The image dissolved in screams, and another memory swelled in its wake.
In a filthy Skullport loft, Iamras Sonmaire crouched before an altar of metal and bone, a bloodied dagger point thrust into the crooked planks next to his knees.
Runes glowed from the altar and the spine of the thick tome perched upon it. Their magic flooded the shuttered room with a sickly green light. Iamras trembled, wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve even as he fought to keep his other arm steady over the book. Blood flowed from a clumsy gash in his wrist into the runes, and the book hungrily drank.
Amrennathed felt amusement stir at this memory. She'd left him knowledge of the book's location and power but stripped the memory of how much was required for its opening from his mind. He would bleed out well before he re-learned what she had stolen from him.
I have raped the secrets of folk across Faerun entire, made hoard of them in place of coin-mountains, she whispered to the stone, as if all Faerun was indeed bent to listen. I have knowledge stored that kingdoms would bleed for and may still, if it is not allowed to pass with me. My body, my mind joined to yours, will be safe.
Safe from a fate you fear, from ghosts of the minds you've stolen.
Again, Amrennathed wondered if she was hearing her own voice echoing in rebuke. Either way, her once clever and manipulative mind was too weary to deny or circle the truth.
Yes. Safe. They will look for my bones and find empty stone. No one will beg secrets from a mountain. I will bury them in the deepest crevices where the lowliest creatures walk. Let them know the secrets ofFaerun's evils and her beauties, where great powers hide and sleep. Wisest of all, they will give no thought or care to my legacy. That is my wish.
None of us can know all that we leave behind.
But the mountain sensed the great wyrm fading. Its words became a sigh as it yielded at last, opening to Amrennathed's oldest, most closely kept magic.
Stone within stone within buried stone shifted and sighed in turn, bent, melted, and burned, reshaping ages of the world in one small space, for the beast that had slumbered within the mountain's breast for untold centuries.
Outside in the clear air, hundreds of feet above the joining, a pair of sharp-shinned hawks nested on a crooked slab of rock where the sun was kind. Beneath twig and talon, the mountain shuddered, heavy with the scent of burning rock and dragon death.
The female of the pair shrieked a cry and took flight, terrified as the unnatural scent wormed its way into the nest. Her talons came down in a rush of wings and scattering feathers onto her own eggs, crushing the shells.
Clouds of feathers separated and drifted down on the wind, far and down. They came to rest in a pool of soapy water at the bare feet of a woman who was singing softly to herself.
The old woman sang and scraped clothes over a wooden washboard in the same back and forth motion she'd used since her fingers had been straight and smooth with youth. She plucked stray feathers from the suds, added more soap and scraped harder, until her knuckle grated on wood, and came up raw from the water.
She didn't notice when the moss-covered rock behind her changed.
The green carpet joining stone to the nearby trees ran dark, purpling like a new bruise. It covered the tree in thick veins, blotting out the hot sun streaming behind.
Cast in sudden shadow, the old woman turned on her knees to look as the first wave of magic slammed her.
She overturned the bucket in her fall to the ground. At first, she thought it might be that her heart had finally failed her, a death, living alone on the mountainside, she had always assumed would be hers. She'd accepted, even welcomed that fate. It was not a bad way to die, not an undignified way. In the end, the pain would have been brief.
Gods' laughter, this was none of those things, the old woman thought, gasping for air and clutching her chest reflexively, though in reality it was her head that felt as if it would burst from the pressure.
Images careened through her mind: a mountain that spoke-her mountain-to a dragon that looked like it was made of purple stone.
'Am-Amrennathed.' Dry lips formed the word, and a wave of fresh agony rippled over her. The name crowded more images into the old woman's mind, of wizards being drained to husks even as she was being filled up-up and over with… what? To her, it was only pain. She was drowning in it.
The old woman shuddered up to her knees and crawled blindly to the side of the mountain, grabbing at roots and stone to drag her body up the slippery rock.
'Please, lady,' she sobbed out, as if the dragon might hear her, 'I don't w-want this-'
Roots snapped, and she was falling again, but her ankle remained tangled with skirts and mountain. There was a second, harder crack, and the world went blessedly dark.
She returned to consciousness slowly, to the sound of a voice-her own voice, pleading with the empty air as the dark trees and mountain loomed over her prone body.
'Lady, be merciful. I don't know… what to do with this.'
She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes until stars swam. The memories were still spinning themselves out inside her head. If she concentrated hard enough, she could separate and see them.
In one, there was another dragon in a very different mountain, tossing in a fevered dream of madness and death. In another, a man was on his knees before a glowing altar, screaming in agony as his life's blood spilled onto the stones. And more, so many more…
Whimpering, the old woman curled into a ball. Her quivering lips picked up her work song again. She sang, low and unintelligible at first, then louder, faster until she was screaming to drown out the memories flitting across her thoughts as if they'd always been there.
Beneath the shuddering pain and the drumming of her heart, she didn't notice when the mountain began to shake.
And as Amrennathed's clever mind finally slowed, joined and shaped to the grace of the mountain, the stone began to tremble.
The entire exchange had taken no more time than the dragon's last, faltering breath, but outside the trembling mountain, seasons passed, the land was reformed… and the village of Orunn died.
25 Flamerule, the Year of Wild Magic (1372 DR)
'Set it on fire and burn her out then!' The wizard pressed furiously trembling hands to his face and cursed as they came away ribboned with blood.
Bahrn did not immediately reply. He stood at the edge of a high cliff and gazed down on the ruins of a house that had suffered that precise fate.
From any perspective, the village of Orunn had already seen enough abuse by fire. To put torch to one more of the sagging dwellings in the midst of the devastation caused by looting and abandonment seemed as arbitrarily cruel as a child squashing five ants because the first four weren't sport enough. Still, he could sympathize with Arlon's mood. Diadree had always had a temper.
Intact, her home perched less than ten yards from the ledge where he stood. Bahrn's dizzying view straight down ended at a lake called the Fox Ear, a sapphire triangle closing off the horseshoe of tiny houses and surrounding farms. Years ago, several men from the village had insisted on erecting a thick plank fence along the treacherous cliff edge for Diadree's safety.
He recalled vividly the old woman's wrath at the perceived insult.
'More likely they're afraid I'll push one of their little bratlings off the edge into the lake. A fence won't cure that temptation!'
Bahrn wasn't surprised to see the fence dismantled, a few stray planks sticking slantwise up out of the ground.
'You're, ah, wizardly cousin did not appear happy to see you,' he said as Arlon continued to curse.
Actually, Diadree had come up behind Arlon as they searched for her and leaped, screeching, atop his back. Before he could wrench her off, she'd set both hands at his cheeks and raked from eye line to bony chin. She'd then barricaded herself inside her home and refused to come out.
Arlon wiped a spot of blood from the cleft of his chin and glared at the mercenary. 'You could subdue her,' he
