Elminster in Myth Drannor - Ed Greenwood [30]
He stood and marveled amid trees that seemed to have grown into fantastic spired castles of spidery grace. The kiira told him of spells that could combine live trees and shape their growth, though neither Iymbryl nor his forebears knew much of how such magics were worked, or who in the city today was capable of them.
Amid the tree castles were lesser mansions of spired stone and what looked like blown, sculpted glass. However it seemed by the hanging gardens that sprawled over such edifices that elves could not bear to live unless growing plants or trees shared the same space with them. Elminster tried not to stare at the circular windows, the carefully crafted views, and the leaping curves of wood and stone all around him, but he'd never seen anything built for folk to live in that was so beautiful. Not just this building here, or that, but street upon street upon winding lane, a city of growing trees linked overhead, and a lush splendor of plantings and vistas and magically animated sculptures that casually outstripped the most exquisite human-work El had seen, even in the private gardens of the mage-king Ilhundyl.
Gods. With every step he could see new wonders. Over here was a house crafted like a breaking wave, with a glass-bottomed room hanging beneath the overarching curve-itself a garden of carefully shaped shrubs. Over there was a cascade of water plucked up tower-high by magic, so that it could plunge down, laughing, from chamber to chamber of a house whose rooms were all ovoids of tinted glass; within, the elven inhabitants strolled about, glasses in their hands. Down that lane of duskwoods wound a little path, to an ending at a small round pool. Seats circled the water in a gentle, hovering dance, their enchantments making them bob and rise as they went.
El shuffled on, remembering to stagger from time to time. How was he ever going to find House Alastrarra in all this?
Cormanthor was busy this bright afternoon. Its streets of trodden moss and the bridges, aloft, that leapt from tree to tree, held many elves-but none of the dirt and real crowding of human cities… and no creature more intelligent than cats and their winged cousins, the tressym, who was not an elf.
It hardly seemed a city. But then, to El, cities meant stone and humans, crammed together in their filth and shouting and seriousnesses, with a scattering of halflings and half-elves and a dwarf or two among the crowd.
Here were only the blue tresses and blue-white, sleek skins of proud elves who glided along in splendid gowns; or in cloaks that seemed entirely fashioned of the quivering green leaves of live plants; or in clinging leathers enspelled so that shifting rainbow hues drifted slowly around wearers' bodies; or in costumes that seemed to be no more than coyly cloaking clouds of lace and baubles drifting around elven forms. These latter were called driftrobes, the kiira let him know, as El tried not to stare at the slender bodies revealed by their circling movements. Driftrobes emitted a constant song of chimings whose descending runs sounded like many tiny, skillfully struck bells falling down the same staircase.
Elminster tried not to stare at anything, or even to look up much, and sighed dolefully from time to time whenever he sensed someone staring at him. This melancholy manner seemed to satisfy the few passersby who spared him much attention. Most seemed lost in their own thoughts or shared enthusiasms. Though the voices tended to be higher, lighter, and more pleasant on the ears, the elves of Cormanthor chattered every bit as much as humans at a market. El was able to covertly watch what he wanted most to see as he went along: how elves walked, so he could imitate them.
Most seemed to have a lilt and swing, like dancers. Ah, that was it-none strode flat-footed; even the tallest and most hurried of the citizenry danced forward on their toes. In his borrowed shape, El did likewise, and wondered when his sense of unease would lighten just a trifle.
It refused to, and as he went on, turning this way and that among