The Herald

by Ed Greenwood

  He gave his own ward shield a slicing edge of pure force, and slashed the undead guardian with it, as if it was a great drover’s whip.

  Causing the baelnorn to waver, leaking blue fire in all directions and reeling back—right into Mattick’s flames of the sun spell, that made its undeath burn like a pyre.

  It blazed up with a sudden roar, and was gone before the two princes could draw another breath.

  Mattick and Vattick regarded each other sourly over the last wisps of the vanishing baelnorn. They were both bruised, cut, and bleeding, their contempt for elves gone and anger in its place.

  “You look like an arcanist who’s just won his first spell duel by sheer luck,” Mattick panted.

  Vattick nodded grimly, and spent some of the elven magic they’d drained on a healing that left him gasping, trembling, and leaking blue fire from his dozens of cuts—but standing straighter and freed from pain when it was done.

  Mattick did the same thing. Then they both looked back at the sprawled corpse of the last arcanist, with his shattered hands dangling from his splintered wrists, shrugged in unison, and turned to the now-unguarded doors of House Alavalae. Two rampant pegasi faced each other, wings and hooves raised, but neither of the twin princes was in the mood to appreciate skilled elven sculpting.

  They each flung out a hand and sent blasting blue fire at the doors. The stone shuddered, wavered, and swung open a trifle.

  Vattick sidestepped as he advanced, and sent another spell against the now-exposed lip of one of the doors, driving it fully open with a heavy grinding rumble.

  Revealing a line—no, a wall—of blue fire in the dim interior of the crypt. Literally heaps of magic.

  “Ah,” Mattick purred, striding eagerly forward, “that’s more like it.”

  Vattick hastened too. Only for the blue fire to fall away like a cascade of spilled water, revealing the grim-faced Coronal of Myth Drannor flanked by a quartet of elf mages.

  Without wasting a word on greeting, parley, or challenge, they all hurled ravening spells into the faces of the twin princes of Shade.

  The purple-eyed face hanging in the darkness was almost as large as the wall Telamont could no longer see behind it, and was wreathed in restlessly whipping and coiling black tresses like the tentacles of the giant octopi sometimes called “the Devourers of the Deeps.” Shar’s choice to give that face the features of one of Telamont’s first loves, dead and gone centuries ago, was merely her usual cruelty; that she’d chosen to manifest in person to speak to him rather than her usual mindspeech in his head was a measure of her fury. Even her nimbus of awful darkness wasn’t as bone chilling as usual, thanks to the warmth of her anger.

  “Both of your agents have failed,” the goddess told her servant coldly. “For all their training, they accomplished little. So now, amuse me: try to justify your failure in Candlekeep.”

  “I cannot justify, Mistress of the Night,” Telamont said swiftly, “but I can explain. Even without Maerandor, our agents among the Avowed could, I believe, have accomplished what we intended and overcome our enemies among the monks, had not an unforeseen power moved against us.”

  “The meddler Elminster was not unforeseen,” Shar snapped. “He is always present, at nigh every great play of power in Toril, outside of Thay, these last four centuries. Such is the chaos he wreaks that I never send servitors directly against him, for time and again he furthers discord, and visits loss, despair, and destruction on many, better than those sworn to me. Prate not to me of Elminster.”

  Telamont Tanthul dared to raise his voice to his goddess. “I did not presume to blame Elminster, and do not. By ‘unforeseen power,’ I meant the one called Larloch. The Last Chosen of Mystryl.”

  “Who has never deserved that title, but let it pass. Why did you not foresee his involvement? I expected it.”

  “I, too, anticipated that he would take a hand—but I foresaw that he’d work through his servitor liches, to seize what books and items of magic could be stolen amid the chaos, as he’s reported to have often done in the past. I had no idea he’d try to seize the power of the wards of Candlekeep for his own, to share the folly of the most crazed arcanists of Netheril and try to make himself into a god!”

  “The wards of Candlekeep might make a toad or a pixie a guardian demigod of Candlekeep, but no more.”

