by Ed Greenwood
There were mirthless chuckles, and the knights unconsciously moved forward. Helm saw it in their faces and felt it himself: for the first time in years, real hope.
“Forty magelords is too many for me,” Elminster went on, “and they command far too many armsmen for my liking. The elves have agreed to fight with me in the days ahead, to cleanse this land of the magelords forever—and I hope to find other allies in Hastarl.”
“Hastarl?” Anauviir barked, startled.
“Aye … before this tenday is out, I plan to attack Athalgard. All I’m lacking is a few good blades.” He looked around at the scarred, unshaven warriors. “Are ye with me?”
One of the knights raised hard eyes to meet his. “How do we know this isn’t a trap? Or if it isn’t, that your spells are strong enough not to fail once we’re in that castle, with no way out?”
“I held that same view,” Ruvaen’s voice came to them from overhead, “and demanded that this man prove himself. He’s slain two magelords so far this day—and another mage works with him. Have no fear of their magic failing.”
“An’ look you,” Helm added roughly, “I’ve known the prince since the day the mage royal’s dragon slew his parents, an’ he vowed to me—a boy an’ all, mind—that he’d see the magelords all dead someday.”
“The time has come,” Elminster said in a voice of iron. “Can I depend on the last knights of Athalantar?”
There were murmurs and shufflings. “If I may,” Anauviir said uneasily, “one question … how can you protect us against the spells of the magelords? I’d welcome a chance to hew down a few magelings and armsmen—but how’ll any of us ever get close enough to have that chance?”
“The elves will go to war beside you,” Ruvaen’s voice came again. “Our magic will hide or shield you whenever we can, so you can stand blade-to-blade against your foes at last.” There were rumbles of approval at this, but Helm stepped forward and raised his hand for silence.
“I’ve led you, but in this every man must choose freely. Death is all too likely, whatever grand words we toss back and forth here.” The old knight spat thoughtfully into the leaves at his feet, and added, “Yet think you: death is coming for us if we say no and go on cowering in the forest. The magelords’re wearing us down, man by man … Rindol, Thanask; you know all of us who’ve fallen … and not a tenday passes that the armsmen aren’t seeking us in every cave and thicket we run to. In a summer, or two at most, they’ll have hunted down us all. Our lives are lost anyway—why not spend them to forge a blade that might actually take a magelord or two down with us?”
There were many nodding heads and raised blades among the knights, and Helm turned to Elminster with a grin that held no mirth at all.
“Command us, Prince,” he said.
El looked around at them all. “Are you with me?” he asked simply. There were nods, and muttered “Ayes.”
Elminster leaned forward and said, “I need ye all to go to Hastarl—in small groups or pairs, not all together where ye may attract notice or be all slain together by a vigilant magelord. Just outside the wall, upriver, is a pit where they burn bodies and refuse; traders often camp near it. Gather there before a tenday’s out and seek me or a man who gives his name to you as Farl. Dress as peddlers or traders; the elves have mint wine for you to carry as wares.” El grinned at them and added dryly, “Try not to drink it all before ye get to Hastarl.”
There were real laughs this time and eagerness in their eyes. “There’s a supply train bound for the eastern fortresses just leaving the fort at Heldon,” Helm said excitedly. “We were debating whether to risk striking at it … it’ll gain us clothes an’ mounts an’ pack beasts an’ wagons!”
“Good!” Elminster said, knowing he couldn’t hold them back now if he wanted to. A hunger for battle was alight in their eyes; a flame he’d lit that would burn now until they—or the magelords—were all dead. There were shouts of eager approval. Helm collected the gazes of all the knights with his own eyes, turning as he drew his old sword and thrust it aloft.
“For Athalantar, and freedom!” he cried, voice ringing through the trees. Twenty blades flashed in reply as they echoed his words in a ragged chorus. And then they were gone, running hard south through the trees with their drawn swords flashing in their hands, Helm at their head.
“My thanks, Ruvaen,” Elminster said to the leaves overhead. “Watch over them on their way south, won’t ye?”
