Realms of the Arcane a-5

by Brian M. Thomsen

  He'd be in his tower right now. Tarangar Tower, highest turret of the frowning stone fortress of Thentarna-gard, at the very heart of Grand Thentor… that way. Lying on her face on the stone, head throbbing, Aerindel wondered if she could still farsee.

  She could. It hurt-gods, it hurt! — but as the fires of agony clawed at her limbs and she whimpered and writhed on the cold stones of Mount Glimmerdown, she seemed to be flying through the night, seeking the dark sword of Tarangar Tower stabbing at the stars. There would be lights in its high window, she knew, and a darkly handsome lord working furiously to gird himself for her doombringing…

  There! Like a Thentan eagle she swooped out of the night, racing up to those lighted windows, seeking the hated face of her foe. She saw him at last, striding across a room whose tables were littered with maps. He seemed to sense her, stiffening and peering at the window. She was past, by then, winging her way around Tarangar Tower and climbing, seeing the steep roofs of Thentor-town spread out below her down narrow, lamplit cobbled streets. She soared toward the moon, willing the crown to blast apart the tower behind her.

  She saw it shattering into tiny rocks, bursting into a cloud of stones that would rain down on all of Grand Thentor, leaving behind a pit so deep that all Thentar-nagard would totter and then fall into it, sliding into oblivion shrouded in rock-dust… just as the Thentan army in Glimmerdown Pass had met its end.

  "This thing can come to pass," the voice of the crown seemed to whisper in the ear, "but it is a very great thing. Doing it will consume a life."

  "Many lives, I should think," Aerindel murmured aloud, her forehead resting on the hard stones of the mountain top.

  "The life of a being who can wield magic," the crown whispered. "A being you have touched while wearing me."

  "A deliberate sacrifice, then," the Lady of Dusklake said wearily. "Or a murder."

  "If I can get no other essence," the crown told her, "I will claim the life-force of the one who wears me."

  "So if I force you to bring down the tower," Aerindel said, 'Tarangar Tower will fall-but I'll wither and die here, on this mountaintop."

  "The tower may survive if it bears strong enough protective magics," the crown replied. "I must feed soon in any case, or shatter."

  Aerindel lay silent, cold fear slowly creeping through her. She had willingly chained herself to some evil thing that would be her doom. Picturing herself tumbling down the mountainside as a desiccated bag of skin with loose bones bouncing and rolling inside it, she forced her trembling limbs to move.

  Snarling with the effort, the Lady of Dusklake moved her arms along the uneven stone, very slowly and very painfully. She was gasping and drenched with cold sweat when at last her fingertips touched the crown.

  It tingled, but did not budge. No matter how hard she clawed and tugged at it, it seemed attached to her head. The Whispering Crown would not come off.

  She rolled over, finally, to stare despairingly at the stars. She had slain men who did not matter, and crippled herself in doing so-leaving herself and her realm helpless against their real foe. All too soon, Rammast would return. Rested, and strong, and ready to slay- and she'd be lying here, too weak to do anything… and with the crown and here to sacrifice in doing the first mighty thing he wanted of it, he would endanger all the Esmeltaran.

  She felt like crying, but Aerindel Summertyn had no tears left. Bleeding, bitten, half-shorn, and dressed only in tatters, she lacked the strength even to stand. She lay on Mount Glimmerdown and looked up at the bleakly twinkling stars, waiting for Rammast's sneering smile to come into view above her.

  Instead, the face that finally loomed up to blot out the stars was an unfamiliar one: a sharp-nosed face adorned with a long beard and blue eyes that held the wisdom of ages. It belonged to a man who wore simple, worn robes. His hands were empty, and he looked down at her with something-admiration? sympathy? cynical amusement? — flickering in his eyes.

  "Take the crown off now, Lady of Dusklake," this stranger said curtly, "before it's too late."

  Aerindel looked up at him, too weak and weary to care how she looked, or how he knew her name. "Does any mage fighting for her land and herself throw away her best weapon?" she spat wearily, wanting to be alone in her misery, wandering in the welcoming mists.

  "Aerindel, do ye want to end up as thy father did?" the stranger asked gravely.

  Aerindel felt anger kindling in her. Why did everyone in Faerun know all about the fate of Thabras Stormstaff except her?

