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  More than he should, some would say.

  Yet never enough, he and his Alassra had always agreed. He felt the familiar stirring ache of grief as she came to mind, and set it aside with cold deliberation.

  Not now, he thought. I have a fresh and more pressing disaster on my platter.

  By which he did not mean the monastery meals. They were better than he recalled them being.

  Aye, after three days of settling in, Candlekeep was both the same as he remembered it, and different. The same deep but somehow listening silence, the same unseen-in-darkness high ceilings in some chambers and low stone vaultings in others. Bare stone floors worn smooth by the passage of many, many soft slippers down the centuries, every wall—even those lining the short flights of stairs—covered with crammed-full bookshelves.

  Physically, it was the same great fortress of learning. What was different was the mood.

  The serene patience was gone. Silent acceptance had become silent tension.

  The monks were wary. Not just troubled by news of the fresh disasters and devastations of a world in tumult beyond their walls, but disquieted by what had befallen within them.

  Disquieted enough to talk about it all. So without any mind touching, El had readily been able to learn what had happened in Candlekeep during the past year.

  Some monks had disappeared, just slipping away from the monastery on errands, strolls to take in the air, and so forth, never to return. Others just … weren’t there at chant or meal or prayer. Gone, with no one having seen them depart, and not to be found when they were searched for. Others had fallen out of view for a time and later returned without tenable explanation, sometimes refusing to say anything at all.

  Some of those latter had come back changed. Fearful and withdrawn, furtive and looking ever over their shoulders.

  The nights had grown increasingly longer, with no explanations to be found in any tome—but hundreds of dire hints and cryptic possible references. As day after day, war and cataclysm wracked the lands outside Candlekeep’s walls. The monastery had been besieged several times by frightened wealthy folk at the gates pleading for refuge and offering vast sums to pay for it. Even more frequent arrivals had been the envoys of many rulers, guilds, costers, and trading alliances, and even dwarf clans demanding the Avowed of Candlekeep share what they knew of battle magic, warding, and mending magic, in this time of ever-increasing troubles. Then had come an actual invasion, by a force of devils led by a wizard who commanded them in the name of Asmodeus, who’d gotten inside the walls to maraud through the fortress itself.

  It had all been too much. The world outside seemed to be trying repeatedly to plunge these halls of learning into the strife and tumult raging through the lands.

  The senior monks had come to a decision with a speed that in Candlekeep verged on the obscene, and hastened to raise the Great Shield, that seldom-raised heart of the wards that let only sound, light, and air pass, and to all else was like a great dome of force, a mighty wall to keep the world out.

  And so the Avowed had physically and magically barricaded themselves inside their ancient fortress, seeking to keep the outside world at bay.

  They were frightened and upset, for it was not a matter of simply ignoring the surrounding lands in favor of prayer to Oghma and pursuing intensive study and writing. The world kept knocking at the gates.

  Even the Great Shield had been tested. Someone had taken to lobbing boulders over the high walls, and although these had been easily turned back by the wards, what sort of wanton destroyer would do such a thing?

  Then, just days ago, a dragon—a dragon!—had arrowed out of the skies to try to wrest open the top of one of the keep’s walled-up and abandoned north-facing towers. Why that particular tower, and what it might contain, were matters of pure speculation to the current monks. The gigantic black wyrm had almost reached its goal thanks to the woman riding it. No one had recognized that rider, but her magic had forced back the Great Shield so far that the mightily flapping dragon’s straining claws had almost raked the tower’s spire before Great Reader Asmurom had used a Rune of Warding to hurl both dragon and rider into another plane of existence.

  Those runes, personally bestowed on the monastery by Deneir and Oghma, were precious and irreplaceable. There were now, so far as the Avowed knew, only four of them left.

  And who had that dragonrider been? And his what—what—had she sought?

  Elminster had no better answers than the bewildered monks, and well understood their consternation. If the armies besieging Myth Drannor marched on Candlekeep, just how long would the Great Shield stand? And how long would the remaining handful of Runes of Warding last?

