The Herald

by Ed Greenwood

  It was quite some time before Arclath had breath enough to groan. He rolled over, still moaning, and grunted, “Rune? Rune?”

  “I’m fine,” his beloved replied sourly. “More or less.”

  Arclath peered rather blearily in the direction Amarune’s voice was coming from, and beheld a wincing Storm rolling over to her knees, his Rune tangled in the bard’s long silver hair—and sliding off her back.

  “While I,” the bard informed Arclath gingerly, “have been better. Thank you for asking.”

  She got to her feet with a wince and a hiss of pain, her tresses setting Amarune upright with gentle care, and peered all around.

  Distant mercenaries shouted, and they heard crashing as heavy-booted men hurried closer.

  “Time,” Storm announced, “to fly.” And she reached out and hugged them again.

  “Not like last time, I hope,” Arclath managed, as magic swept them aloft again.

  “No,” Storm agreed firmly. “A moment ago I was making us all look like a catapult load, because some of yon hireswords will be itching to use the bows, which Myth Drannor’s wards have been foiling, on something. This time, we’ll be flying properly—with about as much control as a heavy, ungainly bird.”

  An arrow shivered off the nearby spreading branches of a duskwood, and Storm sighed and announced, “Change of plan. If arrows can fly, we’re far enough from the wards to translocate.”

  “Translocate?” Arclath asked suspiciously.

  “Teleport,” Storm informed him—and blue light rose like a mist all around them, and fell over them like a cloak in the next instant.

  Then they were falling through a soft blue void, all sounds of the forest gone, and … standing on a flagstone floor.

  “My kitchen,” Storm announced. “In my farmhouse, in Shadowdale.”

  Arclath and Amarune looked at each other, then with one accord started slowly turning as they gazed all around.

  They were in a low-raftered room with fieldstone walls and wooden countertops inset with marble tiles and sinks, furnished in sturdy stools and thick plank-topped tables. Diamond-paned windows looked out into a choked garden, overhung with trees so that dappled sunlight lanced down through them to the flagstones.

  “What a beautiful place,” Rune said aloud.

  “Good,” Storm agreed briskly, “then you won’t mind tarrying here a bit. Without me.”

  Arclath gave her a frown. “While you—?”

  Storm held up one hand to silence him, and with the other reached to a nearby pillar—and tore it open, a concealed panel swinging open. She plucked out a tiny metal box that was tarnished black with age, flipped it open—and the room flooded with almost blinding light.

  Wincing, Amarune tried to peer past it. She saw Storm’s long fingers silhouetted against that brilliance for a moment as the bard plucked whatever was glowing so brightly up out of the box and into her mouth.

  And then the light was gone, and Storm turned toward them a face that was young and unlined again. As she opened her mouth to speak, an echo of the blinding radiance winked inside her, just for a moment.

  Rune gaped. What had she just seen? It looked like Storm had swallowed a tiny star. Some sort of ancient healing magic, or a spark of silver fire, or—?

  “Later,” Storm told her with a wry smile, “when the time is right. Full explanations, I promise.”

  “But—” Arclath started to protest.

  She waved a flamboyant arm at him like a furious high priestess silencing a blasphemer.

  “Later,” she repeated sternly, and added, “Now stay here,” she said, that order afire with a fierceness born of new vigor, then turned to Amarune, seeming somehow taller. Stronger. Renewed.

  “If El and I and the rest fall,” she said, “you are the future—the last Chosen of Mystra. She’ll need you desperately. So stay. Please. The future of the Realms may depend on your obedience.”

  She spun to face Arclath, and commanded him as imperiously if she was the Queen of Cormyr. “See to it that she stays here—and defend her with your life.”

  “Lady,” he replied, “that’s not something you ever need to order me to do.”

  As he uttered the last two words, Arclath found that he was speaking to empty air.

  Storm had whirled away from him to pluck a stone out of the nearest wall to reveal a niche, plucked a glowing blade from out of hiding there, blown them a kiss, and—winked into nothingness.

  Arclath looked at the revealed niche, then looked away.

