The Herald

by Ed Greenwood

  “A man claiming to be Manshoon, aye,” another noble replied, pointing at the senseless man draped across the table. “Me, I think he was just trying to get out of paying for his drinks.”

  The Dragon officer looked at Mirt, who growled, “I’ll cover his owing. And stand all of you yer favorite slake too. Now go put yer love of country to better use.”

  Out of the blue light, a face swam. The Srinshee.

  She blew Elminster a kiss and said tenderly into his mind Farewell, old friend.

  Then the face exploded into a racing blue flame that stabbed across the air between them and coursed into El, imparting such raging power that it lifted him a few feet into the air—sitting on nothing, Alustriel and Laeral clinging to him and elevated with him—and made every hair on his body stand out stiffly, his eyes become spitting blue flames.

  Alustriel and Laeral were flung away from him, shocked and numbed, and landed hard. They stared at him, aghast, as he rose, standing on nothing, now about the height of a tall man off the ground, trembling. Small blue flames spurted from his stiffly spread fingertips.

  The Old Mage hung in the air, helpless, as all of the Srinshee’s magical might and life-force flooded through him—and through the linking flows of power, to stab into Larloch.

  Whose shrieks, as he burned, clawed the ears of everyone in Myth Drannor and Thultanthar.

  It took a long time for those screams to dwindle as the archlich was whirled away, his hold on power lost.

  The mythal collapsed into Elminster, and exploded out of him in all directions, flooding the Weave nearby with its energy.

  The air shone brightly, and sang, loud and bright.

  As the city of Thultanthar crushed elven spires as if they were made of sand and came inexorably down, down atop Myth Drannor.

  The Most High of Thultanthar looked around wildly. The city was heading for the ground, faster and faster, the very stones around and beneath him groaning deep and awful with the strain—and there was nothing, nothing he could do to stop it.

  He’d flung all of his gathered power to tug against the downward pull, in utter vain, then turned it to trying to twist what few spells he could see in the minds of nearby Thultanthans—for there was no time at all to craft a new magic—into a severing force, to slice free of that pull … and failed.

  His city was doomed.

  Telamont snarled a heartfelt curse, and gathered all his newfound power to flee—but the empty air in front of his throne fell away like a curtain, to reveal a bearded and weathered face staring at him with eyes that held no shred of mercy.

  Force flooded out of those eyes in a torrent, slamming Telamont Tanthul back on his throne and pinning him there.

  They gazed at each other, High Prince and Old Mage, while the tyrant of Thultanthar tried a dozen swift spells of escape or destruction, and Elminster casually shattered them all in the instant of their forming, one after another. Until Telamont Tanthul ran out of ideas and relevant magic. As he racked his wits desperately, trying to think of how to escape, Elminster said flatly, “Enough, Tanthul. Ye’ve misused thine Art for centuries, and grown more arrogant rather than wiser. The Realms are far better off without ye. Reap now the reward that should have been thine long, long ago.”

  And the almighty crash that came then shattered bones and toppled walls and pillars, even before the Most High of Thultanthar was flung up at the ceiling and his upthrust throne pinned him there and then drove him through it, in broken pulped pieces that leaked magic in all directions.

  The floating city and hapless Myth Drannor beneath it smashed and ground together and were both destroyed, ancient elven magics exploding here, there, and everywhere amid the roiling field of tumbling stone.

  And Telamont Tanthul died, already in bodily agony, shrieking in terror as his mind broke like a toppled wineglass. Elminster Aumar held the shade’s cracking and disintegrating body on his cracking and disintegrating throne throughout, and the Shadovar’s mind clamped tightly with his own, to make very sure.

  So it was that he tasted Telamont’s destruction, and very nearly shared it.

  Lost in tears, reeling, mentally exposed and exhausted, Elminster swam in and out of consciousness … and lay helpless beneath the coming of the Mistress of the Night.

