Shadows of Doom

1

Elminster was reading yet another book when it all began.

It was the day of Aumry's Feast, when the folk of Shadowdale gathered to toast their lord in the name of a much-beloved predecessor. In his leaning stone tower, well away from all the festivities, the Old Mage sat in the creaking chair by the hearth, his long pipe alight, sighing and muttering his way through a thoroughly hopeless grimoire of some long-ago necromancer of lost Netheril.

The writer had been a perfect crazed-wits, Elminster decided early on, and paranoid to boot. What little magic the Netherese mage had set down was twisted by the periodic ravings of a tenuous sanity and by the suspicion-driven cloaking of facts in a torturous maze of codes, obtuse jargon, deliberate misinformation, and mystical gibberish. The obvious intent was to conceal magical truths from unauthorized readers-all relatively sane wizards, for instance.

"A good one?" His scribe, Lhaeo, was rising from the hearth-cauldron with a long ladle in his hand and an amused look on his face. He'd seen Elminster's disgusted looks a time or two before.

"About five good breaths of blaze, on a hot fire," Elminster replied, hefting the old tome in his hands and looking meaningfully down at the flames under the cauldron. He glanced at the book again and shook his head.

"Sixty pages," he said with a sigh, "and only three real spells so far, one of them hopelessly skeltered at that. Yet he may have hidden a gem or two somewhere in all this nonsense. As ye know, I live in eternal hope."

Elminster snorted, rolled his eyes comically at Lhaeo, and turned another page. His pipe also snorted, puffing out a little burst of sparks.

Lhaeo chuckled and turned back to the herbs on his cutting board. Elminster watched him with a fond smile. When Lhaeo wasn't cooking, cleaning, or actually acting as a scribe, he was gathering herbs, gardening, gathering or shopping for food, or talking about recipes and culinary lore with every caravan cook who passed through the dale.

Elminster sometimes wondered why his scribe wasn't as wide as old Luth's fabled bull. If Lhaeo wasn't eating, he was cooking (and tasting). If he wasn't cooking, he was thinking about food, and if he wasn't doing any of those things, he was asleep and dreaming about food. Or so it usually seemed.

As the old illusionists' saying has it, however, seemings and truth are often as far apart as one's mind can put them. As smoothly as any warrior, Lhaeo suddenly spun back to face his master. He'd heard a sudden, queer sobbing noise-a sound he'd never heard Elminster make before.

And then the illusionist stood quite still, precious herbs dropping forgotten from his hands.

Power filled the room. Blue-white flames blazed along the Old Mage's gaunt limbs and flared in his eyes like two cold fires. Elminster looked at Lhaeo with those burning eyes and did not see him.

With a sudden crackling of energy, the book fell from Elminster's fingers. Had there been some trap waiting in it?

Lhaeo shrank back, reaching out behind him for one of the flasks on a certain shelf. Elminster had prepared a number of such flasks for emergencies. They held protective potions and antidotes for poisons. But even as his fingers felt along the row of cold, dusty stoppers, Lhaeo knew he hadn't an inkling of what to do. The fire under the cauldron had died to almost nothing, and it seemed as if a great weight were in the air, filling the kitchen.

And then both men heard it: a voice that was kind and yet proud, in pain but enthused. A mind-voice that rolled through Elminster's mind so loudly that Lhaeo heard it clearly across the room. A voice that crawled with echoing power.

The voice of a goddess at the height of her aroused power, and yet in need. The voice of Mystra.

"Elminster! I need thee!"

"Lady, I am here," Elminster whispered. Blue-white flames licked from his mouth as he spoke. He rose from his seat, staggering as if under a great burden.

Behind him, the chair suddenly roared into a column of fire that reached for the low roof-beams overhead and then was gone, dying in the instant the chair was utterly consumed. Elminster lurched and almost fell.

Lhaeo shivered in horror at the sudden release of power great enough to burn away a chair between two beats of one's heart, but started toward his master. Elminster frantically waved him back, struggling as if in a high wind, and that great voice spoke again.

