The Herald

by Ed Greenwood

  They both knew that was a lie, but his words at least made him feel better. This had not gone at all as he’d envisaged it, proud and confident that what Telamont had given him would allow him to sweep baelnorn to dust with a casual gesture, shattering their own baleful battle magics in an instant.

  His most powerful swift spells for a fray were gone, spent in a duel that was taking far too long, and this damned undead elf was still standing, still defying him, still preventing him from taking one step nearer the door it guarded—and for that matter, down the passage beyond, seeing as this oh-so-annoying Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn had decided it was guarding not just the crypt of its family, but the corridor outside the crypt doorway, from wall to root-laced wall.

  So he couldn’t even rush past it to blast other baelnorn he might catch unawares, and then return later to deal with this one. It was blocking his path like a castle portcullis. Damn it.

  “Shar take you and rend you,” Helgore muttered in the baelnorn’s direction, though latest barrier magic swirled between them like smoke, hiding it from him except for two blue eyes that blazed through the gloom at him with crimson anger flaring around their edges.

  If looks could kill … but they couldn’t. Not the gaze of this ancient undead thing, at least.

  And he would destroy it, would prevail here, if he just took care enough not to put a foot wrong …

  He’d been impatient thus far, irked and letting his rising anger fuel overly swift and reckless attacks.

  So it was more than time to try a little patience. First, another rash strike that the baelnorn would easily counter and sneer at—and in its wake, while its effects were still blossoming, three slower attacks: spell-serpents, those agonizingly slow lances of force that undulated through the air like swimming snakes toward a foe. Three, all coming at the undead elf from slightly different directions, while he kept it distracted and busy with swifter, more spectacular spells.

  Yes.

  He launched his rash strike—a spectacular spell that brought into being streamers of flaming acid, that he arced around to come at the baelnorn from all directions—and then, as the guardian’s smoky barrier lit up under the assault to become a brightly flaring chaos Nathalanorn shouldn’t be able to see through, Helgore created his three serpents, one after another in swift succession, and watched them begin their porpoise-like charges toward their target.

  Whom he had to keep very busy, so the baelnorn wouldn’t see its doom coming for it until too late.

  He hurled a swarm of magic missiles. Puny darts that the guardian’s barrier would almost certainly intercept and quell—but they were that many more twisting, racing, wheeling perils for the guardian to have to keep track of amid all the long, reaching tentacles of fiery acid homing in on it, in a tightening net that—

  The magical blast that thrust at Helgore then was as sudden and powerful as it was unexpected, a speeding helix of force that tore through the barrier and snared the nearest acid streamers as it came, clawing them into itself and bringing them along as it—

  Stabbed into Helgore’s shoulder, laying open his chin to the bone as he frantically twisted his head away to avoid losing his face and likely his life as it hurled him off his feet and away.

  Unfortunately, the far side of the passage was so close that he crashed into its unyielding stone with force enough to shake even his cocoon of warding magics.

  The raw agony of it was worse than any pain he’d ever felt in his life before, and only his wards kept him from blacking out.

  Which might mean he would manage to defend himself in the moments ahead and so cling to life, but certainly meant he felt it all. Every last raging flare of pain, as he bounced off the wall and rolled to a gasping, blood-drenched stop. His left arm hung limp and useless, his shoulder was just gone, and—

  He could collapse his innermost ward into healing force, and he had to, no matter what the danger. If he got away from the baelnorn …

  Helgore kicked feebly at the floor, trying to scoot himself away as he sat huddled and clutching his arm, rocking from side to side and moaning.

  What was the baelnorn up to, anyway? Why hadn’t it—?

  Through streaming tears, as the dissolving ward flooded through him, sending relief enough that his shuddering body began to obey him again, Helgore saw …

  That his serpents had reached the baelnorn and were searing into it, wriggling like hungry eels as they burned its undeath, boring in and up and through.

