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If gods were going to come calling, he didn't want to be standing there unarmed.
"Mystra is dead!" the Darklady declared exultantly. "Her priests find their spells to be but flickering things, and mages study and find no power behind their words. Magic is now ours alone to command...ours to control!"
The purple flames that raged in the brazier before her cast strange lights on her face as she raised eyes that were very large and dark to gaze at them all. Around the flames sat her eager audience: the six priests of the Dark Lady who'd agreed to work as wizards, harnessing for their spells the power of what had already become known in the temple as the Secret in the Sphere. With them she could make the House of Holy Night the mightiest temple of Shar in all Faerun...and the faith of the Nightbringer the most powerful in all Toril. It might not even take long.
"Most loyal Dreadspells," the high priestess told them, "you have a great opportunity to win the favor of Shar, and power for yourselves. Go forth into Faerun and seek out the most capable mages and the largest holds of magic. Slay at will, and seize all you can. Bring back tomes, rare things, and anything that bears the tiniest glow of magic. You must slay any of those servants of Mystra called the Chosen if you meet with them. We here shall work most diligently with our spells to try to find them for you."
"Your Darkness?" one of the wizards asked hesitantly.
"Yes, Dread Brother Elryn?" Darklady Avroana's voice was silken, a clear warning to all that anyone who dared to interrupt her had better have a very good reason for doing so...or she'd soon give them one.
"My work involves farscrying our agents in Westgate," Elryn said quickly, "and rumor now abroad in that city speaks of many recent sightings of a Chosen in the vicinity of Starmantle ... something about going into a 'Dead Place'..."
“I, too, have heard such tidings," the Darklady agreed eagerly. "My thanks for giving us a location, Elryn. All of you shall go there immediately...and there begin your holy task. Thrust your hands into the flames...oh, and most loyal Dreadspells, bear in mind that we can see and hear you always."
Six faces paled...and six hands were reluctantly extended into the flames. Darklady Avroana laughed delightedly at their fear and let them burn for a few moments ere she said the words that teleported them all elsewhere.
It was very peaceful in the woods around the shrine...and, since the killings had begun and fear had driven folks away, very quiet.
Most days Uldus Blackram was alone on his knees before the stone block, halfheartedly lashing himself a few times...gently, so as not to make much noise...and whispering prayers to the Nightsinger.
The shrine had been founded so nicely, consecrated with blood and a wild ritual that still made Uldus blush to remember it. Now there were no black-robed ladies to dance and whirl barefoot around the horned block and no one to lead him in the half-remembered prayers ... so he did a lot of just thanking Shar for keeping him alive on his stealthy visits to the woods. He hoped she'd forgive him for not coming at night anymore.
"May your darkness keep me safe from the Slayer," Uldus breathed, his lips almost touching the dark stone. "May you guide me to power and exultation over mine enemies, and make of me a strong sword to cut where you need things cut, and slash where it is your will to slash. Oh, most holy Mistress of the Night, hear my prayer, the beseeching of your most loyal servant, Uldus Blackram. Shar, hear my prayer. Shar, answer my prayer. Shar, heed m..."
"Done, Uldus," said a voice from above him, crisply.
Uldus Blackram managed to strike his head on the altar, somersault over backward to get a good four paces away, and get to his feet all in one blurred flurry of movement.
When he froze, half turned to flee and panting hard, he was looking back at six bald-headed men in black and purple robes, standing in a semicircle around the altar facing him, with faint amusement on their faces.
"Lords of the Lady?" Uldus gasped. "Have my prayers been answered at last?"
"Uldus," the oldest of them said pleasantly, stepping forward, "they have. At last. Moreover, a fitting reward has been chosen for you. You're going to guide us into the Dead Place!"
"P-praise Shar!" Uldus replied, rolling his eyes wildly upward as he toppled to the turf in a dead faint.
"Revive him," Elryn commanded, not bothering to keep the contempt from his face or voice. "To think that such as this worship the Most Holy Lady of Loss."
"Well," one of the other wizards commented, bending over the fallen Uldus, "we all have to start somewhere."
The glowing spellsphere orbited the throne at an almost lazy pace. Saeraede gave it only casual attention, absorbed as she was in sending images of her peering self out into the trees to lure this bold Elminster back to her castle.
Aye, let us gently tease this fittingly powerful and somewhat attractive mage hence.
Yet the news was clear enough, from all the mages she covertly farscried. Word of the death of Mystra was spreading like wildfire, spells were going wild all over Faerun, mages were shutting themselves up in towers before grudge-holding commoners could get to them... or tarrying too long, and getting caught on the ends of pitchforks in a dozen realms, and on and on.
It was time to move at last and make Saeraede Lyonora once more a name to be feared!
Abruptly something tore through one of her images. Saeraede sat up with a frown, and peered, trying to find out what it had been. The spellsphere abruptly lost its scene of city spires and flapping griffon wings beneath armored riders and acquired the dappled gloom of the forest above her. A forest that held a crouching Elminster, several of her floating faces, and...
Arrows snarled through her conjured visage and the dead leaves beyond, to thud into the forest loam and send Elminster scrambling around the other side of a tree.
Arrows?
"Damned adventurers!" she roared, her cry ringing back to her off the cavern roof, and sprang up from the throne. The spellsphere winked out as it fell, the radiance around the stone seat faded...but she was already whirling up the shaft, her eyes spitting flames of mage-fire. Were a bunch of blundering sword swingers going to shatter her long-nursed plans now?
The fittingly powerful and somewhat attractive Elminster boldly dodged another arrow, hurling himself on his face in wet moss and dead leaves as another dark shaft whined past his ear like an angry hornet and fetched up in the trunk of a nearby hiexel with a very solid thunk.
El scrambled up, drawing breath for a curse, and flung himself right back down on his face again. A second shaft hummed past low overhead, joining the first.
The hiexel didn't look to be enjoying these visitations too much, but Elminster hadn't time to survey its sadness...or do anything else but charge to his feet, leap over a fallen tree, and whirl around behind its rotting trunk. He bobbed up into view right away, betting that the two archers wouldn't have had time to put fresh arrows to their strings just yet. He had to see them.
Ah! There! He loosed a stream of magic missiles at one, then ducked down again, hearing the approaching thud of booted feet ru
It was time to get gone and be blessed quick about it!
He sprinted away, downhill and dodging from side to side, hearing crashing in his wake that heralded the coming of someone large, heavy, armored, and sword-waving. He didn't stop to exchange pleasantries, but whirled around a tree to let the grizzled armsman have some magic missiles full in the face. The man's head jerked back, wisps of smoke burst from his mouth and eyes, and he ran on blindly for another dozen paces before stumbling and crashing to the ground, dead or senseless.