  And then, as sudden silence stretched and deepened, and Amarune regarded him with a knowing smile, found he couldn’t resist going to see what else might be hidden within it.

  CHAPTER 13

  So Suddenly Swept Away

  THERE WAS A LOUD CLATTER AS MATTICK’S SCABBARD RAPPED against the door of the audience chamber of Thultanthar in his breathless haste.

  Then he and his twin, Vattick, had burst through the doors and were sprinting across the room to where the High Prince of Thultanthar stood addressing a half moon of nine silently standing, dark-robed men. Arcanists. Their brother Aglarel stood like a watchful stone statue behind their father, hand on sword, as he watched their undignified arrival.

  Then Telamont Tanthul turned to regard them, and his face was as friendly as frost-touched iron.

  “W-we came as quickly as we could, Most High,” Mattick gasped. Vattick was too winded to manage words, and could only nod.

  “Was personally inspecting the den of dalliance established by your nieces Manarlume and Lelavdra so important, at this precise time?” Telamont asked coldly. “I would remind you that we are at war.” He turned back to the arcanists, and added over his shoulder, “And before you protest that we’re always at war, be advised that such an observation would be most unwise. At least you remembered your swords.”

  Telamont surveyed the carefully expressionless arcanists, and so did his twin sons.

  Who saw that all nine were wearing identical crystal pendants— before their father leveled an imperious finger at one.

  A thin line of ruby fire sped from his fingertip to strike that arcanist’s crystal. It pulsed once, and then the fiery beam was gone and racing fire curled in swift loops within the stone—only to leap across the room and stab at the uppermost glass globe of the tammaneth rod. Its dark glass flared, and a moment later red fire whirled within it.

  Mattick looked back at the arcanist’s pendant. It was dark and clear once more; the fire that had visited it so fleetingly was gone. His father had already repeated the process with the next arcanist, and was starting on the third. Mattick noticed that the fire streaking from each pendant went to a different sphere of the rod than the previous one, but otherwise … he shrugged. Father’s magic had always been well beyond him. He was happier with a blade in his hand, anyway, magic relegated to useful service such as keeping off the rain.

  Eight, nine … the last arcanist’s pendant had relinquished its fire to the rod. When he saw that, the Most High turned to his sons, satisfaction clear on his face.

  “Our forces continue to advance through Myth Drannor, taking more and more of the city,” he told them, “and letting us reach increasing numbers of elven burial crypts. You will accompany these loyal Shadovar, and protect them as they destroy guardian baelnorn, then seize and drain the magic of crypt after crypt. Guard these two”—he lifted a languid hand to point—“above the rest, for they know where most of the crypts are. Slaughter any disloyal and disobedient among them without hesitation.”

  The Most High turned back to the arcanists. “Obey these two princes as you would me.”

  Then he waved a hand, and the audience chamber was suddenly empty of arcanists and twin princes of Shade.

  The High Prince of Thultanthar turned away and allowed himself a sigh.

  From behind him, Aglarel asked quietly, “How much do you expect them to achieve?”

  Telamont snorted. “Less mischief than if I left them idle. And the small victo
ry of denying desperate elves the magics they might otherwise seize for valiant last stands against us.”

  He turned to face his most trustworthy surviving son. “It is time, and past time, for us to deliver to Shar what she desires. And claim our reward: dominion over all cities and lands of the Realms.”

  A smile rose to his lips. “There are so many of them I want to destroy.”

  If there was one thing he disliked more and more about serving Mystra with every passing year, it was all the damned running.

  Elminster puffed and panted his way along, sprinting through Candlekeep with far more bruising haste than prudence. He doubted any of the Shadovar had ever seen their High Prince run before, but then again, that would mean they wouldn’t know what Telamont Tanthul looked like when running.

