by Ed Greenwood
His steward bowed and hastened out, leaving the noble to sit back in his chair and smile. His gaze fell upon the decanters left ready on the tray, and he idly selected one as he looked at the next sheaf of parchments.
So many debtors yet to punish, so many business partners still to swindle. Ah, work, work, work …
How he enjoyed it all. Why—
“Breeklar, ye’re far from the worst of Suzail’s lords, but gleefully destructive to those who come within thy reach and notice. Not to mention needlessly rude to marchionesses.”
The voice that shouldn’t have been there was coming from close behind Breeklar’s right ear. He spun around, his fist rising with its poison-fang ring at the ready.
“Who are you, and how dare—?”
There was no one there.
One of his decanters clinked. The lord whirled back, furious—and lost his nose as heavy cut crystal crashed across his face.
The man who’d swung it and calmly replaced it on the tray, albeit spattered with Breeklar’s blood, also held all of the papers from Breeklar’s desk.
“I should really read all of these, to learn who ye should be repaying, but I have a lot of nobles to deal with, and ye really aren’t worth the trouble. Die, worthless parasite.”
Lost in his pain and bewildered rage, Lord Breeklar didn’t even have time to protest as coins burst out of his coffers and chests, all over the room, to rush into his mouth and nostrils, pouring down his throat, choking him.
His office held a lot of contracts, bonds of indebtedness, and copies of the threatening missives he’d sent. By the time his steward and underclerks came running, the bonfire was impressive.
Almost good enough to serve the helplessly wide-jawed, purple faced dead man slumped in his chair as a fitting pyre.
In a deep, corpse-strewn Underdark cavern, weary drow warriors raised a ragged cheer as reinforcements arrived. Just in time to deal with a fresh flood of nightmarish creatures out of the widening rift.
Scaled, undulating bodies surged, tentacles lashing out with terrifying speed. Drow were plucked into the air and crushed, or their necks broken, almost before they could scream. Then they were flung down among their fellows with bone-shattering force—and the long, dark, powerful tentacles reached for fresh victims.
More and more monsters crowded through the rift, almost too quickly to get past those busily slaughtering the drow with such ease. The sickly purple-white glow was deepening, flooding out into the passages around like a deadly gas, roiling and billowing.
Drow blew war horns in desperation, priestesses worked spells to alert their distant city, and those who could fell back. The peril was deepening, the rift large enough to split the cavern clear across, now, and the beasts coming through it too numerous to hold back. The battle was lost.
From one of the passages a silent thunder rose, a roaring in every mind, a teeth-chattering call that held hunger and malice and rising fear.
Fear that made it break into an audible, endless whispering scream long before its source burst into view, encircled and lashed by a moving cage of blue flames that forced it along the passage, burned into it repeatedly as it squalled and shrieked and rushed into the cavern.
It was the glaragh, much grown but seared and blackened and shuddering in agony, its tail lashing helplessly under the goad of the merciless web of blue flames. Straight at the rift it raced, or was herded, trumpeting wild pain even as it devoured and mindslew everything in its path. Deadly tentacles flailed in vain ere they were sucked in or crushed under that vast, racing bulk, and small hills of rotting, long-dead drow corpses vanished as the glaragh plowed through them without slowing in the slightest.
Then purple flames blazed up to meet the blue, too bright and furious for the handful of surviving drow to watch—and the thunderous scream of pain ended abruptly.
The glaragh was gone, driven back to wherever it had come from, and the rift it had come through was dying in its wake in an ear-shredding high singing of devouring blue flames.
Blinded and deafened, drow fell to their knees or staggered blindly until they struck stone and slid down it, to roll around clutching their heads. Above their moans, the conflagration in the cavern slowly faded, and all light and tumult with it, leaving behind only darkness.
And the strewn dead, to show that there had once been something here to fight for—or against.
A lone blue flame burned in midair, moving slightly, almost as if it were peering this way and that to make sure the task was done.
Then, almost impudently, it winked out.
