by Ed Greenwood
Hands still moving in the feeble, useless gestures of a broken spell, Elmara found herself hurled out the shattered window where the two thieves had gone, a coil of flames crackling and searing around her. She roared in pain, the flames clawing at her, and twisted about as she fell so as to appear helpless for as long as possible before she called on the powers of her still-working flight spell. The book strapped to her stomach seemed to ward off the flames, but her ears were full of the sizzle of her burning hair.
Below lay the shattered bodies of the two thieves, and a large blackened area where lumps still gave off smoke—all Briost had left of the youngest Blade and the horses he’d guarded. Scant feet above them, Elmara bent her will and darted away, soaring just above the ground, smoke trailing from her blackened clothes. She wept as she flew, but not from the growing pain of her burns.
The small open boat held a man and a woman. The old, grizzled man in the stern poled it steadily on through thick sunset mists.
He eyed the young, hawk-nosed woman who stood near the bow, and asked quietly, “Be going to the temple, young lady?”
Elmara nodded. Motes of light sparkled and swam continuously about the large bundle she held with both hands against her chest, veiling its true nature. The old man eyed it anyway, and then looked away and spat thoughtfully into the water.
“Have a care, lass,” he said, resting his pole so the boat drifted. “Not many goes, but fewer comes back to the dock next morn. Some we never find at all, some we find only as heaps o’ ashes or twisted bones, and others blind or just babbling at nothing, dawn ’til dusk.”
The young, hawk-nosed maid turned and looked at him, face expressionless, for a long time. Then she lifted her shoulders, let them fall in a shrug, and said, “This is a thing I must do. I am bidden.” She looked ahead into the mists and added quietly, “As are we all, too often, it seems.”
The old man shrugged in his turn as the island of Mystra’s Dance loomed up out of the scudding mists before them, a dark and silent bulk above the water.
They regarded it, growing larger as they approached. The old man turned the boat slightly. A few breaths later, his craft scraped gently along an old stone dock, and he said, “Mystra’s Dance, young lady. Her altar stands atop the hill that’s hidden, beyond the one above us. I’ll return as we agreed. May Mystra smile upon ye.”
Elmara bowed to him and stepped up onto the dock, leaving four gold regals in the old man’s hand as she passed. The ferryman steadied his boat in silence, watching the young lady’s determined stride as she climbed the hill. The full glory of the setting sun was past now, and purple dusk was coming down swiftly over the clear sky of Faerûn.
Only when Elmara had disappeared over the crest of the bare summit did the boatman move. He turned away and leaned on his pole strongly. The boat pulled away from the dock, and the old, weathered face of its owner split in a sudden grin.
The grin widened horribly as the face above it slid down like rotten porridge. Fangs grew down to pierce the sliding flesh. The flesh dripped off a too-sharp chin and fell away to slop and spatter in the bottom of the boat, and the scaly, grinning face whispered, “Done, master.” Garadic knew Ilhundyl was watching.
Elmara stopped in front of the altar: a plain, dark block of stone standing alone atop the hill. The wind sighed past her. She offered a heartfelt prayer to Mystra, and the wind seemed to die away for a breath or two. When she was done, she unwrapped Ondil’s Book of Spells, its binding still bright around it, and placed it reverently on the cold stone.
“Holy Lady of All Mysteries, please accept my gift,” Elmara mumbled, uncertain as to what she should say. She stood watching and waiting, prepared to stand vigil the night through if need be.
A bare moment later, a chill ran down her spine. Two ghostly hands, long-fingered and feminine, were rising up out of the stone. They grasped the tome and began to descend again. Sudden, blinding radiance burst from the book, and there was a high, clear singing sound.
Elmara winced and shaded her eyes. When she could see again, the hands and the book were gone. The breezes blew across the bare stone, just as it had been when she found it.
The young priestess stood before the altar for a long time, feeling strangely empty, and weary—and yet at peace. There would be time to choose a path ahead on the morrow … for now, she was content just to stand. And remember.
