"Oh, how extraordinary," he said as he sank to the edge of the bed. "What is your name, beautiful wayfarer?"
Midnight suddenly wished she understood the proper etiquette to accept a compliment gracefully. Because she did not, she merely looked away and studied the floor as she dutifully recited her name and place of origin.
"And your name?" Midnight said. The weakness she had felt earlier was returning, and she was forced to sit on the edge of the bed.
"I am Brehnan Mueller. I am a widower, as you might have guessed. My daughter and I live in this cottage, here in the forest to the west of Calanter's Way." Brehnan looked about the room with sadness in his eyes. "My wife became ill. She was brought to this, our guest room, where she died. You were the very first person to lay upon this bed in almost a decade."
"How did I get here?"
"First, how do you feel?" Brehnan said.
"Sore. Tired. Almost… dazed."
Brehnan nodded. "You say there was a storm last night?"
"Aye."
"A great storm did shake the Realms," Brehnan said. "Meteors split the sky and laid waste to temples all across the Realms. Did you know this?"
Midnight shook her head. "I knew of the storm, but not the destruction."
The magic-user felt the skin of her face grow tight. She looked toward the window once more. Suddenly the images before her came sharply into focus. "But the ground is dry. There are no traces of such a storm."
"The storm was two weeks ago, Midnight. Annalee's prize stallion had become frightened by the storm, and bolted. I caught up with the horse past the woods, near the road, and it was there I found you, your skin glowing with a luminescence that all but blinded me. Your hands clutched at the pendant that hung from your neck. Even when I brought you here, it was all I could do to pry your fingers from the object. And I could not remove the pendant.
"At first I worried that the bed we sit upon now would be your final place of rest, but gradually your strength returned, and I could sense the process of healing as it transpired, day by day. Now you are well."
"Why did you help me?" Midnight said, absently. The weakness she felt was passing, but she still felt dizzy.
"I am a cleric of Tymora, Goddess of Luck. I have seen miracles. Miracles such as the one that surely touched you, fair lady."
Midnight turned to look at the cleric, hardly prepared for his next words, or for the fervor with which his words were delivered.
"The gods walk the Realms, dear Midnight! Tymora herself can be seen between highsunfeast and eveningfeast in fair Arabel. Of course, there is a slight donation to the church that must be made for the privilege. Still, isn't the sight of a god worth a few gold pieces? And her temple must be rebuilt, you see."
"Of course," Midnight said. "Gods… and gold… and two weeks gone…" She saw that the room had started spinning again.
Suddenly there was a noise from outside the window. Midnight looked out and saw that Annalee was leading a horse across the clearing. The horse looked to the window, and Midnight gasped. The creature in Annalee's care had two heads.
"Of course, there have been a few changes since the gods came to the Realms," Brehnan said. Then his tone became reproachful. "You haven't tried to use any magic yet, have you?"
"Why?"
"Magic has become… unstable, since the gods came to the Realms. You'd best not throw any spells unless your life depends on it."
Midnight heard Annalee call each of the horse's heads by a different name, and almost laughed. The room was spinning wildly now, and the magic-user knew why — it was the spell she had thrown. She tried to stand, and fell back onto the bed. Startled, Brehnan called Midnight's name and tried to grab her arm.
"Wait. You aren't well enough to go anywhere. Besides, the roads aren't safe."
But Midnight had already stumbled to her feet and was heading for the door. "I'm sorry. I have to get to Arabel," the magic-user said as she rushed out of the room. "Perhaps someone there can tell me what's been going on in Faerun these past few days!"
Brehnan watched as Midnight headed toward the road and shook his head. "No, milady, I doubt that anyone — short of perhaps the great sage Elminster himself — could explain the happenings in the Realms to you these days."
II
Kelemvor walked through the streets of Arabel, the great walls that protected it from invasions time and again somehow always in view. Although he would never admit it, the walls made him edgy, their vaunted promise of security little more than the bars of a cage to the warrior.
The sounds of the hustle and bustle of a typical day in the merchant city as highsun approached filled his ears, and Kelemvor studied the faces of those he passed. The people had survived recent hardships, but survival was not enough if the spirit of a people had been shattered.
Kelemvor heard the sounds of a brawl, though he could not see the fight. The warrior could hear shouting and the sound of blows falling against mail — a common enough occurrence these days. Yet perhaps the display was nothing more than a carefully laid trap to gain the attention of a lone traveler for the purpose of laying open his head and taking his purse.
Such occurrences were also common these days.
The sounds died down, as presumably did their makers. Kelemvor surveyed the street and saw that no one else was responding to the brawl. It seemed that he was the only one who heard it. That meant the sounds could have come from anywhere. Kelemvor's senses were marvelously acute, and this was not always for the best.
Still, the robbery, if it had been that at all, was nothing unusual. In some ways, Kelemvor was relieved by the fact that the fight was only a mundane occurrence, for little in Arabel — or the entire Realms — seemed commonplace anymore. Everything was unusual, and even magic was untrustworthy since the time of Arrival, as that day was becoming known. Kelemvor thought of the changes to the Realms he had personally witnessed in the past two weeks.
On the night the gods entered the Realms, a close ally of Kelemvor lay wounded in his quarters after a skirmish with a wandering band of goblins. The soldier — and the cleric who attended the soldier — perished in the flames of a fireball that erupted from nowhere when the cleric attempted to ply his healing magic. Kelemvor and the other onlookers were shocked; never before had they seen such a bizarre occurrence. Days later, after the survivors of the destruction of Tymora's temple regrouped, the goddess herself leading them, the church officially disavowed any responsibility for the actions of the cleric, and branded him a heretic for bringing forth the wrath of the gods.
Yet this incident was only the first of many strange happenings that would plague Arabel.
The local butcher had run screaming from his shop one morning, as the carcasses he had kept on ice were now suddenly alive, and hungry for revenge against their slayers.
Kelemvor himself stood by as a mage, attempting a simple spell of levitation, found that the spell was no longer under his control. His assent went unchecked, and the fighter watched as the dwindling form of the screaming magic-user vanished into the clouds. The mage was never seen again.
Over a week ago, Kelemvor and two other members of the guard had been summoned to attempt to free a magic-user who had called a blinding sphere of light into existence and then found himself trapped within the globe. Whether he had summoned the sphere by accident or design was not known. The incident took place in front of the Black Mask Tavern, and the members of the guard had been called to control the crowds of people who had gathered to watch as yet another pair of magic-users attempted to help their brother. The sphere did not falter until a week later, when the trapped mage died of thirst.