  Telamont shook his head. “Larloch goes now to Myth Drannor, or is there already, seeking to snatch its mythal. With that much power, he seeks to remake the Weave and root it in himself, and so ascend.”

  “That, I did not foresee,” Shar admitted, her words rolling across the room as if from a great distance. “So, Telamont Tanthul, your fear tells me you believe he can achieve this. That he is likely to achieve this.”

  Telamont started to pace, cursing softly under his breath without thinking, though his every oath was an insult barbed against Shar. The coldness around him seemed somehow amused as his profanity faltered, then quickly gave way to an admission.

  “The archlich has always been stronger in the Art than I am— possibly stronger than all the massed arcanists of this city, even without the liches who serve him. Goading him out of his seclusion and researches by the bold actions we’ve taken was always a risk … which we’re now facing.”

  “You don’t seem to relish the coming confrontation, High Prince of Thultanthar.”

  “No,” Telamont whispered fiercely, turning away.

  Not that it was possible to turn his back on the Mistress of the Night, in a chamber filled with her dark presence.

  What do you seek to run from, Telamont Tanthul? Her whisper was far louder and more terrible than his, seeming to sigh through his head like a tidal wave racing across hard-day’s ride after hard-day’s ride of unprotected fields.

  “Goddess,” the ruler of the Shadovar mumbled miserably, “I am afraid of Larloch.”

  “Fear is the lash, the goad,” Shar told him, as gently as any mother. “Freeze and cower not when it descends on you, but embrace it, and know me more closely, and use the fear you feel to spur you to greater service.”

  Telamont winced, nodding but still hunched, his teeth set.

  “Show me your mettle, High Prince. Show me why I should still rely on you to serve me.”

  The clear warning in those last words took Telamont by the throat and shook him out of his dark fear.

  He straightened, flung out an arm as if he could dash down mountains with it, and snapped, “Your intentions are not thwarted by the archlich, Divine One. If I can drain the mythal before Larloch can, it should be power enough to raise the Shadow Weave.”

  “It should,” Shar agreed, her approval an arm of warm darkness that seemed to wrap around his shoulders amid silent thunder.

  “See that you succeed,” she added, drawing away again.

  “H-have you any instructions?” Telamont asked quickly, sensing Shar’s presence receding.

  “No one is unexpendable, Telamont, son of Harathroven,” the goddess warned softly, as if from a great distance.

  And with that, she was gone, leaving the Most High of Thultanthar standing alone in empty darkness, sweating and pale.

  “This—this is utter chaos!” a Moonstar protested, white faced in revulsion. Amid the trees, the smoke of countless fires drifted, some of them reeking pyres of the dead. Bodies were heaped and strewn everywhere, swarming flies buzzed, and from all sides arose the clangor, shouts, and shrieks of battle.

  “Do as yon elves are doing,” Dove commanded over her shoulder, as she strode toward the nearest skirmish, sword drawn. “Slay all non-elves you see attacking elves, or advancing to the heart of Myth Drannor.”

  “Yes,” another Moonstar agreed, espying a good blade among the fallen and snatching it up to heft and swing experimentally, “but who are all these warriors? Whence came they here?”

  “From all over Sembia, and Inner Sea ports where the Shadovar sent ships and recruiters,” Dove replied. “It seems the Thultanthans never foresaw their command o
f the siege of Myth Drannor could slip from ‘absolute,’ and so gave their hirelings no battle cries to shout to keep friendly steel from butchering allies.”

  “So this siege has become an utter confusion of scattered skirmishes,” a third Moonstar said disgustedly. “Yet the hireswords seem endless.”

  “Seem endless,” Dove replied. “Ever planted seedlings? No tossing and walking on; you must root and tamp every one, one after another, until the task is done. The hewing of mercenaries must be like that for us, if this siege is to be broken. One after another, and just keep at it until the task is done. If—”

  She was interrupted by a ragged shout, as a dozen human warriors in motley armor came crashing hastily through saplings and dead leaves, waving swords and spears and axes.

