The Herald

by Ed Greenwood

  Let the elves spend their spells and ply their swords against the mercenaries, instead of hunting him down. That’s what the Shadovar armies had been hired for, after all.

  He passed over many bodies, some of them too cooked by spells to have started to rot. Most were human, sprawled and butchered, but there were elves, too, and more of them the farther he went.

  Between two massive serpentine duskwood roots, most of the way to the hole in the forest floor he was heading for, he came upon what looked to him to be an elf knight—a splendidly armored warrior, a female. Her helm was damaged—the visor torn aside and the spear that had claimed her life still buried deep in her face, thrusting up out of it like a leaning sapling—but the rest of her was more or less intact.

  Helgore reared up and took a long, careful look at her, seeking to capture in memory her build, her hair, and the precise hue and shaping of her boots, gauntlets, and armor. Its plates overlapped here and there, and were especially graceful here and over here—and he needed all of this, every last detail, tamped down in his remembrances so as to be able to shift his snake shape into an exact likeness of her when he reached the bottom of that hole.

  Or even earlier, if the way down should prove to be a damaging plunge for a snake but climbable by a slender, armored elf.

  He slithered on, his advance scaring small, scuttling things amid the leaves into relocating elsewhere. A good thing; their presence argued against elves waiting in concealment nearby to pounce on a snake as long as any three of them.

  He reached the ragged edge of the pit, where a part of old Myth Drannor had collapsed under spells and furiously battling elves and men, to reveal older chambers and passages below. Most folk thought of dwarves, when it came to delving beneath the earth, but elves had hollowed out chambers aplenty here, and shaped and rearranged living roots as carefully as any exacting palace gardener, so as to build their city as much beneath and in the living earth as above, within trees and atop their interwoven branches.

  He could see enough to be certain this wasn’t just one large underground chamber whose ceiling had fallen in. No, there were streets of chambers down there, leading off into buried darkness. Yes, what he sought would be somewhere down there.

  Even better, the way down looked to be straightforward, and was. Roots trailed down into the gloom like half a dozen cables, and a serpent could coil around them and proceed along them with slithering ease.

  So he did that, and when down on a floor of moss-girt earth, with not a flagstone in sight, Helgore sought a corner of a room he’d seen from above, that would be sheltered from most spying gazes from both the forest above and from surrounding underground areas, and became the likeness of that elf knight.

  Rising up slender and shapely, with armor that made no sound as it moved because it was part of him.

  Helgore flung up his arms and twirled around on his toes like a dancer, to settle into the feel of this new body and how it balanced and moved.

  Better and better. His vision was his own again, and this body had a catlike grace he favored.

  He headed off down the largest of the underground passages, seeking archways surmounted by House sigils, the traditional entrances to the burial crypts of high elf Houses.

  Shouts and the clang of swords came faintly to him from behind and above, from the opening where the forest had fallen in, but down here it was strangely quiet and deserted, with no sign of mercenaries or defenders.

  Helgore walked a long way in the lilting, silent gait of his new shape, along a tunnel-like, curved-walled passage that gently wended to the left and was festooned by an intricate web of exposed roots.

  He halted in an instant when he saw movement ahead—but not quickly enough.

  The elf who came toward him was tall, imperious, and wearing a high-collared robe. No baelnorn, but a male of still-vigorous years, whose eyes and hands glowed with risen magic. He seemed to be alone.

  “Embruara of Duemethyl, what brings you here?”

  That challenge was far from friendly, but Helgore shaped his lips into a tremulous smile.

  Get close, and then …

  Rune shook her head in silent wonder at the sheer beauty before her.

  Storm had led them through a gate behind a tapestry in the back room of a toy shop in an unfashionable part of Suzail. One step past that hanging—a faded working of blue unicorns sporting with satyrs in a wooded glade—she’d been plunged into the familiar sensation of gently falling through an endless void of warm royal blue.

  Yet her next step had been here, somewhere far enough from the capital of Cormyr that the damp sea air was gone and a cool mountain breeze was in its place. A somewhere that looked out over an endless forest, as the moon rose bright and clear, bathing everything in silver.

