The Herald

CHAPTER 12

Staring at Elminster slack jawed in astonishment, Maerandor flung his arms wide, abandoning the spell he’d intended to hurl, and stammered, “M-my most profound and humble apologies, Most High!”

“Accepted,” El replied coldly, and without the slightest pause, demanded, “Where are our other agents here at the keep? Revaerel and Tolorn?”

“Revaerel and Tolorn, Most High?”

“They have assumed the guises of the monks Hemmeth and Pelsrand, respectively.”

“I–I know not. Forgive me, Most High, I didn’t even know one of us was Pelsrand!”

El favored Maerandor with Telamont’s best coldly disapproving frown, and watched the agent visibly cower.

He didn’t give the man time to recover, but raised his voice a trifle so all the gathered Shadovar heard.

“We’ll achieve more as a force rather than scattered skulkers,” the false High Prince of Thultanthar decreed. “Let us go and find our missing two, then set out together to hunt down Moonstars. When we’ve scoured them out of Candlekeep, then it will be time to work on its wards. Properly, and with unhurried precision.”

“Die!” a furious voice shouted, and a beam of ravening fire lashed down out of the dim heights of the room at Elminster.

Who flung himself headlong, down behind the nearest Shadovar. A moment later, the fiery magic incinerated the unfortunate Thultanthan.

As the deadly flames died away, the dead man toppling and then collapsing into swirling ash, the other Shadovar all whirled around and stared up.

To behold the Prefects of Candlekeep, standing on the highest gallery, frowning back down at them. Each monk was aiming a rod or staff, or holding up an orb-and every one of these enchanted weapons was glowingly awake with roused and ready magic. The highest-ranking monks of the keep had fetched the monastery’s most powerful magics and come to make war.

They let fly.

Fire and frost and snarling lightning rained down, followed by the whirling chaos of more arcane deaths. Men screamed, convulsed, and died. Past the raging of unleashed magic, the fleeing false monks below-Elminster among them-could see tomes floating out into view from behind the shoulders of the Prefects, open grimoires and spellbooks from the libraries of Candlekeep, each wreathed in a rippling aura of risen magic. And from book after book, one by one, glowing beams shot down to immolate running monks below.

Elminster kept on crawling, trying to put solid stone between himself and what the Prefects could hurl. Preferably where he’d find a door out of this chamber straight ahead.

It didn’t feel like the right time for parleys or explanations.

It seemed the Shadow Sword didn’t care if it drank undeath or magic or the vitality of the living. Helgore had slain the last two elves by parrying their furious attacks while his dark conjured blade flew around to slide into them from behind-slicing into armor and flesh alike in silent ease, as if drifting through empty air.

Not that he’d resisted stabbing them when they were already dying. Shadow Sword or not, they were his kills. The latest in a count he’d already lost reliable track of, after a day of walking along in stone-lined underways, busily slaying.

Cormanthorian elves weren’t so formidable, after all.

He looked around at all the lifeless darkness.

The glows of the armor had died with their wearers, leaving him alone in a corridor littered with dead elves and pools of their blood.

Helgore wiped his blade clean on a corpse’s half cloak, sheathed it, and headed for the next crypt doorway. This was almost too easy.

He mind-guided the Shadow Sword to hang horizontally in the air, its star-kissed edge outermost, a dark and deadly barrier to anyone rushing up on him from behind. He willed it to flare its dark reach outward on either side of its blade as much as possible, to ensnare passing magic any elf might unleash at his back, and watched its darkness spread and loom obediently.

There. A shield nothing should be able to pass without his being warned.

Helgore smiled and went to the double doors of the crypt. Again, the device on it was unfamiliar, but really, what did it matter? One more forgotten family of elves too highnosed and haughty to have survived Toril’s last few centuries. Even if one or two elves fighting in the forest above him right now still bore the same surname, they’d be dead soon enough. They all would.

Elves or titans, beholders or alhoon … none could stand against the arcanists of Thultanthar for long.

No coldly defiant baelnorn faded into view to challenge him. Well, perhaps some of them were learning prudence at last.

Helgore blasted the doors to pebbles and powder, enjoying the destruction. There were a few doors back home he’d not mind doing this to, so he could gloat over those cowering behind them ere sliding the Shadow Sword hilt deep through a few Thultanthans too haughty for their own good.

