Realms of the Arcane - Brian M. Thomsen [65]
"Oh, Mystra," came the next speaker, a hoarse whisper seeming to speak right into her ear-she turned her head, but there was no one there-"aid me now!"
"This is no time," the next voice said wearily, "for fools to play at wizardry! Watch!"
"Elminster, aid me!"
That voice made Aerindel stiffen, and tears came. It was her father's voice-and Elminster, she dimly remembered, had been his tutor, and the wizard he'd loved and trusted most. "Aid me!" her father had cried, so anguished, and desperate…
Just as she was. Aerindel sat numbly, the tears trickling down her cheeks, as the voices went on, crying the same things over and over again. Some of them seemed so… final. As doomed as she was. As if they were crying out their last words before death____________________
When she'd heard Thabras say those same three words the fourth time, the spectral tongues seemed to grow fainter, and those that screamed or cried wordlessly died away altogether. Another voice-the insistent whisper she'd heard first-rose over them all. "I am the power you need to keep Dusklake safe, and destroy Rammast forever."
Aerindel got up, putting a cautious hand to her head to be sure the crown was secure, and looked around the crypt. The crown seemed to wink, and suddenly she could see every dark corner as if it was brightly lit.
"I let you see in the dark, and pierce disguises. I let your eyes travel afar…"
She was suddenly seeing an endless sea, silvery under the moonlight, and knew that she was seeing the Great Water that lay west of the Esmeltaran, beyond the Cloud Peaks. And then that vision was swept away, and she was seeing a woman she did not know rising up out of a furious battle. Bolts of flame burst from the crown and felled screaming warriors, hurling many through the air like broken dolls. She watched a severed arm whirl away by itself.
The crown said, "With me, you can do this."
The scene changed, and she was seeing a bearded man standing grimly in a dungeon cell. The crown on his brow flashed with sudden white storm-fire, and the stones before him cracked and melted, flowing aside as the busy lightning cut a man-high tunnel into them.
"And this," the crown whispered.
The scene changed again. She was wearing the crown, this time, and a hydra was rearing up above her, on a sun-dappled forest path somewhere, snapping its jaws horribly. The crown quivered, and suddenly the hydra was shrinking and twisting, flailing its long necks vainly, as it hardened into a gnarled, triple-trunked tree.
"And this," the whisper came again, "among many more powers… if you have the courage to wield them."
"How?" the Lady of Dusklake asked in sudden, eager excitement.
There was a new warmth within her, and a surge of… satisfaction?
What followed felt uncomfortable and slithering and somehow private, as the crown seemed to harness itself to her will. Aerindel shuddered as energy flowed both icy and warm within her, coiling in her vitals and rushing out to her fingertips. She heard a moan that was almost a purr, and realized hazily that it must have come from her own lips.
And then the strangeness was gone, and she was herself again.
Feeling leaping hope and a certain restlessness, the Lady of Dusklake knelt again at the altar to thank Mystra, sprang up, and whirled around.
As she hurried up the steps, her will quested out ahead of her. That farseeing… right now, her most urgent need was to find out where Rammast was, and what he was up to.
There was an exclamation in the darkness ahead of her, and the flash of drawn steel. She slowed, but suddenly she was seeing not a startled Duskan guard, bowing to her at the head of the crypt stairs with fear in his face and a naked sword in his hand, but the bloody-taloned golden eagle banner of Grand Thentor, fluttering in torchlight.
Torchlight somewhere in a night-dark forest where frightened folk screamed and fled into the trees all around, along a muddy road where the warriors of Grand Thentor strode laughing… a road she knew.
A moment later, Rammast's war band passed by a tavern signboard, and she was