The Best of the Realms, Book II

THE WHISPERING CROWN

The young Lady of Dusklake stood alone in her feast hall in the last golden gleam of the setting sun, and waited to die.

Dusklake and Grand Thentor had been at war for only a day, but the battle between Aerindel and Rammast, Lord of Grand Thentor, had begun when they were both children. He had wanted her to be his toy, slave, and plaything for more than a dozen years.

And Rammast was not a man accustomed to waiting long for anything.

He would come for her, and soon. Aerindel wondered if she’d be strong enough to hold on to the three things she valued most: her freedom, her land… and her life.

Knowing what was coming, she’d sent the servants away—but she also knew that eyes were watching her anxiously from behind parted tapestries and doors that somehow hadn’t quite closed, all around the hall. The eyes of those who feared she might take her own life.

The news of her brother’s death lay like a heavy cloak over the household—but it rested most heavily on the Lady Aerindel. Somehow she could not quite believe she’d never hear his bright laughter echoing in the high hall again, or feel his strong arms lift her by her slim waist and whirl her high into the air.

But the news had been blunt and clear enough. Dabras was dead by dragonfire, the grim old warriors had said, proffering his half-melted swordhilt and their own scorched wounds as proof. And that made her ruler of Dusklake.

A small realm, Dusklake, but long ago widely known— and feared—for the man then its master: the mage Thabras Stormstaff. Thabras, Aerindel’s faintly-smiling, sad-eyed father. The mightiest of a long line of famous heads of House Summertyn, from the grandfather Aerindel had never known, the warrior Orbrar the Old, to Asklas and Ornthorn and others in the early days known only in legends. A small but proud hold, it was the oldest of all the Esmeltaran, the holds nestled in the rolling woodlands between Lake Esmel and the Cloud Peaks. Hers, now.

If she could hold it. Aerindel looked grimly out through a window that was seven times her height at the lake the land was named for. Its waters were dark and placid, at the end of a bright, cool summer day. The Green Fields to the north were still a sheet of golden light, but westward the purple peaks of the Ridge rose like a dark wall, bringing an early nightfall down on her hall.

A night that would surely bring Rammast. Dusklake was small but verdant, perhaps the fairest of all the Esmeltaran. Rammast wanted it even more than he wanted her.

Aerindel looked at the fire-scarred blob that was all she had left of dear Dabras, and drew in a deep, unhappy breath. She would cry no more, whatever the hours ahead brought. She was a Summertyn, even if her slim arms were too feeble to swing a warrior’s sword.

Her spells might serve her where his sword had failed him, though she hoped never to be foolish and battle-hungry enough to go off to the distant Dales, as he had, hunting dragons. It was the year 902 there, she thought dully, recalling the words of a far-traveled trader… but there, as here, it was The Year of the Queen’s Tears.

How fitting. She had wept for hours, two nights ago, clinging to the fire-scarred warriors as if their unhappy memories and awkward soothings could somehow bring Dabras back to life.

Sometime the next day—yesterday—she’d been awakened in her own bed by a frightened chamberlass, bringing in an oh-so-polite missive from Rammast.

He grieved for her loss, the flowery-scrolled words read, and hoped to be of help in her time of need. With the world growing ever darker and more dangerous, there was no one in Faerun who could stand alone in safety, without friends.

Dusklake stood in need of strong swords to defend it against brigands and the ores of the mountains, Rammast’s words went on—and Grand Thentor had need of her magic, just as his heart had need of her hand. A wise woman would gladly see that the union of their two lands would set them all on the road to a brighter future; but if she lacked that wisdom or inclination, his duty was clear. His people needed the protection of a sorceress, and he must win her by formal duel if not by her willing submission. At sundown he would come for her answer.

It had taken all of Aerindel’s brittle self-control to keep from crumpling and shredding the parchment in fearful fury. She had grown less and less fond of darkly handsome, cruel Rammast as the years had passed.

In the pale, slim, so often silent days of her youth, he’d been the first man to look upon her with hunger in his eyes. Later, he had been the first to see that though she’d inherited the rings, staff, and spellbooks of the mighty Thabras, her magic was no more than a feeble, faltering echo of his… and that Dusklake, secure for so long behind Thabras’s might, had far fewer hardened warriors to ride to its defense than other neighboring holds could muster.

Once, at a wedding in Hulduth Hold they’d both attended, he’d been particularly forceful in his attentions during a private walk in the gardens. Freeing herself from his grasp, Aerindel had made her own feelings about him coldly and crisply plain. Unperturbed, Rammast had given her the special swift, sly grin he used when gloating, and told her softly that one day Dusklake would be his, and her with it—as his slave, willing and eager to serve him once his magic controlled her wits.

Now, the final taunting words of his missive had said that his own magic remained regrettably inadequate to the task of defending Grand Thentor against its foes, but that he had learned some measure of … control. He hoped she’d remember, and greet his suit fondly.

Aerindel hadn’t heard anything of Rammast’s dabblings in magic since he’d inherited Grand Thentor—beyond a few rumors of summoned beasts running amok, and hired hedge-wizard tutors disappearing mysteriously. His reminder of wanting her as a mind-controlled slave, however, was clear enough. And that confidence meant that he’d measured her magic, and knew himself to be clearly the more powerful.

Bringing her thoughts back to the present, Aerindel licked lips that seemed to have gone dry and glanced again at the banner-pole, one of a pair flanking the tall window, that was really her father’s staff. No doubt she’d be needing it soon.

It and some greater magical aid or ally she knew not where to find, let alone to plead with. What could she give in payment? Herself and her land were all she had, and the very things Rammast sought. She could see no way to keep from losing one—or both—before dawn.

