The Herald

CHAPTER 8

The first few Bladesingers Storm, Amarune, and Arclath had come rushing through the forest to reinforce had given them startled looks, and a high mage of Myth Drannor had shot them a look that was frankly hostile, but once the mercenaries came swarming through the trees in earnest to fall upon this handful of elves defending this particular wooded knoll of Myth Drannor, there was no time at all left for anything but frantic hacking, running, and parrying.

The elves were every whit as agile as Rune, who was used to being the most nimble in any fray, but Storm Silverhand awed her.

A whirlwind of long silver tresses snatching up swearing besiegers and dashing them against trees, or trammeling their swords and maces, the bard seemed to float through the battle, at the heart of the thickest fighting as mercenaries rushed in to try to overwhelm her.

Twice it seemed they’d manage it, as even Arclath-who was plying his sword in one hand and a captured blade in the other, both arms red to the shoulder with gore that wasn’t his-was beaten back from trying to reach her so he could guard her back.

Shouting murderously, the mercenaries closed into a ring around her, thrusting with bills and glaives, hacking with hand axes and blades, nigh burying her with their bodies.

And twice, a moment of silver-edged silence fell, all local din and clangor muted, as every hiresword was snatched off his bloody-booted feet and flung away from her, seemingly in slow motion, a startled open-mouthed tumbling that became a swift and brutal splattering of hurled bodies against unyielding trees. Moss and bark were torn away by rebounding broken bodies, and in a rush all the sound returned, most of it shrieking or raw howling of pain, amid the groans and wet thudding of bodies bouncing and landing.

Leaving Storm standing alone, the fire of risen anger in her eyes, her long slender sword raised and ready as she sought the most formidable-looking nearby foes-and launched herself at them.

“Challenge,” she’d snarl if their backs were turned, then she’d set her teeth and swing. In the ringing shriek of blades crashing together that followed, more than one contemptuous veteran battleblade was driven back on his heels, shaken and astonished. A few of them lived long enough for that astonishment to give way to fear, but as Storm apologized to one falling corpse, “I’m in a hurry.”

The third time the besiegers sought to overwhelm her, they came at her from all sides as she fenced and fought, dancing and whirling to keep from being taken from behind. Rune and Arclath fought shoulder to shoulder, trying to reach her but barely managing to hold their own ground. And then four hulking warriors came rushing at Storm in unison, glaives lowered in a deadly wall of long gutting points, shouting at their fellow mercenaries to get out of the way.

Those deadly, gore-smirched points were almost under her sword arm before the silver silence came again.

Arclath and Amarune gaped at the muted ballet. The charging warriors were hurled up and back, glaives almost raking Storm’s chin as they flew skyward, gauntleted hands clawing at unhelpful air all around. Saplings swayed as men crashed into them, falling leaves swirled, and-the sounds of the nigh deafening battlefield rushed back, battered besiegers fleeing wildly, some of them limping or crawling.

“How do you do that?” Rune demanded, as she came up beside Storm. Who gave her a smile far friendlier than her blazing eyes, and shook her head.

“Not a spell I can teach you,” she panted. “Called on the Weave. Like El does, more than he spouts incantations, these days.” The bard grounded her sword and leaned on it, fighting for breath. “Soon, you’ll feel how,” she added.

Louder panting and gasping could be heard all around them, as exhausted elves sagged back against trees, or wearily thrust steel through the throats of dying mercenaries.

“My thanks,” one of them called to Storm. “Your fury made all the difference.”

“Prowess,” another corrected, bent double in his fight for air. A bladesinger who looked so like him that she might be his sister stroked his shoulder as she passed, heading to where she could keep a wary eye on the retreating besiegers.

Yet it seemed that this corner of the woods had been left to the defenders of Myth Drannor for the moment.

Storm watched one of them turn over the body of a fallen elf, then grimly let it fall back. But not before she’d seen what the living elf had-a face and throat in bloody ruin, flies buzzing thickly.

The surviving elf looked up, met her eyes, and shook his head. “Lhaerlavrae,” he murmured. “She should have lived and laughed for centuries more.”

He got to his feet, the tears coming, and wandered away almost blindly, embracing the trees he blundered into as if they were the comforting arms of kin.

“Heavy losses,” a bladesinger sighed. “Heavy losses.”

Storm went and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

The elf smiled up at her, and covered the bard’s hand with her own. “We usually rush around in battle, pouncing on foes and then melting back into the trees, using our oneness with the forest and nimble swiftness to make our numbers strike the foe as hard as if we were thrice or more what we truly are-but here, where we must stand and defend, we take losses. Too many losses.” She shook her head. “Every day, too many of us fall. This can’t go on.”

