In the closet of the bedchamber was a trunk with the words "Travelling Clothes" written on its top with charcoal. Alustriel opened it and took out the two items of clothing it contained. They looked common enough: a pair of skintight doe-skin breeches, and a tunic made of what appeared to be three layers of netting: black netting on the inside, grey in the middle, and white outermost. Alustriel removed her gown and laid it out on her bed for the chambermaid to find and put away.
As she sat on the edge of the bed and struggled into the breeches, Alustriel thought briefly of the druid who had given them to her, many, many years ago. He had been a good friend (actually, far more than a friend), but like most of the High Lady's past companions, he was now long dead. The breeches, he had told her, would render her insubstantial to all creatures not of nature: undead, magically created or bred mutants, abominations and constructs, all would find it impossible to touch the wearer save by use of weapons or spells. Even then, the attacker would find some of its unnatural life energies sapped by even indirect contact with the wearer.
The three-layered tunic was in reality a magical labyrinth, designed to capture and retard any magic cast at its wearer. Few spells could wend their way through all three layers fully intact: most would lose their way and remain there, dormant, until Alustriel chose to let them dissipate or pluck them out for her own use or study. The tunic was a gift from her sister Laeral, given to Alustriel as a coronation gift when she had become ruler of Silverymoon.
A pair of boots, durable but not magical, and Alustriel's ensemble was complete.
She took up her magical staff with the carved unicorn head, and glanced briefly at her reflection in her huge, gilded mirror. All of her enchanted garments and items shone with a pale blue glow in the reflection.
I look like I should be dancing on a table in some festhall, she thought to herself. But hopefully fashion won't be a concern where I'm going.
She took just a moment to scribble a note to Taern on a piece of parchment. She set it down on a black marble table-top in a corner of the room, and watched as it sank into the reflective surface and vanished. In a few moments, it would appear in the wizard's hand. By that time, Alustriel would be safely away from his protective protests.
She spoke a single word, and found herself standing in a moonlit valley many miles from her home.
It was now quite dark, but Alustriel knew precisely what she was looking for, and where to find it. Centuries ago a village had stood on this spot. It had been looted and burned by bandits, and now only the remains of the well could be found here: an overgrown, vertical shaft surrounded by the ruins of a shattered stone wall. Alustriel stood at its edge and gazed up at the sky. The near-full moon seemed to ride across the sky among the clouds at breakneck speed, but in reality it was the clouds that moved, blown before a high west wind which, on the ground, barely caused Alustriel's silver hair to rustle about her shoulders. She brushed a stray lock out of her eyes and looked down the shaft. The first few feet were dimly visible in the moonlight, before the pit vanished into darkness. Alustriel allowed herself to remember.
The bandit chieftain Arramore had been known far and wide as a brute who enjoyed nothing more than hearing the death-screams of his fellow men. But, it was said, this brutality was tempered by an odd idiosyncracy: he could not bear the sight of a woman or a child suffering. This didn't mean that he would allow them to escape, that he would not sell them into slavery or allow his men to have their way with the women – he simply insisted that such things happened out of his own sight.
Alustriel remembered the look on his face as he sat on his horse and watched his brigands slay the last of the village's defenders. Shocked horror shone in his eyes as he watched each and every one of the doomed hamlet's women and children cast themselves into the well. Alustriel herself had been the last to go.
Arramore must have been truly astonished when he looked down into the well and found it empty of anything save water: no gruesome corpses of dead innocents. He was even more astonished two days later, when a beautiful, teenaged girl with silver hair appeared floating in the air before him, and blew his head from his shoulders with a single spell.
Alustriel shuddered at the memory. It was an angry, reckless phase of her life that she preferred to forget.
The well had hidden a gate which led to the far-off city of Myth Drannor. By speaking a certain word, the young sorceress had activated it and allowed all of the village's women and children to escape to safety. She spoke the same word now, and nodded with satisfaction as she felt the sudden hum of magical power deep down in the darkness.
Normally, a simple teleport spell would have been sufficient to carry the High Lady of Silverymoon to any destination she chose, but such magics were forbidden in the ruins of Myth Drannor. The mythal – the great, living field of magic that encased the ruined city – would not allow it. The city could, however, be accessed via many gates scattered across the Realms, if one knew where to find them. Actually, Alustriel loved the feeling of travelling through Myth Drannan gates. Most teleportive magic caused a slight feeling of nausea and dislocation, but the gates of Myth Drannor produced a pleasant, almost euphoric vertigo, like a tickle inside the brain.
She stepped up on the low wall, called a spell of flight into her mind just in case anything went amiss, and stepped off into the shaft.
She fell into the blackness. There was a sudden lurching sensation, and Alustriel shivered as she passed through the gate. Suddenly, the air became considerably warmer. The moonlight vanished, and the sorceress felt herself floating gently downward, upheld by the magic of the mythal, which would allow no one to fall to their deaths within the city.
She looked below her into the darkness and satisfied herself that no monster lurked below, waiting for her to drop into its open maw. As she recalled, this particular area of the ruins was under the protection of the priests of Lathander and was kept relatively free of danger, but nothing could be absolutely relied on during the hours of darkness in this perilous place. Alustriel also took advantage of her altitude to glance about into the surrounding ruins. She spotted a campfire a few hundred feet off to the north. Fiends and undead (the ruined city's two most notable dangers) seldom chose to light the darkness that they thrived on, so Alustriel resolved to make for the light and investigate.
She landed gracefully, trying to avoid as much as possible any noisy disturbances of the stony rubble that covered the ground here. She moved toward the campfire, grateful on behalf of her legs that she was wearing the tough leather trousers rather than her customary skirts, which would now no doubt have been snagging on every sharp obstacle and offering her no protection from the many shin-high protrusions of rock and crumbled masonry.
Alustriel was a bit disturbed not to hear any voices as she neared the light. She hugged the wall of a partially-collapsed building, and peered carefully around the corner into the clearing where the fire burned.
Six female adventurers stared back at her, weapons and spell components in hand. All were obviously prepared for this situation, and had certainly known of her approach.
Well, so much for my career as a sneak thief
Two of the women held spell components rather than weapons. Their ability to deal death at a distance made them Alustriel's first concern. A tall, slender half-elf with white hair held a small metal peg, and her hands were positioned in the opening gesture of a spell to hold monsters immobile. Across the fire from her, a pretty woman with chestnut-brown hair falling about her shoulders and a holy symbol of Tymora around her neck held a leaf and had begun to sketch a...what was it?...a flame blade spell.
The four other women held weapons. A small and obviously graceful half-elf with long blonde hair held a nasty-looking dagger. Another woman with black hair flecked with grey wielded a morning star, and also wore a holy symbol of Tymora, the goddess of luck and patroness of adventurers. A bearded, scowling female dwarf stood atop a fallen slab of rock with throwing axe at the ready. In the center of the group, nearest the fire, stood a striking woman with long brown hair who held what appeared to be a whip.
"Your name and business here, if you please," said the woman with the whip. "If you mean us harm, you'd better know that you face the Company of the Catlash, and that we're in no mood for mercy tonight."