Ed Greenwood - The Herald

“Teleport,” Rune read aloud, over his shoulder, thankful she could move with swift silence when she wanted to. She snaked her arm under his and deftly snatched the tube out of Arclath’s fingers. “We’ll be needing this.”

Arclath grinned, but also crooked an eyebrow. “Can you pull off a spell like that?”

Amarune gave him her best cold glare. Under its weight, he added hastily and falteringly, “I mean-so powerful, need practice, wizards of much experience, usually …”

“I am Elminster’s heir. His new Chosen One,” Rune reminded him icily. “I can do anything .”

Her man decided it was his turn to tender a withering look.

Rune smiled wryly, but didn’t blush. “Magically, that is,” she admitted, “and in all this spell chaos, perhaps as well as any caster can.”

She lifted her chin in determination. “If I have to, I have to. There is no ‘fail,’ or we all fail.”

Arclath shook his head, smiling at her in obvious admiration.

“Stop mooning over me and hand me that crystal ball,” Rune snapped. “And don’t drop it.”

Arclath put it into her hands with exaggerated care. “You’ve used one before, of course?” he asked, as gently as any deferential servant.

“You know I haven’t,” she flared. “Stop trying to be helpful and-and eat some radishes!”

And she set the sphere-gods, but it was heavy, far heavier than she’d expected-on the table on its swaddling cloth that she tugged into a ring around it.

That did nothing at all to stop the crystal rolling. The hand-carved and well-worn tabletop was a little less than level. She put out a hand to pin the sphere in place, but sighed. She couldn’t use it while holding it, could she?

Without a word, Arclath reached into the box, brought out a thick slab of wood with a bowl-shaped depression sculpted into it, and set the sphere into this rest that had obviously been made for it.

Amarune thanked him with a grimace, flung her arms wide to clear her head, and leaned forward to peer into the empty, colorless depths of the crystal.

Not empty, no, there was something there after all … stirring …

She had to focus on people-well, Storm, of course-or places. That is, memorable fixtures that sat in one spot unmoving, like trees. The problem with people, she half remembered something Elminster had mentioned in passing, was that they moved, and had thoughts of their own, and so were hard to “settle on.”

So it was with Storm. To call to her to mind was to see Rune’s own memories, of Storm turning to smile, Storm speaking sharply, Storm looking impish as her hair reared up like a snake about to strike, Storm … Rune sighed. She could call Storm to mind vividly enough, but her parade of memories did nothing at all to the crystal.

So, then, places, or rather, things in places. That distinctive rotten stump, the one the size of a large oval dining table that Arclath had scrambled over to …

She could remember it, all right, and something stirred in the crystal, its heart going milk white, but then her sharpening concentration veered , as if she was on a racing horse that decided on its own to turn sharply to the right.

Well, then, that sapling she’d put her hand on, to catch her breath, after … no, the same thing was happening. Veering to the left this time, mind, but …

Something was blocking her.

Oh.

The mythal.

Of course.

So, focus on something outside the mythal. Downdragon Tor.

And the milky hue in the depths of the crystal spun, winked, flashed, and Rune was seeing the same view she and Arclath had enjoyed upon their arrival there. Just like that.

Not by night and moonlit, this time, but the same vast carpet of green treetops, spread out before her and stretching into the misty distance.

A bird flew past, startling her. This was no still picture; she was seeing Downdragon as it was right now.

Nice, but she needed something nearer the siege. If the mythal was weakening as badly as she’d feared it was, she might be able to use trees and ridges she’d glimpsed while they were fighting in the forest. Wait, that dead, leafless duskwood, silhouetted against the bit of sky that had gone orange from the Shadovar spell … yes …

Yes! There it was, in the crystal! With drifting smoke from some campfires beyond it, the scene in the crystal moving and alive … which should mean she could look at something-those two dark, entwined trees-at the far left of what she was seeing, make them the center of her view, then look left again, and so face Myth Drannor.

Or what was left of it.

She’d half expected to see a milky shroud blocking any clear view of the city, but there was nothing like that. Just scorched towers and splintered and smoldering trees and a few still-beautiful, leaping bridges arcing between them, cascading gardens of flowing water and lush, spreading plants-and corpses. Everywhere the dead, heaped and strewn and being trodden underfoot by hurrying still-alive elves in blood-besmirched armor, and inexorably tramping mercenaries. Some bridges were broken, abrupt jagged ends thrusting out into empty air, and others trailed what had seemed at first glance to be creeping vines, but that Rune now saw were dangling bodies.

The besieging Shadovar forces were tightening their grip, the exhausted elf defenders ceding more and more of their city-which was being hurled down by the spells of arcanists, tower by tower and bridge by bridge crashing to the forest floor.

And just there , Rune saw, was the lashing tail of an angry dragon that was crawling around, seemingly unable to fly and obviously seething with rage!

“We have to be there,” she told Arclath. “Every last sword and spell is needed. If I could somehow snatch up all the Purple Dragons on duty in Cormyr right now and set them down in the heart of that siege, I’d do it.” She turned to give her beloved a hard look. “But I can’t, so you’ll have to be all of them.”

“Lady,” her lord replied, eyes bright with unshed tears, “command me.”

“We go back to Myth Drannor. Now.”

Arclath nodded, and then spoke like an imperious noble. “Use the jakes first,” he ordered briskly. “Both of us. Then finish this soup. We don’t know when we’ll next-”

“Now I know how the endlessly annoying nobles of Cormyr continue to lord it over the Forest Kingdom,” Amarune snapped, smiling despite herself. “They always finish their soup.”

Arclath bowed low, indicating the garderobe door with a courtly flourish. Then he held it open for her.

She lifted her chin, for all the world as if she’d been born noble, and in one of the haughtiest houses at that, and went in, reading the teleport scroll to herself.

He closed the door behind her, regarded its dark and polished wood, and murmured, “All gods bear witness, I love you, Rune. Was ever a man so fortunate as I?”

“Yes,” a ghostly voice answered him, from somewhere behind him in the room.

Arclath spun around, sword half out, staring everywhere, shocked into silence.

The voice-gentle and low, coming out of nowhere, a woman’s tones-added, “Yet lovers are so easily lost. Treasure every moment you have left together.”

“Who-who are you?” he asked, sword out as he peered around, trying to see where the voice was coming from.

“Once, I was Syluné. Eldest of the Seven. They called me the Witch of Shadowdale. Now I am but an echo in the Weave. Your Amarune is doing the right thing, young lord of Cormyr. May victory be yours.” The voice faded steadily as it spoke, and by that last victory wish, Arclath could hear it no more.

The garderobe door swung open. Amarune peered out, frowning. “Who were you talking to?”