Steven Schend: Blackstaff

Khelben had paused a moment, his eyes closed as he conferred with Tsarra inside the kiira. He focused his intentions and concentration to the magic ahead of them. After a breath or three, he exhaled, stretched, and approached Laeral. He kissed her deeply on the lips, placed one hand over her abdomen, and gave her some of his silver fire for her protection. When she started to ask him a question, he put a hand to her mouth and backed away. He bowed before her, arms outstretched. She reached into her robes and pulled the gnarled, tangled blackstaff of Miyeritar from its extradimensional pocket. Blue sparks crackled among the tangle of roots on its apex. Laeral laid the staff across Khelben's palms. Khelben centered himself at the dead reckoning of the Grasp. Raising the staff as high as he could, he drove it a foot into the rocky heath. Inside the kiira, Tsarra did the same with the blackstaff, thrusting it into the stones of the library, seeing her place in the work. Silver lightning bolts and flames erupted around the staff's impact, but Khelben maintained his grip on the staff, though the flames claimed robes, clothes, hair, and even the flesh on his hands. The blast shattered the sphere of force above their heads, and lightning bolts quintupled in intensity and number around them. The staff drew the lightning bolts from the pyramid, and the air over the structure thickened even more with clouds and storms.

Inside the kiira, the plume of silver-green energy lanced upward from the blackstaff. Tsarra realized that action unleashed most of the silver fires Khelben had previously stored in the tower in Waterdeep.

The silver magic danced into the clouds as lightning, but she could feel it subtly changing the storms. The City of Splendors would be spared any harm, though much would be said of the night Blackstaff Tower crackled lightning-white till dawn. A fleeting glimpse outside the tower also showed Tsarra that the magic had rebuilt the Eightower anew. Tsarra pulled her focus back from the blackstaff and felt all the magic in play on the High Moor. Khelben harnessed the lightning bolts on the High Moor and changed them to pulses of silver fire that flickered to the four Chosen and the five curved menhirs behind them.

As the fire drew them into the magical effect, Tsarra could feel their minds and souls within reach, just like Khelben's. She could see the structure of the Working within their minds and hearts. She and Khelben were the central casters along with Danthra, making them the three-souled one. Elminster mused about a prophecy of the Three becoming a Reunion of Many… Alvaerele thought about all the sixteen bloodlines of power represented among the workers in the first three circles, blood that stretched as far back as Uvaeren in five of them and to Miyreritar in three people… Alustriel carried Silverymoon foremost in her thoughts and its unity and friendship, focusing her hopes into exceeding that spirit herein… Laeral worried about Khelben most of all and the lightning-wracked Sword Coast. No matter what else, each also had in mind a tiny gem. Each Chosen reached into extradimensional pockets and withdrew gems pulsing with power in red, orange, black, and brown hues. They let the gems float in the air. A ring of lightning crackled among them, which blasted the blackstaff at the center of the pyre too. That stoked the fires, and the flames engulfed the First Circle and Malavar's Grasp.

The flames leaped higher, and the central bolt of power shattered the crystalline pyramid overhead. The five legacy items at the points of the pyramid whirled into the fires. A greasy cloud of flies, dust, and corruption rose to infest the bound and floating corpse of the Frostrune. With the pyre lit and burning, the five Chosen urged the selu'kiira they unleashed to find their bearers. One zoomed over to Khelben's forehead and began orbiting a tight circle over the existing kiira already there, both kiira pulsing with energy. The three other gems flew no farther than the black moat surrounding the flaming Grasp. A massive three-headed sharn rose, and the three gems affixed themselves to its heads. The sharn erupted, fires consuming its oily black form and producing three separate bodies, each as tall as Elminster. The two women and one man still kept the blackened skin of the sharn, but their forms were those of nude elves who easily joined the five Chosen within the pyre. The trio formed a ring hovering over Khelben and around the core plume of energy pulsing from the blackstaff. The three elves manifested briefly in Tsarra's kiira-library, and each kissed her, leaving her with their silent sendings: You have awakened us to our purpose and our pleasure. Know you always shall have the gratitude of the cor'sel-u'maraar'Miyeritaari. May your sacrifices be few and your rewards many.

Feast of the Moon, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

The Chosen of the First Circle, having found the grand mages for the greater Working, harnessed their wills and sent the energy of the pyre out in a wide pulse to link their minds, wills, and hearts to those of the Second Circle. Those who claimed bracers from the sharn stood in the Second Circle. The bracers added their hands and strength to the working, focusing its energies to their highest purpose. The silver flames crackled across the plains and hit every member of the circle simultaneously. The fires held at that circle for a time, as the wielders intuited what they needed to do. The Central Caster sparks the flame. The First Circle lights the pyre. The Second Circle uses that flame to restore warmth and light. Once that message was received, the twelve of the Second Circle blasted the fires into the heath, scoring the ground among them for the city soon-to-rise. Four hundred strides separated Tlanchass across the circle from Mentor and the others. She wept openly, knowing that she stood for her fallen love as a student of the Seven Wizards of Myth Drannor. She worked the magic in his name, though her long-bound tears flowed freely due to the embrace and condolences of Mentor Wintercloak. She also bristled at working with corrupt and evil people, but Mentor reminded her they all shared a purpose and a need to be there, even if all was not shared with them. Tlanchass returned to her normal gold dragon form as the fires engulfed the Second Circle. She felt the mind-touch of the eleven other souls within the circle-the dragons Essioanawrath and the Argentalon, Jhesiyra Kestellharp, High Mage Orjalun, Mentor Wintercloak, Darcassan, Shalantha Omberdawn, Syndra Wands, Ualair the Silent, Maskar Wands, and Rhymallos. They all raised their bracer-clad limbs in unison, but Syndra Wands raised both her ghostly arms.

Isylmyth's Bracer gleamed on her other arm and the two bracers glimmered in sympathetic magic. Each created a massive stream of magical energy, and all twelve blasted away the soil and rock. The energies penetrated the High Moor and traveled away from the Second Circle in magical manifestations of ground fires, unicorns, giant ants, bulettes, or even small dragons that scored the heath with golden claws and fire. From their actions, the dirt released its poisons and the magic of the Killing Storms. To some, the fell magic looked like greasy fog, to others virulent plagues of flies, and still others saw nishruu of a slate-gray color. All of this magic they released and directed back toward the center of the working. Tlanchass did as the magic directed her. Her energies and her illusory drakes cultivated health back into the blasted heath she had ever known as the High Moor. She only hoped the strength of her comrades would last, engulfed as they all were in the miasmic fog that killed the people of Miyeritar.

Tsarra marveled at the linking of the minds and perceptions of nineteen souls. She wondered just how much she could handle as three souls in one body. She had already gained much knowledge and power by taking up the mantle of Blackstaff. Still, she ached to fully understand the magic around her. The three grand mages cast another spell of their own above the Chosen-a high magic working within their own ritual. Tsarra tried to focus on what they did, but she went deaf and blind. A chorus of voices sent to her, These are Arts you cannot know. Mystra's fires may keep you safe from the akhelben's working, but to espy on high magic would destroy you utterly. You shall feel its touch soon, child, which shall be gift enow. Tsarra sat back, deflated. Khelben's working still sang all around her, but she prayed she could find a way to stave off what he deemed inevitable. It was then she heard the murmuring in Elvish, "Assemble… Assemble…