“Every bowshot of forest, every spire of the city lost to the foe is a greater death to our race,” one of the high mages snapped at her. “We stand and fight!”

Storm sighed and said to him, “This battle is not about defending courtyards and elegant spires, nor yet wild forest that can all be recaptured or rebuilt. You are fighting for the survival of Fair Folk in these lands. Come sunset, the coronal or Fflar won’t care if you stood your ground or rushed about pouncing and retreating, but only that you still hold Myth Drannor-and that as many elves as possible are alive to do so. Do what works best, to set these mercenaries-who fight for coin, not their lives or their people-to flight. Mere ground is not sacred.”

“You are not of our people,” the mage replied coldly. “You do not see things as we do.”

“This is not even your fight,” another high mage put in.

“We’ve been defending this forest, this great city, for longer than you have been alive, human,” said a third. “Do not presume to tell us how to conduct ourselves in battle.”

“As it happens,” Storm replied mildly, “I was defending this city-and the forest all around us, here-when it was an overgrown ruin, and none of you were to be seen anywhere near here. I know this to be firm truth, for I knew everyone who ran with Alok Silverspear, and knew them well.” She raised her voice so all the elves around could hear, and added, “Your lives are worth more to all Tel’Quess than this little ridge, or that stand of shadowtops yonder. So keep moving, striking from the trees and running on, to strike again. The trees can’t move, so do the moving for them. If you stand your ground against so many, you’ll die.”

“School humans, human,” the first high mage sneered, and turned away. Storm shrugged and bent her attention to a wounded bladesinger.

“They’re coming again,” Arclath warned, peering through the trees.

“Help me get her to her feet,” Storm told Rune, who rushed to aid the bladesinger.

“There, amid the artraela,” the first high mage ordered. “We’ll meet them there.”

Arclath hadn’t heard the Elvish for “duskwoods” before, but it was obvious what the elf was pointing at. The other high mages were already heading for it, picking their way over moss-girt tangles of long-fallen trunks with a fluid grace he envied.

Only a handful of the other elves were moving with them. The rest looked at Storm, as she and Rune got the shuddering bladesinger up between them, and either moved to form a ring around them, or melted back into the trees.

“D’khessarath!” the nearest high mage swore. “Heed!” he cried, and pointed at the stand of duskwoods.

Silent elf faces looked back at him, but no one obeyed.

He whirled to give Storm a glare. “This treachery is your doing!”

She arched an eyebrow. “Treachery is a strong word, from one leaving wounded to the nonexistent mercies of the foe.”

“Insubordinate defiance of discipline wins no wars,” he snarled, and whirled away from them to hasten for the duskwoods.

Storm sighed. “Too many Tel’Quess are sounding more and more human, these days.”

Beside her ear, the wounded bladesinger tried to chuckle, but it turned into a gasp.

The elves around them peered at the advancing besiegers, then looked to Storm uncertainly.

“Go,” she said firmly. “Into the trees, to move swiftly and strike shrewdly at the foe and then withdraw again before you can be surrounded and overwhelmed. Go!”

One warrior looked at the wounded bladesinger and then at Storm, anguish in his face. “I-there is no honor-”

“Win more honor by staying alive and fighting on,” Storm said softly, “warriors of Myth Drannor. Do not let your fallen have died in vain. I say again: go.”

They went, some shaping salutes to her-and they were barely gone amid the trees in one direction when rising shouts and the crashing of trampled ferns and brush from another heralded the arrival of the foremost mercenaries.

“Leave me,” the bladesinger panted. “Save yourselves!”

“No,” Storm replied firmly, lifting the elf with her hair and settling her gently against the scorched and blackened trunk of a forest giant that had been blasted away. “Here, against what’s left of this shadowtop. Rune, to my left-Arclath, my right. We’ll do as yon fools want, and make a stand.” She glanced at the onrushing besiegers. “There are only about threescore of them.”

“Meaning?” Arclath asked with a grin.

“They don’t stand a chance,” Storm told him grimly, her hair lifting from her shoulders to writhe, each tress lashing like the tail of an angry lion, as she took a step forward and let her hair rise into a great restless halo of full readiness.

“Here we go,” Rune said to no one in particular, as the yelling mercenaries crashed through the last few strides of brush and fell upon them.

