The Siege

by Denning, Troy

  “Come along,” the Cormyrean woman said. “The point has been made. Vangerdahast wouldn’t be happy if you stayed behind to confirm it … not happy at all.”

  Rivalen had battled three phaerimm at once, toe to thorn and with no chance to call for help. He had dallied with twin succubae and awakened to find them—well, he didn’t want to relive that again. He had fought demons—bare-handed, by Shadow—and been the one who flew away. And never, not in eight-hundred years—not even when he gave his spirit over to the shadowstuff—not once had he been frightened. Not like this.

  “How?” the Most High asked. His voice was calm, gentle—even reasonable—in that terrible tone it assumed just before he condemned someone to an eternity of wandering the Barrens of Doom and Despair. “Can someone please explain this?”

  They were looking down at the camp of the Harper witch and her Cormyrean scouts. Not scrying it through the world-window, mind you, but looking straight down on it from the Most High’s personal observation balcony in the Palace Most High. Staring down through the shadow mists at an imminently defensible camp, located in a maze of canyons so narrow a veserab’s wings would touch both sides. A maze of canyons flooded by magic light with no particular source, where the few shadows that did exist were guarded by a squad of sentries armed with both magic and steel. A maze of canyons where the Shadovar would have to fight their way in like common orc footsoldiers, and a maze of canyons with plenty of room for more Cormyreans … and Sembians … and Dalesmen … and the Hidden One only knew who else, all determined to deny the lands of lost Netheril to the Shadovar.

  The witch could not see them, of course. Certainly, her Bedine vassals had reported to her the stream of veserabs that constantly dropped into the lake there, and no doubt remarked on the dark storm cloud that never seemed to leave the area, but she could not see Shade Enclave. There were still the shadow mists and the thousands of feet above ground and, not least of all, the Most High’s magic, but Rivalen was not so sure.

  “Rivalen?”

  Rivalen felt the weight of the Most High’s gaze upon him. He did not bother to look up. There was nothing there to see anyway. He simply swallowed his fear, then addressed his father.

  “There is a reason Ruha hides her face behind a veil, Most High,” he said. “Of all the races on Toril, the Shadovar have more reason than any to know the power of the hidden.”

  “True, but that explains nothing.”

  Rivalen swallowed—hard. “Most High, who can explain the will of the Hidden One? The witch is down there; that is all that matters—save my own failure in stopping her in Cormyr.”

  It was this last that saved him. The weight of the Most High’s scrutiny vanished at once, and the air grew still and cold as he came to Rivalen’s side.

  “You did as you thought best, my son,” Telamont said, and Rivalen’s shoulder grew numb with cold. “I am sure you will make it up to us.”

  “As am I,” Rivalen said.

  “Good.” The Most High squeezed his shoulder until Rivalen thought it would break. “Now, we must concern ourselves with what to do next.”

  “The answer is clear, Most High,” said Clariburnus. “We must kill the witch.”

  The Most High was silent.

  Clariburnus continued, the words spilling out of him like breath. “The magic of the Weave is impure and weak, no match for the Shadow Weave. All we need do is drop a shadow blanket—”

  “And that will help us how?” the Most High asked, his voice alarmingly reasonable and calm. “By disposing of your mistake?”

  “My mistake, Most High?”

  “Was she not your guide, brother?” Rivalen asked. “Yours and Brennus’s?”

  “She was,” Brennus answered, “and we controlled her.”

  “Enough!” the Most High spat. “There is no use in blaming each other. I am disappointed in all of you.”

  The Most High remained silent.

  Escanor was the first who dared to speak. “What does the witch matter? If she cannot enter the city, what does it matter if she camps below us for a century?”

  “It only matters if you are wrong,” the Most High responded.

  The question hung in the air as heavy as lead. None of the brothers dared answer.

  Finally, the Most High said, “You have all failed me. All of you princes.” The shadow mists briefly obscured the tents of the Cormyrean camp, and when they cleared again, the princes were looking at a circle of white rocks. “Do you see that circle?”

  “A teleportation circle,” Rivalen said.

  His knees nearly buckled under the weight of the Most High’s question.

  “For retreat, I believe,” Rivalen said.

  More silence.

