The Best of the Realms, Book II

DARK TALONS FORBEAR THEE

Oh, Great Mistress, hear me.”

The whisper is soft, but carries an eerie strength, rolling out across the void in every direction from the spread-eagled, ivory limbs of the floating Priestess of the Night.

“Hear me, I entreat.”

As usual, the words move Vrasabra the Anointed to the verge of tears, as she floats alone in the endless darkness. She feels drained, as she always does after the dark talons of the Devourer have manifested out of her. That night they had torn the flesh of the screaming men with furious energy, crunching even the bones of the doomed sacrifices before fading away.

Leaving faithful Vrasabra alone again, floating in the dark and whispering, “Hear me, my goddess, I beg.”

The darkness is suddenly alive with bristling energy and an invisible menace floods into her, jolting every last raven-dark hair on her body into a rigid spearpoint.

Shar has come.

I AM PLEASED, FAITHFUL SERVANT. WORTHY SACRIFICES, ALL. YOU ARE CLEARLY WORTHY FOR A GREATER TASK.

A wise woman would tremble and swallow a curse of despair, but Vrasabra of the Dark Talons is not a wise woman. She is a Priestess of the Night—and, just now, the Priestess of the Night, exalted above all others.

“Command me, my goddess,” she hisses, limbs glistening with the sheen of excitement.

OF COURSE. Shar’s mind-voice is as cruel as ever. MY MOST HATED RIVAL HAS THREE SHE-SERVANTS WHO HAVE LIVED FAR TOO LONG ALREADY. THE LOSS OF THESE THREE DAUGHTERS WILL HURT HER VERY MUCH. YOUR TALONS WILL CAUSE THAT LOSS.

“Oh, yes, goddess!”

YES, VRASABRA. The echo is mocking.

GO SPEEDILY AND DEVOUR FOR ME THE ONES CALLED AMBARA DOVE, ETHENA ASTORMA, AND ANAMANUE LAERAL. THREE HUMAN MAIDS WITH LONG SILVER HAIR AND ALLTHE RUDE DEFIANCE OF THE MYSTRA THEY SERVE. THEY ARE IN THE CARE OF THE ONE CALLED ELMINSTER.

Vrasabra’s hiss of hatred is strong, but Shar seems almost to chuckle.

SLAY THAT ONE NOT. I HAVE OTHER PLANS FOR HIM.

“Yes, goddess,” the floating priestess promises, not troubling to hide the disappointment in her voice.

The darkness seems to surge through her, and she gasps in sudden fear, pain, and ecstasy.

Rapture that overwhelms her and rewards her for everything, now and forevermore…

When Shar’s touch leaves her, there is no more darkness, and Vrasabra is sprawled facedown on the cold stones of her temple in the moonlight.

She arises, simmering with power, and it is the turn of the ring of kneeling underpriestesses to gasp.

The bare skin of the Priestess of the Night is as ivory-hued and flawless as ever, but her eyes are now two dark wells, lacking pupils and whites entirely.

Her smile, however, is as cruel as ever.

The ruins were too old to have a name. Not that anything more than a short and simple name would have suited them, for they were not much more than a few butter-smooth, cracked stone slabs around the circular base of a long-vanished pillar, in the ferny depths of a forest glade.

The girls called them just The Place, and loved to play there—mainly because Uncle El had forbidden it, but also for the reason behind his prohibition: Spells cast there were “twisted wild,” and made one’s skin glow like faint moonlight, one’s feet leave the ground in a gentle floating, and all cold dwindle away—even in the depths of winter. Snow never fell on the stones of The Place, even when it was piled neck-deep all around.

Dove was idling there now, in the moonlit heart of a warm summer night, dancing lazily in midair with all the indolent confidence of her seventeen summers. She was wasting the few feeble spells El had taught her and watching them ripple forth from her fingers as blossoming flowers, eels, and little jets of scorching flame. The Art smelled like rain-tang, stinging her nostrils, and her skin prickled with its surges.

“Unleashing magic in The Place was… dangerous,” their tall and bearded guardian had said, frowning severely.

Dove had shown him the length of her tongue then, and she aimed it at his unseen, distant presence now.

As if in reply to her rudeness, a familiar figure slipped gently out of the trees to join her. It was both more slender and shapely than Elminster Aumar, and preferred to be known by the name of “Storm.”

