Lamruil and Maura stood alone together on the high cliffs where they had last taken leave of each other. Both knew that this farewell would be their last. The woman's eyes were sad, but set with determination.
'I am no queen, and you know it well,' the girl said calmly. 'Your destiny has been handed to you. You cannot turn away from Evermeet.'
'You know I love you,' he said. 'What was said in the palace was a needed thing. I had to convince Kymil Nimesin of my perfidity.'
'As well I knew,' she retorted, 'And I responded in kind.'
'Yes. If I recall correctly, you called me an albino drow.'
The woman colored and shrugged. 'I wanted a really good, convincing insult.'
'You did well,' he said dryly.
They laughed briefly, then the sadness returned to Maura's eyes. 'I must go now.'
The young elf knew better than to try to dissuade her. Even so, he felt as if his heart had turned to ash and crumbled away. 'Where will you go?'
Maura shrugged. 'Somewhere new, someplace wild. That is all I know or care.'
'Would that I could go with you!' Lamruil said with deep fervor.
'Perhaps, my son, you can,' said a familiar voice, a voice like air and music.
Lamruil turned wondering eyes toward the sound. The familiar, much-loved form of his mother took shape in the air just beyond the cliff's edge. At first she was just a glimmering shadow, a transparent image. Motes of light like sparkling, multicolored gems-silver, gold, blue, green, and obsidian-winked into being and swirled through the glassy form.
Lamruil and Maura clung to each other, awestruck, as the apparition took on form. In moments, a ghostly Amlaruil stepped down from the air.
As her foot touched the soil of Evermeet, color swept through her, adding creamy tints to her white skin and setting the cloudlike hair aflame with red-gold fire. A tangible wave of power swept through her as the magical pulse that was Evermeet flowed through her and reclaimed her as queen.
Without a word, Lamruil took his father's pendant from around his neck and offered it to the queen.
Smiling, Amlaruil shook her head. 'You have proved yourself Zaor's worthy successor, my son. The time has come for you to rule a kingdom of your own.'
'But you are Evermeet,' Lamruil said. 'Why else would you return, but to rule where you are needed?'
A moment's sadness touched the queen's lovely face. 'It was no easy thing to leave Arvandor, and Zaor. But you are right. I had to return, for the good of the People. Evermeet has need of me yet. The island's defenses are badly weakened, the confidence of the People shattered. Though perhaps the latter was a needed thing, we will have to rebuild. This undertaking must be mine. Yours, my son, is quite different.'
Amlaruil lifted both hands and made a complex, fluid gesture. Suddenly she cupped a green bowl, in which was planted a tiny, exquisite tree with leaves of green and blue and gold. 'Do you know what this is?'
The prince nodded, his eyes wide with wonder. He had long shared his mother's passion for the ancient treasures of elvenkind, and he knew the old legends as well as any seer or loremaster.
'That is the Tree of Souls, one of the greatest artifacts of Evermeet!' he exclaimed.
'Its time has come. The Tree of Souls will be planted on the mainland, creating a second stronghold for the elves,' Amlaruil decreed. 'Where would you place it, if the choice were entirely in your hands?'
Lamruil considered the matter. 'My first thought is to restore Cormanthyr to its lost glory. But that time is past. No, the new kingdom must be more defensible. An island, like Evermeet, yet different in its strengths and defenses.'
The prince fell silent. 'I think,' he said at length, 'that I would set this kingdom in the midst of another vast sea, one even more forbidding than Umberlee's domain. There are vast, unexplored regions far north of the Spine of the World. A verdant island, surrounded by ice, would be a worthy haven.'
'But unlike Evermeet, it would be a secret land, known only to the elves,' Amlaruil added in an approving voice. 'You have chosen well. Though this will be a hidden valley, strengthened by the presence of High Magic and protected by an ocean of ice, it will be a wild and dangerous land. This, perhaps, is the challenge that the People need.'
The queen's gaze slid to Maura. 'And for such a kingdom, there could be no better queen than she whom your heart has chosen.'
Amlaruil extended one hand to Lamruil, and the other to the human girl. 'I have no other daughter remaining to me,' she said softly. 'Thank you, my son, for this great gift.'
The girl hesitated for a moment, then her small brown fingers curled around the queen's offered hand.
That night the streets of Leuthilspar were brilliant with festival lights, and a thousand forested hillsides flickered with bonfires and rang with the sound of music and celebration. The weary and battered elves found joy in the return of their beloved Amlaruil, and hope in the possibility that the elves of Evermeet would regain what they had lost.
And yet, there dawned in the heart of every elf the reluctant knowledge that Evermeet would never again be the same-that perhaps it had never been all that the elves had wished to make it.
The promise of a haven from change, the vision of a place where the passage of time and the sweep of distant events could be ignored, was ultimately an empty one.
Evermeet would endure. But as their ancestors had done so many times before, the elves would move on.
Most would remain and rally behind the queen, rebuilding Evermeet's strength and adding to it in new ways. Many of them would find a new homeland, as had the desperate Gold elves from another world whom Lamruil had surprised with a welcome and an offer of haven. Many of these newcomers would follow the restless Lamruil and wrest a new kingdom from a world of ice and solitude, as would some of Evermeet's natives. Still others would pass on to Arvandor, perhaps before their time, unable to adapt to their fuller understanding of the mortal world around them.
And perhaps still others would find ancient gates to other lands, and begin again as their ancestors had once forged a home in the new land of Faerun. They would create still more legends, and do so knowing that they would never truly die as long as the old stories were told, and the ancient songs sung.
There is magic in such things, and where there is magic, there will always be elves.
30th day of Eleint, DR 1371
To Danilo Thann does Khelben Arunsun send greetings.
Thank you for sending me your manuscript of elven stories. Thank you, also, for your assurances that no one else would see it until I had the opportunity to read and approve the content. That you would think to take such steps shows a level of discretion and judgment that I had once despaired of you achieving.
I read your manuscript with great interest. As you surmised, there is much in it that is highly sensitive. To publish this work in its entirety would certainly arouse the ire-and endanger the security-of Evermeet's people.
You are quite right in saying that it might be wise to give one version to Arilyn, and submit another, truncated edition to Candlekeep as Athol's due for his part in this. I thought it best, however, that an elven scholar review the manuscript before it is reproduced in either format. Therefore I have sent the manuscript on to Evermeet for review by Elasha Evanara, a noted scribe and keeper of the Queen's Library.
This scribe is ancient even by elven standards, and is known to work slowly-again, even by elven standards. Although you've stated your eagerness to give this work to your lady as a midwinter gift, you should not count on its return in time for this year's festival. Or next year's, for that matter. You are familiar with the ways of elves, and I trust you will await the return of your manuscript with the necessary patience. Do not despair altogether of seeing it again. Members of the Thann and Arunsun families are known to be extremely long-lived.
I trust this letter finds you well. You picked an excellent year to remove to Silverymoon for a season of study. Winter has set in extremely early this year, and the roads and harbor have been closed by a barrage of early snow and ice this last ten-day. I assume that Arilyn is enjoying good hunting in the forests near Silverymoon. Give my fond regards to her.
