Elminster in Myth Drannor Read online

  The bolts struck, washed over his shield in a soundless fury of white light, and raced back at their source.

  The elf’s eyes widened in amazement, and he shut his eyes and grimaced as the blue bolts crashed into an invisible shield that surrounded him. Of course, thought El. Every magic-hurling Cormanthan probably wore a conjured mantle of defensive magics when he went to war.

  And this was war, El thought, as the elven lord fell back a few paces and snarled out another incantation. With an attacker who’d chosen the ground and had a defensive mantle up and ready on one hand, and the freakish and widely hated human intruder on the other. Oh, joy.

  This time the spell that came at Elminster consisted of three disembodied jaws, their long fangs snapping as they swerved and split apart to come at him from three directions. El fell flat on his stomach and raised his left hand, waiting, as the first soundless flash marked the meeting of his shield and the foremost maw.

  After the flash, it danced and staggered away, heading back for the elf lord. But the second mouth tore asunder his shield with its collision, both spell effects twisting together into a roiling blast that sent a scorching trail of angry purple flames racing along the rocks.

  The returning jaws faded away against the elf lord’s mantle at about the same time as the third raced at Elminster, gaping low to be sure of scooping him up off the rocks.

  From El’s patiently waiting hand flashed a dozen globes of light that spat tiny lightnings behind them as they went. The first blasted the jaws into golden-green nothingness, and the others shot through the spreading fire of that explosion and leaped at the elf beyond in a deadly approaching storm.

  The elf lord looked anxious for the first time, and worked a hasty spell as the spinning globes flashed toward him. He fell back a few more steps to gain time to finish his spell—and so tasted Elminster’s first trap.

  The globes that the elf’s stabbing defensive magic did not touch struck the unseen mantle and exploded in harmless, spreading sheets of light. Those the elf did strike burst apart into triple lightning bolts that stabbed rocks, trees, and the nearby elf lord with equal vigor.

  With a groan of pain the elf staggered backward, smoke rising from him.

  “Not a bad defense for a nameless elf,” Elminster observed calmly.

  His goading promptly had the effect he’d been hoping for. “No nameless one am I, human,” the elf snarled, arms folded around himself in pain, “but Delmuth Echorn, of one of the foremost Houses of Cormanthor! Heir of the Echorns am I, and my rank in your human terms would be ‘emperor’! Uncultured dog!”

  “Ye use ‘uncultured dog’ as a title?” Elminster asked innocently. “It fits ye, aye, but I must warn ye we humans haven’t come to expect such candor from elven folk. Ye may achieve unintended hilarity in thy dealings with my kind!”

  Delmuth roared in fresh fury; but then his eyes narrowed and he hissed like a snake. “You hope to overmaster me through my temper! No such fortune will I hand to you—nameless human!”

  “Elminster Aumar am I,” El replied pleasantly, “Prince of Athalant—ah, but ye won’t be interested in the titles of pig-sty human realms, will ye?”

  “Yes, precisely!” Delmuth snapped. “Er, that is: no!” His arms were acquiring flames again. Circles of fire-bursts chased each other endlessly about his wrists, betokening risen but unleashed old elven battle magic.

  So was the elf lord’s mantle gone entirely, or did it survive still? El silently bent his will to spinning another shield of his own as he waited, suspecting Delmuth would try to ruin the next visible spell his human foe cast by hurling his own spell attack into the midst of El’s casting.

  When El’s shield was complete, he acted out the casting of a false spell. Sure enough, emerald lightnings lashed at him in mid-gibberish, clawing at his shield and rebounding. Delmuth laughed tnumphantly, and El saw by the rebounding sparks that the elf’s mantle had survived, or had been renewed. He shrugged, smiled, and began his own next spell, at the same time as the fiercely smiling elf undertook his own casting.

  Unnoticed by either of them, one of the trees struck by Elminster’s lightning fell over the edge of the peak, tearing crumbling stone with it, to plunge down, down through the empty air.

