They covered close to half a mile with no sign of the daemonfey army, and Fflar found himself wondering whether Sarya had thought better of meeting them in the vale. But then Jerreda Starcloak and a pair of her wood elf scouts emerged from the gloom before the marching Crusade, and trotted up to Seiveril. “The daemonfey are waiting about five hundred yards on your right front, Seiveril!” she called. “They’re drawn up opposite your center. Demons and devils, just like yesterday. The fey’ri are there, but they haven’t taken to the air yet!”
“My thanks, Jerreda!” Seiveril replied. The elflord looked over to his guard captain. “Felael, signal Lord Selkirk to hold in place. We’ll wheel to the right and hit them straight on with our center.”
“Yes, Lord Miritar!” the young captain answered.
He turned and called out more commands, and horns blared again in the morning. Seiveril turned his horse a few points to the right, and the Crusade followed, wheeling easily in the new direction. Fflar heard more signals off to the left, where the Dalesfolk and the elves marching with them had to jog to keep the line dressed. Some would manage it, and some would not; that was a simple fact of trying to maneuver large bodies of warriors on a battlefield.
“There they are!” a sun elf near Fflar shouted.
Fflar stood in his stirrups to see better. In the gray gloom ahead, a dark line of fearsome shadows waited. The hate and supernatural menace from the daemonfey army was as tangible as a thunderclap. The demonic tide roiled and surged ahead, eager for blood, while the fey’ri warriors took to the sky. In the darkness before dawn they seemed like great black crows, inky silhouettes against the lightless sky. He could hear their wing beats even over the footfalls and rustling and creaking of the Crusade on the march.
Seiveril brandished his mace above his head. “This is our time!” he shouted to all within earshot. “The dawn is coming, my friends! Today we break the army of the daemonfey and send their minions back to the Hells from which they came! Now, forward, all! Attack!”
With a great ragged roar, the armies of the Dales, of Evermeet, and of Sembia threw themselves forward, racing over the cool wet grass. Fflar drew Keryvian and followed close by Seiveril.
“Archers, rake those hellspawn!” the elflord cried. “Clerics, ward the ranks! Mages, cast at will!”
Better than a thousand elves, and hundreds of Dalesfolk and Sembians, paused to loose their arrows at the monsters charging up to meet them. Many of the demons and devils among the Dlardrageth armies could not be harmed by mundane steel-but some could, and more than a few of the elf archers carried enchanted arrows. Monstrous shapes stumbled and fell beneath that terrible storm of arrows, but many more shrieked and hissed in defiance and leaped forward to meet the first ranks of the oncoming warriors. Huge bursts of fire and brilliant strokes of lightning crisscrossed the battlefield, banishing the night in flashes of white and sullen red.
The fey’ri arrowed past overhead, seeking to surround the army as they had before. Many shot arrows or threw darts as they passed over, while others contributed deadly spells of their own. Some of the daemonfey spells winked out or rebounded harmlessly, stopped by hasty spell-shields or countered by the Crusade’s own spellcasters, but more hammered the elven ranks. All around Fflar blasts of fire and deadly gouts of acid seared man and beast alike, sowing chaos across the battlefield.
“Seiveril!” Fflar shouted. “It’s time!”
The elflord had his eyes on the fey’ri. As they crossed overhead, he bared his teeth in defiance and raised one hand in the air. “Guardians of the Vale, I call on you!” he shouted. “Aid us against the fey’ri!”
For a moment, Fflar feared that somehow the spirits had not heard Seiveril in the chaos of the battle. Spells, arrows, and furious melees on all sides were all that he could see. But then, a golden light caught his eye. He glanced in that direction, and it seemed that a path of molten light had sprung up in the sky-but this dawn was breaking in the west, not the east. Out of the shining door a host of brilliant white warriors streamed forth. Hundreds of elf spirit-warriors appeared silently and ran to meet the wheeling fey’ri overhead, simply mounting into the air to grapple with their foes.
