by Ed Greenwood
Qasmult retreated, abandoning whatever spell he’d been going to cast, so that was one good result, but the Watch guards were going after Mirt and the others, with their blades out.
“Get me out of here!” That was Glenmaur in the force cage, calling to Qasmult. Who’d thus far shown no intention of freeing the Deputy Master of the Watchful Order, and looked as if his disinclination was quite likely to continue.
“Defend the Lords!” the Watch officer in charge of the patrol bellowed. “Protect them at all costs!” Then he snarled to the two Lords, “You really shouldn’t be here, Lords! Too perilous! And what happened to your, er, colleague?”
“Fell behind two blocks back,” one of the Lords told him, sounding irritated. “And slipped away—don’t know where to.”
“Well, with all respect, follow him!” The Watch officer barked. “Get you gone!”
“The Open Lord!” that was Mirt. “She’s buried here—see? We must dig her out!” When that shout failed to stop the two Watch guards trying to sword him, he disgustedly plucked up a lump of jagged stone from a shattered cornice, beaned one of them and then rushed the other as that armar hastily backed away from his toppling comrade’s sword, took the man by the throat in one large hand, and introduced the Watchguard’s head to his own upthrust knee, and then bellowed again, “Watch guards! Succor for the Open Lord! A rescue! A rescue!”
Chaos. The usual utter chaos. ’Twas always thus, probably always would be. The two Masked Lords had fallen back uncertainly, but not departed, Watch guards were listening to Mirt but doing nothing to follow his exhortations—and Qasmult was now eyeing the force cage, but was also retreating beyond the desk, to where he could put his back to an intact wall, and shoving up his sleeves to ready himself for spellcasting. As his gaze came around to Elminster again.
Aye, this one intended to destroy the Open Lord for good. Perhaps disintegrating what was left of El …
Everything was darkening now. Unable to breathe, body shattered, agony becoming utter … Elminster put all of the tattered will he could muster into pouring himself into the Weave and using it to create a wraith of himself, something that could fly threateningly at Qasmult to delay the man’s spell hurling.
Ravva’s gasp told him he’d succeeded in gathering enough of the Weave to create something rising and ghostly and visible, but everything was going dim.
He … he lacked the strength, lost in the darkening depths of this damnable pain, to … to …
The wraith wavered, started to collapse back into air like drifting smoke, and El put the last of himself into a fierce mind-shout.
It’s up to ye now, Laer, if ye can hear me. And ye, too, Lady of the Staff. I’m done.
And he gave the last of himself to the Weave.
• • •
EL! EL, HANG on! Laeral’s mind-cry thundered through the Weave, and something that might have been El seemed to wink and flash in the distance, as if turning to heed her.
Yet the wraith was falling to the rubble in front of Ravva, fading and collapsing like so much discarded emptiness.
If Elminster Aumar still existed, he was gone for now, lost and scattered. Riding the Weave as she so wanted to be.
So it was up to her. Laeral gathered all that was herself out of the swirling flows—so addictive, so enticing, so pleasurable to be a part of this endless rushing power—and plunged into the wraith, making it boil up again, rising more tangible and darker than El’s feeble effort.
Watch guards cried out in profane surprise, and the faces of Qasmult and Glenmaur tightened with fear.
I am the Open Lord of Waterdeep, Laeral mind-thundered at them all, drawing strength from the Weave to make her voice audible. Watch guards, do you DARE attack my friends, who are loyal to the Deep? Strike rather at these mages, who serve only themselves!
Qasmult was readying a spell now, fingers flashing, so Laeral flung her wraith-self at him. Shadowy arms outstretched, head darkening and shaping dragonlike, so she had jaws to gape at him, eyes starting to blaze …
A spell she did not know, slicing blades of force that crackled with lightning melted into whirling existence and raced at her, washed over and through her. All it did was impart an unpleasant tingling.