Yes. That was something to look forward to. After all, he knew the secrets of the Shadow Sword now. Telamont could hardly reach in and take away memories, so …

Well, now. Look at that. Riches at last.

Through the swirling dust, he could see many blue glows. Bright and strong, many layered … and mighty.

Oho. The Most High would be pleased.

Helgore strode forward. Yes, this crypt was packed with harps and swords and gauntlets-and all manner of gewgaws beyond his naming at first glance, each one of them aglow with the blue radiance of powerful magic.

This crypt was so crowded with loot that the dead lay not on their backs, but stood upright, the remains held vertical by magic that shaped truly lifelike effigies.

Helgore sneered. Well, they’d collapse into bones and dust swiftly and satisfyingly enough when all their magic was drained awa-

The centermost of the three effigies facing him had just opened eyes the hue of mithral flame, and stepped out of the soft blue glows to face him.

Copper-colored hair, pale skin, an elf female he knew from the training the Most High had given him-except that the real thing looked far angrier than Telamont’s mind-portrait. He was face to face with Ilsevele Miritar, the Coronal of Myth Drannor.

Helgore stepped back hastily, ducking low and willing the Shadow Sword to turn and thrust into the crypt point first.

The coronal strode to meet it, blazing eyes fixed on him. “If you’d cared to learn some of the mysteries of the Tel’Quess before destroying them, Shadovar, you might have survived longer. The coronal can feel the breaching of any crypt in this city.”

Whatever she unleashed then, howled into and through Helgore of Thultanthar’s hasty wards and shieldings as if they didn’t exist-and then into and through him.

He didn’t even have time to scream as he met his doom.

So there was no one at all to see the coronal let the Shadow Sword slide into her and through her. Shuddering in agony, she embraced it, tugging at its great hilt to pull it hard against her breast as blue fire flared up around her in a snarling inferno.

And raged in that crypt mouth and out into the passage beyond, hot and bright and blue, racing away down the passage and then rebounding.

It roiled, spat, and became dimmer and smaller, fading … dying away.

When it was all gone, there was no Shadow Sword at all, and the coronal stood tall and unwounded, blue lightning crackling here and there in her copper hair, swollen with all the magic the sword had held.

Yet there was no pride in her face, only sorrow. She shook her head and went out into the passage, weeping softly.

Her tears glowed blue as they fell, dancing like little dying flames on the stone floor in her wake as she went, weeping for those now lost forever.

Deadly magic was still howling and snarling around the high-ceilinged chamber deep in Candlekeep, with dead or dying or frantically fleeing monks among it, and the grim Prefects of Candlekeep staring down from their balcony with the powerful tomes of magic floating around them, directing the death they’d just unleashed.

“Die!” the Keeper of the Tomes had shouted, and the echoes of his cry were still reverberating around the hall, borne on the roiling, spark-studded backwash of deadly energies.

“Die yourself,” Maerandor muttered in reply as he finished his spell, locked eyes with the Keeper of the Tomes up on the balcony above, and unleashed death.

That end of the balcony vanished, the very stones becoming tentacles that should flail and batter even before they crushed and tore.

Farewell, Keeper. Good farruking riddance.

Other Shadovar spells were stabbing up at that balcony, too, and other monks up there were reeling. An orb exploded with a shriek and a bright flash, and Maerandor saw what was left of the monk who’d been wielding it stagger and then topple, now headless and armless …

The Most High was watching.

Maerandor smiled, chose another Prefect along the balcony, worked a deft spell-and killed the man. Harper or Chosen or Red Wizard impersonator, or genuine Avowed of Candlekeep consecrated to learning and Oghma the Binder … it mattered not. They all had to die, and the sooner the better.

Smiling a colder smile, Maerandor chose another target.

El had reached the doorway he’d sought, but didn’t go through it. The Shadovar were both swift and obviously unimpressed by threats from massed old men on balconies who should have cast aside honor and struck first rather than hurling warnings from on high.

Now, every last one of the Prefects looked likely to be slaughtered in short order if nothing was done.

