Those were lost when the High Moor was formed, weren't they?" "No,"
Gamalon said, "despite many efforts. Every few centuries, someone cobbles together a similar magic that's not quite the same, but enough that elf assassins find and destroy mage and magic." "Wait a minute-are you telling me these are killing storms?" Raegar recoiled from the wall. "No again." Gamalon sighed, his face looking exhausted.
"The lightning storms fulfill Alaundo's predictions for the year, but they're only a byproduct of Priamon's collection of artifacts. When he brings the pyramid into proximity with the five menhirs, that will accumulate enough power to release and reactivate the killing storm magic that was trapped in the land more than twelve millennia ago.
That is why Khelben manipulated him into this." "So it's a good thing that the lich can unleash a true killing storm? I don't believe you-"
"I'm not finished, boy. The killing storm is a magic so ancient, that the only way to undo its effects is to let it loose and change its magic with a group casting. There are mysteries tied to the killing storm that only get answered when it is unleashed again and tamed at long last. We have assembled the forces for the past twelve millennia and the time to see it through is tonight." The full moon glowed brightly, and a solid beam of moonlight arced beneath them, parting the clouds and lighting a path ahead. "There is our sign, thanks be to the Moonbow," said Gamalon. "Five gods have watched and waited-both ours and three more. All we need to do now is let Priamon do his part before we take our revenge." With that, Gamalon urged the tower into motion, and the shattered Eightower slipped into the stormy clouds.
Raegar gritted his teeth and reached up to scratch Nameless behind the ears. He whispered, "I hope your mistress is doing better than we are."
CHAPTER THIRTY
Feast of the Moon, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR) Tsarra found it odd that she was smiling as she faced the shimmering wall of black sharnforms. Before I forget, Khelben, that face you made at Priamon was priceless, Tsarra sent to Khelben as he slipped beneath the surface of the sharn. It wasn't too much? Laeral accuses me of being a ham at times. It was a little over the top, but he took the bait. As long as he keeps moving in the direction we need him to go… Indeed. You've learned more than I realized in your short time with us. Now, step forward and learn more about magic than you previously dreamed. We shall need this insight with the sharn for what we do next. Tsarra looked back once at Nameless and Raegar, and she yearned to stay. Still, what she knew moved her forward. She smiled at them, turned, and stepped forward into infinity. Tsarra's first impression was that it felt equally like slipping into an overly warm bath, the empathic embrace of her familiar's bond, and the chaotic stomach-tumble of falling in love. She felt herself move around, willing her arms and legs to move, but she also sensed that they had temporarily ceased to exist. She felt the air moving around her, but it was and wasn't her skin across which the breeze flowed. In fact, she felt as if clothes no longer impeded the breeze. She sniffed, and her usually sharp senses could not isolate scents beyond the strongest-wood smoke, cinnamon, and the bitter coppery smell of spilled blood. Where is all this coming from? she asked herself.
Tsarra blinked and felt dizzy-she looked out on more than nine different scenes all at once. She recognized a few features of Waterdeep through one eye, while another watched the sun rising on the shores of a small island, and more scenes than Tsarra could process.
More and more eyes opened until she shut hers, or so she thought. She looked upon dozens and dozens of sights both sunlit and dark, beneath storms or clear skies, in deep tombs and atop mountains… and the images kept coming… Tsarra! The shout drew her back to herself.
Once again, Khelben drew her out of madness. Lass, you dive in too easily. This isn't mere sorcery or wizardry, so you need to be careful. Focus on my voice again. I'll stay with you. Khelben's voice rang strong in her mind, but thundering behind it was a cacophony of voices. Khelben's face appeared near her, the white wedge of his beard shimmering with purple light as blue sparks revealed his face separate from the darkness. Remember who you are, Tsarra. Don't drift or meld too far into the sharnmind. Just listen to it and watch. See through its eyes, but only as much as you can handle. Know you are apart of all this. Neither give in to it or fight it-just be with it, and it will teach us all we need to know. Thanks to the past few days, you've become adept at bearing more than one soul. Now, get in touch with being both one singular form and many forms. That was the strangest sensation-like dreaming and feeling your body but not… but still seeing and moving and feeling something, Tsarra sent to Khelben. Are we sharn now? You said earlier it was a way to more quickly move to where we needed to go. It is, yes, Khelben replied, but it is also an experience you'll need in order to help me do what I foresaw nine hundred and ten years ago this night when I was Chosen. You've been waiting for this to happen for nearly a thousand years? You saw us melding with sharn? Is that why you've kept me in the tower for so long? Waiting for this? Aye-that and more. Know that they who are with us, around us, within us, have waited far longer than that. The noise surrounding her moved closer, and she recognized it as both a sea of random voices talking amongst themselves and the collective droning of a repetitive phrase: n'fhaorn… avael… avaess… n'quel… n'sukarat'layr. Tsarra knew she wasn't blind, but she wasn't seeing physical forms. The overall gloom seemed almost empty until magical sparkles winked into existence near her, as Khelben appeared. When a form arrived near her like that, its voice stood out from the overall din. Each form was little more than a hint, purple and blue sparkles outlining muscles and features of an unclad but ideal creature: gnome, human, elf, centaur, or others. Their outer and inner forms had not matched in ages, and many of them stared at their sparkling outlines in wonder, as if waking from a long dream. Tsarra knew without asking that all of them comprised the sharn collectively, not individually, and they had all chosen their form and their fate. Very good, child.
The voice came from "behind" Tsarra, who shifted her attention to that area and found herself staring into an eye larger than her head.
Despite the softness of the sending, Tsarra's instinctive reaction was fear. As the eye narrowed and the dragon's outline morphed down into a beautiful elf woman, Tsarra saw three dazzling points of light-far brighter than all the others-approaching both of them. What or who is that? Tsarra sent and asked aloud, though both became mental impressions of her question, rather than anything audible. They wish to meet you, as did we all. The elf woman who was a dragon caressed Tsarra's face, her touch both warm and cool in this maelstrom of sensations. Khelben's face and form shimmered near, and she saw that like the others Khelben's outline was stripped of any clothing. Tsarra looked down at her own form, realizing that she too stood exposed and vulnerable, right down to the birthmarks on her left hip-three dots of purple sparks. The oddest difference between Khelben and all others was the scars he bore on his image-random scars on his face, arms, and legs, and the massive hand-wide scar slashing across his torso. His left leg went missing here as well, and he bled silver sparkles from the stump and around his hip. Khelben? What aren't you telling me? And why am I so afraid of those three lights? Tsarra sent to her mentor.