  He could craft replacement runes, as it happened, though doing so was neither swift nor easy. Yet if confronted as to where he, Andannas Dalkur, had been, it gave him a ready answer: He’d been off alone searching the many, many books of Candlekeep to find instructions for raising a rune he knew to be coded and hidden therein—knew because he’d found tantalizing fragments of four separate writings, by different sages, and just needed to follow the cryptic clues to find the other parts of the four processes. Should he find them, he would of course have to experiment with actually crafting the rune, and such perilous experiments were traditionally done in the deepest caverns beneath the keep itself.

  An excellent excuse for what he’d really be doing—which was, of course, seeking the writings he needed to rebuild the Weave, all at once rather than in painstakingly slow and piecemeal mendings here, there, and everywhere. Mendings that took much too long to rescue Faerûn from its current tumult.

  If he’d had a leisurely lifetime ahead in which to study, he could have just read his way through book after book—for his Mystra and Mystryl before her, not to mention Azuth and Savras and even Selûne and, for that matter, Jergal, had instructed many mortals in Weave work down the unfolding centuries, and even the gods might not know how many mortals had taken up quills and written of what they’d learned.

  Yet that siege wouldn’t last forever, and Shar had been draining captured Chosen like an insatiable devourer all year long, and so he lacked time to do much of anything properly or carefully. As usual. Which meant he had to seek out the writings by one man he knew had understood the Weave, and set down instructions and lore for later readers to find: Khelben Arunsun. His longtime colleague, the strict bark to his sly bite. They’d been very different men who’d shared all too little common ground, but if there was one thing El could trust in, it was the Blackstaff’s magic.

  If he could find it. All he had to do, among all these thousands upon thousands of bound volumes and even more scrolls, was find those Khelben had written, rewritten, edited, or penned under names other than his own. Unfortunately, having detested the man’s stodgy, plodding, and dogmatic style, he’d paid as little attention to Khelben’s writings as he could. Which meant he could recall just six titles, knew of the existence of another ten or so … and remembered the contents of just two books, one of which would be no help at all in his present quest.

  While impostors among the Avowed around him hindered him or even sought to kill him.

  Just once he’d caught a glimpse of the other Andannas Dalkur from afar, across the central courtyard of the monastery, but the other monk had hastily turned away, pulled his cowl up over his head, and vanished through a door into a maze of passages that could have taken him almost anywhere within the fortress.

  Lurking in hiding.

  Elminster smiled wryly. As he was, himself—and judging by the bodies he’d found, more than one other might be doing as well, here in this great, gloomy stone pile of a monastery.

  Lurking in hiding, while war and chaos raged and reigned all around.

  There was a lot of that, these days.

  It wasn’t much of an army camp. Tents huddled here and there in the seemingly unbroken forest. Even with all the felling for firewood and the digging of dung pits, the trees were so old and vast that the disturbances o
f the besiegers seemed lost among them. Those hidden and scattered tents actually formed a great ring around Myth Drannor, but far enough back from those soaring towers as to be out of earshot of the endless singing, that wordless chorus of song and chiming that was strangely alluring. And deeply unsettling. Elves were different, and the world would be a better place when they were all eradicated.

  Not that his mission here would accomplish that. It would, however, put an end to the damnable singing.

  Helgore of Thultanthar strode through the encampment undisguised, his cloak flapping, and shifting tongues of his own darkness traveled with him like so many striding shadows. Mercenaries aplenty were huddled around their cookfires and snoring in their tents. All of them seemed to be following orders: every tent had its pair of armed and watchful sentinels, standing back to back staring out into the dark forest, well away from the fires—and the light of every fire was shaded by shields driven into the earth at angles to form walls. Blackened shields of the older, heavier sort not favored in battles these days formed the bed of each fire, to keep flames from spreading and burning out the besiegers.