The two false monks were hurling their spells already, magics that told him they were powerful wizards indeed-arcanists of Thultanthar, most likely-as they stared at Elminster across the spellcasting cavern with looks that mingled hatred and sneering triumph.

There was time for him to elude death, but only just. An escape that concerned only himself and the Weave immediately around him, and though it meant agony when done so swiftly, it could be done in mere moments.

If you were a master of the Weave.

And if his mastery failed now, or he was an instant too slow, he would be as dead as if those spells struck him …

Elminster gave himself to the Weave, pouring himself into it in all directions at once, throwing back his head and trying to scream in utter silence. The pain …

And by the time a fell emerald glare flared to visit death upon him, and a forest of slicing force blades hissed into being to rain down and make that demise doubly sure, Elminster was a mere seeing sentience in the moving air.

There were many who muttered that the Sage of Shadowdale was a great bag of wind, and El reflected wryly that they’d only been wrong about the “great bag” part.

“You must tell me how to manage that,” Amarune muttered, as the sounds of the siege suddenly came back to them-and various broken mercenary bodies slid bloodily down trees all around them, to crash limply to the forest floor.

“If I have to try it much more often,” Storm whispered raggedly, her face gray, “you may just have to learn it on your own.”

She sagged, and Arclath leaped to catch her before she fell. She leaned gratefully on his arm.

“I’m not the Weave master Elminster is, or some of my sisters were,” she said grimly. “I was always more interested in people. Speaking of which …”

Flinging out her hair to clutch at tree trunks like a drunken man keeping his feet by grabbing onto anything and anyone handy, she set off through the blood-drenched forest toward the stand of duskwoods. Most of the mercenaries had come at Storm, but more than a few had gone crashing up the nearby slope into the duskwoods.

“Well?” Arclath asked, glancing at Rune and then at the bladesinger who nodded her approval of their departure. He started to pick his way over downed trees and fallen elves after Storm. “How fared our oh-so-friendly high mages?”

“This,” the bard replied heavily, as he and Rune caught up with her, “is bad.”

The small stand of duskwoods looked like the nest of some gigantic forest carnivore, a great, untidy ring-shaped heap of bodies-besieging mercenaries, most of them, but at the heart of it, elves.

Including every last one of the high mages, who’d been overrun and cut down. Storm looked from one to another of their slack, staring faces amid all the blood, and shook her head.

“Small wonder there are so few high mages, and fewer as the years pass.”

Now naught but roaring wind, Elminster blew himself across the cavern, racing at the two furious and almost certainly counterfeit monks who’d just sought his death. Seeking not to slay them-though momentarily blinding them and driving them down to cowering helplessness was both tempting and useful if he wanted to get well away-but just to escape.

They cowered as he came howling at them, clapping their hands to their faces, but still, the air in front of Elminster was glowing and changing. He knew the two cowering mages had had no time to work other spells. So was there a third foe, hitherto hidden and-?

Wind or not, he was ensnared.

The air had become a net, formed in but a handful of instants.

Formed from the wards of Candlekeep, and by one of these two monks kneeling before him. A forming that had been done by calling on the Weave.

And as he felt the tightening net, its shape was all too familiar. It had been snatched so hastily into being by someone working with the Weave as Elminster himself had trained them to do.

Which meant one or both of these two monks almost had to be Chosen of Mystra he himself had trained.

He was nigh certainly facing one or two of the Seven Sisters.

El forced the net away with an ease he’d learned twelve centuries ago. Its creator fought him, but it was as if she was tugging vainly on the string of a kite he had clutched firmly to his chest. With the force of his will, El twisted the net inexorably into a magical wall against any other spells these two might send against him.

The struggle made the wall shimmer once or twice into visibility. Behind its protection, Elminster took on his own usual ancient and bearded shape.

And watched astonishment dawn across the faces of the two monks.

“Your turn,” he told them calmly.

Reluctantly, they took on their proper shapes too, and he found himself facing two tall women he’d treated as his daughters, long, long ago.

Sisters, tall and furious. Alustriel Silverhand and Laeral Silverhand Arunsun.

Laeral was the first to break the silence. “El,” she asked grimly, “why are you here? What are you up to?”

“I’m seeking Khelben’s writings, as ye very well know, to try to find out what he was up to. Because it’s time.”

“It’s past time,” Alustriel corrected. “It was past time the day you turned against Khelben, and we Moonstars.”

“I ‘turned against’ no one,” El replied sternly. “I followed the bidding of the Lady we all serve-or claim to.”