Qasmult tried flame next, face fearful—and then, out of its fierce conflagration, she was upon him, buffeting and blinding him with all the dust and debris she could whirl up, but unable to harm him more.
This!
It seemed as if a window opened in her mind then, and she was handed a memory not her own. Of calling on the Weave to twist the magic of others and drain their energies into herself. She realized Qasmult’s last two spells had vanished so swiftly in her wake because this had been done to them—and she already knew by whom. His taste was all over the memory.
El! She thought. So THIS is how you do that; why did you never teach me this?
She’d instinctively drawn away from Qasmult as the memory blossomed, not wanting him to ever have any inkling of how to work with the Weave, and the man seized the instant given him to claw out a wand.
Lightning snarled out from it and down the room, snatching a quivering Watchguard off his feet and then stabbing at a Masked Lord—where the bolt ricocheted off his enchanted helm, it forked into half a dozen crackling, clawing smaller bolts.
Careful. That thought was faint and wavering, but it was definitely Elminster.
Laeral sent him wordless, joyous affection and rushed at Qasmult again.
He gave the room lightning again, a desperate outpouring that flung Waratra against a wall and made her dance involuntarily along it, limbs quivering, toppled two Watch guards with smoke rising from them, and lit up the two Masked Lords like torches. They barely had time to shriek before they fell.
And then Laeral was upon him, burying him under Weave-flows, battering down his limbs so he could barely cling to the wand let alone aim it, shoving against his chest so he panted to draw breath …
The wand exploded.
Laeral was flung away, feeling fresh pain rip through her, and then the dissipating energies sank into the Weave and left her stronger, and she turned to face the howling Qasmult—whose hands were now ruined claws he was wringing and hunching over, face a red ruin, too—and called on the Weave carefully, not hurrying, to power a spell.
A force cage formed around the stricken wizard.
So … easy.
So dangerous, El warned weakly. Too much and ye burn the air around us, leaving it dead to magic in a trice. That is the sin, in Mystra’s regard.
So use sparingly? Laeral thought back.
Aye.
I’m going to make an exception, she told him, and turned to the rubble that buried them both.
It rose gently into the air, as Mirt and Watch guards and the others gaped, and uncovered what looked like a crumpled, shattered Laeral but was really El—or rather, the latest borrowed body El had reshaped into his own—and a smear of blood and one severed hand that was all that was left of her own body; Laeral quietly melted those remains away. Gently she floated the broken false Laeral body out and over to the desk, and then let the rubble fall again, and poured Weave energies carefully into healing and making whole.
There are limits, El warned faintly. No bringing back from death. Mystra now reserves that for herself.
Laeral nodded, intent on restoring every last ravage to this body. He’d shaped her more sleek and unblemished than she was, she judged critically.
Probably the way I looked when he last saw me unclad, rising from Khelben’s side and the bed in Blackstaff Tower …
She altered the body to match what she looked like these days, ignored the bloodstains and scorch-marks and half-destroyed garments, but took the opportunity to trim nails and clean hair because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had time to spare for such fripperies … and then drifted down into it.
That first breath was agony.
El! She thought, nettled, why did you not warn me?
/> If ye remember to expand the lungs first, he thought wryly, that first breath hurts not at all.
Bastard, she sent affectionately, and sat up.
Just two Watch guards were still standing. So were Mirt and Jalester and Dunblade and Ravva, but the two young lads looked battered. To put it politely.
Laeral sent them all healing Weave energy. It was wonderful to see them straighten as the pain left them, but Ravva went straight to Waratra’s sprawled body—and froze.
Like the two Masked Lords—who weren’t Masked Lords at all, so far as Laeral could tell—and one of the unfortunate Watch guards, Waratra was as cooked as a well-turned roast.
Ravva turned a face that held no hope to Laeral. “Lady?”
“I fear not,” Laeral replied. “Only the direct hand of a god can bring her back—and I believe I’m in enough trouble with Mystra right now that even if I pleaded, my entreaties would go unheard.”
