Ed Greenwood - The Herald

“You’re a couple, all right,” she murmured happily.

“We’re cooking enough for an army ,” Rune pointed out, chipping baked bread away from one door. “How can you be sure they’ll come?”

“I know them,” Storm replied. “Saving the world makes you hungry.”

And it was only one dropped loaf and one slopped soup cauldron later that the kitchen door opened without knock or warning, and two tall silver-haired women arrived.

“Luse! Laer! Wine yonder!” Storm greeted them, not leaving her pots.

Alustriel and Laeral smiled and waved at her, and Alustriel asked, “Anything we can help with?”

“Eating and drinking,” Storm told them, “ and settling your behinds down in the chairs that end of the table, out of the way.”

“Fair enough. Oh, we’ve brought along some friends,” Laeral announced, and stood aside to introduce, with a flourish that would have done credit to any herald, a bewildered-looking Lady Glathra Barcantle of Cormyr, with a spiderlike, human-headed thing -the former Royal Magician Vangerdahast-riding on her shoulder.

“Well,” it was telling Glathra rather testily, “ I think the Rune Lords are-oh.” It stared at everyone in the room, and blinked in surprise.

“Welcome!” Storm said with a smile, and then looked at Vangerdahast and added, “You should have come visiting more often down the years, Vangey. Affairs of state make more sense when discussed over broth-or something stronger-in a farmhouse kitchen.”

Vangerdahast bowed his head, looking a little abashed, but whatever reply he might have made was lost in the banging of the door.

It flew open with force enough to make Storm lay hand on the fireplace poker beside the cauldron she was paying most attention to, ready to hurl it-but through it lurched no foe, but a familiar bedraggled wizard.

Looking more exhausted than usual, if that was possible.

“Elminster!” Amarune exclaimed delightedly.

He gave her a smile that twinkled. “Well, now, that’s a pleasant change! Well met, dearest!”

The Old Mage blew Storm a kiss, gave Arclath a cheery wave, then nodded to Vangey and said, “Ao’s finished toying with us all, Abeir and Toril are apart and getting more so, the Sundering is done-and I believe I need a drink! Oh, and here’s a lady ’tis high time I spoke cordially with, rather than sparring over the safety and good governance of Cormyr with!”

Glathra, who’d said nothing at all and looked like she intended to go right on doing so, ducked her head and blushed.

Then Elminster turned to the two women who stood down at the far end of the table, flagons in their hands.

“El?” Alustriel asked tentatively.

“Luse! Laer!” Elminster rushed to them, spreading his arms wide, and they hastily set their flagons down and fell into his arms.

They rocked together for a few moments, murmuring things and chuckling, before El said briskly, “I perceive I seem to have arrived at the right time!”

“As usual,” Storm commented archly, waving a ladle at him.

“Lady fair,” he said gravely, “point ye not that thing at me!”

“Or you’ll … what ?” she challenged him, hands on hips and a mock glower settling onto her face.

“Or I’ll eat one last feast at thy board, burst of a surfeit of everything, and expire at last!” he replied, crossing the kitchen and sweeping her into his arms. “After all, I have a successor now!”

And he pointed at Amarune, who blinked back sudden tears as she reached out an imploring hand to him, fingers far too short to touch him from clear across the room. “ Don’t say that! I’m not ready for-for any of it. Yet … you’ve been meddling and fighting and striving for centuries! As those you love are born, live their lives, grow old, and die, again and again, leaving you alone at sunset, time after time. You must be so tired of it all!”

Storm and Elminster looked at her, their arms around each other. Then they regarded each other, nose to nose-and with a smile and a squeeze, Storm silently bade the last living prince of vanished Athalantar to make reply.

And he smiled back at his too-many-greats-granddaughter with a touch of sadness and a much larger measure of pride, and said, “Yes, dearest, oh yes, but don’t ye see? ’Tis what ye haven’t done that torments ye, in life. And it’s always been the love given me that sustains me-and ye still give it, all of ye. So I cannot stop, until I drop.”

“If you get any more poetic,” Alustriel murmured, “I’m going to gag.”

El chuckled. “Ye see? The love never ends.”

At that moment, there came a knock on the door. Two raps, gentle and widely spaced. “Now who might that be?” Arclath asked, drawing his sword.

El spun something swift and unseen from the Weave that anyone watching might have suspected was some sort of magical shield, and beat the young noble to the door, mainly because he was closest.

“Duth Braerogan from the next farm, quite likely,” Storm told them, looking up from a pot that was right at the stage where it shouldn’t be left alone, with no one to stir it. “He keeps a fairly good watch over the place, and I-”

Elminster opened the door, ready for anything.

And the room silently flooded with deep blue light shot through with a thousand thousand tiny, twinkling silver stars.

Those stars were coming from the eyes of a dark-haired, slender woman who stood almost shyly on the threshold.

“May I come in?” she whispered, but her voice held a deep thunder that set Arclath’s blood thrumming in his veins. He lowered his sword-it seemed to be shrouded in countless swarming stars-and stared.

“Well met,” the woman said to him, and as their eyes met something happened to Arclath. His heart sang, yes, but was he-? He was ! He was floating, drifting gently back from her, the soles of his boots no longer touching the ground.

“Oh, yes! Be welcome, Mother,” Storm said in a tremulous voice, as if she was on the verge of tears. “You are always welcome here.”

“Mother?” Amarune asked, bewildered.

Arclath looked back at her and saw happy tears streaming down the faces of all five Chosen in the room. Among them, Vangerdahast was frozen, openmouthed in dumbfounded awe-suddenly a spider-thing no longer, but a man again, dark robes and all, and looking down at himself and back up at the woman in the doorway and back down at himself again, in utter disbelief-and beside him, Glathra was out of her chair and on her knees, cowering.

It occurred to Arclath Delcastle that he should be kneeling too, if this was who he thought it was, but he was still drifting, unable to go to the floor. That didn’t stop him trying.

“An inherited title I still feel unworthy of,” the woman answered Rune, and seemed to flow into the room rather than walking. “I am Mystra. Yes, that Mystra. And I’ve come to give my deepest thanks to all of you-and to be who I used to be for a little while, if you’ll let me.”

Her eyes twinkled as she looked at Storm. “You see, I’ve never forgotten your cooking.”

“So You’ll be wanting me to stick around and cook a meal or two for You every century or so?” the Bard of Shadowdale asked, her silver tresses stirring around her shoulders like the tails of so many contented cats.

“Please,” the goddess of magic said simply, and the room fairly crackled with benevolent power.

“Not without my El,” Storm replied gently, staring into Mystra’s eyes.

Whereupon the goddess turned to Elminster, who still stood by the door, his hand raised and surrounded by the faint shimmering of his shield. In sudden silence, everyone else looked at him too.