  “But I could be wrong,” Rivalen admitted.

  “If he is, there will be an army below us in hours,” Clariburnus said. “Laeral required less than three hours to transport her entire relief army to the Sharaedim.”

  Rivalen glowered into Clariburnus’s lead-colored eyes. As the Eleventh Prince—and the youngest still surviving—he was an ambitious one, always eager to raise himself at his brothers’ expense.

  “Do not blame your brother for your failures, Rivalen,” Clariburnus said. “In Cormyr, the Steel Regent bested you handily.”

  Escanor, always Rivalen’s favorite brother, said, “We have all underestimated the enemy.”

  “You certainly have,” Clariburnus said.

  Escanor took a step toward the junior prince—only to find Hadrhune blocking his way.

  “Dear princes, if we allow the enemy to divide us like this, we have lost already.” The seneschal—more ambitious than any of the princes and, in his own way, more dangerous—turned toward the Most High. “Mighty Telamont, if I may—”

  “If you must.”

  Hadrhune continued, nonplussed, “If I may suggest a more conservative strategy, perhaps we should call our armies home and defend the enclave.”

  Telamont remained silent.

  “Yes, Most High, I do believe the witch might know a way into the enclave,” the seneschal added, glancing in the direction of Clariburnus and Brennus. “We do not know what she learned when she was brought here. You are aware of where I found her.”

  The Most High whirled away from the rail and stabbed an empty sleeve at Hadrhune’s face. “The Faerûnians are not being reasonable!” he stormed. “What do we want, but what was Netheril’s to begin with? By what right do they deny us?”

  Rivalen breathed easier and settled in for the rant. Having not been born for seven hundred years after Shade left Faerûn, he did not feel the same sense of entitlement as the Most High, but he recognized the power it held over his father. The dream of reclaiming Anauroch and driving out the phaerimm was really all there was of Telamont Tanthul. At times, it made Rivalen wish he had been alive to see the glory that was Netheril, if only so he could understand his own phantom nature.

  “Netheril was the most beautiful, the highest and mightiest, the worthiest civilization that Faerûn ever spawned!” Telamont complained. “And the Heartlands balk at a few decades of starvation! I would not hesitate—not hesitate at all, I tell you—to wipe them all from the face of the world if it meant the return of the floating cities. And the elves—I would give Evereska and Evermeet both to the phaerimm, for just the century of peace we need to restore Anauroch to its glory.”

  Brennus stepped forward, head bowed and ceremonial fangs displayed. “If it pleases the Most High, I would be happy to go to the Sharaedim to open—”

  “Negotiations?” The Most High cuffed him—actually struck him—and sent the prince sprawling. “That I ought to allow.”

  The Most High turned to Rivalen, platinum eyes burning with a question.

  “The alliance could have their army here all too soon,” Rivalen reported. “Our agents in Tilverton report that it is already many thousands strong, and growing by the hour.”

  The Most High turned to Clariburnus.

  “Our army
from the Sharaedim is passing south of the Shadow Sea as we speak,” Clariburnus said. “It will reach Tilverton by tomorrow evening.”

  “How soon could it be here?” asked Hadrhune. As usual, the seneschal’s impudence was beyond belief. It was as though he believed that because he was not plane-spawned he had nothing to fear from the Most High’s wrath. “In time to stop the Cormyreans?”

  Clariburnus inclined his head. “It is but an hour away.”

  Hadrhune turned to the Most High. “Perhaps we could split the army. Recall enough to ensure against an assault.”

  “That way lies defeat in both battles,” Rivalen said. “There are more than ten thousand enemy soldiers in Tilverton, many of them war wizards and clerics. If I am to defeat them, I will need our entire army.”

  “Even the army in Myth Drannor?” Escanor asked.

  In truth, Rivalen thought it would take that army as well, but he did not dare alienate his closest ally among the princes—and his only older brother.

  He inclined his head to Escanor and said, “Any troops you were able to spare would certainly add to the victory.”

  “Unfortunately, I fear it will be impossible to spare any,” Escanor said. “The Myth Drannor phaerimm are proving as obstinate—”

  “I am sure you can spare half your troops,” the Most High said. “Our victory in Tilverton must be quick. We must return our largest army to the Sharaedim within the month, before the shadowshell fails. The phaerimm are our greatest threat.”

