Blackstaff (42 page)

Yaereene stood alone and ill at ease atop a tall spindle of rock. In a deep trench below and around her were a large number of sharn that hewed away at the rock. Miles to the west, she saw the plumes of energy rising into the sky—the central casting.

“So I am to be of the Fourth Circles … what shall our tasks be?”

Behind her was the vast Highstar Lake, a sight she’d not seen in over a century. She clutched the gold seal given to her by Khelben as she looked at the golden ring on her finger. She knew this was a ring for an acolyte of Windsong Tower in fabled Myth Drannor. Were the secrets in play once held by that fabled school of magic? Her reverie ended as three others glinted into view around her, forming a circle.

The chalk-pale Nain Keenwhistler she knew, and she nodded at him, raising an eyebrow at the blackstaff he carried. Of course she recognized her cousin Kroloth Ilbaereth, who bore her family’s dead moonblade at his right hip, and her adolescent maiden niece Ynshael Ilbaereth, whose talents for magic outstripped her own.

“So this is how it is to be—each family and its sacrifice standing with an agent and a seal of the Blackstaff’s making? All this in a minor circle leagues away from the center? I smell deception,” Kroloth grumbled.

Nain, his voice never more than a loud whisper, replied,
“You sense it from yourself, young Ilbaereth. Would you trust this if Malchor Harpell stood here rather than me?”

“I would,” Kroloth said, “for he is a friend of Neverwinter’s elves. He and I have spilt blood together and shared honors. I trust him, yet I know not you. I am here as honor demands and at my cousin’s request. You shall pay for that slight, pallid—”

Yaereene interrupted him. “No he shall not, Kroloth. He plays a role just as we do, and he too has reason to mistrust the Blackstaff. Yet there he stands, ready as called.
Tel’quessir
dare do no less.” As she spoke, light sparks rose between the seal she carried and the rings on everyone’s fingers.

“Place the seal at the center of our stone pedestal here,
osu’nys
,” Ynshael said. “I think I see the pattern that is to come, both from my studies and from the ring … and this.” She stooped and picked up a rusted and shattered sword, its pommel gone as was much of the blade’s point. It too crackled with energy due to the proximity with the rings.

“Are you sure we’re not supposed to wait for those fires to reach us?” Nain asked. “Khelben’s workings tend to be rather stingy where it comes to bending the rules.”

The three elves all said simultaneously, “Magic happens in its own time, and it is never anything but the right time.”

They smiled, and Yaereene placed the thick gold seal on the ground. A light shimmer made each of their rings glow and chime, sending shivers down everyone’s spines. Ideas lit inside their eyes, and they relaxed into their individual work.

Ynshael and Nain surprised each other by saying, “The staff goes next …”

Nain raised the blackstaff and stabbed it down hard upon the gold seal. The staff suffused with light and energy, and magical power lanced upward.

“Now, the blade,” he whispered.

Kroloth unhooked the moonblade—still scabbarded—and
looked at his cousins. “For the People.” Nain, Yaereene, and Ynshael corrected him, “For
all
people.”

For the first time in nearly two thousand years, an Ilbaereth drew the family’s moonblade from its scabbard, its dead blade cracked instead of rune-marked. Kroloth swung the sword toward the glowing blackstaff, but energy erupted when his blade hit the surrounding light. The sword and the scabbard were wrenched from his grasp, and both hit the blackstaff from the top, shattering it into four long pieces. Each piece fell as a shower of energy and engulfed each of the four assembled there. The blade seated itself in the scabbard magically, and both buried themselves hilt deep into the center of the stone pillar on which they stood.

Magic corruscated from the entire circle, and Ynshael yelled above the roar of ancient power, “Once I add this to the pillar, we must all grasp hands!”

Ynshael picked up the rusty shard, kissed it once, and tossed it into the conflagration. She grabbed for Nain’s and Kroloth’s hands as thunder slammed into them all and the powers boomed both above and below. The power among them was contained by their hands, and they all watched as some magic rose from the shards of the blackstaff and focused into a tiny gem. The gem swirled about in the maelstrom of magic then quickly flew off to the west, faster than a rage of dragons. The casters knew that gem had something to do with the central casting, but their rings told them to concentrate on the pommel of the blade.

As they focused on the embedded sword, the earth shifted beneath them. They kept their balance, as where they stood was stable and rising. All four knew the legends of Cormanthor and recognized it as a variant ritual to summon a tower beneath them. They were only barely aware that the shift had dislodged the stone walls that made their location a peninsula. The waters of the lake were no longer held back, and it began flooding the trenches carved around the pillar where the quartet stood.

Nain smiled as Highstar Lake swelled into a new lakebed. Earlier, he had asked Malchor what work Khelben
had him doing with Sememmon and Ashemmi, and the elder wizard grumbled, “I’ve had to build a lake bed without letting a lake into it. Hard enough working with that former Zhent, no matter what Khelben says, but harder still as he and his mistress challenge each other with creative uses for earthquake spells …”

Nain saw their work at hand as his vantage point rose. He guessed that by the time they were done with the tor and the waters setteled, Highstar Lake would be at least a mile wider and longer, a tower in its midst left inaccessible by land.

The magic merged with the casters as the tor grew. They drew apart as the tower grew wider, but stony duplicates of their own forms linked hands with them as the width of their circle grew. By the time they stopped rising, twenty figures linked hands atop the tor. The merlons and crenelations looked like five duplicates of each caster forming the upper battlements here.

Kroloth had a personal vision. He knew that his destiny would be to command this outpost that rose with them. In his mind, he saw the moonblade purified into a crystalline broadsword. He knew it and its eight brethren sacrificed at the other eight Sentinel Tor sites would be called hope-blades. Kroloth beamed—it was his duty to wield the hopeblade of Tor Arsuor as its commander.