Night was coming down swiftly as the last light faded from the still waters of the lake.

Then she saw him: a lone, dark figure walking steadily across the lake toward her. Walking upon the waters as if they were a vast courtyard. A spell spent to show her how powerful he was. Powerful enough that he could afford to waste magic before a duel.

Aerindel turned slowly, her dark gown rustling about her hips, and wondered idly why she’d dressed in her best finery to meet her most hated enemy. Looking all around the hall, she raised her voice and said calmly to the unseen watchers, “Withdraw, all of you. Danger comes swiftly.”

She turned back to the window in time to see Rammast Tarangar smile broadly in sardonic greeting, incline his head to her, and raise one hand.

The bright bolt that burst from it shattered the tall window from top to bottom, sending singing shards of glass flying down the chamber like scattered fragments of a rainbow.

The Lady of Dusklake did not flinch.” ‘Tis a strange man,” Aerindel observed, her voice calmer than it might have been, “whose wooing takes the form of battle.”

Rammast stepped through the empty window frame into the room, the tiny lightnings of a warding spell flickering briefly about his shoulders. When no attack came, he glanced briefly around the room, seeking warriors with ready weapons. Finding none, he smiled at her more broadly and advanced across the tiles at an insolent stroll.

“You are as beautiful as ever, my lady,” he said to her through his smile, “and your tongue remains as cold and cruel as I recall. Yet tongues can be tamed, Aerindel.”

“Ah, but can ambition also be tamed, Lord Rammast? I am not ‘your lady’; not now, not ever. Yet I see no need not to be the ally of Grand Thentor. Our two realms can be friendly without us being wed, or my taking up the position you suggested.”

Rammast’s eyes burned into hers. “Ah, but I believe you’ll enjoy being my slave. You’ll find me the most gentle and thoughtful of men—until I have two strong sons to be my heirs.” He shrugged. “By then, of course, you may have grown weary of being my consort, or Lady of Dusklake, or even—who knows?—of life.”

They both heard an angry gasp from behind a tapestry then, as one of the warriors who’d refused to leave his lady unguarded wrestled with his temper. Rammast casually raised a hand and sent lightnings crackling along that side of the room—and in two places, down the long sweep of tapestries, forms stiffened, slid down the far side of the heavy cloth, and lay still.

The Lord of Grand Thentor raised an eyebrow. “Am I too late, Lady? Have you consorts already?”

Aerindel bit her lip, trembling in grief and rage until she could master her words. He waited, smiling mockingly, until she opened her mouth deliberately and said, “In Dusklake we have laws against slaying, Lord Rammast, and you now stand in violation of those laws. Are you willing to submit to my justice, or is it to be war between us?”

Rammast raised his other eyebrow. “Are you threatening me?”

With the same casual ease as last time, he cast lightning along the other side of the hall, scarring hangings and statues alike. “Or do you just ache to see me on my knees?”

“It’s a pose you’ve no doubt pictured me in often enough,” Aerindel replied grimly, raising her own hands to weave a spell.

Rammast smiled broadly and beckoned her magic toward him with a formal bow. “I wondered how long you’d tremble and haw before loosing some of that vast and mighty magic all of us in the Esmeltaran talk about! Hurl away, bright lady!” He crossed his arms and stood waiting.

Roaring pinwheels of green flame were his reply, snarling out of the empty air around her slim fingers to fly at him, spinning and expanding.

Rammast stood unmoving as they reached him and burst—and for the briefest of moments Aerindel thought she could see their dying flashes through him. Then he yawned and stepped forward again.

“Your fame is not undeserved,” he said lightly, clear and dismissive boredom in his tone. “Impressive. Very impressive.” He opened his hand.

Something small fluttered from it: a serpent with wings. It circled his head once as Aerindel quickly cast another spell, then flew toward her.

Two crackling arcs of the stream of lightnings that she sent at Rammast curled aside to meet the flying thing, but expired in brief haloes as they encountered some sort of shield around it.

The Lord of Grand Thentor stood immobile, still smiling, as her lightnings lashed him. Aerindel saw the snake swooping at her and ducked away, but it followed, eyes bright and fangs agape. It was glistening, wet with slime, and mottled like an uncooked sausage.

She hissed a quick magical shield as she retreated from it—but the very air shattered in shrieks and flashing radiances as the flying monster darted right through her magic.

Aerindel screamed and covered her face as it roared down at her. Her cry was answered by the crack of a crossbow, fired from a high balcony.

The Lady of Dusklake rolled and hit out at the serpent. Above her, she saw a crossbow bolt halt in midair, catch fire from end to end with blue flame that did not consume it, and spin around to race back the way it had come.

There was a despairing shout an instant before it struck. Then blue fire burst forth in a blast that outlined the bones of the Duskan warrior before it hurled them, fleshless and glowing, around the room.

Aerindel felt a painful tug on her scalp. Something was pulling her hair—oh, gods, no!

Rammast smiled down at her. “It’s eating your hair, Lady … and mind: You’re getting your best gown all dirty, rolling around like that. Show a little dignity. Come up at least to your knees. My little pet will take care of your gown after it’s bared your scalp. Then you’ll be wearing shoes, too, won’t you? It should be a good while before it gets around to eating your eyelashes.”

Aerindel screamed, rolling frantically in an attempt to dislodge the thing. It was leaving a wet, slimy trail through her hair, and went on biting and tearing as if she’d done nothing, even when she drew her knife and stabbed it repeatedly. It was a thing of magic, immune to her steel.

Rammast smiled indulgently at her then strolled around the room, looking critically at the tapestries and statues. “Your father’s taste wasn’t as bad as I’d heard,” he said grudgingly, ignoring Aerindel’s sobs then frantic rise to cast a purging spell on herself.