  Escanor glanced at Rivalen, his coppery eyes burning with anger. “But if our losses are heavy—”

  “We will be surrounded on all sides,” Hadrhune confirmed. “Surely, a conservative approach is wiser.”

  The Most High considered this for a moment, then said, “You are half right. I will send princes to treat with polities more sympathetic to our cause. Lamorak, you will go to see the Red Wizards of Thay. Yder, you will seek out the true leaders of the Cult of the Dragon …”

  The Most High continued on, outlining a strategy that would envelop the forces currently surrounding the Shadovar.

  When he finally finished, Hadrhune tried again to assert his influence. “You have taken every wise precaution that can be taken, Most High … but what of my suggestion? Certainly, it is wisest to defend Shade Enclave first.”

  “Wait.” The Most High turned to the Seraph of Lies, Malik. To the great credit of the little man’s willpower, he did not seem to feel the weight of any unspoken questions, and Telamont was forced to ask, “You know Ruha better than any of us. Do you think she knows a way into the city?”

  Malik’s eyes grew as round as coins, and Rivalen thought he would have thrown himself over the balcony rail, had the prospect of a painful landing not been so great.

  “In my experience, that witch can get into anywhere,” Malik said. “She has intruded upon me many times in many delicate moments—and sometimes when I could have sworn she was a thousand miles away.”

  The Most High considered this, then nodded. “I suppose it would be safer to assume that she knows a way into the enclave.” His platinum eyes flared in Clariburnus’s direction, then he looked back to Malik and asked, “So you would advise me to call Shade’s armies home?”

  “Indeed.”

  For a moment, Rivalen thought Malik would leave the matter at that, then the little man’s face contorted into a mask of displeasure, and he said, “Only, I think it would be wiser to advise you to give all your troops to Rivalen and order him to attack.”

  The Most High’s hood turned in the little man’s direction.

  “Because that is what you truly want to do, Most High,” Malik blurted, “and a wise advisor always tells his master what his master is eager to hear.”

  “Is that so?”

  Telamont’s empty hood swung in Rivalen’s direction, and Rivalen felt the weight of his father’s question pressing down on his shoulders.

  He inclined his head. “I will capture Tilverton and destroy the Alliance army,” Rivalen said, “or I will die trying.”

  “Die if you must, but death does not excuse failure,” the Most High said. He turned to Malik, and Rivalen could have sworn he saw a smile beneath the Most High’s hood. “Thank you, little man. Not only are you my wisest advisor, you are the most honest.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  27 Mirtul, the Year of Wild Magic

  To the west lay the setting sun, its orange fury igniting a rusty blaze across the darkening sky and painting the jagged Stonelands in a fiery copper glow. Behind the lonely trees and distant monoliths, the shadows were lengthening, stretching their pointed tips across the parched pasturelands toward the city of Tilverton. To the north, purple darkness already cloaked the Deserts-mouth Mountains. To the south, a lake of umbral murk was spreading outward from the foot of the Stormhorns. The attack could come from any direction or from all three, and with no more warning than the time a shadow needed to sweep across the plain. Or it might not come at all, though Galaeron knew better than to count on that.

  Along with Vangerdahast, Alusair, Lady Regent Alasalynn Rowanmantle, and more aides than was safe, Galaeron was atop an unfinished wall tower in the Knoll District of Old Town, standing on a makeshift scaffolding that creaked every time someone shifted his weight, watching the darkness for the first hint of the enemy. Vangerdahast’s attention was fixed on the south, as that was the only side of the city without a gate and he was convinced the Shadovar would want time to form ranks before the battle began. Most of the aides were convinced they would come out of the Desertmouth foothills, since that was both the shortest route to Anauroch and one of the most sheltered. Alusair was keeping her eye—and her archers’ arrows—trained on the sky, for she was troubled by the descriptions of veserab riders and the fact of the Shadovar’s alliance with Malygris and his blue dragons. Galaeron didn’t know what to expect, but he felt sure that whatever the Shadovar did, it would be as unexpected as it was devastating.