Her sister’s long unbound silver hair flowed behind her like a cascade of moonfall as she came to the edge of the stones, grinned at Dove, and announced cheerfully, “Andur Marlestur is at the cottage.”

“Looking for me? At this time of night? Has Uncle turned him into several sorts of frog at once yet?”

“No, because he’s doing nothing more amorous than earnestly asking your opinion of what flowers his mother would like best for her year-day gift. He forgot, of course, and—”

” ‘Tis on the morrow, yes. And just what am I earnestly replying, given that I’m nowhere to be found? Or is Elminster scouring the forest, and you’ve kindly come running to fetch me before he does?”

“Uncle El is calmly smoking his pipe and chuckling at Lord Marlestur’s tongue-tangles. And you’re teasing him mercilessly—which is making poor Andur even more stumble-spoken than usual, and delighting Uncle to the point of choking on his smoke.”

“I’m what?”

“Teasing him mercilessly, I believe I said,” Storm replied with impish calm.

Dove’s magic might have been weaker than that of her two younger sisters, but there was nothing wrong with her wits. Her eyes scarcely had time to narrow before she spat, “Laeral! She’s wearing my shape again, the little witch!”

She rolled over in midair so suddenly that the magic of The Place dropped her an armlength closer to its old stones, and added crossly, “I wish she’d stop that!”

“Ah,” Storm replied, smiling up at the high-riding moon, “like Uncle El wishes you wouldn’t come here?”

“Uncle El can thrust his pipe where he’ll feel its heat—and stuff the end of his beard in after it!” Dove snarled savagely, hurling herself out of the magic of The Place to strike the dead leaves and moss underfoot at full and angry barefoot stride. “I have plans for Andur Marlestur!”

Storm chuckled and said merrily to her older sister’s dwindling back, “Now fancy that. I daresay he has plans for you, too.”

“Little bitch!” Dove snarled, by way of greeting. Her eyes leaked silver sparks that eddied through her writhing hair, a sure sign of rage. At least, the Dove crashing through the trees looked that furious.

The Dove who wore nothing but torn and much-patched forester’s breeches and the ardently cradling young arms of Lord Andur Marlestur looked surprised—and a trifle alarmed.

A moment earlier, she’d been lifting her lips to those of the local lordling, the smooth swell of her front brushing velvet-soft against him, but now—…

Now she was suddenly hoping Uncle El would reappear.

For his part, Andur was looking down at her in horror and shame, wondering just who he was holding, if ‘twasn’t his Dove.

The voice of his beloved—the furious Dove who’d just arrived—rose in a swift, angry chant somewhere behind his shoulder, and Andur thrust the shapely softness in his arms away in fear and scrambled for the trees, fleeing blindly into the night with an unhappy cry.

Bright blue lightning lanced the night behind him, and Andur flung himself facedown into brambles with a shriek of terror.

“You bitch! You meddling little bitch!” Dove snarled, as her bolt struck the warding Uncle El had woven around Laeral and splashed harmlessly away, its only effect being to snatch away her youngest sister’s spell-spun disguise and reveal Laeral’s true looks to all moonlit Faerun around them.

Laeral shrugged, spread her hands, and pouted, “I was merely having a little fun—and doing you the service, I might add, of showing you just what Lord High and Mighty Marlestur is really after!”

Dove pounced, hands raised to rake and claw, but Laeral laughed and was—elsewhere. Standing halfway across the cottage glade in a whirl of spell-sparks, to be precise.

Her eldest sister glowered at her and snapped, “I know quite well what Andur is after, Laer—and it’s not cuddling with a fifteen-year-old who’s mastered only one thing in her short, twisted life thus far: playing cruel pranks!”

Seething, she whirled and plunged into the forest where Andur Marlestur had fled, bent branches dancing in her wake.

After a moment, Laeral shrugged and strolled over to retrieve the jerkin Andur had so fumblingly undone and drawn aside, a few breaths ago. Holding it up before her, she indulged in a single, brief giggle.

“That was cruel, Laer,” Storm said, from behind her.

Laeral turned around with a shrug that was almost angry. “So? Dove spends all her time defying Uncle El, being all sorts of cruel to him—and he’s everything to us! Our cook, our washerwoman, our seamstress, our woodcutter…”

Storm sighed. “Yes, but… well, I don’t like being told not to do things, either. And Uncle El tells us not to do so many things.”

