by Ed Greenwood
BAH! YOUR MIND IS A CESSPOOL OF THESE MISTY-EYED MOMENTS! WHAT CARE I FOR THE TEARS OF WEAK AND FOOLISH HUMANS?
[shards of remembrances hurled, broken, away …]
HOW CAN YOU HIDE WHAT I SEEK, WHEN MAGIC IS YOUR POWER AND YOUR LIFE’S WORK? HOW? HOW?
[red eyes glaring through the darkness of shattered chambers, memories strewn broken on the floor like shards of glass and torn cobwebs]
MYSTRA. THAT’S IT. YOUR GODDESS AIDS YOU.
[diabolic eyes raging up into pyres]
SHOW YOURSELF, GODDESS!
[darkness, silence, eddying dust]
COME FORTH, COWARDLY WENCH!
[darkness, memory shards sighing down to rest]
ELMINSTER AUMAR, SHOW ME MYSTRA! REVEAL TO ME MEMORIES OF MYSTRA! SHOW ME!
[cringing, faltering, pain-ridden]
Aye …
“The Starym are apt to be overproud fools,” the Lady Laurlaethee Shaurlanglar said calmly, “but they are right in one thing: to allowing these stinking bears of humans into our midst is to sully and doom us. That’s why I invited you here, plaything of the Srinshee. That moonwine you drained oh so elegantly was laced with enough srindym to kill a dozen overambitious human magelings.”
The man they called Elminster cast three swift, hawklike glances behind and before him, gliding a pace to one side to peer behind a hanging as gracefully as any young warrior of the People.
The elf lady laughed lightly. “We are quite alone, doomed one. I’ve no need or desire for witnesses—no guards to keep at bay the paws of a dying brute. I am the last of a proud warrior line, and I can protect myself.”
Elminster gazed silently down at the slender wisp of gowned elven beauty in the chair. The Lady Laurlaethee was frail even as elves measure such things. Standing tall, she’d be little more than half his height. Sapphire-bright eyes looked coolly back up into his with no trace of fear. He gave her the slightest of smiles and asked, “And ye did this thing—why?”
“Hatred,” the matron said, rising with supple grace. “For you and the likes of you. Beasts who seek to steal what they haven’t the wits to learn. If the Srinshee wasn’t so besotted with lust, you’d still be scrabbling and straining to call forth a little glow from your fingertips—in the brief moments before you found your corpse decorating the end of a Cormanthan spear.”
“Well, that’s certainly blunt enough,” Elminster observed. “Being a thirsty beast—and one of course quite devoid of proper manners, I wonder if I might have some more of this excellent wine. I believe the srindym improves it somewhat.”
Sapphire eyes flashed. “She protected you!”
Elminster bowed his head. “Lady, she did.”
“That traitoress!” the Lady Laurlaethee spat, striding to a corner where large and small spheres of crystal turned slowly, chiming faintly as they spun. “Once word of thi—”
“Lady, I must guard ye against thy own foolishness,” Elminster said swiftly, raising his voice a trifle. “Ye seem to think I speak of the Srinshee. I do not. She neither knows of our meeting nor provides me with any defenses. My spell cloak is my own.”
The exquisite beauty of an elven face is shattered when perfect lips twist into a sneer. “You presume me foolish indeed, ape-thing. You wield no magics of any accomplishment that you did not seize, steal, or cozen from this elf or that. Who is this ‘she’ who protects you, if not one of the People?”
“Divine Mystra, the goddess I serve,” Elminster said quietly. He watched for her response as calmly as if he feared nothing.
“Pah!” The Lady Laurlaethee spat, coming to a halt behind her crystals and glaring at the guest she hoped to slay over them. Their radiance lit her face strangely from below. “All sorcery streams from those we reverence—the True Gods! If this ‘Mystra’ of yours has any power at all, she must be but a face and a name extended to you unwashed humans by divinity that cleaves to elves, the Chosen Folk!”
“And if this is so,” Elminster said with a smile lurking in his eyes that did not—quite—touch his lips, “and my magic triumphed over thy magic, it would mean that a goddess we both revere, by whatever name, has chosen me over ye—would it not?”
“Be still, ape!” his hostess snarled. “Lie down and die! How dare you profane the air of my home, to say nothing of my own ears, with such a suggestion!”
She made a clawlike gesture with one hand, and the air seemed to sparkle and freeze in place, just for a moment, around Elminster. He gave her a lazy smile and strode forward.