  “Oh, be careful, Elminster!” the Lady Oluevaera Estelda breathed, as she sat on empty air in a dark and dusty chamber at the heart of the ghost castle of the Dlardrageth. Her eyes were seeing a distant peak and two figures striving against each other there, as their spells flashed and raged about them. The one just might be the future of Cormanthor, while the other was one of the most haughty and headstrong of its oldest, proudest Houses—and its heir to boot.

  Some would call it treachery to the People to intervene in any spell duel—but then, this was no proper duel, but a man lured into a trap by the deceit of an elf. Many more would deem one who aided any human against any elf, in any situation, a traitor to the People. And yet she would do this, if she could. The Srinshee had seen more summers by far—aye, and winters, too—than any other elf who breathed the clear air of Cormanthor today. She was one of those whose judgment would be deferred to, in any high dispute between Houses. Well, then; her judgment would have to be respected as highly in this more personal matter.

  Not that anyone but ghosts were in this shunned ruin to stop her.

  The only swift link she had with Druindar’s Rock was through Elminster himself, and it might well be fatal to him to create any distraction in his mind at the wrong moment. However, she could “ride” through him, exposing herself to the same magics he faced in the process, until he happened to let his eyes fall on some part of the surroundings that wasn’t full of erupting magic or a leaping elf lord—whereupon she could hurl herself to that spot, and materialize there.

  The spell was a powerful but simple one. The Srinshee murmured the words that released it without taking her eyes off the spell-battle, and felt herself sliding into Elminster’s mind, as if slipping into warm, tingling waters that carried her swiftly along a dark, narrow tunnel, toward a distant light.

  The light grew brighter and larger with terrifying speed, until it became a serenely beautiful face that the Srinshee knew, its long tresses stirring and writhing like restless snakes. A face whose eyes were stern as it loomed up like a vast, endless wall before her, a wall she was going to crash helplessly into …

  “Oh, Lady Goddess, not again!” The Srinshee cried, an instant before she struck those gigantic, pursed lips. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help—?”

  When the whirling world came back again, Oluevaera was staring at a dark, cobwebbed ceiling inches overheard. She was sprawled on her back on a bed of raging black flames that tickled her bare skin—her bare skin? what had become of her gown?—as if it were a thousand moving feathers, but did not burn.

  The flames seemed to be slowly sinking away from the ceiling; had she appeared through it? Wonderingly she ran her hands up and down her body. Her gown, with its amulets and spell-gems—yes, even those woven into her hair—were gone, but her body was smooth and full and young again!

  Great Corellon, Labelas, and Hanali! What had befalle—but no. Great Mystra! The human goddess had wrought this!

  She sat up abruptly, amid the descending flames. Why? In payment for aiding the young lad, or as an apology for shutting her out? Was it lasting? Or but a taunting taste of youth? She still had her spells, her memories, the—

  “So, old whore, you’ve traded your loyalty to the realm for some spell of youth the human knows! I wondered why you aided him!”

  The Srinshee turned her head to stare at the speaker, bringing her hands up to cover her breasts without thinking. She knew that cold voice, but how came it here?

  “Cormanthor knows how to treat traitors!” he snarled, and a bolt of ravening lightning crackled across the room.

  It sank into the black flames and was sucked in without a sound. The black flames hauled every last spark of the bolt from the hands of the astonished High C
ourt Mage Ilimitar. He stared at the now-youthful sorceress.

  She looked back at him with sad reproach in her eyes and spoke softly, using her old pet name for him. “So how is it, Limi, that you rise from being my pupil, and learning love for Cormanthor from my lips, to presuming to speak for all the realm as you try to slay me?”

  “Seek not to twist my will with words, witch!” Ilimitar snapped, raising a scepter to menace her. The dark flames touched the stone floor of the chamber and faded, and the Srinshee stood facing him, spreading her hands to show that she was nude and unarmed.

  He leveled the scepter without hesitation, saying coldly, “Pray to the gods for forgiveness, traitor!”

  Emerald fire raced from it as that last hurtful word left his lips; the Srinshee tuned to leap side, stumbled—it had been so long since she’d known a body that could obey swift movements—and then sprawled bruisingly on the stones as the scepter’s death roared over her.

  Her onetime pupil aimed the scepter lower, but the Srinshee had hissed the words she needed. Its fury splashed in futility along an unseen shield.