  Shar raged, vast and dark and terrible in the sky above the broken cities, glaring down out of her own nightfall at the floating, slumped Elminster, her darkness rolling down, down, reaching out with great dark tentacles …

  That vanished in a flood of silver light, a sloping wall of silver fire like an impossibly tall tidal wave, sweeping up into the sky and growing a face.

  Mystra, bright and powerful and whole, smilingly defying the dark goddess.

  “Let us, for once, not go too far, Goddess of Night,” Mystra said gently, her eyes two silver flames of understanding, warning, and grim promise.

  Shar snarled in rage and turned away in a swirling of shadows, and the day came back again.

  One moment the coronal was fighting desperately against too many mercenaries to count, in deepening darkness as the floating city came down on all their heads, fighting to guard Fflar’s back and keep him alive as he worked miracles of deft bladework to hold back hireswords beyond counting, and helping elf knight after wounded elf knight through the portal—

  And the next, she was somewhere else.

  Somewhere green and forested and familiar, that lacked tall spires and human butchers-for-coin beyond number and fallen Tel’Quess everywhere.

  She blinked. Semberholme, that’s where she was.

  There were elves everywhere around her, in bloody armor, swords in their hands, weeping and embracing. Her people, the last Myth Drannans who’d fought beside her, she who was now coronal of nowhere.

  Through the sobbing, hugging crowd, she saw Fflar, her Fflar, in his hacked and rent armor, sword still in hand, stalking wearily toward her.

  “The Srinshee,” he said hoarsely. “She saved every one of us.” And burst into tears.

  They plunged into each other’s arms.

  The breeze was icy, up on so high a ledge of the Thunder Peaks, but it afforded them the view they needed—once augmented by their spells, of course—and they simply had to see.

  It’s not every day you watch your home and most of your kin and people destroyed, all at one stroke.

  Gwelt, Manarlume, and Lelavdra stood together in stunned silence as the debacle unfolded.

  It was a long time before Gwelt stirred.

  “Your grandsire was a mighty man, but a proud one,” he said grimly. “Too proud, in the end.”

  “He was a proud fool,” Lelavdra replied scornfully.

  “There are worse things to be,” said Manarlume, “but yes, let us strive not to be so proud.”

  “Or foolish,” Gwelt added.

  “And keep far from the company of those who are,” Lelavdra said bitterly.

  Manarlume sighed. “So shall we shiver on some mountaintop? Shrivel dry at the heart of some vast desert? Or drown on a rock far out in the trackless seas?”

  The three Shadovar looked at each other—and then burst into rueful laughter.

  It was so late on this night of the thirteenth of Marpenoth that it had really become early on the fourteenth, and outside was chill darkness and glittering stars.

  Yet Storm’s kitchen was a warm welter of noise, delightful aromas, and dancing candlelight from a dozen lanterns. It was hot and getting hotter, and Amarune and Arclath were trying their best to help their whirlwind of a host prepare a feast. Storm preferred to stir and sample the soups herself, but there were roasts to be wrestled onto spits and then turned by someone who could kick fresh logs into the hearth beneath them without having all the flaming firewood roll right back out (Arclath’s job, and he was learning mastery of it fast, though his boots would never be the same), and bread to be hauled out of ovens (Amarune’s task).

  She blew clinging hair off her forehead with a mighty puff, slid her hands into the
padded gloves Storm had tossed her way, and picked up a pry bar to do battle with the bread-oven doors.

  “How do you know they’re done?” Arclath asked her.

  “See that line of bread dough all around the edge of the door, sealing it?” Rune asked tartly. “It’s done, yes? Well, then, so are the loaves inside.”

  “And you became an expert on baking bread when?”

  “When Storm told me about that trick, while you were raiding the pantry,” Amarune admitted, and when Arclath looked over his shoulder, he saw Storm watching them with a broad grin.

  “You’re a couple, all right,” she murmured happily.

