• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

As the velvet darkness came down again, and rolled away to reveal a huge and shining hall crowded with elves in their splendor, the Coronal's magic made the chant roll forth again.

Amid the astonished faces of the Court of Cormanthor, all heard it ring clear: "And Cormanthor shall be one with thee."

Part II

Armanthor

Seven

Every Pool Its Party

When Elminster first saw it, Cormanthor was a city of haughty pretence, intrigue, strife, and decadence. A place, in fact, very like the proudest human cities of today.

Antarn the Sage

from The High History of Faerunian Archmages Mighty

published circa The Year of the Staff

By the time Ithrythra had clicked her way unsteadily up the wooded path to the pool in her new boots, the party was well under way.

"Frankly, gentlest," Duilya Evendusk confided to someone, loud enough to shake leaves off the moon-bark trees overhead, "I don't care what your elders say! The Coronal is mad! Completely mad!"

"You'd know madness better than the rest of us," Ithrythra muttered under her breath, setting her own glass on a float-platter to unlace her thigh-high silver boots. It was a relief to step out of them. The spiked heels made her tower over the servants, yes, but ohh, how they hurt. Human fashions were as crazed as they were brazen.

Ithrythra hung her lacy gown over a branch and shook out the ruffles of her undergown until they hung as they were supposed to. She checked her reflection in the hanging glass under the shadowtop tree, an oval mirror taller than she was.

As she stared into its depths and saw just a hint of swirling things there, she recalled that some Cormanth ladies whispered that this mirror sometimes served the Tornglaras as a portal into dark and dirty streets in the cities of men. The Tornglara lords went to do business that Cormanthor frowned upon, trading with humans. The Tornglara ladies, now…

She clucked her lips at those thoughts and set them firmly aside. Fashions were what Alaglossa Tornglara went seeking; fashions, and no more.

Ithrythra gave the legendary mirror a little smile. Her new hairdo had held its sideswirl, firmly woven about the hand lyre, sigil of her House. Her ears stood up proudly, their rouged tips unmarred by over-gaudy jewelry. She turned, so as to survey one side of her body, and then the other. The gems glued down her flanks were all in place. She struck a pose, and blew the mirror a pouting kiss. Not bad.

After the highsun meal of every fourth day, the ladies of five Houses gathered at Satyrdance Pool in the private gardens behind the many-towered mansion that was House Tornglara. There they bathed in the wannest of the pools, in which spiced rosewater had been poured for the occasion, and sipped summer-mint wine from tall, green fluted glasses. The platters of sugared confections and the justly famous Tornglara vintages flowed freely, and so did the real reason the ladies came back to the same place time and time again: the gossip.

Ithrythra Mornmist joined her chattering companions, making her greetings with her usual silent smiles. As she slipped her long legs into the pool, sighing with pleasure at the soothing warmth of the waters, she noted that her glass was the only one not yet empty. Where were the servants?

Her hostess noticed Ithrythra's glances, and halted in midchatter to lean forward conspiratorially and say, "Oh, I've sent them away, dear. We'll have to fill our own glasses this time-but then, 'tisn't every day one discusses crown treason!"

"Crown treason? What treachery can the Coronal have practiced? That elf s too old to have any wits left, or stamina either!" Ithrythra exclaimed, evoking shrieks of laughter from the ladies already in the pool.

"Oh, you're out of touch, dearest Ithrythra! It must be all that time you spend in your cellars grubbing up mushrooms to earn a living!" Duilya Evendusk said cuttingly; Alaglossa Tornglara had the grace to roll her eyes at this rudeness.

"Well, at least it proves