Final Gate lm-3

by Richard Baker

  “A potent spell,” the Pale Sybil murmured.

  A dark look flickered across her cold and perfect face. She wove her hands sinuously together and muttered powerful, perilous words. The very stone around Araevin’s feet seemed to groan in reply, and from her outstretched fingertips a sickly purple ray lanced out.

  Araevin recoiled in alarm and barked, “Iorwe!”

  In the space of an instant he slid out of the path of the lambent ray, conjuring himself a dozen feet from where he stood. The Sybil’s spell arrowed past him to strike one of her own warriors dueling Jorin on the opposite side of the courtyard.

  The luckless swordwight crumbled into dust and bits of pitted bronze.

  Jorin spared a quick look over his shoulder and grimaced. “Bane’s black fist,” he muttered. “That was too close.” The ranger twisted out of Selydra’s line of fire and engaged a new foe.

  Ignoring the destruction behind him, Araevin responded by fanning his fingers out before him and invoking the brilliant, many-colored rays of his prismatic blast. Rays of blazing red fire and crackling yellow lightning shot past the Sybil, and the beam of emerald poison she parried with a graceful flick of her glossy black scepter.

  That’s the second time she’s saved herself with the scepter, he thought. Clearly it was enchanted to absorb magic. He would have to figure out how to get it away from her. Thinking furiously of the spells he had ready that might serve, he prepared himself for her next attack.

  But Selydra did not strike immediately. She studied him avidly for a moment, perhaps considering her own tactics.

  “Enough,” she said. “I think you are perhaps a little too dangerous to toy with any longer, and I am growing hungry.”

  Araevin started to speak a defensive spell, but Selydra fixed her eyes on his and opened her mouth wide, looking for all the world like she was giving voice to a silent scream, and inhaled deeply. Shadows dark and potent seemed to rush into her open mouth, and Araevin felt something in him tear free from his body and fly to her. The Weave tore away from his grasp, and spells held in his mind faded and vanished as the Pale Sybil literally drank them from his soul.

  Appalled, he took several steps back and staggered to a knee. He could see it as a visible phenomenon: a nimbus of ethereal silver light ringed his body, but over his heart it streamed out toward Selydra like a plume of white sand driven by a wild wind. It should have been intensely violent-the wind should have roared in his ears, his hair and clothes should have whipped and flapped in the force of that ethereal blast-but Selydra’s hunger was something that was not at all physical. Even as tatters of his soul seemed to tear loose and fray in the awful storm, Araevin suffered in silence, the blackness of Lorosfyr’s night still and cold around him.

  “What are you?” he gasped.

  “You are strong, Araevin,” Selydra said. Her voice was a deadly moan. “I have rarely encountered your equal. You will sustain me for many long years, I think.”

  “Araevin!” shouted Maresa. “Fight it off! Do something!” She snapped a shot at the Pale Sybil with her crossbow, but the quarrel struck an invisible shield around Selydra and shattered.

  She is a vampire of some kind, Araevin thought. She drinks souls and magic, not blood. Any spell he had that might guard him from such an insidious attack was gone already, consumed by the Pale Sybil in her hunger. More were being ripped from him with every moment, and he could feel himself literally fraying away. In the space of moments she would tear his soul free from him, and that would be his destruction.

  “Magnificent,” Selydra crooned. Her eyes blazed with a sinister purple light, and there was a feral cast to her face that had not been there before. “Not since I consumed the archmage Talthonn have I tasted such as you!” She stalked closer, reaching out one white hand as if to hold him in place through sheer force of will.

  Fight it, he told himself. Saelethil Dlardrageth taught me something about battles within the soul, if nothing else.

  With great cry of anguish, Araevin threw all of his heart, his will, into battling Selydra’s consuming hunger. For a moment he stemmed the awful tide, and in the space of that instant he lashed out with a blinding bolt of lightning. It was a deadly enough spell in its own right, but all he really wanted to do was to drive her back and gain a moment to gather himself.

  Selydra drank the spell the instant it left his fingertips, and laughed in evil delight. “Surely you can do better than that, Araevin! Have you no more powerful spells than that left to you?”

