The Herald

by Ed Greenwood

  And then that terrible mind turned from the cowering, gibbering, or droolingly ruined arcanists to bear down on just one mind. The sentience of Telamont Tanthul, High Prince of Thultanthar. What Larloch said to the Most High of the city, he let—nay, forced—every mind in the city to hear. It was a biting rebuke.

  If you were a tenth the wielder of the Art you presume to be, you might have succeeded in this. If, that is, I decided not to prevent you.

  Larloch ended his address with a contemptuous surge of power that shattered the draining spell and left Telamont Tanthul leaking mental pain into the heads of those arcanists still conscious and sane.

  Then, the dark and awful mind was abruptly gone.

  Leaving the Most High of Thultanthar aghast, standing in a courtyard littered with ruined arcanists.

  Telamont Tanthul stared around wildly, hearing wild babblings, keening, and even doglike barking from some arcanists on their knees.

  Then he turned and ran for the doors that would lead most directly to his throne, desperate to get to it and unleash all of the magics in that chamber, to try to destroy Larloch.

  Before Larloch decided to destroy him.

  Prince Aglarel lay sprawled and senseless in front of the doors.

  Telamont kicked desperately at his son’s body, to try to shift it so he could get at least one door far enough open to slip through.

  In the courtyard behind him, some of the arcanists started to howl and bay at the sun.

  CHAPTER 19

  Descent, Destruction, and Endgame

  THE DOOR BANGED OPEN.

  Manarlume and Lelavdra whirled from their table of maps and tomes and rune tiles, hands rising to hurl dread magic.

  The arcanist Gwelt stood panting on the threshold.

  “Madness!” he gasped, “sheer madness! And the Most High is paying for it right now!”

  “What madness?” Lelavdra snapped.

  “T-the draining spell! Of hundreds of arcanists, working in concert with the High Prince, together seeking to draw the power of the elf city’s mythal to us, and so master the Weave, for the greater glory of Shar! He—”

  “Yes, yes, we’ve heard the grand and glorious plan,” Manarlume said dismissively. “Mythal down, Weave our servant, hot suppers for everyone with a snap of our fingers, new gowns whenever we turn around, yes. What ‘madness’ is involved, and High Prince Tanthul is ‘paying for it’ how, exactly?”

  “The one called Larloch—the archlich served by many liches—got to the mythal first. And blocked the shielding, sending deadly magic along it that’s felled many arcanists, mind-ruining them or worse! He’s calling himself the Shadow King, and he taunted the Most High, and said he prevented us all by himself, and could stop anything we tried. Called us fools, presumptuous fools who know nothing of real power.”

  “Oh? And how fared you against Larloch’s attack?”

  “I … I was not touched. I was there, but not part of the meshed minds of the spell.”

  Manarlume stared at the arcanist coldly. “So you played traitor, when the Most High most needed your loyalty and service.”

  “No! No, I am no traitor! I foresaw the folly and tried to warn Prince Aglarel; he told me he’d hear me out when the spell was done.”

  “So you are now the judge of folly and best policy in Thultanthar?” Manarlume flung at him, eyes flashing as she strode at him.

  Gwelt stood his ground. “No! That is to say …”

  “Gwelt, I am enraged. I am disgusted. Stand aside! I’m off to report your treachery to the Most High right now!”

  “No! No, hear me! Whatever you think of me and want to say about me, tarry for a day—please!”

  “Why?” Lelavdra asked bluntly. “Why should my sister delay on your say-so, when our city’s safeguarding and bright future are at stake?”

  “For her own safety! He suffered mind-wounding and a terrible humiliation; when last I saw him, he was kicking Prince Aglarel! Stay away from him right now, I beg you! It’s not safe!”

  “And why do you care what happens to me?” Manarlume flared.

  Tense silence fell, as they all stared at each other.

  “Well?” she snapped. Lelavdra stepped to her side, folding her arms across her chest and adding her glare to that of her sister’s.

  Gwelt flushed a deep crimson under the hard weight of their regard, and muttered, “I … I love you, Ladies Tanthul. Both of you.”

