Elminster in Myth Drannor Read online

  “They’re real,” Hauntokh said hoarsely. “They’re more real’n’that.” He jerked his thumb at the scepter, looked down at his own golden bauble, and shook his head slowly.

  “Boy,” Surgath said, “if you’re serious … this scepter is yours.”

  Men and women were on their feet all over the room, goggling at the table strewn with sparkling gems. One of the Red Blades strode forward until he loomed above Elminster.

  “I wonder where a youngling gets such riches,” he said with slow menace. “Have you any more such baubles, to see you down the long, perilous road to the Rapids?”

  Elminster smiled slowly, and put something into the warrior’s hand.

  The man looked down at it. A single coin glimmered in his palm. A large, olden coin of pure platinum.

  Elminster took the scepter from its soft midair twirling, and waved his other hand in invitation at the table of gems. Surgath scrambled for it.

  The hawk-nosed youth watched him feverishly raking rubies together and leaned forward to speak to the adventurer, in a soft whisper that carried to every corner of the taproom. “There’s just one thing to beware of, good sir—and that’s coming to look for more.”

  “Oh?” the man asked, as menacingly as before.

  Elminster pointed at the coin—and suddenly it stirred, rising as a hissing serpent in the man’s hand. With a curse the man hurled it away. It struck a wall with a metallic ring, dropped, and rolled away, a coin once more.

  “They’re cursed, ye see,” Elminster said sweetly. “All of them. Stolen from a tomb, they were, and that awakened it. And without my magic to keep the curse under control.

  “Wait a bit,” Surgath said, face darkening. “How do I know these rubies’re real, hey?”

  “You don’t,” Elminster told him. “Yet they are, and will remain rubies in the morning. Every morning after that, too. If you want the scepter back—I’ll be in the room Rose has ready for me.”

  He gave them all a polite smile and went out, wondering how many folk, whether they wore serpent rings or not, would try to slay the spell image that would be the only thing sleeping in El’s bed tonight, or turn the room inside out searching for a scepter that was not there. The turf-and-tile roof of the Herald’s Horn would do well enough for the repose of the last prince of Athalantar.

  Of all the eyes in that taproom that wonderingly watched the young man from Athalantar leave, one pair, in a far corner, harbored black, smoldering murder. They did not belong to the man who wore the serpent ring.

  “A hundred rubies,” Surgath said hoarsely, spilling a small red rain of glittering gems from one hand to the other. “And all of them real.” He glanced up at the reassuring glow of the wards, smiled, and stirred his bowl full of rubies once more. It had cost him the same worth as two of these jewels to buy the wardstone, years ago—but it was worth every last copper tonight.

  Still smiling, he never saw the wardstone flash once, as a silent spell turned its fiery defenses on its owner.

  There was a muted roar, and then the prospector’s skeleton toppled slowly sideways onto the bed. Surgath Ilder would grin forever now.

  A few rubies, shattered by the heat, tinkled to the floor in blackened fragments. The eyes that watched them fall held a certain satisfaction—but still smoldered with murder yet to be done. Revenge could sometimes reach from beyond the grave.

  After a moment, the owner of those eyes smiled, shrugged, and wove the spell that would bring a fistful of those rubies hence.

  We must all die in the end—but why not die rich?

  TWO

  DEATH AND GEMS

  The passing of the Mage of Many Gems might have doomed the House of Alastrarra, had it not been for the sacrifice of a passing human. Many elves of the realm soon wished the man in question had sacrificed everything instead. Others point out that in more than one sense—he did.

  SHALHEIRA TALANDREN, HIGH ELVEN BARD OF SUMMER-STAR

  FROM SILVER BLADES AND SUMMER NIGHTS:

  AN INFORMAL BUT TRUE HISTORY OF CORMANTHOR

  PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR OF THE HARP

  As he went on through the endless wood, the land began to rise again, sprouting crags and huge mossy overhangs of rock amid the ever-present trees. There was no trail to follow, but now that Elminster was past the line of mountains that marked the eastern boundary of the human realm of Cormyr, wherever south and east the trees rose tallest must be the right direction to head for Cormanthor. The hawk-nosed youth with the saddlebag on his shoulder walked steadily toward that unseen destination, knowing he must be getting close by now. The trees were older and larger, hung with vines and mosses. He’d long since left all traces of woodsmen’s axes behind.

