by Ed Greenwood
Most folk thought the servants of gods knew everything and could see all that went on, regardless of how many walls or night glooms were in the way. El smiled wryly at the thought. Mystra herself, perhaps, but not her Chosen.
He stood and marveled amid trees that seemed to have grown into fantastic spired castles of spidery grace. The kiira told him of spells that could combine live trees and shape their growth, though neither Iymbryl nor his forebears knew much of how such magics were worked, or who in the city today was capable of them.
Amid the tree castles were lesser mansions of spired stone and what looked like blown, sculpted glass. However it seemed by the hanging gardens that sprawled over such edifices that elves could not bear to live unless growing plants or trees shared the same space with them. Elminster tried not to stare at the circular windows, the carefully crafted views, and the leaping curves of wood and stone all around him, but he’d never seen anything built for folk to live in that was so beautiful. Not just this building here, or that, but street upon street upon winding lane, a city of growing trees linked overhead, and a lush splendor of plantings and vistas and magically animated sculptures that casually outstripped the most exquisite human-work El had seen, even in the private gardens of the mage-king Ilhundyl.
Gods. With every step he could see new wonders. Over here was a house crafted like a breaking wave, with a glass-bottomed room hanging beneath the overarching curve—itself a garden of carefully shaped shrubs. Over there was a cascade of water plucked up tower-high by magic, so that it could plunge down, laughing, from chamber to chamber of a house whose rooms were all ovoids of tinted glass; within, the elven inhabitants strolled about, glasses in their hands. Down that lane of duskwoods wound a little path, to an ending at a small round pool. Seats circled the water in a gentle, hovering dance, their enchantments making them bob and rise as they went.
El shuffled on, remembering to stagger from time to time. How was he ever going to find House Alastrarra in all this?
Cormanthor was busy this bright afternoon. Its streets of trodden moss and the bridges, aloft, that leaped from tree to tree, held many elves—but none of the dirt and real crowding of human cities … and no creature more intelligent than cats and their winged cousins, the tressym, who was not an elf.
It hardly seemed a city. But then, to El, cities meant stone and humans, crammed together in their filth and shouting and seriousnesses, with a scattering of halflings and half-elves and a dwarf or two among the crowd.
Here were only the blue tresses and blue-white, sleek skins of proud elves who glided along in splendid gowns; or in cloaks that seemed entirely fashioned of the quivering green leaves of live plants; or in clinging leathers enspelled so that shifting rainbow hues drifted slowly around wearers’ bodies; or in costumes that seemed to be no more than coyly cloaking clouds of lace and baubles drifting around elven forms. These latter were called driftrobes, the kiira let him know, as El tried not to stare at the slender bodies revealed by their circling movements. Driftrobes emitted a constant song of chimings whose descending runs sounded like many tiny, skillfully struck bells falling down the same staircase.
Elminster tried not to stare at anything, or even to look up much, and sighed dolefully from time to time whenever he sensed someone staring at him. This melancholy manner seemed to satisfy the few passersby who spared him much attention. Most seemed lost in their own thoughts or shared enthusiasms. Though the voices tended to be higher, lighter, and more pleasant on the ears, the elves of Cormanthor chattered every bit as much as humans at a market. El was able to covertly watch what he wanted most to see as he went along: how elves walked, so he could imitate them.
Most seemed to have a lilt and swing, like dancers. Ah, that was it—none strode flat-footed; even the tallest and most hurried of the citizenry danced forward on their toes. In his borrowed shape, El did likewise, and wondered when his sense of unease would lighten just a trifle.
It refused to, and as he went on, turning this way and that among the gigantic trees that rose like castle towers from the mossy ways, it began to dawn on him: he was being watched.
Not the countless casual inspections, the glances of laughing elves and sprawled cats and even winged steeds wheeling overhead, but by a single pair of eyes that was always on him, following him.
