Hand of Fire - Ed Greenwood [78]
To it he crept, hunger growing, and so found Silverymoon and its palace where trapped magics of tome and item were strongest, with a human woman who seemed like a flame of living magic at its heart.
Others of Rathrane's kind had gathered there, too, to warm themselves in the spellglows and slowly grow stronger and more substantial. In the magics cast on stone and glass and air many Netherese magewraiths lurked, watching this Alustriel of Silverymoon.
Evaereol Rathrane had not been bold when he dwelt in Jethaere, but the long, long waiting had changed something in him. He needed to act, to reach out – not to savage this woman of such achingly strong magic and drink her power, as his fellows sighed for, but to find more like her and ride the Weave that enwrapped her like a cloak wherever she went.
So he held back from striking at her, mastering his hunger when his fellow mage-wraiths could not. He saw them ravaged and yet invigorated by her counter spells, and in the wake of their defeat he saw his own chance. Forthwith he rode the spell-link between Laeral and Alustriel. Another she-wizard of blinding power! This one seemingly as yet undetected by others of his kind, so his alone!
When these mightiest of mortal mages translocated, the rush of exchanged energies gave Evaereol Rathrane power he could taste, lasting power that gave him more substance each time. This Laeral-she teleported often in her tower that blazed with an everpresent field of translocational magic, and every journey he took with her was a burst of ecstasy to Evaereol – real, lasting power.
Soon he'd dare to do more than and drain the discharges of wild spells and decaying magics.
Soon, he would – Once, Ieiridauna Amalree had been alive. There was a dim and distant time when she'd lived and laughed in the lone, proud tower of the mages Nathra, her elf mother, and Phanturgost, her human father, and thought Waterdeep the greatest shining place on Toril. That had ended when the sorcerers who treacherously slew her parents after coining as guests to eveningfeast had struck her down, too, with so many spells as she fled clutching precious magics that the explosions had trapped her sentience in the Weave. It had been long years ere she was aware of herself again and longer before she could perceive and materialize once more in the tower where she'd died.
It had become part of a large and rambling mansion in her lost years, the abode of a fat, shambling man who at first horrified and disgusted her. Then, ever so slowly, her feelings toward this Mirt had changed.
It had begun after she became able to vocalize and show herself and seek to scare him as a "haunting," knowing what she'd become. She succeeded only in amusing him, then in awakening his pity. He sought to chat with her on long, lonely nights, and when she dared converse, he flirted with her, tried to befriend her, and asked what he could do to make her welcome and happy.
"Ye could get out of my house!" she'd shrieked at him that first time, centuries of rage and grief overwhelming her. She had been taken with shame when he pursued her weeping and sought to learn of her life. So had his lady, the impish Asper, who even invited her into their shared bed, betimes sought to play games with her, and seldom forgot to tell her gossip and unfolding news upon her every return to what now even Ieiridauna was pleased to call "Mirt's Mansion."
Other buildings, even in Waterdeep, had watchghosts, but Ieiridauna doubted many of them felt as happy as she.
Now, upon the heels of that unpleasant Athkatlan's visit, something dark and unseen had come into the house. Lurking near the Master and the Mistress and their friend, so subtle among the shielding magics that she'd not sensed it until it reached out, so silent and sinister…
With a shriek of rage and fear that her happiness was to be snatched away from her once more, Ieiridauna hurled herself from the forehall up the stairs to the office, whelming the protective