"Old Mage, my time is done. I am going, and have no time to tell thee what has befallen, or thank thee for the years thou hast given me.

"You must bear the load, old friend. You must be the one. Hold my flame for the one who is to come." A hint of amusement echoed in the voice. "You'll like her. You always do fancy young maids." Then she was gone, with no farewell but a flicker of communicated pain-and something whispered after it.

Elminster stiffened. Abruptly, the roaring, blazing force of Mystra's magical power-her very essence-surged into him, filling him in relentless waves. It brought burning agony, daggerlike fingers tearing through his ancient body. He tried to roar but could not.

In Elminster's numbed mind, the force of Mystra's magic swept bindings, odd memories, and safeguards before it as a tidal wave tumbles wreckage along in its uncaring, destroying foam. His hands jerked and flailed about helplessly, and he fell.

It had been many long years since sheer intensity of Art had hurled the Old Mage to his knees. He could scarcely remember the last time he'd felt overmatched by sheer power of magic. A wry thought came unbidden then. He'd known this would happen, sooner or later. He shook his head and gradually became aware of a faint, raw, frantic screaming.

Where-? A protesting thought whirled into Elminster's mind. Why do the worst problems always come when one is ill prepared? He strove to focus on the direction of the sound, raising a hand in front of his face as if to wave away the blue-white mists before him. Slowly, slowly, he drifted closer to the agonized shrieking, saw Lhaeo's shocked face coming closer through the mists-and realized the sound was coming from his own lips.

Elminster of Shadowdale spread his hands apologetically, struggled up from his knees, and fell headlong into Lhaeo's reaching arms as another surge of Art carried him away, chilled and burned all at once.

In a place of drifting mists, Elminster of Shadowdale gathered his will to banish the pain. Ice took him by the heart and throat as he groped for his Art amid the roiling magic that filled him.

He found nothing. The Art that had served him for many hundred years was burned away. All his power had fled from him. His magic was gone.

From a place where only gods walk cometh the Fall to cast down all the gods. Among them is Mystra, the goddess whose thought shapes and controls the eternal fires men call magic all across the world of Toril. What befalls that world if all the bounds and enchantments of its magic should burst at once, to let the fire flash free?

The world perishes in flames, of course, and so this must not befall. Even in her destruction, a goddess can strive to do something noble, a last act of love for the world she's watched for so long.

No time remains for a considered and orderly passage of power. No mortal frame can hope to hold her essence without burning to nothingness. No mortal mind can carry what she knows, without being snuffed out in an instant.

Azuth must carry more. All of her Chosen must carry more. But one mortal must carry the chief load, lest all perish with Mystra's passing. One mortal must be chosen in an instant. One who can carry more than most. One who can resist the temptation to twist the power to his or her own ends, and by meddling doom all the Realms. One must suffer Mystra's Doom.

In pride, folly, and despair at the moment of her passing, Mystra knows the mortal who must be chosen. Only one can hope to survive. Only one may succeed-and perhaps, much later, forgive.

"Remember me," she whispers to the chosen one, with her last thought. There is not enough left of her to shed the tears that are the price of her long burden. "Remember me."

"Lady Mystra," Elminster whispered in urgent reply, as he lay on the stones of his kitchen floor. "I love thee! I will remember. Take my thanks!"

He could not tell if Mystra ever heard him, or if she was gone before his thoughts were formed. Elminster looked up at Lhaeo and felt tears wet on his cheeks.

"She's gone," he mumbled, rather unnecessarily. Lhaeo nodded, and bent over him.

"Aye," he said gravely, "but what has she done to you?"

Through fresh tears, Elminster met a gaze that was wary and the gray of cool steel. He noted Lhaeo's ready grip on a belt dagger and made no move with his own hands.

"I am still myself," he said quietly. "Or as much as I can be with no magic left to me."

