Final Gate lm-3

by Richard Baker

  The leading companies drew within two bowshots of the daemonfey horde, and heavy brazen horns sounded deep in the enemy ranks. All at once, the leash was slipped, and the cacophonous tide of hellborn monstrosities surged forward to meet the advance. Bulldoglike canoloths as big as draft horses bounded across the field, barbed tongues lolling from their terrible jaws. Mezzoloths clacked and hissed, leaping over the wet grass with astonishing speed for creatures as big as ogres. Fflar reached up to close his visor over his eyes, and drew Keryvian in one smooth motion. The sword burned with bright blue fire, sensing demonblood nearby.

  “Archers! Mages! Take them!” Selkirk called.

  Streaking balls of fire sailed out of the Sembian ranks, along with flight after flight of white arrows. The demons and the rest responded with infernal spells of their own, scouring the ranks of the human and elf warriors with ripping blasts of scarlet lightning and worse. Then the fey’ri overhead dropped down low and added their own deadly sorcery to the barrage of hellwrought spells and blights searing the field. The battlefield erupted into waves of roaring fire, booming thunderclaps, glowing shields and barriers, as on both sides hundreds of clerics, wizards, and demons hurled magic at their foes or sought to parry enemy strikes.

  “Tymora preserve us,” Miklos Selkirk muttered, so softly that no one more than ten feet away could have heard him.

  Humans and elves died by the hundreds in that awful moment, charred to smoking corpses, blasted into bloody pieces, or smothered beneath life-snuffing necromancy. But fey’ri burned and fell out of the sky, while demons screamed in rage at spells that destroyed them or hurled them back to their own foul plane.

  “Demons! Demons among us!”

  An uneven wave of sulfurous bursts all around the standards announced the appearance of demons and devils by the hundreds, teleporting themselves to attack the twin standards. Elves and humans cried out in alarm or screamed in mortal pain, while the fiendish creatures roared, hissed, or bellowed in obscene laughter. Fflar swore savagely and closed up with Seiveril, guarding the elflord’s back. In the skies above them the fey’ri legion climbed back above bowshot and soared over the allied army.

  “It’s the Lonely Moor again!” Seiveril shouted to Fflar. “They are trying to surround us!”

  “That didn’t work before,” Fflar replied. “The daemonfey are up to something else!” Then he found himself hurled out of his saddle by a deafening thunderclap.

  His horse screamed once in mortal agony, and the ground hit him like a giant’s hammer. For a moment he stared into the sky, his head swimming. The demons came after the standard despite our guards, he realized. Then he rolled to his hands and knees and pushed himself upright.

  Seiveril was nowhere in sight, but all around him the elf knights of the Golden Star fought furiously against dozens of demons-fire-wreathed things that looked like black skeletons, hulking toadlike hezrous that filled the air with their noxious reek, even buzzing chasme demons that flitted over the ground like monstrous flies. Sun elf knights battled the monsters, swords aglow with holy fire, while blazing arrows streaked from spellarchers’ bows and elf battle-mages hurled destruction in a dozen forms. Human warriors fought beside them, spending blood and strength with an extravagance that awed Fflar. Even though few wielded weapons that could harm a devil or a demon, still they stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their elf comrades.

  “Dieee, elfff!”

  A darting chasme swooped toward Fflar, knifelike claws extended to impale him. Its buzzing, chittering voice stabbed like daggers in his ears, but Fflar leaped to meet the creature and sheared off its arms and half its head with one great upstroke of Keryvian. The sword rang shrilly with its first kill of the day.

  “You’ll have more than enough today, old friend,” Fflar said to his sword.

  To his right a hezrou clawed an elf knight out of the saddle and stooped, catching the unfortunate warrior’s head between its huge, wet talons. It leered at its victim, needle-like fangs dripping in anticipation-and Fflar sliced into it from its side, hewing great black cuts in its quivering flesh. The hezrou let loose a gurgling wail and collapsed. Fflar reached down and dragged the wounded warrior to his feet.

  “Watch yourself, friend!” he called.