“Of course,” the musical voice replied. “This is a battle no elf or man loyal to Athalantar should miss … and we must keep sharp watch in case there are other traitors among the knights.”
“Aye,” Elminster said soberly. “I hadn’t thought of that. Well said. I go.” He wove a brief gesture with one hand and vanished.
The two elves descended from the tree to make sure one of the knights’ cooking fires was truly out. Ruvaen looked south, shook his head, and rose from the last drifting tendrils of smoke.
“Hasty folk,” the other elf said, shaking his own head. “No good ever comes of hot haste.”
“No good,” Ruvaen agreed. “Yet they’ll rule this world before our day is done, with recklessness and neverending numbers.”
“What will the Realms look like then, I wonder?” the other elf replied darkly, looking south through the trees where the men had gone.
Eight days later, the golden sun of evening saw two crows alight in a stunted tree just inside the walls of Hastarl. The branches danced under the weight of the birds for a moment—and then were suddenly bare. Two spiders scuttled down the scarred and fissured tree trunk, and into cracks in the wall of a certain inn.
The wine cellar beneath the streets was always deserted at highsun—which was a good thing, for the two spiders crawled out into a musty corner, moved a careful distance apart … and suddenly two short, stout, pox-scarred women of elder years stood facing each other. They surveyed each other’s tousled white hair, rotting clothing, and sagging, rotund bodies—and in unison reached to scratch themselves.
“My, but ye look beautiful, my dear,” Elminster quavered sardonically.
Myrjala pinched his cheek and cackled, “Oh, you say the sweetest things, lass!”
Together they waddled through the cellars, seeking the stairs up into the stables.
Seldinor Stormcloak sat in his study, thick tomes on shelves all around him, and frowned. For two days now he’d been trying to magically graft the cracked, severed lips of a human female—all that was left of the last wench he’d seized for his pleasure—onto the unfinished golem standing before him. He could make them knit with the purple-gray, sagging flesh around the hole wherein he’d set the teeth, yes.… To make them move again, as they should and not of themselves, though, was proving a problem. Why now, after so many successful golems? What had cursed this one?
He sighed, swung his legs down from the desk, and sprang to his feet. If he left the fleshcreep spell hanging and brought it down as he sent lightnings through the thing … well, now. He raised his hands and began to speak the complicated syllables with the swift sureness of long practice.
Glowing light flashed, and he leaned forward eagerly to watch the lips bind themselves to the raw, knotted flesh of the faceless head. They trembled. Seldinor smiled tightly, remembering the last time he’d seen them do that … she’d pleaded for her life.…
He brought down his most special spell of all—the one that mated the golem with the intellect of a limbless familiar he’d prepared last night. Hanging in its cage, it stared at him in helpless, mute horror for an instant before the spell took hold and the lights in its eyes went out. Now if things were right at last.…
The lips moved on the otherwise blank face, shaped a smile that Seldinor matched delightedly, and breathed the word, “Master!”
Seldinor stood before it triumphantly. “Yes? Do you know me?”
“Well enough,” was the breathy, whistling reply. “Well enough.” And the arms of the golem came up with frightening speed to
grasp his throat. Strangling for air, hands frantically shaping spells out of the air, Seldinor had time for one last horrified glimpse of a magical eye appearing on the blank face of the golem and winking at him, before the golem snapped his neck like a twig—and then, unleashing its awful strength for a moment, tore the wizard’s head from his shoulders in a bloody rain of death.…
Old, wise eyes watched Seldinor’s head sail across his study. The lips of their owner thinned in a smile of satisfaction. He passed a hand of dismissal over his scrying crystal and walked away. It was time to prepare against this threat to them all, now that his hated foe was gone, and in such a fitting manner too.…
He chuckled, whispered a word that kept guardian lightnings at bay, and grasped the knob atop a massive wooden stair. It swung open at his touch, and from the hollow within he drew two wands, slid them up his sleeves into the sheaths sewn into his undertunic, and then drew out a small, folded scrap of cloth. Carefully he unfolded it and lowered it onto his head: a skullcap set with many tiny gems. He went back to stand over the crystal, closed his eyes, and gathered his will. Tiny motes of light began to sparkle and pulse in the web of jewels.