  Manarlume and Lelavdra stared at him.

  Then, slowly, they both grew the same catlike smile.

  Larloch was talking to himself. Again.

  “For a long time I contented myself with studying the Art, taking it further than any one entity had done before,” he purred, “and letting Toril attend to itself. I cared for no realm nor ruler nor cabal, and was content to be left alone. And the world grew no better, and petty tyrants meddled ever more recklessly with magic, from the dupes of Shar to those fools in Zhentil Keep and Thay, and now these arrogant returned bumblers of Thultanthar. It is time, and long past time, to intervene. Not to rule the high and the low, trying to make laws and enforce them in matters ever so petty—but to slap down the worst parasites and vandals, and let commoners and oxen alike breathe once more! A city should have a ruler pitted against guilds and street gangs and the wealthiest families—but above that, there should be no one but the gods, and their priesthoods locked ever in opposition. Let there be an end to kings. Let there be only … Larloch.”

  Elminster rolled his eyes. Alustriel and Laeral both wagged fingers at him in mock reproof.

  The Weave anchor between them hummed on, intact. A mythal anchor had been entwined around it, like a thriving vine, and when they’d trudged up to the Weave anchor, amid the moss-carpeted roots of a thriving duskwood, they’d felt the mythal anchor, and heard Larloch’s voice thrumming along it. He must be somewhere near.

  Or perhaps not. He could be anywhere else that the mythal of the city extended. Far beyond the few buildings the elves still held against the tightening ring of Shadovar besiegers.

  They could see him through the anchor, as well as hear him; a flickering, translucent, miniature image of the tall, gaunt archlich in his robes. He was gloating, head thrown back, concentration turned inward, bent on drawing the mythal’s power into himself—and as they watched, he was growing larger, and larger, and starting to glow …

  Elminster beckoned Alustriel and Laeral close. When they bent their heads to his, he whispered, “Anchor me.”

  Frowning—what was the Old Mage up to now?—they nodded and wrapped their arms around him from either side. He sat down, drawing them down with him onto the forest moss, and closed his eyes, waiting for their minds to settle into full and calm contact with his. When that happened, El called on the connection to the mythal Larloch had inadvertently shown him back in Candlekeep when the death of the Guide had wrenched him out of the monks’ minds.

  He called on that connection ever so gently, not wanting Larloch to sense him doing so.

  The mythal was flowing into the archlich’s vast, dark, and starless mind, slowly but ever faster, draining away from the City of Song.

  El didn’t try to fight that flow, nor divert it. Not yet. Not until he had need of its power. First, he called on his command of the Weave, that far greater web of magical might, wrapping himself in all the thrumming power he could stand—his body shuddering and then shaking violently in the firm grip of the sisters—and then reaching up and out with that gathered power.

  Power that stretched out like so many soft and unseen tentacles to nestle among the enchantments that knit together the stones of the flying city of Thultanthar, and held it aloft, and controlled the moisture that reached it, and governed the temperature within and around its buildings. Making those contacts into bindings, knitting them into the very fabric of all those thousandfold enchantments; turning them into so many hooks for him to pull on.

  Then, tentatively at first, and then insistently, Elminster set about pulling
the floating city of Thultanthar down out of the sky.

  Alustriel and Laeral, their faces almost touching his, stared at him in dawning awe, feeling what he was doing through their link with him.

  Then, each of them accepted what must be, and bolstered him with their will.

  And silently, through the clouds, the great floating city started to descend.

  Arclath looked up at the great dark bulk of the Netherese city, floating so large overhead. It was blotting out most of the sun, and it was getting larger.

  “It’s definitely getting lower,” he reported, and then added inevitably, “Are you sure it was wise to come here?”

  “Wise?” His lady’s eyes flashed. “Of course it wasn’t wise, Lord Delcastle!”

  Arclath winced. Uh-oh. And me without a shield.

  “It was, however,” Rune snapped, “the right thing to do! And the gods take all wisdom and prudence if riding under their banner means a life of renouncing or shirking what is right!”