Lhaeo stared at him in shocked silence for a long time. Then he whispered, "Old friend, I am sorry. Very sorry indeed." He knelt down and took Elminster's hand. "Gone for good?"

Elminster shrugged and then slowly nodded. "I fear so."

Lhaeo's look was grave. "There is no gentle way to ask this," he said slowly. "You have lived beyond most men. Without Art, will you soon crumble away?"

Elminster grinned feebly. "Nay, Lhaeo. Ye're stuck with me awhile longer."

"Then I suppose," Lhaeo said solemnly, "you'll be wanting to get up off this floor. I haven't swept it yet today."

In a dark chamber far away, the silent, floating ring of beholders drew back as Manshoon, High Lord of Zhentil Keep, gasped and halted in his cold address to them. He stumbled, caught himself, and straightened to face them again, but on his bone-white face was a look of fear it had not worn for years.

The beholders waited watchfully, many dark and glistening eyes staring at the human archwizard, ready to rend him in an instant if it should be needful.

Manshoon looked around at all those eyes, took a deep breath, and licked suddenly dry lips. "Something has happened. Something terrible." He shook his head in disbelief. "Bindings have failed all across the Realms."

The largest beholder drifted a little nearer. The cold, hissing voice of Ithaqull sounded coldly amused as it rolled out around the archmage. "An event that has possibilities, does it not?"

As the sun went down over Shadowdale, Elminster sat, long pipe in hand, beside a placid little pool. Power still roiled within him, but there seemed less of it now than at first. Perhaps it was leaking away or leaving him by some means prepared beforehand by the Lady of Mysteries, or perhaps he was just getting used to it.

He raised a finger and tried to light his pipe with a little cantrip he'd learned long ago. Nothing happened. He tried again, holding up his finger and staring at it as he gathered his will.

The spell was still there. He'd had it in his mind before Mystra had spoken, though he couldn't feel any enchantments hanging ready any longer. He could think clearly and remember all that he'd done, but Art simply would not come to his call. Feeling a little ashamed, he stuck his pipe, unlit, back in his mouth and stared out across the water.

Night came creeping across the sky like thieves' fingers, long, dark blue clouds coming in low from the west. Small croakings and singings sounded around the pool. Amid the stones at its eastern edge, Elminster sat as if he were stone himself, and made no sound at all.

Lhaeo came out to him with a steaming jack of hot spiced wine. Elminster only smiled a little as the scribe placed it in his hand, and looked up with eyes that did not see. Lhaeo put a hand on his shoulder in answer and went back in. Elminster did not speak, for he was very busy talking-in his mind, which was a crowded place just then.

The Divine Lord Azuth was there, and with him Noumea, the Lady Magister. There was also Storm Silverhand and High Lady Alustriel and Nethreen. Most of all Nethreen: Witch-Queen of Aglarond, widely feared across the Realms as the fiery-tempered, awesomely strong archmage the Simbul. Elminster loved her very much.

They'd held each other and whispered their truenames in the wake of the coming to power of the spellfire-maiden, Shandril Shessair. Since then-in their own independent, far-traveling ways-they'd been lord and lady to each other.

In the flurry of mind-spoken questions, comfortings, and advice, the Simbul's quiet voice tore at Elminster's heart the most. As night came to Shadowdale, Elminster sat amid the ever-louder chorus of crickets and bullfrogs, and thanked his friends for their care and good wishes. Feeling sick at heart, he told them plainly that he didn't know what to do now. Concerned thoughts flew like flashing swords, but in their midst the Old Mage grew ever more tired and heartsick. He was beginning to feel that the power to link thoughts with others who carried the burden of Mystra's power was a curse, not the comfort and safety it was intended to be.

Yet the Old Mage cared for all who reached out to his mind this eve, and none of them were unfriendly or unperceptive. They knew he carried a terrible measure of power he did not know how to call on. Worse, they all knew his own Art, or at least his means of grasping magic, was gone. They knew, too, that he was very tired and wanted to be alone.