Lights played back and forth among the gems as the old man mouthed silent words and traced unseen sigils … and the skullcap slowly faded into invisibility. When it was entirely gone, he opened his eyes. The pupils had become a flat, brightly glowing red.
Staring unseeing into the distance, the old man spoke into the crystal. “Undarl. Ildryn. Malanthor. Alarashan. Briost. Chantlarn.”
Each name brought an image into the air above his head. Looking up, he saw six mages approach their own crystals and lay hands on them. They were his, now. He smiled, slowly and coldly, as the magic of his crown reached out to grip their wills.
“Speak, Ithboltar,” one wizard said abruptly.
“What befalls, Old One?” another asked, more respectfully.
“Colleagues,” he began quietly, and then added, “students.” It never hurt to remind them. “We are endangered by two stranger-mages.” From his mind rose images of the young, hawk-nosed one and the tall, slim woman with the dark eyes.
“Two? A boy and a woman? Old One, have you plunged asudden into your dotage?” Chantlarn asked scornfully.
“Ask yourself, wise young mage,” Ithboltar said, his words mild and precise, “where Seldinor is now? Or Taraj? Or Kadeln? And then think again.”
“Who are these two?” another magelord asked curtly.
“Rivals from Calimshan, perhaps, or students of Those Who Fled from Netheril and flew far to the south … though I’ve seen the woman a time or two before, riding the lands west of here.”
“I’ve seen the boy,” Briost said suddenly, “in Narthil … and thought him destroyed.”
“And now they are killing us, one by one,” Ithboltar said with velvet calm. “Done scoffing, Chantlarn? We must act together against them before others among us fall.”
“Ah, Old One—another frantic defense of the realm?” Malanthor’s voice was exasperated. “Can it not wait until the morrow?” They all saw him look over his shoulder and smile reassuringly at someone they could not see.
“Amusing your apprentices again, Malanthor?” Briost snorted.
Malanthor made a rude gesture and stepped back from his crystal.
“Until the morrow, then,” Ithboltar said quickly. “I’ll speak with all of you then.” He broke contact, shaking his head. When had all his students, once eager to bend the world to their wills, become such spineless, self-indulgent fools? They’d always been reckless and arrogant, but now …
He shrugged. Perhaps they’d learn the error of their ways on the morrow, if the two strangers continued to strike down magelords. At least he could now compel the wizards of Athalantar into battle with the crown … so these foes wouldn’t find too many more of them alone and unsuspecting. And nothing this side of the archmages’ tombs of Netheril, short of a god, could hope to stand against the magical might of the gathered magelords of Athalantir. And gods interested in the Kingdom of the Stag seemed in short supply these days.
“Yes,” Elminster said softly. “In this building here.” Braer and one of the other elves nodded silently, and stepped forward to touch El’s shoulders. As he faded into wraith form, he heard them muttering softly, weaving cloaking magics more powerful than anything he knew.
They alone could still hear him, so he thanked them before stepping off the rooftop and flying through the moonlight to the window below. A single amulet glowed in his magesight, but his experienced eyes saw more: a trap Farl had rigged elsewhere in earlier days. A heavy cleaver had been set on a trap-thread to chop down onto the sill. Elminster’s mistlike form drifted past it, and then he was in the room, moving unthinkingly to one side of the window to avoid being silhouetted against the moonglow—and to avoid the sleep-venomed darts set to fire when the floorboard below the sill was stepped on.
The elves had made his insubstantial form completely invisible; Elminster drifted across the room toward familiar snores. They were coming from within a close-canopied bed larger than some coaches El had seen. The prince raised his eyebrows at such wealth. Farl had certainly come up in the world.
There was another trap-thread just inside the draperies. El slipped past it and settled into a comfortable sitting position on the foot of the bed. The sleepers had thrown aside the covers in the warm night, and lay exposed to his view: Farl on his back, one arm spread possessively over the small, sleek woman who lay curled against him: Tassabra.