  He’d been walking for days—months—but in a way he was glad brigand arrows had deprived him of his mount. Even in the lands claimed by the men of Cormyr, now behind him, the hills had been so trackless and heavily wooded that he’d have had to let his horse go, thus willfully breaking Mystra’s directive.

  Long before the terrain would’ve forced that disobedience on him, he’d have been coinless from buying hay for the beast to eat, and weary-armed from hacking at tree-limbs to cut a way large enough for the horse to squeeze onwards—presuming, of course, that the horse would’ve been willing to be ridden into woods too thick to move about in. Woods roamed by things that snarled and howled at night, and caused many unseen things to scream and wail as they were slain.

  El hoped not to join their ranks overly soon.

  He kept holding spells handy; they allowed him to freeze rabbits and sometimes deer where they stood, and get close enough to them to use his knife. He was getting tired of the bloody, messy butcherings that followed, the constant rustlings and calls that meant he was himself being watched, the loneliness, and of feeling lost. Sometimes he felt more like a badly aimed arrow rushing blindly off to nowhere, rather than a powerful, anointed Chosen of Mystra. Occasionally he hit something, but all too often—though things seemed easy and straightforward enough—he plunged right into one blunder after another. Hmm. No wonder Chosen were rare beasts.

  No doubt there were rarer beasts lurking somewhere in all these trees right now, hunting him. Why couldn’t Mystra have given him a spell that would whisk him right to the streets of the elven city? The Moonsea lay somewhere ahead and to his left, ending these trees that were elven territory—and if his memory of overheard merchant chatter and glimpses of maps in Hastarl served him rightly, it was linked by a river to an arm of the vast and sprawling Sea of Fallen Stars, which formed the eastern boundary of the elven realm he sought. The mountains behind him were the western edge of Cormanthor—so if he kept walking, and turned right whenever he found a river, he’d stay in elven lands. Whether or not he’d ever find the fabled city at its heart was another matter. El sighed; there’d been no glows of torchlight or the like at night to mark a distant city—and he’d not seen an elf since leaving Athalantar, let alone found one since passing the line of mountains. Something as simple as a fall over a tree root out here could kill him, with no one but the wolves and buzzards to know about it. If Mystra attached such importance to his getting himself to the city, couldn’t she guide him somehow? Winter could find him still wandering—or long dead, his bones cracked and forgotten by some owlbear or peryton or skulking giant spider!

  Elminster sighed and walked on. His feet were beginning to ache so much—a deep bone-ache, that made him feel sick—that the pain overwhelmed the ever-present sting of broken blisters and raw skin. His boots weren’t in good shape now, either. In tales heroes just got to wherever the excitement was without delay or hardship—and if he was a Chosen of Mystra, surely he qualified as a hero!

  Why couldn’t all of this be easier? He sighed again. As the wood went on around him, footfall after weary footfall, mushroom-cloaked roots rose out of the earth everywhere, like contorted walls, and full sunlight became rare. Deer were a common sight now, lifting their heads to watch him warily from afar, and rustlings a
nd flutterings in the ever-present shade around told him that other game was growing more plentiful, too.

  Elminster ignored most snags and shrubs and clinging creepers, for fear of lurking danger; not wanting to be hunted by anything hungry that had a nose, he’d long ago cast a spell that left him treading air a foot or so clear of the ground. He left no trace of his passage, keeping to where gnarled forest giants choked out saplings and thorn-thickets, and the way was relatively clear. He was making good progress; when he grew weary he rested in the shape of a cloud of mist clinging to high branches in the night. Someone or something was following him, of course.

  Something too wary, or cunning, to let him get a look at it. Once he’d even cloaked himself in a spell of invisibility and doubled back on his route. He found the tracks of his pursuer hastily turning aside to end in a stream. All the last prince of Athalantar learned was that the being shadowing him was a lone human—or some other sort of being that wore hard-soled boots. On two feet.

