Bury Elminster Deep

CHAPTER ONE

As he directed Amarune’s borrowed body to pad cautiously through a pale white labyrinth of moonlit trees, Elminster felt himself trembling.

This almost had to be a trap, after all this time-yet, nay, nay, it was her, his Mystra! It was!

He could feel her! He knew that feeling, could never forget the touch of her mind on his… this was Mystra, the vivid blue mists of power swirling around the edges of his mind…

A sharp stick underfoot hurt his-Rune’s-bare feet, and El sank to all fours to crawl like a beast. He tingled with eager haste and had to remind himself to look for what peril that might be aprowl in the King’s Forest.

Halting on a tree-cloaked ridge in the rolling, deepening woods north of the cabin, one hand raised like a questing cat’s paw, he listened hard.

He heard distant stirrings of brush to the northeast, probably well across the Way of the Dragon, then silence. Broken by a brief, faint hooting even farther westward.

Still and silent, Amarune’s dancer’s body poised like a statue, El waited.

Long enough for even a lazy hunter to become impatient he held still, but nothing else moved that he could hear. And the sleekly muscled body he was occupying had far better hearing than what he’d grown used to in recent centuries.

Some of his excitement washed into her sleeping mind, at rest in one dim corner of the brain he steered. Amarune rose slowly toward wakefulness, her dreams growing restless, as she tasted his eagerness.

Ye’re as giddy as a lass fleeing her first kiss, El reproached himself, as he crawled on down a ferny slope of wet dead leaves toward a dark bank of old, leaning trees. Steady, Sage of Shadowdale. Where’s that world-weary yawning that ye do so well?

Part of him smirked, but through the lacy curtain of his mirth, El fought to quell ever-wilder excitement as he reached the bottom of the slope.

Only to lose his breath under a thrilling onslaught of fresh nerves as he felt the nearness of Mystra. Right ahead of him.

A weighty taste in the air came from the silent gloom behind a rising old tree that smelled of bear.

He didn’t even have time for a hint of fear before he saw a dark wall of fur that must be that beast shambling away along the line of trees, afire with Mystra’s power just as his own mind was.

Blue fire deepened in his brain, bringing certainty. The goddess of all magic was riding the bear’s mind just as he was riding Amarune’s.

Before El knew it, the moonlit trees were behind him, and he was crawling into bear-smelling darkness, over muddy, loose stones in a musky earthen den tapestried in descending roots and floored with gnawed old bones green with mold. As he crawled on, the ground dropped down into a stony cavern tall enough to stand in, aglow with Mystra’s fire.

Where two great, keen eyes he’d not seen for long centuries suddenly opened in the air in front of him.

Stealing away his breath again.

Elminster gazed into them, dumbstruck. Floating orbs of silver-blue fire regarded him with love and an excitement to match his own. Eyes he’d feared he’d never see again.

Amarune’s body lacked the feel for the Art that his aching old frame had possessed, but strain though he might, he could sense nothing false about what loomed before him. This was Mystra, though the heat in his mind remained a whispering echo of her full power.

Yet Our Lady of Mystery could easily hold back, cloaking her divine might to seem less than she was, and often-usually-did so. The eyes of deepening silver-blue fire were linked by softly coursing threads of the same radiance, lines like lightnings too gentle to crackle or spit, to… things strewn among rocks on the cavern floor.

A gauntlet with gems inset in the knuckles, a wand, a ring, other small items still hidden among the stones.

“Some blood of my mortal self spilled on these trifles of Art in the time before I became Mystra,” came the warm whisper of the goddess, both in his head and filling the cavern as if she were awakening in purring languor right beside his ear. “When you came nigh, El, the nearness of your mind alerted me. I am… preoccupied much, now.”

“Ye collected these things when ye were Midnight?” El blurted, trembling in a sudden chaos of wanting to know so much, yet not knowing what he dared ask. Her love-or at least fondness-was in his head and all around him, But something was subtly different in it, a distance that had not been there once, or rather one that had grown since Midnight had ascended to replace the Mystra his far younger self had first touched and tasted. Gone was the Mystra whose mind would long ago have merged with his to let them converse wordlessly, thoughts flashing.

Something was rising in him, something urgent. Before he quite knew what it was, he felt a flash of confusion and wonder, alarm strangled by awe. Amarune Aumar had awakened.

“I did,” the Lady of Magic replied as if nothing had happened, though fond regard washed out of her bright silver-blue fire into Amarune, causing a mental turmoil of astonished pleasure tinged with bewilderment. “The bear keeps them safe here, and I see through his eyes and guide him. It is good you came to me, El; I have many unfinished tasks for you.”