  “We’re cooking enough for an army,” Rune pointed out, chipping baked bread away from one door. “How can you be sure they’ll come?”

  “I know them,” Storm replied. “Saving the world makes you hungry.”

  And it was only one dropped loaf and one slopped soup cauldron later that the kitchen door opened without knock or warning, and two tall silver-haired women arrived.

  “Luse! Laer! Wine yonder!” Storm greeted them, not leaving her pots.

  Alustriel and Laeral smiled and waved at her, and Alustriel asked, “Anything we can help with?”

  “Eating and drinking,” Storm told them, “and settling your behinds down in the chairs that end of the table, out of the way.”

  “Fair enough. Oh, we’ve brought along some friends,” Laeral announced, and stood aside to introduce, with a flourish that would have done credit to any herald, a bewildered-looking Lady Glathra Barcantle of Cormyr, with a spiderlike, human-headed thing—the former Royal Magician Vangerdahast—riding on her shoulder.

  “Well,” it was telling Glathra rather testily, “I think the Rune Lords are—oh.” It stared at everyone in the room, and blinked in surprise.

  “Welcome!” Storm said with a smile, and then looked at Vangerdahast and added, “You should have come visiting more often down the years, Vangey. Affairs of state make more sense when discussed over broth—or something stronger—in a farmhouse kitchen.”

  Vangerdahast bowed his head, looking a little abashed, but whatever reply he might have made was lost in the banging of the door.

  It flew open with force enough to make Storm lay hand on the fireplace poker beside the cauldron she was paying most attention to, ready to hurl it—but through it lurched no foe, but a familiar bedraggled wizard.

  Looking more exhausted than usual, if that was possible.

  “Elminster!” Amarune exclaimed delightedly.

  He gave her a smile that twinkled. “Well, now, that’s a pleasant change! Well met, dearest!”

  The Old Mage blew Storm a kiss, gave Arclath a cheery wave, then nodded to Vangey and said, “Ao’s finished toying with us all, Abeir and Toril are apart and getting more so, the Sundering is done—and I believe I need a drink! Oh, and here’s a lady ’tis high time I spoke cordially with, rather than sparring over the safety and good governance of Cormyr with!”

  Glathra, who’d said nothing at all and looked like she intended to go right on doing so, ducked her head and blushed.

  Then Elminster turned to the two women who stood down at the far end of the table, flagons in their hands.

  “El?” Alustriel asked tentatively.

  “Luse! Laer!” Elminster rushed to them, spreading his arms wide, and they hastily set their flagons down and fell into his arms.

  They rocked together for a few moments, murmuring things and chuckling, before El said briskly, “I perceive I seem to have arrived at the right time!”

  “As usual,” Storm commented archly, waving a ladle at him.

  “Lady fair,” he said gravely, “point ye not that thing at me!”

  “Or you’ll … what?” she challenged him, hands on hips and a mock glower settling onto her face.

  “Or I’ll eat one last feast at thy board, burst of a surfeit of everything, and expire at last!” he replied, crossing the kitchen and sweeping her into his arms. “After all, I have a successor now!”

  And he pointed at Amarune, who blinked back sudden tears as she reached out an imploring hand to him, fingers far too short to touch him from clear across the room. “Don’t say that! I’m not ready for—for any of it. Yet … you’ve been meddling and fighting and striving for centuries! As those you love are born, live their lives, grow old, and die, again and again, leaving you alone at sunset, time after time. You must be so tired of it all!”

  Storm and Elminster looked at her, their arms around each other. Then they regarded each other, nose to nose—and with a smile and a squeeze, Storm silently bade the last living prince of vanished Athalantar to make reply.

  And he smiled back at his too-many-greats-granddaughter with a touch of sadness and a much larger measure of pride, and said, “Yes, dearest, oh yes, but don’t ye see? ’Tis what ye haven’t done that torments ye, in life. And it’s always been the love given me that sustains me—and ye still give it, all of ye. So I cannot stop, until I drop.”