  So he’d shrugged and pressed on, heading for the fabled Towers of Song. The elves suffered no human to see their great city and live, but a goddess had commanded El to go thence, in his first service to her. If elves clinging fiercely to their privacy didn’t approve, that was just too bad.

  Too bad for him, if his alertness or spells failed him. Once already there had been a burst of blue light in the dusk off to his left one evening, as a trap spell claimed the life of an owlbear. Elminster hoped such magics were specific in their triggerings … and weren’t waiting for humans who used spells to keep clear of the ground.

  One thing was increasingly clear to him, now: even elves eager to be friendly, if Cormanthor boasted any such, weren’t likely to welcome an intruding human with smiles if that lone visitor was carrying a scepter of power looted from an elven tomb.

  The attention he’d attracted back at the Horn had been a mistake, whatever danger that prospector’s ignorance of magic had posed. He’d lost a night’s sleep, and had to use hasty spells to snatch himself clear, when at least four folk with spells and daggers had separately attacked his sleeping chamber. The last one had come creeping across the roof, blade in hand, right to where El was listening to the sounds of two of the others knifing each other to death in the darkness below.

  Now he was carrying a beautiful—and no doubt very recognizable—thing of gems and chased silver that an elf who saw it might be able to awaken from a distance to turn its powers on Elminster … a scepter that might bear a curse or spit magics that harmed anyone arousing them. A scepter that had belonged to an elf whose surviving kin might slay any human who dared to touch it. A scepter someone might be tracing even now.

  How could he have been so stupid? El sighed again. Somewhere on this journey he had to hide the scepter, in a place where he—and, barring tracing spells, only he, not some mysterious follower or elven patrol—could find it again. And that meant a distinctive landmark; in this endless wood, something of the land beneath the trees, not a tree itself. He kept a watch for something suitable.

  Soon after sunrise, on the day after Elminster walked above the dark waters of his twelfth swamp, he found it. The land rose sharply in a line of pointed crags, the last one a bare stone needle like the prow of some gigantic ship eager to sail up to the sun.

  Elminster chose the crag next to the prow. It was a lower, tree-girt height, with a duskwood tree he liked the look of clinging to one of its edges. ’Twould do. In among its roots he knelt, scooping up a handful of earth and crumbling it in his fingers until it fell away to leave him holding a few stones.

  Out of his bag he took the silver scepter, glancing at it briefly as he laid it on his palm amid the stones. It was a beautiful thing, one end tapering into the shape of a tongue of flame. Elminster shook his head in admiration, and whispered a certain spell over his hand. Then he thrust the scepter into the hole he’d created, smoothed dirt over it, and plucked up a nearby clump of moss to lay atop the disturbed earth. A handful of leaves and twigs completed the concealment, and he hurried to the next crag along the line. There he dropped one of the stones, and went on to another three of the tree-clad heights, to leave a stone at each. Pausing at the last, he murmured another spell that left him feeling weak and sick inside, as his limbs tingled with blue-white fire for the space of a long, leisurely breath.

  He took that breath, and another, before he felt strong enough to make the second casting. It was a simple thing of gestures, a single phrase, and the melting away of a hair from behind his ear. Done.

  The Athalantan kept still for a moment, listening, and peered back the way he’d come for any signs of movement. Nothing met his ears and eyes but the scuttlings of small forest creatures … moving in various wrong directions, and ignoring him. El turned and went on with his journey. He didn’t feel like waiting for hours just to see who was following him.

  Mystra had sent him to Cormanthor on a mission. Just what he was supposed to do there she hadn’t revealed yet, but he’d be needed there, she’d said, “in time to come.” It didn’t sound like anything one had to hurry to, but El wanted to see the legendary ciy of the elves. It was the most beautiful place in all Faerûn, the minstrels said, full of wonders and elven folk so handsome that looking upon them took one’s breath away. A place of revels and magical marvels and singing, where fantastic mansions thrust spires to the stars, and the forest and the city grew around each other in a vast, rolling garden. A place where they killed non-elves on sight.

