Elminster stared up at him thoughtfully—and then stiffened as he heard the sudden, approaching thunder of running, booted feet echoing in the passages nearby. That sound could mean only one thing: armsmen of Athalantar.
“Save thyself!” he snapped, without stopping to think what a ridiculous warning that was to the mightiest archmage in all the world, and darted toward the nearest archway that did not ring with footfalls.
He was still three running strides short of it when men with halberds and crossbows burst into the room, but the puffing merchant with them stabbed a finger up at the floating mage and bellowed, “There!”
By the time the volley of quarrels and hastily conjured flames had torn through suddenly empty air, both the running boy and the eyes in the licking flames that played about the ruin of Havilyn’s once grand table had vanished. A breath later, the floating corpses suddenly fell from the air, striking the stone floor with wet, heavy thuds. White-faced armsmen drew back, calling aloud on Tempus to defend them and Tyche to aid them.
Elminster took one door out of the kitchen, found himself in a dead-end cluster of pantries, and raced frantically back to the kitchen’s other, smaller door, offering his own quieter prayer to Tyche that it not be another pantry—when he heard Havilyn’s furious voice snarl, “Find that boy! He’s no part of my household!”
Cursing aloud, Elminster snatched open the door. Yes, this was the way the terrified cooks had fled. He took the stairs two at time until at a bend in the stair several halberds crashed down together in fro
nt of him, striking sparks. Snarling armsmen struggled to tear them free of the stair rails and wrestle them around to stab downward—but El had already seen a third armsman lumbering along the passage above with a ready crossbow. He leaped back down the stairs in a single bound, landed hard on his haunches, and sprang sideways into an evil-smelling alcove.
A breath later, a crossbow quarrel cracked off the wall nearby and rattled down into the kitchens. A second quarrel followed, speeding deep into the throat of the foremost armsman racing up the stairs.
Elminster didn’t spare the time to watch the man gurgle and fall; he was looking around the dark alcove for the scullery door. There! Wrenching it open, he skidded across the noisome room, through a maze of sloped boards where meat was washed and buckets where food scraps were thrown, hoping the house was old enough to have … yes!
El seized the pull ring and hauled up the trapdoor of the refuse pit. He could hear the waters of the Run rushing past in the darkness below as he slid feet first down to join them.
The drop was farther than he’d thought it would be, and the waters numbingly cold. El’s heels struck a mucky bottom for a moment, and he twisted to one side to come up off to one side of the door above.
Trying to ignore the unseen slimy lumps floating in the water with him, he came up gasping for breath, in time to hear a quarrel crack off the hatch somewhere above and behind him, followed by the shout, “The sewers! He’s gone below!”
Elminster swam with the rushing river, trying not to make noise. He didn’t trust the avid armsmen not to come down after him or lower torches and try their archery along the river tunnel. The chill of the waters crept into him as they carried him around a corner and away.
It seemed the first chance he’d had in a long while to collect his wits. The mage royal and at least three other magelords had been swept away in a single night—but the hand of Elminster had done nothing to them. He hadn’t even a bite of supper or a spare coin from the house to show for his efforts.