Ed Greenwood - The Herald

“Indeed,” the Srinshee agreed. “And have not all of us been all of those things, betimes? Yet let us not be those things today. Too much rides on victory. Which is why I’ve come back. Myth Drannor stands imperiled, so I am here.”

Laeral regarded her unsmilingly. “You truly believe the city can be saved?”

The Srinshee shrugged. “Buildings are just that-buildings. The community has already been lost, turned from lives unfolding freely into waging constant war … but the people can be saved, some of them, to return and refound and rebuild once this threat is past. I’m here to salvage what Tel’Quess I can, and friends to the elves too. I came back because I could not bear to see it all be lost, while I did nothing. You three have brought me hope; with your meddling, perhaps Shar and the Shadovar who serve her, and Larloch who seeks to exalt himself, shall not prevail.”

She looked into their eyes, one after another, and then added, “Now enough grand words. El, yield me up some more monsters!”

And she plunged right through his eyes into his mind, plucking at the minds of the two silver-haired sisters as she passed, and dragging them down and into the warm and familiar murk of Elminster’s busy mind along with her. Images flashed past them, one melting through another with bewildering rapidity, some half familiar, some very strange. El steered the racing meteor that was the Srinshee, taking her down, down to where runes glowed and wrote themselves over and over in his remembrances, secret words were whispered, hiding places under stones and behind concealing spells were revealed, and-a mind flayer came striding.

It had baleful eyes, as it reached out its tentacles in another place and another time, uncoiling to stab into both Elminster’s ears, to feed-but was instead ensnared in his waiting trap, stiffening in dismayed disbelief as its intrusion plunged into waiting magic meant to hook it alone, setting mental barbs deep so that to tear away would be to lose the greater part of its intellect. It tried to tear free anyway, tasting terror for the first occasion in a long time, but the leaking chaos washing across its thoughts, that lessened it and bewildered it, left it powerless to resist the tightening spell … and so it was that the illithid Qhelaraxxalarr was frozen, its mind whirling in an endless loop, its muscles locked. Shoved into a closet, hooded, and as the endless darkness began, sunk into a torpor by a chilling spell it had never felt before, even as it heard the thudding echoes of the closet being boarded up, blows that seemed to come from a vast distance, and that were followed by fainter hammerings that went on for a much longer time, as a false wall was built in front of the closet.

“Perfect,” the Srinshee decreed. “Mind-wounded beyond recovery, but goaded by fear and anger into the feeding hunger. It won’t last long, the moment the mercenaries see what’s in their midst and any Shadovar with them decree it not of their recruiting.” She whirled it away as Laeral and Alustriel worked busily on lifting Elminster’s spells, and it was gone.

“Next!” she commanded briskly.

“How about another dragon? Only a little one, but deadly. It can’t fly, having no wings-nor does it have a breath weapon-both thanks to arcanists of Thultanthar, as it happens, and their eagerness to experiment on dragonkind. But it can take human shape, and once it escaped the arcanists and went on a slaying spree, slaughtering any human mage it could find. ’Ware the poisonous stinging tail.”

“You do have quite the menagerie, don’t you?”

And so the unleashing went on, El groaning at the upheaval in his memories as long-forgotten oaths and sealing spells and bindings were dredged up.

“Hurts,” he gasped several times, and by the time the last bound creature-a one-armed lich that wielded some very creative magics- was set among an encampment of the besiegers, El was staggering in a murk of his own making, lost to the world.

When he ran into his third tree, gentle but firm arms embraced him and sat him down, and from somewhere nearby he heard Alustriel murmur, “He’s not doing well. A little silver fire?”

“ No ,” the Srinshee said emphatically. “That’ll draw arcanists galore down on us, and quite likely Larloch too. No, just let me …”

She murmured something, and cool, blessed relief flooded through Elminster’s roiling thoughts like dappled sunlight dancing through leaves and falling through high windows onto the dark floor of his mind.

He was barely aware that he was being lifted and carried, by Laeral and Alustriel, who grunted and staggered from time to time under his dead weight and the awkwardness of conveying him over tree roots and the uneven forest floor. More than once, he felt a magical force thrust up beneath him out of nowhere, as if the air had suddenly become a firm and solid hand, to hold him up over the roughest stretches, or where the trees stood so thick and close that he had to be turned on his side and slid through and around boughs and trunks, to …

A place where he started to tingle all over. A Weave anchor!

He was propped against a tree trunk-a shadowtop, by the feel of the bark, and as large across as the wall of a good-sized cottage-and left there, as Laeral and Alustriel and the Srinshee moved to form a box, with each of them and himself as a corner. The magic they worked then roused his mind out of the Srinshee’s healing mist, into full awareness of the forest around him again, and of what they were doing.

Destroying a Weave anchor, that was also one of the places the mythal of Myth Drannor was rooted. It was like shifting a downspout while storm rain was racing down it, rain that tugged at him and tore a little of his essence away.

Shocking him utterly awake. He blinked and groaned.

“Get up!” The Srinshee was shoving at his chest and armpits, trying to make him stand from where he’d slumped down the tree trunk. “ Up ! The sooner you’re on your feet and able to think, the sooner I can be fighting! I can win you more time by defending my city than helping you three do away with anchors-which must be done with care, remember, or the Weave will be lost!”

“And Mystra,” Alustriel warned.

“Not necessarily. That’s the foremost reason Mystra is hiding from the wider world-to withdraw herself from the Weave as much as possible. She told me so, and said her other important reason is to not provoke Shar into taking a hand openly-lest the Dark Goddess sweep the most important mortals who oppose her off the board before we have a chance to play.”

“This isn’t a game ,” Laeral flared.

The Srinshee turned to her. “Isn’t it? To Shar, it certainly is. Remember that. She doesn’t want to destroy the prize to win it, or she’d have done so long ago. Playing the game is what sustains her, not winning.”

The sisters both stared at her, openmouthed, as Elminster tried to remember how to nod. And managed it with some satisfaction.

“After she destroys or enthralls all mortals,” the Srinshee added, almost fiercely, “where will she gain the loss, forgetfulness, and oblivion she feeds upon? Did you never ponder why the world hadn’t been destroyed by the gods who feed on destruction long before any of us could have been born? It never ends-it’s not meant to. If we defeat Shar’s pawns now, she’ll withdraw and seduce new ones and scheme anew. If you think of her thus, and talk not of ‘forever’ and other absolutes, it becomes easier to bear-and easier to correctly foresee what any deity will do. Even the mad ones.”

“Especially the mad ones,” Elminster muttered.

“Which, from the point of view of most crofters and shopkeepers, is every last one of them,” Laeral said wryly.