  Her mantle was up now, and she doubted all the scepters he owned could bring it down. It would be spell to spell, unless she could dissuade him. The High Court Mage she’d trained. Earynspieir might attack her, yes, he’d never been her friend. But she’d not thought Ilimitar could be so quick to do this.

  Oluevaera rose and faced the furious mage, standing no taller than his shoulder. “Why did you seek me here, Ilimitar?” she asked.

  “This tomb of traitors was always your favored spot to bring pupils to try castings, remember?” he spat at her.

  Gods, yes, she’d brought Ilimitar here to Castle Dlardrageth, twice. Tears came at the memory, and as the High Court Mage flung down his scepter and wove a spell to bring the roof down on her, he snarled, “Regretting your folly now, eh? Too late, old witch! Your treachery is clear, and you must die!”

  In reply the last Lady Estelda merely shook her head and calmly wove the magic that awakened the ancient enchantments the Dlardrageth had used to raise these halls. When Ilimitar’s spell smashed and clawed at the ceiling, instants later, his magic turned to fire that rained back down at him.

  He staggered back, coughing and shuddering—his mantle must be weak, she thought—and shouted, “Seek not to escape me, Oluevaera! No part of the realm is safe for you now!”

  “By whose decree?” she cried, fresh tears on her cheeks. “Have you slain Eltargrim, too?”

  “His folly is not yet open treachery to Cormanthor, but something that can be corrected once the human—and you, with your lying tongue—are gone. I will hunt you down wherever you flee to!” He muttered an incantation on the heels of that shout.

  “I’ve no intention of fleeing anywhere, Ilimitar!” the Srinshee told him angrily. “This realm is my home!”

  The air before her exploded in flames. From each blossoming ball of fire a beam shot out, to link with the other fireballs. Oluevaera ducked away from one whose heat threatened to blister her shoulder and whispered words that would dissolve a spell into strengthening her mantle.

  “Is that why,” the High Court Mage snarled in reply, “you protected a human, keeping him alive and counseling him into flattering the Coronal enough to win an armathor out of the old fool? He’ll just be the first of a scheming, grasping horde of the hairy ones, if we let him live! Can you not see that?”

  “No!” the Srinshee shouted, over the crash and roar of his next spell attack. “I fail to see why loving Cormanthor and working to strengthen it must place me in the situation of having to slay one honorable human—who came here to keep a promise to a dying heir, and deliver a kiira to an elder House, Ilimitar!—or be slain by you, unless I destroy you: a mage in whom I awakened mastery of magic, and have been proud of these six centuries!”

  “Always you twist folk with clever words!” he shouted back, and went right on into snarling the incantation of another spell.

  The Srinshee found herself weeping again. “Why?” she sobbed. “Why do you force me to make this choice?”

  Her mantle shuddered then, as purple lightnings of magical force sought to drain its vitality. Through the tumult, as paving stones cracked underfoot in a ragged, deafening chorus, her newfound foe cried, “Your wits are addled by love, old hag, and corrupted by the Coronals’ dreams! Can you not understand that the security of the realm must be paramount over all other things?”

  The Srinshee set her teeth and lashed out with lightnings of her own; his mantle lit up briefly under their strike, and she saw him staggering. “And can you not see,” she shouted at him, “that this man is the security of our realm, if we but guard him and let him grow into what Eltargrim sees?”

  “Bah!” Ilimitar the mage spat derisively. “The Coronal is as corrupt as you are! You and he both stain the good name of our court, and the trust our People have put in you!” The chamber rocked around them as his latest spell clawed its way along every inch of her mantle, but could not break it.

  “Ilimitar,” the Srinshee asked sadly, “are you mad?”

  The chamber fell suddenly silent, with smoke eddying around their feet, as he stared at her in genuine amazement.

  “No,” he said at last, in almost conversational tones, “but I think I’ve been mad for years not to see the game you and the Coronal have been playing, moving Cormanthor ever so gently—deftly, like the sly oldlings you both are—toward the day when humans would dwell among us, and outbreed us, and in the end overwhelm us, leaving no Cormanthor at all to serve or be proud of! How much did they offer you? Spells you couldn’t find elsewhere? A realm to rule? Or was it this return of your youth, all along?”