  The sun elf clamped one hand over his side and nodded, shaking, behind his visor. He stooped to pick up his sword, and turned back to the fray. Fflar turned, seeking the next threat.

  Metal scraped and creaked nearby.

  “Now what?” the moon elf warrior murmured.

  He looked toward the sound, and for a moment didn’t see anything at all-it was coming from behind the line of demons and fiends fighting savagely at the army’s front. But a flash of lightning and sharp thunderclap slashed through the ranks, clearing his field of view.

  Tall, ponderous iron shapes lumbered up out of the demonic ranks. They were shaped like elves dressed in ancient armor, their fists encased in huge spiked gauntlets. Each was fully ten feet tall. Bright blue flashes sparked from the joinings of their armor and glowed behind their expressionless visors. For a moment he thought they were lumbering up to attack Sarya’s demons from behind, destroying them against the swords of Evereska’s Vale Guards. But the fiends simply ignored the old elven constructs. With mindless determination, the battle golems raised their fists and struck down elves and humans alike.

  What new deviltry is this? Fflar wondered.

  The war-constructs were old elven work, he could see that easily enough. But they fought for the daemonfey-scores of them. Arrows splintered on their rusted breastplates, swords broke, spears shivered, and even spells seemed to be of no avail against the relentless new enemy.

  Fflar looked down at Keryvian in his hands. “Come on, old friend,” he said. “I think we have a long day ahead of us.”

  With a bold battle cry, Fflar charged at the first of the daemonfey battle golems.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  17 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms

  Araevin and his companions made the trek from the refuge-cave at the top of the terrible stairs to the portal leading back to the Waymeet in one long hike. They encountered no other travelers along the way, reinforcing his original impression that this was a very remote part of the Underdark indeed. They did not even rest for food or drink until they made the turn into the wall of bedrock and left the vast, silent dark of Lorosfyr a good half-mile behind them.

  “Good riddance to that place,” Maresa said. No one argued with her.

  Some time later-it was impossible to tell in the changeless dark of the underworld-they reached the blank-faced portal, set deep in its squared alcove of stone. The place looked much as they had left it. He peered down the tunnel snaking away into the darkness, and looked back the way they had come.

  “We’ve marched for quite some time, and I feel like we should rest before entering the Waymeet again,” he said to the others. “But this is a bad place to make camp. Anyone or anything using this tunnel couldn’t help but walk right into us.”

  “Then let’s not take the chance,” Jorin said. “I’d rather deal with what might be waiting for us on the other side of the portal than pass another day in this sunless place.”

  “I’m with Jorin.” Donnor squared his shoulders, shifting the weight of his armor. “I think we should press on.”

  “Very well,” Araevin agreed. He considered the blank portal for a moment, thinking. How long had they been in the Underdark? Six or seven days? Or even more? And what had the servants of Malkizid accomplished in that time? “I think we should take some precautions, though. I will conceal us with a spell of invisibility. Some demons and devils can see through spells of that sort, but perhaps it will help us to avoid unnecessary trouble.”

  “I will speak a prayer for Lathander’s protection, too,” Donnor said.

  Araevin moved his hands in the arcane passes of the spell and murmured the familiar words, while Donnor chanted his own prayers. In the space of a few moments his companions grew tr
anslucent and faint. The cleric’s protective spell left no visible sign, but Araevin felt a reassuring warmth on his shoulders, almost as if he stood in the bright sunshine of the World Above. Satisfied that they were as ready as they were likely to get, he turned back to the portal and woke it with another spell.

  “Follow me,” he said to his companions, and he strode into the gray mists.

  As usual, there was an instant of darkness and a flutter in his stomach as if he were suddenly falling, and he emerged in the Waymeet. He stopped dead a step inside the doorway, appalled.

  Half the Waymeet had been consumed by the hot black iron of infernal magic.

  Like some torturer’s machine, the rune-scribed iron bands affixed to the pillars and columns of the crystalline cathedral had chewed their way deeper into the fragile glass. It almost seemed that a second, parasitic Waymeet was being built over the first, riveted to its skeleton. The pearly luminescence of the whole structure had died away to a lifeless dull gray, and the air was hot and acrid.