“Get out of my house!” she snarled at him, as she finally felt the gnawing serpent fade away to nothingness. “You cold-blooded bastard!”

Rammast turned to meet her furious gaze, shook his head with a disapproving sigh, and opened his hand again. Another serpent flew from his hand, and as she screamed in despair, he chuckled heartily and strolled in her direction.

“Perhaps your gown first, and the hair later,” he suggested. “I suspect you’re the superior of any of these rather contorted maids on pedestals your father collected. Was your mother particularly ugly, or did he just have odd tastes?”

Through tears of utter fury Aerindel spat her last battle-spell, sending a ravening purple cloud of flesh-eating radiance in his direction.

“Oooh,” Rammast said in appreciation. “My, my.” And he faded away, leaving her spell with nothing to slay. It rolled out over the lake, vainly seeking something to kill.

Abruptly the darkly handsome Lord of Grand Thentor was standing beside her, a mocking smile on his face, as his second serpent flashed down over her shoulder to sink its fangs into her bodice.

Aerindel screamed.

“On your knees, lady,” Rammast suggested gently. “Remember?”

He waved a hand, and she felt an unseen force pressing her down. With a snarl she hissed her last dispel, wiping it away along with the sharp-fanged serpent.

He smiled even more broadly, and opened his hand again. Another serpent flapped its wings in his palm, eyeing her with glittering amusement.

“Perhaps one eyelash,” her foe said calmly, “to remember me by.”

And as the serpent sprang from his hand, Aerindel found that she had no spells left. Clapping her hands protectively over eyes that streamed tears of rage and despair, she snarled a certain word.

On the wall beside the shattered window, the Stormstaff flashed into life and lightings lashed forth like great tentacles to encircle the Thentan intruder and drag him up into the air.

Even as he struggled in the grip of its awesome energies, and the white fire of its fury burst forth from his skin, Rammast smiled down at her. “So that is how paltry your spells are—and those are the words that awaken your father’s staff. My thanks, Aerindel. You’ve been most helpful, if far more feeble a foe than I’d thought. Don’t bother taking your own life; I shall merely bring you back from death to serve me.”

The lightnings were beginning to tear him apart now, but the Lord of Grand Thentor showed no pain as he added, “You might fix your hair and change your gown, though. I will come for you.”

Then, with a last sneering smile, his false body faded away, leaving her lightnings nothing to ravage.

The Lady of Dusklake sent them racing out over the lake before they could do any harm to the hall or any of her folk, then went to her knees and wept for a long time in the shattered chamber.

When she could weep no more, Aerindel fell silent and threw herself full-length onto the floor. Lying with the smooth stone cold and hard against one cheek, she murmured the words that would bring the comforting length of the Stormstaff into her hands.

It flew to her, and she clutched it like a drowning sailor clings to a spar as she went down into haunted darkness…

* * * * *

“L-lady? Lady Aerindel?” one of the chamberlasses called tentatively.

The woman who lay curled up like a child around a staff clenched in her hands moved her head and murmured something.

“Lady Aerindel? Great Lady… are you well?”

Abruptly the wild-haired figure in the tattered black gown sat upright and stared into the moonlight. The staff in her hands thrummed once, and tugged at her grasp.

Aerindel screamed in anguish. Rammast must be calling it from afar!

It was her last weapon… her last hope. The staff moaned and wrenched at her numbed fingers again, and Aerindel came to her feet with another raw scream, wrapping herself around it.

She stood panting in the pitiless moonlight, staring around the ruined hall and wondering just what she could do against the ruthless Lord of Grand Thentor. The staff snarled against her bosom again, and Aerindel snarled back at it in frustration.

In the brief silence that followed, she heard the frightened sobs of the fleeing chamberlass echoing back to her down one of the kitchen passages, and drew in a long, shuddering breath.

She had fought and had been overmastered with contemptuous ease. There were no hidden tricks or lurking spells left to her. She was doomed, and Dusklake with her.

As her father had once said to an excited Dabras, looking down at a battle in Glimmerdown Pass from the top of Mount Glimmerdown, with Aerindel sitting huddled against her nurse, “It’s all over now but the praying.”

But the praying…

Well, what else could she do?

Aerindel tucked the Stormstaff under her chin and rushed from the hall, padding through the darkened passages of the castle toward a certain dusty and neglected back stair. Many of the torches were unlit, and there were neither guards nor servants to be seen. Had they all fled? Or had some dark magic sent by Rammast slain them all?

Their fates were worries for later. Right now, she had to find, in the deepening darkness beyond the pantries, the way down to the family crypt.

In the end, though she feared to awaken it, Aerindel was forced to use the Stormstaff to conjure a faint radiance, or risk breaking her neck falling down unseen steps to the gate adorned with the split oak Summertyn badge.

Her father’s staff made a strange, muted sound, like many voices chanting a wordless, endless chorus, but obeyed her, with none of the tugging it had displayed in the feast hall. Perhaps Rammast’s spells couldn’t reach it down here.

Aerindel lacked the key that others would need, but she was of the blood of Summertyn, and a quick bite of her hand brought forth red blood that she could dab on the badge. At its touch, there was a faint singing sound, and the gate opened.

The door beyond had no lock or fastening, and she pushed it inwards with her foot, smelling the familiar damp, earthy smell that always clung to the resting place of her forebearers.

There was the long, slender casket of Haerindra, the mother she’d never known. Beyond it, the high canopied tomb of Orbrar, and to the right, the great black coffin of her father.

The Stormstaff hummed, a deep groan that was echoed by the black stone that enclosed her father’s ashes—and Aerindel nearly turned and fled. This had never happened before.