  Translucent flesh sagged, seeming to melt, the baelnorn’s mouth yawned open in a long and soundless scream, and it spent itself, falling from a thing with limbs and a head into a racing streak of glowing undeath, howling at him through its own fading barrier, racing at him in what expanded into a ghostly fanged maw fringed with many reaching taloned arms, talons that grew impossibly long—

  And then faded away against his last, feebly flickering ward, and tore it down.

  Baelnorn and ward vanished together, in small writhing snarls of nothingness that fell from him, to roll away, and fade as they rolled … across the suddenly dark and quiet stone passage.

  He was alone. The Guardian Undying was no more.

  Helgore lay there panting and staring into the darkness for what seemed a long time before he mastered the pain enough to work a restorative spell on his shoulder, sacrificing three lesser battle spells to fuel that healing.

  It was longer still before he felt whole enough again to roll cautiously over and try to get up. As far as his knees, at least, to stare around at a passage that seemed strangely unmarked for all the raging magic that had so recently been hurled around in it. It was deserted. Dark and empty, with no elves racing to see what had made all the tumult.

  And there, mockingly close to him, stood the doors of the crypt of House Nathalanorn that the baelnorn had guarded for centuries before his birth, and had fallen defending against him. Just as—if things went much better than this first bumbling assault—many other baelnorn would fall.

  Wincing, for although the pain had fled to no more than a dull ache of reminder, his restored shoulder was stiff, Helgore got to his feet. His shoulder felt … odd. As if it wasn’t truly part of him. It didn’t seem to fit, somehow.

  He shook his arm and flexed the fingers, numbness racing along them and then fading, as he studied the Nathalanorn House symbol. That entwined salamander and fish, amid a sinuous and clinging forest of ivy. At least, that’s what it looked like, and he supposed there was no one left in the world to correct him about that now.

  He had won.

  Helgore permitted himself a smile, then walked a few cautious steps back and forth in the passage to make sure his body was his own once more. It was high time to, as the arcanists who’d first tutored him had been fond of saying, “Get on with it.”

  He hadn’t much magic left, but this should suffice, right now …

  He worked a swift magic, remembering to step aside as he finished, and had the satisfaction of watching the crypt door shatter.

  The pieces, however, hung in place, hovering in midair, the broken edges glowing and pulsing with the angry blue racing glows of disturbed magic. So his way was still barred. Of course.

  Helgore snorted. Misbegotten elves!

  He spent the slightest of spells to sweep the shattered pieces of door aside, to crash down on the passage floor. Several of them slumped straight into dust.

  Leaving him facing another set of doors. An inner pair that were closed and intact and seemingly not locked. These would, of course, bear an enchantment that would slay any non-elf—or any elf not bearing the right token—touching them, to prevent tomb looting.

  So it would take another spell to … wait.

  Helgore looked back down the passage the way he’d come, and there it was: the skin of the elf he’d slain. Rippling and lifting a little as he gazed at it, like a cat or quiet dog craving attention.

  He gave the skin a wry little smile, worked a very small and simple magic—o
f the sort wizards these days called cantrips—and bent his will on it.

  Obediently, it slithered forward, flowing to the doors and climbing them like some sort of animated, rearing leaf. At his direction, it wrapped itself around the pull ring of the inner doors, turned it, and pulled.

  The doors opened in eerie silence, revealing the faint blue glow of a ward. By its light, he could see into the circular, dome-shaped crypt of the Nathalanorns.

  He could see dozens of effigies on the floor. Or, no, they were the crumbling, ancient skeletons of elves, cloaked in magic that almost hid them from swift and distant scrutiny—magic that shaped the likeness of the dead as if they were alive but lying on their backs, asleep. Intangible effigies of magic, rather than the sculpted stone that adorned the tombs of some dwarves and humans. And—ahh—what he’d come for and had begun to hope hard for, in addition to the crypt ward itself, was there as well—small areas where the blue ward glow was more intense, unmoving spots centered on swords, hunting horns, harps, gauntlets, bracers, and breastplates interred with or upon the dead. Magic items.

