11
Malar the Beast Lord considered no wild lands beyond his claim. The deep forests of Evermeet should have been his to rove, and all living things upon the island should have been his rightful prey. If elves were numbered among this prey, so much the better.
But, the bestial god was barred from the elven retreat. A net of powerful magic covered the island and kept the gods of the anti-Seldarine from making a direct attack upon Corellon Larethian's children. And this time, there was no treacherous elven goddess to open the way for him from within.
No, Malar mused, he could not reach the island. But perhaps there were others who could. Once, long ago, a coalition had come near to defeating the elven pantheon in their own sacred forest. Why could he not gather a similar group of gods and direct the combined efforts of their mortal followers? Once and for all, he would crush the mortal elves whose very existence reminded him of his humiliating defeat at the hands of Corellon.
The sea, Malar reasoned, was his first barrier to success, and a formidable one. For the most part his own followers were orcs, humans who gloried in the hunt, and beings from a score or so of the other predatory races. These hunters lived upon the mainlands and did not have the ships or the skills needed to cross the vast watery divide. In time, perhaps, he could find godly and mortal allies who could remedy this lack. But it seemed clear to him that the first, logical step in building such an alliance would be to enlist the powers and the creatures of the depths.
And so the Beast Lord sought out a remote and rocky island, far to the north of Evermeet, and took on his bestial avatar form. He sent out a summons and then he settled down upon a high and ragged cliff to wait.
The sea winds that swept the island quickened to gale force as the sky darkened to indigo. Waves reared up and dashed themselves against the cliff below, growing higher and higher until the Beast Lord's black fur was drenched by the salty spray. Just as Malar thought the angry waters might engulf the island, and his avatar with it, a massive wave rose straight up from the sea and formed itself into a beautiful, wild-eyed woman.
The goddess Umberlee loomed over the island, quivering in the crest of that great, dangerously undulating wave. 'What do you want of me, land dweller?' she demanded in a thrumming voice.
Malar eyed the sea goddess with a touch of apprehension. Her powers and her watery domain were far beyond his experience or understanding. Yet it might be that he could find a common ground, or at least some blandishment that would catch her fancy and mold her purposes to his. This would not be without risks. By all accounts, the goddess of the waves was dangerously capricious.
'I come in peace, Umberlee, and I bring warning. The elves travel your oceans to settle the island of Evermeet,' he began.
Lightning sizzled forth from Umberlee's eyes, and the gnarled beach plum bushes on Malar's left exploded into flame. 'You presume to summon me, and then speak as if I know not what happens within my own domain?' she raged. 'What does it matter if the elves travel the seas, as long as they pay proper tribute to me?'
'But they do not merely travel your seas. They think to rule the ocean, with Evermeet as their base,' Malar persisted. 'This I know from a goddess of the elves.'
The water goddess retreated a little as if in surprise, and a different sort of wrath kindled in her eyes. 'No one rules the oceans but Umberlee!'
'The seagoing elves do you homage, that is true, but they revere only their own gods. Even the Sea elves do not worship you, but rather Deep Sashales.'
'That is the way of things,' the goddess said in a sullen voice. 'Many are the creatures that inhabit my oceans, and all worship their own gods. But all they who live within or venture upon the waves pay tribute to me, and they say prayers to win my forbearance and stave off my wrath!'
'Do the elves who now live upon Evermeet so entreat you, or are they too content with the protection of their own gods?' Malar asked slyly. 'Aerdrie Faenya has cast about the island wardings such that no ill wind or weather can ever destroy the island. The elves of the Seldarine believe that Evermeet is beyond the power wielded by other gods. And yet, surely there is something that Umberlee, one of the great Gods of Fury, can do to thwart these presumptuous elves!'
Malar watched as this shot sank home, as Lloth had predicted it would. He would have preferred to bring Umberlee into line with brute force and rending talons, but, as the dark goddess had pointed out, there comes a time in many a hunt when the prey must be herded to a place of the hunter's choice.
'There are many things I could do,' the proud goddess boasted. 'If there is chaos enough in the seas surrounding Evermeet, the elves will come to know and revere my power!'
The Beast Lord listened as Umberlee began to spin her plans for the Coral Kingdom, a vast and disparate group of enemies who would trouble the elves whenever they set sail. Some of these creatures could even venture onto the island itself, for the protection of the elven gods did not- could not-exclude all the followers of other gods. For such revenge as Malar had in mind, mortal beings would do what the gods could not.
And as he listened to the sea goddess boast and plot, Malar marveled at the cunning of Lloth, who had so deftly planned how to bring Umberlee's power against their elven foe. He tried not to dwell overlong on the end results of the dark goddess's last campaign, or on his dawning suspicion that he himself might have been as handily manipulated, both then and now, as was Umberlee.
Such dark thoughts served him best when they were turned into anger-a fine and killing rage that Malar could focus utterly against Corellon's children.
In the years that followed, large communities of strange and evil creatures began to gather in the warm waters surrounding Evermeet.
The scrags were the worst of them. These ten-foot, seagoing trolls were nearly impossible to defeat, for they healed themselves of battle wounds with astonishing speed. They could easily swarm over an elven ship, regenerating as fast as the elves could cut them down. Setting them aflame only ensured the destruction of the ship, and left the elven crew at the mercy of those scrags still in the sea. Few elves survived the swim through troll-infested waters. Travel between the mainland and Evermeet grew exceedingly perilous, and more ships were lost than made harbor.
In addition to the marine trolls were the sahuagin, dark and hideous fish-men who were driven by a soul-deep enmity toward Sea elves. Many were the battles that raged beneath the waves between these ancient enemies. In a few short decades, the peaceful Sea elves who lived near Evermeet, who guided elven ships and scouted ahead for dangers that hid beneath the waves, were nearly destroyed.
It was a dark time for the elves of Evermeet. Cut off from the powerful kingdom of Aryvandaar except for the Tower-sent messages, bereft of the formidable protective barrier once provided by the Sea elves, they found to their horror that their sacred homeland was not, as they had fondly hoped, impervious to attack.
Nearly four hundred years had passed since the first ships from Aryvandaar had sailed past the mountainous island outpost known as Sumbrar and into the deep, sheltering bay on Evermeet's southern shore. Here, at the mouth of the Ardulith river, they had founded Leuthilspar, 'Forest Home.'
From gem and crystal, from living stone and mighty ancient trees, the High Magi of Aryvandaar brought forth in the forests of Evermeet a city to rival any in the kingdoms of Faerun. These buildings of Leuthilspar grew from the land itself, increasing in size as the years passed to accommodate the growing clans who dwelt within, as well as the settlers who came later. Even in its infancy, Leuthilspar was a city of incomparable beauty. Spiraling towers leaped toward the sky like graceful dancers, and even the common roadways were fashioned from gems coaxed from the hidden depths.
Although complete harmony among the elven nobility remained an elusive goal, Keishara Amarillis served well in bringing the contentious factions together. And when the time came for her to answer the call to Arvandor, Rolim Durothil accepted the duty of High Councilor with a humility and resolve that would have astonished those who had known him as a proud Gold elven warrior of Aryvandaar.
Rolim and his wife, the Silver elf mage Ava Moonflower, set an example for harmony among the clans and the races of elves. Theirs was an unusually large family, and their children increased both the Durothil and the Moonflower clans. Those children who took after their Gold elf patriarch were counted among the Durothils; those