  Araevin’s other knee gave out, and he found himself kneeling on the cold tiles. Think! he raged. She will simply consume any spell you hurl at her. How else to strike back, to break her deadly grasp?

  A sudden intuition sprang to his mind. Desperately clutching at the remnants of his magical power, Araevin conjured up a wreath of deadly green flame around his fist. It was a spell meant to smite an enemy, but deliberately he brought his smoldering hand up and set it against his own breast. Searing emerald pain exploded against his chest-but then it vanished at once, drawn away by Selydra’s black hunger.

  A tiny green flame sprang into life above the Pale Sybil’s heart. She frowned and looked down in puzzlement-and the small spark burst into a roaring sheath of emerald fire. She shrieked in pain and staggered back… and with that her connection to Araevin was broken, and the black consuming void ceased with the suddenness of a slamming door.

  Araevin toppled forward as his soul seemed to snap back into his body with startling force. He heaved a great sobbing breath and clutched a hand to his burned chest, momentarily defenseless. But Selydra was engulfed in green fire, wailing like a banshee. Somehow she managed to gain enough control to rasp out the words of a countering spell and extinguish the flames.

  Wreathed in acrid emerald smoke, almost doubled in on herself, Selydra glared at him. Her face twisted in a murderous fury. “I will have you yet,” she hissed. She barked out the words of a teleport spell, and vanished.

  Araevin pushed himself to his feet, looking around for any sign of the enchantress. The Pale Sybil’s warriors pressed Donnor, Maresa, Nesterin, and Jorin from all sides. Several of the hunched giants lumbered up after the dead warriors, huge mauls gripped in their massive fists.

  “There are too many of them, Araevin!” Nesterin cried. He wheeled and gave voice to a piercing shriek that blew several of the undead warriors into shards of bone and crumpled bronze plate. Jorin and Donnor fought furiously side-by-side, giving ground as they backed out into the courtyard.

  “Leave that to me!” Araevin took a deep breath, trying to find his strength again, and took a quick look around. Selydra’s servants crowded both the doorway through which he and his friends had entered, as well as the passage she had emerged from-there was no easy escape in either direction.

  He wasn’t about to let that stop him. He faced one wall of the narrow court, and deliberately incanted his next spell. Parting his hands slowly, he phased a six-foot wide plug of the wall into nothingness, creating a safe passage out of the courtyard.

  “This way!” he shouted, then he hurled himself through into the still, silent chamber beyond.

  One by one, his comrades broke away from their own fights and hurried after him, abandoning the cloister to Selydra’s minions. Donnor was the last one through, pausing before the gaping hole to brandish Lathander’s sunburst and blast a half-dozen of Selydra’s warriors back into the true and final death from which they had been called.

  “To dust with you!” the cleric shouted. “Return to your graves, warriors of Lorosfyr!”

  Jorin and Nesterin reached out to pull Donnor through the hole. Several of Selydra’s giants reared up before the opening, mauls raised over their heads, but Araevin made a single curt gesture, and the stonework phased aside by his passage spell suddenly returned to its rightful place. With a rush of displaced air and an echoing boom! he walled off their pursuers behind them.

  “Well done, Araevin,” Nesterin said. The star elf wiped blood fro
m a shallow cut across his forehead. “Our enemies are confounded, at least for a moment. Now what do we do?”

  “We find the second shard,” Araevin answered. “We’re not leaving Lorosfyr without it.”

  The smoke of burning fields left a yellow-gray pall over the Moonsea’s shores. Scyllua Darkhope saw little point in the destruction, really. The grain was shoulder-high and close to harvest. It would have been better to capture Hillsfar’s fields rather than fire them. But at least the burning induced the folk of Hillsfar’s westerly farms and hamlets to flee east to the city proper, carrying panic, despair, and disease within the distant city walls and clogging the roads for miles.

  “All is in readiness, High Captain,” reported Marshal Kulwarth. A fierce soldier who had been born among the barbarians of the Ride, Kulwarth was in charge of Scyllua’s cavalry. Other marshals led her archers, ogres, footsoldiers, and spellcasters. “We await your order to attack.”