Manshoon frantically raced around the cellar, snatching up a wand here and an orb there. He couldn’t be without that, or those, or the—
The glows of his scrying spheres all winked out at once.
A moment later, all the magics bundled in his arms went off together, destroying his forearms and much of his face in a single roaring instant.
He staggered back blindly, wracked in agony, fighting to see anything through his helpless tears.
“Ye couldn’t resist,” Elminster said disgustedly from nearby. “Ye’ve never been able to resist.”
Manshoon managed a curse. Something stole through his body. A tingling, a magic that … that left his limbs frozen, unable to obey him.
He could still think and speak, but …
“Thy undeath gives me an easy hold over thee,” El told him grimly. “So I can begin to avenge just a few of those ye’ve slain, the lives ye’ve blighted.”
“Oh?” Manshoon spat defiantly. “So who made you the righter of wrongs?”
“Mystra. Yet I don’t right all wrongs. Even after a thousand years, I haven’t time. So I do what is needful about some, a little of what I can regarding others, and forgive the rest.”
“Forgive?” Manshoon managed a sneer. “As priests do?”
“As all of us do, or should. If ye can’t forgive a wrong, ye become its prisoner—or rather, shackled to thy own hatred, thy own thirst for revenge. I’ve grown weary of imprisonment, so I do a lot of forgiving.”
“So why not forgive me?”
“I should. Ye’re crowing-to-thyself crazed, after all, and less able to withstand it than I am—and too much of a deluded fool to see how a hidden one is manipulating thee.”
“What?”
“Nay, I’m not going to tell thee. Let that be the little worm that gnaws at ye, as you perish. Let that be my revenge.”
“Revenge!” Manshoon spat, trying to see the potions he’d hidden among Sraunter’s useless concoctions and dyes and acids, on the shelves yonder, through eyes that wouldn’t stop streaming. “What would you know of revenge, meddler? You’ve always had a goddess—and your fellow Mystra slaves—to guide you and guard you and do it all for you.”
“Aye,” El agreed gently. “And one of them was you.”
“Pah! I pretended to serve, to get the magic I wanted!”
“Ye think she didn’t know that? Just what d’ye think a goddess is, anyhail?”
“A larger shark, a larger wolf, among all the rest of us. You’re a fool if you think otherwise.”
“Can ye really see only wolves, Manshoon?”
“There are only wolves—and sheep. And when the sheep are gone, it’s a wolf-eat-wolf world out there.”
“Is it? Well then, we should be doing something to change that, shouldn’t we?”
“Change! Everything changes, Old Fool—but nothing truly changes. Just the names and faces of those on the thrones, until they’re hurled down by the next names and faces!”
“Ye can change thyself, Manshoon. Ye can be better. We can all be better.” Elminster turned away, then added over his shoulder, “Some of us try that, from time to time, in our lives. Most of us don’t bother.”
Manshoon bared his teeth in a wordless snarl of defiance, and raced across the room to the shelf. That bottle, and that one, all he had to do was smash them, drink splinters and all, and—
He was half an instant away from
the shelf when it vanished in a racing flood of silver fire, a flood he crashed into a moment later, rebounding off the sagging, softening remnant of what had been a solid cellar wall, and—
Staggering until he fell, his very limbs melting, caught in a ravaging he couldn’t escape, couldn’t fight, couldn’t withstand …
“I did not come here to taunt with ye and let ye escape, Manshoon. I came here to destroy thee.”
Manshoon heard that, but no longer had lips or tongue or mouth to reply. He was going … he was joining the silver roaring … he was torn away into it …
CHAPTER
THIRTY
LAST THINGS
You have a visitor, lord,” the heavily armed Harper at the door murmured, as gently as any palace doorjack.
King’s Lord Lothan Durncaskyn looked up from his desk without even bothering to sigh. He was in a far better mood than usual, with things finally getting done around Immerford, its folk happy, the—
The man who strode into the room was clad like a forester. Or rather, the rare sort of forester who liked to wear a long sword at his hip. His face seemed familiar, somehow …
He gave Durncaskyn a nod and a rather sour grin.