  Helgore looked up and down the passage again to make sure no one was approaching. Finding it as deserted and silent as before, he drew in a deep breath, settled himself into a comfortable stance, legs balanced well apart, and worked one of the longest and most intricate magics he’d ever been taught.

  He was shaking with weariness when he was done, but if this worked, that would shortly cease to be a problem.

  And so would whatever spells any baelnorn hurled his way.

  Helgore smiled and held out both hands to what he could see of the crypt, as if it was a young child he was beckoning to run into his arms.

  What stole out of the crypt was utterly silent, and slower than a child. It was more like a scent wafting through the air, inexorably drifting toward him, and up his arms—his fingers tingled as if struck by sparks, then went numb—into him.

  Yes! His weariness melted away, his hair slowly straightened to stand quivering on end, his scalp lifted and prickled, his teeth started to itch … power was sliding into him, the force captured and stored by all those enchantments now becoming his, building in him, building …

  Helgore stood silently, watching swords and harps and armor slumping to dust in the crypt as the magic left them and flowed into him, more and more of it.

  The effigies faded, the bones slumped to dust, and the walls of the tomb cracked, long jagged lines moving across the hitherto-smooth dome, as the blue light grew fainter and fainter …

  Until all of the power of House Nathalanorn was a visible blue-white line in the air, flowing into his embrace. And he was filling up, feeling the first rising discomfort as he swelled, on his way to bursting with energy—a discomfort that swiftly became pain, and that pain grew and grew …

  He was quivering, a quivering that became trembling, that fell swiftly into uncontrollable shuddering. All of his wounds were gone, healed by the blue-white fire still sliding inexorably into him, but the boon was now agony, his skin starting to glow blue-white, his eyes turning to blue-white flames.

  Blue-white fire spilled from his lips as he groaned, a long moan escaping from blue-white lips, a moan that started deep but rose slowly in pitch and urgency—

  And then it was done.

  The crypt of House Nathalanorn stood dark and empty, and Helgore Ulitlarathulm swayed and shuddered in the passageway, swollen with blue-white light that boiled and leaked out of him as he turned, lurching like a drunken man whose knees were too stiff to bend, and stalked like a zombie down the passage.

  Drunk on power, swollen to gasping pain from all the energies surging through him. Heading for the next crypt.

  It was surprisingly close to the one he’d just ravaged. This one had a device he recognized on its doors, an emblem that had been in the records that had been gathered to prepare him for his task. It was not something easily described—privately, he thought of it as the tangled collision of three harps—but Helgore knew it at first glance. It marked the crypt behind it as that of House Erembelore.

  He lurched up to the doors, but no baelnorn appeared. So he fought the pain down to a few moments of precise control—and blasted the doors to nothingness, aiming sideways so if anything more shattered, it would be the stone of the doorframe, and nothing in the crypt beyond.

  That brought out the Erembelore baelnorn, in a cold rage that Helgore was still in too much pain to indulge with high words.

  He merely sent enough energy to make himself feel far more comfortable right through the undead guardian, a roaring that consumed it before it could utter a sound.

  Helgore took five unsteady steps forward, right through the sighing, eddying, glowing dust that a moment ago had been an elf who’d spent centuries guarding his dead kin. He paused just long enough to make sure it was indeed gone, and not lurking as some sort of malicious remnant, and—fell headlong into the dim blue radiance of the last resting place of the Erembelores.

  That hadn’t been so hard, he thought dully, trying to collect his thoughts. The pain was almost all gone, and the dazedness that had almost overwhelmed him had been dashed out of him by his sudden meeting with the cold and unyielding floor.

  He rolled over, almost absently spending a little more of his seized energies to banish the bruises of his fall, and settled himself on his back, listening hard.

  There were no sounds in the passage outside, no sign that anyone had heard. All that was audible was his own breathing. Around him, the crypt was still and silent, the Erembelores sleeping the slumber from which no one awakens.

  Good.

  Now for the spell the Most High had devised just for him. Now that at last he had gained excess energy enough to fuel it, and didn’t have the more pressing need to heal himself.