“We have all obeyed Mystra,” said Laeral, “and continue to do so. You reared us, El-do you not know how much we love you? Do you think we would have taken different paths without her blessing, and still remained her Chosen? You were closer to her than the rest of us, and know full well she revealed things to you and gave tasks to you that she did not share with us-can you not accept that she did the same with each of us, and that she chose not to reveal it to you?”

“Nor can any of us roll back the years and undo what has been done and said,” Alustriel added. “We three stand here now. Is it to be war between us, or common cause?”

“That will depend,” Elminster said wryly. “Are we agreed in this much: that Shar seeks to destroy Mystra and remake the Weave as her own? And that if she succeeds before the Sundering of Toril and Abeir is complete, she will be named the goddess of magic on the Tablets of Fate, and darkness and shadow will hold sway in the Realms forever?”

Both sisters nodded.

“We are,” Laeral confirmed, “and it is now our turn for asking, Elminster. I ask again: why are you here?”

It was time for full truth. El cleared his throat and began.

“I’ve worked with the Weave for more centuries than I care to remember, and have labored on it mightily these last seven years, mending and restoring it. Yet rifts and roilings recur in it constantly; it has not collapsed, but is forever in peril of doing so. Where I was the meddler among thrones, mansions, guildhalls, and cottages, Khelben was the Weavemaster. If there is a key to restoring the Weave to stability, to rebuilding it to be the strong and pervasive web we once enjoyed, Khelben knew that vital secret and recorded it-and one of the places he must have hidden that record is here, in the great library of Candlekeep. I must find that key, master it, and restore the Weave.”

He started to pace. “And if I can reason thus, so can any wise wizard. The Shadovar will come here-they have undoubtedly come here already, dwelling here as monks. While the wards stand, they can be rooted out and thwarted-but if the wards fall, the entire might of Thultanthar can be hurled against us, and all the lore stored here lost in the fray. I have slipped through these wards many a time, and know their strength, if not all their nuances. I can hold these wards up, if anyone can.”

He brought himself to an abrupt halt, regarded them both, and said flatly, “That is why I am here.”

Their frowns told him they were considering his words, but no more.

So he smiled and asked gently, “So why, ladies fair, are ye here? Posing as monks of Candlekeep, and moving or hiding all of the books I’ve sought? Are ye hiding the word of Khelben from the disguised Shadovar within these walls? Or just hiding from the Realms, as war rages, ravaging it?”

The two sisters looked at each other. Then Alustriel tossed her head and told him, “While you mastered the natures of all who dwell in Faerûn, and how best to sway and cozen them, and set about doing that so very well, Khelben foresaw the Sundering, and set about preparing for it.”

She looked again at Laeral, who nodded, so she went on. “We have been monks here for more than a century, after arranging matters so the wider Realms thought us dead. Itching to act in matters large and small, yet keeping our silence and our secrets and learning the cold price of patience, to serve the greater cause. Making copies of the tomes here Khelben did not write, and sending them forth to other libraries, so that they might survive what is soon to come. Watching and waiting for the moment we must destroy Candlekeep.”

“What?”

“What name do the elves have for us, El?”

“What do ye mean, ‘destroy Candlekeep’?”

“What name do the elves have for the Moonstars, El?”

“Answer my-Tel’Teukiira.”

“Yes, and what is written in Amagal’s Tome about the Tel’Teukiira?”

El frowned. “That’s one of the books I’ve been seeking these past days, and cannot find. I read it just once, centuries ago, and in great haste, seeking words of power that could compel elder dragons before they could ravage three kingdoms. I don’t remember! So tell me: what is written in Amagal’s Tome about the Tel’Teukiira?”

“The Tel’Teukiira will save us from the Three Who Wait in Darkness, the Prefects, and ourselves.”

El gave them his best quizzical raised eyebrow. “Even so-called ‘true prophets’ get things plainly wrong, despite their habit of writing and speaking cryptically, for the gods are all too fallible. Ye’ve both lived long enough and seen enough to know that. Even if Amagal could see the future with clear precision-as even the gods cannot-how do ye know this is the time? And who precisely, for certain, are the Three Who Wait in Darkness, the Prefects, and ‘ourselves’?”