  A soft clatter sounded below as the bodyguard companies at the base of the tower ran through the procedure of admitting a runner. Finally, a herald called for permission to send up one of Vangerdahast’s wizards, and a surprised murmur rose atop the keep as the aides nearest the ladder saw who it was. Galaeron looked down to see a willowy woman in a red cape ascending the long ladder. With red hair and golden eyes, even he recognized her as Vangerdahast’s favorite aide—and, some said, lover—Caladnei.

  The old wizard stepped over to the ladder and, as she neared the top, extended a hand. “About time, my dear,” he said, pulling her onto the scaffolding. “What news?”

  “Good news.” She turned away and bowed to Alusair, then made her report directly to the regent. “Ruha has found the flying city, and it appears but lightly defended.”

  “Where is it?” Vangerdahast asked. “On the new lake?”

  Caladnei nodded. “Floating above the north end. There is fresh water, and a defensible camp. Hhormun is preparing a translocational circle now.”

  Alusair considered the report for a moment, then said, “There’s a reason the city is only lightly defended.”

  Vangerdahast nodded. “Either Galaeron is right and they’re readying an attack …”

  “Or they’re hoping to lure us into a trap,” Alusair finished. She turned to Galaeron. “What do you think?”

  “The Shadovar are cunning warmakers,” he said, “but the phaerimm are their most ancient enemies. Telamont Tanthul would risk freeing them only if he’s allowing his anger to guide him.”

  “And angry men don’t lie in wait,” Alusair agreed. “They attack.”

  “Unless that’s what he wants us to think,” Caladnei pointed out. “Perhaps Telamont is confident he can defeat us quickly and return his army to the Sharaedim in time to keep the phaerimm in check.”

  “In which case, he can’t let us set the pace,” Vangerdahast said. “Either way, he’s attacking us. Everything points to it.”

  Caladnei inclined her head to the o
ld wizard. “I’ll send word to Hhormun to save his spell.”

  Alusair raised a restraining hand. “Hold a moment.” She bit her lip in thought, then turned to Vangerdahast with a half smile. “What if we could beat them to the strike?”

  Galaeron’s brow rose. “Beat them? If you timed matters wrong, Tilverton would be lost.”

  “True,” Alusair said without losing enthusiasm, “but Cormyr has many cities. The Shadovar have only one.”

  Alasalynn Rowanmantle gasped aloud. “You would sacrifice Tilverton?”

  “No, but I’d surely wager it,” Alusair said, not grinning. “You do have an evacuation plan?”

  Alasalynn’s already pale face grew even paler. “I’ll activate it.”

  She thumbed a ring on her middle finger and vanished in a crackle of magic.

  Vangerdahast cocked his bushy brow and started to say something, then caught Alusair’s warning glance and cleared his throat instead.

  Alusair smiled. “Vangey, can you.… ”

  “Of course, Princess.” Too plump and rickety for the ladder, Vangerdahast simply stepped to the edge of the scaffolding and looked for a clear place to land. “I’ll prepare the device for transport at once.”

  Galaeron frowned but bit his tongue and managed to avoid asking about the “device.” Their departure from Arabel had been delayed nearly a day and a half to give Vangerdahast and the war wizards time to “prepare.” Galaeron had assumed that they were gathering magic items and memorizing spells, but he had realized this was not the case when the wizards emerged from their armory pulling a huge wagon covered with a tent of black canvas. The wizard had ignored Galaeron’s repeated inquiries about the thing, saying only that it would prove once and for all that the Weave was mightier than the Shadow Weave.

  When Galaeron made no move toward the ladder or Vangerdahast, the wizard grabbed him by the arm.

  “Come along, young fellow.” Vangerdahast pulled him off the scaffolding, and they floated down the hollow interior of the unfinished tower. “You’ll want to see this.”

  At the bottom, they gathered Aris and Vangerdahast’s troop of bodyguards and threaded their way down the knoll past company after company forming up for the short march to the translocational circle. The officers were engaging in no bluster or bravado and offered relatively few words of encouragement. Everyone knew the Shadovar were a strange and powerful enemy, and most wise commanders had prayed that the mere fact of the Heartlands Alliance would force the princes to reconsider the melting of the High Ice. That the Alliance was being marshaled for a night march put to rest any hope of ending the matter without a fight.