Storm and Elminster looked at her, their arms around each other. Then they regarded each other, nose to nose-and with a smile and a squeeze, Storm silently bade the last living prince of vanished Athalantar to make reply.
And he smiled back at his too-many-greats-granddaughter with a touch of sadness and a much larger measure of pride, and said, “Yes, dearest, oh yes, but don’t ye see? ’Tis what ye haven’t done that torments ye, in life. And it’s always been the love given me that sustains me-and ye still give it, all of ye. So I cannot stop, until I drop.”
“If you get any more poetic,” Alustriel murmured, “I’m going to gag.”
El chuckled. “Ye see? The love never ends.”
At that moment, there came a knock on the door. Two raps, gentle and widely spaced. “Now who might that be?” Arclath asked, drawing his sword.
El spun something swift and unseen from the Weave that anyone watching might have suspected was some sort of magical shield, and beat the young noble to the door, mainly because he was closest.
“Duth Braerogan from the next farm, quite likely,” Storm told them, looking up from a pot that was right at the stage where it shouldn’t be left alone, with no one to stir it. “He keeps a fairly good watch over the place, and I-”
Elminster opened the door, ready for anything.
And the room silently flooded with deep blue light shot through with a thousand thousand tiny, twinkling silver stars.
Those stars were coming from the eyes of a dark-haired, slender woman who stood almost shyly on the threshold.
“May I come in?” she whispered, but her voice held a deep thunder that set Arclath’s blood thrumming in his veins. He lowered his sword-it seemed to be shrouded in countless swarming stars-and stared.
“Well met,” the woman said to him, and as their eyes met something happened to Arclath. His heart sang, yes, but was he-? He was! He was floating, drifting gently back from her, the soles of his boots no longer touching the ground.
“Oh, yes! Be welcome, Mother,” Storm said in a tremulous voice, as if she was on the verge of tears. “You are always welcome here.”
“Mother?” Amarune asked, bewildered.
Arclath looked back at her and saw happy tears streaming down the faces of all five Chosen in the room. Among them, Vangerdahast was frozen, openmouthed in dumbfounded awe-suddenly a spider-thing no longer, but a man again, dark robes and all, and looking down at himself and back up at the woman in the doorway and back down at himself again, in utter disbelief-and beside him, Glathra was out of her chair and on her knees, cowering.
It occurred to Arclath Delcastle that he should be kneeling too, if this was who he thought it was, but he was still drifting, unable to go to the floor. That didn’t stop him trying.
“An inherited title I still feel unworthy of,” the woman answered Rune, and seemed to flow into the room rather than walking. “I am Mystra. Yes, that Mystra. And I’ve come to give my deepest thanks to all of you-and to be who I used to be for a little while, if you’ll let me.”
Her eyes twinkled as she looked at Storm. “You see, I’ve never forgotten your cooking.”
“So You’ll be wanting me to stick around and cook a meal or two for You every century or so?” the Bard of Shadowdale asked, her silver tresses stirring around her shoulders like the tails of so many contented cats.
“Please,” the goddess of magic said simply, and the room fairly crackled with benevolent power.
“Not without my El,” Storm replied gently, staring into Mystra’s eyes.
Whereupon the goddess turned to Elminster, who still stood by the door, his hand raised and surrounded by the faint shimmering of his shield. In sudden silence, everyone else looked at him too.
The Old Mage smiled back at them all.
“Well, look ye, I’ve wanted to die for a long time now. But no longer. Now, I want to stay and see the Realms healed.”