And if you want something done in the Realms, you call on Elminster …

Pah. El did a working he hoped no one would even notice that thrust an invisible tongue of the wards of Candlekeep straight across the room, right in front of this Maerandor of Thultanthar. The arcanist’s next hurled doomspell should strike it and rebound right back on its caster-

Like that.

Grinning ruthlessly up at the balcony, Maerandor had flung a spell Elminster remembered from long, long ago. A magelord of Athalantar had been fond of that same bone-rend spell, the distinctive red-and-black cloud of grisly destruction as a living man’s bones were torn right out of his body, bursting through flesh in an invariably messy explosion of wet spattering blood and innards.

The wet red heap that had been Maerandor looked no cleaner than any of the other victims El had seen.

Elminster looked down at what was left of the arcanist for a moment, then turned away. He’d seen little enough of Telamont Tanthul, but what he had taken in should be enough to convincingly feign being High Prince of Thultanthar for a little longer.

“Another traitor falls,” he announced loudly, keeping his voice cold and calm, “failing himself and Thultanthar alike.”

Shadovar were turning to him, listening. Telamont must have them well whipped.

“Leave these old fools for now!” he ordered. “Time enough to destroy them later, when the Moonstars are dealt with! The Moonstars who are creeping up behind our backs even now!”

And he spun to face the door he’d been crawling for, and blasted it open. Its shards were still hurtling and clattering down off walls beyond when he sent a second blast through the space where it had been-and blew apart an innocent statue, several rooms away.

“Spittle of Shar,” he snapped, “I missed that one! After him!”

He pointed and then sprinted, not looking to see if any Shadovar followed.

Yet soon enough he heard them pounding along after him.

Every one of them. The ruse had worked. The Shadovar tore off through Candlekeep, away from the chamber of the balconies-and the dumbfounded Prefects.

This morning, the attacking mercenaries seemed endless. Even more numerous than the trees that stood all around this particular corner of the widespread fray.

Storm, Rune, and Arclath had been fighting for what seemed like forever, an endless deadly dance of swing, duck, dodge, parry, rebound from the numbing clang of blade on blade, and hack again. There were a score of besiegers to every defender of Myth Drannor, or even more.

Even given how many were being slaughtered with every panting, passing moment as the ring of attackers tightened around the city, yard by blood-soaked yard.

“F-fall back!” Arclath panted, slipping again on dead bodies underfoot. They were slick with blood, flies buzzing in profusion everywhere.

Not that he could hear the little pests. He was half deaf from all the clanging of blades striking blades or shields or armor, men shouting or screaming, raw dying shrieks on all sides. It had been nigh ceaseless, until a few panting moments ago.

Amarune flung out a hand to catch his shoulder and steady him. Gasping, he thanked her with a nod, and leaned on his sword, using it as a crutch to keep himself upright while he fought for breath.

This little lull in the fighting had come when the foe had fallen back to regroup. Which in this case meant drag the wounded away, reform survivors into new bands under the commanders who were left-probably all of them; these particular mercenary captains led from the rear-and in the meantime send fresh troops forward to pick up bodies and the dismembered, and fling them into heaps to clear some ground to walk on.

So they could all come charging up to the elf lines again.

Huh. Such as the “elf lines” were. There were perhaps a score of elves still on their feet, for as far as he could see along this ridge. And behind them all, there was no more wild forest, just the trees that sheltered and adorned the homes and garden terraces and soaring spires of Myth Drannor itself.

If the defenders retreated again, it would be the city itself they were yielding. Building by building.

“Sorry I got you into this, my love,” Rune whispered into his ear, as they leaned together for support, both gasping for breath. “You could still be safe by your fireside, back at home.”

“While you got butchered here without me? Never! After all, you’d haunt me over it-I’d never get a moment’s sleep!”

“True,” Rune whispered as she leaned against him. Forehead to forehead, they clung to each other, sharing their aches.

Storm had been helping elf wounded, and was now trudging back to meet them, with her hair, with all of her, drenched in blood.

Brow to brow with Arclath-who smelled as good as ever, she couldn’t help but notice-Amarune watched the bard come slowly up to them, trailing a sword that dripped with gore. So Chosen got just as weary as mere mortals.

Somehow that was both discouraging and reassuring at the same time.

They’d all been fighting hard amid the trees for what seemed like forever, and everyone’s arms-sword arms especially-ached and felt as heavy as castle stones.

