by Ed Greenwood
Ah, but who is to remember it? The voice in their heads was a sad sigh. The forest grows through roofless chambers that once were fair, and scatter the bones and dust that were my kin, while I am here, far distant. A watchnorn, now. Cormanthans term us “ghosts,” and fear us, and keep away. Hence our guardianships here be lonely, and bid fair to remain so.
“I shall remember the House of Calauth,” Elminster said quietly, his tone firm. “And if I live and am allowed to walk fair Cormanthor freely, I will return to talk with thee, Lady Braerindra. Ye shall not be forgotten.”
Blue-white hair swirled up around Elminster, and a chill prickled through him. I never thought to hear a mortal do me honor in the world again, the voice in his head replied, full of wonder. Still less a human, to speak so fair. Be welcome whenever ye can find the time to come hence. Elminster felt a sudden wrenching cold on his cheek, and he shivered involuntarily. Naeryndam caught hold of his shoulder as he reeled.
My thanks to thee also, wise mage, the spirit added, as Elminster struggled to smile. Truly, you bring wonders to show our Coronal.
“Aye, and so we must pass on. Fare thee well, Braerindra, until next our paths cross,” the old elf replied.
Until next, the voice replied faintly, as blue-white wisps sank into the ground and were gone.
Naeryndam hurried Elminster along one of the mossy paths. “Truly, ye impress me, man, by the way ye take on the weight of others’ cares. I begin to hope for the human race yet.”
“I—I can scarce speak,” El told him, teeth chattering. “Her kiss was so … cold.”
“Indeed—had she meant it to do so, ’twould have driven the life from thy body, lad,” the old elf told him. “It is why she serves thus, she and those of her kind. Yet be of heart; the chill will pass, and ye need not fear the touch of any undead of Cormanthor, forevermore. Or rather, for as long as thy ‘forevermore’ lasts.”
“Our lives must seem fleeting to elves,” El murmured, as the path took them up into small bowers of curved seats amid shrubs, and past trickling streamlets and little pools.
“Aye,” the elven mage told him, “but I meant rather the peril ye stand in. Speak as fairly in the time just ahead as ye did to the watchnorn, lad, or death may yet find thee this night.”
The young man beside him was silent for some time. “Is the Coronal one I should kneel to?” he asked finally, as they came up some stone steps and between two strange, spiral-barked trees out onto a broad patio lit by luminous plants.
“Be guided by his face,” the mage replied smoothly as they advanced, not hurrying.
An elf sat on nothing at the center of the paved space, with an open book, a tray of tall, thin bottles, and a footrest floating in the air around him. Two cloaked elves who wore power as if it crowned them stood on either side of him; at the sight of the human they glided swiftly forward to bar Elminster’s path to the Coronal, slowing only slightly at the sight of Naeryndam Alastrarra behind the human.
“You must have helped this forbidden one win past the watchnorns,” one of the elven mages said to the old elf-mage, ignoring Elminster as if he were no more than a post or bird-spotted stone sculpture. His voice was cold with anger. “Why? What treachery, reveal unto us, could reach the heart of one who has served the realm so long? Have your kin sent you hither for punishment?”
“No treachery, Earynspieir,” Naeryndam replied calmly, “nor punishment, but a matter of state requiring the judgment of the Coronal. This human invoked our law, and survives to stand here because of it.”
“No human can claim rights under the laws of Cormanthor,” the other mage snapped. “Only those of our People can be citizens of the realm: elves, and elf-kin.”
“And how would ye judge a human who has in all honor, and not through battle-spoil, worn a kiira of an elder House of Cormanthor, and walked the streets of our city until he found the rightful heir to surrender it to?”
“I’d believe that tale only when it could be proven to me, beyond doubt,” Earynspieir replied. “What House?”
“Mine own,” Naeryndam replied.
Into the little silence that his soft words made, the old elf in the chair said, “Enough tongue-fencing, lords. This man is here, that I may judge; bring him to me.”
