The Herald

by Ed Greenwood

  “Die, elf bitch.” He grinned into its face. Which, though he could see right through it to the dark stones of the passage beyond, showed gasping agony, dark eyes that clung to his in desperation and … was that triumph? He twisted his sword within it, shoving the blade in even farther—and felt nothing, of course. It was but a wraith to him, only his sword could slice the baelnorn as if it was wholly alive and solid.

  With a sneer, he leaned forward until he could feel the chill of its undeath on his chin, could have thrust himself forward and kissed it if he’d wanted to.

  “Does it hurt?” he whispered, smile widening, letting it see the cruel contempt he felt. “Does it?”

  “Of course,” the guardian breathed back—and kissed him.

  The cold of that contact shocked Mattick’s breath away, and he flung himself back, lips and face seared as if with ice. He tried to curse, and found his tongue a thick and then an unfeeling thing. He slashed furiously with his sword—and found that he was holding nothing but a hilt.

  The stub of the blade was smoking, runes smoldering as they slid off steel that was no longer there, and collapsed into nothingness.

  Prince Mattick stared at it in disbelief, stumbling back. The baelnorn was a brighter and more opaque blue than before, and it was smiling at him, sadly.

  “I have descended to this,” it whispered. “Still, you intend to do worse to me, and shall. I thank you for the energies in your blade, man—and your life-force. I’m well aware you didn’t intend to yield either to me, but … I will do anything for House Velanralyn. That is my honor, and my curse.”

  Mattick flung down the hilt of his sword before the dark smoldering consuming it reached his fingers. He felt weak, sick … hollow.

  He was, he was … suddenly no longer alone, as the five surviving arcanists led by his brother boiled around the corner and charged at the baelnorn.

  Vattick stopped abruptly as he saw what had befallen his brother, ignoring the sudden flare of spells rocking the passage.

  “Kisses of Shar!” he cursed in astonishment, grabbing Mattick by his elbow and towing him back around the corner. “You’ve no lower face left! How did it do this to you?”

  Mattick shook his head helplessly, no longer able to speak. His heart was slowing, coldness was creeping across his chest, he couldn’t breathe …

  Vattick sighed, stepped back, and started casting spells.

  “This should teach you,” he began severely, between the second and the third. And then, when the sixth was done and Mattick was looking distinctly better and feeling his jaw and face wonderingly, Vattick sighed and added, “but it won’t.”

  Mattick managed a grin. “Oh, I don’t know. A few things stick, sometimes. I owe you thanks, Brother. And I am thankful, believe me. Now, let’s see to this blasted baelnorn.”

  And he strode back around the corner.

  The baelnorn had lost even more of its armor, and looked to be in pain again. The shards of one of its swords were circling it in midair, tumbling in slow leisure, but the guardian was holding its other blade high, looking more than ready to slay.

  As it had been, and rather busily, it seemed. Only two arcanists were still standing, and one of them looked to be in pain, his clothing torn and burned away and scales appearing here and there on his revealed skin, before fading away to reappear somewhere else.

  “Now that’s interesting,” Vattick told the baelnorn politely, pointing at the scales. “How did you manage that?”

  He looked at Mattick, who was wincing at the carnage and muttering, “Father is going to be less than pleased.”

  Vattick nodded—and without looking at the baelnorn, unleashed something small and blindingly bright from his hand at it.

  Mattick and the arcanists all shouted in pain and clutched at their watering eyes, dazed and blinded, but Vattick ignored them, turning to gaze hard at the writhing wisp of fading blue radiance that was the baelnorn.

  It was gone from the waist up, consumed by his sunglow magic. He watched it sigh into oblivion with satisfaction that would have been greater if he hadn’t known he had no more sunglows. And that his father had given it to him months ago in secret to use as a “last resort,” not for this.

  Oh, well …

  “Can you see yet, Brother?” he asked wearily. “Why you feel the need to spend so much time playing the stone-headed fool is beyond me, but I’m yoked to you, great lout of Thultanthar!”

  “I can see more or less,” Mattick growled. “Pretty well for a stone-headed fool, anyway.”