  He was trying to get well ahead of them, anyway, but even if he’d been young and fresh and not seeking to maintain a disguise of Art, Candlekeep’s layout didn’t make that an easy thing to do. Rooms gave in to rooms, with a minimum of passages, the lighting tended to be dim or worse, and there were always odd steps just where you didn’t expect them or had forgotten there were any, and—

  He burst out into a room where monks stood waiting. Six of them, grim faced, in front of open double doors at the far end, all facing him. He saw no weapons, but they were standing like veteran adventurers, well enough apart so no one would unintentionally get in the way of a comrade’s sword being drawn in haste, and—

  That one, dead ahead, shared a face with one of the corpses he’d found on his way into the keep. So, a false monk, and almost certainly not a Shadovar. Which left independent agents of all stripes, and—the Moonstars.

  The six were glaring at him as he pounded up to them, their arms lifting and faces tightening—

  El gave them a wide and genial smile and caused twelve tiny blue-white stars to wink into being in a circle around his face.

  “Make way,” he gasped, “please.”

  Three of the monks drew aside, but the one he knew to be false and the two monks on either side of that false monk stood their ground.

  As, back behind El, the Shadovar started pelting into the room.

  Elminster drew in a deep breath, threw back his head, and bellowed, “Moonstars! All of these!”

  Then he threw all his will into wrapping himself in the wards of Candlekeep and bringing up his own mantle to its utmost inside those wards—as he crashed into the false monk shoulder first, got both hands on one of the man’s elbows, and spun him around, hard. He’d be drawing a dagger or worse, of course, but any spell El should be able to hold at bay for a few moments at least, and hopefully—

  The false monk did have a dagger out, but had made the mistake of raising his arm high to bring it down in a forceful stab, so all El had to do was shove the force of the wards into the man’s face and throat and hold it there, to keep that arm from being brought down.

  The elbow grab and spin had flung them both around to look back down the room El had just run the length of, and had done so in time to see the first Moonstar spells strike the Shadovar, and the swiftest Shadovar who weren’t flung off their feet hurl magics of their own back at the Moonstars.

  Great bright bursts of force erupted among the Shadovar, spattering some of them back against the walls—and then a full and proper spell battle was raging.

  A scene that abruptly vanished in blue mists that El was softly and silently falling through, all alone.

  Mists that were gone again just as abruptly as they’d come, leaving Elminster blinking away the half-seen cold smile and raised bony hand of Larloch, to stare around a room he knew.

  So the Shadow King had just teleported him away from the battle between the Shadovar and the Moonstars—and right back into the tall chamber in Candlekeep with the wall of galleries.

  El looked up. Much of the highest gallery was gone, blasted away, and its remaining stonework was scorched and crisscrossed by a webwork of cracks.

  The surviving Prefects had descended a level, and were crowded in one corner of that lower gallery, keeping well away from the ruined end of the one above. Eleven strong, still in their robes and still clutching their rods and scepters. They were deep in angry, worried argument.

  “May I remind you,” the First Reader was snarling, “that they are all within our wards and walls! Among us! The fiercer the magic we hurl, the more we endanger tomes that cannot be replaced! The work of centuries!”

  “Yet if we don’t regain mastery of our halls swiftly and decisively,” a Great Reader replied heatedly, “we risk losing our lives and all chance of expelling or defeating these foes—and then they’ll have every last tome to take away or destroy at whim!”

  “Fellow Avowed,” the Chanter broke in, sounding genuinely anguished, “we don’t even know who these intruders are! Most of them wear our faces, so they can obviously take on many guises by magic, and it follows that we can’t even trust—”

  “Don’t say it!” another Great Reader interrupted. “That way lies madness! I refuse to let us be ensnared in the trap of none of us trusting an opinion or an observation because we think the mouth uttering it belongs to an impostor! It is possible to overthink everything, you know, and—”

  “Excuse me,” the Gatewarden broke in, his voice just a trifle below a bellow. His unaccustomed fury and volume drew every eye on the gallery—so they all saw that he was pointing down at the floor below, where all the Shadovar had been standing quite a short time ago. “We are not alone.”

  All of the Prefects looked down. Amid the litter of broken Shadovar bodies stood a lone man looking back up at them.

  A man who looked like the High Prince of Thultanthar—but was melting, as they stared, into someone else.

