Elminster in Myth Drannor

by Ed Greenwood

  Feeling suddenly sick, El looked down at the orc again and gasped in horror.

  As he flung himself to his knees and reached out to touch and make sure, he felt as if Faerûn was opening up into a dark chasm around him. The chains were lying limp and loose around a small and slender form.

  An all-too-familiar form, lolling lifelessly in his hands as he rolled it over. The eyes of Nacacia, still wide in sad and vain pleading, stared up at him, dark and empty. They’d be so forever, now.

  Shaking, El touched the cruel gag that still filled her gentle mouth, and then he could hold back the tears no longer. He never noticed when the swirling smoke came again to take him.

  NINETEEN

  MORE ANGER AT COURT

  Among the tales and accounts of men, the Court of Cormanthor is portrayed as a glittering, gigantic hall of enchanted wonders, in which richly robed elves drifted quietly to and fro in the ultimate hauteur and decorum. It was so, most of the time, but a certain day in the Year of Soaring Stars was a decidedly noticeable—and notable—exception.

  ANTARN THE SAGE

  FROM THE HIGH HISTORY OF FAERÛNIAN ARCHMAGES

  MIGHTY

  PUBLISHED CIRCA THE YEAR OF THE STAFF

  Hold!” The Masked cried, and there was a hubbub of shocked voices from all around. “I bring a criminal to justice!”

  “Really,” someone said, severely, “is there any—”

  “Peace, Lady Aelieyeeva,” broke in a grave but stern voice that El knew. “We shall resume our business later. The human is one I named armathor of the realm; this affair demands my justice.”

  El blinked up at the throne of the Coronal, where it floated above the glowing Pool of Remembrance. Lord Eltargrim was leaning forward in its high-arched splendor in interest, and elves in splendid robes were hurriedly gliding aside to clear the glassy-smooth floor between El and the ruler of Cormanthor.

  “Do you recognize the human, Revered Lord?” The Masked asked, his cold voice echoing to every corner of the vast Chamber of the Court in the sudden stillness.

  “I do,” the Coronal said slowly, a trace of sadness in his tone. He turned his head from Elminster to regard the masked elf, and added, “but I do not recognize you.”

  The Masked reached up, slowly and deliberately, and removed the mask from his face. He did not have to untie it or slip off any browband, but merely peeled it off as if it was a skin. El stared up at him, seeing that coldly handsome face for the first time in over twenty years … a face he’d seen once before.

  “Llombaerth Starym am I, Lord Speaker of my house,” the elf who’d been Elminster’s master said. “I charge this human—my apprentice, Elminster Aumar, named armathor of the realm by yourself here in this chamber, twenty years ago—murderer and traitor.”

  “How so?”

  “Revered Lord, I thought to teach him the life-quench spell, to make him capable of defending Cormanthor, so he could be presented to you as a full mage of the realm. Having learned it, he made use of it without delay both to slay my other apprentice—the half-blood who lies beside him now, still in the chains in which he trapped her—and to doom one of the foremost mages of the realm: Mythanthar, whom he cloaked in a death-of-magic, so that our wise old sorcerer could not avoid the swords of the drow this human is in league with.”

  “Drow?” Among the courtiers who lined both sides of the long, glassy-smooth floor of the hall that cry was almost a shriek.

  Llombaerth Starym nodded sadly. “They fear the creation of a mythal will hamper their plans to storm us from Below. Later this summer, I suspect.”

  There was a moment of shocked silence, and then excited voices rose everywhere; through the tears he was fighting to master, El saw the Coronal look down the hall and make a certain gesture.

  There came a skirling, as of many harpstrings struck in unison, and the insistent, magically amplified voice of the Lady Herald rolled down the long, open Chamber of the Court. “Peace and order, lords and ladies all. Let us have silence once more.”

  The hush was slow in coming, but as armathors left the doors of the court and started purposefully down the ranks of the courtiers, silence returned. A tense, hanging silence.

  The Starym mage put on his mask again; it clung to his face as he raised it into place.