  And perhaps, just perhaps, a life of longer duration.

  Arclath was careful to think that, but say no word nor hint of it. If he was going to get killed or maimed this day, let it not be by the lady he loved.

  Who was now tugging at his arm and pointing. “There! Elves, more than a dozen of them!”

  “With what looks to be several thousand mercenary warriors trying to slaughter them,” Arclath pointed out.

  “Yes, those elves!” Rune said fiercely. “We go to reinforce them!”

  “Of course we do,” Lord Delcastle replied. Lifting his chin, he hefted his sword and started running, his beloved right beside him.

  The flows of power were thunderously obvious, and Larloch looked along them at their commander.

  And saw what Elminster was doing.

  The archlich smirked, smiled broadly, then burst into laughter. “You amuse me with your strivings, petty meddler!” he told the Old Mage. “Destroy all the architecture you want! Soon you shall have a new master, and your dances will be to my command—you and every last archmage and hedge wizard, from one end of this world to the other!”

  “Oooh,” Elminster replied mildly. “Won’t that be nice?”

  The lights of Larloch’s eyes blazed up. “Man, do you mock me?”

  “Archlich, I mock everyone. Myself, most of all. It’s how I guard my heart against the flailing lashings of life. And you?”

  The archlich regarded him in still silence for an uncomfortably long time. And then sighed and said, “You do understand. I need such as you. I have all too few friends.”

  Elminster looked steadily back along the flows, into Larloch’s distant face.

  “Me too,” he said.

  The doors of the audience chamber were barred and spell-sealed, and one man sat alone on that high seat.

  All around him, things of beauty and power summoned from all over Thultanthar floated in the air, drifting in slow orbits around the throne. Staves, rods, scepters, crowns, rings, keys, wands, pairs of boots, and many smaller, odder things, from tiny pouch coffers to ornate lamp statuettes, hundreds of them were slowly circling the throne.

  And as they drifted on their unhurried journeys, they darkened and crumbled as their magic was drained from them, and the vivid and crackling blue-white auras surrounding the slumping items and becoming bright lines of force that stabbed at the arms of the throne. And as those arms shone an ominous blue beneath the clenched fingers of the man seated on the throne, and stray bolts and tendrils of unleashed force snarled up his arms, item after item became drifting black ashes … that then tumbled into powder, and in time became finer dust.

  The Most High of Thultanthar sat on his throne like a statue; stone faced, his eyes closed, patiently brooding. Letting the magic build within him.

  When all the circling items were gone, Telamont Tanthul opened his eyes. They had become two blue-white stars.

  He crooked a finger, and the air before him came alive with the bright and moving hues of a scrying scene that filled the room from wall to wall, reflecting off the polished marble.

  The air above a vast green forest was filled with crisscrossing, shifting, racing lines of bright force that formed an impossibly complex and ever changing weaving—the Weave, made visible, and beneath it …

  A panorama of a few desperate elves in shining armor, battling to protect the flickering blue upright oval of a portal on a terrace between two tall, fair, slender-towered buildings. All around them were their foes, human mercenaries in motley armor who pressed inexorably forward over their own dead, a dozen of them to replace each of their fellows who fell, a score to drag aside the limp dead to keep them from becoming walls the elves could defend.

  Myth Drannor had all but fallen—and now this.

  “No!” Telamont Tanthul spat suddenly, bringing one hand down on the arm of the throne in a fist. “Never, lich! No Tanthul shall serve the likes of you!”

  He sprang to his feet and flung his arms wide, exulting in the power now surging through him. “I shall destroy you, dead wizard!”

  The doors of the room boomed open, and magic howled through them, summoned from all over the city.

  Draining wards and craftings that should not be drained, but … there comes a time for strong measures, and it was here.

  The High Prince of Thultanthar laughed wildly as more and more power flooded into him.

  The shadow of the descending city loomed larger and larger above the dwindling section of central Myth Drannor the elves still commanded, blotting out the sunlight.