The Lady Laurlaethee stiffened and went white, her eyes blazing. There was a sighing in the air around the advancing human. Her eyes widened, and she drew back a pace.
Elminster Aumar stepped gently around the spheres of crystal and continued to advance on her. Furiously she wove magic with nimble fingers and hissed incantations. The air became alive with tiny silver lances and curling, half-seen dragons … but still he came on.
“Back, beast!” the elf matron said, her voice rising in real fear. “Stay back, or—or—”
A ring on her finger winked and vanished. Suddenly great hands reached up from the floor beneath her guest’s boots, and down from the ceiling … hands that faded into trailing dust before they could close on the human.
Laurlaethee’s lips tightened. Other rings flashed. She shouted a sudden incantation and dashed one hand across her other palm, gashing it with the thorn-barb on a ring. A swift word made the drops of blood she flung into the air catch fire and hang motionless between them.
Elminster smiled gently and stepped through them, wincing not at all as they exploded.
The Lady Laurlaethee was almost in a corner now, her mouth trembling with fear. The next words made the room rock and roar. They left her visibly wrinkled and withered … but seemed to touch the advancing human not at all.
Slender shoulder blades brushed a flower-girt wall, and the last of the Shaurlanglars shuddered, drew in a deep breath, and closed her eyes. She did not need or want to see what she did next.
Her hand swept down like a striking adder, plucking the tiny dagger from its sheath at her loins and bringing it back up to her breast in one flashing movement. As it went home, she would spit her death blood in his face and bring down a curse on him that no mage shield could turn aside. Laurlaethee Shaurlanglar did not want to live in a world where beasts rose to rule. To think that it had come to this, that—
She knew just where to strike, but she’d not thought it would feel so icy.
Cold, so cold, the blood spurting and—and—sudden glory! Warmth, a rising song, ecstasy such as she’d not felt for years, since the arms of her gone and gathered beloved Touor had last clasped her close …
She blinked her eyes open—and stared into those of the hated human, inches away. His hand was on her breast, the magic that had healed and restored her curling up from his fingers. Those fingers trailed down to her wrist with infinite gentleness and captured her fingers.
He knelt and kissed her fingertips. “Lady,” he said from his knees, looking gravely at her, “I came here hoping to win a friend, not to shatter a foe. Does it matter who we worship if we do good to each other? I hope to call on ye again … and that ye never have proper cause to use this on me.”
He rose as swiftly as her hand had sought her own death, and dropped something into her palm: her blade of honor, still dark with her blood. As she watched, that gore vanished like smoke, leaving the silver-steel as bright as before.
She closed her hand around it and raised it, ashamed at her trembling. He stood regarding her, well within her reach, and did nothing but look into her eyes.
Laurlaethee Shaurlanglar flung her blade away blindly and was sobbing as hard as she’d ever wept in her life, almost blinded by the flood of her tears. Through them, she dimly saw the human walk away across the room, through the tatters of her mightiest spells, to the balcony whence he’d first come.
The human Elminster stood there, looking back at her, and raised his hand in a sal
ute used by elves of older times to show respect to their elders.
As he did so, every spell he’d broken whirled once more to life, restored and singing bright and mighty around her. The room rocked once more with the force of their contesting powers. He held them in check, one doom upon another, and then, with a wave of his hand, spun them all back to nothingness. Her ring reappeared on her finger, undrained. Her spells and her spilled blood returned to her, thrilling her once more with their waiting power.
Laurlaethee gaped at him in astonishment. No one could do thus. No one.
“Mystra is nothing if not merciful,” he whispered, the sound carrying loudly to her ear. “Be at peace and of good cheer, Lady Shaurlanglar. Neither of us is angry with thee.”
Then he was gone. The ancient elf raised her fingers to her cheeks to brush away tears. For the first time in centuries—long, long centuries of lonely pride—she felt wonder.
She turned her head to look at herself in the lone mirror in that room, and stood a long time lost in thought. Even the withering was gone. She looked—younger! She turned to show one flank to the glass, and then the other. Younger, firmer, taller … she threw back her head and laughed, caring not if it sounded a little wild. Then, impatiently, she did off her gown and let it fall behind her, striding bare to the balcony where she sniffed at the decanter of moonwine, and found it, of course, purged of all srindym.
