by Ed Greenwood
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, “I 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 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.
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 BE 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, searing 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 Faerûn, 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 the 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 Faerûn bright and fair through them, below and behind her, Mystra knew that she must go or lose Toril in h
er 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 clear 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 large 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.
“I don’t have to do this, you know,” Lhaeo muttered. “I could be earning a whole copper piece a month digging graves in Voonlar.”
“Ye could be ruling a kingdom somewhere not so far away, lad,” Elminster told the ceiling.
“Don’t tempt me,” Lhaeo grunted. “Glass everywhere, roses shredded and smoking, and several dozen young Sembian ladies coming to tea! Couldn’t you just slay me now and get it over with?”
“And what would I be doing for fun tomorrow, eh? Ye princelings—always thinking only of thyselves, sparing not a thought for the welfare of feeble old wizards, worn out from saving the world for a few thousand years.…”
“Oh, belt up! The only thing worse than a gushing gossip is a puffed-up wizard! You’ve already eaten half the sandwiches, and they’re not even here yet!”
“ ’Twas the least I could do, lad,” Elminster replied in hurt tones, “after ye went to all that trouble, trimming off the crusts.”
Lhaeo’s head rose into view through the glass-toothed window frame. “And that’s another thing! Off you go to another of these ‘other worlds,’ and pick up another utterly crazed idea! Cutting my perfectly good egg-glazed crust off bread sliced so thin I can spit through it! What idiotic sort of folk do that? I—”
“Could spit through it, as a mere supposition, I hope,” Elminster said reprovingly, one eyebrow lifting.
“Could and did,” Lhaeo told him. “I had to try it, once I thought of it.”
Elminster emitted a sort of incredulous “eep,” and looked down at the neat piles of crustless sandwiches on the plates before him.
Lhaeo gave him a disgusted look. “You don’t mess about much in kitchens, do you?”
At that moment a fat-bellied copper frog statuette on a nearby shelf opened one eye and its mouth, cleared its throat, and said in flat tones: “Bong.”
Lhaeo groaned. “They’re here.” He waved a hand wildly, murmured something—and all the glass in the room rose back into place in a smooth, glittering swirl.
Elminster raised a sardonic brow. “Getting a little showy now, for the ladies?”
The window made a very rude sound in reply.
Elminster ignored it. Lifting two fingers in a swift little gesture, he said to the empty air. “Pray enter and be welcome, ladies fair. Let my humble home be a refuge to thee, however unworthy its accoutrements. As ye walk about my home, I bid ye remember only this: If ye don’t touch it, it can’t hurt ye. Tea is served in the room whose door is now glowing blue.”
Blue mists roiled for a moment at the far end of the chamber. The door there swung wide.
Something large and lace-trimmed and seemingly triple-bosomed sailed in through the mists before Elminster could finish putting a kindly smile on his face. “Oh, so YOU are the GREAT Elmin-STAH! SUCH an honor, SUCH a rare joy to meet you! My friends back in Selgaunt will be SO jealous! A REAL live archWIZARD, sitting in his own parlor with all his books and funny hats and skulls and JARS of frogs and … oh, well, yes, it’s SO exciting! ISN’T it, girls?”
There was an obedient chorus of “Yes, great lady” from the doorway, but Great Lady Calabrista wasn’t waiting to hear it.
“I want you to know, sirrah, that we have come SUCH a long way just to see YOU, and that I’ve chosen only the FINEST of my young ladies! I’d not DREAM of wasting your time on any
thing but the BEST! Oh, yes, I think you’ll be HIGHLY satisfied at the sort of young lady my little school produces—if I DO say so, myself! Girls? GIRLS! Dally not at the doorway, but come in, come in, so the GREAT Elminster can see you!”
The teacup in front of Elminster muttered, “Sounds like a slaver I once heard in Tharsult.” The voice sounded suspiciously like a tiny, tinny replica of Lhaeo’s.
Elminster smiled and said, “GREAT Lady Calabrista, ye must be SO hungry after such a LONG, ARDUOUS journey!”
The teacup sputtered, but Elminster ignored it. “PRAY enter in and sit in my BEST chair, and partake of these SUCCULENT sandwiches and a little light berry cordial.… Thy young ladies, too, I’m sure, would not take such fare amiss.…”
Before he finished speaking, the owner of the high-prowed gown and helm-high hairdo had whisked herself into the pink silk cushions of a gilded high-back lounge. It had been a rotting mushroom in the forest out by Harper’s Hill only that morning. She swept sandwiches onto a silver self-platter faster than raindrops fly to earth. A dainty decanter of cordial floated gently off a shelf to fill a fluted glass at the Great Lady Calabrista’s elbow, causing her to emit a surprised little titter.
Four young and silken-gowned beauties drifted into the room, making hand-courtesies as they came. They ranged themselves before the four empty chairs farthest from their tutor. Their beauty was as gilded as fine court furniture, but at least two of their smiles held a touch too much superior sneer. All of them affected slight boredom and languid ease. All of them would soon catch cold in the gowns they had chosen to impress. Watching pearls glisten, slippers glide, and pendulous gem-cluster earrings sway and dangle, Elminster was beginning to be reminded of Tharsult too.
“Come along, come closer, girls! DON’T be shy; great men have no time for shy little girls! Sirrah Elminster, these sandwiches are QUITE the most EXQUISITE morsels that have passed these my lips in weeks! Why, whatever are they made of?”
“Snail, Great Lady,” Elminster said with the sweetest of smiles. “Laced with a green paste made from only the largest tree-slugs of the forest around us, garnished with pepper and lemon-squeezings, of course.”