  Under Selûne’s silvery light, beneath a sky studded with twinkling stars, the land below seemed so tranquil.

  “As pretty as the kiss of a princess,” Arclath murmured, from behind her. “And as misleading as the honeyed tongue of a dock trader.”

  “That, Lord Delcastle,” Storm agreed gently, “has been said a time or two before. In my hearing, by folk standing right here, arriving when the weather is fair. Sometimes, the winds howling over this height would freeze your heart and set your teeth to chattering before you could wax so lyrical. I’m afraid it’s more than a fair walk from here to Myth Drannor. The mythal keeps closer ways closed.”

  “Where are we, exactly?” Arclath asked, looking back over his shoulder and seeing the distant many-spired rock wall of the Thunder Peaks rising to the stars.

  “Right here,” Storm teased, and then added, “This is Downdragon Tor. Named for the dying fall of a red dragon onto this height, after a midair death struggle between two such wyrms, one summer when I was young.”

  “Four years back, or five?” Arclath replied swiftly.

  “Oh, you are a sly gallant, sirrah,” Storm reproved him fondly. “Don’t make me regret dragging you from your hearth and wine, now.”

  “So ‘sly gallant’ means base flatterer?” Amarune asked her lover archly.

  Lord Arclath Delcastle shrugged. “The words used pale before what is heard and understood, as always, ladies. Pillory me not, I but speak fond foolishness to the two greatest ladies it’s ever been my honor to escort anywhere.”

  Storm and Rune looked at each other. “Base flatterer,” they agreed in crisp unison.

  Arclath sighed. “Outnumbered and vanquished,” he declaimed mournfully. “Lead on, Lady Bard. As impressive as the view may be, I doubt a desire to tarry here is what moved you to drag me from idle luxury into sword-ready danger. ‘A fray that will probably mean your death’ was how you described it, as I recall.”

  “Yet you rose, buckled on your blade, ate a handwheel of cheese in two bites while you dragged on your boots, and came with us,” Storm reminded him.

  “ ’Twas the ‘us’ that carried me into whatever imprudence you might have commanded, not the spice of danger,” Arclath replied. “Speaking of which, lead on, Lady of the Harp.”

  Storm smiled. “Now there’s a nice name I’ve not been called before.” She looked at Rune. “You chose a well-spoken one.”

  Amarune smiled. “I chose the best. Or rather, he chose me. Rather persistently, as I recall.”

  Arclath winced. “Shall we revisit my style, or lack of it, later?”

  Storm was already heading down a narrow, winding path that clung to the weathered rock walls of the tor. In the steepest spots along it, steps had been carved out of the solid rock. They followed her down into a wild wood of rock creeper vines, old and jagged rocks, and struggling felsul and quarr trees.

  “Where are we heading? Within Myth Drannor, I mean?”

  “Dlabraddath, first.” Catching sight of Rune’s puzzled look, Storm explained, “The part of the city that was open to all races in elder days. Since the city was rebuilt, it’s been where commoners of low coin dwell, sell, and buy, keeping shops for wealthier folk to flock to. S
o its defenders won’t just be elves, and we run a lower risk of being lightning bolted on sight by the nearest high mages.”

  Arclath winced. “I’d forgotten their fervent dislike of the likes of us.”

  The woodland path they followed cut around a towering stand of duskwoods and out into the open where a small fire—lightning, probably, and no more than two seasons ago—had cleared a slope down to ashes and blackened spars that were the tusklike remnants of trees.

  They traversed that slope, and others beyond, then nine or more rolling, wooded hills, to emerge at last on a height where Storm stopped and flung out an arm.

  Amid the trees stretching out below were a few slender spires of towers, and nearer jutted up three separate keeps that looked like the turreted gate towers of Suzail.

  In a great ring around these buildings were the tents, campfires, and glittering weapons of a vast besieging army.