  “By the Seldarine,” he murmured.

  The portal whispered at his back, and Donnor staggered into him. Araevin flailed for balance, and his outstretched hand brushed against one of the metal bands. Searing heat scorched his flesh, and he yanked back his hand with a stifled cry. In the space of a moment, Jorin, Nesterin, and Maresa filed out of the doorway after the cleric.

  “Bane’s brazen throne, but someone has been hard at work here,” Jorin said. The Yuir ranger scowled fiercely. “Is this as bad as it looks?”

  “Araevin, what happened to his place?” Donnor asked.

  “Malkizid’s servants have increased their efforts. We have less time than I thought.” Araevin did not give his friends much time to get over their shock. “Come on. I want to see if the Gatekeeper can help us, and our spells will not hide us for long.”

  Stilling their questions, his companions hurried after him while he quickly retraced the path leading back to the plaza of the speaking stone where he had questioned the mythal before. At one intersection they found a pair of barbed devils crouched atop ramparts of iron-scarred glass. The spine-covered monsters kept watch over the path below, but Araevin managed to double back and go around the creatures. He simply wasn’t certain that he could rely on the invisibility spell to fool the devils.

  With no more close calls, they came to the open space where the speaking stone stood. Iron plates had been riveted to each side of the triangular pillar, encasing the crystal in a cruel coffin. Not a glimpse of the original crystal showed through the plating.

  “Damnation,” Araevin murmured. “I should have expected that.”

  “Have the devils finished their work here, then?” Nesterin asked.

  Araevin studied the scene, searching for the subtle strands of magic that pervaded the structure. Angry reddish-gold threads of infernal power coiled around the original weavings of the ancient mythal, strangling vines that slowly tightened their grip on the living artifice that hosted them. At first he feared that Malkizid’s cruel siege was complete, and that nothing remained of the original spells the hellish sorcery replaced. But then he sensed a dim blue pulse, soft and shallow.

  “Not quite yet,” he answered the star elf. “It took the high mages of Aryvandaar a hundred years to raise this mythal. It’s not entirely corrupted yet.”

  “Another tenday or two, and they’ll have the whole thing riveted shut in those rune-covered bands,” Maresa said. “What happens then?”

  Araevin did not answer. Instead he moved closer to the speaking stone, examining the iron driven into its face. He hesitated to interfere with the spells burned into the metal for fear of announcing their presence to the power or powers behind the device, but he could see at a glance that the Gatekeeper was barred beneath the metal. After a moment, he decided that it was more dangerous to delay within the Waymeet than it was to risk a disturbance.

  “Watch for Malkizid’s servants,” he warned his friends. “I am going to try to reach the Gatekeeper.”

  He felt quick glances at his back, but his comrades didn’t question his judgment. Blades whispered out of their sheaths as Donnor and Nesterin drew their swords and set themselves at Araevin’s shoulders, while Maresa and Jorin found good places to crouch in the shelter of soaring spars of iron-banded glass. Trusting that his friends would warn him if anything threatening appeared, Araevin quickly considered the spells ready in his mind and settled on a powerful spell of unjoining. It was the most potent counterspell he knew, which worked by rending spells into their component parts. He thought it might separate the diabolic curse from the Waymeet, at least in that one corner of the edifice.

  He hummed a strange atonal tune and wove his hands in the sinuous passes of the disjunction. “Estierren nha morden! ” he called out, and plunged his mind into the tangled skein of magic in front of him.

  He brushed his hand to one side, as if to clear away the foul clinging webs of the devilish magic, while holding the original magic in place with his other hand and fierce concentration.

  Iron shrieked in protest. Araevin was so intent on his work that he did not even notice the heavy plate facing him come loose until Donnor muttered an oath and dragged him back three steps. The sinister runes cut into the plating blazed an incandescent orange for one long moment, and they grew dull and dark.

  The iron cladding over the speaking stone peeled away and toppled to the hard paved ground with hideously loud clangs. The revealed crystal was pitted and cracked, leaking tears of blue from the places where iron bolts had been driven into its surface.