  “Limi,” she said earnestly, “this body you see is not of my doing, and when first you found me here and now, I was but newly aware of it. I know not where it came from—it could be some old joke of the Dlardrageth, for all I know—and the young human certainly didn’t give it to me, or promise it; he doesn’t even know about it!”

  Ilimitar waved a dismissive hand. “Words—just words,” he said heavily. “Always your sharpest weapons. They don’t work with me anymore, witch!” He was panting, now, as he faced her.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked, taking something small from a belt pouch and raising it into view. “It’s from the Vault of Ages,” he added mockingly. “You should know!”

  “It’s the Overmantle of Halgondas,” the Srinshee said quietly, her face going pale.

  “You fear it, don’t you?” he snarled, triumph glinting in his eyes again. “And there’s nothing you can do to stop me using it! And then, old witch, you are mine!”

  “How so?”

  “Our mantles will merge, and become one. Not only will you not ward off my spells, but you won’t escape; if you flee, you’ll drag me with you!” He laughed, his tones high and wild, and the Srinshee knew then that he was mad, and that she would have to kill him here, or perish.

  He broke the Overmantle.

  The inexorable surging together of their two mantles began, their ragged ends searching for, and attracted to, each other. The Srinshee sighed and began to walk toward her onetime pupil. It was time to use the spell she hated.

  “Surrendering?” Ilimitar asked, almost gleefully. “Or are you foolish enough to think you can fight on—and prevail? I’m a High Court Mage, witch, not the youth you showed castings to! Your magic is all trickery and old sly spells and little magics for scaring younglings!”

  The Srinshee drew in a deep breath, and lifted her chin. “Well then, grand and mighty sorcerer—destroy me if you must!”

  High Court Mage Ilimitar gave her an disbelieving look, raised his hands, and said gruffly, “I’ll make it quick.”

  A trident of spell spears thrust through her. She stood unmoving, though her eyes rolled up in her head and she bit her lip. After the spell began to fade, her body started to tremble.

  Ilimitar watched her. Well, it wasn’t his fault she’d spun so many preserva
tive and guardian enchantments down the centuries, layer upon layer. She’d just have to endure the pain, now, as they kept her alive longer than was necessary.

  She brought her head down, eyes closed, and stood breathing heavily. Blood ran down her face from her closed eyelids, and dripped on the shattered stones underfoot. Ilimitar’s nostrils flared in distaste. So it was martyr time, was it? He’d make short work of that.

  His next spell was a thrust of pure energy that should have left her in ashes. When it faded and he could see again, the stones were melted away in a neat circle, and she stood ankle-deep in rubble, blackened and with all her hair burnt away—but she still stood, and still shuddered.

  What foul pact had the sorceress made with human mages? Ilimitar cast the spell she’d once forbid him utterly to use; the one that summoned the Hungry Worm.

  The worm materialized coiled about one of her arms, but it slithered straight for her belly, and began burrowing into the cracked and blackened flesh immediately. Ilimitar sighed and hoped it would be quick; he had to be sure that human was dead, and swiftly, so he could be back at court to denounce the Coronal before nightfall. But he was trapped here with the Srinshee, inside the shared Overmantle, until one of them was dead.

  It was a pity, really. She’d been a good teacher—if an overly strict one, with little love for pranks and stealing days in high summer to snatch honey and nibble berries and hunt down new owl eggs—and she should never have sunk to this. She’d been old even then, though, and no doubt tempted to take any means to regain youth. But consorting with humans was unforgivable. If she wanted to do that, why hadn’t she just quietly left Cormanthor? Why ruin the realm? Why—

  The worm was largely done, now. It never touched the limbs or head when it had a body to feast upon, a body now little more than rags of skin upon hollowed-out, empty bones. How was it that she was still standing?

  Ilimitar frowned, and hurled a quartet of small forcebolts into her—the sort one uses to fell woodcutters or running rabbits. Her ravaged body still stood.

  He was nearly out of useful battle spells. He shrugged and picked up the fallen scepter, raking her with emerald fire until the scepter sputtered and died, drained away.