  Scyllua gazed at the simple ditch-and-dike the Red Plume brigade had thrown up across the road in front of the village. She could not quite make out the towers of Hillsfar itself, but she could see twisting ribbons of smoke rising a few miles to the east, where parts of the city were said to be burning still after the daemonfey raid. Four days before, she and her army had crushed the Hillsfarian garrison at Yulash, driving the Red Plumes out of the ruined city. Within two days, perhaps three, she would lead her army against Hillsfar itself. The renowned Red Plumes of the city were broken and leaderless, and the paltry collection of mercenaries and peasant levies thrown into the path of the Zhent advance would not delay her long.

  “Your orders, High Captain?” Marshal Kulwarth asked again.

  “Send the ogres and the footsoldiers against the center, with the support of the spellcasters. Give them a short time to allow the attack to develop, and lead your cavalry against the enemy left flank. You will shatter the Red Plumes and drive them into the sea. I will lead the flanking attack personally.”

  Kulwarth thumped his fist to his breastplate and grinned. “I am honored, High Captain. It will be as you say.” The scarred barbarian rode off, barking orders, while Scyllua settled her helm over her head and drew on her gauntlets.

  Horns blared and drums rolled ahead of her, and phalanx after phalanx of the Zhentilar infantry started forward against the Red Plumes in their hasty fortifications. Ogres in heavy hauberks of mail, armed with maces and axes the size of small trees, waded among the human and orc warriors. Scyllua expected that the infantry alone would suffice to break the Hillsfarians… but she wanted to annihilate the Red Plumes, and that meant cutting off their retreat with her cavalry.

  The sounds of battle drifted back from the ramparts, while the Zhentilar horsemen sat impassively watching. Then Kulwarth had his trumpeters sound their commands. Scyllua led the way as the cavalry rode south, moving away from the center of the fight. When she judged that they had circled far enough, she stood up in her stirrups and let out a high, piercing cry: “Warriors of Zhentil Keep, follow me! ”

  Brandishing her scalloped blade, Scyllua Darkhope wheeled her pale white hellsteed in one tight circle and spurred the nightmare across the trampled fields before the Hillsfarian position. Blue fire fumed from the nightmare’s nostrils and struck from the ground at each hoof beat, wreathing Scyllua in the hot stink of brimstone as she dashed out in front of her soldiers. Few of the cavalrymen at her back could keep up with her, but she did not concern herself with what was happening behind her back. In front of her the Red Plumes of Hillsfar were arrayed for battle, and she meant to conquer or die.

  Arrows hissed past her, and a couple glanced from her armor of black plate. One even pierced her left leg just above the greave, skewering the meat of her calf, but Scyllua shoved the pain out of her consciousness with a single shrill battle cry. There would be time to worry about her wounds later. A foolish wizard hurled a blazing ball of fire right at her and her hellish mount, but the High Captain of Zhentil Keep rode through unscathed-no flame found in Faerun could harm her nightmare, and her armor was magically warded against fire.

  “For the Black Lord!” Scyllua screamed.

  She hurled herself over the warriors of Hillsfar, striking off the head of a Red Plume who tried to spear her as she rode past. She threw herself into the middle of the biggest knot of Hillsfarians she could see, and for twenty red heartbeats she laid about her on all sides, taking arms and cleaving skulls in a bright and perfect battle-madness. Her steed kicked, tore, and spumed blue fire everywhere her sword did not reach, and together they worked awful destruction.

  “Kill her! Kill the captain!” cried the Hillsfarians around her.

  On all sides Red Plume veterans hurried to attack her, hoping to strike down the leader of the Zhent army while Scyllua fought recklessly and alone. But then the rest of the cavalry caught up to her, sweeping into the gap her impetuous charge had ripped in the Hillsfarian line. The Zhentilar cavalry broke like a black thunderbolt over the Red Plumes’ defenses and swept them away.

  In the end, a small number of the Red Plumes managed to escape. Half a dozen Hillsfarian war galleys arrived on the shore late in the afternoon and carried off a few hundred of the surviving soldiers. Scyllua killed her last Red Plumes of the day while her nightmare plunged steaming belly-deep in the cold waters of the Moonsea, chasing after the enemy soldiers floundering toward the waiting ships. Only then did she allow her warriors to lead her back to the shore.