“Kissing again?” Storm teased them, as she picked her way over heaped elf bodies to come up beside them. “You young ones never stop, do you? Don’t forget to breathe, now!”

They were both still too winded to give her suitably arch replies, so Rune settled for a rude gesture. Storm chuckled and embraced her, hugging her and then massaging the younger woman’s shoulders. Rune groaned.

Arclath smiled at them both fondly-as a war horn blared far off in the trees.

From far back in the enemy ranks somewhere.

He peered in that direction. The besieging mercenaries seemed endless; Arclath could see banners swaying among the trees as their bearers clambered over roots as high as tables, moving closer. The farthest banner was distant indeed.

He sighed, and leaned a little more heavily on his sword. There were too many mercenaries, too great a host for the surviving defenders to hold for long.

But then, he’d known all along that without far superior magic to hurl on the battlefield, Myth Drannor was doomed. It wasn’t a question of if the city would fall, but when.

The banners were moving again.

“They’re coming,” he muttered. “Are there any elves in reserve, or is it just this handful of us to hold back an army?”

Storm looked back over one shapely shoulder, then told him, “No, there’s another handful coming. I’d say Fflar is standing more or less alone against the mercenaries attacking the far side of the city. He’s sent most of his command to join us.”

Then she added, “Excuse me. Stay where you are.”

As Amarune and Arclath watched, the bard plunged down the steepest nearby slope, into a little pit ringed by the heaped dead-and shook herself like a wet dog, all over, her long silver hair thrusting itself out straight and stiff like a pincushion.

The heir of the Delcastles hauled Rune hastily down, so only a fine rain of blood fell on them like a mist, rather than a huge wet wall of it.

When they scrambled up again, to peer at the advancing mercenaries-who were thankfully coming with wary slowness, not shouting and charging-the Storm who joined them had hair that was silver again, clean of blood. The rest of her, however, was still besmirched.

“That’s a neat trick,” Rune told her. “Show me that, when we have time.”

“Gladly,” Storm agreed, as she raised a hand in greeting to the elves hastening to join them.

“Lady Storm,” the foremost warrior greeted her with a wry smile. “Well met. It’s been a few summers.”

“It has, Velathalar. Good to see you again. Are those with you likely to take a suggestion from a human, or are they more interested in trumpeting their precious honor and so dying in their own way?”

Arclath was greatly amused to hear that a dumbfounded male elf said “Eh?” in just the same tone of voice a male human did. But recovered, he had to grant, faster.

“Why?” Velathalar grinned. “What suggestion are you apt to make?”

“That we retreat, right now, to just there, where the fallen end, so we can stand on sure footing while the mercenaries struggle on the dead underfoot.”

“Wise,” the elf agreed, “not that honor will agree.” He whirled around to snap an order to the elves with him. “Back! Back to where the footing’s clear!”

“What?” a taller, older female elf snapped back at him. “And surrender soil of our city without even fighting for it? Where is your honor, Velathalar Muirdraevrel?”

Velathalar turned and gave Storm an “I told you so” look that was so clear and comical that Rune found herself giggling.

Despite more mercenaries than she could count mounting the last corpse-strewn slope with bills and glaives and spears ready in their hands that even now were being lowered to menace her.

“My honor,” Storm told the elf, before Velathalar could begin a reply, “comes from staying alive to win more of it, in days and months and years ahead. You do all Tel’Quess more service if you live to fight and defend beyond the next few minutes. If you’re fighting for grass and trees, why these, just here, in particular? Once you’re dead, you’ll never again be able to defend any of them.”

The bard hadn’t raised her voice, but her hair was stirring around her shoulders, and her words carried to every elf along the ridge. Magic or Weave work. And most of the elves pulled back a few strides to open ground.

“They’re here,” Arclath said warningly, as he backed carefully to join them, Rune at his side and Velathalar guarding his other flank.

The angry elf looked at Storm, and Storm gave her a sunny smile in return.

About then the elf realized the two of them now stood alone, a good three or four paces ahead of all the other defenders. She grimaced, sighed, then turned and retreated with more haste than grace. Storm stood behind her, guarding her back all the way-as the mercenaries reached the end of where they’d dared to clear bodies aside, and broke into a stumbling charge across the heaped and slippery bodies, with ragged yells that mingled into a general rising roar.