“As it happens, Amagal did not see the future,” Laeral said dryly. “He merely passed on a more ancient foretelling, purportedly uttered by Chauntea at her birthing, when Toril itself came to be-and Amagal mangled it while doing so. That older prophecy is thus: ‘When worlds are sundered once more, and Toril itself stands in peril, only the Tel’Teukiira can save us from the Three Who Wait in Darkness, the Prefects, and ourselves.’ ”

“I can guess that the Shadovar have something to do with the Three Who Wait, but who are the Prefects? And who could Chauntea-if it was the Allmother-have meant by ‘ourselves’? The gods?”

Both sisters shrugged.

El regarded them sourly. “All right, who did Khelben think ‘ourselves’ meant? And how did he-or the two of ye-come to conclude ye must destroy Candlekeep?”

“Do not think we have not debated this down the years, El,” Alustriel told him ruefully. “Confronting Khelben, when we still could, as fiercely as you are confronting us now.”

“More than once,” Laeral put in sadly, “I wasted time disputing when we were abed together. Time I would give almost anything to have back now.”

“We have argued it and argued it,” Alustriel added, “and asked Mystra as much as we dared, and pieced together every hint we could find in what all the gods have said-Jergal in particular, hinted much-and threw all we could learn at Khelben. And he stood fast.”

“So what, by the Lady’s Secrets, did he believe?”

“That ‘ourselves’ meant those of us alive at the time, and the follies and mistaken beliefs that will lead us astray. The Prefects were what the senior officers of Candlekeep were collectively called by the monks beneath them in rank, at its founding; a term that soon faded into disuse and was forgotten. And we agree with you that the Three Who Wait in Darkness are probably Shadovar-and are certainly agents of Shar, for she is ‘the Darkness.’ ”

Elminster nodded. “I find myself still waiting for a good reason Candlekeep must be destroyed. I have spent my life preserving lore so that the Art will not be forgotten, but flourish. If I am not to fall upon anyone seeking to smash this great storehouse of lore and destroy them utterly, the reason for my forbearance had better be good.”

“Candlekeep’s wards are the mightiest surviving wards on or under Toril. Myth Drannor’s mythal is the greatest extant mythal. They are the greatest sources of stored magical energy in all the Realms-and both must be destroyed to keep their energies from Shar, and Telamont Tanthul, her most capable agent.”

“Myth Drannor now, too? The mythal I helped raise so long ago, with so many dear to me who are now gone? Lus, Laer, have ye both gone mad?”

“We may well sound so, El, and believe me it grieves us to think of such great and lasting magics thrown down too … but hear us out.”

“My ears attend ye,” Elminster told them dryly. “Make it good.”

Laeral gave him a sigh, then a smile, and then the words, “The elves of Cormanthor are a proud and truly noble people, but that pride is what it has always been-their greatest weakness. Most of them can’t believe mere human arcanists, however skilled in sorcery, can defeat them. Yet they will never hold their city against what the Shadovar can muster against them. The monks in this great fortress around us are just as deluded; they trust in the wardings alone for defense. Telamont will seize the power here, then that of the mythal, and with it will tame the Weave and remake it into a true ‘Shadow Weave.’ And with that, Shar will finally become the greatest goddess she has so often boasted of being.”

Elminster lifted his head as if to say something, but Laeral raised a forefinger to forestall him and added, “With the Weave augmenting the Shadow Weave and controlled by it, Shar will have a Shadow Weave that is more than an echo of the Weave we have served and strengthened for so long-she will govern the world with her Shadow Weave, and will be able to transform it into what she seeks. Oblivion. The world we know will become an endless night of hunting and slaughter, with all order and lore destroyed-and Shar exulting in the continual loss of life and all history forgotten, only the hounds that serve her knowing what they destroyed, and keeping those secrets within the ranks of those who serve her. It will be eternal nightmare.”

“So you see,” Alustriel added, “we must destroy the great wards here, and the Last Mythal there, rather than let them fall into Telamont’s hands.”

El shook his head. “Ye deem the elves weak, thanks to their pride, yet spare Telamont the same judgment. He has pride and overconfidence enough for any score of archmages.”

“I know it will take some time to come around to seeing things as Khelben did,” Laeral added gently. “It took us years. Years I’m afraid you don’t have.”

“Ladies, I very much doubt there are enough years ahead for us all, for there to be enough to bring me to thinking the old stiffnec-the Blackstaff was right in this. The old saying about ‘defending the castle so fiercely that it was destroyed in the defending’ comes to mind. In short, I have not heard such utter madness since Khelben was alive.”

