Yaereene stood alone and ill at ease atop a tall spindle of rock.
In a deep trench below and around her were a large number of sharn that hewed away at the rock. Miles to the west, she saw the plumes of energy rising into the sky-the central casting. "So I am to be of the Fourth Circles… what shall our tasks be?" Behind her was the vast Highstar Lake, a sight she'd not seen in over a century. She clutched the gold seal given to her by Khelben as she looked at the golden ring on her finger. She knew this was a ring for an acolyte of Windsong Tower in fabled Myth Drannor. Were the secrets in play once held by that fabled school of magic? Her reverie ended as three others glinted into view around her, forming a circle. The chalk-pale Nain Keenwhistler she knew, and she nodded at him, raising an eyebrow at the blackstaff he carried. Of course she recognized her cousin Kroloth Ilbaereth, who bore her family's dead moonblade at his right hip, and her adolescent maiden niece Ynshael Ilbaereth, whose talents for magic outstripped her own. "So this is how it is to be-each family and its sacrifice standing with an agent and a seal of the Blackstaff's making? All this in a minor circle leagues away from the center? I smell deception," Kroloth grumbled. Nain, his voice never more than a loud whisper, replied, "You sense it from yourself, young Ilbaereth.
Would you trust this if Malchor Harpell stood here rather than me?" "I would," Kroloth said, "for he is a friend of Neverwinter's elves. He and I have spilt blood together and shared honors. I trust him, yet I know not you. I am here as honor demands and at my cousin's request.
You shall pay for that slight, pallid-" Yaereene interrupted him. "No he shall not, Kroloth. He plays a role just as we do, and he too has reason to mistrust the Blackstaff. Yet there he stands, ready as called. Tel'quessir dare do no less." As she spoke, light sparks rose between the seal she carried and the rings on everyone's fingers.
"Place the seal at the center of our stone pedestal here, osu'nys,"
Ynshael said. "I think I see the pattern that is to come, both from my studies and from the ring… and this." She stooped and picked up a rusted and shattered sword, its pommel gone as was much of the blade's point. It too crackled with energy due to the proximity with the rings. "Are you sure we're not supposed to wait for those fires to reach us?" Nain asked. "Khelben's workings tend to be rather stingy where it comes to bending the rules." The three elves all said simultaneously, "Magic happens in its own time, and it is never anything but the right time." They smiled, and Yaereene placed the thick gold seal on the ground. A light shimmer made each of their rings glow and chime, sending shivers down everyone's spines. Ideas lit inside their eyes, and they relaxed into their individual work.
Ynshael and Nain surprised each other by saying, "The staff goes next…" Nain raised the blackstaff and stabbed it down hard upon the gold seal. The staff suffused with light and energy, and magical power lanced upward. "Now, the blade," he whispered. Kroloth unhooked the moonblade-still scabbarded-and looked at his cousins. "For the People." Nain, Yaereene, and Ynshael corrected him, "For all people."
For the first time in nearly two thousand years, an Ilbaereth drew the family's moonblade from its scabbard, its dead blade cracked instead of rune-marked. Kroloth swung the sword toward the glowing blackstaff, but energy erupted when his blade hit the surrounding light. The sword and the scabbard were wrenched from his grasp, and both hit the blackstaff from the top, shattering it into four long pieces. Each piece fell as a shower of energy and engulfed each of the four assembled there. The blade seated itself in the scabbard magically, and both buried themselves hilt deep into the center of the stone pillar on which they stood. Magic coruscated from the entire circle, and Ynshael yelled above the roar of ancient power, "Once I add this to the pillar, we must all grasp hands!" Ynshael picked up the rusty shard, kissed it once, and tossed it into the conflagration. She grabbed for Nain's and Kroloth's hands as thunder slammed into them all and the powers boomed both above and below. The power among them was contained by their hands, and they all watched as some magic rose from the shards of the blackstaff and focused into a tiny gem. The gem swirled about in the maelstrom of magic then quickly flew off to the west, faster than a rage of dragons. The casters knew that gem had something to do with the central casting, but their rings told them to concentrate on the pommel of the blade. As they focused on the embedded sword, the earth shifted beneath them. They kept their balance, as where they stood was stable and rising. All four knew the legends of Cormanthor and recognized it as a variant ritual to summon a tower beneath them. They were only barely aware that the shift had dislodged the stone walls that made their location a peninsula. The waters of the lake were no longer held back, and it began flooding the trenches carved around the pillar where the quartet stood. Nain smiled as Highstar Lake swelled into a new lakebed. Earlier, he had asked Malchor what work Khelben had him doing with Sememmon and Ashemmi, and the elder wizard grumbled, "I've had to build a lake bed without letting a lake into it. Hard enough working with that former Zhent, no matter what Khelben says, but harder still as he and his mistress challenge each other with creative uses for earthquake spells…"
Nain saw their work at hand as his vantage point rose. He guessed that by the time they were done with the tor and the waters settled, Highstar Lake would be at least a mile wider and longer, a tower in its midst left inaccessible by land. The magic merged with the casters as the tor grew. They drew apart as the tower grew wider, but stony duplicates of their own forms linked hands with them as the width of their circle grew. By the time they stopped rising, twenty figures linked hands atop the tor. The merlons and crenelations looked like five duplicates of each caster forming the upper battlements here.