The folk of Heldon and the outlaws in the ravine outside the Castle, the Velvet Hands lying in the alley, the Brave Blades so many dead. Gone to meet the gods, leaving her alone again.…
Lost in reverie, Elmara only gradually became aware of a brightening glow from down the hill, behind the altar.
She stepped forward. The glow was coming from a slim female figure that stood twice as tall as she. The apparition was gowned and regal and stood in the air well clear of the ground. Her eyes were dark pools, and a smile fell across her face as she raised her hand and beckoned. Then she turned and began to walk away, striding on empty air down the hill. After a moment, Elmara followed through the tugging breeze, down the windblown slope, then around another hill, and on. They came out onto a pebble beach on the far side of the isle from the dock, but the glowing figure ahead walked on, straight into—no, above!—the waves, striding out to sea.
Elmara slowed, eyeing the water’s edge. Gray waves rolled endlessly up onto the pebbles, and then sucked them back. The water ahead was glowing where Mystra had walked above it. Unbroken by the rolling waves, a shining path lay across the waters ahead of her. The goddess was growing distant now, still striding across the waves.
Gingerly, Elmara walked into the surf, and found her boots still dry. A fine mist covered her, but her feet did not plunge through the waters … she was walking on the waves! Emboldened, she began to hurry now, striding along in haste to catch up.
They were walking out to sea, leaving the island well behind. The breezes blew past, cool and steady, driving the sea to shore. Elmara hurried until her breath was coming in gasps, not quite daring to run on the moving waves … yet drew no closer to the glowing figure ahead.
El was just beginning to wonder where they were hurrying to when a cold, clear voice from just ahead of her said, “You have failed me.”
Ahead, the glowing figure dimmed, fading quickly above the dark waves. Elmara started to run in earnest now, but the radiant waves in front of her grew darker and darker, until the path was gone, and the figure too—and she was suddenly walking on the water no more, but plunged into icy depths.
She rose, struggling, cold water crawling in her throat and nose as she coughed and thrashed … and a wave slapped her in the face. She spat out water and clawed her way around, so the next swell lifted her under the shoulders and carried her along.
Back toward the island, now only a dark spot on the running gray seas. She was alone in the chill waters, at night, far from land.
In the breeze howling its way over the hilltop there came a sudden whirl of sparkling lights, rising up into a singing cloud of winking radiance. From its heart stepped a tall, dark-robed figure.
He strode to the bare stone block, looked down at it for a moment, and said coldly, “Rise!”
There was a sigh and a stirring from the stone in front of him, and wisps of pearly light began to stream from it, tugged by the quickening wind. The radiance swirled, thickened, and became a translucent figure—a woman who held a tome. She extended the book to the robed man, who stretched forth his hand in a quick gesture. Brief lightnings played around the book, and then died. Satisfied, the man took it.
The ghostly face leaned close. Its entreating whisper was almost a sob. “Now will ye let me rest, Mage Most Mighty?”
Ilhundyl nodded once. “For a time,” he said curtly. “Now—go!” The spirit’s shadowy form wavered above the stone block, as if it were whipped in a gale, and her faint voice came again. “Who was the young mage, and what is her fate?”
“Death is her fate, and so she is nothing, of course,” Ilhundy
l said, and there was a clear edge of anger in his cold tones. “Go!”
The lich moaned and sank back into the stone; the last that could be seen of her before she faded utterly was a pair of spread, beseeching hands.
Ilhundyl ignored them, hefted the weighty book in his hands, and smiled coldly across the breezy night at the third hilltop, where only rubble remained of the shattered True Altar of Mystra. If he had learned one thing in all his years of spell work and ruthless advancement, it was that the Mistress of Magic valued magical might above all. Wherefore Ilhundyl proudly wore the “Mad Mage” title men whispered behind his back. Soon, soon he’d be the most powerful, the Magister over all Faerûn—and then they’d be too busy screaming to whisper and work against him.
He stiffened, peering into the night. A blue flame was rising from the shattered stones on the other hilltop, flickering but growing ever brighter … and taller.