  The Coronal rose from his throne, his white robes gleaming, and stood on empty air, looking down at Elminster. “Justice has been demanded; the realm will have it. Yet in matters between mages there has always been much strife, and I would know the truth before I pass judgment. Does the half-elven yet live?”

  El opened his mouth to speak, but the Masked said, “No.”

  “Then I must call upon the Srinshee, who can speak with the departed,” Lord Eltargrim said heavily. “Until her arr—”

  “Hold!” The Masked said quickly. “Revered Lord, that is less than wise! This human could not have made contact with the drow without the aid of citizens of Cormanthor, and all here know of the long series of reverses Mythanthar suffered in his work to craft a mythal. One of the traitors powerful enough to work against that wise old mage undetected, and to traffic with the dark ones and survive, is the Lady Oluevaera Estelda!”

  His voice rose dramatically. “If you summon her here, not only will her testimony be tainted, but she could well strike out at you and other loyal Cormanthans, seeking to bring the realm down!”

  The Coronal’s face was pale, and his eyes glittered with anger at the masked mage’s accusation, but his voice was level and almost gentle as he asked, “Who, then, Lord Speaker, would you trust to examine the minds of the dead? And of the one you have accused?”

  Llombaerth Starym frowned. “Now that the Great Lady, Ildilyntra Starym, is no longer with us,” he said slowly, carefully not watching the Coronal’s face turn utterly white as all blood drained out of it, “I find myself at a loss to find a mage to turn to; any or all of them could be tainted, you see.”

  He turned, walking on air, to stride thoughtfully along the edge of the courtiers. Many of them drew back from him, as if he bore a disease. He paid them no heed.

  “How, Lord Speaker, would you view the testimony of the mage Mythanthar?” The rolling tones of the Lady Herald, who still stood by the doors at the end of the chamber, startled everyone. The heads of both the Coronal and The Masked jerked up to stare down the long, open Chamber at Aubaudameira Dree.

  “He’s dead, Lady,” The Masked said severely, “and anyone who questions him can by their spells conjure up false answers. Do you not see the problem we face?”

  “Ah, Starym stripling,” said a slight figure, placing his hand on the shoulder of the Lady Herald to gain the use of her voice-throwing magic, “behold your problem solved: I live. No thanks to you.”

  The Masked stiffened and gaped, just for a moment. Then his voice rang out in anger. “What imposture is this? I saw the human cast the lifequench. I saw the drow, hastening into the house of Mythanthar! He could not have lived!”

  “So you planned,” said the old mage, striding forward on the silent air, the Lady Herald at his side. “So you hoped. The problem with you younglings is that you’re all so lazy, so impatient. You neglect to check every last detail of your spells, and so earn nasty surprises from their side effects. You don’t bother to ensure that your victims—even foolish old mages—are truly dead. Like all Starym, young Llombaerth, you assume too much.”

  As he’d spoken, the old elf mage had been walking the length of the Chamber of the Court. He came to a stop beside Elminster, and reached out with his foot toward the body of Nacacia.

  “You would blame me for the murder of my apprentice?” The Masked shouted, sudden lightnings crawling up and down his arms. “You accuse me of trying to work your death? You dare?”

  “I do,” the old mage replied, as he touched the body of the half-elven lady in its chains.

  The Lady Herald said formally, “Lord Starym, you stand in violation of the rules of the Court. Stand down your magic. We duel with word
s and ideas here, not spells.”

  As she spoke those words, and the Coronal stirred, as if to add something more, the body in the chains vanished. In its place, a moment later, another form melted into view: a half-elven girl with long auburn hair who stood straight, angry, and very much alive.

  The Masked recoiled, his face going white. Mythanthar said in dry tones, “A lifequench spell is a potent thing, Starym, but no antimagic shell, however strengthened, can prevail against a spell shear. You need more schooling before you can call yourself any sort of wizard, whether you wear Andrathath’s Mask or not.”

