The Best of the Realms, Book II

LIVING FOREVER

Fear me, oh yes. I am fearsome and awesome. I am Ondruu, and I will live forever.

Once I was tall, spare, and strong, my eyes green flames as I strode Cormanthor cloaked in my power, chuckling silently as I surveyed elven fancy. Ladies of the Fair Folk looked at me sidelong, and again—and when they saw me alone, drifted out of nightshadows to do more than look.

They’d never seen a man so graceful and fine of face and form, nor one who could spin spells as effortlessly as the Srinshee, magics cleverer and stronger than the craftings of the haughtiest Starym archmage.

Oh yes, I was something to behold.

Now you think me a ghost and stare amazed, thrusting your blades at the twinkling of lights I trail … but I am not where you believe me to be.

I am here, in the spell-knotted heart of this fist-sized emerald—see how I sparkle?—in the hilt of Talath Mornyr’s swiftwing sword. Yes, in my favorite place, sliding through the ever-glowing maze of soft-woven dweomers wherein old Eloedar Lyrindralee captured the crowning magic that makes the blade fly like a bird, across half Faerun if need be, to return to its bearer’s home carrying a transfixed message, or a token bound to it, or even a stolen spell.

Ah, but you begin to forget me, and relax.

So now I quit the blade and fly past ears and over heads— hah!

Carve the air if you will, futile swordswingers! See if you can make it bleed, where even gods fail!

Chuckling silently, I alight in this glass flower, amethysts and amber melted and shaped by Sarsaree the Weaver, glowing like kindling flame now as I dance, awakening spell-locked scents that have lasted a thousand years and will prickle noses for another thousand. Nay, strike not at such beauty, or I’ll thrust you through with lightnings and leave your boots full of ashes for the next fools to find!

Away I’ll fly, if your blades are your answers to my every glimmer and shimmerburst!

Away, to make many-pillared Aladaen Hall awaken and sing, the ghosts of elven ladies dancing again in the depths of its huge crystal pillars.

Then to the Harpstones beyond, to send forth tunes through crumbling towers that have not heard such sounds for centuries … and on, ahead of your hurrying boots, to where the armors of Faeravarra drift and float, dark and gleaming and deadly, awaiting but my thoughts to send them swooping into battle! Blood you want so thirstily, intruders?

Blood you shall have, bright rains of it—and all your own!

Yes, I am Ondruu, and you should fear me. You will fear me.

And yet, pause now, a-panting and wild-eyed, and think on this: I am the most noble of those who tarry here, spirits riding the Mythal like breezes.

Oh, yes. I know mercy—and show it to others, as did the Lady Steel whose remembered beauty sears my heart still. The Dark Ones know rather less of mercy.

They ride the Mythal too, more cruel than clever: drow, drained and enslaved here by one who has the gall to tamper with the Mythal.

She. She who thinks herself Queen of Myth Drannor, and makes the Mythal a crude weapon and a spark for her puling spells. She looks only for her own reward and sees all beings as things, tools to be wielded—but sees not beyond tomorrow.

I’ve known many men thus, but few such among women who spin spells. One, I say, is more than enough.

If you meet with her, you’ll know it—even before she drains you. Madness is in her eyes. She must have more, ever more… more power and more souls. With the Mythal she makes greater her fell thralls, not-dragons and once-dragon and all, and casts forth draining radiances in pools far from this greatest city of all, to drive down men like cattle in distant lands and grow ever greater.

Perhaps she thinks to ascend among the gods, a new star blazing up among old. Where else does such power point? And yet I’ve seen stars fall even from those shining heights. And bright though her power blazes, she’s not yet even sensed Ondruu—or any of the other watchful spirits who ride the Mythal.

If she goes too far and calls on her dark vessel to do the wrong thing, we’ll boil up out of cellars, mossy spires, forgotten crypts, suddenly blazing runes, and buried coffers all over this root-split, leaf-choked, proud ruin of a city, and shine forth in our wrath ere we descend on her, in all our chilling, howling glory.

Aye, cower, intruders! We are more than just voices moaning in the wind. Some of us were trapped here, and some embraced the Mythal as it formed. Others sank into it when they wearied of daily deeds, or when fiends came upon them in the Fall and sought to tear Myth-folk limb from limb—there! See? That twinkling of lights in yonder dark arch, across the rubble that was once Alaungaleir House?