“L-lady?” Rune dared to blurt, then. “Who are you?”

“I,” the fire behind the eyes replied, as tenderly as any gently drawn sword, “am Mystra. I am magic.”

That last word became a thunderclap that raced away into unseen distances, only to return a rolling echo of deep, teeth-chattering force that made small stones fall and patter in the bear’s den, and the living roots groan and murmur all around them.

I am the fire in all things. That whisper came soft and calm, uttered only in the depths of their shared mind.

Then Mystra seemed to shake herself and added, “More than ever, El, I need your service. You I can truly trust, where so many others have turned from me or fallen. I can coerce, of course, but I will no longer make that mistake of lesser gods. The work of slaves is nigh worthless. For deeds to have true and lasting meaning, they must done willingly. Elminster Aumar, El mine, are you still mine? Are you with me?”

“As ever,” Elminster burst out, finding himself on the choking edge of tears in an instant. “Goddess, command me!”

Blue fire flooded through him, leaving him gasping, overwhelmed by Mystra’s pleased satisfaction.

“You must be my roving hands, skulking alone,” she said, eyes flashing with resolve, showing power enough to make Amarune’s mind cower. “I charge you to preserve magic wherever and whenever you can, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. Bold confrontations and invoking my name are clumsy marks of pride I would fain put behind me forever. So, El, be my-forgive me, Amarune-my Silent Shadow.”

Amarune fought to make her lips gasp; El was too distracted to relinquish control over them. He felt amusement washing through his mind on tides of blue fire as Rune managed her gasp, then gave him a rueful mental shove as she yielded her mouth back to him. It was some moments later before he managed to reply, “Lady, I will.”

“Employ disguises. Be the thief you once so ably were in Hastarl. Steal and copy magic, and then hide the copies so that, whatever befalls the originals, my Art will survive for those yet unborn.”

“Lady,” Elminster repeated, “I will.”

“Recruit new Chosen, and gather them here for me to confer with. I need many, and they must be different from my daughters and from each other, for that kinship was another misstep. Yet, we both know how rarely the needed loyalty and strength are found together-and above all, I must have those I can trust.”

El nodded, remembering Khelben and Sammaster, Laeral, and too many elven ladies who were all so willing, yet had faded so swiftly under the ravages of too much Art. Betrayals, defiances, independence, and weaknesses. Gone, now, all of them. Gone…

His Alassra, fled and mad somewhere, brain-burned by the roaring Blue Fire that was not Mystra, the plague of wild fury that had snuffed out the lives of thousands in a blazing instant, and many more in the days and seasons that had followed…

“Lady,” he said huskily, “I will.”

“Continue what you have done so well for so long: preserve and strengthen the Art-not magic bestowed by others, but magics worked by the caster’s own craft and knowledge.”

“Lady, I’ve done that for so long,” El told her truthfully, “that I do not know if I could now refrain from doing so. It is what I do.”

“It is. Yet the fall of Azoun heralded your newest task. It is time to do what Storm and Dove have both suggested. By any means you deem best-becoming their head or turning their leaders to my service-recruit Cormyr’s wizards of war. They must become the ready allies, helping hands, and spies for all my Chosen.”

All my Chosen?

Ah, Storm and Alassra, of course. If there were more, and Mystra desired him to know of them, she would reveal them…

She was right, of course. If he was to manage any of these tasks, he sorely needed new allies-with his own body lost to him, Alassra crazed, Storm’s magic all but gone, and the work already far more than he and Storm could handle.

“Soon enough, you’ll again have a body of your own,” Mystra murmured among El’s racing thoughts. She was reading them, of course, and “In the meantime,” the goddess whispered, “I can aid the one you have. You have been sorely wounded in my service.”

The silver-blue fires changed, and in the mind they were sharing, Amarune recoiled in fear.

The floating eyes flared larger, brighter… and nearer.

“Embrace me,” Mystra commanded.

Somewhat warily, with Amarune on the verge of whimpering at the back of their shared mind-an image of her fearful staring eyes flaring to outshine Mystra’s huge orbs-Elminster stepped forward and spread his arms wide.

The shield-sized eyes of silver-blue drifted together, merging in smooth silence right in front of him, and flaring into silver lightning that shocked through him. His arms flew apart convulsively, and then tightened again around the lightning as if it were something solid he could crush. Not that Elminster was thinking of crushing anything.

Or thinking at all.

He was too busy screaming in pain.

The high, throat-stripping shriek of a young female dancer lost in agony and horror spat out of him into the night, as lightning slammed through him, his every hair standing on end like a straining dagger, snapped back out of him, then roared back into him again. It was as if a thousand spears thrust through him, tore back out, and then thrust right back in repeatedly through the same gaping wounds.

