Elminster in Myth Drannor - Ed Greenwood [45]
The young man's lips moved with agonizing slowness as he tried to shape words. "No," he said at last, slowly and deliberately. "Ye are welcome in my thoughts. Were ye not trying to make me rise?"
"No," the Coronal said, turning his head so that the link between their gazes was cut off, as if by a knife. "strove to keep you on your knees, to master your will." He frowned, eyes narrowing. "Perhaps another works through you."
"My lord!" the mage Earynspieir cried, thrusting himself between Elminster and the Coronal. "This is precisely the peril you must be shielded against! Who knows what deadly spell could be worked upon you, through this lad?"
"Hold him in thrall, then, if you must," the Coronal said wearily. "All three of you-and Earynspieir, let there be no 'accidentally' broken necks, or frozen lungs, or the like. I shall reveal whom he serves with the scepter, and read his memories of the matter of the kiira thereafter."
From one of the trays floating near at hand the white-robed elf took up what looked like a long claret-hued glass rod, smooth and straight, no thicker than his smallest finger. It seemed almost too delicate to hold together.
El found himself lifted off his feet to hang motionless in the air, hands spread out stiffly from his sides. He could move his eyes, his throat, and his chest; all else was gripped as if by unyielding iron.
A light grew in the glass rod, and raced along its length. The old elf calmly pointed it at Elminster's head, and they both watched the thin ray of radiance slide out of the rod and move through the air, with almost lazy slowness, to touch El's forehead.
A great coldness crashed through the Athalantan, shaking him to his very fingertips. As he quivered there in midair he could hear the clatter of his teeth chattering uncontrollably, and then gasps of amazement from all four elves.
"What is it?" he tried to say, but all that came out through his frozen lips was a confused gurgling. Abruptly he found that his mouth was freed, and that he was turning-being turned-in the air, around to face a ghostly image that was towering over the patio. The spectral outlines of a face he knew.
A calm, serene face regarding them all with mild interest. Its eyes lit upon Elminster, and brightened.
"Is that who I think it is, man?" the Coronal asked gently.
"It is Holy Mystra," El told him simply. "I am her servant."
"So much I had come to suspect," the old elf told him a trifle grimly. A moment later, he and the young human melted away together, leaving the floating chair, and the air above and before it, empty.
The three mages stared at those emptinesses, and then at each other. Earynspieir whirled around to look up into the sky again. The huge human face was fading, the ghostly tresses curling and whipping like restless snakes as it seemed to draw slightly away from the Coronal's garden.
But what made the elf-mages cower and stammer out the names of their gods was the way the beautiful female face looked at each of them in turn, as a broad and satisfied smile grew across it.
A few moments later, the face could no longer be seen at all.
"Some trick of the young human, no doubt," Earynspieir hissed, visibly shaken. Naeryndam only shook his head in silence, but the other court mage plucked at Earynspieir's arm to get his attention, and pointed.
That vast smile had suddenly reappeared. There was no face around it this time, but all three mages knew what it was. They would see it in their memories until their dying days.
As they turned their backs on the stars and hastened toward the nearest doors that led into the palace, another sight made them all pause and stare in silence once more.
All over the gardens, the watchnorns were rising silently to watch that smile fade.
Six
The Vault Of Ages
Beneath the fair city of Cormanthor, in some hidden place, lies the Vault of Ages, sacred storehouse of the lore of our People. 'Let Mythal rise and Myth Drannor fall,' says one ballad, 'and still the Vault remembreth all.' Some say the Vault lies there yet, unplundered and as splendid