Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [139]
Perhaps forty feet off the ground her hands fell away from her mouth as she stared at the empty air beside her and gasped in wonder, "Narm? M-Mystra?
Gorstag?"
And then Shandril exploded, in a burst of radiance so bright that Asper saw nothing for days afterward.
"Oh, lass," the High Lady murmured. "You saved him and healed him, and never knew. He but collapsed from the pain and lives yet. Unlike you."
The Weave flashed and shook itself, as if rid of a great burden. Alustriel Silverhand, weeping with grief and pain amid leaping tongues of silver fire, let go her shielding spells at last.
In Shadowdale, Elminster looked up sharply from an old map as Mourngrym frowned across the table at him and Illistyl and Jhessail winced in unison and grabbed for the backs of chairs, for support. "She's gone," the Old Mage said slowly, shaking his head.
"She lasted longer than I'd ever thought she would."
Torm's eyes narrowed. "Who?"
"Shandril," Rathan said heavily, and reached for a decanter. "Gathered, as the gods gather us all."
"Mystra preserve her," Jhessail gasped, and threw back her head as if starving for air. A single tear fell like a wet star on the map before her. Torm reached out a finger and drew a prayer-rune with it, right across the face of Elminster's map.
Mourngrym waited for the Old Mage to erupt, but no storm came. Elminster merely shook his head again, looking off into a distant otherwhere that only he could see, and murmured, "Mystra will provide."
"Sharantyr?" Florin asked quietly, from his end of the table.
The Old Mage almost smiled. "Someone else has already provided for her. Someone who could teach Torm, here, a thing or two."
"What's wrong, Tess?" the Purple Dragon asked, coming awake in an instant and reaching for her with one hand and his ready sword with the other.
Tessaril Winter trembled under his touch like a little girl, and he swiftly wrapped a comforting arm around her smooth curves. "I know not, King Azoun," she said formally, her voice empty and despairing. "I only know someone has died – and in dying, reached out to me."
"Who?" the king of Cormyr asked softly, enfolding her in his arms.
Tessaril whispered, "She. Young, and of great power … it can only be Shandril Shessair. She never made it to Silverymoon, after all." She swallowed. "Oh, Az – hold me."
"I will," Azoun said gently, not bothering to point out that he already was. Kindness is a rare quality in a king, understanding another, and caring a third.
Tessaril lay still and thought on all three, and her eyes filled with tears.
"At least I have you," she whispered, and the Purple Dragon's answer was a simple whisper.
"Yes."
They lay together in silence for a long time before his Lady Lord of Eveningstar twisted free of the royal grasp and of her bed in one smooth movement, to stand bare and magnificent in the moonlight.
"Where -?" Azoun asked, hefting his sword.
Tessaril turned from a jewel-box on her dressing table with a pendant in her hand. As she held it out, the great jewel seemed to glow slightly. "I must tell Fee without delay," she explained almost apologetically. "She'll have felt my – my upset, and be lying awake now, wondering."
"Filfaeril? Are your two minds often linked, when you and I are together?"
Tessaril smiled a little sadly at him. "I would consider it treason on my part if they were not," she said quietly. "We also talk often with this."
She heard his sigh as she bent over the jewel, and turned her head again to add, with a thin half-smile,
"And yes: often about you."
Azoun lay back with another sigh and told the moonlit ceiling, "I might have known."
Lord Manshoon stopped in midstride, the whirling magic that had brought him to this chamber in Zhentil Keep still dwindling behind him, and snapped, "Send for the priests! Something has happened – something that has made the Weave itself tremble!"
As wizards scrambled to do his bidding, he murmured, "So if the wench is dead, who has spellfire now?"
In the Stonelands a cool breeze was quickening, but despite the leaves it rustled