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In The Web
There comes a day at last when even the most patient and exacting of scheming traitors grows impatient,
and breaks forth into open treachery. Henceforth, he must deal with the world as it is, reacting around
him, and not as he sees or desires it to be in his plots and dreams. This is the point at which many
treacheries go awry.
The sorcerer known as The Masked was, however, no ordinary traitor if one may think of an
"ordinary trai-tor." The historian of Cormanthor, reaching back far enough, can do so, finding many
ordinary treacheries, but this was not one of them. This was the stuff of which wailing doom-ballads are
made.
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Shalheira Talandren, High Elven Bard of Summerstar
from Silver Blades And Summer Nights:
An Informal But True History of Cormanthor
published in The Year of the Harp
Elminster shook his head to try to banish mind-weariness; he'd been spinning spells with another, colder
mind for too long, and almost staggered in the patiently humming web.
"Get clear now," the thin, cold voice of the Master said into his ear then, though the elven mage was
standing in the air at the other side of the spell chamber.
"Nacacia, hie you to the couch in the corner. Elminster, here to stand with me."
Knowing his impatience was apt to flare at such times, both apprentices hastened to obey, dropping
lightly out of the webwork as soon as they were low enough to do so without disrupting anything.
El had scarce reached the spot The Masked was pointing at when the elf hissed something and used one
finger to bridge the gap between two protruding points at the end of the glowing lines. That set the web
to working; its magic snarled forth, trailing sparks as the web dissolved itself, discharging spell after spell.
The elven sorcerer looked up expectantly, and El fol-lowed his gaze to a spot in the air high above them,
where the air, encircled by an arching strand of the web, was flickering into sudden life. A scene
appeared there, floating in the emptiness like a bright hanging tapestry, and growing steadily brighter.
It was a view of a house El had never seen before, one of the sprawling country mansions made by
elves. A house that lived, growing slowly larger as the cen-turies passed. This one had been standing for
more than a thousand summers, by the looks of it, at the heart of a grove of old and mighty shadowtops,
some-where in the forest deeps. An old house; a proud house.
A house that would be standing only a few moments more.
El watched grimly as the unleashed magics of the spell web shattered its magical shields, set off its
at-tack spells and forced their discharges back inwards to strike at the heart of the old house, and
snatched guardian creatures and steeds from their posts and stables, only to dash them back against the
walls, right through the full fury of the awakened spells, reducing them to raglike, bloody tatters.
It took only a few minutes to alter the proud, soaring house of mighty branches and lush leaves to a
smoking crater flanked by two splintered, precariously wavering fragments of blackened and splintered
trunk. Mis-shapen things that might have been bodies were still raining down around the wreckage when
the spell web drank its own scene, and the air went dark again.
Elminster was still blinking at the empty air where the scene had been when sudden mists snatched at
him. Before he could even cry out, he was somewhere else. Soft soil and dead leaves were under his
boots, and the smells of trees all around.
He was standing in a clearing deep in the forest with The Masked reclining at ease on empty air nearby,
and no sign of Nacacia or of any elven habita-tion. They were somewhere deep in the wild forest.
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El blinked at the change in light, drew in a deep breath of the damp air, and looked all around,
delight-ing in being out of the tower at last, and yet filled with foreboding. Had his master espied his
meeting with Mystra, or seen it in his mind since? She'd reclined in almost the same way.
The clearing they were standing in was odd. It was a semicircular bare patch perhaps a hundred paces
across completely bare, just earth and rock, with not a stump or lichen or pecking woodbird to enliven
its barren lifelessness.
El looked at The Masked and raised inquiring eye-brows in silence.
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