Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [77]
"High Lady Alustriel will be delayed arriving in Waterdeep, I take it?" Asper asked swiftly, helping herself to the decanter of snow wine.
"I'm afraid so. On the other hand, it will be days yet before Shandril reaches Waterdeep, even if her caravan has a clear run, and we know the maid from Highmoon has power enough to defend herself for a few days longer."
"More than enough, I'm thinking," Mirt growled.
"Tis in my mind, Laeral m'gel, that spellfire in the hands of a youngling untutored in magic or by Mystra may become like a wind-driven forest fire: stronger as it goes on and soon out of control and needing mages working on all sides to prevent it overwhelming everyone. Each time Shan used it when I was with her, her confidence and power seemed to grow. Can her will and backbone keep pace with its flaring? I hate to say this, but I doubt it."
Laeral nodded grimly. "As do I, Old Wolf." She took a long sip from her goblet and added, "I'm afraid you know too much about how magic works to be wrong in this hunch."
"Knowing my Lord," Asper said fondly, as she put an arm around Mirt from behind, "I'm sure he's hurled queries at you like a busy slinger hurling stones in battle and heard this from you already – but if 'tis not a deep, close secret, Laeral: what attack?"
"While trying to enter some of the vaults of great magic deep beneath her palace in Silverymoon," the Lady Mage replied, "Alustriel was beset by a storm of spells launched by lurking mages – a cabal of unfamiliar and strangely empowered wizards."
"She survived, so much I know. Did they gain access to the vaults?"
"No, but they seemed able to take refuge in the Weave itself when she struck back at them."
"And reading the Weave, she learned what about them?"
Amusement rose and danced in Laeral's eyes. "You know all that you need to know – and more – about the Art, too, it seems. Well, then, my sister's attackers seemed to be incorporeal, half-insane wizards who'd passed beyond life into unlife in some new and hitherto unknown way. 'Mere memories of mages,' she called them."
Asper rolled her eyes. "Haven't we enough magic surging and drifting and scuttling around Faerun, without something new to – "
The watchghost began to scream in earnest, a great deafening bell-shrieking that roared up the stairs and swept toward them, making the stones of the old house around them shake and then the very air hum and wail.
The scream that burst into the office shattered goblets and decanters into dust and hurled Asper, Mirt, and Laeral back against the walls like mere rags, surging up toward the ceiling, to wrestle there with something dark, startled, and suddenly visible.
*******
Once, Evaereol Rathrane had been alive. There was a dim and distant time when he'd known laughter, warm embraces, and proud achievements in Jethaere of the Towers. Jethaere – one of the first floating cities of Netheril, a refuge of the gentler mages who delighted in studying and perfecting magic, rather than using it as a great sword to cleave and reshape Toril a dozen times in a day.
There had come the time when it darkened, as all things must. That darkness had been the Phaerimm.
Against them some Jethaerren had fought and perished, and some had fled by many ways, down a myriad of twisting tunnels of hiding and transformation and flight. Some had died, some had turned into things they were loath now to leave the ranks of – or were trapped in the shapes of… and many, many had gone mad.
Evaereol had spell-called a dragon as the darkness blossomed, then hid himself within one of the greatest magic items he'd ever crafted. His ploy had worked. Snatched up and carried off into a distant hoard, he'd escaped the Phaerimm… but been trapped in his own disguise for a time so mindsingingly long as to almost break him.
He'd clung to his own name desperately, drifting in increasing despair, until the day came at last when someone's misuse of the item that held him shattered it and its spells together and set him free.
Long he'd drifted, a tattered wraith of spellstuff with whispering