El began to double back on his route, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever was following him, but the feeling grew more intense, as if the source of the scrutiny was drawing closer. Once or twice he stopped and wheeled around, as if to take in the view back along a sweeping avenue—but really to see who shared the path under the arching trees with him, trying to notice any face that was there more than once.
Some elves looked at him oddly, and El turned quickly away. Odd looks meant the lookers thought he was behaving oddly. He mustn’t earn attention, at all costs. He’d just have to go on as before, trying to shrug off the odd prickling feeling between his shoulder blades that warned him of the ongoing scrutiny.
Did this open city have some sinister means of identifying intruders not of the People? They must, El supposed, or they’d soon be awash in the shapeshifters men called alunsree, or doppel-gangers … hmm, but wasn’t “alunsree” an elven word? The elves must have faced such problems when humans were still grunting at each other in caves and mud huts.
So he’d been spotted by someone. Someone concerned enough to stalk after him all this time, as he wandered down almost every street and lane of Cormanthor. What could he do?
Nothing but what he was doing—seeking House Alastrarra without seeming to be anxiously looking for anything. He dared not ask anyone where it was, or attract enough attention by his manner that someone might ask him if he needed aid … and he dared not call on the magic in the lore-gem unless he was desperate.
Desperate: surrounded by angry elven mages, all seeking his death with risen magic blazing in their hands. El glanced around the street as if such perils might come drifting toward him from all sides in a breath or two, but the scene remained almost like the revels of a feast-day. Folk were dancing in small groups or declaiming grandly as they swept along wrapped in their own self-importance. The fluting calls of horns heralded fresh songs, and off to the east a pair of pegasi riders chased each other across the sky in loops, rolls, and dartings that often sent leaves swirling in their wakes.
If he’d dared to, El would have sat on one of the many benches and floating highseats that flanked the mossy ways, and watched Cormanthor’s comings and goings, openly fascinated. Yet if his true form were revealed, he might well be slain on the spot, and he had a mission to fulfill for Iymbryl. Where in all these endless trees was House Alastrarra, anyway? He’d been walking for hours, it seemed, and the light told him that the sun was sliding down the western sky. With its descent, the feeling grew in El that his mysterious shadow would attack.
After darkness fell? Or whenever things grew private enough? Where he stood now, the network of crossing trails was growing sparse, and the lights, bridges, and sounds were becoming fewer. If he continued on, he’d probably be heading into the deep green heart of the woods beyond the city, to the … southwest. Aye, southwest. He peered that way, and saw hanging creepers, and thick stands of gnarled trees, and a dell full of ferns. That decided him. Fern dells weren’t high in his personal ranking of scenic beauty spots just now.
El turned around and picked up his pace, dancing softly forward on his toes as it seemed all Cormanthan elves did. He was moving purposefully now, as if heading for a known destination. His hand wasn’t far from the hilt of the dagger that rode hidden in his sleeve. Was he charging straight toward an invisible, waiting foe? One who could draw a blade and hold it out, so that a hurrying false Iymbryl Alastrarra impaled himself on it?
The delicate strikings of a harp arose from a garden of hanging plants to his left as he went on. He had to go on; what else could he do?
After the mission the dying Iymbryl had set him stood his first task for Mystra. El shook his head in exasperati
on. This place was so beautiful; he wanted so much to just stroll and enjoy it.
Just as he’d wanted to grow up in Athalantar with his mother and father, not shiver in the wilds as an orphan outlaw, hunted by magelords. Aye, there was always someone with magic lurking about to ruin things. El set his jaw and went northeast. He’d strike clear across the city, and then try to circle around its outermost trails from there—he reckoned he’d trudged most of its labyrinthine heart already, with nary a sign of the falcon sigil of Alastrarra.
No unseen blade felled him, but the feeling of being watched didn’t fade, either. The glows of enchanted symbols were growing stronger around El, now, as he walked. The gleam of the setting sun touched the treetops into golden flame, but down here in the dappled gloom its lances never penetrated.