  “Peace, all!” the Coronal thundered. As heads snapped around to him, and the armathors began to gather by the Pool, he turned his head to regard Nacacia, who was embracing a sobbing Elminster, and asked, “Child, who is to blame for all of this?”

  Nacacia pointed at the masked Starym mage and said crisply, “He is. It is all his plotting, and the one he truly seeks to slay, Revered Lord, is you!”

  “Lies!” the Masked shouted, and two bolts of flame burst from his eyes, snarling across the Chamber of the Court at Nacacia. She shrank back, but Mythanthar smiled and lifted his hand. The streaming fire struck something unseen and faded away.

  “You’ll have to do better than that, Starym,” he said calmly, “and I don’t think you know how. You didn’t even recognize a seeming when it lay before you here, in chains, an—”

  “Starym!” The Masked bellowed, raising his arms. “Let it be NOW!”

  Among the courtiers, all over the chamber, bright magic erupted. There were screams, and sudden explosions, and suddenly elves were running everywhere in the hall, swords flashing out.

  “Die, false ruler!” Llombaerth Starym shouted, wheeling to face the Coronal. “Let the Starym rule at last!”

  The roaring white bolt of rending magic that he hurled then was only one of many that lashed out at the old elf standing before his throne, as Starym mages hurled death from many places in the hall.

  The Coronal vanished in a blinding white conflagration of meeting, warring spells. The very air roiled and split apart in dark, starry rifts; the Lady Herald screamed and collapsed to the gleaming floor as the shield she’d spun around her ruler was overwhelmed. The hall rocked, and many of the shrieking courtiers were hurled from their feet. A tapestry fell.

  Then the bright, roiling radiance above the Pool was thrust back, to reveal Lord Eltargrim standing atop the floating Throne of the Coronal, his drawn sword in his hand. Light flickered down the awakened runes on the flanks of that blade as he growled, “Death take all who practice treachery against fair Cormanthor! Starym, your life is forfeit!”

  The old warrior sprang down from his throne and waded forward, swinging his sword like a farmer scything grain, using the enchantments that smoked and streamed along its edges to cleave the magic trained upon him. The swirling flames and lightnings faded in tatters before the bright edges of that blade.

  Someone shouted in triumph among the courtiers, and the ghostly outlines of a great green dragon began to take shape in the air above their heads, its wings spread, its jaws open and poised to bite down on the slowly advancing Coronal. As the Starym who’d summoned it wrestled against the wards of the chamber to bring the wyrm wholly into solidity, and its outlines flickered and darkened, El and Nacacia could see the neck of the dragon arching and straining, trying to reach the lone old elf in white robes who stood beneath it.

  Mythanthar said two strange words, calmly and distinctly, and the flickering lightnings and smokes of magic the Coronal was hacking his way through suddenly flowed up and over Eltargrim’s head, straight into the straining maw of the dragon.

  The blast that followed smashed the roof of the chamber apart, and toppled one of its mighty pillars. Dust swirled and drifted, as elves screamed on all sides, and Elminster and Nacacia, still in each other’s arms, were hurled to the floor as the magical radiances that gave light to the vast Chamber of the Court winked out.

  In the sudden darkness, as they coughed and blinked, only one source of light remained steady: the empty throne of the Coronal, floating serenely above the glowing Pool of Remembrance.

  Lightnings clawed and crashed around it, and the body of a hapless elven lady was dashed to bloody ruin against it. She fell like a rag doll into the Pool below, and its radiance went suddenly scarlet.

  The Chamber of the Court shook again, as another explosion smashed aside tapestries along the east wall, and sent more broken bodies flying.

  “Stop,” snapped a voice in the darkness. “This has gone quite far enough.”

  The Srinshee had come at last.

  TWENTY

  SPELLSTORM AT COURT

  And so it was that a spellstorm was unleashed in the Court of Cormanthor that day. A true spellstorm is a fearful thing, one of the most terrible

  dooms one can behold, even if one lives to remember it. Yet some

  among

  our People hold far more hatred and fear in their hearts for what happened after the spellstorm blew apart.