Elminster ducked around the mage who stood nearest and strode boldly toward the Coronal. He never saw the mage wheel and cast a deadly spell at him, or Naeryndam nullify it with a scepter held ready for just such an occurrence.
The second mage was hurling another dark magic when Elminster knelt before the ruler of all Cormanthor. The Coronal raised a hand, and that magic, rushing toward his face like a dark roiling in the air, ceased to be. “Enough spell-hurling, lords all,” he commanded gently. “Let us see this man.” He looked into Elminster’s eyes.
El’s mouth was suddenly dry. The eyes of the elven king were like holes opening into the night sky. Stars swam and twinkled in their depths, and one could fall into those dark pools and be dragged down, down, and away …
He shook his head to clear it, clenched his teeth at the effort required, and set one booted foot on the pave. It seemed as if he were lifting a castle tower on his shoulders when he tried to straighten that leg, and surge to his feet. He growled, and set about doing so.
Behind him, the three elven mages exchanged looks. Not even they could forge on against the Coronal’s will, when mindlocked with the ruler of all Cormanthor.
White-faced and trembling, sweat running in rivers down his cheeks and chin, the raven-haired young man rose slowly, gaze still locked with the Coronal, until he was standing beside the seated elf.
“Do you resist me yet?” the old elf whispered.
The young man’s lips moved with agonizing slowness as he tried to shape words. “No,” he said at last, slowly and deliberately. “Ye are welcome in my thoughts. Were ye not trying to make me rise?”
“No,” the Coronal said, turning his head so that the link between their gazes was cut off, as if by a knife. “I strove to keep you on your knees, to master your will.” He frowned, eyes narrowing. “Perhaps another works through you.”
“My lord!” the mage Earynspieir cried, thrusting himself between Elminster and the Coronal. “This is precisely the peril you must be shielded against! Who knows what deadly spell could be worked upon you, through this lad?”
“Hold him in thrall, then, if you must,” the Coronal said wearily. “All three of you—and Earynspieir, let there be no ‘accidentally’ broken necks, or frozen lungs, or the like. I shall reveal whom he serves with the scepter, and read his memories of the matter of the kiira thereafter.”
From one of the trays floating near at hand the white-robed elf took up what looked like a long claret-hued glass rod, smooth and straight, no thicker than his smallest finger. It seemed almost too delicate to hold together.
El found himself lifted off his feet to hang motionless in the air, hands spread out stiffly from his sides. He could move his eyes, his throat, and his chest; all else was gripped as if by unyielding iron.
A light grew in the glass rod, and raced along its length. The old elf calmly pointed it at Elminster’s head, and they both watched the thin ray of radiance slide out of the rod and move through the air, with almost lazy slowness, to touch El’s forehead.
A great coldness crashed through the Athalantan, shaking him to his very fingertips. As he quivered there in midair he could hear the clatter of his teeth chattering uncontrollably, and then gasps of amazement from all four elves.
“What is it?” he tried to say, but all that came out through his frozen lips was a confused gurgling. Abruptly he found that his mouth was freed, and that he was turning—being turned—in the air, around to face a ghostly image that was towering over the patio. The spectral outlines of a face he knew.
A calm, serene face regarding them all with mild interest. Its eyes lit upon Elminster, and brightened.
“Is that who I think it is, man?” the Coronal asked gently.
&
nbsp; “It is Holy Mystra,” El told him simply. “I am her servant.”
“So much I had come to suspect,” the old elf told him a trifle grimly. A moment later, he and the young human melted away together, leaving the floating chair, and the air above and before it, empty.
The three mages stared at those emptinesses, and then at each other. Earynspieir whirled around to look up into the sky again. The huge human face was fading, the ghostly tresses curling and whipping like restless snakes as it seemed to draw slightly away from the Coronal’s garden.
But what made the elf-mages cower and stammer out the names of their gods was the way the beautiful female face looked at each of them in turn, as a broad and satisfied smile grew across it.
A few moments later, the face could no longer be seen at all.