  The sentinels watched Helgore as he passed, but not one of them was unwise enough to challenge him. The lone walker’s dark skin, emanation of shadows, and his face—two bright eyes staring out of roiling shadow—told them he was a shade, and his purposeful, even swaggering gait betokened high rank.

  He should have been stopped and questioned, at the very least, but the hireswords weren’t looking for traitors who were shades.

  Helgore’s lip curled. They should have been.

  The sharp wits, forethought, and ruthlessness of Telamont Tanthul might prevent open rebellion, but the Shadovar Helgore had known all his life were constantly scheming to advance themselves and discredit others, and to let the princes of Shade know and see as little as possible of their true ambitions and deeds. Everyone had hidden wealth and weapons, and plans for a life outside Thultanthar that began with a swift escape from the city. And everyone was learning all they could of the suddenly tumultuous world around their city, with an eye to making use of what they learned for their own private advantage, in ways large and small, despite any plans for conquest the Most High might proceed with.

  Helgore himself wouldn’t have dreamed of crossing the Most High in the smallest detail or degree, but he wouldn’t—couldn’t—have sworn the same for any of his fellow Shadovar. Even Maerandor.

  Hmm. Perhaps especially Maerandor.

  Helgore thrust that darkly amusing thought aside. What was ahead needed his full attention. The camps were behind him now, and he was heading up into the trampled clearing where wounded mercenaries were tended to, and those held in reserve were assembling. Swordcaptains gave Helgore hard and suspicious stares, but he ignored them, striding on toward the din of battle and the flaring, moving glows amid the trees that marked where elven armor was being tested. The hard way.

  The front lines were within sight, not that the darkness of deepening night and all the trees made it easy to actually see anything. Myth Drannor was more tended forest than it was buildings, and entirely lacked walls, moats, ditches, or any of the other usual defensive barriers besiegers faced when attacking most cities.

  So this siege was an endless series of running skirmishes in the deep forest, often fought amid ancient trees with not a building in sight. At first, the Shadovar-led army had set fire to the forest to try to scour the battlefield bare and drive the elves out, but the smoke had proved deadly, choking the besiegers more than the elves—who had no doubt devised spells to protect themselves against forest fires long ages ago—and lending elf strike bands ample cover to move around, pounce, and slaughter.

  Closer to the fabled elf city, the mythal prevented small fires and dampened large ones, making burning anything down nigh impossible. And in the vast forest, the elves were in their element. In the fray they melted away into the trees seemingly at will, often racing lightly aloft through the countless boughs. They knew which glades were now disguised deadfalls that would plunge unwary invaders down into the yawning cellars of vanished or overgrown buildings. And there were all too many such ruins, remnants of the halcyon days when Myth Drannor had been larger, brighter, and home to all races, the fabled City of Song of flourishing art, growth, and harmony among all peoples.

  So it had come down to the Shadovar trying to bury their foes under sheer numbers, wearing down the far fewer elves but taking horrific losses as they slowly, ever so slowly, drove the defenders back. Losses that made the hireswords—men mustered from many lands, whose good pay could, after all, be spent only by the survivors—ever more wary and surly, and all too apt to retreat or take no chances at all rather than press hard in the fray and perhaps shatter the elf lines.

  The Most High was both methodical and calculating, but his cold and unhurried calm did not mean his patience was endless. Myth Drannor had to fall, and had to fall soon. Unfortunately, the city’s mythal was itself the prize, so the quick victory stroke of assembling the arcanists of Thultanthar and hurling their Art against the mythal to destroy it and end this strife in a swift cataclysm of utter destruction was out of the question. Rather, this must be done the slow, hard way, sword to sword and hurling only small battle spells that would not threaten the mythal.