Laeral shook her head in disgust. “And like Dove, you fall into his trap of defiantly rushing to do those forbidden things, just as he intended you to. For all your superior we’re-so-grown-up airs, the two of you are pretty stump-headed most of the time.”

Storm and Laeral were both angry now, standing almost nose-to-nose in the moonlight, their silver tresses stirring about their shoulders like annoyed snakes. Wherefore neither of them noticed the man they called their uncle, grinning to himself behind the nearest clump of thornbushes.

They were handfuls, these three—and the gods had, after all, only given him two hands. But sometimes they also provided delightful entertainment. Though poor young Andur probably didn’t think so, just now…

* * * * *

The dark woods were full of thorns and jabbing branches, and it wasn’t long before a panting, exhausted Andur Marlestur, Lord of Tharnwood, was utterly lost.

Lost and in much pain, sliced where he hadn’t been jabbed, bruised from precipitous falls down unseen banks onto unexpected stones, Andur groaned and gulped air and staggered frantically on. Something was crashing through the trees far behind him, and that brought cold fear up into his throat, almost strangling him. He had to get out of the forest, had to find the familiar tower of Tharnw—.

There was moonlight ahead of him, and an open area. Thankfully he thrust his way forward through crackling branches, and almost fell onto— the smooth stones of some old, vanished ruin. A tall woman with nightdark hair and darker eyes stood at their heart, bare and beautiful, awaiting him with a cold and hungry smile.

“There you are, Lord Marlestur,” she said, reaching out a welcoming hand.

Andur stared at her in disbelief, eyes caught by her smile and her—her… She stood proudly, smooth ivory skin glowing in the moonlight, and he stared.

“Yes,” she whispered softly, turning her head aside almost demurely. “What I can give is yours …”

Andur’s clumsy feet stumbled then and brought him staggering out onto the stones—and in a trice an arm was around him, soft flesh was pressed against him—and an icy fang was slicing through his throat.

The priestess held him firmly against herself as he gouted blood—Shar Above, so muck blood!—trembled, spasmed, and died.

Then Vrasabra the Anointed allowed the Devourer within her to manifest just enough to let many mouths swim up from beneath her flesh and suck. Their long tongues licked away all traces of Andur Marlestur’s gore before she let his body slump to the stones where magic went wild, and betook herself and her newly-cleaned dagger away.

Keeping the Devourer from stretching forth jaws to rend and bite down required all her strength, and she gasped and staggered as badly as Andur had done as she got herself back into the trees. But a Priestess of the Night is trained to be strong—and Vrasabra was a very good Priestess of the Night.

Andur Marlestur’s body must be intact enough to be recognized by the lass who daily dallied with him, for the lure to work.

And by all the Holy Darkness of Shar herself, the lure would work.

* * * * *

“Andur? Andur!”

There was nothing wrong with Dove’s night-sight, and she’d seen death before. Andur Marlestur was still warm, his wide eyes staring forever up at the moon in astonishment, his mouth slack and… bloodless. But how, in so few breaths, could— then, kneeling with the lad she might have loved in her arms, Ambara Dove saw the ragged slash across his throat, heard faint rustlings in the trees all around her… and knew the who, if not the how.

Tears made the moonlight so many shimmering stars, but through them she could see the men with knives—a dozen of them, and more. Hard of face and eye and dark-clad, they drew swiftly apart to surround her, forming a ring around the stones of The Place.

In a flare of heartfelt fury Dove lashed them with fire—or tried to. Her magic went wild, of course, becoming sparks that boiled up into bell-clear tones, a mocking music that drifted harmlessly into the trees and left the men in dark leathers grinning at her.

They were still spreading out, each man striding farther from the next, and laughing at her snarls of rage. Dove tried another spell, which failed even more feebly than her first.

In its wake, she could think of nothing else to do but watch as the bladesmen completed their ring. Then, at a sharply snapped order—just where it came from, she couldn’t catch—they all took a step closer to her.

Where they stopped, gazing on her with smiles that held no shred of mercy.