Elminster looked longingly at her for a moment. Her beauty, sharp wits, and kindness had always stirred him. But … we make choices, and he’d chosen to leave this life. At least she and Farl had found happiness together, and hadn’t died under the blades of the Moonclaws.
They might well find death in the nights ahead, of course, because of him. Elminster sighed, spoke a word that would let them see and hear him, and said quietly, “Well met, Farl. Well met, Tass.” Farl’s snores ended abruptly as Tass tensed, coming instantly awake. Her hand slipped under her pillow, seeking the dagger El knew must be there.
“Be at ease,” Elminster said, “for I mean ye no hann. ’Tis Eladar, come back to plead with ye to save Athalantar.”
By now Farl was awake, too. He sat up and gaped, open mouthed, as Tassabra let out a little shriek of surprise and leaned forward to stare at him. “Eladar! It is you!” She lunged forward to embrace him, and fell through his sitting form, to land on her forearms at the end of the bed. “What?”
“A sending—just an image,” Farl told her, rising with blade in hand. “El, is that really you?”
“Of course it’s really me,” El told him. “Were I a magelord, I’d not be just sitting here, would I?”
Tassabra’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a mage, now?” She passed her hands through his form. “Where are you, truly?”
“Here,” El told her. “Aye, I’m something of a mage now. I took this shape to get past all thy, ah, friendly traps.”
Tassabra put her hands on her hips. “If you’re right here, El,” she said severely, “make yourself solid! I want to feel you! How can I kiss a shadow?”
Elminster smiled. “Right then. But for thine own safety, stop waving thy hands about in me.”
She did so, he murmured a few words—and was suddenly heavy and solid again. Tassabra embraced him eagerly, smooth skin sliding against his dark leathers. Farl put his arms around them both, hugging tightly “By the gods I missed you, El,” he said huskily. “I never thought to see you again.”
“Where were you?” Tassabra demanded, running her hands along his jaw and through his hair, noting the changes the years had wrought.
“All over Faerûn,” El replied, “learning enough magic to destroy the magelords.”
“You still hope to—?”
“Before three dawns have come,” El told them, “if ye’ll help me.”
They both gaped at him. “Help how?” Farl asked, frowning. “We
spend much of our time just evading casual cruelties cast our way by those wizards. We can’t hope to withstand any sort of deliberate attack by even one of them!”
Tassabra nodded soberly. “We’ve built ourselves a good life here, El,” she said. “The Moonclaws are no more; you were right, El—they were tools of the magelords. We run the Velvet Hands together now and shrewd investments and trading make us more coins than we ever got slipping into windows of nights.”
Elminster sent a thought to Braer and knew he was cloaked again. He caught an appreciative “Nice lass, there,” from the other elf before he turned his attention again to the pair facing him.
“Can ye see me now?” he asked. Farl and Tass shook their heads.
“Nor can ye touch me—even with spells,” Elminster told them. “I have powerful allies; they can cloak ye even as they’re shielding me now. Ye could steal from magelords and stab at them without fearing their magic!”
Farl stiffened, eyes shining. “No?”
Then his eyes narrowed. “Just who are these allies?”
Elminster flicked a thought at Braer: May I?
Leave this to us, came the warm reply. A moment later, he heard the bed hangings rustle behind him. Tass gasped, and Farl’s hand tensed on the blade he held beneath the covers.
El knew both elves had appeared behind him even before he heard Braer’s musical voice. “Forgive this intrusion, Lord and Lady,” the elf said. “We do not make a habit of intruding into bedchambers, but we feel this chance to free the realm is most important. If you’ll fight beside us, we would find it an honor.”
El saw his old friends blink; the elves must have vanished abruptly. He heard the bed hangings fell back again. Tass closed her gaping mouth with an effort. “An honor?” Farl said wonderingly “Elves would take it as an honor to fight with us?”
“Elves,” Tassabra murmured. “Real elves!”
“Aye,” Elminster said with a smile, “and with their magic, we can defeat the magelords.”