  And so it fell to Helgore to be Telamont’s dagger unlooked for, to stab at the belly and groin of a foe whose attention was kept elsewhere by this endless hacking and stabbing amid the trees. Helgore’s task was to drain and destroy baelnorn after baelnorn, robbing Myth Drannor of its wise and mighty magical guardians who might well be able to control the mythal with adroit and precise spells to keep it as a shield for the city while also turning it into a sword against the Shadovar-led attackers. Just why the Most High valued the mythal so highly, demanding it go undamaged while swords ran red with gore within and beneath it, was none of Helgore’s business. In truth, he cared not.

  His concern was to destroy baelnorns so swiftly and thoroughly that the Most High would be mightily impressed even though he was the source of all the weapons and training that made Helgore able to do so, the undead-destroying spells and the gem.

  The high loregem, to be precise. How Telamont Tanthul had come by the seemingly ancient selukiira, Helgore had no idea. Again, not his affair.

  What mattered to him was that it functioned as a passkey to the mythal that was all around him now, its embattled verges giving the deep forest an eerie silver-blue glow.

  A handful of outnumbered elves had just been forced to abandon the trees around, as hundreds of fresh mercenaries had fallen upon them, hacking tirelessly. The Myth Drannans had fled into a deeper tangle of trees, and the besieging hireswords had rushed right after them. Giving Helgore the moment of relative peace and privacy he needed.

  Shrouding himself in the usual instant of thickening darkness, like smoke suddenly tumbling through the air close around him, he put his back to the trunk of a large, old, and leaning duskwood tree, and looked all around to make certain no one was watching—or worse yet, readying a bow, spell, or charge for him. Seeing no watchers, he quickly unsealed a warded belt pouch, then drew out and unwrapped a cloaking scrap of black shadow-imbued cloth to reveal the long and sparkling loregem. Its facets winked at him as the rainbow tourmaline caught the silver-blue light of the forest. He held it up—and swallowed it.

  It was hard and pointed, and hurt going down. And, he decided after a few cautious moments, didn’t make him feel one whit different.

  Yet as he worked a spell that transformed him from a man to a long, fat black serpent and began to slither on through the trees, Helgore was aware that a certain tension that had been building around him as he’d walked closer to the elf city, a sometimes-crackling thickening of the air and the very blood in his veins, was suddenly … gone. The mythal was no longer fighting him; he could proceed freely. The gem was working.

  Helgore tried not to pay attention to the momentary cascade of faint memories that were not his,
now welling up within him. Elf memories, of course.

  He didn’t want to know which proud elf House this selukiira had come from, didn’t want to know what the pointy-eared, sneering posers thought about and valued and did. Let the gem inside him be a key and nothing more. It wasn’t his high lore, and he wanted no part of it.

  Helgore glanced around again, peering out of the darkness he’d shrouded himself in to keep nearby eyes from seeing he was eating a gem and taking snake shape. There was still, so far as he could tell, no one watching.

  Good. The Most High had warned him that the high loregem would mark Helgore as a foe who must be destroyed to any elf who saw it. If no elf had seen it, what was coming just might be a little easier to accomplish.

  He needed to find a way down into the underground levels of old Myth Drannor. Down to the oldest elf family crypts. Blasting a hole amid all the tree roots would draw unwanted attention and probably spend a lot of magic getting nowhere near where he wanted to be. Finding a chasm opened in previous fighting would be much easier. And slipping into such a handy hole unnoticed would be best.

  The first furious assault had created—or rather, revealed the hard way—more than a few such holes, but Helgore, hidden away in inner chambers of Thultanthar under Telamont’s exacting tutelage, had been told rather than seen this.

  Nor did the eyes of his serpent shape afford the sort of vision he was used to. He needed height, and he needed it now.

  He slithered up the nearest tall tree to look around.

  Ah! There, and there, and over there, too. The farthest one looked the most promising. It was the largest, and had a few faint, distant, and steady magical glows visible in its depths, suggesting that it opened into some broad expanse.

  He slithered back down the tree and glided to that farthest chosen hole, keeping to cover and not hurrying. Right now, cloaking himself in self-created darkness—if the mythal allowed him to do so at all—would certainly draw attention to his presence.