One by one they wished him well and withdrew. Soft soothings echoed and re-echoed in his mind. Elminster felt their own weariness, bewilderment, and fear for Mystra and for the fate of them all, and had no comfort to give. He saluted them as they parted, until at last-as he knew would happen-only one thought-voice remained, riding his mind with the easy familiarity of intimacy.

Nethreen. Lady most mine. Elminster let her feel his gratefulness. I am right glad of thy company.

I know, Lord, came the calm reply. I know. I was ever lonely until I came to thee and found another I could trust.

Elminster smiled in the darkness, and then hastily caught his pipe as it fell. I love thee, Lady.

And I thee, Lord. Stop all this formal fencing, El. We're alone now, and you're in perhaps the worst danger you've ever really faced. Have you decided what to do next?

Elminster's sigh slid into a rueful grin. No. I've thought, but not decided. I was hoping-

That between us all, we'd decide on a path for your feet? came the dry reply. That is not laid on through life for any of us, Old Mage. You of all folk know that well. The rebuke was lost in the same ruefulness that Elminster felt, shared for a moment before it faded. When the Simbul spoke again, her mind-voice was gentle. Will you come to me? There is a hidden place deep in the Yuirwood, a refuge I've used before, as others of Aglarond did before me.

Nay, Lady. Elminster's feelings were firm and certain about this, at least. This danger is, as ye say, mine to face. Moreover, I menace any mage I am near. Even if I did not love thee, Aglarond needs thee against the spite and greed of Thay, whose meddling mages would be that much closer to me in thy refuge than they are now.

Right now, all who learn of your misfortune and would do you ill know exactly where to find you, Nethreen reminded him sharply. Don't misthink yourself into a grave, my lord! Her mental tone shifted into curiosity. Why are you a danger to any mage? Are you afraid the power in you will tempt me, or another like me?

Elminster's reply was subdued. I know not if Mystra's power will leak from me. Mayhap it will be unleashed in some sort of magical blast. In either case, it may destroy any mages near, or render them feeble witted or dead to Art as I am now.

Moreover, I am sure to attract the overly ambitious, if ever my fate becomes known. I would not want ye to face hourly visits from the likes of Ghalaster of Thay; that Calishite, Murdrimm the Hierarchmage; or Manshoon, backed by all his Zhentarim. One or a number of them, working against thee or me, might taste too much of Tymora's good fortune. Those who would seize Mystra's power will do anything, and more than anything, to get it.

What must we do, then? The Simbul's voice seemed close to tears.

If ye would help me, Elminster replied carefully, feeling his way as he spoke to her, watch over Mourngrym-and Randal Morn in Daggerdale-as I have done, and help the Harpers as best ye can. Storm will tell thee how. I need thee to take on my tasks while I am unable to do them-if ye deem the doing necessary and good, for I will not tell thee how to judge, or that I have been right in what I've done.

There was a little silence, and then the reply came, soft as a falling feather. I will, Old Mage. Remember that I love thee. That was all, and she was gone.

Elminster sat alone again in the night, waiting for moonrise.

He could not see the silent tears the lady in the tattered black gown shed then. Far away, in the highest room in a night-cloaked tower in Aglarond, the Simbul wept for her doomed lord. She hated to break their link together-now, when he needed her most-but she couldn't hide her pity any longer. That last pride she would not take from him, whatever befell. It was nearly all he had left.

Sitting alone in the soft darkness, Elminster watched the stars slowly wheel overhead.

"I wonder," he said at last, aloud, "if every mage who strives with Art to change the world were swept away tomorrow, if it would make one breath of difference to the Realms."

"I know not," came a quiet reply from out of the night, "but it's never stopped any of us from trying."

Elminster nearly jumped right into the air. Heart racing, beard bristling, he contented himself with jerking around toward the voice as he flung away pipe and wineglass.