Laeral winced. “It has not been so long, El, that his death does not pain me. Please listen-”

“Ye please listen, the both of ye. Ye speak of destroying two of the greatest surviving magical treasures of our world, achievements that may never be replaced once they are gone, to say nothing of surpassed. Even if that vandalism means nothing to ye, consider the danger ye plunge all the Realms into if they are destroyed. Two great storehouses of active Art, brought down, will inevitably release such a flood of magical energies that the Weave would be torn to shreds. Every bit of it to fail would become wild magic, a spreading chaos that could well banish governable magic from the world. If ye thought the Spellplague was bad, imagine Toril and Abeir awash in unleashed and roiling power, yet with every last sentient being powerless to wield or steer any of it, because ‘magic’ as we know it has failed utterly. A second and greater Spellplague!”

Laeral shook her head and opened her mouth to speak, but El held up a forestalling finger and swept on.

“The two worlds will separate, aye, are sundering even now-and with the Weave gone, there will be nothing to safeguard any stability at all. Toril and Abeir were rocked by the first Spellplague, but what was left of the Weave still protected Toril then, like a tattered suit of armor. A suit, may I remind ye, that I have spent centuries strengthening and patching and fastening together ever more securely, which is why it survived at all when Mystra fell.”

Elminster started to pace in his agitation, waving his arms like an exasperated tutor. “Without any protection at all, order cannot hold! The raging chaos of magic will strike all the Art stored in items-paltry sparks, but there are thousands upon thousands of them! — and all that unbridled energy must go somewhere! If the Srinshee is right-and I believe she is-both worlds will most likely collapse into uncounted shards, with all life on them swept away in tumult and agony. Do ye not care about our world, and everyone in it? What price victory, if we all die-and the Realms with us? What sort of triumph is that?”

“That will not happen, Old Mage,” Alustriel snapped, “if we do as Khelben saw we must. You conjure dire fantasies, when you should face the truth. The Blackstaff studied this for centuries, and at first thought as you do, but then-”

“Made another of his misjudgments? The Lady knows I’ve made a generous share of grave mistakes, but Khelben made more of them, and stubbornly stood by what he’d decided, even after his folly became clear to all, longer than any mage not green and young I ever met. His stubbornness was his hallmark-”

“And his strength.” Laeral’s voice was as firm as a forge hammer striking iron. “Nor is this a contest of who’s more worthy or more ‘right.’ In this case, this most important case of all, Khelben studied longer and harder than any of us, and reluctantly came to this one conclusion, and we agree with him. And you yourself have spoken of how the Srinshee promised to return in Myth Drannor’s hour of need-so where is she, if that gravest hour of need is truly upon us?”

Alustriel spoke again, before Elminster could. “El, hear me: we have spent more than a century confined here, constraining our lives down to reading and writing and praying, to silence and holding back, to acting roles that chafe us, because we love the Realms too much to fail it. We will not be turned from this. The wards of Candlekeep and the mythal of Myth Drannor must be destroyed. Whether you stand with us or against us, this must be done.”

There were tears in Alustriel’s eyes now, and running down Laeral’s cheeks, but their lips were firm lines of determination.

He found his own throat closing in grief, as he asked roughly, “And if I stand against ye both, what then, old friends? Foster daughters?”

Laeral lifted her chin. “Choose wisely, El. If you are not with the Moonstars, you are against the Moonstars.”

El looked from one tear-wet face to the other, his face as sad as theirs as he used the Weave to spin down streamers of power from the mighty wards of Candlekeep, spiraling eel-like tongues of energy that became two cocoons of force to imprison Alustriel and Laeral.

He saw surprise in their faces-that became astonishment as they tried to command the wards against him, and discovered that his control overrode theirs.

He didn’t wait to see more. Not that he’d ever seen the sense of wasting time in gloating, when there was something very needful that had to be done very swiftly if all this wasn’t to end in disaster. He had to work a difficult spell of his own, and very quickly.

He got the incantation off, and the gestures, and it began. Half-seen movement in the air in front of him, the edges of fingers, darting and interweaving like a great school of fish swarming in the air. Ghostly hands, scores of them, disembodied and swirling in front of him in a shield of sorts.

The moment they were a little more tangible, he sent them racing at Alustriel and Laeral in their whirling, now tightening cocoons. Those streams of slapping, clutching, clawing hands should hamper any spellcastings they might attempt-and hold the two women fast if they managed to banish the cocoons.

They didn’t try. Trading glances, they chanted the same spell in unison.

And shattered the ceiling of the cavern so it plummeted with a thunderous roar.

Elminster didn’t bother to stare upward. He knew what he’d see. Tons of rock, hurtling to crash down on him.