Elminster in Myth Drannor Read online

  Symrustar stared at her cousin. “And where, ’Ranthae, would the fun be in that?”

  Amaranthae shook her head, smiling. “Of course. Let prudence never get in the way of fun!”

  Symrustar smiled. “Of course.” She reached for the speaking-chimes. “More dawnberry cordial, coz?”

  Amaranthae gave her an answering smile and reclined against the leafy boughs that ringed their bower. “And why not? Hurl all spells behind us, and soar howling into the moon!”

  “A fitting sentiment,” Symrustar agreed, stretching her magnificent body, “considering my plans for this human, ‘Elminster.’ Yes, I’ll see to it that humans have their uses.” Extending her empty cordial glass in her toes, she struck the speaking chimes with it.

  As their gentle chord resounded, Amaranthae Auglamyr shuddered at the cold, careless pleasure in her cousin’s voice. It sounded somehow hungry.

  “I’d not be in the boots of this human, no matter how mighty a sorcerer he may be,” Taeglyn murmured from below, where he was sorting the gems carefully on velvet with the aid of a magnification spell.

  “I care not a whit for this human—a beast of the fields, after all,” Delmuth growled, “but it’s the boots of the Coronal I’ll want to see filled by a new owner, after I do what I must.”

  “ ‘Do what you must’? But, Lord, the Lesser Flith is almost complete! It lacks but a ruby for the star Esmel, and two diamonds for the Vraelen!” The servant gestured at the glittering star map filling the domed upper half of the chamber. In response to the star names he uttered, the spell Delmuth had cast earlier awakened two precise points in the empty air into winking life.

  They flashed silently, awaiting their gems, but Delmuth Echorn was descending smoothly out of the midst of his life work, the constellations he’d modeled in gems glittering around him. “Yes, do what I must—destroy this human. If we let this go unchallenged, we’ll have them in here by the thousands, a sea of rabble around our ankles, begging or threatening us whenever we go out, and despoiling the forest as fast as they so ably know how!” His boots touched the glossy black marble floor. “Why, if they could touch the stars,” he snarled, pointing up at his miniature heavens, “we’d have found one or two missing by now!”

  Delmuth glared up at the winking points of light, which obediently went out. He handed Taeglyn his gloves, with their long, talonlike metal points, stretched like a great and supple cat of the jungles, and added, still angry, “Yes, our fair and mighty Coronal has gone mad, and none of us seem ready enough to raise our hands and voices against him. Well, I’ll take the first step, if no other Cormanthan has the stomach to. The pollution he has allowed to walk right into the very bosom of our fair Cormanthor must be eradicated.”

  Face set, he strode out of the room, smashing its double doors aside with his enchanted bracers. They boomed, splintered, and shuddered back from where they’d struck the wall, but Delmuth Echorn, striding hard, didn’t even hear them.

  A few breaths later, he was passing through the high, many-balconied front hall, his best boar sword glowing green in his hands from its many enchantments, when his uncle Neldor leaned down over a stair rail and exclaimed, “By the unseen beard of Corellon, what are you about? There’s no Hunt called for this even, and it’s still morn yet!”

  “I’m not going on a Hunt, Uncle,” Delmuth replied, without slowing or looking up. “I’m out to cleanse the realm of a human.”

  “The one named armathor by our Coronal? Lad, where are thy senses? No trumpet has cried your challenge! No charge has been delivered before the court, or to this man! Duels must be formally declared. ’Tis the law!”

  Delmuth stopped at the tall front doors to give a scrambling servant time to swing them open, and looked up and back. “I go to slay one who is vermin, not a person with any right to be treated as one of us, whatever the Coronal may say.”

  He cast the sword spinning up into the air and followed it outside; just before the doors boomed shut behind him, Neldor saw him catch the blade and set off through the mushroom garden, taking the shortest route to the hawthorn gate.

  “You’re making a mistake, lad,” he said sadly, “and taking our House with you.” But there was no one left in the forehall of Castle Echorn to hear him except the frightened servant, whose white face was raised to heed Neldor.