A light—a faint glow of the air, not a spark or flame— occurred suddenly in front of her, in the open space between the three caskets she knew. By its brightening radiance she saw other coffins, stretching back into dark, vaulted distances, and the source of the light: a blue-white star glowing on a simple stone marker.

The altar of Mystra. It had been a long time—too long— since she’d knelt there to pray for guidance. She went to her knees in a rush. Drops of blood from her hand fell upon the stone, and startled her by flaring instantly into smoke that drifted around her, then faded away as abruptly as it had come.

“Mother of Mysteries,” she whispered, “I have neglected you and failed in my diligence at crafting your holy Art of magic… but I need you now, and have come to beg forgiveness and plead for guidance. Holy Mystra, aid me!”

“Aid is at hand,” a faint whisper came out of the darkness to her right. Aerindel was so startled that she almost dropped the staff.

A moment later, she realized that it was sinking… sinking into the solid stone she was kneeling on!

She tugged on it, but was as overmatched as if she’d been trying to hold back a surging stallion. The staff moved powerfully downwards, burning her clutching fingers as it slid between them, going down into stone that had no hole nor mark, and was cool and hard under her fingertips after it was gone.

Mystra had taken—reclaimed—the Stormstaff. What sort of aid was this?

Kneeling in the near-darkness, Aerindel heard the faint whisper again: “Set aside fear, and put me on.”

She peered into the gloom, seeking the source of that softest of voices. It repeated its message, and by the rasping words she located it: a crown, lying atop her father’s coffin.

A chill touched her heart. The black stone resting-place of Thabras Stormstaff had been bare of all but dust when she’d first looked at it, moments ago.

And yet she knew this crown. She remembered seeing her father wearing it once or twice, when she was young. Aerindel frowned. It was no part of the regalia of Dusklake, and had disappeared before his death. So far as she4cnew, it had never been in the coffin of Thabras.

She stared at the black stone casket for a moment, considering, but knew she dared not try to open it, even if she’d commanded strength enough to shift its massive lid.

On the altar before her, the blue-white star flashed once then started to fade. At the same time, the crown began to glow.

“Set aside fear, and put me on,” the whisper came again.

Aerindel knelt in the dark crypt staring at the circlet, a dark fear rising in her breast, then shrugged. What choice did she have?

If she hesitated, fear might win and send her running from this place—so she made her arms stretch forth without hesitation, and took up the crown.

It was cool in her hand, but not as heavy as it looked. It seemed to tingle slightly as she peered at it. She found no markings nor gems, shrugged again, and settled it on her head.

All at once, she was shivering as a cold wind seemed to blow through her head, and someone nearby—a woman, both desperate and furious—screamed, “No! You shall not have me!”

Her cry was drowned out in deep, exultant laughter, which bubbled up into the words, uttered in a different voice entirely, “Of course, I can also do—this.”

“Oh, Mystra,” came the next speaker, a hoarse whisper seeming to speak right into her ear—she turned her head, but there was no one there—“aid me now!”

“This is no time,” the next voice said wearily, “for fools to play at wizardry! Watch!”

“Elminster, aid me!”

That cry made Aerindel stiffen, and tears came. It was her father’s voice—and “Elminster,” she dimly remembered, had been his tutor as well as the wizard he’d loved and trusted most. But what mattered that? “Aid me!” her father had shouted, so anguished and so desperate.

Just as she was. Aerindel sat numbly, the tears trickling down her cheeks, as the voices went on, crying the same things over and over again. Some of them seemed so final. As doomed as she was. As if they were crying out their last words before death…

When she’d heard Thabras say those same three words the fourth time, the spectral tongues seemed to grow fainter, and those that screamed or cried wordlessly died away altogether. Another voice—the insistent whisper she’d heard first—rose over them all. “I am the power you need to keep Dusklake safe, and to destroy Rammast forever.”

Aerindel got up, putting a cautious hand to her head to be sure the crown was secure, and looked around the crypt. Above her brows, the crown seemed to wink, then she could see every dark corner as if it were brightly lit.

“I let you see in the dark and pierce all disguises. By my power your eyes can travel afar…”

She was suddenly gazing at an endless sea, silvery under the moonlight, and knew that she was seeing the Great Water that lay west of the Esmeltaran, beyond the Cloud Peaks. Then that vision was swept away and she beheld a woman she did not know rising up out of a furious battle. Bolts of flame burst from the crown and felled screaming warriors, hurling many through the air like broken dolls. She watched a severed arm whirl away by itself as the crown said, “With me, you can do this.”

The scene changed, and she saw a bearded man standing grimly in a dungeon cell. The crown on his brow flashed with white storm-fire, and the stones before him cracked and melted, flowing aside as the busy lightnings cut a man-high tunnel into them. “And this,” the crown whispered.

The scene changed again. She was wearing the crown this time, and a hydra was rearing up above her, on a sun-dappled forest path somewhere, snapping its jaws horribly. The crown seemed to quiver, then the hydra was shrinking and twisting, flailing its long necks vainly as it hardened into a gnarled, triple-trunked tree. “And this,” the whisper came again, “among many more powers… if you have the courage to wield them.”

“How? ” the Lady of Dusklake asked aloud, almost choking in excitement.

There was a warmth within her and a surge of … satisfaction?

What followed felt uncomfortable, slithering, and somehow private, as the crown seemed to harness itself to her will. Aerindel shuddered as energy flowed both icy and warm within her, coiling in her vitals and rushing out to her fingertips. She heard a moan that was almost a purr, and realized hazily that it must have come from her own lips.

Then the strangeness was gone, and she was herself again.