Ilhundyl’s mouth was suddenly dry. A woman twice as tall as he stood looking across the empty air between them. A tall, regal lady of blue flame, her eyes dark and level as they met his.
Sudden fear rose to choke him. Ilhundyl muttered a hasty word and sketched a sign in the air, and the winking lights rose bright around him, bearing him away.
Elmara groaned, coughed weakly, and opened her eyes. Dawn had come to Faerûn again … and, it seemed, had found her still in it. She was lying half in water and half on sand, with the endless crash of the surf all around. Fingers of foaming water ran up the sand past her. El watched its flow, feeling weak and sick, and then tried to lift herself. Sand sucked at her, then she was on hands and knees … whole and unhurt, it seemed, just a little dizzy.
The beach was deserted. A cool, salty onshore breeze blew past her and made her shiver. She was naked except for the Lion Sword, still on its thong around her neck. Elmara sighed, and wobbled to her feet. There was no sign of houses or docks or fences … just stunted trees, rocks, and a tangle of grasses, old stumps, and bushes where the beach ended and the living things began.
She took a step forward, then froze. In the sand in front of her, someone had scratched one word: “Athalantar.”
El looked down at the word in the sand, and then at her bare limbs, and shivered. She coughed, shook her head, lifted her chin, and strode away from the water, heading toward the rising sun.
In a place where guardian spells glowed night and day, deep in the Castle of Sorcery, a man settled down to read.
“Garadic,” he said coldly, and sipped his drink.
The scaled minion reluctantly shuffled forward out of the shadows and gingerly opened Ondil’s Book of Spells, where it lay on a lectern at the far end of the chamber from his master. Always-vigilant protective spells massed and swirled around the lectern, but no lightnings nor creeping death came. The revealed page was blank.
“Bring it,” was the next cold command.
When the lectern stood before his high, padded chair, Ilhundyl set down the goblet of emerald wine and waved the scaled, shambling thing away. He turned the next page himself.
It was as blank and creamy as the flyleaf before it had been. He turned it back. So was the next … and the next … and the next … every one of the pages was blank! Ilhundyl’s face froze, and a frown crept in around his eyes.
He spoke a word that made all the radiances in the room dim. The floor glowed briefly, and there came a grating sound, as a flagstone there moved back to reveal a hole. Very quickly, as if it had been waiting, a slyly questing tendril rose from unseen depths below. It touched the book delicately, almost caressingly, and then enfolded it—only to recoil, disappointed, and sink down again. That meant there were no hidden writings, nor portals or linkages to other spaces and other tomes. The book was empty.
Sudden rage seized Ilhundyl then. He rose from his seat in black anger, striding through portals that slid open and curtains that parted at his approach. His furious walk ended half the castle away, before a large sphere of sparkling crystal. It stood atop a black pedestal, alone in a small room of many lamps.
He glared into the depths of the sphere. Flames and flickerings appeared and coiled there, fueled by his anger. Ilhundyl stared into the crystal as the flames within it slowly grew, reaching flickering talons up its curving sides, and suddenly he was shouting. “I’ll blast her bones! If she’s drowned, I’ll raise her—and then smash her bones like hurled eggs, and make her beg for release! No one tricks Ilhundyl! No one!”
He spat a word of summoning, and halfway across the Castle of Sorcery, where he cowered in concealing shadows, the winged and warty shape of Garadic rose hastily and flapped down the swiftest ways to his master’s side.
Ilhundyl glared into the crystal, summoning up the young, hawk-nosed face from his memory. The fires swirled and shifted, clearing, and he gathered himself to hurl a scything blade of his will, to chop the young worm’s legs off at the knees and let her scream and crawl until Ilhundyl came—and gave her real cause to scream and crawl!
But when the fires of the crystal spun into focus, the visage looking calmly back at him was not the one Ilhundyl sought. He gaped in astonishment.
The wrinkled, bearded face dropped its habitual expression of mild curiosity to smile gently at him, nodded in greeting, and said, “Fair day, Ilhundyl; gained a new spellbook, I see.”
Ilhundyl spat at the Magister. The spittle hissed and smoked as it struck the crystal. “The pages are blank—and you know it!”