  “Behold,” Storm announced, in a voice that had a clear bitter edge to it, “Myth Drannor! A jewel ruined and rebuilt and ruined anew more times than it should have been. That now bids fair to fall once more. Because to some fools, a city so fair must be made to fall.”

  “I—I—am hurt!” Helgore gasped. “W-where am I, exactly?”

  “Right here, Lady Duemethyl. In the Promenade of the Fallen. A place I am charged to guard, where you should not be.”

  “Oh,” Helgore murmured, feigning injury and dazedness, swaying as he staggered nearer to the imperious elf. “Oh, dear …”

  He put one hand to his head, moaned as if in despairing pain, and felt blindly for the elf barring his way, or the nearest wall, or something solid to cling to.

  Shaking his head and murmuring wordlessly to himself, he sensed rather than saw the elf smoothly step out of the way to avoid being touched, and raise a hand festooned with rings that winked and glowed as he called on the magic within them.

  So he’d have to strike now, and this was as close as he was going to get.

  His back to the imperious elf, Helgore made the forearm and fingers of the hand that were most hidden from the guardian grow longer, and slipped the incantation of the vampiric spell Telamont had taught him into his mumblings.

  It tingled down his lengthened arm, and he spun around and lunged, willing his arm longer still.

  The guardian shouted and flung up both hands, bright magic lashing out—but the tips of Helgore’s longest two fingers brushed the recoiling elf’s elbow for an instant.

  And that was all that was needed.

  The roiling radiances of the spell lashed out, red and purple and edged with black, washing over the shouting guardian, whose shout had time only to soar in fear into a sort of startled mew before it abruptly ended.

  The guardian staggered back, and Helgore cast one swift glance down the promenade to make sure there were no witnesses. Seeing only empty darkness, he looked back at his victim, the tingling in his arm becoming a numbing explosion of silent spasms, and watched as the spell raged up the elf’s body, draining the guardian of vitality, blood, and moisture, the eyes becoming two dark pits above a vainly gasping mouth.

  The doomed elf sagged as his life-force poured into Helgore, who stood over him watching in satisfaction.

  Well, now. Drain enough elves, and one could live forever, yes?

  The guardian collapsed into a puddle on the floor, mere shriveled skin over bones.

  Helgore broke off his spell before it was entirely done in his haste to shape himself into an exact likeness of this imperious elf as Helgore had first seen him, hale and frowningly alert, before he forgot any details of the guardian’s appearance.

  He thought he’d succeeded well enough, but truncating a spell has consequences. When he turned away, the puddle on the floor stirred, tugged eerily as if connected to him by invisible cords, and then … the skin of his victim flowed away from its bones.

  Helgore looked down at it with interest, then regarded the sprawled bones. Anyone walking down the passage could hardly miss them. Which might raise an alarm and hamper him, before he was done with his work here. So these bones should go, or at least be put somewhere a trifle less in the way.

  He looked up and down the promenade, seeking handy hiding places. Every doorway along the way was set into its own alcove, and there were scores of them, a long curving row of closed stone doors graven with House sigils, each of them its own dark byway. He kicked the bones into the darkest corner of the nearest, and turned away.

  In his wake, the skin of the elf he’d just slain slithered after him like an obedient dog.

  CHAPTER 6

  Time to Loose the Prowling Beast

  WELL, LORD DELCASTLE?”

  Arclath looked his ladylove up and down. Not that it was easy in the dimness of the deep forest all around them and through the darkness that now clung to her. Her face was entirely hidden; he could just make out the gleam of her eyes through what seemed a roiling cloud of smoke.

  “I prefer to see what I want to kiss,” he told Storm. “Just to avoid broken noses and chipped teeth, you understand. Yet I won’t deny this shadowy look has a certain exotic allure.” He looked at Rune. “Tell me, does it tickle?”

  “No,” she replied with a chuckle, “and that’s a good thing, being as she’s started on you already.”

  “What, and didn’t even buy me a drink first?”

  “My, but what passes for humor among nobles is … interesting,” Storm commented darkly as she strolled around Arclath, studying him critically as her illusory darkness built around his shins like swirling smoke, and started to drift higher. “Seldom amusing, but interesting.”