“Some trick of the young human, no doubt,” Earynspieir hissed, visibly shaken. Naeryndam only shook his head in silence, but the other court mage plucked at Earynspieir’s arm to get his attention, and pointed.
That vast smile had suddenly reappeared. There was no face around it this time, but all three mages knew what it was. They would see it in their memories until their dying days.
As they turned their backs on the stars and hastened toward the nearest doors that led into the palace, another sight made them all pause and stare in silence once more.
All over the gardens, the watchnorns were rising silently to watch that smile fade.
SIX
THE VAULT OF AGES
Beneath the fair city of Cormanthor, in some hidden place, lies the Vault of Ages, sacred storehouse of the lore of our People. ‘Let Mythal rise and Myth Drannor fall,’ says one ballad, “and still the Vault remembreth all.” Some say the Vault lies there yet, unplundered and as splendid as before, though few now know the way to it. Some say ’tis the Srinshee’s tomb. Some say she has become a terrible mad thing of clawing magics, and has made the Vault her lair. And there are even some who admit that they do not know.
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
There were no mists, this time, only a soft moment of purple-black velvet darkness, and then Elminster was elsewhere. The white-robed elven ruler stood with him, in a cool, damp stone room whose ceiling arched low overhead. Luminous crystals were set in the places where the crisscrossing stone ribs of its vaults met, one with the next.
The elf and the human stood in the brightest spot, a clear space at the center of the domed chamber. In four places around its circular arc the wall was pierced by ornate arches that gave onto long vaulted passages running—El peered down one, and then another—to other domed chambers.
A narrow, winding path had been left clear down the center of each passage, but all of the rest of the space was crammed with treasure: a spreading sea of gold coins and bars and statuary, holding in its frozen waves ivory coffers that spilled pearls and rainbows of glittering gems.
Chests were stacked six high along the walls, and chased and worked metal banner-poles leaned against them like fallen trees. Nearer at hand, a dragon as tall as Elminster, carved from a single gigantic emerald, leaned amid the branches of a tree of solid sardonyx; its leaves were of electrum covered with tiny cut gems. The prince of Athalantar turned slowly on his heel to survey this treasure, trying to look expressionless and very much aware that the Coronal was watching his face.
There were more riches here, in this one chamber, than he’d ever seen before in all his life. The wealth here was truly staggering. The entire treasury of Athalantar was outshone by what would lie beneath him, were he to simply fall on his face in the nearest heap of coins. Right by his foot gleamed a cut ruby as large as his head.
El dragged his gaze up from all the wealth to meet the searching, starry eyes of the Coronal. “What is all this?” he asked. “I—that is, I know what I’m looking at, but why keep it here, underground? The gems would dazzle far more in sunlight.”
The old elf smiled. “My People dislike cold metal, and keep little of it to look at and touch on a daily basis; something gnomes and dwarves and humans never seem able to grasp. The gems we need to serve us as homes for magic, yes, those we keep about us; the remainder rests in various vaults. That which belongs to the Coronal—or rather, to the court, and thus, all Cormanthor—comes here.” He looked down one of the passages. “Some call this the Vault of Ages.”
“Because ye’ve been piling up riches here for so long?”
“No. Because of the one who dwells here, guarding it all.” The Coronal raised a hand in greeting, and El stared down the passage that the old elf was facing.
There was a figure there, tiny in the dim distance, and as thin as a post. A very graceful post, swaying as it came toward them.
“Look at me,” the Coronal said suddenly. When Elminster turned, he found himself looking into the full, awakened might of the ruler of Cormanthor. Once again his boots rose helplessly from the floor, and he hung in the air above the old elf as irresistable probes raced through him, calling up memories of a ferny dell, his spellbook left behind, Iymbryl gasping, and a certain scepter.
The Coronal stopped at that, and then sent El’s mind racing back, through brigand battles and The Herald’s Horn, to a certain encounter outside the city of Hastarl, where—
Now the smiling face of Mystra was back again, blocking the Coronal’s probings. She raised a reproving eyebrow at the elf, and smiled to soften her rebuke as the elven ruler reeled and shook his head, grunting in mindshock and pain.