  “Mask’s sweet night, Araevin, could you have made any more noise?” Maresa demanded. But then the genasi fell silent, for the speaking stone guttered into a weak, fitful life again. A tiny candle-flame of pure light danced and flickered in the shattered facets of the stone.

  “Gatekeeper, can you hear me?” Araevin asked urgently. “Are you there?”

  “I… hear you… Araevin Teshurr…” the speaking stone replied. “Speak quickly… I do not have much strength.”

  “I have the second shard of the master crystal. I divined the location of the third shard, but it lies in one of the infernal planes. Can you direct me to a portal that will take me to its location?”

  “Yes… but you must hurry. Your spell… has not gone unnoticed.”

  “I thought that might be the case. Which door do we need?”

  “Turn toward the center… at the next intersection. It will be the third arch…” A faint blue gleam briefly flickered across the face of a broken pane on the far side of the open space, illuminating the way. “Good fortune to you, Araevin Teshurr… I fear that we will not speak again.”

  “How long can you endure, Gatekeeper?” Nesterin asked.

  “Not much longer… Nesterin Deirr… a few days, perhaps… Go now! Many devils come…”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Maresa said. Turning in a quick circle to clear her back, she started across the square. She spared Araevin a quick look and jerked her head at the corridor marked by the failing blue gleam. “Come on, let’s not wait around to see exactly what it means by ‘many.’”

  Araevin nodded, and backed away from the speaking stone. The broken iron cladding at its foot would certainly reveal that someone had been there, and if the Gatekeeper was right, the devils infesting the place would know that a skilled mage had worked magic to communicate with the mythal. Malkizid will be looking for me, he realized. Well, perhaps he will not think to look where we are going.

  “Araevin, come on!” Maresa hissed.

  He turned and ran after the genasi, while his companions joined him. Abandoning stealth for speed, they ran down the passageway until they reached the intersection, perhaps fifty yards past the plaza of the speaking stone. He took a quick glance at the lay of the Waymeet around him, and pointed to his right.

  “That way,” he told his friends.

  The third portal was already waking as they skidded to a halt in front of the alcove shelt
ering it. This time the mists forming in place of the blank doorway had an ugly, roiling red-orange hue to them.

  “I don’t like the looks of that,” Jorin said quietly. “Is this the right doorway, Araevin?”

  Araevin quickly examined the portal. He could feel the tug of the third shard, a constant pressure in his consciousness whenever he focused on it. There was no mistaking it. It was the right door.

  Behind them, something gave voice to a shrill, furious scream. Araevin glanced around at the cry, searching the crystalline corridors for the pursuers that must be following by now.

  “I think they’ve found my work at the speaking stone,” he said to his friends. “This way, quickly! And may the Seldarine protect us.”

  He stepped into the angry portal and vanished.

  The smoke of countless fires choked the Vale of Lost Voices.

  Fflar couldn’t remember how any of the blazes began, really. Most likely it was a simple consequence of fire spells and lightning blasts hurled recklessly across the field after a long, hot summer. But even if the daemonfey and their infernal legions had set the grass of the vale alight through the pure accident of battle, the wildfires had become one more enemy for the Crusade to contend with. Walls of blinding smoke partitioned the battlefield into dozens of furious skirmishes, most of which were being decided outside Fflar’s sight or knowledge. The horses of the elven cavalry and the Sembian dragoons were growing so panicked and skittish that many riders had been forced to fight afoot. And Fflar had seen too many elves and humans who had perished horribly in hungry red flames, too badly wounded to escape.

  He stumbled into a clear space in the fighting, and took a moment to wipe the hot, stinging sweat from his brow. His arms quivered with fatigue, and he was not as steady on his legs as he would have liked, but so far he had avoided any serious injuries. On the other hand, he had lost sight of the banner again. Fflar took a slow, careful look around his surroundings, trying to peer through the hot embers and billowing gray smoke that danced and streamed wildly in the hot breeze. “We might as well fight in a burning house,” he muttered to himself.