Ed Greenwood: Bury Elminster Deep

Sometimes, Lord Arclath Delcastle thought he was going mad.

Right now, for instance.

He’d risen out of a very pleasant dream of lazing abed with his beloved Amarune, which had turned suddenly into a nightmare of thunderous voices in his head, a scrambling of frightened clawing and clutching, and a rising dread. Hurled into fearful wakefulness, he grabbed for his sword.

Only to find the rafters of a simple King’s Forest royal cabin above him, his Amarune hastening out into the night-and Storm Silverhand throwing herself on top of him, seeking to hold him down.

And managing that very effectively.

Grunt and heave though he might, he couldn’t reach the waiting, just — beyond-his-fingertips pommel of his sword…

Storm’s long, silver hair was alive, its tresses like the monstrous vines of half-remembered nursery tales, lengthening and winding to bind him fast. Those gods-cursed strands shone like armor in the dancing glow of the brazier. Moreover, her warm and sweet lips were glued firmly to his, keeping his cries and curses to muffled mumblings.

No matter how he bucked and strained, her long limbs kept him down. She was stronger than he was-stronger than a smith he’d once wrestled! Not to mention sleek and shapely and pressed against him…

Arousing him, all gods blast it, despite his anger and worry.

Arclath shook his head, managing to free his mouth from hers at last. “Dragon take all!” he gasped. “Will you not let me go?”

“No,” Storm replied firmly, her voice low and regretful. “Not while you’re this upset. You’ll go rushing off into the night and get lost or hurt. And if you do find Rune, you’ll interrupt something needful. Something very important. Something wonderful.”

Was that… awe in her voice?

Arclath swallowed, trying to think through his panting rage, to fight down his anger and frustration.

“Let…,” he gasped, “let me up. I’m… I can’t spend much longer tussling with you in this bed. ’Tisn’t seemly, as… older nobles say.”

“Aye,” Storm said in a dry voice, running one finger along his thigh-past the part of him that was stirring uncomfortably. “I’ve noticed.”

She raised herself on one elbow. “If I let you go, have I your word you’ll not depart this cabin, Lord Delcastle?”

Arclath crooked an eyebrow. “You really think you can hold me?”

Storm descended in a lunge that brought one of her hands around his throat. Her grip was like iron.

“Yes,” she replied calmly. “Yes, I do.”

She was giving him just enough space to breathe. Arclath used it to swallow, sigh, and tell her, “You have my word. Just as long as you tell me where Rune went, and what’s going on!”

Storm grinned. “The eternal demands of the young. I can answer your first. She’s gone somewhere near in the forest, taking Elminster to an… unexpected meeting. As for your second question, your guess, Lord Delcastle, is as good as mine. They should return soon, though, and you can be sure I’ll demand answers from them just as strenuously as you.”

Arclath nodded. “Your terms are accepted. Upon my word as a Delcastle.”

“That’s well spoken, lord,” she replied, in precisely the indulgent tones he’d heard matriarchs of Cormyr’s haughtiest noble Houses use.

Ah, but she was one, now, wasn’t she? Marchioness Immerdusk, and a few more titles since…

Huh. A matriarch less like his mother he couldn’t imagine.

His words were obviously what she’d been waiting for, so she released him.

“Someone,” Arclath said slowly, as he sat up and rubbed his throat, “was speaking in our minds when I awoke. Someone of great power.”

“Yes,” Storm replied calmly, handing him his sword and settling herself in a comfortable sitting position beside him. Her long, silver tresses curled almost demurely around her. Watching Gods, but she was beautiful.

Arclath forced himself to think of Rune, alone in the night.

No, not alone. She had Elminster with her, riding her mind.

He grimaced, his irritation flaring. Storm hadn’t handed him the answer he was seeking. He gave her a glare.

And found her half smiling at him, a knowing twinkle in her eyes. She looked like someone bursting with a happy inner secret.

“Well,” he snapped, “who was it?”

“Such manners, Lord Delcastle,” she reproved him. Then she laughed like a little girl and said, “It certainly seems to be a goddess many have long thought dead. Mystra, the Greatest of All. The One. Our Lady of Magic.”

Arclath stared at her, his mouth falling open.

Was she mad? Or mistaken?

And if not, what doom would this bring down on Cormyr, and all the world besides?

As he directed Amarune’s borrowed body to pad cautiously through a pale white labyrinth of moonlit trees, Elminster felt himself trembling.

This almost had to be a trap, after all this time-yet, nay, nay, it was her, his Mystra! It was!

He could feel her! He knew that feeling, could never forget the touch of her mind on his… this was Mystra, the vivid blue mists of power swirling around the edges of his mind…

A sharp stick underfoot hurt his-Rune’s-bare feet, and El sank to all fours to crawl like a beast. He tingled with eager haste and had to remind himself to look for what peril that might be aprowl in the King’s Forest.

Halting on a tree-cloaked ridge in the rolling, deepening woods north of the cabin, one hand raised like a questing cat’s paw, he listened hard.

He heard distant stirrings of brush to the northeast, probably well across the Way of the Dragon, then silence. Broken by a brief, faint hooting even farther westward.

Still and silent, Amarune’s dancer’s body poised like a statue, El waited.

Long enough for even a lazy hunter to become impatient he held still, but nothing else moved that he could hear. And the sleekly muscled body he was occupying had far better hearing than what he’d grown used to in recent centuries.

Some of his excitement washed into her sleeping mind, at rest in one dim corner of the brain he steered. Amarune rose slowly toward wakefulness, her dreams growing restless, as she tasted his eagerness.

Ye’re as giddy as a lass fleeing her first kiss, El reproached himself, as he crawled on down a ferny slope of wet dead leaves toward a dark bank of old, leaning trees. Steady, Sage of Shadowdale. Where’s that world-weary yawning that ye do so well?

Part of him smirked, but through the lacy curtain of his mirth, El fought to quell ever-wilder excitement as he reached the bottom of the slope.

Only to lose his breath under a thrilling onslaught of fresh nerves as he felt the nearness of Mystra. Right ahead of him.

A weighty taste in the air came from the silent gloom behind a rising old tree that smelled of bear.

He didn’t even have time for a hint of fear before he saw a dark wall of fur that must be that beast shambling away along the line of trees, afire with Mystra’s power just as his own mind was.

Blue fire deepened in his brain, bringing certainty. The goddess of all magic was riding the bear’s mind just as he was riding Amarune’s.

Before El knew it, the moonlit trees were behind him, and he was crawling into bear-smelling darkness, over muddy, loose stones in a musky earthen den tapestried in descending roots and floored with gnawed old bones green with mold. As he crawled on, the ground dropped down into a stony cavern tall enough to stand in, aglow with Mystra’s fire.

Where two great, keen eyes he’d not seen for long centuries suddenly opened in the air in front of him.