with brisk haste. Setting the hairs from the man shy;sion on one pedestal and the pipe ash on the other, Laeral spread her fingers over them, and closed her eyes.
Brief radiance played about her fingertips, and two of the hairs wriggled away from the pile and drifted to the floor.
Laeral opened her eyes again. Everything that was left had come from, or been in intimate contact with, the same human male. If she was fortunate, a much more powerful spell could now use these discards to trace-and spy upon-the absent Auvrarn Labraster. If she was unlucky, they'd lead her to a servant, or per shy;haps some merchant who'd recently visited Windpennant Pillars,
Laeral frowned again. Why was a feeling of forebod shy;ing growing strong within her? One merchant, after all, with no known dark history of misdeeds or penchant for swaggering menacingly around the docks with a large force of hireswords in tow. . why was she so uneasy?
'Mystra preserve,' she murmured, and thrust aside dark thoughts.
Laeral looked into the antechamber to be sure no apprentice was going to come bustling in with a mes shy;sage in the midst of her casting, drew in a deep breath, and carefully cast her spell.
The scrying sphere that looks upon the spellcasting chambers flashed once, but thereafter remained dark. Briion Dargrant nodded calmly. The lady was conducting some sort of research with the oddments she'd brought back. He turned back to the writings Khelben had given him to go over, and did not look up until a scrying sphere burst with a flash and flame that hurled him and his stool over backward amid singing shards of glass.
Blinking amid the wreckage as loving tendrils of smoke flowed down over the edge of the table to envelop him, Briion did not have to clamber back up to know which globe had shattered.
'Oh, Great Lady!' he gasped. Tears started into his eyes, and he fainted.
Running feet almost trampled him a breath or two later. Apprentices poured down the passages and stairs of the tower, shrinking back against the walls as a black whirlwind snarled past them and plunged down into the depths.
They started to run again in Khelben's wake, feet thundering down stone steps and racing along the narrow ways to where bright light was raging in the depths. There they came to a halt and stood staring in sudden, panting astonishment, one by one. Astonish shy;ment. . and growing fear.
The largest, deepest spellcasting chamber of the tower no longer had a door. Its arch stood empty, the door now a smear of dripping metal on the wall across the passage. Through the gaping opening, over the black and trembling statue of their master the Blackstaff, the staring apprentices could see that the cham shy;ber held leaping, clawing lightning amid scorched nothingness. A single ribbon of silver flame danced among them.
As the folk of the tower watched, the lightning became fitful, then slowly died away, leaving only the silver flame struggling alone in the darkness. Lord Khelben turned around then to face the apprentices, his face like white marble, with two terrible flames as eyes.
'It would be best,' he whispered with terrible gentle shy;ness, 'if all of you went away. Speedily.'
He turned slowly back to face the ruined chamber without another word. By the time the Lord Mage of Waterdeep faced the flame again, he was alone once more. As the old MageFair saying put it: 'Apprentices moved by fear can move swiftly indeed.'
Khelben drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and stepped grimly into the room where the flame danced ever more feebly, to shape a spell he thought he'd not have to use for years.
'Only someone of great power could have wrought such a spelltrap,' he said grimly, as he stretched forth his hand to let what was left of his lady take the life-force she needed from him, to survive. 'The last such I tasted was the work of Halaster the Crazed.'
The silver flame coiled around his forearm almost affectionately, and the familiar voice he'd cheerfully die for, any day of any year, spoke in his mind.
'Some women,' Khelben growled affectionately, his voice trembling on the edge of tears, 'will do anything to get in some gossip.'
Alustriel
There are some who hold that the High Lady of Silverymoon is a deluded dreamer, doomed to fail in her fair craftings because she thinks too highly of the good in folk, and too little of the evil that lurks always near at hand. I am not one of those.
It was a very calming ceiling to stare at, and Alustriel of Silverymoon was staring at it now, lounging back in her chair to lose herself in the delicately painted panels and curving vaulting. Cracks gave the masterpiece character, like the cracks that afflicted and weakened the city she'd shaped. Her eyes followed the vault rib that plunged down in a smooth curve from ceiling to wall to become one of the two pillars framing the door. It was through that door that all urgent troubles came, sometimes jostling each other for attention, to shatter her moments of solitude here. Alustriel gave the door a wry look. It was closed now; trouble was overdue.
Sometimes she felt like a caged panther, prowling restlessly and endlessly along the bars that confined her. Outside this room was a palace, and around the palace stood the city some called the Gem of the North. Her Silverymoon, a walled refuge against the dangers of the wilderlands, and her cage for many a year. Just recently though, it seemed a larger cage beckoned her to let herself out into wider roaming, in a possible union of the Moonlands and the risen dwarf holds.
A folly, some said, but then, what folly is there in striving to bring a measure of security and happiness to even a tiny corner of Faerun? Even if it all ended in bloody failure, leaving behind only legends to echo down the years to come, the attempt would have been worth something in itself. Would be worth something, always, for a striving, however flawed, outstrips empty dreams and the sloth of not having tried to shape or create anything worthy at all. Yet would not the same argument be championed by a tyrant invading a realm he deems decadent, or any woodcutter carving asunder an elven grove?
'Alustriel,' she told herself calmly, 'you think too much.'
She sometimes thought it was the endless leaping and weaving of her rushing thoughts that made her weary, and drove her to seek moments of silence, alone, like this. By the grace of Mystra she no longer needed to sleep, but the wits of every Chosen grew weary of grappling with problem after problem, and memorizing spell after spell; their power a constant roiling in the mind.
'Oh, dear me,' she told herself aloud, stretching like a dancer to show full contempt for her own weariness. 'Is the High Lady to be pitied, then? Does she want something purring and affectionate to cuddle, and a world without cares to do so in? Well, she'd better join the stampede-'
The air off to the left shimmered and became a float shy;ing, star shaped mirror-sweet Mystra, she'd set it off again!
' 'Cuddle,' ' she told it severely, 'was perhaps not the wisest trigger word to use.'
Obediently, the mirror winked back to nothingness again, but not before it had captured and flung her own image back at her. She beheld a slender beauty of a woman whose emerald eyes were winking with amuse shy;ment as she wrinkled her lips wryly, and guided the tresses of her long silver hair-moving seemingly by themselves-to smooth back the shoulders of her fine dark gown. Gracefully, of course; a certain sensuous grace, some termed it. She was not called 'Our Lady of Dalliances' behind her back for nothing.