Dove swallowed, fought down the urge to lash out with another spell that would be twisted into futility, and forced herself to sink down in her mind… down into the warm, humming, eternally-waiting glow of the Weave. Where she flung a silent cry at the unseen cottage: Uncle El! Storm! Uncle El! Aid—aid, or I die! She sent the gleaming of knives she was gazing at with that plea, wrapped around its ringing urgency, to show the peril she faced.

And waited, quivering in fear and grief, Andur’s dead face so close beneath her, hoping the men with the knives would go on waiting for whatever they were waiting for.

That sharp order came again, and the ring tightened another step, booted feet stepping in unison up onto the stones she knelt on.

And there they stopped again.

Something stirred, deep in Dove’s mind, almost choking her, and she couldn’t hide her alarm. This turmoil wasn’t of her doing, wasn’t…

Then something burst through the trees, trailing a whirlwind of shredded leaves, flying hard and fast right at her.

It darted over the heads of the ring of bladesmen, caught the moonlight for the briefest of instants as a falcon—then struggled in the air, clawed by the silent wild magic of The Place, to tumble helplessly down to the stones before her: a panting, breathless, barefoot Storm.

As if that had been what the men with the knives had been waiting for, they sprang forward in an eager wave of dark leather, gleaming grins, and reaching knives, Laeral arched and clawed at the moonlit air, losing her pout in a wild, large-eyed gasp as Elminster’s mind-voice crashed into her head.

GET TO THE PLACE, TO FIGHT FOR DOVE’S LIFE— NOW. MANY MEN WITH KNIVES. LASH THEM WITH SPELLS FROM WELL OUTSIDE THE WILD MAGIC.

The youngest of the three sisters in Elminster’s care reeled, clutching the red pain spilling through her head. Uncle’s farspeaking had not been gentle.

Yet she had pride and strength enough to straighten upright into an insolent pose, sigh, roll her eyes, and ask, “So the High-and-Mighty Mistress Dove the Willful has got herself encoiled in something beyond her at last, has she? You’ve let her stew long enough already to learn something, I trust?”

YES. AND NO. COME!

Elminster’s command was a mind-shout that sent Laeral to her knees. She bit her lip and shuddered helplessly for a breath or two, and then pouted, straightened, and told the moon overhead, “Unlike my sister Dove, I’m not going to disobey just for the delight of doing so. That’s so childish.”

* * * * *

Dove rolled poor Andur under the rushing feet of the men in front of her as she spun around and launched herself in the other direction. Knives were stabbing in at her—she was going to die—she was— The roiling in her head was now a dark, rising thunder in her body, shaking her in its inexorable approaching flood.

She screamed, or thought she did, as something burst out of her, blinding her momentarily. Storm groaned in pain somewhere behind her, then—.

The bladesmen right in front of Dove toppled as if their legs had been cut from under them, and a dark, bearded form that was—yes—Uncle Elminster rose up out of their bouncing limbs to busily thrust a dagger into the neck of the bladesman to his left.

Dove’s frantic dive slammed her straight into the thrashing bodies of the fallen bladesmen. They were hard, heavy, and reeking, and she slid onward in what could only be blood, coming to an uneasy stop surrounded by the stink of death and the dark hulks of dead men.

Someone spewed out blood and an agonized groan back where Uncle El was plying his knife, then Dove heard two men grunt in pain, almost in unison, as if sharp steel had been driven deep into them both.

She scrambled up, looking wildly around for a knife, and saw Elminster sagging to the stones, clutching at his side— and nearly knocking foreheads with a bladesman doing the same thing. They’d stabbed each other!

Already more bladesmen were hastening over to stab at Uncle El…

A spell washed over them all, stabbing arcs of lightning that became floods of harmless water in a struggling instant. Someone spat out a startled curse that rose into a shriek of pain as Storm flung herself shoulder-down on the corpse-strewn stones, her palms still flickering in the aftermath of her useless spell, and brought her legs up into a bladesman’s crotch with all the force she could muster.

One of the men attacking Uncle El turned his head to see what Storm was doing, and that gave Dove time enough to see and snatch at a fallen knife. Another bladesman leaned forward to slash down viciously at her and sliced open her shoulder with fiery ease.

The slashed remnants of Dove’s light gown fell away to her waist as she rolled desperately away. She kept rolling, clawing open the catches of her girdle and coming up again to lash a bladesman’s dagger aside with it, then flail him across the face with the corset-like leather.