  Instead of ignoring him or snapping out a curt order, the eldest living elf of the blood of Echorn sadly spread his empty hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  By the doors, the servant began to cry.

  The elf in black leathers turned an exultant somersault in the air, crashed through the curtain of evercreeper leaves, and flung the sword in his hand exuberantly into the trunk of a blueleaf tree as he fell past. It struck deep and thrummed, neatly cutting an errant leaf in two on its brief journey.

  The pieces were still fluttering down when the elf sprang up through them and snatched his sword back, crying joyously, “Ho ho, a cat has certainly been set loose among all the sleepy doves at court this time!”

  “Easy, Athtar; they can probably hear you right down south by the sea.” Galan Goadulphyn was carefully arranging small heaps of glass beads on his cloak, spread out atop the stump of a shadowtop that had fallen when Cormanthor was young. Only he knew that they represented the loans paid out to a certain phantom mushroom-growing concern by several too many proud Houses of the realm. Galan was trying to work out how to pay off some of the stiffer-lipped House keymasters by borrowing more from others.

  If he couldn’t come up with a deft pattern by nightfall, it might be necessary to leave Toril for a lifetime or two. Or however long it took for elves to find spells enough to build completely different, mind- and spell-fooling identities for themselves. A gloomhunter spider wandered onto the cloak, and Galan scowled at it.

  “So? Everyone in the realm knows as much!”

  “I don’t,” Galan said, staring intently into the eyes of the spider. They looked at each other for a moment, one eye to a thousand. Then the spider decided that prudence wasn’t always only for others, and scrambled off the cloak as fast as its spindly legs could carry it. “Enlighten me.”

  Athtar drew in a deep and delighted breath. “Well, the Coronal has found a human somewhere, and brought him to court, and named him his heir and an armathor of the realm! Our next Coronal’s going to be a man!”

  “What?” Galan shook his head as if to clear it, spun away from his cloak, and snatched at his friend’s throat lacings. “Athtar Nlossae,” he snarled, shaking the leather-clad elf as if Athtar was a large and floppy doll, “kindly speak sense! Where in the name of all the bastard gods of the dwarves would the Coronal find a human? Under a rock? In his vaults? In a discarded slipper?” He let go of Athtar, who staggered back until he found a tree trunk to lean against, and took refuge there.

  Galan advanced on him, growling, “I’m engaged in something very important, Athtar, and you come to me with wild tales! The Coronal’d never dare name a human armathor even if someone brought him a hundred humans! Why, he’d have all the stiff-necked young lads and old warriors in the realm lining up to spit on their swords and throw them back at him!”

  “That’s just what they’re doing,” Athtar replied delightedly, “right now! If you stand up on yon stump and listen, Gal—like this!—you’ll—”

  “Athtar—nooo!”

  Galan’s clutching hands came down just an instant too late. Beads bounced, rolled, and flew. Breathing heavily, the tall, one-eyed elf found his hands locked around Athtar’s throat, and the leather-clad elf looking at him rather reproachfully.

  “You’re very intense these days, Gal,” Athtar said in hurt tones. “A simple ‘I find I feel deeply for you’ would’ve sufficed.”

  Galan let his hands fall. What was the use? The beads were scattered, now, save for the few that—

  There was a crunching sound under Athtar’s right boot.

  —remained on the cloak, under their feet. Galan sighed, took a deep breath, a
nd then sighed again. When he spoke again, his tone was wearily pleasant. “You came here to tell me that our next Coronal, a thousand years after they kill the both of us for our deeds and forget where our graves lie, will be a human—is that it? I’m supposed to ‘feel deeply’ about that?”

  “No, dolt! They’ll never let a human be Coronal! The realm’ll be torn apart first,” Athtar said, shaking him by one shoulder. “And with the laws swept away and every House floundering, lowskins like you and me will hold the ready blades at last!” He thrust up his sword in celebration, and laughed again.