The king’s lord stared back at him, frowning. “Sunter? Is that you? What brings you here?”
The man nodded again, and without waiting for an invitation he plucked up a chair, sat down on it, and put his boots up on Durncaskyn’s desk. “It is, Loth. And to answer you, a long and dusty ride brought me here; got anything to drink?”
“But … well, of course—here, the last of Braeven’s Best—but why aren’t you at High Horn? Keeping the realm safe against orcs and invading armies, and worse?”
Lord Sunter raised his eyebrows as he accepted a flagon. “Guard our borders? When we have all too many of our own nobles riding to war right in the heart of Cormyr—and the likes of Elminster on the loose?”
Durncaskyn shrugged. “I’ve heard the rumors, too, but …”
His voice trailed off as he caught sight of something on the wall and started to stare at it. His mouth dropped open.
Sunter turned his head to see what was so gripping and did the same thing. Before snarling out a curse, draining his flagon, and slamming it down on the desk with the words, “That’s it. I quit. It’s farming for me, from now on. Somewhere on sleepy back lanes, far from any of our borders. Got any sheltered sisters I can marry?”
Durncaskyn was still staring at the wall too hard to think of a reply.
That particular wall of his office sported the usual fine map of Cormyr. An official one, issued by the palace; both men had seen dozens of copies of it before. However, neither was used to seeing such a map silently burst into flames, all by itself.
Flames that were a vivid, dancing blue.
What had been Manshoon slumped, like logs crumbling in a fire, then melted and was gone. Hard-eyed, Elminster watched his old foe whirl away into silver flame that blossomed and grew.
He clawed at it with his own fire, raking as much as he could of it into himself, wresting Mystra’s power from one unworthy. One who would see other days beyond this one.
Even before an eerie wisp swirled out of that fire and raced up out of the cellar and away, El knew why destroying Manshoon was beyond him. The vampire who as a man with many bodies had ruled Westgate, and Zhentil Keep before that, and founded and led the cruel Zhentarim, had carried Mystra’s silver fire in himself for too long. It would take a god—perhaps two of them, acting together—to destroy Manshoon utterly and forever. Unless, like his Alassra had, Manshoon sacrificed himself willingly.
Hah. As if that would ever happen.
El let the silver fire roar straight up, consuming the building above him, making the shop of Sraunter the alchemist a neat pit between the neighboring buildings, a gap in a row of dingy teeth. And then he brought it down again, taking the fire that was forever back inside him—his own, and Alassra’s, and what he’d torn out of Manshoon.
It was too much.
He’d known it would be. Yet he dared not let more leak out. Not when the likes of Manshoon were lurking, to take it and empower themselves and work worse mischief. So he drew it in, fought to hold it, and the real agony began.
Up from the ravaged cellar he soared, a silver comet seeking the sky, up and over the great green sward of Jester’s Green, heading north.
“Arrrrrgh!” he shouted into the wind of his own racing flight. Oh, he’d known it would hurt, but this …
He was diving, racing down out of the sky, startled riders on the road scrambling for the ditch. There were carts and wagons rushing up to meet him that couldn’t move—he veered into the trees, fighting to slow himself. It would be a poor gift to the Forest Kingdom to burn a great scar through the King’s Forest, or to shatter trees from here to Mouth O’ Gargoyles …
Snarling, El fought for control. Enough, at least, to be able to jet out silver fire with some precision and slow himself, so as to drop down gently.
He managed it. Somehow he won that fight and landed gently on rotting deadfall wood and leaves without any flames at all … and found himself lurching dazedly through the fallen-tree-littered floor of the vast wood.
And stumbling over the first such rotting obstacle and falling on his face. Aye, fittingly greet the glorious conquering hero …
El got up again, though he didn’t remember doing so. Too much fire … it was leaking out of him at every staggering step.
“Too much,” he groaned aloud. “Oh, Mystra, the pain!”
He fell against a tree, silver fire splashing out of him to race up and down its trunk, charring it in an instant.