Laurlaethee shook her head, smiling a little, and leaned out to watch birds flit and whir and sing. A cool breeze had risen from the shadows to ghost past the rail, but she stood proud against it, not chilled in the slightest.
Wonder makes a very warm cloak.
LITTLE MUMBLING GODS, MORE PRETTINESS? MY HEART TREMBLES, BUT MY GORGE RISES! FIRE OF THE PIT, HUMAN, BUT YOU TRY ME SORELY! I SUPPOSE THAT WAS MYSTRA WORKING THROUGH YOU, AND THUS—BY THE THINNEST, MOST TWISTING THINKING—A FULFILLMENT OF MY COMMAND.
Indeed.
SILENCE! WHEN I HAVE NEED OF YOUR CLEVERNESS, WIZARD, I’LL NOT FAIL TO INFORM YOU. YOU CAN AVOID TORMENT RIGHT NOW BY SHOWING ME YOURSELF WIELDING—OPENLY AND AS A WEAPON IN A MANNER USEFUL TO ME AND CLEARLY REVEALED—POWER GRANTED YOU BY MYSTRA. IMPRESSIVE POWER, MIND, NOT IDENTIFYING THE FRAGRANCE OF FLOWERS OR SOME SUCH FRIPPERY!
Thy command becomes my wish.
AND THY MOUTH REMAINS FAR TOO SMART FOR THY COMFORT, IDIOT WIZARD! DO AS I COMMAND—NOW!
[flow of bright images, like stars poured down a well, quickening and growing broader, deeper … slowing, slowing … one radiance wells up to outshine all]
The line of blue fire blazed down the doors, sealing them. Ancient magics girded the hall, for all its ruined state, against wider Faerûn outside. Here the most mighty had contended in formal duels for centuries upon centuries, fusing the stone into glassy flows, embedding desperate radiances … and leaving behind the smell of fear and the prickling tension of watching, bound and helpless spirits.
A smile crossed the face of the tall, impossibly thin combatant. It held no trace of mirth or friendliness.
“Did you think,” the lich hissed in triumph, “that I’d come alone?”
A stalactite behind and above one bony shoulder blurred and descended—and became a floating sphere of many eyes. It drifted forward with dangling tentacles and many jaws snapping on stalks. From nearby shadows flew a bat-winged gargoyle waving a sword of black flame. A vast snake slithered out and lifted its gigantic, cruelly beautiful, human-seeming head. Near it stood a graceful she-elf with obsidian skin and spell-spun daggers whirling about her slender wrists.
These creatures strode or glided or floated down the hall to menace the lone challenger—a human not so tall or thin as the lich. He had little of a warrior’s build and nothing about him sharper than his hawklike nose.
The human’s eyebrows rose. “Strange bedfellows, indeed,” he observed calmly. “Thy falling into league together—that’s a tale I’d like to hear.” He sat down on a piece of the tumbled stone beside him, propped his dusty boots on another stone, and got out his pipe. “Well?”
The lich stared. “Are you insane?”
The mage shook tobacco out of a little pouch and commenced to tamp it down into the bowl of his pipe with his thumb. “Probably,” he replied cheerfully. Death advanced on him, spreading out with stealthy grace to outflank and surround him. “Are ye surprised?”
The lich did not bother to reply but instead snapped hurriedly, “Before Mystra and the Mages Arcane, I claim right of subsumption in this duel, that all my opponent’s powers be granted to me—attack!”
Though the presence of allies and the failure to allow one party to claim before commencement were blatant breaches of the rules of Spelldown Hall, and though the creatures arrayed against him made death a swift certainty, the human puffed on his pipe and made no move.
As the first spell touched him—a bright bolt from the death tyrant—the hall was suddenly full of blue-white fire and a wordless singing that was both feminine and exultant. Drow limbs roared into flame and were gone. The gargoyle melted away into a brief whirling chaos of black flame and melting shards of sword. The gigantic snake burst like a boiled sausage and crumbled to dust. Silently, the beholder winked out.
As the last of its allies vanished, the disbelieving lich gasped, “How—?”
“Mystra gives ye greetings,” the reclining human said pleasantly. He blew a smoke ring in the direction of his opponent before following it with the innocent question, “Does this mean ye don’t want to tell me the tale of this little alliance?”
The lich’s scream of fury was as wordless as Mystra’s swelling song. Black flames and red roared out of its bony hands and snarled across the hall at the man with the pipe.
