The altar of Mystra. It had been a long time-too long-since she'd knelt here to pray for guidance. She went to her knees in a rush. Drops of blood from her hand fell upon the stone and startled her by flaring instantly into smoke that drifted around her, and then faded away as abruptly as it had come.
"Mother of Mysteries," she whispered, "I have neglected you and failed in my diligence at crafting your holy Art of magic… but I need you now, and am come to beg forgiveness and plead for guidance. Holy Mystra, aid me!"
"Aid is at hand," a faint whisper promptly came out of the darkness to her right. Aerindel was so startled that she almost dropped the staff.
A moment later, she realized that the staff was sinking… sinking into the solid stone she was kneeling on!
She tugged on it, but was as overmatched as if she'd been trying to hold back a surging stallion. The staff moved powerfully downward, burning her clutching fingers as it slid between them, going down into stone that had no hole nor mark… and was cool and hard under her fingertips after it was gone.
Mystra had taken-reclaimed-the Stormstaff. What sort of aid was this?
Kneeling in the near-darkness, Aerindel heard the faint whisper again: "Set aside fear, and put me on."
She peered into the gloom, seeking the source of that softest of voices. It repeated its message, and by the rasping words she located it: a crown, lying atop her father's coffin.
A chill touched her heart. The black stone resting-place of Thabras Stormstaff had been bare of all but dust when she'd first looked at it, moments ago.
And yet she knew this crown. She remembered seeing her father wearing it once or twice, when she was young. Aerindel frowned. It was no part of the regalia of Dusklake, and had disappeared before his death. So far as she knew, it had never been in the coffin of Thabras.
She stared at that black stone casket for a moment, considering, but knew she dared not try to open it, even if she'd commanded strength enough to shift its massive lid.
On the altar before her, the blue-white star flashed once and then started to fade. At the same time, the crown began to glow.
"Set aside fear, and put me on," the insistent whisper came again.
Aerindel knelt in the dark crypt and stared at the circlet, fear rising in her breast. What choice did she have? If she hesitated, fear might win, and send her running from this place-so she made her arms stretch forth without hesitation, and took up the crown.
It was cool in her hand, but not as heavy as it looked. It seemed to tingle slightly as she peered at it, found no markings nor gems, shrugged again-and settled it on her head.
All at once, she was shivering as a sudden cold wind seemed to blow through her head, and someone nearby-a woman, both desperate and furious-screamed, "No! You shall not have me!"
Her cry was drowned out in deep, exultant laughter, which bubbled up into the words, uttered in a different voice entirely, "Of course, I can also do-this."
"Oh, Mystra," came the next speaker, a hoarse whisper seeming to speak right into her ear-she turned her head, but there was no one there-"aid me now!"
"This is no time," the next voice said wearily, "for fools to play at wizardry! Watch!"
"Elminster, aid me!"
That voice made Aerindel stiffen, and tears came. It was her father's voice-and Elminster, she dimly remembered, had been his tutor, and the wizard he'd loved and trusted most. "Aid me!" her father had cried, so anguished, and desperate…
Just as she was. Aerindel sat numbly, the tears trickling down her cheeks, as the voices went on, crying the same things over and over again. Some of them seemed so… final. As doomed as she was. As if they were crying out their last words before death.
When she'd heard Thabras say those same three words the fourth time, the spectral tongues seemed to grow fainter, and those that screamed or cried wordlessly died away altogether. Another voice-the insistent whisper she'd heard first-rose over them all. "I am the power you need to keep Dusklake safe, and destroy Rammast forever."
Aerindel got up, putting a cautious hand to her head to be sure the crown was secure, and looked around the crypt. The crown seemed to wink, and suddenly she could see every dark corner as if it was brightly lit.
"I let you see in the dark, and pierce disguises. I let your eyes travel afar…"
She was suddenly seeing an endless sea, silvery under the moonlight, and knew that she was seeing the Great Water that lay west of the Esmeltaran, beyond the Cloud Peaks. And then that vision was swept away, and she was seeing a woman she did not know rising up out of a furious battle. Bolts of flame burst from the crown and felled screaming warriors, hurling many through the air like broken dolls. She watched a severed arm whirl away by itself.
The crown said, "With me, you can do this."
The scene changed, and she was seeing a bearded man standing grimly in a dungeon cell. The crown on his brow flashed with sudden white storm-fire, and the stones before him cracked and melted, flowing aside as the busy lightning cut a man-high tunnel into them.
"And this," the crown whispered.
The scene changed again. She was wearing the crown, this time, and a hydra was rearing up above her, on a sun-dappled forest path somewhere, snapping its jaws horribly. The crown quivered, and suddenly the hydra was shrinking and twisting, flailing its long necks vainly, as it hardened into a gnarled, triple-trunked tree.
"And this," the whisper came again, "among many more powers… if you have the courage to wield them."
"How?" the Lady of Dusklake asked in sudden, eager excitement.
There was a new warmth within her, and a surge of… satisfaction?
What followed felt uncomfortable and slithering and somehow private, as the crown seemed to harness itself to her will. Aerindel shuddered as energy flowed both icy and warm within her, coiling in her vitals and rushing out to her fingertips. She heard a moan that was almost a purr, and realized hazily that it must have come from her own lips.
And then the strangeness was gone, and she was herself again.
Feeling leaping hope and a certain restlessness, the Lady of Dusklake knelt again at the altar to thank Mystra, sprang up, and whirled around.
As she hurried up the steps, her will quested out ahead of her. That farseeing… right now, her most urgent need was to find out where Rammast was, and what he was up to.
There was an exclamation in the darkness ahead of her, and the flash of drawn steel. She slowed, but suddenly she was seeing not a startled Duskan guard, bowing to her at the head of the crypt stairs with fear in his face and a naked sword in his hand, but the bloody-taloned golden eagle banner of Grand Thentor, fluttering in torchlight.
Torchlight somewhere in a night-dark forest where frightened folk screamed and fled into the trees all around, along a muddy road where the warriors of Grand Thentor strode laughing… a road she knew.
A moment later, Rammast's war band passed by a tavern signboard, and she was sure. Dusking! They were in Dusking, at the other end of her realm-already invading Dusklake, to put her folk to the sword!
A woman screamed in that far place, and Aerindel found herself trembling with rage.
"Take me there!" she snarled. There was an exhilarating surge within her, a moment of terror when the world rushed and flowed, all around… and then she was standing in the night, in the muddy road through Dusking, with that banner bearing down on her, and a host of men with drawn swords tramping around it.
A Thentan soldier hooted at the sight of the fine-gowned lady standing alone in the way before him, and waved the torch he held. "Look, lads! Mine, I tell you, this one's-"