Feeling leaping hope and a certain restlessness, the Lady of Dusklake knelt again at the altar to thank Mystra, sprang up, and whirled around.

As she hurried up the steps, her will quested out ahead of her. Her most urgent need was to find out where Rammast was, and what he was up to.

There was an exclamation in the darkness ahead of her, and the flash of drawn steel. She slowed, but suddenly was seeing not a startled Duskan guard, bowing to her at the head of the crypt stairs with fear in his face and a naked sword in his hand, but the bloody-taloned golden eagle banner of Grand Thentor, fluttering in torchlight.

Torchlight somewhere in a nightdark forest where frightened folk screamed and fled into the trees all around, along a muddy road where the warriors of Grand Thentor strode laughing… a road she knew.

A moment later, Rammast’s warband passed by a tavern signboard, and she was sure. Dusking! They were in Dusking, at the other end of her realm—already invading Dusklake, to put her folk to the sword!

A woman screamed in that far place, and Aerindel found herself trembling with rage.

“Take me there!” she snarled. There was an exhilarating surge within her, a moment of terror when the world rushed and flowed, all around … then she was standing in the night, in the muddy road through Dusking, with that banner bearing down on her, and a host of men with drawn swords tramping around it.

AThentan soldier hooted at the sight of the fine-gowned lady standing alone in the way before him, and waved the torch he held. “Look, lads! Mine, I tell you, this one’s—”

Aerindel bent her grim gaze upon him, her eyes dark with hatred, and willed forth fire. The bobbing torch blossomed into sparks as the crown spat out fire at the one who held it.

The soldier was headless, then half a staggering man, then two quivering legs with nothing above them.

The fire roared like a dragon through the rest of the invaders, tumbling those it did not turn to ashes. Swords melted away in crumbling hands, men shouted then fell silent, and the reek of burnt flesh rose thick around the Lady of Dusklake as she strode forward.

The last soldier fell with a despairing, bubbling scream. She watched his flesh melt from his bones amid greasy smoke and looked down the empty, ashen street to be sure she had destroyed every last Thentan.

In the distance, along the road, something glowed in the night. She willed the crown to take her to it—and found herself looking into the angry eyes of Rammast Tarangar. The glow of the magic that had brought him was still fading around his limbs. He snarled at her in astonishment and a ring flashed on one of his hands as he raised it and made a punching motion at her.

A magic that would have twisted her into a toad-thing plucked at her limbs; the crown told her what it was, shattered it, and sent a withering ray at the Lord of Grand Thentor.

Rammast staggered back, alarm clear on his suddenly pale face, as a ward around him was overwhelmed and cast down in an instant, and the ray bored in at him, clawing at his arm, side, and shoulder.

Gasping and enfeebled, Rammast cast a dispel of his own, banishing the blight the crown had sent him. Aerindel smiled grimly and smashed him to the ground with a stabbing thrust of force. Watching him writhe as ribs snapped and he grunted and sobbed in pain, she mustered all she knew of what the crown could do, and bored in at him again, seeking to see into his mind.

Rammast’s frightened eyes filled her vision. He gibbered like a mindless thing in fear of her as the crown carried her through his pain, hatred, and awareness of the hard ground beneath him… and on into what he had been thinking about, and where he had been.

A vision unfolded in her mind: his vision. She saw a great company of armed warriors, harness creaking as they filed through a narrow way in the mountains. Gods above! She was seeing the main army of Grand Thentor, invading the other end of Dusklake, hard by her castle—through the narrow, perilous Glimmerdown Pass!

The vision was shattered. The crumpled turf before her was bare; Rammast had managed to work a magic that tore him free from Dusking and her scrutiny, and whirled him away to safety.

Aerindel shrugged. She had to be gone from here herself— to the windswept top of Mount Glimmerdown, forthwith!

“To will it is to do the deed,” the crown whispered, as seductively as any lover … and she found herself standing elsewhere, on bare stone with a cool breeze sliding past. She was on the mountaintop where her father had triumphed, so long ago. There were faint saddle-creakings and the snort-ings of restive horses from the dark cleft below her.

The Lady of Dusklake looked down hard-eyed at the invaders she could not see and felt rage building within her.

Across empty air was the sister peak to the one she stood on, High Glimmerdown; the moonlight showed her its ragged edge. “Down,” Aerindel whispered to it, gesturing into the cleft between the two heights. “Go down on them.”

She gathered her will, pointed at the rocks across the pass, and gestured grandly, downwards. A few stones broke free and fell, bouncing down out of sight.

There were crashes and startled shouts from below, but Aerindel did not hear them. She was swaying in the night, feeling weak and sick. She went to her knees to avoid following the rocks down into the pass, and clutched at her head. What was wrong with her?

She felt… strange. The Lady of Dusklake gritted her teeth. Whatever her malady, her realm needed her now, before those men with their swords got out among her sleeping folk, and stormed a castle that had no more than a dozen men awake to defend it… if she were lucky.

They were hurrying in the cleft below her, now, and a man who’d been screaming abruptly fell silent. Sworded by his own comrades to keep from rousing her people, no doubt.

Aerindel clenched her fists, glared again at the rocks of High Glimmerdown, and hissed, “Down! Smash away the mountainside and send it down to bury them!”

A red rain seemed to burst inside her head, and she was suddenly lying on her face on hard rock, as the roar of falling rock rose up around her, amid ragged screams from below.

The Lady of Dusklake clung to her own name, gasping in a sudden sea of confusion. Who was she? Where was she? She seemed to be drifting in mists, and folk wearing her crown were there too; she glimpsed them from time to time. All of them had sad faces and looked weary and wasted. They grew older and more shriveled as she watched, wasting away…

She heard shouts and curses from below, and someone snarling to “Abandon the horses! We’ve blades enough to slaughter a dozen Duskan garrisons, you fools! Just get out of this pass before they can send us any more rockfalls! Move, damn you!”

