Was it time to become even less human, and so cheat the ravages of the passing years?
Would he be able to snatch the time it would take for the exacting, painstaking process of becoming a shadow lich, in this spreading chaos and tumult? Or did she have other ideas?
Perhaps he should pursue some of the alternatives. What sort of a life did a floating skull enjoy? Skinless, bodiless, reduced to little more than malice and sinister whisperings …
How far from that am I right now, really?
Those dark thoughts took him down from the dais and, striding unhurriedly, to the great double doors. His will made them swing open at his approach, heavily but in velvet silence.
His will then made his staff appear out of nowhere in his hand as he walked.
Well, at least some things still obeyed him without pause or question.
Aglarel was waiting for him just outside the doors. Of course.
Aglarel, tallest of his sons and bareheaded but resplendent in his obsidian armor, was the commander of the Most High’s personal bodyguard-and the closest thing to a trusted friend in Telamont’s life for too many years to count now.
He fell into step a careful half stride behind Telamont, as usual, the faintly purple crackling of his armor’s ward surrounding Telamont’s own invisible mantle. Nothing short of a falling spire from one of Thultanthar’s loftiest towers should be able to reach the Most High through their combined wardings.
Not that anything in this city had dared to try, for some time.
Yet there would come another attempt someday. One always did.
Aglarel did not ask where they were heading. Wherever his father desired to go, he would walk escort unless ordered away.
Truth to tell, Telamont enjoyed his company.
“You sent your two new wizards off on their first assignments?” Aglarel asked casually.
“Yes,” Telamont told him flatly.
No more words passed between them as they walked the length of the long and deserted forehall. Although they were alone, Aglarel tirelessly peered this way and that seeking trouble, as was his habit.
They came out into the round reception hall with its lofty and magnificent vaulted ceiling, where guards stood at attention, carefully impassive. Telamont turned left.
“You’re not going to tell me what those missions are, are you?” Aglarel asked calmly.
“Not yet,” Telamont replied, his tone matching his son’s.
Together they strode through a hall of gloom and shadows where their footfalls echoed as if across great distances, and there were no guards. Beyond themselves, there was no one at all.
They proceeded in calm silence through an archway, to emerge into a room lit by the soft, steady purple glow of magic, and crossed it to another archway opening into deeper darkness.
They were halfway down the long passageway beyond, walking in darkness no mere human could have navigated through, when Aglarel ventured, “In order to protect you properly, Father, I would like to know the reason behind your sudden prohibition on using magic that attacks minds, or contacts them at all. Working blind is … unsettling. And dangerous.”
“So is suffering damage to our own minds, whenever we use such magics,” Telamont replied. “And that’s what recently began to occur. If you try to read minds a dozen times before nightfall, you’ll go to bed a far lesser arcanist than you were this morning.”
“Who’s behind this?” Aglarel’s voice was ever so slightly sharper. “Surely we should all know everything we can learn about such a peril, so as to deal with it swiftly, before all else.”
Telamont looked at him. “Have you never wondered why for so long I forbade all attempts to bring Hadrhune and your brothers back from death?”
“I presumed it was to avoid any chance of those who make undead their thralls-such as the one called Larloch, and Szass Tam of Thay-extending their influence among us. I take it I was wrong.”
“You were right, but a new reason has been added to that. What most call the Spellplague, this continuing chaos of the collapsing Weave, does not mean the Weave is dead. Holy Shar would not seek its capture, were that so. Lesser wielders of magic than we went mad, or had their brains literally melt or explode, when the Spellplague began. Those greater wielders of the Art who still live are far less sane than they were. And now, lurking in the Weave, are fell sentiences that prey on us-on all of Shade-when we work magic that contacts other minds. For a time, Hadrhune was one of these lurkers. They yet include some of your fallen brothers and rival arcanists, of this city and others.”
“They died, and yet still live?”
“Their minds are caught in the Weave. They seek to regain full life. They need more life-force, depth of will, and scope of mind to forcibly take over a capable living person. Their best road to doing so is to plunder minds they know. So they wait for us-and when we work those sorts of magic, we lay ourselves open to them, and they stealthily rob our minds of some power, every time. It’s happened to you. To me. To most of your brothers, perhaps all.”
Aglarel stopped, mouth agape. “How is this possible?”
Telamont shrugged. “None can ever fully understand the Art. Yet when I seek to compel the Weave, to conquer it locally and claim it for Shar, it resists me as it always has. Which means Mystra yet survives, or enough of her Chosen, to offer resistance.”
Aglarel’s face hardened. “Which is why they must all die,” he snapped. “More than that-be utterly destroyed, minds shattered and severed from the Weave. I am going to be so bold as to guess you have sent your two agents to bring us closer to that goal.”
“So much is obvious,” Telamont replied. He spun around to stare into Aglarel’s silver eyes, their noses almost touching. “I tolerate all the intrigues, petty treason, and misbehavior of your brothers and lesser citizens of our city so long as they stray not from that goal. Every last creature of Mystra, and the vestige of that goddess herself, must perish utterly. We cannot rule this world, else. And in time to come, through patient achievement that ruins not the prize we seek to claim, rule it all the worthy among us shall.”
That last word was said with icy firmness, ere the Most High turned on his heel and strode on.
“The worthy among us,” Aglarel muttered, lengthening his stride to catch up to his father.
“Tell me, how many of us are worthy?”
“All too few,” the High Prince of Shade replied curtly. “It’s why I went on siring sons.”
CHAPTER 3
I can’t believe,” Rune panted, as the two thousandth bramble of the day whipped across her face, drawing yet more blood, “anyone has passed this way in the last generation or so. Owww.”
Dry and dead thorncanes crackled as she forced her way through them, marveling again at the lithe grace of the silver-haired bard ahead of her, whose shapely behind and muscled back she’d been rather grimly following for what seemed a very long afternoon. Of course, when your hair can reach out like a dozen strong arms to pull branches, vines, and brambles apart, it’s a lot easier to travel thick, trackless wilderland woods in the unmapped beyond, to be sure …
“Not long now,” Elminster murmured from right behind her. They were far from Elturel, in a forest reached through an ancient portal Amarune couldn’t have found again if she’d wanted to. This forest was thinner and higher than the one that held Ralaskoun’s tomb-which was seven days behind them now-on rocky and rising ground.
They’d been climbing higher for some time, and right then were ascending a steep, lightly forested slope where loose stones underfoot were only outnumbered by growing things that bristled with sharp thorns. Rune was very glad she’d worn thigh-high boots, or her legs would have looked as if she’d fought a long and hard battle against halfling children armed with thornsticks.