And the din of battle broke out again, metal clanging on metal, laced with screams and grunts and yells. Storm’s tresses thrust forward like tentacles, wielding hand axes and daggers and at least one stolen mercenary spear, and the elves of Myth Drannor fought alongside her with a lithe agility that Arclath had already learned he had to keep from watching, lest he be fascinated for an instant too long and pay for his distraction with his life. The elves were skilled and fighting for their home-but they were also weary from days of fighting. No matter how many mercenaries they slew, the motley human hireswords just kept coming, in a great sea of helms and shields and breastplates, flooding through the trees in a flow beyond counting, a surge of bodies trampling their own fallen that forced the outnumbered defenders slowly back, and back again, and then into a hasty hacking scramble along the ridge to keep from being cut off and buried in thrusting enemy blades, and …

“Fall back!” Velathalar shouted, too beset by attackers to snatch at his horn. “Sound the retreat!”

High, fluting horns promptly did just that from behind the foremost elves, then larger and more distant horns took up the blaring call.

Storm’s hair curled around three throats from behind, and snatched that trio of Velathalar’s attackers off their feet; he used the respite to swiftly slash the other two and clamber up a heap of dying men he’d helped to build, to bellow, “Back, and rally!”

He shouted it twice, and by some magic of Storm’s, his second shout rolled through the trees like thunder. A glowing banner promptly unfurled atop a rise to the east, as a rallying point-but out of the trees beyond the mercenaries came a black, howling cone of biting jaws and raking claws, pouring through the air just above gleaming, bobbing mercenary helms to pounce on the banner.

The rise became briefly a dark cloud of swirling death and tatters of banner, but then the air turned bright, and the claws and jaws were beaten back, fading to nothingness.

Storm’s face, as she fought, turned grim.

The city wards should have stopped that Shadovar spell; it shouldn’t have taken a counterspell from an elf in the fray.

The inevitable end was coming much faster than she’d feared. Hereabouts, in this particular battle, perhaps in her next panting handful of breaths. Despite all the reinforcements Fflar had sent.

Elves who could not be spared, so if they fell here …

And in the end, she must do her utmost to preserve Amarune, and take her far from this, no matter what else happened or who fell.

She thought all of this without one moment of hesitation in her deadly dance of ducking, twisting, lunging, and leaping, sharp blades of steel thrusting and slashing at her constantly, many blows so heavy that sparks flew at every parry. She slew mercenaries with the same brutal ruthlessness they were trying to use on her, and they were falling in their dozens and scores, shoved onto the blades of those behind them, kicked to make them fall and trip their fellows, stunned from above by branches groaningly spell-bent for a moment, and beset by hails of fallen weapons flung in their faces by Storm’s tireless tresses. This was to the death, with no parleys nor ransoms, no chivalrous agreements for breathers or chances to retrieve the wounded or the dead.

Mercenaries were dying at a sickening rate-yet elves were falling fast too, and soon there’d be too few to hold any ground here at all, and the battle would be into the city streets and flying bridges, catwalks and room after splendid room of the homes and mansions that-

“Arclath!”

That anguished shriek nigh deafened Storm, and she whirled with her heart sinking, afraid that whatever had befallen Lord Delcastle, whom she had come to love and respect, would drive his beloved so mad with grief that she’d run right onto mercenary steel uncaring, or not seeing her peril at all.

And saw Arclath staggering back with a blade through his neck, the snarling mercenary who’d driven it there already dying, his fierce snarl sagging into bulging-eyed and agonized disbelief as a furious woman had leaped on him, her thighs now wrapped around his shoulders-and one of her daggers hilt deep in his nearest ear, her other dagger slashing at the man’s sword arm as if its blade could slice right through plate armor if it just struck often and hard enough.

Rune was going to overbalance, her weight dragging herself and the mercenary she was riding down, down atop the already dead and dying underfoot, and there were three mercenaries with well-used swords already lurching forward, ready to hack and stab …

Storm sprang to meet them, slashing viciously at faces and putting her shoulder into the chest of the first one, to topple him back into others and win space enough for Rune to come crashing down atop her mercenary without getting impaled on a reaching blade.