The fey’ri cried out in consternation and shifted their attacks to the Vale spirits. Fireballs and blasts of lightning scoured the celestial ranks. Some of the ghostly figures winked out, extinguished or driven off by fey’ri spells. But more of the spirits leaped up, attacking the daemonfey legions with swords of blazing light. Despite the battle raging around him, Fflar could not help but watch the spectacle in the sky above the furious clashing armies, and he was not the only one.
“Starbrow, look out!” Felael shouted. Fflar whirled around and found a nycaloth rushing up from behind him. The huge winged daemon leaped for him, claws hooked to tear out his throat, but Fflar spurred his horse and ducked under the scaly monster’s swing. He spun in the saddle and lashed out in a backhand slash that dug a long, shallow gash across the nycaloth’s shoulders. Holy fire blackened its flesh.
The nycaloth howled in agony. “You will pay threefold for that insult, elf!” it screeched.
It leaped into the air with one snap of its vast leathery wings, and dropped down on Fflar like the shadow of a mountain. But the moon elf took his baneblade in both hands and rose in the saddle to stab the point straight through the nycaloth’s black heart. The creature fell on him, one clawed hand clenching its talons in his shoulder, and its fanged maw gnashed only inches from his face. Fflar managed to duck under the worst of the monster’s weight and let the horse ride out from beneath. The nycaloth fell heavily to its side and moved no more.
Remember, you still have a battle to fight, he berated himself. The shining spirits of the vale won’t keep you from having your head torn off by one of Sarya’s demons.
“My thanks, Felael,” he said, but the guard captain was no longer in sight. The battle had carried him away.
A chorus of sudden cries of dismay caught his attention. Fflar pulled the reins in that direction and spurred his horse forward. Seiveril’s banner was under attack. Barbed devils and mezzoloths swirled around the standard, battling Felael and the rest of Seiveril’s guards. The elflord himself laid about furiously with his silver mace, which flashed and thundered with holy enchantments. Without another thought, Fflar charged forward into the fray, and for a terrible instant he slashed and stabbed, and shouted defiance at the infernal creatures all around him.
He suddenly found himself standing in a space cleared of enemies, and briefly wondered if they’d driven off all their foes. He glanced at Seiveril, who was also looking for foes.
“Where did they go?” he asked the elflord.
“They drew back,” Seiveril answered. He started to say more but suddenly stopped in mid-word. And Fflar felt a presence, a malevolence so powerful and close that his war-horse gave off a high shrill whinny of panic and shied away. He wrenched at the reins to keep the animal under control, and looked up to see what new terror had come to the battle.
A dreadful king with pale skin and great gray wings confronted them, bearing a terrible black sword. Dark blood seeped from a wound or mark on his brow, and a guard of devils and yugoloths simpered at his side. The infernal lord studied the two elves with a predatory grin.
“It seems that I must take matters into my own hands,” he said. His voice was rich and musical, unbearably sweet. “Your Crusade ends here, Seiveril Miritar. I have raised up Sarya Dlardrageth as Queen of Cormanthor, and I do not intend to allow you to interfere with the work of fifty centuries.”
“You are Malkizid,” Fflar said.
The archdevil turned his black eyes on Fflar. “So I am, Fflar Starbrow Melruth. I well remember who you are and how you failed… though I have never forgiven you for destroying my servant Aulmpiter. I look forward to granting you a second death.”
“I do not fear you, devil!”
Malkizid’s cold smile failed. “Then you are a fool, mortal,” he snarled.
The mark burned into his forehead began to smolder, and the Branded King advanced to meet Fflar and Seiveril.
The rocky defile grew steeper and more narrow as Araevin and his friends pressed on from the scene of their battle against the hell hounds, until they finally found themselves toiling up a trail of sorts that switchbacked its way up to a bladelike saddle between the jagged hilltops. Here they found the first pitiful signs of vegetation that they had seen so far-black, iron-hard briars that clung to the deepest clefts in the rock. The wind grew stronger as they gained height, blasting at them with unpredictable and malicious gusts. Dust and grit coated their faces and hands, and clung to their garments.
With one last nerve-racking scramble, they reached the saddle proper and finally glimpsed what lay on the other side of their climb.