The Magister smiled again, a trifle tightly. “Yes … but the young mage who offered it to Mystra did not. You told her not to look inside, and she obeyed you. Such honesty and trust is sadly lacking in this world today—isn’t it, Ilhundyl?”
The Mad Mage of the Calishar snarled and hurled a spell into his crystal. The world inside the sphere flashed and rocked, throwing back bright reflections from Ilhundyl’s cheeks, but the Magister only smiled a little more tightly—and then the Mad Mage’s spell came howling back at him, bursting out of the bobbing, chattering crystal to crash into Ilhundyl and then rage about the chamber. Garadic flapped hastily aloft to avoid the full force of the flaming points of force, only to be tumbled helplessly around the walls, scraping and squawking, by the force of their flights.
“Temper, Ilhundyl, is the downfall of many a foolish young mageling,” the Magister said calmly.
Ilhundyl’s scream of frustrated fury echoed around the chamber—and then he turned, murder in his eyes, and hurled rending fire. Garadic hadn’t even time enough to finish his squawk.
A minstrel was singing in the dimly lit taproom of the Unicorn’s Horn as the young hawk-nosed woman stepped wearily inside. The roadside inn stood amid a cluster of sheep farms well west of Athalantar; to reach it, she’d walked all that day with nothing but brook water to drink and nothing at all to eat.
The innkeeper heard the traveler’s stomach growl as she stalked past, and greeted her affably. “A table and some stew right off, goodwoman? With a roast and wine to follow, of course …”
The young woman nodded, a smile almost rising to her grim lips. “A—quiet corner table, if ye would. Dark and private.”
The innkeeper nodded. “I’ve many such … this way, along behind, here.…”
The traveler did smile this time and allowed herself to be led to a table. Her dark clothes were worn and nondescript, but by her manner, she’d known both book learning and gentle society, so the innkeeper didn’t ask her for coins before service, but was astonished when the slim woman kicked off her boots with a contented sigh and spun a gold regal across the table.
“Let me know when that one needs company,” she murmured, and the innkeeper happily assured her that all would be done as she directed.
The wine—a ruby-red dwarven vintage that burned all the way down—was good, the roast excellent, and the singing pleasant. The flagstone floor was cold, so Elmara put her boots back on, pulled her cloak around herself, and settled back against the wall, blowing out the single cup-candle on the table.
Cloaked in darkness, she relaxed, listening to the minstrel singing of she-dragons and brave lady knights rescuing young men who’d been chained out as sacrifices to them. It was good to be warm and full of food again, even if the morrow was sure to bring death and danger (hopefully someone else’s, and not her own) as she reached Athalantar’s borders.
Yet she would press on. Mystra expected it of her.
The mellow voice of the minstrel rose into words that made Elmara break off thinking about Mystra’s disappointment in her, and lean forward to listen with her full attention. The ballad was one Elmara hadn’t heard before; a hopeful song of praise to brave King Uthgrael of Athalantar. Listening to the warm words of respect for the grandsire she’d never known, El found her eyes wet with sudden tears. Then the mellow voice changed, thickening, until it trailed off into a croak. Elmara peered through the shadows toward the minstrel’s stool beside the hearth, and stiffened.
The minstrel was clutching his throat, eyes staring in fear as he convulsed on his stool. He was goggling at a man who’d risen from his chair at a nearby table—a table of haughty, richly robed men who were laughing at the minstrel’s fate. The table in their midst was a forest of already-emptied bottles, goblets, and skins. Elmara saw wands at their belts, as well as daggers … wizards.
“What’re ye doing?” That sharp question came from a fat merchant at another table.
The mage who stood with one outstretched hand slowly clenching, choking the breath out of the minstrel, turned his head to sneer, “We don’t allow that dead man to be mentioned in Athalantar.”
“You’re not in Athalantar!” a man at another table protested as the minstrel gagged and gurgled helplessly.
The wizard shrugged as he stared coolly around the room. “We are magelords of Athalantar, and all this land will soon be part of our realm,” he said flatly.
