Taller than the Stormstaff she was, floating and glowing with a white radiance that tore at the crown. With no head to support it, the circlet fell down the length of her, its frantic whisperings fading, and rang on the stones. Elminster snatched her away from it, strode two swift paces, and let go of her.
The coldness drained away swiftly, and Aerindel was herself once more-standing facing him, panting in fear and fury, the ruins of her gown hanging from bared, moonlit shoulders, her once-beautiful hair a gnawed ruin. She looked older. Her skin hung in wrinkles, mottled here and there. Her eyes were sunken, and her mouth pinched, as if with great age. Even in her rage, her bosom heaving, she was stooped, hunched over with hands that had become the knob-jointed claws of a crone.
"Go away, wizard!" she snarled, eyes like twin flames. "You've meddled more than enough! I need the crown to defend my land and… myself. Rammast shall get neither, if you'll just stand aside and let me use what Mystra sent me! It was her gift to me!"
"Mystra gives gifts that carry choices," Elminster told her quietly, his eyes on hers. The crown glimmered on the rocks behind him. "Each one is a test. No sword is deadly until a hand wields it."
"Bah!" Aerindel spat. "I've no time for gentle philosophy, mage! Dusklake is imperiled! Rammast gathers strength even as we stand here arguing! Get out of my way?
Elminster bowed his head and stepped aside. "The choice must be thine," he said gravely. "So long as ye know that the glow upon yonder circlet now means it must drink the life-force of the first magic-using being to don it, or crumble away."
Aerindel stormed forward, checked herself, shot him a look of anger, and snarled, "Such words are cheap weapons, wizard-how do I know they're true?"
Elminster shrugged. "Ye must trust in someone else at some time; why not begin now? If I'm right and ye heed me not, yell die. If ye heed me, I make this pledge: I'll stand beside ye to defend Dusklake against this Rammast, and teach ye enough magic so that ye'll need no crown nor wizardly aid hereafter. What say ye?"
Aerindel's eyes narrowed as she looked at him. Then her face twisted and she tossed what was left of her hair angrily. "What assurance have I that you'll keep this pledge? I don't know you-your word could be worthless!"
Elminster shrugged. "So it might. It comes back to trust, doesn't it?"
Aerindel waved her hand at him spurningly as she strode past. "Enough clever words, wizard! This I know, and have wielded, and can understand!" She bent and snatched up the crown.
"Remember my warning!" the wizard called.
It glowed at her invitingly, pulsing, its cool radiances running up her arms in what were almost caresses. The Whispering Crown gave forth a faint chiming, as of distant bells, and a feeling of warmth and reassurance. Aerindel drank it in, looked at Elminster with a silent challenge in her eyes, and raised the crown to put it on.
"Yesss," its whispering voice was hissing as she raised it past her face. But then another voice burst from it, desperate and alone, echoing in strident despair.
"Elminster, aid me!"
Her father's cry was louder than before.
Aerindel stared at the crown, hearing it snarl angrily. Under those angry growls the cries of others came faintly to her ears. Those who died wearing it. Its other victims.
"Farewell, Father," she said, voice trembling. She turned on her heel and threw the Whispering Crown hard and high.
Out, out over Glimmerdown Pass it flew, howling in angry despair. It spat out lightning at her as it fell- lightning that clawed at the rocks by her feet and then fell far short as the crown tumbled from view.
The moonlight seemed brighter as Aerindel turned into the cool breeze, squinted at the wizard, and asked timidly, "Elminster?"
The bearded man gave her a smile that lit up his face. He took her hand. "The right choice, Aerindel. Ye used yon crown for what Mystra put it into your hands for… and let it go when she wanted you to. Come, now. Mystra will protect ye; ye shall learn magic as thy father did."
An amber light whirled up around their joined hands, to shroud them both in a whirling cloud-a cloud that flashed blue-white and faded, leaving the mountaintop bare.
An instant later, lightning crashed down on the mountaintop, hurling what stones they did not scorch high into the air. The night crackled and glowed with the fury of that strike.
"There's no way they could have survived that," the Lord of Grand Thentor said with satisfaction, looking up from where he stood among the tumbled rocks that now choked Glimmerdown Pass. His men were under all this, somewhere-but who needed warriors in a land where one was the only wielder of magic?
"I wonder who that wizard was," Rammast mused aloud as he clapped his hands together and prepared to cast a flying spell, to whisk him over the rocks into Dusklake. He shrugged-well, he'd fly up over the mountaintop, just to be sure the mysterious mage was no more than ashes and memories now.
It was a pity about Aerindel, but he had her likeness fixed in an evermirror spell, and could alter the shape of some hired wench or other to take her place. Even if word got out, there'd be none to stand against him ere Dusklake joined Grand Thentor, and he looked to richer lands to the west, like Marbrin and Drimmath. Why, he could be ruling an empire in four winters' ti-
Amber light flared momentarily atop the mountain, high above. Frowning, Rammast peered up at it.
Something clanged on the rocks nearby, and bounced past his foot with a metallic clang. The crown!
His lightning must have blasted it from her head!
Smiling, Rammast snatched it up. Gods, but it had given her power enough! With this, Rammast Tarangar would be well-nigh invincible!
He'd call his realm Tarangara, when it stretched from the Great Water to the Inland Sea, and from the High Forest to the hot lands… Yes, by Mystr-
He was still smiling broadly as he settled the Whispering Crown onto his head.
"Look ye now," Elminster said gravely. One of his arms was around her shoulders. He pointed with the other, down at the tumbled stones where there had once been a pass. Down at a lone, gloating man: Rammast, Lord of Grand Thentor. He was-putting on the Whispering Crown!
Aerindel bit her lip and tried to blink away the tears that had been falling since she'd realized what the crown had done to her. She was old, and wrinkled, her life stolen from her… and all for magic. "Mystra will protect ye." Hah.
So Rammast would die, unless the goddess had played one last trick on her… but no. He was falling, dwindling into a dark and twisted thing, skin hanging on a skeleton that was toppling into cinnamon-hued dust… and sweet, surging energies were welling up in her, raising her, making her gasp and tremble in a rapture more intense than anything she'd ever felt before.
Aerindel found herself sobbing, clinging to the comforting arms around her as she shuddered-and then kissing the half-seen face above her wildly, joy surging through her. Her skin was smooth and young again, her body her own!
"Ye see," that kind voice rumbled by her ear. "These things work out. Mystra does provide. Ye have only to trust, and think clearly, and do as she guides."
"And how will I know her directives?" the Lady of Dusklake asked, brushing hair aside from shining eyes to meet his gaze.
Elminster pointed down again. Something gleamed amid skeletal dust, far below. Aerindel saw it only for an instant before the lightning of a spell that no mortal had cast erupted along the cliff across from where they stood, and sent a huge fall of stones rolling down to bury the Whispering Crown.
As the dust rose up toward them, Elminster replied solemnly, "She whispers to us always."
"Elminster," Aerindel said with a tremulous smile, "aid me!"
Interlude
Wes finished reading about the Whispering Crown and turned again to the strange, slim tome he'd found behind the bookcase. Something told him to read more of it. He picked up the book and continued.