Storm sent her hair lashing out in all directions, to blind and to ensnare sword wrists and to tug at ankles and elbows, heedless of the pain as some of her hair was torn out by the roots.

Rune was down, crashing atop the mercenary she’d slain, his sword in Arclath and his dagger flying free into the air, and Storm sprang over her and landed on her toes right in front of the mercenaries she’d wounded and sent falling. She spent a precious spell to whirl up a dozen fallen weapons into a clanging, darting wall of slashing steel to keep back the mercenaries coming up behind those she’d felled, and spun around to try to get to Arclath.

Rune was there first, of course, sobbing and crying his name and trying to hold her man up-but stumbling helplessly to the ground with him. Or rather, thudding down onto the heaped bodies of the dead and dying. Storm shouldered her aside, to corral Arclath’s head in one hand, and kiss him long and hard on his blood-drooling mouth.

As she brutally tore the sword out of his neck.

“What’re you do-”

Rune stopped in midshriek as she saw silver fire leaking from around their joined lips.

Storm was holding Arclath up, kneeling over him, and in her strong but shaking arms Amarune saw her man writhe and stiffen. His eyes flared, momentarily becoming two silver flames.

Then he shuddered, arched-and fell back out of Storm’s embrace, shaking his head and moaning like a bewildered child in pain. His eyes were his own again, but trailing smoke as they wept blood, his face clenched in racking agony.

Yet there was no blood welling out of his mouth anymore, and the great wound in his neck was-gone.

And Storm was getting to her feet with her face drawn and old, swaying and staggering, and throwing up her hands in a desperate magic that flung scores of weapons up into the air from the dead all around and whirled them at the mercenaries surging forward.

Screams and wet gurglings rent the air as the front ranks of the besiegers collapsed into wild butchery, blood spraying in all directions, as Storm turned grimly to Arclath, who was once more in Rune’s fierce embrace, and said grimly, “It’s past time that the two of you went into hiding-and stayed there.”

“And leave you to die here? Leave Myth Drannor to fall?”

“Are we going to argue this?” Storm hissed fiercely, glaring at them both for just a moment before she found it prudent to whirl around and glare at the nearest mercenaries-those creeping around the edges of her spell to try to reach them.

“Y-yes,” Rune managed, matching her glare for glare. “Don’t think I’m ungrateful-”

“Oh, I don’t,” Storm replied, trading two swift parries with a mountain of a mercenary before dispatching him with a leaping thrust up through his mouth into his brain. “I think you’re being stupid. Just as I was stupid to bring you here.”

She spun around and slashed another mercenary across his eyes, letting the force of her swing bring her back around to face them-and another mercenary, who stumbled back in alarm at her speed. “A mistake-”

She sprang to meet that stumbling mercenary, and at the last instant sidestepped and surprised the one beside him with a thrust through the man’s leather-gloved sword hand. He shrieked, she twisted her steel free and fed it back to the stumbling man-right through his neck, just as Arclath had been wounded, something he winced at the sight of-and turned to add, “-I’ll now-”

She spun around again, to strike aside a hurled spear, then pluck up a fallen mercenary with her hair and fling him at the ankles of a trio of advancing besiegers, forcing them into cursing falls, and added over her shoulder, “-rectify.”

And without any warning at all she spun around again with her arms spread, and gathered Arclath and Amarune into a fierce hug.

Which became a tingling shroud of silver-blue fire, magic that snarled up into a rushing wind that flung all three of them aloft, soaring up in a great arc that tore through leaves and small branches to hurtle up into the sky, far above the countless helms and shoulders of the mercenary army below.

And on through air that was surprisingly chilly, high and far before it started to descend, the huge trunk of a gigantic shadowtop looming up to meet them-

Storm hissed something that snatched all three of them abruptly aside, to the left, to miss crashing into that huge tree.

Instead, they smashed into the bough of another tree with enough force to wind and daze all three of them, and break Storm’s hug-so the three of them tumbled on through a bruising, buffeting, deafening chicane of torn and whirling leaves, shattering twigs, and dancing branches, plummeting down, down, and-

Through a tangle of vines and snapping, collapsing dead trees those vines had strangled, to crash at last to earth.