  "Who are you?" she snapped, eyes flashing. "How is it you know of my father?"

  The bearded face bent closer; the man was kneeling beside her. "I trained him in the ways of magic, and made him what he became."

  He looked across the pass at High Glimmerdown for a moment, and then down at her again and added softly, "And so, I suppose, am responsible for his doom. I am called Elminster."

  "Elminster," she repeated huskily. Suddenly, fresh energy surged through her, and the crown whispered inside her head, Destroy this one. His magic is strong, very strong. He is a danger to us both-and his power is just what I need to smash Tarangar Tower and Rammast with it.

  "How?" she asked it, not caring if she spoke the word aloud.

  Look at him, and will forth fire, as you did to the soldiers at Dusking… and I'll strike. Keep the flow unbroken, after, so that I can draw his life-force back to us.

  Aerindel smiled, slowly, as it was done.

  Fire roared forth, and the kneeling man shuddered and flinched back-but it licked only briefly at his robes, seeming to be drawn into his eyes… eyes that darkened and seemed somehow to become larger.

  Yessss, the crown hissed in her, and she felt a warm glow of exultation.

  Elminster rose and stepped away, and Aerindel turned her head to keep him in view, as the crown had urged her to. There came a sudden, sharp pain in her head, and a shaft of pure rage from the crown that made her gasp and writhe on the stones.

  "No, cursed one!" the crown snarled, out of her trembling lips.

  Elminster ignored it, raising a hand to slice off the line of flame as if it were a strand of spiderweb. "Aerindel," he said urgently, bending near again, "take off the crown. Please."

  The crown flashed, and Aerindel felt fresh energy flowing into her. The crown urged her to do thus, and so-and she did.

  Green lightning flashed forth from her brow, to crackle hungrily up that extended arm, outlining it with writhing flames. Elminster grimaced. Clear annoyance flashed across his face for a moment as he made a brushing-away gesture.

  Astonishingly, the green lightning sprang away from him to frail away into the cool night breeze. Aerindel felt annoyance of her own-or rather, it came from the crown, along with more instructions.

  She did as she was bid, and a searing white flame burst into being, hurling the bearded man back. He staggered, shoulders shaking as the ravening white fire tore into him.

  The Lady of Dusklake suddenly found herself strong enough to stand. She scrambled up, conscious of a glow around her head. The crown flashed ever brighter. She stretched out her hands and lashed Elminster with conjured tentacles that snapped and bit at him like hungry eels with long, barbed jaws.

  "Aerindel," he cried, sounding almost in anguish, "fight against it! Obey not the crown! Tis a thing that twists its wearers to evil if allowed to command! Ye must order it, not let it enthrall ye!"

  "Die, mage, and quickly," Aerindel hissed back at him. "All this time, Rammast grows stronger, and the folk in my castle aren't even warned and awake! Die, or leave me be-get you gone!

  She lashed him with ropes of twisting fire, spun him around, and hurled him out over the chasm that had been Glimmerdown Pass.

  But he did not plummet to his death. Instead, he stood on empty air as if it were solid rock, and pointed at her. "Aerindel, I charge thee: do off the Whispering Crown-now.1"

  "Never!" Aerindel shouted at him, hurling the might of the crown at the rocks they stood upon, tearing them up in l
ong, jagged shards to hurl at the wizard.

  Elminster gave her a weary look, and murmured some words. The stony spears turned to dust in the air between them. He said something else, and made a gesture-and Aerindel felt a coldness that seemed to start at her feet and race up and out her throat.

  She could do nothing but see straight ahead now, as she quivered upright in midair, but the crown let her see everything: Elminster had transformed her into a long, thin staff of wood, such as a wizard might carry.

  Taller than the Stormstaff she was, floating and glowing with a white radiance that tore at the crown. With no head to support it, the circlet fell down the length of her, its frantic whisperings fading, and rang on the stones. Elminster snatched her away from it, strode two swift paces, and let go of her.

