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"About as subtle as an orc horde," Mystra had once termed these tactics, pouting prettily, and El knew she was right. Wherefore today he firmly took up his cloak, worked the powerful spell Azuth had given him that obliterated all traces or magical echoes of his visit, and left in the form of a shadow. The thoughtful shadow restored a few of the wards and traps in his wake before he slipped back out onto the street, inches distant from the back of a guard whose attention was on a gold coin that seemed to have fallen from the sky moments before. U
The cloaked, hawk-nosed figure had been gone from sight around a corner for exactly the time it took to draw in a single good, deep breath when a dark horse came trotting through the steady stream of walking folk and clopped to a halt in front of the guard.
That worthy looked up, raising an eyebrow in both query and challenge, to see a young, maroon-robed elf in a rich cloak peering down at the coin in the guard's weathered palm.
The guard closed his fingers around it hastily and said, "Aye? What d'you want, outlander?"
"Myth Dra
The guard flushed. "Paid to me fair and square, more like," he rumbled.
The elf nodded, his gaze now lingering long and considering on the overgrown crypt the guard was standing duty in front of. The Moondarks … that bastard house of dabbling mages. And all of them who'd found their way home to die now shared a stone tomb-house, such as humans favor. In good repair, by the looks of it, with its wards still up. It was closed up much too securely for inquisitive birds or scurrying squirrels to pluck up a gold coin and carry it outside the walls. His eyes narrowed, and his face grew as sharp as honed flint, causing the guard to warily raise his weapon and shrink back behind it.
Ilbryn Starym dropped the man a mirthless and absentminded smile and rode on toward the Stars and Sword.
Wizards who came to Westgate always stayed at the Sword, in hopes of being there when Alshinree wandered in and did her trance-dance. Alshinree was getting old and a bit gaunt, now, her dances weren't the affairs they'd once been, with the house crowded with hungrily staring men. Her dance, too, was usually just so much playacting and drunken mumbling … but sometimes, a little more often than once in a month, it happened. An entranced Alshinree uttered words of spells not known since Netheril fell, advice that might have come from the Lady of Mysteries herself, and detailed instructions as to the whereabouts, traps, and even contents of certain archmages' tombs, ruined schools of wizardry, sorcerous caches, and even long-forgotten abandoned temples to Mystra.
Bad things happened to mages who so much as spoke to Alshinree outside the Sword or who tried to coerce or pester her within its walls, so they contented themselves with booking rooms at the i
The hard looks thrown his way by every guard and many merchants he'd passed suddenly hit home, Ilbryn blinked, looked all around, and found that he was galloping his startled mount down the street, its hooves slipping and sliding on the cobbles. He reined in and settled the horse into a careful walk thereafter. The bright, sparkling spell-animated sign of the Stars and Sword loomed ahead, and the champion of Starym honor steered his mount through the bustling folk to... he hoped...some answers, or even the man he sought.
As he gathered the reins together in one hand to free the other for the bellpull that would summon hostelers to see to his horse, Ilbryn discovered that something he carried in a belt-pouch had found its way into his hand, and was now clenched there: a scrap of red cloth that had been part of the mantle of office of the Court Mage of Galadorna. Elminster's mantle.
The elf looked down at it, and although his hand remained rock steady, his handsome face slowly slipped into a stony, brooding mask. His eyes held such glittering menace that both hostelers recoiled and had to be coaxed back.
As he swung himself down from the saddle and reached for the handle of the Sword's finely carved front door, Ilbryn Starym smiled softly.
And as one of the hostelers put it, "That were worse than 'is glaring!"
Still smiling, Ilbryn put one hand...the one flickering with the risen radiance of a ready, deadly spell-behind his back, and with the other opened the door and went in.
The hostelers lingered, half-expecting to hear a terrific crash, or smoke, or even bodies hurled out through the windows … but their hoped-for entertainment never came.
Twelve: The Empty Throne
It must bother most wizards a lot that for all their spells, they can't seize immortality. Many try to become gods, but few succeed. For this, let us all be very thankful.
Sambrin Ulgrythyn, Lord Sage of Sammaresh
from The View From Stormwind Hill
published circa The Year of the Gate
Far to the east of Westgate, even as a smiling elf slipped into an i
It was a mist that sparkled and chimed as it went, moving purposefully through the trees. Sometimes it rose up into an almost humanoid, striding form, bulking tall, thick and strong, at other times it moved like an ever-leaping, undulating snake. No birds called in the shade around it, and nothing rustled in the dead leaves underfoot. Only its own whirling breezes stirred the creepers and tatters of hanging moss it wound its way through, silence ruled the forest it traversed.
This was no wonder, earlier chiming hungers had left not a creature alive in that part of the forest to witness its haste. The chiming mist had left the graveyard of the Frostfire Ba
The mist drifted along the dips and turns of that road, passing like eager smoke across crumbling stone bridges that took the road across rivulets, to the deep green place where the road ended … and the ruins began.
The lines of gigantic old trees flanking the overgrown road gave way to a litter of creeper-shrouded, sagging wagons and coaches. Beyond lay thickets, at their hearts overgrown mounds that had once been stables and cottages. Beyond the thickets rose shadow-tops so tall that their gloom choked away thickets and lay in endless shadow over the rotting ruin of a drawbridge across a deep, muddy cleft that had once been a moat... and the stone pillars or teeth within the moat, that had once been the stout buttresses of mostly fallen walls. Walls that had once frowned down on Faerun from a great height, formed a massive keep.
The long-fallen fortress was more forest and tumbled stone, now, than a building. The mist moved purposefully through the tangle of leaning trees and creepers that grew in its i
The mist came to a gently chiming halt in a chamber that had once been large and grand indeed. Gaps in its walls showed the forest just outside, but there was still a ceiling, and even furniture. A rotting-canopied bed larger than many stable stalls, stood with ornate gilded bedposts and cloth of gold glinting among the green mildew-fur of its bedding. Close by stood a lounge, canted over where one leg had broken, and beyond that several stools were enthusiastically growing mushrooms. A little way farther on, across the cracked marble floor, a peeling, man-high oval mirror stood beside a sagging row of wardrobes. Water was dripping down onto what had once been a grand table in another part of the room...and beyond it, in the darkest, best-roofed rear of the chamber, stood a ring-shaped parapet. Within the knee-high circular wall was only deeper darkness . .. and when the mist began to move, it headed straight for this well.