  “Let’s start with these handy targets,” Dove added cheerfully, and strode to meet them, dagger in one hand and long and ready blade in the other.

  Moonstars hesitated—but Dove waded cheerfully into the fray, one woman alone against the dozen. Steel clanged on steel; she danced and ducked and sprang like a festival tumbler, and it was mercenaries who fell, not the lone woman darting about in their midst. “Surrender and be spared,” she chanted in their faces as she parried hard enough that sparks flew, and dealt death. “Surrender and be spared!”

  The last few mercenaries fled from her, crashing wildly through the forest, but the din of their flight was drowned out by the arrival of more of the besieging army, from two directions through the trees—hundreds of them.

  They came on at a trot, flooding through the saplings, swarming up and around Dove, who never faltered in her demands that they surrender, though they closed in around her, thrusting and hacking viciously. Several Moonstars rushed to her aid, charging determinedly through all the offered steel, but others yelled, “Fall back!” or just hastened away.

  More warriors came through the trees, scores of them, and it wasn’t long before a Moonstar fell. And then another.

  Even Dove was being driven back by the sheer force of new arrivals, charging in to try to get at her, their rush shoving back the forefront of the bloody fray.

  A high, clear horncall rang out through the trees, and suddenly there were elves darting in among the mercenaries, their long swords gleaming.

  A Moonstar reared up, transfixed by two mercenary blades, shrieking in agony—and right beside him, as he crashed down in his last fall, choking on his own blood, an elf charge swept away most of the Shadovar forces surrounding Dove and the handful of Moonstars standing with her.

  And came at Dove and those Moonstars with the same slaying ferocity that they’d shown to the besiegers.

  Dove thrust them away with a swift spell, shouting, “Can you not tell friend from foe?”

  Whatever reply the elves she was facing might have tried to make was lost in another horncall, this one three notes winded at once.

  The signal for a retreat.

  In an instant, the elves fell back again, running back into the trees. After a wavering moment, the besiegers let out a ragged chorus of yells and went after them.

  Leaving Dove and her Moonstars behind, forgotten.

  She peered through the trees, grimacing. The elves were surrendering more and more of their city.

  Given what she knew of their pride, their ranks must have been thinned indeed, worn down in this siege, for this to happen.

  “Well?” one of the Moonstars asked, looking to her.

  “Aye, what now?” asked another, wiping at blood that was streaming down the side of his face. “Where shall we throw our lives away?”

  Dove snorted like a horse in dismissal of his words, but had no others to give him.

  “So pass two princes of Thultanthar,” the Coronal of Myth Drannor said bitterly. “Would that they had kept to their own city and their own Art, and left ours alone. What they’ve destroyed can never be replaced … like so much of what all Tel’Quess have lost, these last few centuries.”

  She turned away from the smoking ashes of what had been Mattick and Vattick Tanthul, and signaled wordlessly to one of the high mages. He bowed and obeyed, beginning to cast an intricate spell over the remains of their fallen foes that would ensure no one successfully brought them back to life or unlife.

  His three fellow mages turned to obey commands she’d given earlier, resealing the crypt of House Alavalae.

  Ilsevele Miritar, the Coronal of Myth Drannor, watched them, and sighed. How long would it be before the next tomb robbers came down this passage, bent on taking what they could and destroying all that was left of a proud elf family?

  They had won this battle, but it didn’t feel like any sort of victory.

  The mages all looked to her, their castings done.

  “Come,” she commanded softly, and led the way along the passage. There was another crypt, around two bends of the way ahead, and these plunderers might have sent others …

  They found its doors intact, but the door warden of House Felaeraun was a flickering blue flame in the passage before them, weeping inconsolably.

  “Gone!” was all they could get out of the baelnorn. “Gone!”

  At a gesture from their coronal, two of the high mages unsealed the doors with careful spells, working gently—and just as gently, opened the doors wide.

  Into still darkness.

  The last resting place of House Felaeraun had been drained from within. All of its honored dead were now dust, their magic gone.