Aerindel swallowed. She hadn’t crushed them all. She raised her eyes again to the freshly-scoured face of High

Glimmerdown, much changed where rocks as big as cottages had broken away, and fought to stay awake.

A yellow haze was rising behind her eyes to blot out the night. “Down,” she whispered, trembling on the stones, “go down upon them all. Let not aThentan man survive, to swing his sword in my fair Dusklake.”

The crown surged again, and Aerindel felt pain in every joint as well as in her breast, head, and belly. She groaned aloud, trying to writhe on the stones but finding her limbs too weak to lift.

The stones were shaking, though—shaking with a deep, teeth-rattling roar that grew louder and faster and finally thunderous, as High Glimmerdown poured itself down into the mountain pass, stones shrieking like women in pain as the dust rose and the host of Grand Thentor was buried alive.

Aerindel bounced bloodily across the quaking mountaintop and fetched up against a jagged knob of rock. The dust-shrouded ruin of the pass gaped in front of her as she retched, sobbed, and spasmed uncontrollably. Despite her tumblings, the crown seemed welded to her temples, and by the faint light it began to emit, through no doing of hers, she saw that her hands were as wrinkled as those of an old woman.

The crown fed on its wearers, somehow. Aerindel held that thought for a time, but her wits seemed to wander again. Memory showed her boulders bouncing and rolling down the side of High Glimmerdown, but she could not think of the next thing…

Just as she’d stood waiting in the feast hall, dreading the coming of Rammast but knowing no clever thing she could do…

Rammast. He could still be up to something! She had to see him, to know what he was doing. Coming to strike at her in her chambers at the castle, if she knew him—but not yet. She’d hurt him, at Dusking, and he’d go to banish the pain before anything else. He’d heal and take up new spells and magic weapons, before he came seeking her.

No, he’d be in his tower. Tarangar Tower, highest turret of the frowning stone fortress of Thentarnagard, at the very heart of Grand Thentor. Lying on her face on the stone, head throbbing, Aerindel wondered if she could still farsense.

She could. It hurt—gods, it hurt!—but as the fires of agony clawed at her limbs and she whimpered and writhed on the cold stones of Mount Glimmerdown, she seemed to be flying through the night, seeking the dark sword of Tarangar Tower stabbing at the stars. There would be lights in its high window, she knew, and a darkly handsome Lord working furiously to gird himself for her doombringing…

There! Like a Thentan eagle she swooped out of the night, racing up to those lighted windows, seeking the hated face of her foe. She saw him at last, striding across a room whose tables were littered with maps. He seemed to sense her, stiffening and peering at the window. She was past by then, winging her way around Tarangar Tower and climbing, seeing the steep roofs of Thentor-town spread out below her down narrow, lamplit cobbled streets. She soared toward the moon, willing the crown to blast the tower behind her apart.

She saw it shattering into tiny rocks, bursting into a cloud of stones that would rain down on all of Grand Thentor, leaving behind a pit so deep that all Thentarnagard would totter and then fall into it, sliding into oblivion shrouded in rock-dust, just as the Thentan army in Glimmerdown Pass had met its end.

“This thing can come to pass,” the voice of the crown seemed to whisper in the ear, “but it is a very great thing. Doing it will consume a life.”

“Many lives, I should think,” Aerindel murmured aloud, her forehead resting on the hard stones of the mountaintop.

“The life of a being who can wield magic,” the crown whispered. “A being you have touched while wearing me.”

“A deliberate sacrifice, then,” the Lady of Dusklake said wearily. “Or a murder.”

“If I can get no other essence,” the crown told her, “I will claim the life-force of the one who wears me.”

“So if I force you to bring down the tower,” Aerindel said, “Tarangar Tower will fall, but I’ll wither and die here, on this mountaintop.”

“The tower may survive if it bears strong enough protective magics,” the crown replied. “I must feed soon in any case, or shatter.”

Aerindel lay silent, cold fear slowly creeping through her. She had willingly chained herself to some evil thing that would be her doom. Picturing herself tumbling down the mountainside as a desiccated bag of skin with loose bones bouncing and rolling inside it, she forced her trembling limbs to move.

Snarling with the effort, the Lady of Dusklake moved her arms along the uneven stone, very slowly and very painfully. She was gasping and drenched with cold sweat when at last her fingertips touched the crown.

It tingled, but did not budge. No matter how hard she clawed and tugged at it, it seemed attached to her head. The Whispering Crown would not come off.

She rolled over, finally, to stare despairingly at the stars. She had slain men who did not matter, and crippled herself in doing so—leaving herself and her realm helpless against their real foe. All too soon, Rammast would return. Rested, strong, and ready to slay—and she’d be lying here, too weak to do anything. And with the crown and her to sacrifice in doing the first mighty thing he wanted of it, he would endanger all the Esmeltaran.

She felt like crying, but Aerindel Summertyn had no tears left. Bleeding, bitten, half-shorn and dressed in tatters, she lacked the strength even to stand up. She lay on Mount Glimmerdown and looked up at the bleakly twinkling stars, waiting for Rammast’s sneering smile to come into view above her.

Instead, the face that finally loomed up to blot out the stars was an unfamiliar one; a sharp-nosed face adorned with a long beard and blue eyes that held the wisdom of ages. It belonged to a man who wore simple, worn robes. His hands were empty, and he looked down at her with something— admiration? sympathy? cynical amusement?—flickering in his eyes.

“Take the crown off now, Lady of Dusklake,” this stranger said curtly, “before it’s too late.”