  “If you get any more poetic,” Alustriel murmured, “I’m going to gag.”

  El chuckled. “Ye see? The love never ends.”

  At that moment, there came a knock on the door. Two raps, gentle and widely spaced. “Now who might that be?” Arclath asked, drawing his sword.

  El spun something swift and unseen from the Weave that anyone watching might have suspected was some sort of magical shield, and beat the young noble to the door, mainly because he was closest.

  “Duth Braerogan from the next farm, quite likely,” Storm told them, looking up from a pot that was right at the stage where it shouldn’t be left alone, with no one to stir it. “He keeps a fairly good watch over the place, and I—”

  Elminster opened the door, ready for anything.

  And the room silently flooded with deep blue light shot through with a thousand thousand tiny, twinkling silver stars.

  Those stars were coming from the eyes of a dark-haired, slender woman who stood almost shyly on the threshold.

  “May I come in?” she whispered, but her voice held a deep thunder that set Arclath’s blood thrumming in his veins. He lowered his sword—it seemed to be shrouded in countless swarming stars—and stared.

  “Well met,” the woman said to him, and as their eyes met something happened to Arclath. His heart sang, yes, but was he—? He was! He was floating, drifting gently back from her, the soles of his boots no longer touching the ground.

  “Oh, yes! Be welcome, Mother,” Storm said in a tremulous voice, as if she was on the verge of tears. “You are always welcome here.”

  “Mother?” Amarune asked, bewildered.

  Arclath looked back at her and saw happy tears streaming down the faces of all five Chosen in the room. Among them, Vangerdahast was frozen, openmouthed in dumbfounded awe—suddenly a spider-thing no longer, but a man again, dark robes and all, and looking down at himself and back up at the woman in the doorway and back down at himself again, in utter disbelief—and beside him, Glathra was out of her chair and on her knees, cowering.

  It occurred to Arclath Delcastle that he should be kneeling too, if this was who he thought it was, but he was still drifting, unable to go to the floor. That didn’t stop him trying.

  “An inherited title I still feel unworthy of,” the woman answered Rune, and seemed to flow into the room rather than walking. “I am Mystra. Yes, that Mystra. And I’ve come to give my deepest thanks to all of you—and to be who I used to be for a little while, if you’ll let me.”

  Her eyes twinkled as she looked at Storm. “You see, I’ve never forgotten your cooking.”

  “So You’ll be wanting me to stick around and cook a meal or two for You every century or so?” the Bard of Shadowdale asked, her silver tresses stirring around her shoulders like the tails of so many contented cats.

  “Please,” the goddess of magic said simply, and the room fairly crackled with benevolent power.

  “Not without my El,” Storm replied gently, staring into Mystra’s
eyes.

  Whereupon the goddess turned to Elminster, who still stood by the door, his hand raised and surrounded by the faint shimmering of his shield. In sudden silence, everyone else looked at him too.

  The Old Mage smiled back at them all.

  “Well, look ye, I’ve wanted to die for a long time now. But no longer. Now, I want to stay and see the Realms healed.”

  In search of an end to the Era of Upheaval … From the Avatar Crisis to the Spellplague, divine drama has shaped Faerûn. Now it’s time for the heroes to decide.

  Six novels, six authors … an epic odyssey through the Forgotten Realms® begins Summer 2013

  The Companions R.A.Salvatore August 2013

  The Godborn Paul S. Kemp October 2013

  The Adversary Erin M. Evans December 2013

  The Reaver Richard Lee Byers February 2014

  The Sentinel Troy Denning April 2014

  The Herald Ed Greenwood June 2014

  THE SUNDERING story continues in-store with D&D Encounters™.

  Play through D&D® adventures penned by

  R.A. Salvatore and Ed Greenwood.

  DungeonsandDragons.com