El? She thought. Have you any idea what Cazondur is up to right now?
His reply was a mental shrug and the thought, Trace him.
Laeral turned, walked to where the floor was clear of rubble, and called up the Weave.
Only to have the empty air in front of her suddenly fill with a furious Vajra Safahr, the Blackstaff flaring with fell radiances in her hand.
“Not so fast, traitor,” she snapped. “I don’t know who you really are, but Lady Silverhand you are not. I felt her die.”
Raising the fragment of the Blackstaff over her head, she snarled, “And now, so shall you!”
• • •
IT HAD TAKEN her what seemed a soul-stripping forever to awaken the Blackstaff again. She’d thought at it and cast spells at it and daubed her blood and spittle on it, all to no avail, and finally abandoned her attempts as something she’d no more time for, just now, and turned to the powers of Blackstaff Tower itself, to scry across the city.
Where a nigh-blinding outpouring of magical power up in North Ward had riveted her attention, just in time to see lightning die away, leaving two Masked Lords of the city in full regalia dead.
So this must be the slayer of Lords they’d been seeking; as she’d felt and heard Laeral’s dying agony herself, this “Laeral” couldn’t be the real one!
She’d rushed around the Tower gathering an arsenal of magic items to gird herself with, in breathless haste, and when she’d snatched up the last one—a staff of frost she’d never thought she’d ever have cause to touch—she’d turned to find the Blackstaff floating in midair nigh her shoulder, awake and silently in rapport with her as if nothing had ever happened.
She would never understand the Art, if she lived to be three hundred and studied it hard every day …
That thought brought a feeling of silent amusement that certainly wasn’t hers. Vajra froze, heart pounding, until she realized it must be coming from … the Blackstaff.
“Mystra, thy wonders,” she whispered aloud, shaking her head.
And then she took the Blackstaff into her hand, and made the preparations for battle.
So when she teleported to that ruined building in North Ward, her magical arsenal came with her, floating in a cloud around her, linked and controlled by the Blackstaff.
Whoever this false Laeral was, she or he was formidable, and so shouldn’t be given a moment to muster magic against her.
With her denunciation still ringing in the air, a hitherto-never-used wand of magic missiles flared like a tiny star and crumbled to nothing as Vajra drained it, hurling all of its energy into a volley of streaking blue-white bolts. Reliable death to lessen, if not dispatch, an impostor—and they all hit home.
Yet “Laeral” merely smiled, standing seemingly unharmed. If anything, she seemed somehow bigger and brighter.
Not that Vajra was waiting to savor her own dismay. The staff of frost, floating above her left shoulder, flared into life and unleashed a roaring cone of frigid air at her foe.
Who smiled, waved her arms back and forth in the air like a tavern dancer, and somehow, without casting a spell that Vajra could see, though surging magic crackled in the air all around them, caught Vajra’s magic and hurled it back—not at her, but at the floating Blackstaff, as a beam of sparkling whiteness that howled its way through the air.
When it struck, the Blackstaff screamed.
The staff of frost and several of the smaller floating items of Vajra’s arsenal burst, shards flying everywhere—as Vajra tumbled in the air amid them, clutching at her head as it exploded into raw red pain that precipitated a flurry of involuntary, confused memories, one melded with another, in a meaningless and bewildering chaos.
Out of which she dragged herself with a snarl, and with clenched teeth and pounding head told the Blackstaff to awaken the staff of thunder and lightning she’d brought along, to unleash a lightning strike.
The Blackstaff shuddered. It had fallen silent after its shriek, but now let out what Vajra could only think of as a groan, and flared with brief radiance that was echoed an instant later by the staff, which spat a leaping lightning bolt.
Death that the false Laeral leaned smilingly forward to embrace, as it crackled and played around her. Then she did something with all that energy that Vajra couldn’t see or understand.
Baffled and furious, fear rising—how could this be happening? Who is this? Will she survive this battle?—Vajra called on the Blackstaff to echo her mightiest spell. A meteor swarm.