“Mystra,” he gasped. “That’s it! Mystra will know how to help me …”
He staggered a few steps, leaking silver fire in a smoking rain as he went, then sprang back into the air on a jet of silver fire, to fly on through the King’s Forest. Seeking a certain waiting cave.
Gasping in pain, breathing out silver fire and leaking it from fingers and knees to scorch everything he touched, Elminster landed in a whirlwind of crisped and crackling leaves, staggered a few steps, fell to his knees, and stayed there.
Just here … aye … he crawled into muddy, stone-studded darkness that still smelled faintly of bear. Through the tapestries of tree roots, over the bear’s moldy old gnaw bones, and down into the stony cavern at last.
Where those great, keen silver-blue eyes of fire hung in midair, awaiting him.
“Goddess,” El gasped, still on his knees, “I … I …”
You blaze with my fire, most faithful of men. Will you freely yield much of it to me?
“Oh, Mystra, yes,” he groaned, reaching for her.
For an instant he thought two shafts of blue radiance lanced out of those eyes to drink silver fire from him. Then he felt arms grasping him with cruel and hungry strength, pulling him up and into a womanly embrace.
Silver fire caressed him, more silver fire poured out of him, his body seemed to become flame, flames that flickered and shrank and roiled as the goddess he’d served so long, the faint vestige of the Mystra he’d never stopped loving, hungrily clawed silver fire out of him, in a roaring flood that went on and blessedly on …
He was nothing, he was everything, he was soaring, leaving all pain behind …
He was standing in a cavern that was a cavern no more.
The rough and solid stone roof, the earth above it, and tall forest giants of trees above that were all torn away and hurled high into the sky or seared to nothingness in mere moments, leaving him standing in a new clearing, the empty sky above.
The air was full of blue light and the awed wordless song of a thousand unseen voices … and towering above El, shaped tall out of the blue glow, was the Lady of Art he’d first met so many centuries ago.
“I have returned,” Mystra whispered, soft words that were full of awe and exultation … and a thunder of power that shook Elminster and the ground beneath him and the rustling, creaking, swaying
trees of the King’s Forest for miles around.
A star of silver brightness kindled in the blue glow beside Elminster, and faded into Storm Silverhand, every last strand of her silver hair on end and standing proud from her, as if she were some sort of strange peacock. She looked astonished and delighted—and in one bound they were in each other’s arms, both of them leaping to meet each other. The blue glow took gentle hold of them in midair, and floated them into each other’s arms.
Rather dazedly, they hugged and kissed, then leaned back in each other’s arms to laugh together, then look each other up and down, as if not quite believing they were whole, and here.
Elminster found his tongue first. “Well, I’m back,” he said hoarsely. “I’m Elminster again. I think.”
“If you’ve started thinking again,” Storm jested, “the Realms are in trouble indeed.”
“Indeed,” El replied dryly, and he kissed her again, hungrily this time, his arms tightening around her as if he intended never to let go.
They hugged each other tightly, and wept together happily, as overhead the silver-blue and glowing sky filled with Mystra’s song.
“No, no, no, you dolt! While you’re striking that grand pose, what d’you think yer foe’ll be doing, eh? Standing back to admire?”
Mirt lurched forward, right through the ringing blades of the Harpers he was training, the ironguard magics that protected them all letting blades slice them without harm, as if they weren’t there at all.
“You cover yerself like this, see? If you don’t, what you’ll see instead’ll be a blade plunging right through yer heart. Or throat. Or whatever other part of you yer foe feels like gutting.”
It was the bright and breezy afternoon of the ninth day after Mystra’s Return. Beyond Mirt, on the shadier side of the glade, Amarune and Arclath were tutoring other pairs of Harpers in the finer points of real-world bladework.
Storm and Elminster sat on a mossy bank, leaning back against the massive bough of a shadowtop split in some long ago tempest, that had decided to grow horizontally along the ground rather than up into the sky. They were also leaning into each other, shoulders together. At peace.
