The altar of Mystra. It had been a long time—too long— since she’d knelt there 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, 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 have come to beg forgiveness and plead for guidance. Holy Mystra, aid me!”
“Aid is at hand,” a faint whisper came out of the darkness to her right. Aerindel was so startled that she almost dropped the staff.
A moment later, she realized that it 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 downwards, 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 she4cnew, it had never been in the coffin of Thabras.
She stared at the 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 then started to fade. At the same time, the crown began to glow.
“Set aside fear, and put me on,” the whisper came again.
Aerindel knelt in the dark crypt staring at the circlet, a dark fear rising in her breast, then shrugged. 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. She found no markings nor gems, shrugged again, and settled it on her head.
All at once, she was shivering as a 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 cry made Aerindel stiffen, and tears came. It was her father’s voice—and “Elminster,” she dimly remembered, had been his tutor as well as the wizard he’d loved and trusted most. But what mattered that? “Aid me!” her father had shouted, so anguished and so 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 to 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. Above her brows, the crown seemed to wink, then she could see every dark corner as if it were brightly lit.
“I let you see in the dark and pierce all disguises. By my power your eyes can travel afar…”
She was suddenly gazing at 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. Then that vision was swept away and she beheld 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 as the crown said, “With me, you can do this.”
The scene changed, and she saw a bearded man standing grimly in a dungeon cell. The crown on his brow flashed with white storm-fire, and the stones before him cracked and melted, flowing aside as the busy lightnings 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 seemed to quiver, then 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 aloud, almost choking in excitement.
There was a warmth within her and a surge of … satisfaction?
What followed felt uncomfortable, 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.
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. 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 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 nightdark 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 warband 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 … 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.
AThentan 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—”
Aerindel bent her grim gaze upon him, her eyes dark with hatred, and willed forth fire. The bobbing torch blossomed into sparks as the crown spat out fire at the one who held it.