  Galan shook his head sourly. “It’ll never get that far. It never does. Too many mages lurking about to control minds and threaten the high and mighty into obeying whatever they can’t force them into supporting. Oh, there’ll be an uproar, sure. But the realm torn apart? Over one human? Hah!” He turned away to step down off the stump, trying to shake off Athtar’s grip.

  Athtar didn’t let go. “Even so, Gal,” he said urgently, lowering his voice to underscore his excitement. “Even so! This human knows magic, they say, and the folk at court are wild with tales of how he’ll shake things up. Whatever happens to him in the end—and it’ll happen, never fear; the young blades’ll see to that—this is the best chance we’ll ever see to break the old guard’s strangehold on what’s done and not done in Cormanthor! Settle some old scores with the Starym and Echorns, if we don’t get trampled in the rush of other Houses trying to do the same thing! Who do you owe the most money to? Who are giving you the hardest time over it? Who can be put down in the forest mud where they belong, forever?”

  As the elf in leathers ran out of breath with his last query echoing back from the trees around them, Galan looked at his friend with true enthusiasm for the first time.

  “Now you’re interesting me,” he breathed, embracing Athtar. “So settle down, and get yourself some bitterroot ale; it’s over by the duskwood that’s losing its bark—there. We have to talk.”

  Elminster, aid me. The mind-cry was faint, but somehow familiar. Could it be, after all this time? It sounded like Shandathe of Hastarl, whom El had carried into the bedroom of a certain baker, to find unintended bliss, and later tested the mind powers Mystra had honed in him by eavesdropping on …

  Elminster sat up, frowning. Though it was highsun, their work together had been exhausting, and the Srinshee was asleep, floating on air across the chamber, the faint glow of her keep-warm spell eddying around her. Were the Dlardrageth ghosts playing tricks on him?

  He closed his eyes and shut out the dark chamber and the weight of his full roster of freshly memorized spells, letting all stray thought and distraction drain away, drifting down into the dark place where mind voices were wont to echo.

  Elminster? Elminster, can you hear me?

  The voice was faint and distant, yet oddly flat. Strange. He sent a single thought toward it: Where?

  After a time of echoing emptiness an image came swimming up to him, spinning slowly like a bright coin on edge. He plunged into it, and was suddenly at its glowing heart, staring into a dark, stormy scene: somewhere in Faerûn, with wind trailing across a rocky height, and treetops below. A woman was spread-eagled face down on that rock, wrists and ankles bound apart on saplings, her features hidden by the swirl of her unbound hair. It was a place he’d not seen before. The woman could be Shandathe.

  The viewpoint could not be made to move. It was time to decide.

  El shrugged; as always, there was only one decision he could make, and still be Elminster. The fool wizard.

  Smiling in bleak self-mockery at that last thought, he rose, holding firmly to the image of the peak with the bound woman—a striking trap, he’d grant its weaver that much—and crossed the room to touch the Srinshee’s teaching crystal. It could store mind images, and so show her where he’d gone. The stone flashed once, and he turned his back on its light and stepped away, calling up the spell he’d need.

  When his foot came down again, he stood on the rocky height with the cool breeze sliding past. He was in the center of a vast forest that looked suspiciously like Cormanthor. The bound woman at his feet was fading and shrinking, her form flowing like pale smoke. Of course. Elminster called up what he hoped was the best spell for the occasion, and waited for the attack he knew would come.

  In a dark chamber, a floating figure sat up and frowned at where her human charge had last stood. Some battles must be faced alone, but … so soon?

  She wondered which elven foe was so swift in calling him to battle. Once news of the Coronal’s proclaiming spread across the realm, yes, El would find no shortage of opponents, but … now?

  The Srinshee sighed, called up the spell she’d cast earlier, and gathered her will around the image of Elminster in her mind. In a few breaths’ time she’d be seeing him. Gods grant that it not be to witness his death now, before their friendship—along with the Coronal’s dream and the trail that led to the best future for Cormanthor—was truly begun.