  Well, there was a line in an old ballad about stupid brigands that had become a wry saying among Athalantans: “We’ll just have to burn that treasure when we get our hands on it.” It would have to serve him in the days ahead. El rather suspected that he’d be spending a lot of time drifting around Cormanthor as a watching, listening mist.

  Better that, he supposed, than spending the eternal oblivion of death by spells, to sink forgotten into the earth of an elven garden somewhere, his service to Mystra unfulfilled.

  The young man paused at the base of a shadowtop as large around as a cottage, swung his saddlebag from one shoulder to another, stretched like a cat, and set off south and east again, walking fast. His boots made no sound as he trod the empty air. He glanced at the still waters of a little pool as he passed, and they reflected back the image of an unshaven, straggle-bearded youth with keen blue eyes, black tangled hair, a sharp beak of a nose, and a long, gangly build. Not unhandsome, but not particularly trustworthy in appearance, either. Well, he was going to have to impress some elf, sometime.

  Had he looked back at the right moment, El would have seen a cloud of clinging mushrooms rise from the damp forest floor as something unseen disturbed them, and settle softly again as whatever it was whispered a curse and turned hastily aside. Was the young man ahead going to blunder straight into the guarded heart of Cormanthor?

  Then the forest gloom to the south and east gave sudden birth to spreading rings of fire, and the ground shook. Yes, it seemed he was.

  Elminster hurried forward, running on the air, swinging his saddlebag fore and aft in one hand to give him the momentum to surge forward in earnest. That had been a battle spell, hurled in haste.

  Leaves were still flaming in dancing branches ahead, and a tree crashed down somewhere to the west, in answer to the deep, rolling force of the explosion that had shuddered past him moments before.

  Elminster dodged around a long side-limb and over a rise, descending into a rocky, fern-filled dell beyond. At its bottom, a spring welled up between old and mossy boulders—one of which was just tumbling back to earth, trailing flames and the spinning bones of something torn apart.

  Figures were trotting and scrambling and hacking among those boulders. Elves, El saw, who were fighting burly red-skinned warriors whose mouths jutted tusks, and whose black leather armor bristled with daggers and axes and maces.

  Hobgoblins had surprised the elves at the stream and slain most of them. As El raced closer above the ferns, his bag sending them dancing and wav
ing in his wake, an elven sword flashed with spell light as it rose and fell. Its quarry fell away, snarling in pain and clutching at a ravaged neck, as an iron bar wielded by another hobgoblin came down on the head of the elven swordsman with a solid thud that echoed across the dell, sickeningly loud.

  The elf”s head collapsed in a spray of gore, and his twitching body fell against his companion. This last survivor of the elven patrol, it seemed, was a tall elf who wore a shoulder mantle adorned with rows of oval, gem-adorned pendants that flashed and sparkled as he dodged. A mage, El guessed, raising a hand to hurl a spell.

  The elf was faster. One of his hands blossomed into a ball of fire, which he thrust into the face of the staff-wielding hobgoblin. As his foe staggered backwards, roaring in anger and pain, the fire sprouted two long tongues of flame, like the horns of a bull. The flames stabbed out at the red-skinned ruukha, searing away leather armor to lay bare scorched grey hide. The iron staff clanged to the rocks as the hobgoblin spun away, howling in earnest—and the elven mage swept his horns of flame across the face of another assailant.

  Too late. The fire was still sizzling across the bat-eared, snarling face of one ruukha when another reached over it to thrust the dark and wicked tines of a longfork clear through the elven mage’s upper body.

  The seeking bolts Elminster had hurled were still streaking through the air as the transfixed elf struggled his way clear of the bloody tines, shrieking in agony, and slumped into the stream. Hobgoblins were swarming down around the rocks now, stabbing at the writhing elven mage. El saw his fine-boned face thrown back in agony as he gasped out something—and the air above the stream was suddenly full of countless streaking silver sparks.

  Hobgoblins jerked and spasmed, arching in agony, as the elf sank back into the roiling waters. Fallen ruukha weapons crashed down around him as his magic raged. Their former owners were still reeling as Elminster’s bolts tore into them, spinning them around and filling them with blue-white fire.