Ynshael had never before left the safety of Neverwinter Woods. She responded to Yaereene’s call when it intertwined with a vision from the Moonbow herself. She gasped as she realized the mate for whom she had prayed to Sehanine stood near. He was a human and had shining dark hair long past his shoulders, and hair on his face and chest. His build was elfin—whip-strong and wiry, but not as muscular as some humans. Ynshael realized that she had seen his eyes—a pale green like the snow lettuce growing in her garden—and she found those same eyes in Nain Keenwhistler.

Stranger still, Ynshael saw what Nain didn’t seem to notice—his restoration. His hair grew within the fiery
magic, darkening to a chestnut brown and becoming more lustrous. Nain’s scraggly beard thickened and lengthened down to his chest, and all that darkened as well. The only white hair he kept were twin stripes of white along his temples and in his beard where sideburns would be in a clean-shaven man. Ynshael smiled and gripped his hand harder. Her patron goddess had shown her a path, and while she never expected to live beyond Neverwinter’s boughs, she believed her home to be with that man. The both of them, often underestimated by themselves and others, would come together to fulfill destinies they dared never dream of before.

T
sarra heard four whispers whirling about her library, each chanting,
“Assemble …”

Ghostly elves entered her sanctum and summoned thrones for themselves around her. They studied her mutely, some with open disdain. The sendings grew one by one, and so did those assembled before her. She tried to talk with the elves, but she only ever got a one word sending:
Patience
. Tsarra hated the mystery, and grew frustrated when even her tome would not or could not identify the figures invading her sanctum.

She examined the library and found that every book in Khelben’s true collection had a simulacrum there as well. She looked for books discussing high magic, in hopes of understanding those rituals, both the one with Khelben at the center and the second one under the direction of the grand mages
of Miyeritar. Khelben’s working was incredibly powerful, but it wasn’t high magic. It cleansed and prepared the High Moor for the return of its people, destroyed that last taints of the Killing Storms, and raised the city’s defensive towers as they were twelve thousand years ago.

After hours of the droning chant, Tsarra jumped as the elves suddenly stopped. Magic crackled around the sanctum. Nine additional thrones rose swiftly, and within a few moments, elves appeared in them. All smiled broadly. Tsarra felt suddenly powerful, and she approached the mirror. Thirteen gems swirled and circled around Tsarra’s head, leaving trails of arcane fire behind themselves and lighting up her own
kiira
and tattoos. The fires and the gem’s pulses suggested the hints of a crown around her head, and Tsarra recognized it—and the degree of power in the working.

At the same time, all thirteen elves stood as one. The first to arrive drew Tsarra into the center of both circles and embraced her. He gestured, snapped his fingers, and Khelben’s image joined them in the library as well. He too was embraced. The thirteen bowed their heads and their collective sending went out with a pulse of power:
The Highfire Crown is worn once more, and we bless the Weave and the People as one!

A sending rang through the head of everyone bearing a golden item for the Gathering. Later, people would remark that the voice sounded like a mixture of Tsarra, Khelben, Danthra the Dreamer, and sixteen other elves of various tones and timbres.

Hearken ye, and hear the People’s thanks. Nine tors rise without, our guards and our sentinels. Our home rises within, our symbol and our hope. All your actions and sacrifices shall be rewarded. Remain united yet retain your differences. Be brethren in intent, if not in blood. Honor knowledge and ability without judgement. These are the hallmarks of Oacenth’s Vow, of the Promise of Cormanthor,
of every hope for unity from Silverymoon to this place
.

The Central Caster sparked the flame. The First Circle lit the pyre. The Second Circle restored warmth and light. The Third Circle awakened understanding. The Fourth Circles raised awareness and vigilance. Your work is done. The land is risen and restored
.

All Circles now join in fire and friendship. All Circles shall see Miyeritaar restored in Rhymanthiin, the Hidden City. The city and its denizens, its secrets-keepers, its loyalists, and ye, its saviors all—ye shall be restored to health and happiness, if that be your wish. Now begins the Rejuvenation
.

Tsarra found herself seeing and feeling a flurry of images and sensations as ninety-five souls felt the play of magic that used the links of the first ritual intertwined into another more primal, more powerful ritual. She felt the magical connection she and Khelben had with the sharn, and she realized it was the trio of grand mages at work. She readied herself to add her spirit to theirs, but the elves surrounding her in the sanctum shook their heads.

Watch and learn. Your strength is needed next
.

She realized the thirteen were the high mages of Myth Drannor manifested as the Highfire Crown. She and Khelben both turned to the mirror to watch the other participants who gave their spirit and magic to the ritual.

Gamalon felt a tingling in his left eyesocket but bowed his head and sent a prayer to Mystra, “Let me honor Mynda’s sacrifice by bearing that scar.”

When he opened his eyes, he realized his Lady had answered his prayer with a new gift. His left eye showed him a green world awash in magic, just as he had seen with his magical gem-eye for more than forty winters.

Rhmallos cried tears of joy as the chitinous armor fell around him in pieces, and he stood a gnome once more. To feel soft loam and grass beneath his bare feet and the rush of breeze and magic across his skin was a blessing after seven hundred years as a demon. His role to infiltrate the armies fighting Myth Drannor was long over, and he
danced gleefully to have a life again in a place of new hope as Cormanthor was in its day.

Numerous cries of joy echoed through the links as those who had long lived under curses or enchantments found their burdens gone. Tulrun laughed his deep, booming laugh at his restored youth and humanity. Ashemmi wept as the foul contortions Manshoon had once placed on her soul were shattered, and she found her love unchanged for Sememmon, knowing he struggled toward the light of his own will. Many chose to drink in youth and vigor from the ritual, the energy freely given by the grand mages.