  Without looking at her crystal, she beckoned it, and touched it when it came. The image of a rocky height amid the Cormanthan forest leaped into her mind. Druindar’s Rock, a place none but a Cormanthan was likely to choose for a moot or spell duel. The Srinshee sent her spell sight racing toward it, seeing a familiar young, hawk-nosed man standing above a bound woman, who was no bound woman at all, but a …

  The woman and the spars she’d been bound to were both flowing and dwindling. Elminster calmly stepped back from the changing magic and glanced over the edge of the rock on which he stood. It was a long, long way down on two flanks, with a prow-like point between. In the third direction rocks rose into broken, tree-cloaked ground. It was from the concealing branches of those trees that cold laughter came as the lady captive shrank at last into a long, wavy-bladed boar sword that flickered and glowed green as it rose smoothly from the ground, turned on edge, and flew toward him point first.

  Knowing what is about to kill you doesn’t always make it easier to evade the waiting death, as a philosopher—dead now—among the outlaws of Athalantar had once said.

  There was little space in which to dodge, and almost no time for El to act. This blade might be only animated by a simple spell, or it might well bear enchantments of its own. If he assumed the former and was wrong, he’d be dead. So …

  Elminster carried in his mind only one of the mighty spells known as Mystra’s unraveling, and disliked casting it so soon when he stood in danger, but—

  The blade raced at his throat, turning smoothly as he sidestepped, and following his every move as he bobbed and crouched. At the last moment he hissed the single word of the spell and made the necessary flick of his cupped hand.

  The swift-flying sword shivered and fell apart in the air in front of him. Green radiance sputtered, tumbled away, and was gone as the blade became falling flakes of rust. Dust kissed Elminster’s face as it rushed past … and then nothing at all.

  The laughter in the trees broke off abruptly, into a shout of, “Corellon aid me—human, what have you done?”

  A finely dressed, youthful elf lord with hair like white silk and eyes like two red and furious flames came leaping out of the trees with the flames of rising magic growing ever-brighter around his wrists.

  As the elf came snarling to a halt on the last rock above Elminster, almost weeping in his rage, Elminster looked up at him, used a spell echo to momentarily call up the image of the glowing green sword’s destruction, and calmly asked, “Is this elven humor, or some sort of trick question?”

  With a wild shriek of rage the elf sprang at El, flames leaping from his hands.

  NINE

  DUEL BY DAY, REVEL BY NIGHT

  Few who’ve witnessed a spell battle forget the very old saying among humans: “When mages duel, honest folk should seek hiding places far away.” Though mantles and araemyths make elven wizardly duels more a matter of anticipation and slowly unfolding complexity than human struggles, ’tis still a good idea to be at a safe distance when sorcer
ers make war. Out of the realm, for instance.

  ANTARN THE SAGE

  FROM THE HIGH HISTORY OF FAERÛNIAN ARCHMAGES

  MIGHTY

  PUBLISHED CIRCA THE YEAR OF THE STAFF

  You—you wretch!” the elf snarled, hurling fire from his hands in a web of snapping flames. “That blade was a treasure of my House! It was old when humans first learned to speak!”

  “My,” Elminster replied as his warding spell took effect, sending the flames splashing down around him in a ring, “that’s a lot of dead boars. How old did any of them live to be, I wonder?”

  “Insolent barbarian human!” the elf hissed, dancing around Elminster’s ring. His fair hair bounced about his shoulders as he went, flowing in the passing breeze as if it were the flames of a hungry fire.

  Elminster turned to keep himself facing this angry foe, and said calmly, “I tend not to be overly pleasant to those who try to slay me, but I have no real quarrel with ye, nameless elf lord. Can we not part in peace?”

  “Peace? When you’re dead, human, perhaps, and the mages of whatever godless grubbing kingdom spawned you have been compelled to replace the sacred sword you destroyed!”

  The angry elf drew back, raised both arms above his head with his hands still pointed at Elminster, and spat angry words. El murmured a single word in response and flicked his fingers, altering his warding into a shield that would send hostile magics back whence they’d come.

  A trio of racing blue bolts, each with its own nimbus of lightning encircling it, roared out of the elf’s hands and came screaming at the last prince of Athalantar. Inside his shield El crouched ready, bringing another spell to mind but not casting it.