The elven games and music went on unabated as twilight came down over Cormanthor. El walked on, trying not to show how anxious he was becoming. Could the lore-gem have played him false? Had it shown him an older House Alastrarra, or was the mansion well outside the city? Yet it held no scenes of another family holding, nor any sense that it was elsewhere in Cormanthor. Surely Iymbryl had known where he lived.
Aye, known too well for it to matter and be set forth clearly in the gem’s stored memories. The whereabouts of House Alastrarra were a known, everyday thing to the bearers of the gems, not something …
But wait! Wasn’t that a—no, the falcon symbol he was seeking?
El turned aside, pace quickening. It was!
His call of thanks to Mystra was no less fervent because of its silence.
The arched gate stood open, blue and green spell-glows winking and crawling up and down its filigree of living vines. El stepped inside, took two paces into the gloom of the twilit garden beyond, and then turned to survey the street behind him.
No elf stood there, but the unseen gaze remained unbroken. Slowly El turned around again.
Something gleamed in the air ahead of him, floating above the winding garden path. Something that hadn’t been there moments before. It was the gleaming helm, arms, and shoulders of an elf in armor.
Or the semblance of such a guard—because those arms and shoulders and head were all he faced. The body that should have been beneath them was missing, the dark, gleaming armor trailing away like smoke below the breast of the silent apparition. As El stared at it, something rose menacingly from behind a bush off to the left: another armored form, just like the first.
El swallowed. So he’d awakened the magical defenses of this place. Blasting them with spells was probably not the wisest choice. So he turned slowly on his heels as guardian after guardian rose silently out of the dusk-cloaked garden, to ring him in on all sides.
Fire kindled then, behind the eye slits of one helm, as El found himself facing the one who’d first blocked his way. The mansion rose beyond it, just as in the scene the gem had shown him. The soft glows of moving lights showed from the tall, narrow windows the Alastrarrans were so proud of.
Right now, some of them might be glancing out those windows to see what manner of creature their guardians were slaying.
As El stood quietly, wondering what to do, and searching frantically through the gem’s visions in search of some guidance, thin beams of amber fire suddenly reached out from the fire raging within the helm before him to touch the disguised prince of Athalantar.
El felt no pain; the beams were sweeping through him, leaving behind a tingling, rather than burning or tearing. There was a sudden warmth on his brow and a burst of light that almost blinded him. He narrowed his eyes until he could see again.
The lore-gem had blazed into life, glowing like a leaping flame in the darkness of the garden. Its eruption seemed to satisfy the guardians. The searching beams winked out, and the menacing helms began to sink into the darkness on all sides, until El faced only the first one. It hung, helm dark now, in his way.
Elminster made himself walk calmly toward it, until the smokelike trail that marked where its body faded should have been tickling his nose.
But it wasn’t. As he took the step that would have brought him into collision with the silent sentinel, it vanished, winking out of existence and leaving him staring at the front door of House Alastrarra. Music came faintly to him through that portal, and tiny traceries of golden light formed endless and intricate patterns on one of its panels.
The lore-gem told him nothing about traps or door gongs or even servants of the portal, so El strode toward the doors and extended a hand to the crescent-shaped handle that hung like a bar in the air before them. Mystra grant that they be unlocked, he thought.
As he took that last step and laid his hand on the bar, El realized that something felt different. For the first time in hours, the ever-present pressure of those unseen, watching eyes was gone.
A feeling of cool relief washed over him—relief that lasted almost an entire breath before the handle under his hand glowed with sudden savage blue fire, and the doors rolled soundlessly open, to leave him staring into the startled eyes of several elves in the hall beyond.
“Oho,” Elminster whispered, almost audibly. “Mother Mystra, if ye love me at all, be with me now.”
An old trick practiced by thieves in the city of Hastarl is to act with cool condescension when caught where one has no business being. Lacking time to think, El used it now.
The five elves had frozen in the midst of opening fluted bottles of wine and pouring them over heaps of diced nuts and greens on several platters that seemed content to float in the absence of any table. El stepped around them with a calm, superior nod of recognition—something he was very far from feeling, for the gem held no images of servants; Iymbryl had evidently spent little time noticing underlings—and swept on into the back of the hall, where small indoor gardens sprouted. Behind him, the servants hastily sketched salutes and murmured greetings that he did not stop to acknowledge.