He slashed back at her blindly and she caught his knife-hand and flung herself to the stones again, twisting hard.

He screamed as bones broke and let go of his steel fang.

Dove snatched it away and rolled, losing the rest of her gown in twisted confusion around her neck. It took but a moment to pluck it off and swing it as a flail of sorts into another bladesman’s face, then serve his throat as Andur’s had been.

Hot blood sprayed her bare flesh, and Dove hissed in disgust, whirling away again to face the man she’d disarmed. He stared at her bared flesh for a moment as the moonlight caught her curves, and she flung herself at his ankles.

As he cursed, toppled, and came down hard, she stabbed up—harder.

More blood fountained, but thankfully he fell over and past her, spraying someone else.

The night flared into eerie blue-white fire behind Dove, and several men cursed in alarm.

She turned her head in time to see Elminster staggering to his feet, face twisted in pain, and what should have been blood leaking from between his fingers as blue-white, dripping tongues of flame. The hilt of a dagger that no longer had a blade fell away from him, to clang and clatter on the stones.

Then real lightning split the night, laced with Laeral’s triumphant laughter. Outlined against it Dove saw bladesmen who’d staggered off the stones convulse, wave their limbs spasmodically, and fall.

The lightnings turned to streams of radishes, bouncing and rolling, wherever they reached into The Place—but where they struck Elminster’s flaming blood, the spew of radishes turned to lightning again, scorching at least one bladesman until his sizzling eyes sprouted plumes of smoke and he fell, gasping out more smoke.

Dove tripped over someone, saw someone else looming up over a desperately-rolling Storm, and went for him, lashing him with her gown and her girdle. The man sidestepped, slashing at both garments, and Dove flung herself down, scissoring her legs around his.

He started to fall, waving his arms wildly to try to stay upright, and she stabbed at him with her dagger. He twisted away with a triumphant howl, only to overbalance and fall backward onto the stolen dagger a grimly-smiling Storm was holding ready. It burst up through the man’s throat with a dark bubbling, and he barely had time to stare disbelievingly up at the moon before his wide eyes froze and his frantically-cursing mouth fell slack.

Storm groaned under him, pinned and breathless, and Dove reached to try to free her.

“Begone, useless fools,” came a sharp command, and this time Dove heard enough of the sharp voice to know that it was female. It came from a tall woman with nightdark hair and darker eyes who was walking barefoot out of the trees, a loose cloak eddying around her ivory limbs and a dark mask failing to conceal her smile.

Two gliding steps brought the woman to the edge of the stones as bladesmen fled into the woods like hurrying shadows. The cloak was flung off and the mask followed, and from the ivory-hued body thus revealed inky darkness flooded, devouring moonlight as it came.

Trees, the moon, and even the corpse-strewn stones of The Place vanished before that swift-spreading gloom, but in the resulting void Dove found she could still see some things.

Or rather, some people. Uncle El lay curled over in pain, his skin glowing a pale white and that bright blue-white fire leaking from him in ribbons and pooling around him.

Storm’s skin was white, too, and so was Dove’s own—and blue-white flames pulsed in slices and gashes on both of them.

A similar moon-white glow shone brightly from the shapely woman confronting them, but her skin was moving, thrusting outward here and there as if trapped fists were reaching out from beneath it, and darkening where it did so. Darkening and erupting into long, cruel black claws, and narrow-snouted, many-toothed jaws.

“Behold,” the woman purred, “the Dark Talons of the Devourer.”

She glided forward, shapely no longer, a small forest of eel-like necks ending in clamshell-like jaws, wriggling taloned tentacles, and that soft cruel smile.

“In the sacred name of Shar I feed,” she announced calmly, kneeling over the dead bladesman and the struggling, still-pinned Storm beneath him. “I, Vrasabra the Anointed, Priestess of the Night.”

There was a brief flash of magic from somewhere behind the priestess, but it howled into strange music, followed by Laeral’s disgusted curse.

Vrasabra smiled. “Handy, this place of wild magic. And fitting that creatures of Mystra should perish because of her carelessness.” Talons reached forward almost gently to pluck aside the dead bladesman and reach for— Elminster gasped out a desperate spell and the night boiled.

