Elminster Enraged

Well, that much Elminster could and would do. She would go to Irlingstar-perhaps too late to stop Vandur making messes, but she’d go to Irlingstar, and there claim to be Wizard of War Brannon Lucksar. She’d say she fell down a shaft into the Underdark, fought fell creatures there, was mortally wounded, and died in an eerie place that must have been what some arcane sages call an earth node, where the magic of Faerun itself surged strongly. Where she somehow awakened later in this drow body, put there by a magical curse or a whimsical deity or the mindless magic of that eerie place or something … Aye. She had mental ferocity enough to mind battle any wizard of war who tried to mindspeak her-

And if you don’t, I do, Symrustar piped up.

— and she’d do it. Impersonate Lucksar for a time, a normal man’s lifetime if need be. This would be her first stride along the road to recruiting the wizards of war to Mystra’s service, without revealing to Manshoon or anyone else that the infamous Elminster still survived.

“Ganrahast! There you are!”

The Royal Magician blinked, looked up from the large array of maps, floorplans, and written reports he was bent over, and smiled. “Ah, Glathra! You wanted to see me?”

If Glathra of the war wizards noticed that her superior’s smile seemed a little forced and weary around the edges, she took no notice of it. She was too angry to notice much of anything that didn’t bellow at her, thrust a sword or spear in her direction, or hurl a spell that sought to separate her back teeth from the rest of her.

“You’re hrasted right I do!” Glathra spat angrily, firmly slamming the door closed behind her, so no guard or palace servant would stray too near, and overhear. “It’s Storm Silverhand!”

“Ah! You’ve had your usual reports, and-?”

“I have, and our fellow wizards of war are almost unanimous in telling me that the woman seems to have wings! Or can translocate tirelessly, to whisk herself around like a god! It seems Storm Silverhand has been flitting here, there, and everywhere, all over Suzail and in naeding near every room in this palace, not to mention daily appearances in Waymoot and Espar and-and just about every last hamlet and village in all Cormyr! And they tell me she’s getting past patrols and gate guards and the like with a commander’s ring!”

Ganrahast nodded. “Those reports are correct.”

“Well, what by the Dragon is going on? Why is she being allowed to do this?”

“It’s the king’s will,” Ganrahast told Glathra gently. “I believe he values the loyal nobles of our land, and she is the Marchioness Immerdusk, however ancient the title. She has been doing vital work for the Dragon Throne. Soothing many nobles, seeking to bind them more tightly in loyalty to the Crown, in the wake of the disaster at the council.”

“Oh? All the reports that have come to my ears speak of her visiting commoners,” Glathra snapped. “In smithies, sundries shops, tanners-and brothels. Not nobles in their high houses.”

“Ah, that would be her other mandate. Her obedience to the commandment of the Lady of Mysteries, the goddess all mages once held dearest, and will again.”

“What commandment?”

“To make the Harpers once more strong and numerous.”

“What? And you’ve let her do this? Raise an ever-present army of traitors in our midst?”

Ganrahast smiled gently. “And how exactly should we go about seeking to stop her? When we can instead watch from afar, and so learn exactly who each Harper is, what their skills are, and where they dwell?”

Glathra stared at him, chastened. “Oh. Ah. I see.” Then her frown drew down again. “How do we know she’s not aware of our scrying, and deceiving us?”

Ganrahast shrugged. “We know she is aware of our scrying. She’s told me-and the king-that Harpers want a stable, just, happy Cormyr, lightly ruled by a benevolent monarch. Happily, that’s precisely what King Foril wants, too. Storm doesn’t mind if we know who most of the Harpers are; she sees it as a good check and balance on Those Who Harp.”

Glathra frowned, shaking her head. “Yielding up such a weakness … I don’t think I’ll ever understand senior Harpers-or these self-styled Chosen of Mystra, either.”

Ganrahast smiled again. “I don’t think we’re meant to.”

The chasm was deep, its sides bare rock that was jagged in some places and smooth in others; the hardened flows of a volcano that was now nowhere to be seen.

What could be seen was an eerie purplish radiance deep down in the stony gulf, a glow that was sometimes half-bright and sometimes very dim. Great drifts and serpentine coils of shadow shifted constantly in the chasm air, undulating back and forth. A warm, sulphurous wind was blowing up out of the chasm. Those shadows were the smoke of some strange elsewhere blown upward by it, undulating endlessly as they came.

Horrid creatures came with them, long human-headed snakes with wings. There were also little ribbonlike eels that flew without wings, and spent much of their time restlessly coiling and uncoiling in the air. There were fat, wrinkled ovals with four batlike flapping wings each, that saw by means of a single oversized eye, and had cruel underslung jaws like sharks … and there were other things. They streamed up into Faerun, riding the shifting smokes, in a tireless invasion that plunged almost gratefully into the dark wilderland forests above the chasm.

A sudden blue-white star flickered into being in midair above the gulf, in the heart of that flow.

The shifting shadows shrank back from it, bending away in their endless streaming … as it grew, faded, and coalesced into-

A long-limbed, unclad woman floating upright in the air with her long, long silver hair coiling and whipping around her like a great tangle of restless, energetic snakes. Her legs were together, but her arms were flung wide, and in her clenched hands were two things that blazed with vivid blue flames. A chalice and a sword.

Their flames howled and snarled in all directions with a quickening hunger, many of them arcing back and forth across their holder’s breast as the two blue fires sought to join, visibly scorching her.

She tossed her head in pain, biting her lip and moaning from time to time, as the blue flames grew brighter and larger, their searing tongues longer.

“Elminster,” the hovering woman gasped, “where are you? Be with me! Be with me now! Oh, I need your strength …”

She sobbed, then fought for air enough to cry, “Elminster! Hear me!”

That cry was loud and borne far on the rising wind from the gulf.

Yet aside from some cruel laughter from the winged snakes rushing past, there came no reply at all.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE PENALTY FOR TREASON IS DEATH

The Simbul let her head loll back on her shoulders. She was exhausted, shaking with weariness, and far from done.

And the pain was only going to get worse.

Back and forth across her the blue fire raged, faster and faster, the howls of the two balls of blue flame around her hands becoming a loud and continual roar as they built higher and higher. The dark creatures riding the shadows shrank back and mewed in fear as they scrabbled past.

The Simbul’s hands were blackened yet uncharred, burned but not consumed. The tongues of blue flames were twice her height, towering blazes that stabbed at the sky-and leaned inward to touch in the air high above her. There the blue flames wrestled briefly, then blazed forth with renewed fury, forming a single raging, roiling sphere of blinding blue flame that …

Boiled over, collapsing down into the gulf like an extinguished geyser. Behind that flood, from the chalice and the sword in The Simbul’s hands, came lances of blue, rays of eerie light that stabbed down into the roiling shadows