  “Good. Then take this mace—what’s left of Arthulniyr here certainly won’t be needing it again—and breach the crypt doors. Have fun just hammering away at them. I’ll stand ready, lest a trap or another guardian waits inside.”

  Mattick hefted the mace a few times, shook his head as if to clear it, passed a hand across his eyes as he worked a minor healing on them, and strode to the vault doors.

  The entwined phoenixes of House Velanralyn didn’t stand a chance.

  The view out of Storm’s kitchen windows into her herb garden was beautiful, even in mid-Marpenoth.

  Yet with an exasperated sigh, Amarune suddenly turned away from it, fists clenched. “I know I can walk right out that door, and down to the gate, and out into all waiting Faerûn—but I daren’t. I know not where to go, or what to do … this house is as warm and comforting as any place I’ve ever been in, yet it’s a prison for us!”

  Arclath set aside the old, thick book of recipes he’d been delving in, and hastened to wrap comforting arms around his beloved. “You want to be out there doing,” he murmured soothingly. “That’s my lady. A true however-many-greats granddaughter of Elminster.”

  “Lord Delcastle,” Rune muttered into his chest, “are you patronizing me?”

  “No! Gods, no! Your need to be out striving is a credit to you; you are a true noble, caring for the land and the folk in it, wanting to help. It’s just that … staying here, where Storm knows where to find us, and you can survive if the Old Mage should fall, is the best service you can render just now.”

  Rune arched her back and shoved on his upper arms to put distance between them, so she could lift her chin and glare at her lord. “Oh? And who made you the all-knowing sage, between two beats of my heart? Hey?”

  Arclath grinned. “There, you’re even sounding noble.”

  “Oh, go ride a unicorn’s horn!” she snarled, breaking free and striding across Storm’s kitchen. She flung out an arm to bat a bundle of dried herbs down off its beam, then stopped herself, hands like claws, only to whirl back to him and say pleadingly, “Oh, forgive me, my love! It’s just—not being part of what’s going on gnaws at me!”

  “I know,” Arclath almost whispered. “I feel that same ache.” He took her hand, as if he was going to whirl her into a dance across the smooth-worn flagstones of Storm’s farmhouse kitchen, but instead drew her close and murmured, “But I must confess it’s being overtaken swiftly by a deeper ache. Yawning hunger. Let’s make some soup.”

  “Soup? At a time like this? Is that how Cormyr was founded, and defended, and made great? By the making of soup?”

  “Doughty nobles ride into war best with full bellies,” Arclath replied brightly, giving her a wide and false smile. When he batted his eyelashes at her like a dockside lowcoin lass, Rune found herself snorting in helpless amusement.

  She wagged a reproving finger in his face. “You, my lord, are a dangerous man!”

  “But of course,” Arclath replied airily, twirling away from her into a full-flourish court bow. When he rose out of his crouch, he was holding a tureen and a large wooden spoon. “Soup?”

  Amarune put her hands on her hips, shook her head, and then smiled wryly. “Soup,” she confirmed.

  “Good. Pull some leeks and parsnips while I prime the pump.”

  Rune arched an eyebrow. “My, but lords are very good at giving orders.”

  “ ’Tis what we do best,” he replied airily. “Which really me
ans most of us are hard-galloping disasters at doing anything else, but at least I’m one of the all too few who knows so, and will admit it. You chose well.”

  “I chose—? Lord Delcastle, may I remind you—”

  “You may. Several times, and beating your points into me with yon spoon if you feel the need—after you get the leeks and parsnips.”

  Rune stopped in midretort, nodded, grinned, and went out the back door into the garden. Only to peer back through the door arch and ask warily, “You do know how to cook, yes?”

  Arclath grinned. “Wise woman. Know ye: so long as we stick to the six—no, I lie, seven—dishes I was taught, down the years, behind my mother’s back, I probably won’t kill us both.”

  “Probably,” Amarune echoed warily—and flashed him a grin before ducking out into the garden again.

  Arclath found the pump didn’t need priming, so he had the tureen full of water and the beginnings of a fire smoldering under it when his lady returned.