It almost deafened her. Twice. Hurling her back against the rear wall as the fiery tumult raged down the shell of Thantilvur Investments, blackening the shattered walls.
And leaving a scorched Vajra facing … an unharmed “Laeral.”
Who stood calmly facing her, with Mirt and the others standing untouched behind. That’s what she’d spun the earlier spell-energies into; some sort of shield.
Vajra’s foe calmly lifted a hand, and the Blackstaff—which had slid down the wall with Vajra, to the floor—rose and began to glow.
And Vajra found her arms couldn’t move, nor her mouth. The last of her arsenal of enchanted things from the Tower vanished from around her, and a voice said gently in the depths of her mind, Lady Vajra, have done. You mean well, but have been sorely mistaken. I am Laeral Silverhand. Please stop, before I’m forced to destroy you.
This sounded like Laeral, right enough, but still … Vajra would not soon forget that dying cry; that had been real.
And sudden ire kindled in her. She was sick of losing, of being bested, of being surprised at every turn. She was the Lady Mage of Waterdeep, hrast it, the Lady of the Staff, the Blackstaff.
She reached out with her mind and will, hot with rising anger, and called on the Blackstaff to free her, to slice away whatever power was holding her arms and mouth immobile.
The Blackstaff soared into the air, flickered with black flame, and she could move again. Vajra raced to grasp it, chased by a tiny, distant mind voice saying disgustedly, Ye learn one new trick, and now ye’re going to repeat it and repeat it and call this victory. Bah!
That was Elminster, unmistakably—but the Blackstaff was soaring into the sky, up through where the roof of the building had been. Vajra clung to it stubbornly, fighting for control of it with … this foe who wore the likeness of Laeral, who was somehow controlling the staff without having worked a spell.
Vajra, have done! That was not-Laeral, all stern and commanding.
Never! Vajra snarled back, aloud and with her mind, hot with fury now. Speak no treason to me!
Very well. I’m too busy to reason with you now, so—be gone.
And the Blackstaff raced high into the air, in a great arc, as Vajra desperately flung her arms around it to keep from losing hold and falling, a plunge that would surely be to her death from this height and wind-whistling speed.
She was sailing away over the city, hurtling to her doom, the Blackstaff utterly ignoring her attempts to slow or steer it.
“S-sorry!” Vajra managed to cry aloud, hoping she’d been wrong and it was L
aeral, after all, who might hear her and somehow relent and release the staff and let her—And even as the shout left her lips and was whirled away in her wake, control of the Blackstaff was hers again.
Oh, Mystra!
Now, if she called on it thus, to power a teleport into safe and familiar Blackstaff Tower before she crashed into anything—she was plunging down the descending side of the arc now, and some of the spires and chimneys were flashing past uncomfortably close—
Something moved, ahead of her, something large and dark and solid. It was responding somehow to the staff, and Vajra only just had time to recognize that what she was seeing was the Walking Statue known as the Great Drunkard, as it—amid a great groaning of stone and terrified screams from Gralkyn’s Tankard, the tavern in its lap, as their floor abruptly tilted and the walls around them started to crack—reached up one of its great stone hands to intercept her, before she crashed into that very, very solid stone, and the world went away, just like that.
• • •
LAERAL SIGHED, SHOOK her head, and said sadly, “Idiot. I didn’t want to have to do that.”
With almost impatient haste she let go of the barriers shielding Mirt and the others, and drew energy from the Weave to power a teleport. She had to get to the Palace now, before Cazondur had time to—
Rather than translocate her to the little private chamber she was picturing, the Weave-power rebounded and slapped her across the face, with force enough to dash her flying into an indelicate rump-first meeting with some rubble.
What, by the Mysteries of the Lady—?
The Blackstaff had left her a parting gift, it seemed. A hopefully temporary area where magic was roiling wild—an area that was all around her, and somehow clinging to her!