“That, I did not expect,” Nesterin breathed.
“Me, neither,” Maresa agreed.
The serried ridges continued on into the distance, their flanks scorched and bare. Immediately before Araevin and his friends, the steep-sided valley separating the ridge they had just scrambled over from the next was filled with a forest of sorts. The trees were black and dead-scorched by the dry heat of the Barrens, Araevin guessed, though he couldn’t imagine how they had grown there in the first place.
In the center of the dry, dead forest stood a tower of blackened glass. Its needle-like spires soared above the barren branches, glistening darkly in the ruddy light. Araevin had glimpsed its like only a few times in his life in some of the most ancient places of elvenkind. The spiraling ascent, the slender buttresses that arched away from the tower, the fluid lines of the place… it was a citadel of the Crown Wars, a glimpse of elven castles from the dawn of the world. But the fortress was blackened, its crystalline substance scorched and cracked.
“Malkizid’s tower,” he murmured. “That’s it.”
“That has the look of elven work,” Nesterin said, frowning. “Was this place made in mockery of the People? Or did elves once live here?”
“The Vyshaan of Aryvandaar,” Araevin answered him. “They built the Waymeet, and they had dealings with Malkizid. They might have built the portal leading to this domain and raised a tower here.”
“Elves lived here?” Maresa asked, incredulous.
“The Vyshaanti were more like daemonfey than elves, Maresa,” Araevin told her. “They would not have been deterred by dealing with the evil denizens of the Barrens. I don’t know if they actually dwelled in this place, but I would not be surprised to learn that they visited it often enough to see the need for a strong refuge here.”
They fell silent, studying the old citadel and its dead forest, until Jorin cleared his throat. “We’d better start down from this ridgeline. We don’t want to be seen.”
The ranger led them down the steeply descending path that dropped from the barren hills into the dead forest. Sliding and scraping their way down the hillside, they finally reached the sparse cover of the desiccated forest. Their path grew easier as the slope lessened. When they reached the black woods, Araevin could see that the valley floor was choked with thick briars. Thorns as sharp and long as daggers gleamed on each side of the path.
Jorin led the company deeper into the forest, staying on the trail. On several occasions winged fiends-devils or yugoloths, Araevin could not easily tell-flew overhead, croaking to each other in harsh voices. Each time he and his friends crouched down under the cover of the burned trees and sullen briars, getting as close to the thorns as they dared, and waited until the monsters flew off.
“Do you think they are looking for us?” Donnor asked softly after the third such encounter.
“I doubt it,” Araevin said. “I think there would be many more devils prowling in this vale if they suspected our presence.”
“That’s reassuring,” Maresa snorted. “They’re going to figure it out sooner or later, you know.”
Araevin did not answer her. When the danger passed, they climbed to their feet and continued on. After another parched mile of walking beneath the bare branches and black trunks of the old forest, they came to a small clearing where an old fountain basin had once stood. It was crowned by a statue of a winged angel transfixed by a sword. Immortal agony and despair gaped silently toward the sky. Rising above the trees a few hundred yards away, the nearest spire of the ruined citadel peered down on them.
“I’ve seen this before,” Araevin murmured.
It was the place from which he had glimpsed the third shard’s hiding place in his vision. He could not make out any gleam of light in the spire to announce the shard’s presence, but that did not surprise him. Visions exaggerated things like that in order to convey information.
A broad balcony caught his eye. It ascended the outside of the spire for quite a distance before it came to a ruined edge. A dark doorway midway along its length seemed to lead to the tower’s interior. A sudden inspiration came to Araevin then. He’d been wondering how they could slip inside the tower proper, since he assumed that Malkizid’s minions would carefully guard what passed for the tower’s gate. But it might be possible to make their entry from the balcony outside.
“There,” he said, pointing out the balcony to the others. “We’ll enter the spire from the balcony. Link hands-I’ll teleport us all to the balcony.”
“Is it safe?” Donnor asked.
“Nothing here is safe,” Araevin admitted. “But I suspect that we may do better to trust in speed than stealth once we get inside. It will be very hard for me to conceal my presence.”