  The coldness drained away swiftly, and Aerindel was herself once more-standing facing him, panting in fear and fury, the ruins of her gown hanging from bared, moonlit shoulders, her once-beautiful hair a gnawed ruin. She looked older. Her skin hung in wrinkles, mottled here and there. Her eyes were sunken, and her mouth pinched, as if with great age. Even in her rage, her bosom heaving, she was stooped, hunched over with hands that had become the knob-jointed claws of a crone.

  "Go away, wizard!" she snarled, eyes like twin flames. "You've meddled more than enough! I need the crown to defend my land and… myself. Rammast shall get neither, if you'll just stand aside and let me use what Mystra sent me! It was her gift to me!"

  "Mystra gives gifts that carry choices," Elminster told her quietly, his eyes on hers. The crown glimmered on the rocks behind him. "Each one is a test. No sword is deadly until a hand wields it."

  "Bah!" Aerindel spat. "I've no time for gentle philosophy, mage! Dusklake is imperiled! Rammast gathers strength even as we stand here arguing! Get out of my way?

  Elminster bowed his head and stepped aside. "The choice must be thine," he said gravely. "So long as ye know that the glow upon yonder circlet now means it must drink the life-force of the first magic-using being to don it, or crumble away."

  Aerindel stormed forward, checked herself, shot him a look of anger, and snarled, "Such words are cheap weapons, wizard-how do I know they're true?"

  Elminster shrugged. "Ye must trust in someone else at some time; why not begin now? If I'm right and ye heed me not, yell die. If ye heed me, I make this pledge: I'll stand beside ye to defend Dusklake against this Rammast, and teach ye enough magic so that ye'll need no crown nor wizardly aid hereafter. What say ye?"

  Aerindel's eyes narrowed as she looked at him. Then her face twisted and she tossed what was left of her hair angrily. "What assurance have I that you'll keep this pledge? I don't know you-your word could be worthless!"

  Elminster shrugged. "So it might. It comes back to trust, doesn't it?"

  Aerindel waved her hand at him spurningly as she strode past. "Enough clever words, wizard! This I know, and have wielded, and can understand!" She bent and snatched up the crown.

  "Remember my warning!" the wizard called.

  It glowed at her invitingly, pulsing, its cool radiances running up her arms in what were almost caresses. The Whispering Crown gave forth a faint chiming, as of distant bells, and a feeling of warmth and reassurance. Aerindel drank it in, looked at Elminster with a silent challenge in her eyes, and raised the crown to put it on.

  "Yesss," its whispering voice was hissing as she raised it past her face. But then another voice burst from it, desperate and alone, echoing in strident despair.

  "Elminster, aid me!"

  Her father's cry was louder than before.

  Aerindel stared at the crown, hearing it snarl angrily. Under those angry growls the cries of others came faintly to her ears. Those who died wearing it. Its other victims.

  "Farewell, Father," she said, voice trembling. She turned on her heel and threw the Whispering Crown hard and high.

  Out, out over Glimmerdown Pass it flew, howling in angry despair. It spat out lightning at her as it fell- lightning that clawed at the rocks by her feet and then fell far short as the crown tumbled from view.

  The moonlight seemed brighter as Aerindel turned into the cool breeze, squinted at the wizard, and asked timidly, "Elminster?"

  The bearded man gave her a smile that lit up his face. He took her hand. "The right choice, Aerindel. Ye used yon crown for what Mystra put it into your hands for… and let it go when she wanted you to. Come, now. Mystra will protect ye; ye shall learn magic as thy father did."

  An amber light whirled up around their joined hands, to shroud them both in a whirling cloud-a cloud that flashed blue-white and faded, leaving the mountaintop bare.

  An instant later, lightning crashed down on the mountaintop, hurling what stones they did not scorch high into the air. The night crackled and glowed with the fury of that strike.

  "There's no way they could have survived that," the Lord of Grand Thentor said with satisfaction, looking up from where he stood among the tumbled rocks that now choked Glimmerdown Pass. His men were under all this, somewhere-but who needed warriors in a land where one was the only wielder of magic?

  "I wonder who that wizard was," Rammast mused aloud as he clapped his hands together and prepared to cast a flying spell, to whisk him over the rocks into Dusklake. He shrugged-well, he'd fly up over the mountaintop, just to be sure the mysterious mage was no more than ashes and memories now.