  Storm saw something flying like a vengeful arrow. It plunged into the mercenaries waiting to get at her and the rest of the surviving elves, opening a great furrow through the startled warriors. It was an elf whose sapphire-blue hair trailed behind her like a comet as she flashed through mercenaries, slicing as she went.

  All the way to Storm, where she hissed, “Get all the Tel’Quess out of here! Now!”

  And she was gone, racing away through clanging steel and more reeling, falling warriors.

  Storm felled four foes with as many vicious slashes, then turned and sprinted to the coronal.

  “Get them out!” she screamed. “Every last one of your people! Now!”

  And she lunged forward to strike down the mercenaries hacking at the coronal and at Fflar beside her, to give them both time to think. They looked at her, then up at Thultanthar darkening the sky—and started shouting orders, directing a fighting withdrawal through the portal.

  Storm whirled away from them, thrust an elbow into the thrumming magic that outlined the portal, and called on the Weave.

  It flung her through the forest in the direction she desired, over the heads of the mercenaries, to land in a corpse-strewn courtyard that the elves had yielded a day ago. Where a spell had just sent lightning lashing through the rearmost mercenaries.

  Storm ran for its source.

  Amarune Whitewave, with Lord Arclath Delcastle standing like a bodyguard in front of her, sword ready. They both gaped at her.

  “Well met!” she greeted them, still sprinting hard. “You two are as blithely disobedient as I expected you to be. What? Why the astonishment? Haven’t you ever seen a Chosen of Mystra who’s been bathing all day in blood before?”

  “Storm!” Rune’s stare was anxious. “Where are you headed?”

  “This way, and I need you both with me! Come!”

  Some of the rearmost mercenaries were turning now, and running toward them.

  Amarune and Arclath glanced at them, then back at Storm. Who spread her arms and gathered them in. “Come on!”

  More of the besiegers were running now, and the sky was growing dimmer overhead, the floating city lower and nearer.

  “Where’re we headed?” Rune gasped. “A portal?”

  “No!” Storm panted. “No magic! Want to be far away from all magic, when—”

  The flash of blinding, deep blue light from behind them came with a shock wave that lifted every last running being—not
to mention shrubs and sapling—and flung them onward.

  “Noooo!” everyone heard two voices shout, out of different directions in the empty air: Telamont Tanthul and the archlich Larloch, united in dismay.

  Yes, another voice replied fiercely, out of the heart of the light. I, the Srinshee, have made my choice, so that my people shall live. In a Realms not bound to tyrants of darkness. So whenever you smile into the fresh winds of freedom, remember me.

  In a dark corner of the exclusive upper room in the Memories of Queen Fee, the most fashionable and expensive club of the clubs that overlooked the great Promenade in Suzail, a tall and darkly handsome man suddenly stood bolt upright. His surge upset goblets and tallglasses in profusion, not to mention a side table bristling with expensively filled decanters. Nobles exclaimed in exasperated irritation.

  “Dolt!”

  “What’s got into you? Have a care, man!”

  “Such a waste! Sirrah, I’m talking to you!”

  Manshoon ignored them all. His eyes were wide, not seeing the room around him, but struggling to far scry an elf city far away across a mountain range—and failing. His magic was failing him.

  “Something’s happening,” he snapped, still struggling. “Great power—”

  As everyone stared, he cried out in pain, blue light flashed from his eyes in actual spurts of flame, and he collapsed across the table.

  Mirt deftly whisked his own drink safely out of the way, regarded the senseless man almost in his lap, and muttered, “Never liked wizards. Damned excitable idiots. Swords now, and sly tongues … with them, I know where I stand.”

  There were suddenly armed and uniformed men in the room, peering around, hands on sword hilts. A Purple Dragon patrol.

  Noble lords of Cormyr looked up from their drinks to regard the Dragons sourly. “Even here?” one of them rumbled. “Aren’t there murders you could be solving? Thieves to catch?”

  “We got a report that the wanted wizard called Manshoon was here,” the leader of the patrol snapped.