Behold another spirit of the Mythal, regarding you now: Amanthala, Dark Lady of the Nornaneir, the darkest sorceresses of Myth Drannor. She bathed in blood—her own, and that of human women who gave it willingly, and in turn tasted blue elven firewine and lived longer. Long ago that was, and she misses it. She hates the soulless dark-ears even more than Ondruu, and the not-dragons, too… and most of all, this upstart not-queen with her overbold spells and her careless graspings at power.

She should have turned to our road long since, to live forever within the Mythal and of the Mythal, glorying in its song. The song of a thousand mages and more, who gave of themselves as they bound powers into it, and played those powers like harpstrings to do new things, keeping the Mythal alive, vital, and growing.

I miss those days. The Mythal has not reached forth in new splendor for too many long years, now. It goes less far than it once did; I can no longer soar over the lights of Sembia, or stand in the night air between the stars and the Moonsea. There are darknesses and fadings within it, and none to weave, mend, and brighten Myth Drannor again.

Yet see me dance now, away from brooding Amanthala to this balcony choked with trailing vines and the bones of fiends. Here they died—final falls, just as toads, foxes, and most men die, their spirits blasted and consumed by the floating sphere at their heart. Oh, yes, Daraedyntyr: smooth, dark, and round, a black gem as big as six mens’ heads, floating so serenely among the fused bones….waiting.

Waiting to slay you, if you dare to touch it. I can dance here in its dark heart, amid the deadly magics stirring even now, because I am half a ghost.

And that is Tyche’s own favor on you, for Ondruu was not the least among mighty battle-mages, and—I daresay—one of the very few who enjoyed dealing death and striving against foes. Oh, yes, your luck would have failed ere now, wildsword adventurers, if I had my body still…

* * * * *

“Again, see? Almost as if it’s… taunting us.”

Delmoene’s voice seemed almost lazy, but its casualness fooled none of her companions. The agitated flashings of the sentient gems set into her gauntlets might have had something to do with that.

“So? ‘Tis a ghost—a pranksome ghost, that seeks to lure us astray into doom. Think you no one died here?” The growling warrior looked at the moss-girt, leaning tower on their left, then peered quickly at the moss-girt, soaring tower on their right.

“Why,” he added slowly, looking again to the left, “fiends must have bounded over all these stones, tearing elves apart with their claws in a storm of slaughter!”

“Thank you, Solor,” Delmoene said icily. “Just the cheerful image I needed, with dusk coming down fast and no time to walk back out.”

“I say again: Teleport us back to the clearing and we’ll use the gate again tomorrow,” another warrior said in exasperation. “I’m not smitten at the thought of spending a night here, either!”

The fair-haired sorceress had known the kisses of both men before, but her patience with thick-headed warriors had run out for this dying day. “Baerlor,” Delmoene asked almost gently, “did you or did you not see Rathkra blasted to blood-spray when she tried to teleport, back by the broken bridge?”

Baerlor shrugged. “That might have been just there. We can—”

“Baerlor, Rathkra is about the twoscore and third mage I know of who died trying a translocational spell in Myth Drannor. I’m not about to become the twoscore and fourth.”

The warrior waved his glittering sword angrily. “The Mythal’s not supposed to let anyone open gates into the heart of the city, either, yet here we are!”

“Yes, but we don’t know who crafted the gate— it might’ve been part of the Mythal all along! Why can’t you think for a breath or two, all of you, before opening your big mouth!”

The ground under Solor’s boots erupted in tentacles—a dozen, racing up as high as five Solors and more, ere stabbing back down again.

Delmoene didn’t spare time to scream, but Baerlor did. They were all running back the way they’d come by then, as hard and as fast as their boots could take them over broken stone, vines, and slippery moss, racing for the stone steps that would take them back out of this dell, and— Delmoene crashed into Baerlor’s back, spun away, and caught her balance with a curse. “Loviatar lash you, Baer, what’re you— oh!”

The stair was occupied. Gasping adventurers stared into the cold, gentle smiles of about a hundred dark-armored drow.

* * * * *

Oh, yes. The Hungry One’s tentacles behind you, the drained drow before you. No time now to wave swords at me, hey?

I am Ondruu, and I will live forever.