  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

  Sudden light kindled in the darkness and the dust. Golden motes of light, drifting up from the open hand of a sorceress who seemed no more than an elf-child. Suddenly the Chamber of the Court was no longer lit only by the flashes of spells, the flickering steel of the Coronal’s sweeping blade, and the leaping flames of small fires blazing up tapestries here and there.

  Like a sunrise in the morning, light returned to the battlefield.

  And battlefield the grand Chamber of the Court had become. Bodies lay strewn everywhere, and amid the risen dust, the sky could be seen faintly through the rent in the vaulted roof of the hall. Huge fragments of the toppled pillar lay tumbled behind the floating throne, with dark rivers of blood creeping out from beneath some of them.

  Elves still battled each other all over the Court. Armathors struggled with courtiers and Starym mages here, there, and everywhere, in a tangle of flashing blades, curses, winking rings, and small bursting spells.

  The Srinshee was floating in front of the throne, conjured light still streaming up from her tiny body. Lightnings played along the fingertips of her other hand, and stabbed out to intercept spells she deemed too deadly, as they howled and snarled above the littered floor of the Court.

  As Nacacia and El found their feet and staggered back into each other’s arms, they saw something flicker in the hands of their former master. Suddenly The Masked was holding a stormsword conjured from elsewhere, purple lightnings of its own playing up and down its blade. His face no longer looked so desperate as he watched the Coronal hewing slowly through the Starym retainers gathered in front of their lord speaker.

  Llombaerth Starym looked over at the human and the half-elf standing in each other’s arms then, and his eyes narrowed.

  He crooked a hand, and El felt a sudden stirring in his muscles. “No!” he cried desperately, as The Masked jerked him out of Nacacia’s grasp, and lifted his hands to work a spell.

  As his eyes were dragged up to focus on the Srinshee, El cried out, “Nacacia! Help me! Stop me!”

  His mind was flashing through magics as The Masked rummaged his spell roster, seeking one particular spell and, with a warm surge of satisfaction, found it.

  It was the spell that snatched blades from elsewhere and transported them, flashing in point-first, to where one desired.

  Where the Masked desired the points to go was the eyes and the throat and breast and belly of the Srinshee, as she stood on emptiness deflecting the worst magics of the warring elves.

  All over the hall fresh spells flared. Elves who’d hated rivals for years took advantage of the fray to settle old scores. One elf so old that the skin of his ears was nearly transparent clubbed another of like age to the ground with a footstool.

&nbs
p; The falling elder’s body spread its brains over the slippers of a haughty lady in a blue gown, who didn’t even notice. She was too busy struggling against another proud lady in an amber dress. The two swayed back and forth, pulling hair, scratching, and spitting. There was blood on their nails as they slapped, kicked, and flailed at each other in panting fury. The lady in amber slashed open one cheek of the lady in blue; her foe responded by trying to throttle her.

  As similar battles raged in front of him, El raised his hands and set his gaze upon the Srinshee.

  Nacacia screamed as she realized what was happening, and El felt the thudding blows of her small fists. She jostled him, shoved him, and beat at his head, trying to ruin his spell but not hurt him.

  Slowly, fighting his own body but unmoved by the pain she was causing, El gathered his will, took out the tiny sword replicas he needed from the pouch at his belt, lifted his hands to make the gesture that would melt them and unleash the spell, opened his lips, and snarled desperately, “Knock me down! Push me against the floor! I need—do it!”

  Nacacia launched herself into a desperate, clumsy tackle, and they struck the floor hard, bouncing and driving the wind out of El. He convulsed, arching his body on the smooth, bruising stone as he sought to find air, and she fought to keep on top of him, riding him as a farmer tries to hold down a struggling pig.

  He shook himself, dragging her this way and that, and tried to lash out at her, but fell hard on that shoulder, needing his arm for support.

  Something was spinning in his mind, rising up out of the depths as he struggled. Something golden.