Elminster watched the flames come. As they struck home, he jerked his body this way and that in spasms that made his pipe shoot up to the ceiling. Smoke curled from his lips as he announced calmly, “Mystra makes reply.”
He closed his mouth. When he reopened it all the blue-white fire in Faerûn poured forth, sweeping away one end of Spelldown Hall, frantic lich and all, in a single roaring instant …
Blue-white and so bright …
AARGH! RRRAAAAAGHH! OUGHHH!
[writhing flailing red-eyed pain, shuddering horns and tentacles, rocking and keening in helpless slithering agony, dying slowly to gasps]
[cautious peering, stealing forward from shadows to look at the smoking ruin of too many memories, with the smarting sentience of an archdevil smoldering at their heart]
OHHH URRHH. [slow roll over, curling of stiffened talons, flexing of torn tentacles, unfolding in the sudden absence of pain] SWEET FIRES OF NESSUS!
Nergal?
IF I THOUGHT YOU’D DONE THAT DELIBERATELY, WIZARD, I’D TEAR YOU LIMB FROM LIMB AND SAVAGE YOUR REMAINS!
I but yielded what ye forcefully sought.
SO YOU DID. THOUGH IT SHOWED ME NOTHING USEFUL. SUCH FURY RARELY COMES FORTH WHEN I OPEN MY MOUTH.
Oh, I might disagree with ye there.…
HAVE YOUR SMILE, LITTLE MAN TORMENT WILL COME TO YOU AGAIN SOON ENOUGH.
[rising from the ruin to stand and then stagger, tentacles questing forth, the light growing more as the search begins once more]
SO THAT’S WHAT THE FIRE OF A GODDESS TASTES LIKE. SPARE ME NO WARNINGS IN FUTURE, WHEN I TAKE HOLD OF ANY SIMILAR SURPRISES!
I know not, devil, what can surprise thee.
REALLY? NEITHER DO I. [grim mental smile] WELL, WE’LL JUST HAVE TO LEARN TOGETH—
Spinagons swooped and tumbled out of the blood-red sky. They fell upon a hulk and stabbed with forks and raked with feet. The thing reared up, scattering them with two thrusts of its tentacles, and bellowed, “Who dares—?”
Shrieking, the devils flapped out of the hollow, fleeing in babbling panic.
Nergal glared after them, able to snatch only one of his attackers. Snaking tentacles slowly tore one limb after another from that hapless, shrieking spinagon. One end of a tentacle thrust into its mouth, breaking the jaw to keep
from being bitten, and remaining. That muffled the shrieks. Nergal shook his head.
Whether agents sent by a rival or merely brainless hunters, these flapping annoyances were an overdue warning. Lost in the enjoyment of rummaging human memories, he’d been leaving himself vulnerable. Not all the denizens of Avernus were wise enough to avoid an archdevil. Others might well decide to try their luck with a wounded, reeling Nergal—to say nothing of the naked, puny crawling thing that was Elminster. Alone amid smoke and scuttling things a few gorges off, he was well on the way to blundering into the arms of Tasnya, or Oomrith, or Skeldagon, or half a dozen others.
Caution was in order. Nergal moved across smoking fissures to a more defensible place. A pack of nupperibos had gathered there. Nergal gave them a many-fanged smile full of fell promise. The nupperibos fled from him in grunting haste. Nergal flung his awareness back to the dark caverns of Elminster’s mind.
Back to the human’s youth in Hastarl, and from there no doubt a long, tortuous chain of memories wherein the wizard knew ever more of Mystra’s power, and magic mastered and then hidden. Magic that would soon belong to Nergal.
Diabolic laughter echoed in a cavern around the tentacled lord. The sound filled also the riven chambers behind the eyes of the Old Mage. Spines bristled, granted by Nergal to make Elminster a less obvious morsel.
Languid limbs stretched, cherry-red and glistening with the blood of the gutted, half-crushed lemures that filled the bowl-shaped bed.
“So,” purred their owner, as little flames licked from between her lips and rose from the tips of magnificent breasts, “Nergal has a new toy—one alluring enough to distract him from his usual hunts and cruelties. Such a toy Tasnya must have.”
She rolled over on the lemuran corpses, arching away from the razor-maws of the land lampreys whose gnawing brought her such pain and pleasure. She-devils knelt eagerly at the foot of the bed. She fixed one with a look that had fire in it. Its human-seeming tongue licked both its lush lips and the dainty fangs behind them, in anticipation of a pleasurable mission.