  Kulwarth greeted her on the rocky strand. “We have about one hundred prisoners, High Captain. What do you wish done with them?”

  “Put the badly wounded ones to the sword. Send the rest back to the slave markets in Zhentil Keep.”

  “As you command, High Captain.” Kulwarth struck his breastplate again in salute.

  “One more thing, Marshal. Have our spellcasters send word to Lord Fzoul. Tell him that we are victorious. The Red Plumes are driven from the field.” Scyllua doffed her helm and shook out her short-cropped hair. “We march on Hillsfar tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  11 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms

  Exchanging messages by magical couriers, Miklos Selkirk and Seiveril Miritar agreed to meet at an old manor atop a hill in Battledale, twenty-five miles north and west of Blackfeather Bridge. Selkirk arranged for Ilsevele and her remaining escorts to be set free, asking only that she allow him to accompany her to Battledale. And so as dawn broke over the broad gray downs stretching east from Tegal’s Mark, Selkirk and Ilsevele rode out from the Sharburg together, with their escorts intermingled.

  The overmaster’s son brought only seven of his Silver Ravens with him, since Ilsevele’s party was reduced to herself, Fflar, and six of her own bodyguards. Fflar decided that he approved of Selkirk’s good faith, though he certainly hoped that they would not run into any roaming bands of daemonfey or marauding demons with such a small company. Fortunately, the miles passed without trouble. Few people lived in that part of Battledale, and the daemonfey war had largely passed by the rolling hills and lonely farmsteads of the area.

  Shortly before dusk, they sighted the crumbling walls of Orskar Manor. The old house had been abandoned for more than a century, and little remained except the shell of its sturdy stone walls. Open grassy fields surrounded the place, crisscrossed by tumbled-down walls of fieldstone. Fflar spied a small company of elves waiting at the top of the hill, horses grazing in the fields near the old ruins.

  “It seems your father is already here,” Selkirk observed to Ilsevele. The Sembian studied the surroundings for a moment and allowed himself a small smile. The broad hillsides around the place offered little cover for a company of warriors to lurk unseen nearby, so it was a good spot for a parley. “Let us go on up and join him. I wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”

  “I am sure he is anxious to meet you, Lord Selkirk,” Ilsevele assured him.

  She tapped her heels to Swiftwind’s flanks, and the horse picked up her step and cantered easily up the old lane lea
ding to the house. Selkirk followed a length behind her, his big coal-black charger streaked with dust from the long ride. Together they clattered into the old drive of the manor, while Fflar contented himself to follow close on their heels. Elves in dappled green and gray cloaks trotted out to take the riders’ reins and steady their mounts as they dismounted and stretched their legs.

  “Ilsevele!” Seiveril Miritar appeared, standing on the steps of the old veranda. He wore a tunic of gray silk over a coat of bright mithral mail and carried his long-handled silver mace at his hip. He trotted down the stone stairs and caught his daughter in a strong hug. “Thank the Seldarine that you are safe. I worried about you every day.”

  “There was no need for that!” Ilsevele said with a smile, and kissed her father on the cheek. “I am well enough, as you can see.”

  Fflar swung down from his horse and took a deep breath. Seiveril and I need to have a long talk about Ilsevele, he reminded himself. In the right and proper course of things he would have asked the elflord for his permission before courting Ilsevele, but somehow events had conspired against that sort of formality, hadn’t they? And what if Seiveril decided that he did not approve? What were he and Ilsevele to do then?

  All of the sudden, Fflar found that he was not as relieved to be back with the Crusade as he had thought he would. Do it soon, he told himself. The sooner the better.

  “Starbrow! You are up and about.” Seiveril grasped Fflar’s hand and squeezed his shoulder. “We heard that you were injured. I am glad to see you, my friend.”

  “A little drow poison. I’m much better off than the fellow who stuck me with it.” Fflar managed an uneasy smile, wondering what to say next, but Ilsevele rescued him.

  “Father, this is Lord Miklos Selkirk, son of Overmaster Kendrick Selkirk of Sembia,” she said. “Lord Selkirk, this is my father, Lord Seiveril Miritar of Evermeet.”