Blood burst from him in all directions in a blue-white mist. The very stones of The Place shook, then the tall, slender wizard was suddenly hanging in midair, with great white wings sprouting from him.

Three, four—Dove watched in horror as a spine sprouted from Uncle El’s disbelieving face and grew feathers, white pinions racing along its length with uncanny speed as he

moaned, sobbed, and flung himself forward in a chaos of mismatched wingbeats, rolling like a tumbleweed.

Vrasabra the Anointed hissed and shrank back, talons and jaws gathering in front of her in a wall of menace.

Elminster did nothing to her, instead snatching up Storm in his arms as he hissed in pain, leaking blue-white fiery blood all over her, and flung himself forward into the night.

“Get the stones!” he gasped at Dove, as he hit the ground hard and rolled—or tried to. A crumpling chaos of wings spilled Storm onto the ground in a comical collapse that made the priestess of Shar crow with mirth—and pounce.

Then the night lit up with a white flood that seared eyeballs and left everyone blinking dazedly at Laeral, who stood wearing nothing but torn and much-patched forester’s breeches—and a coldly sneering smile.

“A step too far, Sharran,” she said triumphantly, her eyes igniting like two silver flames. “Now kiss the Weave.”

The very air tore audibly as magefire slashed talons and claws alike, hurling a shrieking Vrasabra of Shar headlong across The Place. Stone glowed and heaved where the roiling fires touched them, but released the priestess, who crashed into saplings on the far side of the ruins, trailing smoke.

Dove turned, caught up a fallen knife, and ran toward the woman—but behind her Laeral’s cry of glee rose into an ear-stabbing scream that went on, and on, and…

Brightness crashed through and flooded all, carrying Dove far, far away.

* * * * *

Swimming through glimmering waves of tears, the moon hung silent and serene, telling Dove wordlessly that not much time had passed.

She sat up—or tried to, but somehow found herself on her face.

She tried again, but the night whirled around Dove then ebbed away, leaving her on her back again.

Rolling over with slow caution, she saw that the glade was awash in a soft blue-white glow. The very air was glowing.

That glow seemed to be rooted in the sprawled body of Laeral, who lay senseless on her back, staring at nothing.

Between Laeral and the wincing, staggering priestess of Shar—whose bare body trailed dozens of limp, lifeless jaws and talons, though a handful still writhed and snapped hungrily—lay a scorched area that no longer held any ancient stones.

The Place was gone.

Its slabs and the base of its pillar had vanished, swept away into some otherness that seemed to have claimed half of Uncle El’s wings—which were sheared off in a straight line as if sliced by a sword. That left only their roots sprouting from … the sprawled, motionless body of the patient man who’d reared Dove and her sisters.

A scorched and dazed Storm was wandering aimlessly among the trees and trampled ferns beyond Elminster, where the huddled thing that had once been Andur Marlestur also lay. A few daggers and severed arms and hands were also scattered about, but most of the dead bladesmen had vanished with the stones they’d been sprawled on.

“Ohhh,” the Sharran gasped, clawing her way up a tree until she was more or less upright, “that was a spell. No more wild magic here. Gone, quite gone.” She tried a smile, and found that—between winces—it managed to linger.

“Leaving none of you strong enough to resist the Devourer.”

Vrasabra the Anointed left the tree behind and came unsteadily through the glow toward Storm, almost falling once.

She’d nearly reached her mumbling, staggering prey when the body of Andur Marlestur stirred under her feet, tripping her into a headlong fall.

The Sharran came up snarling, turning to meet her new foe—and by then the dead lordling was on his feet, his head lolling lifelessly and his eyes fixed on nothing.

“No undeath comes so quickly!” the priestess snarled in disbelief, stepping back to hiss the words of a spell that would impose her will on the walking corpse.

The remains of the Lord of Tharnwood folded its arms politely and waited for her to finish—but the moment she’d done so, the bloodless body staggered forward to embrace her.

“Kiss of the goddess!” Vrasabra spat in revulsion, thrusting the shambling thing away from her.

Dove found fresh grief welling up in her as she saw her Andur stagger doggedly forward, trying to aid her one last time.

He couldn’t be alive, simply ‘twasn’t possible! She shook her head through new tears, found one dagger, then another, and launched herself at the Sharran.

