Elminster in Myth Drannor - Ed Greenwood [40]
The room spun around him then, and he had no breath left to cry anything. His body was stretching, everyone was shouting in anger and alarm, and the last thing the prince of Athalantar saw, as he spun down into tentacles of darkness that came sweeping greedily up to take him, was the furious face of the Lady Namyriitha, dwindling away behind the one solid thing in all this: the leveled wooden scepter, held firmly in Naeryndam's old hand. He clung to that image as utter darkness claimed him.
Five
To Call On The Coronal
And so it befell that Elminster of Athalantar found the elven family he had so inadvertently joined and did that which he was sworn to do. Like many who fulfill an unusual and dangerous duty, he received scant thanks for it. Had it not been for the grace of Mystra, he might easily have died in the Coronal's garden that night.
Antarn the Sage
from The High History of Faerunian Archmages Mighty
published circa The Year of the Staff
Ornthalas Alastrarra stumbled across the chamber, clutching his head and screaming, his voice raw and ugly. Crackling lightnings of magic trailed from the gem that shone like a new star upon his brow, back to the one from whom it had come: the sprawled body on the floor, so young, and ugly-and human.
Filaurel's bedchamber was in an uproar. Warriors hacked at the barrier that repelled their armor and their blades, and were repulsed. They clawed their way along it, shouting in pain amid bright clouds of sparks, only to stagger back, master their trembling limbs, and try again. Under their high-booted feet Melarue lay sprawled, her hair outflung like a fan around her, stunned from her own attempt to burst through Naeryndam's barrier. She'd forgotten the manifold enchantments upon her jewelry.
Not so her mother. Lady Namyriitha was standing well clear of the singing air and grimly bringing down the barrier with spell after spell of her own, melting away its essence layer by layer. As those magics crashed and swirled, Filaurel and most of the other women screamed at the sight of Elminster's true nature and at the agony of Ornthalas. Servants crowded in at every door to see what was befalling.
The old elf-mage calmly stepped over the motionless body of the hawk-nosed human and stood astride it, drawing a sword seemingly out of the empty air. Magic winked and chased itself up and down that rune-marked blade as he raised and shook it a little doubtfully, as many an old warrior readies a weapon he finds heavier than he remembered. He raised his scepter in the other hand. When the barrier failed in a wash of white sparks an instant later, and the warriors of House Alastrarra surged forward with an exultant shout, he was ready.
Blue fire swirled out from the tip of Naeryndam's blade, so hot and quick that warriors bent over backward in mid-charge, and fell in awkward, sliding heaps. A sweep of that same blue fire along the furs underfoot, a sweep that left the furs unscorched, sent them rolling and scrambling away again, back to where they'd stood before. One elf flung his blade as he fled, spinning hard and fast through the air at the motionless human. The scepter spat forth its own fire, a stabbing, silvery needle of force, and the thrown blade exploded into a rainbow of snapping sparks that spun and flew until they were no more. One or two of them bounced almost at Naeryndam's feet.
"What treachery is this?" Lady Namyriitha spat at the old mage. "Are you crazed, aged brother? Has the human some sort of spellhold over you?"
"Be still," the old mage replied in calm and pleasant tones-but as she had done earlier, he put his risen power behind his words. The only sounds that followed their rolling, imperious thunder were faint groans from where Ornthalas lay in a corner, his head against the wall, and sobbings here and there where women who'd been screaming struggled to catch their breaths again.
"There's entirely too much shouting and spellhurling in this House, these days," Naeryndam