Ed Greenwood - The Herald

And as they drifted on their unhurried journeys, they darkened and crumbled as their magic was drained from them, and the vivid and crackling blue-white auras surrounding the slumping items and becoming bright lines of force that stabbed at the arms of the throne. And as those arms shone an ominous blue beneath the clenched fingers of the man seated on the throne, and stray bolts and tendrils of unleashed force snarled up his arms, item after item became drifting black ashes … that then tumbled into powder, and in time became finer dust.

The Most High of Thultanthar sat on his throne like a statue; stone faced, his eyes closed, patiently brooding. Letting the magic build within him.

When all the circling items were gone, Telamont Tanthul opened his eyes. They had become two blue-white stars.

He crooked a finger, and the air before him came alive with the bright and moving hues of a scrying scene that filled the room from wall to wall, reflecting off the polished marble.

The air above a vast green forest was filled with crisscrossing, shifting, racing lines of bright force that formed an impossibly complex and ever changing weaving-the Weave, made visible, and beneath it …

A panorama of a few desperate elves in shining armor, battling to protect the flickering blue upright oval of a portal on a terrace between two tall, fair, slender-towered buildings. All around them were their foes, human mercenaries in motley armor who pressed inexorably forward over their own dead, a dozen of them to replace each of their fellows who fell, a score to drag aside the limp dead to keep them from becoming walls the elves could defend.

Myth Drannor had all but fallen-and now this.

“No!” Telamont Tanthul spat suddenly, bringing one hand down on the arm of the throne in a fist. “Never, lich! No Tanthul shall serve the likes of you!”

He sprang to his feet and flung his arms wide, exulting in the power now surging through him. “I shall destroy you, dead wizard!”

The doors of the room boomed open, and magic howled through them, summoned from all over the city.

Draining wards and craftings that should not be drained, but … there comes a time for strong measures, and it was here.

The High Prince of Thultanthar laughed wildly as more and more power flooded into him.

The shadow of the descending city loomed larger and larger above the dwindling section of central Myth Drannor the elves still commanded, blotting out the sunlight.

Storm saw something flying like a vengeful arrow. It plunged into the mercenaries waiting to get at her and the rest of the surviving elves, opening a great furrow through the startled warriors. It was an elf whose sapphire-blue hair trailed behind her like a comet as she flashed through mercenaries, slicing as she went.

All the way to Storm, where she hissed, “Get all the Tel’Quess out of here! Now !”

And she was gone, racing away through clanging steel and more reeling, falling warriors.

Storm felled four foes with as many vicious slashes, then turned and sprinted to the coronal.

“Get them out!” she screamed. “Every last one of your people! Now !”

And she lunged forward to strike down the mercenaries hacking at the coronal and at Fflar beside her, to give them both time to think. They looked at her, then up at Thultanthar darkening the sky-and started shouting orders, directing a fighting withdrawal through the portal.

Storm whirled away from them, thrust an elbow into the thrumming magic that outlined the portal, and called on the Weave.

It flung her through the forest in the direction she desired, over the heads of the mercenaries, to land in a corpse-strewn courtyard that the elves had yielded a day ago. Where a spell had just sent lightning lashing through the rearmost mercenaries.

Storm ran for its source.

Amarune Whitewave, with Lord Arclath Delcastle standing like a bodyguard in front of her, sword ready. They both gaped at her.

“Well met!” she greeted them, still sprinting hard. “You two are as blithely disobedient as I expected you to be. What? Why the astonishment? Haven’t you ever seen a Chosen of Mystra who’s been bathing all day in blood before?”

“Storm!” Rune’s stare was anxious. “Where are you headed?”

“This way, and I need you both with me! Come!”

Some of the rearmost mercenaries were turning now, and running toward them.

Amarune and Arclath glanced at them, then back at Storm. Who spread her arms and gathered them in. “Come on !”

More of the besiegers were running now, and the sky was growing dimmer overhead, the floating city lower and nearer.

“Where’re we headed?” Rune gasped. “A portal?”

“No!” Storm panted. “No magic! Want to be far away from all magic, when-”

The flash of blinding, deep blue light from behind them came with a shock wave that lifted every last running being-not to mention shrubs and sapling-and flung them onward.

“Noooo!” everyone heard two voices shout, out of different directions in the empty air: Telamont Tanthul and the archlich Larloch, united in dismay.

Yes , another voice replied fiercely, out of the heart of the light. I, the Srinshee, have made my choice, so that my people shall live. In a Realms not bound to tyrants of darkness. So whenever you smile into the fresh winds of freedom, remember me .

In a dark corner of the exclusive upper room in the Memories of Queen Fee, the most fashionable and expensive club of the clubs that overlooked the great Promenade in Suzail, a tall and darkly handsome man suddenly stood bolt upright. His surge upset goblets and tallglasses in profusion, not to mention a side table bristling with expensively filled decanters. Nobles exclaimed in exasperated irritation.

“Dolt!”

“What’s got into you? Have a care, man!”

“Such a waste ! Sirrah, I’m talking to you!”

Manshoon ignored them all. His eyes were wide, not seeing the room around him, but struggling to far scry an elf city far away across a mountain range-and failing. His magic was failing him.

“Something’s happening,” he snapped, still struggling. “Great power-”

As everyone stared, he cried out in pain, blue light flashed from his eyes in actual spurts of flame, and he collapsed across the table.

Mirt deftly whisked his own drink safely out of the way, regarded the senseless man almost in his lap, and muttered, “Never liked wizards. Damned excitable idiots. Swords now, and sly tongues … with them, I know where I stand.”

There were suddenly armed and uniformed men in the room, peering around, hands on sword hilts. A Purple Dragon patrol.

Noble lords of Cormyr looked up from their drinks to regard the Dragons sourly. “Even here ?” one of them rumbled. “Aren’t there murders you could be solving? Thieves to catch?”

“We got a report that the wanted wizard called Manshoon was here,” the leader of the patrol snapped.

“A man claiming to be Manshoon, aye,” another noble replied, pointing at the senseless man draped across the table. “Me, I think he was just trying to get out of paying for his drinks.”

The Dragon officer looked at Mirt, who growled, “I’ll cover his owing. And stand all of you yer favorite slake too. Now go put yer love of country to better use.”

Out of the blue light, a face swam. The Srinshee.

She blew Elminster a kiss and said tenderly into his mind Farewell, old friend .

Then the face exploded into a racing blue flame that stabbed across the air between them and coursed into El, imparting such raging power that it lifted him a few feet into the air-sitting on nothing, Alustriel and Laeral clinging to him and elevated with him-and made every hair on his body stand out stiffly, his eyes become spitting blue flames.