  “Gods, what a garden,” she murmured, joining him at the counter with its window looking out into the beanstalks. “I could learn to love it here.”

  “Storm told me generations of Harpers have stayed here, when they found the need,” Arclath told her, inspecting what she’d brought and reaching for a trimming knife.

  “You’re strangely calm, considering the doom that may soon befall all Faerûn,” Rune complained.

  Her lord shrugged. “I can’t do much, so I’m seizing this rare time of not running around swinging a sword to think. Yes, we nobles do think. Once or twice in our lives, between flagons and platters of whole roast boar.”

  For a moment, Rune’s face told him she was going to say something saucy and stinging by way of reply, but then her face changed and she asked almost humbly, “And what are you thinking about just now, my lord?”

  Arclath set down the knife, looked straight into her eyes, and replied, “When I was a child, my mother told me of a prophecy the High Herald Crescentcoat once shared with her. It impressed her so much that she wrote it down and often referred to it. I’m trying to remember it.”

  “Because?”

  “It might bear on what’s befalling right now. All I can recall of it, here and now, is the last half of it: ‘That when two cities fall together, nobles across Faerûn must and shall renew the realms they serve.’ So I find myself wondering if the prophecied time is nigh.”

  “Renew Cormyr?”

  “If it’s time. And if that be the case, and Myth Drannor is one of the cities that will fall, what’s the other?”

  Rune shrugged to indicate she hadn’t the faintest. “Elminster has shown me that prophecies are put into the minds and mouths of mortals by the gods. They are what they want mortals to believe—wishful thinking, if you will—not firm destinies that can be fully understood beforehand, and counted on. That prophecy may be so many empty words, or—”

  The front door of the kitchen swung open, and a man in worn leathers and homespun confronted them, drawn sword in hand.

  “Who are you?” he growled. “And what’re you up to?”

  “Making soup,” Arclath replied, bending to add some of Storm’s split kindling to the fire, and wincing at how damp it was. “I hope.”

  The sword leveled at him didn’t waver. “Neither of you are the Lady Storm—”

  “No,” Amarune replied calmly, “but she brought us here, and asked that we stay and await her.”

  “Oh? And what did she say might depend on your obedience?”

  Rune and Arclath blinked at their gruff interrogator … and then Rune remembered Storm’s words. “The future of the Realms,” she replied triumphantly.

  The man stared at her for a moment, then—very slowly—smiled, and his sword went down.

  “Well met,” he said. “I’m Braerogan, of Shadowdale. Next farm up. Heard your voices.”

  Arclath bowed. “I am Lord Arclath Delcastle, of Cormyr, and this is Lady Amarune Delcastle, my wife. We are … friends of the Lady Storm.”

  Braerogan lifted a bristling brow. “Lords and ladies, is it? Well, carry on. Didn’t know nobility knew how to make their own soup, but … live and learn, live and learn. Any friend of the Lady Storm is a friend to all Shadowdale. And we need friends, what with all this fighting and tumult from one end of Faerûn to the other, and portents and priests muttering about Chosen, and I don’t know what all.”

  He nodded, sheathed his sword, waved an uncertain salute in their direction, and went out, pulling the door closed behind him.

  Rune stared at it in statuelike silence for long enough that Arclath had all the parsnips washed and chopped and into the tureen and was starting on the leeks before she exploded into pacing. Across the kitchen and back, across and back, whirling hard at each turn, and growling under her breath.

  “Salt?” Arclath asked. “And share what you’re snarling?”

  His lady halted at the far end of the kitchen, hands on hips, and snapped, “We shouldn’t be cowering here, when the Realms— literally, this time, not mere bardic overblown claims—hangs on the brink of utter destruction. Why should I keep myself safe to carry on tomorrow, when there won’t be any tomorrow if Elminster, Storm, and the others fail?”

  She marched across the kitchen to fetch up against Arclath’s chest.

  “Well, Lord Delcastle? Answer me that! Why are we languishing here when every blade and spell is needed? Why?”

  “Because if they fall, you are their only hope. They can fight better knowing that, knowing you are out of harm’s way.”