The Lathanderite bowed his head and murmured the words of a prayer. Then he looked back up at Araevin. “I’m ready.”
The mage reached out and seized his friends’ hands, and spoke the words of his teleport spell with his eye firmly fixed on the tower’s balcony. He felt the familiar icy plunge into blackness, an instant of disorientation… and he and his friends were standing high above the barren forest on a narrow balcony of ebon glass. Fortunately, it seemed sturdy enough to hold them all. Araevin had half-feared that it might give way beneath their weight.
Maresa glanced down to check herself, as if she expected that not all of her would have made the trip. Then she grunted in satisfaction and said, “Well, we’re here. What next?”
Araevin quickly took his bearings. The citadel was really three distinct spires in one structure, winding around each other as if they had grown out of the ground in that form. About halfway up the height of the central spire, one of the two smaller ones branched off and soared out as a hanging minaret. The other, the one Araevin and his friends stood on, branched out a little bit higher. The whole edifice spurned the earth below, boldly leaping out over dizzying drops below with the support of long, slender buttresses. Beneath their feet loomed a drop of two hundred feet or more.
“This way,” he said, and he led his friends to the doorway close at hand.
The archway was guarded by a warding symbol, glowing red with malevolent magic. Araevin studied it for a moment and framed a negating spell to suppress it while they passed. Inside the spire, he found a chamber finished in red marble with gold veins. A broad stair circled up to the floor above, and another led below. The room was appointed as a conjury of some kind, with summoning diagrams inscribed on the floor and shelves filled with scrolls of sallow parchment.
The third shard whispered to him from somewhere above. Araevin started for the stairs leading up-but then Nesterin hissed in alarm. “There’s a devil following us!” the star elf said. He stood by the archway leading outside, peering back the way they had come. “It’s alighting on the balcony…”
Maresa drew her rapier and melted into the wall beside the archway. Nesterin and Jorin backed up, readying their bows, while Donnor found the best cover he could on the opposite side of the archway from Maresa and hefted his broadsword. Araevin found a good place in an alcove along the far wall… but then he heard a hissing, scrabbling sound coming from the downward stairs to his left. He looked down just as a trio of chitin-pl
ated canoloths appeared on the stair, spiky tongues lolling from their barbed snouts.
A black-scaled shadow filled the archway. It was a towering devil, easily the height of a good-sized giant, though it was lean and lanky. A bladed tail whipped anxiously behind it, and the fiend gripped a long, barbed chain in its talons. Two great, curled horns crowned its fearsome visage.
“Stupid mortals,” it gloated. “Did you think your sealing spell could hold us for long? You will soon learn-”
“Enough of this,” Jorin said.
The ranger loosed his arrow and buried the slender shaft in the thick scales over the fiend’s chest. The devil roared in pain and started toward the archer just as Maresa slipped in from the left side of the portal and skewered its hip-the highest part of the creature she could easily reach-with her rapier. The devil roared again and leaped away from her, ripping her rapier from her hands.
“Impudent insect!” the creature snarled. “I will eat your liver before your dying eyes!”
It lashed out in a blinding frenzy, whirling the huge barbed chain in its taloned hands. With one quick strike it wrapped the cruel chain around Maresa’s shins and jerked the genasi off her feet, and with the other end it smashed the bow out of Jorin’s hands. The monster wheeled and lashed its bladed tail at Donnor, striking the knight’s shield with a resounding clang that sent him staggering to his knees.
“Araevin! The stairs below!” Nesterin shouted. He gave voice to a sharp atonal song that scoured the lean monster’s side with a blast of blue power. An instant later he very nearly lost his left leg to the creature’s bladed tail as it whipped around and lashed at him, slicing through his mail as if it were paper. The star elf cried out and fell, his leg buckling.
“I know!” Araevin answered Nesterin.
The canoloths below bounded up the stairs with startling speed for creatures so large and heavy. Doubled jaws, wide enough to bite a man in two, gnashed and slavered. He snapped out the words for an ice spell, sealing the top of the stairway with a glistening white wall. The ice shuddered as the monsters below hurled their strength against it, but it held.
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