  “We learn from the very best,” Arclath assured her affably. “Jesters, bards, and Elminsters.”

  Storm’s reply to that was a snort. Ere she stepped back, looked him up and down, and pronounced, “You’ll do. We look like three Shadovar arcanists showing our true selves so the motley mercenaries we’ve hired from all around the Sea of Fallen Stars and beyond will recognize us, and not put swords or crossbow bolts through us.”

  “By accident,” Arclath amended dryly.

  “By accident,” Storm agreed. “Now let’s get going. It’s a fair hike through yon army. One piece of advice, if I may: Lord Arclath Delcastle of Cormyr, try to keep your mouth shut. You don’t sound Netherese enough to fool anyone. Let me talk, as the two of you do the murmur, mumble, and ‘stare silently’ routine.”

  “By your command, Marchioness,” Arclath agreed with sardonic formality, falling into step behind Rune. Rune chuckled again.

  Ahead of them both, Storm was already striding purposefully onto the little path that led to the latrines and on down into the encampment below.

  As they passed the expected aroma, Arclath wondered for the fourscore and second time why soldiers always seemed to dig their latrines uphill from where they’d be sleeping—but keeping in mind Storm’s command, he wondered it silently. Crossing Storm was best done for very good reasons, and as seldom as possible.

  The camp was the usual confusion of men trotting in various directions all at once, laden with firewood and weapons and grimly important looks, but it was quieter than most. No officers were shouting urgent orders.

  Not that any were needed. The siege had settled into a daily grind of fighting in the trees, slowly wearing down vastly outnumbered defenders who couldn’t replenish their losses.

  The three false Shadovar walked straight through it all unchallenged, heading for the clang of sword on sword, the occasional brief flashes of spells, and the smoke drifting from where fiery spells had set trees aflame.

  Arclath set himself to wondering again. This time as to why exactly this age-old, merry woman with octopus-like living hair the hue of polished silver was taking them straight into the heart of the thickest choking smoke.

  Rune was coughing already. Storm turned, murmured something, and touched her throat, then kept right on turning until her long fingers tapped Arclath under the chin.

  He blinked. There w
as still smoke all around them, so thick it was getting hard to see, and he could smell the sharp, acrid burning in his nose—gods, up his nose—but the tickle in his throat, the searing that threatened to set him choking, was just … gone.

  “How—?” he blurted involuntarily.

  “Magic,” Storm purred in his ear. “Pray silence, Arclath. Not for all that much longer, but for now. Please.”

  Her unseen hand captured his, and a thigh that, by what was belted around it, almost certainly belonged to his Rune brushed against his. Storm led them both by the hand down a little slope, into the blinding heart of the thickest smoke.

  Arclath could see nothing of their surroundings then, not even what must have been a large, gnarled old tree trunk as he brushed—scraped—past it. The world around them was lost to view, entirely hidden in smoke.

  Storm stopped suddenly. Her arms proved as strong and immobile as iron bars, abruptly halting Arclath and Amarune as they started to walk obliviously on.

  “Down,” she murmured nigh their ears. “Sit down, then lie down, trying not to lose hold of my hand.”

  I couldn’t if I wanted to, Arclath thought ruefully, doing as she’d commanded and saying nothing. She is so much stronger than I am, this Lady Bard, I can scarce believe it. She looks in good trim, yes, thewed as well as buxom, but I do believe that if she ran to meet a galloping horse, and they crashed together, it would not be the horse that raced on unchecked. Ye gods, she has a grip like thick forged steel.

  He couldn’t see Rune, but knew she’d laid herself down on the ground on the far side of Storm, just as he’d now done.

  Abruptly, that iron grip relaxed and his hand had its freedom back, but he could feel what seemed to be a dry lapping wave flowing over his chest and arms, tracing the shape of his torso. Soft and yet firm, a manyfold caress at once reassuring and yet at the same time clearly bidding him, without a word being spoken, to remain still.

  Storm’s hair, those long silver tresses that moved like so many serpents with minds of their own.