Or rather, several soft and mushy feet of dead leaves, to rebound out of muck that had a decidedly skunky smell, and roll to a painful stop in a thorn bush.

It was quite some time before Arclath had breath enough to groan. He rolled over, still moaning, and grunted, “Rune? Rune?”

“I’m fine,” his beloved replied sourly. “More or less.”

Arclath peered rather blearily in the direction Amarune’s voice was coming from, and beheld a wincing Storm rolling over to her knees, his Rune tangled in the bard’s long silver hair-and sliding off her back.

“While I,” the bard informed Arclath gingerly, “have been better. Thank you for asking.”

She got to her feet with a wince and a hiss of pain, her tresses setting Amarune upright with gentle care, and peered all around.

Distant mercenaries shouted, and they heard crashing as heavy-booted men hurried closer.

“Time,” Storm announced, “to fly.” And she reached out and hugged them again.

“Not like last time, I hope,” Arclath managed, as magic swept them aloft again.

“No,” Storm agreed firmly. “A moment ago I was making us all look like a catapult load, because some of yon hireswords will be itching to use the bows, which Myth Drannor’s wards have been foiling, on something. This time, we’ll be flying properly-with about as much control as a heavy, ungainly bird.”

An arrow shivered off the nearby spreading branches of a duskwood, and Storm sighed and announced, “Change of plan. If arrows can fly, we’re far enough from the wards to translocate.”

“Translocate?” Arclath asked suspiciously.

“Teleport,” Storm informed him-and blue light rose like a mist all around them, and fell over them like a cloak in the next instant.

Then they were falling through a soft blue void, all sounds of the forest gone, and … standing on a flagstone floor.

“My kitchen,” Storm announced. “In my farmhouse, in Shadowdale.”

Arclath and Amarune looked at each other, then with one accord started slowly turning as they gazed all around.

They were in a low-raftered room with fieldstone walls and wooden countertops inset with marble tiles and sinks, furnished in sturdy stools and thick plank-topped tables. Diamond-paned windows looked out into a choked garden, overhung with trees so that dappled sunlight lanced down through them to the flagstones.

“What a beautiful place,” Rune said aloud.

“Good,” Storm agreed briskly, “then you won’t mind tarrying here a bit. Without me.”

Arclath gave her a frown. “While you-?”

Storm held up one hand to silence him, and with the other reached to a nearby pillar-and tore it open, a concealed panel swinging open. She plucked out a tiny metal box that was tarnished black with age, flipped it open-and the room flooded with almost blinding light.

Wincing, Amarune tried to peer past it. She saw Storm’s long fingers silhouetted against that brilliance for a moment as the bard plucked whatever was glowing so brightly up out of the box and into her mouth.

And then the light was gone, and Storm turned toward them a face that was young and unlined again. As she opened her mouth to speak, an echo of the blinding radiance winked inside her, just for a moment.

Rune gaped. What had she just seen? It looked like Storm had swallowed a tiny star. Some sort of ancient healing magic, or a spark of silver fire, or-?

“Later,” Storm told her with a wry smile, “when the time is right. Full explanations, I promise.”

“But-” Arclath started to protest.

She waved a flamboyant arm at him like a furious high priestess silencing a blasphemer.

“Later,” she repeated sternly, and added, “Now stay here,” she said, that order afire with a fierceness born of new vigor, then turned to Amarune, seeming somehow taller. Stronger. Renewed.

“If El and I and the rest fall,” she said, “you are the future-the last Chosen of Mystra. She’ll need you desperately. So stay. Please. The future of the Realms may depend on your obedience.”

She spun to face Arclath, and commanded him as imperiously if she was the Queen of Cormyr. “See to it that she stays here-and defend her with your life.”

“Lady,” he replied, “that’s not something you ever need to order me to do.”

As he uttered the last two words, Arclath found that he was speaking to empty air.

Storm had whirled away from him to pluck a stone out of the nearest wall to reveal a niche, plucked a glowing blade from out of hiding there, blown them a kiss, and-winked into nothingness.

Arclath looked at the revealed niche, then looked away.

And then, as sudden silence stretched and deepened, and Amarune regarded him with a knowing smile, found he couldn’t resist going to see what else might be hidden within it.