Elminster was dimly aware of falling to his knees and shuddering helplessly. He was caught on the bright spears of lightning, unable to collapse onto his face… unable to do anything.

Every time the lightnings snarled out of him, they took life with them, vitality that was not returned when they stormed in again.

Amarune was sobbing, or trying to, but her body could not breathe, could no longer make a sound. Her brain was awash in roaring silver fire, flames of power that thundered through her mind and might well have destroyed it had Elminster not been grimly fighting to stay himself, to cling to what was Elminster of Shadowdale amid the hungry fires of a goddess.

Around him, blue fire was being beaten back by silver flames, flames that circled him-and then darted into him.

Elminster tried to scream, but all that came out was a strangled squeak.

Mystra-if it was Mystra-had drained much energy from his borrowed body but was now at work on steadying his mind, forcing back the roiling blue fires that had lurked there for nigh a hundred years.

“There, my champion,” Mystra whispered as tenderly as any mother. “Go forth renewed. Greater and more magic you can now work without madness coming upon you, but not an unlimited amount. I cannot do more. Go now, until next we meet.”

Silver fire left him then, leaving only chill darkness.

Elminster stood forlorn, blind in the darkness.

Something soft and tender stroked his face and arm, turning him and leading him back. Out and up, stumbling over unseen things underfoot, once more into the moonlight.

Weak and dazed, reeling, with Amarune cowering in mute terror in a corner of their shared mind, Elminster shivered in the night.

Bare and chilled, feeling sick and empty-kiss of Mystra, half of Rune’s energy must be gone-he staggered up rises and down slopes, through countless trees. The way was not long, but he would have been lost had a tiny silver star not guided him until the dark bulk of the little lodge loomed out of the night.

He leaned against its front wall beside the door, shuddering, until he could master his breathing enough to stand upright and square his-her-shoulders.

Amarune was still drawn into herself, but El could put the pain and horror of the lightning firmly behind him and take satisfaction in the healing that had been done to him.

By his goddess.

His Mystra.

Aye, Mystra was alive and in the realms still.

A part of him wanted to shout that to the stars above, to bellow it until folk came awake in their beds in Suzail to sit up listening.

And a part of him wanted to keep it so secret that not even the young nobleman inside the hut would begin to suspect it.

Let alone Manshoon or any other wizard of power.

Elminster threw back his head, drew in a deep breath-and smiled at the tiny silver flash of farewell that winked out in the darkness above his nose. Then he eased open the door with a fingertip and stepped inside as quietly as he could.

The hearth was dim, almost out, but someone had lit the brazier tray fixed in its spark-shield frame behind the door. Its dancing glow fell upon blankets frozen in the usual twisted chaos left behind when sleepers arise And it fell upon Storm Silverhand, her shirt-clad body bent back in a graceful bow on the floor. Someone had hogtied her to a leg of the table and her hair was over her face. She lay unmoving. Dead or senseless.

She’d been bound with Arclath’s belt.

The door slammed behind Elminster. He spun around, managing to quell Rune’s instinctive urge to leap back and away. He might need to be close.

As he’d expected, he faced a half-dressed Lord Arclath Delcastle, who waved his sword threateningly. Behind its bright edge-and above the burning brazier-the young nobleman held the coffer in which Storm had been carrying Elminster’s ashes.

Arclath’s eyes, as he glared at El, were like two dagger points.

“Luckily for my Amarune’s sake,” he snapped, “you seem unaware that even fine, upstanding nobles of Cormyr learn a few tawdry secrets of the realm-and lack scruples in exploiting them. The uses of darfly-sting essence, for instance. It brings on instant, topple-on-your-face sleep at the slightest scratch and can be found on the heads of the takedown arrows that Highknights of Cormyr hide in the same spot in every royal hunting lodge across the realm. Sleep that takes even legendary silver-haired bards blessed by the gods, it seems.”

Elminster sighed and shook his head, and then he lunged back as the bright tip of Arclath’s sword hissed past his throat.

Inside the mind they shared, El threw all his exasperation at Amarune, who spasmed like a speared fish, sent fury back at him, and stared at Arclath.

“Your ashes!” the nobleman hissed, shaking the coffer. “I’ll destroy them if you don’t surrender Amarune to me.”

He bent into a lunge that kept his sword up and menacing Elminster as he lowered the box into the flames of the brazier. They flared up and crackled, right on cue.

“Wizard, get out of her right now! Or you die!”

He flicked his blade so its tip pointed at Storm’s throat, where she lay with her head on the floor, silver hair fallen across her face.

“And so does she!”