Aerindel looked up at him, too weak and weary to care how she looked, or how he knew her name. “Does any mage fighting for her land and herself throw away her best weapon?” she spat wearily, wanting to be alone in her misery, wandering in the welcoming mists.

“Aerindel, do ye want to end up as thy father did?” the stranger asked gravely.

Aerindel felt anger kindling in her. Why did everyone in Faerun know about the fate of Thabras Stormstaff except her?

“Who are you?” she snapped, eyes flashing. “How is it you know of my father?”

The bearded face bent closer; the man was kneeling beside her. “I trained him in the ways of magic, and made him what he became.”

He looked across the pass at High Glimmerdown for a moment, then down at her again and added softly, “And so, I suppose, am responsible for his doom. I am called Elminster.”

“Elminster,” she repeated, huskily. Fresh energy surged through her, and the crown whispered inside her head, Destroy this one. His magic is strong, very strong. He is a danger to us both—and his power is just what I need to smash Tarangar Tower and Rammast with it.

“How?” she asked it, not caring if she spoke the word aloud.

Look at him, and will forth fire, as you did to the soldiers at Dusking, and I’ll strike. Keep the flow unbroken, after, so that I can draw his life-force back to us.

Aerindel smiled, slowly, as it was done.

Fire roared forth and the kneeling man shuddered and flinched back, but it licked only briefly at his robes, seeming to be drawn into his eyes… eyes that darkened and seemed somehow to become larger.

Yessss, the crown hissed in her, and she felt a warm glow of exultation.

Elminster rose and stepped away, and Aerindel turned her head to keep him in view, as the crown had urged her to. There came a sharp pain in her head, and a shaft of pure rage from the crown that made her gasp and writhe on the stones.

“No, cursed one!” the crown snarled, out of her trembling lips.

Elminster ignored it, raising a hand to slice off the line of flame as if it were a strand of spiderweb. “Aerindel,” he said urgently, bending near again, “take off the crown. Please.”

The crown flashed, and Aerindel felt fresh energy flowing into her. The crown urged her to do thus, and so—and she did.

Green lightnings flashed forth from her brow to crackle hungrily up that extended arm, outlining it with writhing flames. Elminster grimaced, and clear annoyance flashed across his face for a moment as he made a brushing-away gesture.

Astonishingly, the green lightning sprang away from him to trail away into the cool night breeze. Aerindel felt annoyance of her own—or rather, it came from the crown, along with more instructions.

She did as she was bid, and a searing white flame burst into being, hurling the bearded man back. He staggered, shoulders shaking as the ravening white fire tore into him, and the Lady of Dusklake found herself strong enough to stand. She scrambled up, conscious of a glow around her head.

The crown was flashing ever-brighter as she stretched out her hands and lashed Elminster with conjured tentacles that snapped and bit at him like hungry eels with long, barbed jaws.

“Aerindel,” he cried, sounding almost in anguish, “fight against it! Obey not the crown! ‘Tis a thing that twists its wearers to evil if allowed to command! Ye must order it, not let it enthrall ye!”

“Die, mage, and quickly,” Aerindel hissed back at him. “All this time, Rammast grows stronger, and the folk in my castle aren’t even warned and awake! Die, or leave me be!”

She lashed him with ropes of twisting fire, spun him around, and hurled him out over the chasm that had been Glimmerdown Pass.

But he did not plummet to his death. Instead, he stood on empty air as if it were solid rock and pointed at her. “Aerindel, I charge thee: do off the Whispering Crown —now!”

“Never!” Aerindel shouted at him, hurling the might of the crown at the rocks they stood upon, tearing them up in long, jagged shards to hurl at the wizard.

Elminster gave her a weary look and murmured some words. The stony spears turned to dust in the air between them. He said something else, and made a gesture—and Aerindel felt a coldness that seemed to start at her feet and race up and out her throat.

She could do nothing but see straight ahead as she quivered upright in midair, but the crown let her see everything: Elminster had transformed her into a long, thin staff of wood, such as a wizard might carry.

Taller than the Stormstaff she was, floating and glowing with a white radiance that seemed to tear at the crown. With no head to support it, the circlet fell down the length of her, its frantic whisperings fading, and rang on the stones. Elminster snatched her away from it, strode two swift paces, and let go of her.

The coldness drained away swiftly, and Aerindel was herself once more—standing facing him, panting in fear and fury, the ruins of her gown hanging from bared, moonlit shoulders, her once-beautiful hair a gnawed ruin. She looked older, her skin mottled and hanging in wrinkles. Her eyes were sunken, and her mouth pinched, as if with great age. Even in her rage, confronting him with heaving bosom, she was stooped, hunched over with hands that had become the knob-jointed claws of a crone.

“Go away, wizard!” she snarled, eyes like twin flames. “You’ve meddled more than enough! I need the crown to defend my land and… myself. Rammast shall get neither, if you’ll just stand aside and let me use what Mystra sent me! It was her gift to me!”

“Mystra gives gifts that carry choices,” Elminster tola her quietly, his eyes on hers. The crown glimmered on the rocks behind him. “Each one is a test. No sword is deadly until a hand wields it.”

“Bah!” Aerindel spat. “I’ve no time for gentle philosophy, mage! Dusklake is imperilled! Rammast gathers strength even as we stand here arguing! Get out of my way!”

Elminster bowed his head and stepped aside. “The choice must be thine,” he said gravely. “So long as ye know that the glow upon yonder circlet now means it must drink the life-force of the first being to don it and work magic, or crumble away.”

Aerindel stormed forward, checked herself, shot him a look of anger, and snarled, “Such words are cheap weapons, wizard. How do I know they’re true?”