  Lying on the floor, Helgore cast that magic with slow and exacting care … and just as slowly, something dark and edged in purple formed in the air above him, half seen and menacing.

  The dark outline of a sword, floating horizontally. A sword large enough for a smallish giant, nine feet long and utterly dark, with no hint of light reflected back off metal—or of metal at all.

  A Shadow Sword. Just as Telamont had crafted, and just as had formed when he’d first practiced the spell. Helgore released the stolen energy roiling in his body into it. Blue-white fire silently streamed out of him, flaring into brief tongues of flame, ere it vanished into the blade’s all-devouring darkness.

  Every moment brought relief, less pain, and the opportunity to relax. So relax he did, at last, indulging himself in a long moan of bliss.

  Then Helgore rolled over and up to his feet, feeling marvelous. He chuckled and pointed the sword—and stood watching as it drained the wards and magics of this second crypt, family treasures sighing into little heaps of ash and dust as the Shadow Sword drank all their magic, effigies fading and the bones beneath them sighing into eddying dust.

  This time, the darkness flared momentarily blue-white around its edges, seeming more solid and a trifle larger.

  Then it subsided into darkness that verged on invisibility again.

  Soon would come the time to slice at the mighty mythal above and around him with it, to sever it from most of its anchors so its energies could be drained quickly. Soon.

  But not yet. To do so now would be to alert every elf of Myth Drannor to the doom yawning before them.

  For now, the Shadow Sword would slay baelnorn and drink in more elven magic.

  Helgore went hunting more prey. Haughty elves who’d lurked down here for centuries, serenely confident in their hollow achievements and service. The world was better off without them. Was better off without any toothless posers, least of all those who lorded it over humans as inferior barbarians, uncouth and dim-witted and …

  Lip curling, Helgore stalked on. Following the passage around several scalloped curves, as the ancient way snaked around the mighty roots of age-old forest giants, to yet another double door carved with the device of an elf
House. Its baelnorn faded through the closed doors to confront him.

  Smilingly, he sketched a mocking bow.

  “Who are you?” the undead guardian asked sternly. “You are no elf, and I fear you intrude here for no good or honorable reason. What is your purpose, smirking human?”

  Helgore made no reply to this tiresome challenge, but merely willed the Shadow Sword forward. It glided down to transfix and drain the baelnorn in midspeech, destroying it before he had to lift a finger.

  Helgore didn’t bother to even look at the House carving this time. After all, what did it really matter?

  Just another tomb full of dead elves, already forgotten. The sword drank them, and Helgore smiled and headed for the next crypt, his great weapon a silent silver line rippling with shadow in his wake.

  Only to find his way barred, this time, by elves in armor. Faces furious, and hastening to form a line, swords out.

  “Foul despoiler, your life is forfeit. Go greet the gods!” one of them cried.

  “After you, elf.” Helgore sneered, dropping to one knee and letting the Shadow Sword pass over him.

  Sped by his will, it raced forward to devour.

  Living, unliving, magic; what did it matter?

  CHAPTER 10

  No Shortage of Strife

  OH,” THE MONK SIGHED, SHOULDERS SAGGING IN RELIEF. “IT’S YOU. Sorry, Chethil, I thought you were—”

  He tried to choke and sob in the same moment, and managed only a strangled eep as his eyes bulged, staring at Norun Chethil in shocked disbelief.

  Maerandor chuckled. “And you thought that the head cook of Candlekeep could only kill with what he served forth on platters, didn’t you? My, my, Wendarl, for such an old and wise man, you’re as naive as a green young lad!”

  By then, old Wendarl was sprawled at his feet, far beyond hearing jeers and witticisms, so the false cook fell silent. As was most prudent, considering that fighting had broken out in many of the rooms and passages around him. The other hitherto-hidden Shadovar agents among the monks had seen the sign he’d left, and begun murdering monks—only to encounter a few instances of suspiciously strong resistance. More than a few “monks” of the keep who seemed to have become powerful wizards and sorcerers when no one was looking.