  It was a pity about Aerindel, but he had her likeness fixed in an evermirror spell, and could alter the shape of some hired wench or other to take her place. Even if word got out, there'd be none to stand against him ere Dusklake joined Grand Thentor, and he looked to richer lands to the west, like Marbrin and Drimmath. Why, he could be ruling an empire in four winters' ti-

  Amber light flared momentarily atop the mountain, high above. Frowning, Rammast peered up at it.

  Something clanged on the rocks nearby, and bounced past his foot with a metallic clang. The crown!

  His lightning must have blasted it from her head!

  Smiling, Rammast snatched it up. Gods, but it had given her power enough! With this, Rammast Tarangar would be well-nigh invincible!

  He'd call his realm Tarangara, when it stretched from the Great Water to the Inland Sea, and from the High Forest to the hot lands… Yes, by Mystr-

  He was still smiling broadly as he settled the Whispering Crown onto his head.

  "Look ye now," Elminster said gravely. One of his arms was around her shoulders. He pointed with the other, down at the tumbled stones where there had once been a pass. Down at a lone, gloating man: Rammast, Lord of Grand Thentor. He was-putting on the Whispering Crown!

  Aerindel bit her lip and tried to blink away the tears that had been falling since she'd realized what the crown had done to her. She was old, and wrinkled, her life stolen from her… and all for magic. "Mystra will protect ye." Hah.

  So Rammast would die, unless the goddess had played one last trick on her… but no. He was falling, dwindling into a dark and twisted thing, skin hanging on a skeleton that was toppling into cinnamon-hued dust… and sweet, surging energies were welling up in her, raising her, making her gasp and tremble in a rapture more intense than anything she'd ever felt before.

  Aerindel found herself sobbing, clinging to the comforting arms around her as she shuddered-and then kissing the half-seen face above her wildly, joy surging through her. Her skin was smooth and young again, her body her own!

  "Ye see," that kind voice rumbled by her ear. "These things work out. Mystra does provide. Ye have only to trust, and think clearly, and do as she guides."

  "And how will I know her directives?" the Lady of Dusklake asked, brushing hair aside from shining eyes to meet his gaze.

  Elminster pointed down again. Something gleamed amid skeletal dust, far below. Aerindel saw it only for an instant before the lightning of a spell that no mortal had cast erupted along the cliff across from where they stood, and sent a huge fall of stones rolling down to bury the Whispering Crown.

 
As the dust rose up toward them, Elminster replied solemnly, "She whispers to us always."

  "Elminster," Aerindel said with a tremulous smile, "aid me!"

  Interlude

  Wes finished reading about the Whispering Crown and turned again to the strange, slim tome he'd found behind the bookcase. Something told him to read more of it. He picked up the book and continued.

  It said that the library was originally a little less than half its current size, the northern end of the building being the oldest part. Several times over the past centuries, the monks had added extra rooms until, from the outside, the building looked like an evil baron's castle from a child's nightmare. Inside, the main book rooms and most of the reading rooms were easy enough to locate, for the library had been built around them. Not so the vaults, where many of the works were stored. They were all over the library, utilizing any spare space.

  The monks' living areas and accommodation for visiting scholars were in the southeast corner, and all the cooking was done in an outbuilding to keep the smoke and cooking odors away from the books and scrolls.

  Many rooms were set up for scribes, and each monk spent a large part of his day copying scrolls and books. It was the abbot's wish that the library hold at least three copies of each work, both to allow several scholars to peruse a work at once, and to protect the works against theft or the privations of age or fire.

  The way the library had grown over the centuries made it difficult to tell from the outside where one room started and another ended. Even from the passageways inside, it could be difficult to tell which room was on the other side of a wall. As a result, the library was a very easy place to get lost in.

  Wes put the tome aside again. It wasn't getting any more interesting, and there were still several dozen works he hadn't looked at yet. He got up from the table and began looking for something to match the story of the Whispering Crown.

  An old scroll caught his eye. He pulled it gently from its home and unrolled it. It was a map, with some roughly scrawled notes around the edges. Between the dim light and the bad writing, Wes couldn't make out the whole story, but it appeared to show the location of a treasure hoard that belonged to a dragon. Judging by the age of the scroll, Wes thought the dragon must be long dead, and the treasure probably found by some group of adventurers.