  Someone now holding up both hands in surrender or to show they were empty, and saying earnestly, “I come in peace!”

  Wands and scepters were hurriedly trained on him. None of them were drawn back when his new likeness became apparent.

  The Prefects stared down at the beak-nosed and white-bearded Sage of Shadowdale, and he stared back up at them, asking urgently, “Can we talk?”

  “I suspect a trick,” the First Reader announced coldly, “or a ruse to buy time or distraction for your fellows to attack us in circumstances most advantageous to them. In any case, I will not debate with anyone actively engaged in altering the wards of the keep, until they cease doing so.”

  “Such inflexibility is neither wise nor prudent,” observed a cold voice from behind the Prefects, “but perhaps the Avowed of Candlekeep don’t deserve the mastery of either that their reputation bestows upon them. Will you debate with someone who can destroy you at will, yet chooses not to do so?”

  Even as the monks started to whirl around, they felt the wands and scepters they held snatched from their hands by irresistible rushing magic that numbed and paralyzed their hands in an instant.

  Tingling, their arms flailing beyond their control, they lurched around to face the back of the gallery—and found themselves staring at a tall, withered, nigh skeletal figure, surrounded by the wands and scepters that had just been torn from them and were now floating in midair. Untouched by any hand they could see, each and every wand and scepter was aglow with risen power, and aimed directly at them.

  “Well met, Prefects of Candlekeep. I am the one your lore tomes call Larloch. Or the Shadow King … or less fitting names.”

  The lich gave the monks a smile that was soft as it was grinningly sinister.

  “Down below us is the man your books name ‘Elminster Aumar.’ Neither of us are Moonstars nor servants of Thultanthar. We are here for a nobler purpose than most visitors to Candlekeep, and we need your help, Avowed of the keep. We are trying to call on the age-old wards of the keep to stabilize the Weave.”

  Silence fell.

  “The Weave?” Larloch added mildly. “I believe you’ve heard of it.”

  The First Reader was the first to rally. “Well, yes, of course, but—”

&nb
sp; “This is highly irregular!” the Chanter protested.

  “The more you live outside the routine and order that usually hold sway within these walls,” the Shadow King replied, “the more you’ll discover that high irregularity is frequent in most lives. Unwelcome to most, but frequent nonetheless. I am well aware that you embrace tradition, and seldom reach decisions swiftly, but our errand carries more than a little urgency. May we count upon your assistance?”

  “Assistance how, exactly?” one of the Great Readers asked doubtfully.

  “And by what right do you frame decisions and press us for answers within these walls?” asked another. “We serve the Binder, and only He can do that with our implicit and wholehearted acceptance. All others would seem to need to submit to our judgment.”

  “Elminster and I can proceed with this needful work with you,” Larloch replied coldly, raising a hand meaningfully, “or without you.”

  Silence fell again.

  “Well,” ventured the Gatewarden, “when you put it that way …”

  The Shadow King’s smile was as soft as his purr: “I do. Oh, I do.”

  A Great Reader shuddered visibly, and the First Reader cleared his throat several times before he managed to say, “I believe that in these circumstances we can see the, ah, utility of aiding you. I know I can.”

  “Yes,” several Prefects agreed.

  “Then leave off attacking either of us, and sit down. Yes, here on the gallery floor. Lean back against the walls, be at ease, and bend your minds to the wards. Each of you Prefects is attuned to them. All you need do is will their power—the thunder, I believe your late and lamented Keeper of the Tomes called it; that silent and heavy weight that rests on your minds every moment you are within them—to slowly flow, like a tiny trough of water, into this, my mind-mouth held ready for you. As Elminster’s vigilance keeps the flow both small and stable. Through me, the power will flow into the Weave, strengthening and reanchoring it, and I shall return it, in just as slow and careful a flow, back into the wards again. Leaving neither drained or lessened, but both restored. I am the only one here who knows how to do this, so I must be the focus, and none other. This is the service Candlekeep was founded to render, so long ago. This is the salvation you can bring to all Toril, both the lands of Faerûn around you and the distant lands across the seas. Yes, you can save the world.”