“How about another dragon? Only a little one, but deadly. It can’t fly, having no wings-nor does it have a breath weapon-both thanks to arcanists of Thultanthar, as it happens, and their eagerness to experiment on dragonkind. But it can take human shape, and once it escaped the arcanists and went on a slaying spree, slaughtering any human mage it could find. ’Ware the poisonous stinging tail.”
“You do have quite the menagerie, don’t you?”
And so the unleashing went on, El groaning at the upheaval in his memories as long-forgotten oaths and sealing spells and bindings were dredged up.
“Hurts,” he gasped several times, and by the time the last bound creature-a one-armed lich that wielded some very creative magics- was set among an encampment of the besiegers, El was staggering in a murk of his own making, lost to the world.
When he ran into his third tree, gentle but firm arms embraced him and sat him down, and from somewhere nearby he heard Alustriel murmur, “He’s not doing well. A little silver fire?”
“No,” the Srinshee said emphatically. “That’ll draw arcanists galore down on us, and quite likely Larloch too. No, just let me …”
She murmured something, and cool, blessed relief flooded through Elminster’s roiling thoughts like dappled sunlight dancing through leaves and falling through high windows onto the dark floor of his mind.
He was barely aware that he was being lifted and carried, by Laeral and Alustriel, who grunted and staggered from time to time under his dead weight and the awkwardness of conveying him over tree roots and the uneven forest floor. More than once, he felt a magical force thrust up beneath him out of nowhere, as if the air had suddenly become a firm and solid hand, to hold him up over the roughest stretches, or where the trees stood so thick and close that he had to be turned on his side and slid through and around boughs and trunks, to …
A place where he started to tingle all over. A Weave anchor!
He was propped against a tree trunk-a shadowtop, by the feel of the bark, and as large across as the wall of a good-sized cottage-and left there, as Laeral and Alustriel and the Srinshee moved to form a box, with each of them and himself as a corner. The magic they worked then roused his mind out of the Srinshee’s healing mist, into full awareness of the forest around him again, and of what they were doing.
Destroying a Weave anchor, that was also one of the places the mythal of Myth Drannor was rooted. It was like shifting a downspout while storm rain was racing down it, rain that tugged at him and tore a little of his essence away.
Shocking him utterly awake. He blinked and groaned.
“Get up!” The Srinshee was shoving at his chest and armpits, trying to make him stand from where he’d slumped down the tree trunk. “Up! The sooner you’re on your feet and able to think, the sooner I can be fighting! I can win you more time by defending my city than helping you three do away with anchors-which must be done with care, remember, or the Weave will be lost!”
“And Mystra,” Alustriel warned.
“Not necessarily. That’s the foremost reason Mystra is hiding from the wider world-to withdraw herself from the Weave as much as possible. She told me so, and said her other important reason is to not provoke Shar into taking a hand openly-lest the Dark Goddess sweep the most important mortals who oppose her off the board before we have a chance to play.”
“This isn’t a game,” Laeral flared.
The Srinshee turned to her. “Isn’t it? To Shar, it certainly is. Remember that. She doesn’t want to destroy the prize to win it, or she’d have done so long ago. Playing the game is what sustains her, not winning.”
The sisters both stared at her, openmouthed, as Elminster tried to remember how to nod. And managed it with some satisfaction.
“After she destroys or enthralls all mortals,” the Srinshee added, almost fiercely, “where will she gain the loss, forgetfulness, and oblivion she feeds upon? Did you never ponder why the world hadn’t been destroyed by the gods who feed on destruction long before any of us could have been born? It never ends-it’s not meant to. If we defeat Shar’s pawns now, she’ll withdraw and seduce new ones and scheme anew. If you think of her thus, and talk not of ‘forever’ and other absolutes, it becomes easier to bear-and easier to correctly foresee what any deity will do. Even the mad ones.”
“Especially the mad ones,” Elminster muttered.
“Which, from the point of view of most crofters and shopkeepers, is every last one of them,” Laeral said wryly.
Alustriel, however, was frowning at the Srinshee. “How can you be sure of what Shar will do?”
“I know her,” came the bleak reply. “Far better than I care to. I was the Herald of Mystra before El was-stars and seas, before any of you were born. I met many of the gods, often.” The Srinshee shook her head and added in a whisper, “I am … too old for this now.”
She turned away. “So come on. If he can’t walk straight yet, bring him.”
Elminster waved away helping hands, started striding after the Srinshee-and fell flat on his face.
Grinning and shaking their heads, Laeral and Alustriel hauled him to his feet, put their arms around his shoulders, and started walking him through the forest. Six stumbling steps later they lost patience, exchanged glances, slid long locks of silver hair under their burden’s thighs from behind, and boosted him off his feet into a chair lift.
Enthroned, Elminster was whisked over a wooded ridge, across a tangled ravine beyond, and over a second ridge. Where mercenaries came charging out of the trees with a triumphal roar.
The Srinshee sighed, waved one arm without slowing, and paid no attention at all to the startled cries of pain-or the thuds and abruptly-cut-off yells that followed, when the weapons and bucklers racing away from her towed their mercenary owners into swift and brutal meetings with trees.
Not a single besieger reached the two silver-haired women and the bearded old man bouncing between them.
“Here!” said the Srinshee, a ridge later, as they came upon an ancient stump the size of a large coach, with a tiny spring fountaining out between its rotting roots. “Triangle, the three of us, and put El between us. When the anchor breaks, mind you thrust the leakage into him!”
It was Laeral’s turn to frown. “But won’t that-?”
The Srinshee gave her a look that was somewhere between patiently polite and withering.
“Ah.” Laeral winced. “You’ve done this before. Yes.”
The anchor gave way with frightening ease, and Elminster’s body arched and bucked as Weave and mythal energies snarled through him, leaking out of his mouth as brief blue flames.
He rolled over, coughing weakly.
The Srinshee clapped him on the back, kissed the startled face he raised to her, and announced briskly, “Right, only forty-two more to go! I’m off!”
And she hurled herself away through the air like a sling stone-to slam into an arcanist who was just stepping out from behind a tree to hurl a blasting spell at Elminster and the two sisters. He was flung backward into an awkward stagger, and the Srinshee pursued him, slicing his throat open with a dagger as she flashed past.
About then, she noticed the arcanist she’d felled was just the foremost of a dozen more hastening through the trees to investigate the magical turmoil of the anchor being destroyed.
She fetched up on a high bough, rebounded off the trunk it had grown out of to reclaim her balance, and cast a spell of her own.
As El, Laeral, and Alustriel watched, the Srinshee’s working became a mighty explosion in the heart of those approaching arcanists. Tattered bodies-some collapsing into disembodied heads, limbs, and hands in midair-hurtled in all spattering directions.
Then, with a cheery wave, she was gone.
“Well,” Alustriel said rather ruefully, “that seems to be that. We’re on our own.”