Delicate eyebrows arched. "I know I haven't done anything to my hair since this morning," Jhessail Silvertree asked calmly, "but do I really look that bad?"

"Mystra's mercies, lass! Must ye creep up on an old, enfeebled man like that?" Elminster sputtered, peering at his onetime pupil. Instead of her customary man's tunic and breeches, the Knight of Myth Drannor wore a dark, splendid gown. Her long hair, unbound, curled about her shoulders. Her eyes were very dark.

The lady Knight leaned close enough in the dimness for him to see her smile. "It certainly seemed effective," she agreed. "How are you tonight, Old Mage?"

Elminster sat very still. Then he said simply, "Not good."

"I know," Jhessail said softly, sitting down and wrapping smooth, strong arms around him. "It's why I've come."

"Ye know?" Elminster asked dully. Realizing how very much he needed the friendly warmth of arms about him just now, he slowly relaxed in her embrace.

Jhessail nodded, her hair brushing his cheek. "Storm sent me. Worry not; no others in this dale know." She snuggled closer. "Storm has two guests-Harpers-this night and thought you needed someone to hold you."

"Well," Elminster said dryly, "there's always Lhaeo."

"He's busy," Jhessail said, "getting out all your old clothes and wands and traveling boots, and cooking up a storm just in case."

"In case, good lady, of what?" Elminster asked rather testily.

"He knows how restless you are," Jhessail said gently. "Even if you're so shaken right now that I could walk right past you to the tower and back again without your noticing."

"Shaken?" Elminster suddenly found himself shouting, trembling in a red fury. He drew back a hand and hit out hard. "Have a care, wench!" he snarled. "I've-"

When he realized what he'd done, ice clutched at his spine, and the anger was suddenly gone. He was alone in black despair, sinking, and without magic. "Oh, gods, lass," he whispered roughly. "I'm sorry."

There was silence. She did not move.

"J-Jhessail?" the Old Mage asked almost frantically, "Have I hurt thee? I-Smite me with Art, I deserve it! I am most sorry, but I cannot undo what I've done. I deserve to make amends."

There was a soft chuckle in the darkness, a chuckle with a catch in it. Then Jhessail's arms went around him again. Elminster couldn't help noticing what a shockingly firm and heaving bosom pressed against him as warm lips kissed his cheek.

"Just had to catch my breath. You've a mean right arm, for all your years, Old Mage," Jhessail said happily into his chest. "I'm glad, not angry. It seems you'll be all right, after all."

"No," Elminster said miserably, "that's just what I won't be, lass. Without magic, I won't be all right ever again."

Jhessail kissed him full on the mouth, stopping his bitter words. "Ever notice," she said, a long breath later, "how some wizards think the sun rises and sets on their shoulders, and their feet hold the Realms together as they walk on it?"

Elminster, still reeling from the kiss, asked roughly, "What d'ye-? Are ye implying-?"

"No," Jhessail replied sweetly, "I'm saying it straight out. And more. I'm telling you to get up, help me find the glass and pipe you threw my way a little while ago, and go in and have dinner. Lhaeo's worried about you. I'm worried about you. And when I get home and Merith sees this magnificent bruise on my ribs, he's going to be worried about you."

"I didn't-I'm sorry, lass!" Elminster protested wretchedly, but firm hands lifted him from his seat and propelled him into the night. He heard her chuckle again, and in anger and despair cried out, "Jhessail! My Art's gone, I tell thee!"

"Yes, yes," Jhessail said quickly, "and now the whole dale knows, too!" Her voice broke then, but she rushed on. "Gods, Old Mage, don't make this any harder for me than it is already. I'm scared sick at what might happen to you, and to this dale without your protection. I'm trying to cheer you up, but it's cursed hard work, and-and-" Tears came then, and she reached for him in the darkness and embraced him again.

"If you're quite finished with the first act of this little love play," Lhaeo's dry voice came out of the darkness a few breaths later, "a late feast-late indeed, by now-is laid ready in the kitchen. There's enough for three."