Blackstaff

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Feast of the Moon, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

The Chosen of the First Circle, having found the grand mages for the greater Working, harnessed their wills and sent the energy of the pyre out in a wide pulse to link their minds, wills, and hearts to those of the Second Circle. Those who claimed bracers from the sharn stood in the Second Circle. The bracers added their hands and strength to the working, focusing its energies to their highest purpose. The silver flames crackled across the plains and hit every member of the circle simultaneously. The fires held at that circle for a time, as the wielders intuited what they needed to do. The Central Caster sparks the flame. The First Circle lights the pyre. The Second Circle uses that flame to restore warmth and light. Once that message was received, the twelve of the Second Circle blasted the fires into the heath, scoring the ground among them for the city soon-to-rise. Four hundred strides separated Tlanchass across the circle from Mentor and the others. She wept openly, knowing that she stood for her fallen love as a student of the Seven Wizards of Myth Drannor. She worked the magic in his name, though her long-bound tears flowed freely due to the embrace and condolences of Mentor Wintercloak. She also bristled at working with corrupt and evil people, but Mentor reminded her they all shared a purpose and a need to be there, even if all was not shared with them. Tlanchass returned to her normal gold dragon form as the fires engulfed the Second Circle. She felt the mind-touch of the eleven other souls within the circle-the dragons Essioanawrath and the Argentalon, Jhesiyra Kestellharp, High Mage Orjalun, Mentor Wintercloak, Darcassan, Shalantha Omberdawn, Syndra Wands, Ualair the Silent, Maskar Wands, and Rhymallos. They all raised their bracer-clad limbs in unison, but Syndra Wands raised both her ghostly arms.

Isylmyth's Bracer gleamed on her other arm and the two bracers glimmered in sympathetic magic. Each created a massive stream of magical energy, and all twelve blasted away the soil and rock. The energies penetrated the High Moor and traveled away from the Second Circle in magical manifestations of ground fires, unicorns, giant ants, bulettes, or even small dragons that scored the heath with golden claws and fire. From their actions, the dirt released its poisons and the magic of the Killing Storms. To some, the fell magic looked like greasy fog, to others virulent plagues of flies, and still others saw nishruu of a slate-gray color. All of this magic they released and directed back toward the center of the working. Tlanchass did as the magic directed her. Her energies and her illusory drakes cultivated health back into the blasted heath she had ever known as the High Moor. She only hoped the strength of her comrades would last, engulfed as they all were in the miasmic fog that killed the people of Miyeritar.

Tsarra marveled at the linking of the minds and perceptions of nineteen souls. She wondered just how much she could handle as three souls in one body. She had already gained much knowledge and power by taking up the mantle of Blackstaff. Still, she ached to fully understand the magic around her. The three grand mages cast another spell of their own above the Chosen-a high magic working within their own ritual. Tsarra tried to focus on what they did, but she went deaf and blind. A chorus of voices sent to her, These are Arts you cannot know. Mystra's fires may keep you safe from the akhelben's working, but to espy on high magic would destroy you utterly. You shall feel its touch soon, child, which shall be gift enow. Tsarra sat back, deflated. Khelben's working still sang all around her, but she prayed she could find a way to stave off what he deemed inevitable. It was then she heard the murmuring in Elvish, "Assemble… Assemble…

Assemble…" She tried to isolate the voice, but it circled the library. Each orbit, its call pulsed through the kiira: "Assemble..

Assemble… Assemble…" Tsarra followed the whisper around the room, and she spotted the selu'kiira floating about her own brow in the mirror. Within a moment of that realization, another selu'kiira arrived in a nimbus of red brilliance, and it too took up both the sending chant and an orbit around Tsarra's own gem. Tsarra stared at the two gems orbiting her own kiira, fascinated.

It was nearly highsun, but the sky remained storm-wrapped. Mentor coughed violently, much to his surprise. The bracer and the magic he controlled teased nutrients from the Weave and into the soil around him. The clouds and gray detritus of the life-poisons rose more swiftly, and the gray-green hue of the heath slowly became healthy soil for the first time in twelve thousand years. Unfortunately, the poisons took their tolls on the casters within it, and Mentor found blood on his sleeve when he wiped his mouth and nose. So be it, if that is our cost, he thought to himself. He sensed that the toxins surrounding them weakened some fellow casters. Maskar, Jhesiyra, Orjalun, and Ualair nearly succumbed, faltering and lying prone but still manipulating magic as the masters they were. All had reserves of power that defied age and infirmity, but the work sorely taxed their abilities to fight off death. Despite that, Mentor marveled at how well the plan had come together, that working he and his six comrades had inherited back in the Incanistaeum. Much had been rumored about the Seven Wizards of Myth Drannor, but their greatest secret had lain unguessed for centuries. Mentor was proud of his former student, the proud non-elf of elf's blood who had made quite a few names for himself since the Wintercloak had called him "Nameless." They had inherited the secret from others, who had carried it before them. The seven had believed they guarded the secrets of Uvaeren. It took Khelben to piece it all together and show even his own teachers that secrets within secrets provide a fertile loam in which much magic and mystery can grow. Unfortunately, the deeper they all dug and tilled the soil, the more virulent the venoms they unleashed into the storms.

Mentor and the eleven others of the Second Circle moved into the second stage of their working. They took their cues from Syndra Wands, who taught them the magic within Isyllmyth's Bracer. They all cast simultaneous spells, and they became pillars of lightning and flame.

The twelve pillars struck the clouds overhead, energies crackling in the ominous clouds. More lightning bolts erupted swiftly from the full-fledged Killing Storm, scoring the earth for miles around. Each strike left silvery flames in its wake, and the Second Circle also released its contained fires, allowing the High Moor to become awash in silver brushfires. They sent their glad tidings, best wishes, and magical thoughts with the fires, which merged with the others and built as the ground flames surged slowly across the heath. Inside the pillars, the twelve sighed in relief as the magic kept them safe from the poisons that threatened their lives. Each soul hoped such cures might be forthcoming for those who might fall into the Killing Storm's path before they could tame it. Ualair lived up to his name, keeping even his mind partially silent from the link among the Second Circle.

He sensed what most others could not-the building of high magic at the center of the working. He knew the costs that would be asked of them soon, and he prepared to pay them without a second's thought.