Ed Greenwood - The Herald

Vattick waved to his twin as if he was directing him to a seat at a feast table-and Mattick strode forward with a smile whose malice would have done credit to any ruthless wolf, and unleashed some of the magic he’d drained from the crypts of Myth Drannor.

His ravening magical fire snarled around in a great arc to stab at the undead guardian from behind.

It backed away hastily to avoid being caught between two destroying spells at once-but the doors it was bound to guard were all too near, robbing it of space enough to flee into.

Its blue glow seemed to catch fire, going red and emerald green and then boiling up inky black-until it managed some sort of more powerful warding, and forced the princes’ contemptuously hurled magics back.

That was when the arcanist dared to step forward and add his spell to the fray, a careful casting that shattered the warding, consuming itself in doing so.

The spells the twin princes had cast crashed in on the guardian from either side-and it winked out of visibility, letting the spells crash together and roil angrily in midair.

When they were spent, the last force rolling away from their meeting to strike the walls and rebound, like a wave striking a rocky shore, the guardian faded back into visibility-much closer to the three Shadovar than it had been before.

Mattick spat a curse and Vattick ducked hastily aside as he worked a spell, but the baelnorn had guarded this spot for centuries, and had made some preparations. It spread hands that pulsed with blue fire-and flat, sharp-edged stones burst free of the walls all around and whirled at the human trio like whirling blades.

Scores of stones, a volley that Mattick and Vattick flung themselves to the floor to try to survive, arms cradling their heads.

The arcanist wasn’t swift enough in joining them. He staggered, his skull shattered and his arms and ribs breaking with sickening thuds under the barrage of piercing stone … and then he fell over backward, his throat crushed and his head lolling limply.

The stones flashed through the air with unabated force, ricocheting off one another and the walls amid deafening krrracks and sprays of small shards as one after another broke apart. They flashed through the baelnorn without doing it any harm, but the two groaning, crawling princes of Thultanthar weren’t so lucky.

Vattick finally managed to cast something that flung all the stones at the ceiling, then sent them racing at the floor, and then back at the ceiling again. At each thunderous meeting of hurtling stone with immoveable floor or ceiling, more shatterings spat clouds of curling dust and sprays of pebble-like shards everywhere.

And then, at last, it was done, and Mattick and Vattick surged painfully to their feet, teeth clenched, and advanced on the baelnorn.

Who gave them a serene smile, and worked the same magic again.

This time, Mattick-who’d half suspected such a tactic, for all his snarling rage-had enough warning to work a strong ward shield. Vattick’s went up more slowly, but protected him against the worst whirling shards-and when the second stone storm died away, he did something that caught the baelnorn by surprise.

He gave his own ward shield a slicing edge of pure force, and slashed the undead guardian with it, as if it was a great drover’s whip.

Causing the baelnorn to waver, leaking blue fire in all directions and reeling back-right into Mattick’s flames of the sun spell, that made its undeath burn like a pyre.

It blazed up with a sudden roar, and was gone before the two princes could draw another breath.

Mattick and Vattick regarded each other sourly over the last wisps of the vanishing baelnorn. They were both bruised, cut, and bleeding, their contempt for elves gone and anger in its place.

“You look like an arcanist who’s just won his first spell duel by sheer luck,” Mattick panted.

Vattick nodded grimly, and spent some of the elven magic they’d drained on a healing that left him gasping, trembling, and leaking blue fire from his dozens of cuts-but standing straighter and freed from pain when it was done.

Mattick did the same thing. Then they both looked back at the sprawled corpse of the last arcanist, with his shattered hands dangling from his splintered wrists, shrugged in unison, and turned to the now-unguarded doors of House Alavalae. Two rampant pegasi faced each other, wings and hooves raised, but neither of the twin princes was in the mood to appreciate skilled elven sculpting.

They each flung out a hand and sent blasting blue fire at the doors. The stone shuddered, wavered, and swung open a trifle.

Vattick sidestepped as he advanced, and sent another spell against the now-exposed lip of one of the doors, driving it fully open with a heavy grinding rumble.

Revealing a line-no, a wall -of blue fire in the dim interior of the crypt. Literally heaps of magic.

“Ah,” Mattick purred, striding eagerly forward, “ that’s more like it.”

Vattick hastened too. Only for the blue fire to fall away like a cascade of spilled water, revealing the grim-faced Coronal of Myth Drannor flanked by a quartet of elf mages.

Without wasting a word on greeting, parley, or challenge, they all hurled ravening spells into the faces of the twin princes of Shade.

The purple-eyed face hanging in the darkness was almost as large as the wall Telamont could no longer see behind it, and was wreathed in restlessly whipping and coiling black tresses like the tentacles of the giant octopi sometimes called “the Devourers of the Deeps.” Shar’s choice to give that face the features of one of Telamont’s first loves, dead and gone centuries ago, was merely her usual cruelty; that she’d chosen to manifest in person to speak to him rather than her usual mindspeech in his head was a measure of her fury. Even her nimbus of awful darkness wasn’t as bone chilling as usual, thanks to the warmth of her anger.

“Both of your agents have failed,” the goddess told her servant coldly. “For all their training, they accomplished little. So now, amuse me: try to justify your failure in Candlekeep.”

“I cannot justify, Mistress of the Night,” Telamont said swiftly, “but I can explain. Even without Maerandor, our agents among the Avowed could, I believe, have accomplished what we intended and overcome our enemies among the monks, had not an unforeseen power moved against us.”

“The meddler Elminster was not unforeseen,” Shar snapped. “He is always present, at nigh every great play of power in Toril, outside of Thay, these last four centuries. Such is the chaos he wreaks that I never send servitors directly against him, for time and again he furthers discord, and visits loss, despair, and destruction on many, better than those sworn to me . Prate not to me of Elminster.”

Telamont Tanthul dared to raise his voice to his goddess. “I did not presume to blame Elminster, and do not. By ‘unforeseen power,’ I meant the one called Larloch. The Last Chosen of Mystryl.”

“Who has never deserved that title, but let it pass. Why did you not foresee his involvement? I expected it.”

“I, too, anticipated that he would take a hand-but I foresaw that he’d work through his servitor liches, to seize what books and items of magic could be stolen amid the chaos, as he’s reported to have often done in the past. I had no idea he’d try to seize the power of the wards of Candlekeep for his own, to share the folly of the most crazed arcanists of Netheril and try to make himself into a god!”

“The wards of Candlekeep might make a toad or a pixie a guardian demigod of Candlekeep, but no more.”

Telamont shook his head. “Larloch goes now to Myth Drannor, or is there already, seeking to snatch its mythal. With that much power, he seeks to remake the Weave and root it in himself, and so ascend.”