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"That I did not see," Iyriklaunavan replied. "I did, however, see what Azuth was regarding. A ghostly sorceress, who was trying to slay a Chosen of Mystra."

"What's that?" the Great Lady asked. "Some sort of servant of the goddess?"

"Yes," the elf mage said grimly, "and he was someone you might remember. Cast your thoughts back to a day when we fled from a tomb…a tomb furnished with pillars that erupted in eyes. A mage was hanging above us there, asleep or trapped, and came out after we fled. He asked you what year it was."

"Oh, yesss," the ladylord murmured, her eyes far away, "and I told him."

"And thereby we earned the favor of the goddess Mystra," Iyriklaunavan told her, "who delivered this castle into our hands."

The Lady Nuressa frowned. "I thought Amandarn won title to these lands while dicing with some merchant lords…hazarding all our coins in the process," she said.

Rauntlavon stood very still, not wanting to be ejected again now. Surely this was an even more dangerous secret than…

"Amandarn lost all our coins, Nessa. Folossan nearly killed him for it…and they had to flee when he stole a few bits back to buy a meal that night and got caught at it. The two of them hid in a shrine to Mystra…rolled right in under the altar and hid under its fine cloth. There they slept, though both of them swear magic must have dragged them into slumber, for they'd had little to drink and were all excited from their flight and the danger. When they awoke, all of our coins were back in Amandarn's pouch…along with the title to the castle."

The Great Lady's brow arched and she asked, "And you believe this tale?"

"Nessa, I used spells to glean every last detail of it out of both their heads, after they told me. It happened."

"I see," the Great Lady said calmly. "Rauntlavon, be aware that this is another secret shared between us here…and only us here, or you'll have to flee four Lords of the Castle, not merely one."

"Yes, Great Lady," the apprentice said, then swallowed and faced them both. "There's something I should say, now. If something happens to Great Azuth…or Most Holy Mystra…and magic keeps crumbling, we all share a grave problem."

"And what is that, Rauntlavon?" The Lady Nuressa asked, in almost kindly tones, her fingers caressing the pommel of her long sword.

Rauntlavon's eyes dropped to those fingers…whose fabled strength was one of the rocks upon which his world stood…then back up to meet her smoky eyes.

"I think we must pray for Azuth or find some way to aid him. The castle was built with much magic," he told the two lords, the words coming out in a rush. "If its spells fall, it will fall…and us with it."

The Great Lady's expression did not change. Her eyes turned to meet those of the Lord Iyriklaunavan. "Is this true?"

The elf merely nodded. Nuressa stared at him for a moment, her face still calm, but Rauntlavon saw that her hand was now closed around the hilt of the long sword and gripping so tightly that the knuckles were white. Her eyes swung back to his.

"Well, Rauntlavon…have you any plan for preventing such doom?"

Rauntlavon spread empty hands, wishing wildly that he could be the hero, and see love for him awaken in her eyes… wishing he could give her more than his despair. "No, Nuressa," he was astonished to hear himself calmly whispering. "I'm only an apprentice. But I will die for you, if you ask me."

He drew his blade out of the swaying sorceress with savage glee, to thrust it into the Great Foe he'd pursued for so long, the grasping, stinking human who'd dared to stain bright Cormanthyr with his presence and doom the House of Starym, now helpless before him, able to move just his eyes…fittingly…to see whence his doom came.

"Know as you die, human worm," Ilbryn hissed, "that the Starym aven…"

And those were the last words he ever spoke, as all the magic that the ancient sorceress had drawn into herself rushed out again, in a fiery flood of raw magical energy that consumed the blade that had spilled it and the elf whose hand held that blade, all in one raging wave that crashed against the far