  CHAPTER 16

  Slain Qualms and Worse

  I HAVE AN IDEA,” ELMINSTER ANNOUNCED SUDDENLY.

  “Of course you do,” the Srinshee, Alustriel, and Laeral all replied in unintentional unison—something that startled them into gales of laughter.

  El overrode them all with a firm, “Heed me!” And then added, “For I’ll be needing aid—mind-steadying—from all of ye.”

  “El,” Laeral told him crisply, “you’ve needed that for years.”

  That brought a chuckle from the man himself, amid fresh mirth from the others, but then he said, “I’ve magically bound more than a few beings over the years. Some, I’m thinking, could wreak much havoc among the armies of Thultanthar gathered here.”

  “And against the battered few Tel’Quess still fighting for our city,” the Srinshee said sharply.

  “Only if they break through all the massed mercenaries I’m thinking of putting them right into the midst of.”

  “What sort of bound beings?” Alustriel asked suspiciously.

  “Dracoliches, dragons, beholders, and the like. Usually I thrust them into stasis, where they’ve been caught ever since, but in a few cases I bound them to a particular place, so they could no longer wander and maraud at will.”

  “Dragons … beholders,” the Srinshee murmured, shaking her head. “And this will help my people how? By sending them to their graves all the sooner?”

  “If you help me transform the bindings I’ve laid on them into prohibitions to keep them from translocating or flying,” El explained, “we’ll keep most of them ground ridden. Beholders dragging themselves along, dragons and dracoliches stalking like cats—they’ll be caught in the thick of well-armed hireswords who can hit back, and hit hard. Lots of hireswords. The armies far too numerous for the Tel’Quess of Myth Drannor to stand against. Think of these beasts as our army.”

  Laeral winced. “I have some ethical qualms … convince me, El.”

  “I bind nothing and no one lightly. These bound creatures are all menaces—and if I fall in battle, they’ll all be loosed anyway, wherever they are on Toril, without heralding nor any watch over where they go and what they do. Which will undoubtedly be to slaughter and despoil and devour. Why not have that havoc be visited on warriors who’ve taken coin to do butchery on others, in a forest-locked city far from what any of them hold dear, whose inhabitants have threatened them not at all? Let them earn their blood-coins for once. And if all this should thin the ranks of mercenaries, so be it. Better they fall, and all lands be some
what the safer for the lack of so cheap and plentiful means of making war, than Myth Drannor fall and Shar or Larloch or something worse prevail, the Weave crash, and a new Spellplague or worse race like wildfire across the world, and countless beings be plunged into fear and misery and lives of desperate savagery, fighting every day just to stay alive in the face of—”

  “Enough,” Laeral said firmly. “You’ve slain my qualms, not to mention any more qualms I may entertain for the next season or so. Let’s be loosing your beasts—only with precision.”

  “Of course,” Elminster agreed. “That is what I need the three of ye to help with. I need ye to steady and guide me, so we translocate each beast to the best spot at the right time.”

  “Though every moment we spend means more of my people fall,” the Srinshee said firmly, “we are going to begin by taking time enough to swiftly survey the strength of the foe, and just where they’re scattered. Fortunately, this was a survey I was already undertaking when you arrived. Sit down, all of you.”

  “I—”

  “Sit down. Or lie down; whatever brings most ease. Linking hands, all of us, in a ring. Attune to me.”

  Both Alustriel and Laeral opened their mouths as if to protest, then nodded, sat, and reached out for Elminster— who was grinning at the Srinshee’s sudden fire—and for the Srinshee herself.

  It took a moment for their minds to mesh, four so spirited and long-lived individuals, but when the inevitable tugging and surging subsided into a comfortable union, their linked minds flashed out to several pairs of small, darting forest birds, and rode their tiny minds and all-seeing eyes through the trees, sweeping over the Shadovar army ringing Myth Drannor. Everywhere within the city, there were skirmishes and fires and rushing armed bands … but not far off, there were thousands of mercenaries encamped, or waiting orders to advance into the city.