Elminster shrugged. “Ye must trust in someone else at some time; why not begin now? If I’m right and ye heed me not, ye’ll die. If ye heed me, I make this pledge: I’ll stand beside ye to defend Dusklake against this Rammast, and teach ye enough magic so that ye’ll need no crown nor wizardry aid hereafter. What say ye?”

Aerindel’s eyes narrowed as she looked at him. Then her face twisted and she tossed what was left of her hair angrily. “What assurance have I that you’ll keep this pledge? I don’t know you—your word could be worthless!”

Elminster shrugged. “So it might. It comes back to trust, doesn’t it?”

Aerindel waved her hand at him spurningly as she strode past. “Enough clever words, wizard! This I know, have wielded, and can understand!” She bent and snatched up the crown.

“Remember!” the wizard called. “It must now drink the life-force of the first magic-wielder wearing it, or crumble!”

It glowed at her, invitingly, pulsing, its cool radiances running up her arms in what were almost caresses. The Whispering Crown gave forth a faint chiming, as of distant bells, and a feeling of warmth and reassurance. Aerindel drank it in, looked at Elminster with a silent challenge in her eyes, and raised the crown to put it on.

“Yesss,” its whispering voice was hissing, as she raised it past her face. But then another voice burst from it, desperate and alone, echoing in strident despair.

“Elminster, aid me!”

Her father’s cry was louder than before.

Aerindel stared at the crown, hearing it snarl angrily. Under those angry growls the cries of others came faintly to her ears. Those who died wearing it. Its other victims.

“Farewell, father,” she said, voice trembling, as she turned on her heel and threw the Whispering Crown hard and high.

Out, out over Glimmerdown Pass it flew, howling in angry despair. It spat out lightnings at her as it fell, lightnings that clawed at the rocks by her feet then fell far short as the crown tumbled from view.

The moonlight seemed brighter as Aerindel turned into the cool breeze, squinted at the wizard, and asked timidly, “Elminster?”

The bearded man gave her a smile that lit up his face as he took her hand. “The right choice, Aerindel. Ye used yon crown for what Mystra put it into your hands for, and let it go when she wanted ye too. Come, now. Mystra will protect ye. Ye shall learn magic as thy father did.”

An amber light whirled up around their joined hands, to shroud them both in a whirling cloud—a cloud that flashed blue-white and faded, leaving the mountaintop bare.

An instant later, lightnings crashed down on the mountaintop, hurling what stones they did not scorch high into the air. The night crackled and glowed with the fury of that strike.

* * * * *

“There’s no way they could have survived that,” the Lord of Grand Thentor said with satisfaction, looking up from where he stood among the tumbled rocks that now choked Glimmerdown Pass. His men were under all this, somewhere—but who needed warriors, in lands where one was the only wielder of magic?

“I wonder who that wizard was,” Rammast mused aloud as he clapped his hands together and prepared to cast a flying spell to whisk him over the rocks into Dusklake. He shrugged. Well, he’d fly up over the mountaintop, just to be sure the mysterious mage was no more than ashes and memories.

It was a pity about Aerindel, but he had her likeness fixed in an evermirror spell and could alter the shape of some hired wench or other to take her place. Even if word got out, there’d be none to stand against him ere Dusklake joined Grand Thentor, and he looked to richer lands to the west, like Marbrin and Drimmath. Why, he could be ruling an empire in four winters’!

Amber light flared momentarily atop the mountain, high above. Frowning, Rammast peered up at it.

Something clanged on the rocks nearby and bounced past his foot with a metallic clang. The crown!

His lightning must have blasted it from her head!

Smiling, Rammast snatched it up. Gods, but it had given her power enough! With this, Rammast Tarangar would be well-nigh invincible!

He’d call his realm Tarangara, when it stretched from the Great Water to the Inland Sea, and from the High Forest to the hot lands… Yes, by Mystr—

He was still smiling broadly as he settled the Whispering Crown onto his head.

* * * * *

“Look ye now,” Elminster said gravely. One of his arms was around her shoulders; he pointed with the other. Down at the tumbled stones where there had once been a pass. Down at a lone, gloating man: Rammast, Lord of Grand Thentor. He was putting on the Whispering Crown!

Aerindel bit her lip and tried to blink away the tears that had been falling since she’d realized what the Crown had done to her. She was old and wrinkled, her life stolen from her… and all for magic. “Mystra will protect ye.” Hah.

Yet at least Rammast would die, unless the goddess had played one last trick on her … but no. Her distant foe had raised his hands grandly to cast a spell of farseeing—and was suddenly crumpling, falling, and dwindling into a dark and twisted thing, skin hanging on a skeleton that was toppling into cinnamon-hued dust. Sweet, surging energies welled up in her, raising her, and making her gasp and tremble in a rapture more intense than anything she’d ever felt before.

Aerindel found herself sobbing, clinging to the comforting arms around her as she shuddered, then kissing the half-seen face above her wildly, joy surging through her. Her skin was smooth and young again, her body her own!

“Ye see,” that kind voice rumbled, by her ear. “These things work out. Mystra does provide. Ye have only to trust, think clearly, and do as She guides.”

“And how will I know her directives? ” the Lady of Dusklake asked, brushing hair aside from shining eyes to meet his gaze.

Elminster pointed down again. Something gleamed amid skeletal dust far below. Aerindel saw it only for an instant before the lightnings of a spell that no mortal had cast erupted along the cliff across from where they stood and sent a huge fall of stones rolling down to bury the Whispering Crown.

As the dust rose up toward them, Elminster replied solemnly, “She whispers to us always.”

“Elminster,” Aerindel said with a tremulous smile, “aid me!”