Who saw her and spun around with a snarl, talons lashing out.—

Which was when Storm, also staggering doggedly forward, as if someone was shoving her along and holding her up at the same time, walked straight into the priestess from one side—and poor dead Andur slammed into her from another.

Crushed between them, Vrasabra fell the only way she could, toppling forward into Dove’s waiting daggers with a helpless cry.

Talons raked and claws bit in a brief frenzy that left Dove sobbing in pain, but Andur thrust himself between her and the snarling priestess, standing like a shield as agonies fell away from Dove to savage him instead.

Biting her lip against still-sickening pain, Dove reached around her dead beloved and drove the daggers hard into what she could no longer see, again and again.

After a time, the priestess gave a soft gasp, and Dove’s reaching fangs found only air.

She dropped them, shaking, and tried to collapse, but Andur’s arms found her and held her up, strong and tender … and cold.

Tears blinded her, sweeping her away like a waterfall. Cold, so cold…

* * * * *

The brightness on her face was warm and golden. Sunlight— afternoon sunlight Wearily Dove opened her eyes, tensing against the pain.

There was none.

How could that be? She was lying on her back, naked but covered with her own quilt. Outside?

Someone snorted softly beside her—a snort of awakening that sounded somewhat familiar.

Dove turned her head. A sleepy-eyed Storm was stretching like a cat. Laeral lay asleep beyond her, in the same pool of sunlight. They were all on the mossy bank outside the cottage, lying under their bed-quilts—and a long, familiar shadow lay across the bottom of Storm’s quilt.

Its source was sitting on his favorite stump, watching them, a rather sad smile on his face.

“Andur?” Dove asked Uncle Elminster quietly.

“Buried with honor. His body served me well, for the brief time I needed it.”

She closed her eyes, drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and nodded.

Elminster gave her silence until she was ready to ask something else.

“The priestess of Shar?”

“Dead, and taken far from here. The Mother of Mysteries was less than pleased.”

“What happened to The Place?” Storm asked softly.

“Swept away by Laeral’s spell—both the wild magic and all trace of the stones.” Uncle El’s voice held just a trace of what might have been admiration.

Dove sighed and turned back the quilt to look down at herself. As she’d expected, there was no trace of the gory wounds that should have been there. “You healed us, and yourself, too. The Weave?”

“The Weave,” Elminster confirmed calmly.

“Is… is this the way it’s always going to be?” Storm asked. “With the right magic, you can make everything better?”

Uncle El gave her a long, level look. “Most cuts and the like I can banish, scars and all.” He reached up and tapped his forehead. “Scars up here are much harder things to make go away. So don’t go looking for more trouble than ye want to embrace.”

Dove saw Laeral’s eyelids flicker, and knew she’d come awake and lay listening.

“So my Andur is gone,” she said, managing to say the words without a quaver, “and we all got a scare, and felt much pain, besides. And you let us fight with each other and get into scrapes like this and do nothing to stop us, when you could shout in our heads and even ride our minds and force us to walk and act and speak as you will.”

She sat up, looked at both of her sisters then back at Elminster, and added, “We’ve been right proper little bitches to you, time and again—yet you let us. Why? Does Mystra command you thus?”

“Nay,” the wizard replied. “Just as I try not to command ye three.”

“Even when we stride right into trouble?”

“Aye. Life is learning, lass—or ‘tis no life at all, but mere existence. And the lessons learned best are those ye learn on thy own, and learn hardest.”

“But you were almost slain,” Laeral said suddenly, sitting up to fix him with bright eyes. “I felt it, when…”

“When Mystra thrust the full power of the Weave into ye. I was nearly done, aye.”

“But why? Did you do something… foolish?”

“Several things. Ye see, little one, I’ve learned all too few lessons yet.”

“And Mystra trusts you to raise and train us?”

“I believe ye three enjoy her full confidence.”

“What?”

“That’s hardly a ladylike query, now, is it? Choose words again.”

Laeral pursed her lips, wrinkled her nose, then said disgustedly, “Pray pardon, good Uncle, but did my ears betray me? I almost believe I heard ye—uh, you say we three sisters enjoy the full confidence of the goddess.”

“Aye, ye did.”

“And what, precisely, is she confident we can do?” Elminster smiled wryly. “Why, teach me necessary lessons, of course.”