She wanted so much more, but neither El nor Alassra would learn that from her. Ever.
She held some measure of power over both of them, if she’d been the sort of worm to seek to wield it. The Simbul had been torn witless by the Spellplague, magic ravaging her mind; ever after only magic made her sane.
Magic she’d accept only from Elminster. Magic he could only give her by letting the fires within her consume the frozen fires of enchanted items he brought her-because the Spellplague had marred him, too. Casting spells plunged him into madness on the spot.
Unless one person-just one, in all Faerun, for all she or he knew-healed him, with almost the only magic the Spellplague had left her. Storm Silverhand, the Bard of Shadowdale no longer. Now she was Elminster’s healer, though they’d taken great care the Realms never learned that. By touch and will she could heal his mind, pouring her vitality into him shaped by the paltry Art left to her, to bring him back to sanity almost as fast as he lost it, if she stood with him. Time and again she had done so.
So the feared Witch-Queen needed magic to regain sanity for fleeting times, magic she trusted only Elminster to give her, and Elminster needed Storm if he was to work magic at all.
The very sight of Storm sometimes enraged Alassra when she was less than lucid, and El, damn him, trusted Storm as a friend, road-companion, and fellow warrior. Not as his lady.
“I am Storm Silverhand,” she told the nearest tree in a fierce but almost soundless whisper. “And I want more. So much more.”
They had lain together in each other’s arms and had watched the dusking sky above them … as one by one, the stars had come out.
She was asleep, and dreaming. Moving against him, clinging to him for comfort, murmuring, and caressing. Alassra was dreaming of making love to him again.
As still as he could keep himself, his arms going numb around her, Elminster lay awake, staring grimly up at the coldly twinkling stars.
A wolf howled, far off to the north, and there had been nearer hootings and rustlings from time to time, but El feared no foraging beasts; Storm was somewhere near, standing sentinel. She’d stolen out of the trees to stand silently looking at them both a little while earlier, tears glimmering in her eyes as she stared down at her sister-but had gone again, a softly hastening shadow, when Alassra had stirred.
Leaving Elminster alone with his brooding.
How long would she stay herself this time? He needed to find more powerful magic and have done with this business once and for all.
He was tired of feeding her little oddments of Art to win her a mere handful of days and nights of sanity, then doing it all again for another paltry handful a few months hence. If he could lay hands on something truly powerful that hadn’t been twisted too wild by the Spellplague, he might be able to make the Simbul whole and sane again. There was risk, but he knew how.
The gorget he’d brought with him wasn’t enough. It should buy her days, perhaps a month or more, and when she sank into deeper dreaming he’d feed it to her. When she’d have some time asleep for it to work its way through her.
Aye, he needed mightier magic. Not that he didn’t need powerful enchanted items-whose wielding, unlike the casting of a spell, wouldn’t plunge him into madness-for other uses. Such as destroying or at least blunting some of the more pressing dangers of the Realms.
Foes he once would have been able to blast at will or misdirect into doing good they did not intend. Back when he dared use magic, back when he still had a body that would obey him.
Back when he was still someone.
The worst of it was that he knew where so much powerful magic was … or had been. Yet the greater part of it was lost or buried or walled away beyond his failing strength or hidden from his fading senses. The mighty Elminster couldn’t steal much more deftly than a good thief, these days; he was reduced to picking up fallen battle-spoils or plucking whatever was left unguarded. Or swooping in after someone else did the finding for him.
Someone like that young fool Marlin Stormserpent back in Cormyr, who was seeking the nine ghosts he thought would swiftly slay all the war wizards and loyal Purple Dragons and rival traitor nobles alike and deliver the Dragon Throne into his idle lap.
Lovely Laeral was gone, so there weren’t nine deadly ghosts to be had. Yet there were still six, possibly seven-and if a certain Elminster commanded them, he could hurl back the shadows in Sembia and make the Forest Kingdom bright and strong again, a bastion for Harpers and those who had a talent for the Art but lacked training. A land where he could make mages trusted and respected again, and from which he could send them forth to deliver the rest of Faerun from so much of its lawless, bloody chaos. New guardians to take up the burden of defending the Realms from all who’d cheerfully destroy it while conquering it.
Or he could let Alassra consume the ghosts, and be restored.
That much power and that many memories would be enough to make her whole again, the twisting taint burned right out of her, to stand strong at his side, his lady love once more bright in all her power and fury. Together they could tame the Realms and set it to rights.
So, the Crown … or the Mad Queen?
Ah, dark decisions …
Easily made, this time.
His Alassra.
Soft lips found his throat in the dark, just above his collarbone. She was still asleep, loving him in her dreams.
El smiled thinly. He loved the Obarskyrs and the Land of the Purple Dragon dearly, but it could all be swept away in scouring fire in an instant if that was what it would take to make his Simbul herself again.
To have his Alassra back, he would do anything.
Anything.
CHAPTER TWO
Hold! What was that?”
The hoarse whisper came out of the night, not much more than twice her arm’s reach in front of her, where a cluster of duskwoods stood dark and tall. Storm Silverhand froze.
“Some scuttling furry thing. What else’d be creeping around the heart of the Hullack at this time of night?” The second voice was thinner and sharper. It was also higher up, coming from somewhere in one of the trees in front of her.
“Elminster and the Simbul?”
“Very funny.”
Storm heard a faint scuffling as the second speaker clambered down to the ground before adding, “Well, I can’t trace a thing. We’re too close to the ruin. What’s left of the tower’s wardings won’t keep a mouse at bay, but their decay is like a great seething hearth-cauldron in front of us, roiling and echoing. It may be silent and unseen, but it’s all too stlarning effective at foiling my scrying magic. Trying to find those two with spells, if they’re anywhere in front of us, is impossible.” There followed a gusty sigh, then, “Heard anything more?”
Storm stood right where she was, thankful it was dark enough in the hollow that it was easier for the men to move by feel than by sight.
“No,” said the first whisperer, a little doubtfully.
“Well, I’m not telling Kelgantor we heard a little rustling we can’t identify, just once, and only for a moment.”
Kelgantor. These were war wizards. Storm kept very still.
“What ruin?” the first whisperer hissed. “What sort of fool would build in the heart of the Hullack?”
“A long-ago fool, that’s who. Your older colleagues tell me it was called Tethgard. Some fallen fortress from the bygone days of the realm, back when this Elminster-if he really is as old as all the legends say he is-was young. You know: when gods walked the earth and Anauroch was all empty desert and a dragon laired on every hilltop.”