  “But I’m not, Arclath, and neither are you. The two of us can’t even defend every door and window of this kitchen! We’re safe only so long as none of the Shadovar or their hirelings and beasts notice us! The moment one of them so much as looks in this direction, or happens to blunder up yon path and through that door …”

  Arclath stared at her, looking grim.

  Rune put her arms around him, drew him so close that their noses touched, and stared into his eyes. “You haven’t any answer for that, do you?” she asked softly.

  Slowly, very slowly, Arclath shook his head.

  CHAPTER 15

  Attempting the Needful

  BLUE LIGHTNING STABBED BRIEFLY OUT INTO THE PASSAGE AS THE last rubble fell away. Mattick and Vattick regarded each other across it, smiled, and when the lancing death was done, stepped through the archway with one accord, boots crunching on the rubble where Mattick had breached and shattered the crypt doors.

  House Velanralyn had died out a long time ago, by the looks of things. Corpses sighed into dust at the most delicate of touches, and Vattick swiftly gave up on trying to see what sort of dead elf was wearing or holding what—he just started snatching things of magic as fast as his brother was, and draining them.

  Briefly flaring blue glow after silent blue glow, they worked their way across the crypt. It was larger and dimmer than most, and they went to the highest, grandest biers and catafalques, one after another, leaving the lesser interments until later. The two arcanists watched uncertainly for a moment, and then one took up a guard’s stance at the shattered entrance, and the other—the one afflicted with scales migrating around his body—joining the harvesting of magic items, collecting them rather than draining them as the two Tanthuls were.

  As the draining went on, Mattick felt more powerful than ever in his life before, swollen and tingling and itching to hurl spells and blast screaming elf faces to nothingness. Then a stealthy movement seen out of the corner of his eye made him turn, in time to see the scaly arcanist slip a glowing blue ring into a belt pouch.

  A moment later, the kneeling arcanist gasped and swayed forward—as the point of Vattick’s sword burst out of his breast.

  Mattick’s brother had run the Shadovar through from behind. He twisted his blade to make the sobbing, convulsing arcanist feel more pain. Then pulled it out—and slid it back into the shade’s body at a different angle and twisted it again.

  The raw shrieks and g
urglings were impressive.

  The other arcanist came from the crypt entrance to watch, reluctant and white faced, as his scaly fellow Shadovar died slowly and horribly on Prince Vattick’s magical sword.

  When the thieving Thultanthan was still and silent at last, Vattick kicked the body off his steel, wiped the blade clean on the dead, staring face, and drawled, “I knew we’d have to make a lesson of someone. It was just a matter of who.”

  He slashed open the dead arcanist’s pouch, hooked the ring on the tip of his sword, flung it into the air, and caught and drained it, letting the dust the ring crumbled into trickle out of his palm onto the dead man’s face.

  Mattick looked at the sole surviving arcanist. The man’s face was the color of old bone, and he was swallowing repeatedly, as if something was caught in his throat.

  A curse, probably.

  “Next crypt,” Mattick ordered him briskly, and followed his words with an impish smile.

  The last arcanist shuddered and swallowed again. Hard.

  “Beloved teacher,” Elminster said gently, “we are indeed going somewhere. Up out of here, to the heart of Myth Drannor. I think ye know why.”

  The Srinshee nodded.

  “The hour of need is come,” she said sadly. “Being as some are contemplating destroying the mythal.”

  “Olue,” El asked gravely, “ye aren’t going to resist us, are ye?”

  “No. What you are attempting is needful. It tears at my heart to lose this bright city again—oh, how it hurts—but I would lose a thousand Myth Drannors if the loss could save Faerûn. We elves can go to Semberholme, or find trees elsewhere. If the dwarves can abandon all their homes and travel far and do whatever is needful to endure, so can we. So shall we. Yes, El, I’m with you.”

  “Oh, thank Mystra!” El exclaimed in relief as he rushed to her, arms flung wide.

  The Srinshee smiled, and burst into a rush of her own. They ended up in each other’s arms, and El swept the small guardian off her feet in a fierce embrace.