El found himself abruptly back on the floor, dumped like a sack of grain.
When he looked up, he found himself staring into the tiny, shrunken face of the oldest elf he’d ever seen. Her long silver-white hair brushed the tiles below her slippered feet—feet that trod air, inches above the smooth-worn paving stones underfoot—and her skin seemed draped over her bones … bones so petite and shapely that she looked exquisite rather than grotesque, despite the fact that except where her diaphanous gown intervened, El could almost see her skeleton.
“Seen enough?” she asked impishly, caressing her hips and turning alluringly, like a tavern dancer.
El dropped his eyes. “I—my apologies for staring,” he said quickly. “I’ve never seen one of the People who looked so old before.”
“There are few of us as old as the Srinshee,” the Coronal said.
“The Srinshee?”
The old elven lady inclined her head in regal greeting. Then she turned, held out her hand over some empty air, and sat on that air, reclining as if she was lying in a pillow-padded lounge. Another sorceress.
“Her tale is her own to tell you,” the Coronal said, holding up a hand to stay further words from Elminster. “First must come my judgment.”
He walked a little away from the young man, treading the air above the floor. Then he turned back to face the Athalantan and said, “Your honesty and honor I have never doubted. Your aid to House Alastrarra, without thought of reward or rank, alone is worthy of an armathor—in human words, a knighthood, with citizenship—in Cormanthor. So much I freely grant, and bid you welcome.”
“Yet—?” El asked ruefully, at the old elf’s guarded tone.
“Yet I cannot help but conclude that you were sent to Cormanthor by the divine one you serve. Whenever I try to learn why, she blocks my inquiries.”
Elminster took step toward the old elf and looked into his eyes. “Read me now, pray ye, and know that I speak truth, Revered Lord,” he said. “I am sent here by Great Mystra to ‘learn the rudiments of magic’ as she put it, and because she foresaw that I’d be needed here ‘in time to come.’ She did not reveal to me just when, and how, and needed by whom or what cause.”
The white-robed elf nodded. “I doubt not your belief, man; ’tis the goddess I cannot fathom. I well believe she said just those words to you; yet she bars me from le
arning your true powers, and her true designs … and I have a realm to protect. So, a test.”
He smiled. “Think you I show every outland intruder riches that could well bring every hungry human from here to the western sea clamoring through the trees of Cormanthor?”
The Srinshee chuckled, and put in, “Elven ways may outstrip the comprehension of men, but that does not make them the ways of fools.”
El looked from one of them to the other. “What testing do you plan? I’ve little stomach left for more spell duels or wrestlings mind-to-mind.”
The Coronal nodded. “This I already know; were you such a one, you’d never have been brought here. To risk myself in your presence is to imperil a strong weapon of Cormanthor; to endanger the Srinshee needlessly is to toy with a treasure of the realm.”
“Enough flattery, Eltargrim,” the sorceress said primly. “You’ll have the lad thinking you a poet, and not the rough warrior you are.”
El blinked at the old Coronal. “A warrior?”
The white-haired elf sighed. “I did in my time down some orcs—”
“And a hundred thousand men or so, and a dragon or two,” the Srinshee put in. The Coronal waved a dismissive hand.
“Speak of such things when I am gone, for if we tarry overlong we’ll have the court mages blasting apart half the palace seeking me.”
The Srinshee winced. “Those young dolts?”
The Coronal sighed in exasperation. “Oluevaera, how can I pass judgment on this man if you shatter our every attempt at dignity?”
The ancient sorceress shrugged in her airy ease. “Even humans deserve the truth.”
“Indeed.” The Coronal’s tone was dry as he turned to Elminster, assumed a stern face, and said, “Hear, then, the judgment of Cormanthor: that you remain in these vaults for a moon, and search and converse with their guardian as you will; she will feed you and see to your needs. Folk of the court, myself among them, will come for you at the end of that time, and bid you take but one thing out of these vaults to keep.”