A sudden burst of laughter from an open doorway on the right made the servants hasten in their tasks and forget him. El smiled with relief and at the good fortune Mystra had sent him. Along the passage he hadn’t chosen, an array of unattended bottles was flying, approaching at chest height and spectacular speed, in obvious answer to a servant’s summons.
His smile froze on his face when an elven maid danced out of a crescentiform archway ahead along the right-hand wall and looked him full in the face. Her large, dark eyes filled with surprise as she gasped, “My lord! We did not expect you home for another three dawns!”
Her tone was eager, and her arms were rising to embrace him. Oh, Mystra.
Again El did what his time in the backstreets of Hastarl bid him. He winked, spun away from her on down the hall, and raised a finger to his lips in a sly “silent, now” gesture.
It worked. The lass chuckled in delight, waved to him in a way that promised future ecstasies, and danced away down the passage toward the front hall. The sash of her brief garment swirled behind her for a moment, displaying its glowing falcon sigil.
Of course. That sigil, like those the five by the doors were wearing, was the livery of the staff; they otherwise wore whatever befitted the situation, not any sort of uniform.
And from the memories he was borrowing swam up the face of the lass who’d now danced out of sight around the corner, and her name: Yalanilue. In Iymbryl’s remembrance, she’d been chuckling just like that, face close to his. But she hadn’t been wearing any clothes at the time.
El drew in a deep breath, and released it slowly and ruefully. At least the lore-gem steered him through the nuances of elven speech.
He went on down the passage, finding an archway to the left leading into a room where reflected stars glimmered in the deserted waters of a pool, and another to the right opening into a darkened room that seemed to house a sculpture collection. Thereafter the passage displayed closed doors down both walls on its run to an ending in a round room where glowing spheres of light floated, drifting gently about like sleepy fireflies as they lit a slender spiral
stair.
El took it, wanting very much to be out of the passage before one of the Alastrarras found him. He ascended past a chamber where dancers were stretching into and out of twists and backflips, obviously warming up for a performance to come. Of both sexes, they wore only their long hair, flowing free. Tiny bells were woven into some of the locks, and their bodies were painted with intricate and obviously fresh designs.
One of them glanced at the elf hurrying past on the stair, but El put a finger to his chin as if in deep thought and hastened on, pretending not to have noticed the arching bodies of the dancers at all.
The stair took him then to a landing festooned with hanging plants—or rather, with spire-bottomed bowls enspelled so as to float at varying heights above the landing, to let the trailing leaves of their living burdens just brush the iridescent tiles underfoot.
El ducked between them toward an archway visible in the dimness beyond, still affecting his “lost in thought” pose. Then he came to an abrupt halt as something barred his way.
It blossomed into cold, white brightness, curling up to illuminate the chamber from its source: the naked edge of a leveled sword blade.
The blade hung by itself in midair, but a few drifting motes of magical radiance drew El’s eye from it to an elven hand—an upraised right hand in a back corner, near the archway.
It belonged to a handsome, almost burly elf who must be accounted a muscle-bound giant among Cormanthans. The elf rose with easy grace from the gleaming black gaming board on the floor at which he’d been playing spellcircles, here in the darkness, against a frail-seeming servant—a maid who’d have been beautiful if there hadn’t been so much fear in her eyes. She was losing, badly, and no doubt saw ahead the whipping or other punishment her burly opponent had promised her. El wondered for a moment if winning or losing would grant her the greater pain.
The lore-gem told El that the burly elf facing him was Riluaneth, a cousin taken in by the Alastrarras after his parents died, and a source of trouble ever since. Resentful and with a cruel streak that was seldom far from governing him, Ril had delighted in teasing and occasionally tormenting the two young Alastrarran brothers, Iymbryl and Ornthalas.
