The voice in Elminster’s head fell silent for a moment. When it spoke again, it was laced with amusement.
Or do you mean, how is it that I became a Chosen? And you never knew of me?
“Ah … aye. To thy first, I mean. As for the second, Mystra shielded ye from me, of course.”
She did. For both our sakes. I love you, man.
“And I ye. I believe ye when ye speak of love-but ye had, ye must admit, an odd way of showing it.”
I was torn, and more than torn. I hated you, too. For being a human, El. It was … shame to me to desire a human. Until my heart told me otherwise, I was as certain as the rising and setting of the sun and moon that humans were stinking, hairy, brutish savages. A young, reckless, lesser race that deserved no respect and was unworthy of their ever-rising power. A blight upon the Realms that despoiled and ruined without thought or caring, and responded with angry violence when their faults were pointed out to them. You shattered all I knew of the world, all at once, and … and I saw what was to come. That seeing would not be easy for any elf, high or low. It was poison to me. You were poison to me.
“I … Lady, I was young and foolish and proud, and-and did ye ill.”
I tried to do you worse. Even prayed not just to the gods I knew well, but to Mystra, for the means to destroy you.
“Sweet shattered spells …,” El whispered, aghast. “Did ye not know-?”
The ties between you and your goddess? I soon learned. The voice in his mind was wry. Yet never have I known such love, such mercy. Instead of destroying me or playing me false, she gave me kindness and wise counsel. That I spurned. When at last I fell in battle, she came to me as I was flung across the sky, my body rent in fire, and offered me a new life. I said yes. She promised me you would never know while she flourished. I wonder now if she foresaw her fate.
“I … I think Mystra’s fall was part of a cycle fated to happen again and again, as the Weave-as all magic of this world-needs renewal. Mystra has returned.”
WHAT? I’ve felt her not!
“She is … much changed. Diminished. Needing my service urgently, where before I was but one able-handed servant and messenger among many at her disposal.”
And so you’ll endure, as I fall into the darkness. Yet I’ll have this brief time with you, ere I fade. You always had the hardest road, Lord Aumar. You prince. The voice lost its forlorn and wistful feeling, and turned warmly affectionate. You right rogue.
“Lady,” Elminster replied, “I … I wish matters had been different, between us.”
If wishes were armies, Cormanthor would yet stand bright. I had my second chance, El, and made much of it, and long ago moved beyond regret. I found lovers and soulmates and good friends among Mystra’s faithful, then peace over what befell when we were both in the City of Song. Mystra often showed me your unfolding exploits, as entertainment for us both. Know that I … The voice seemed to choke for a moment, as if suppressing a sob. That I often cheered for you.
Symrustar’s voice slid back into wry amusement again. Even when you were … wenching.
Elminster winced. “Mystra never told me …”
Mystra never told you a lot of things. Yet know that she regarded you above all others in her service, gave you the hardest tasks, trusted you more than any other. You were her lion. I … I often wondered what your mind would feel like.
“And now?”
It feels … comfortable. Friendlier and kinder than I thought it could be. You are a bright lion, man.
El winced again. “I–I bumble along, these days. Trying to do what I’m bidden without doing too much damage to the Realms around me. All too often failing at that, I must tell ye.”
Modestly said, Lord Aumar, but just now, I perceive from your thoughts, body snatching is your foremost interest. Hardly a modest pursuit.
“Ouch. Thy tongue still stings with casual ease.”
I’m not quite dead yet. So share. This is my last ride, and I want to enjoy it.
“Lady, flying around as a sort of sightseer has its fleeting attractions, but Mystra has laid urgent orders upon me, and much depended upon me before that. To fulfill any of these tasks, I require a body, hands and all. Not some thrall under compulsion I might try from a distance, but the defter, closer control I gain by inhabiting the body, wearing it as my own.”
So how did you happen to be so careless as to lose your own body?
El sighed. “A longish tale, lady. Do ye really want me to spend the time to-?”
No. I was … needling you. A besetting failure of mine. Forgive me. Explore away. The sooner you’re wearing a body, the sooner we can be out of this place. Those last mental words came wrapped in rising fear, revulsion, and a hastily suppressed flare of gruesome memories of grinning drow cutting into her ere the excruciating pain made her faint.
Elminster sent her all the soothing, loving emotion he could muster, which earned him a sharp: Spare me the romance, Sage of Shadowdale. A little late now for both of us, wouldn’t you grant? So get looking!
“Thy wish, lady,” El told the elf in his mind wryly, “is my command.”
He drifted forward. But even for swirling ashes, haste among freshly fallen rubble, with pillars and fragments of ceiling often crashing down suddenly, was nigh-impossible. Caution had to govern.
What El had watched the glaragh do suggested mindless bodies would be plentiful if he picked promptly. He could see silent, empty-eyed drow drooling and aimlessly staggering in distant galleries, heedless of peril; were those the best and strongest bodies to choose from, or should he take one that was unmarked but unconscious?
Take the most beautiful she-drow, Symrustar suggested tartly. Drow males and human men are alike in this: beauty distracts them from instantly seeking to slay. They’d rather have some fun first.
“Cynical,” El muttered, “yet astute.”
The one does not preclude the other, man. Even among humans. As for elves, have you so utterly forgotten your days in Cormanthor?
“No,” Elminster whispered. “Never.”
Gently, El. I did not mean to wound.
“I bear many wounds,” he murmured. “The worst healed are those I carry in my mind.”
Carefully wrapped in shrouds and hidden away, I see.
Elminster winced again.
In the rubble-heaped cauldron where the prow of stone had been, most of the drow were dead or maimed, half-crushed or missing limbs. El floated into the intact rooms deeper along the surviving side of the citadel where Symrustar had been slain.
This may be the wiser place to search, his newfound guest said approvingly. Or the most dangerous-the most powerful priestesses had chambers in this direction.
“The glaragh stole every mind it could reach,” El told her. “Unless other drow come before I’m done, I don’t expect battle.”
Nor did he find any. Staring drow were everywhere, their bodies intact but their minds quite gone, some of them silent and seemingly unaware of him or anything, others slinking away like cowed dogs at any nearby movement.
He floated through room after room, the furnishings growing grander, with ever increasing numbers of poisonous guardian spiders-some curled into tight balls of agony or spasming, quivering insanity, others frozen in awe, thanks to the abrupt disappearance of the drow minds to which they’d been linked.
He found priestesses clad in elaborate high-cowled spider robes, who bore scepters and wands of darkly menacing power. Some were slumped in spots that suggested they’d been guarding locked rooms beyond them-and
