Final Gate lm-3

by Richard Baker

  The Crusade swept into the city ruins, rushing past the empty stone skeletons of elven palaces and towers. Seiveril led the warriors of Evermeet deeper into the city, striking for the old towers of Castle Cormanthor.

  “To victory!” the elflord cried, and he dashed across the rubble-strewn courts.

  “What does he think he’s doing?” Fflar muttered to himself, and he ran after Seiveril.

  A company of fey’ri appeared before them, snarling defiance. The daemonfey warriors unleashed a barrage of deadly spells and fuming fire, hurling every sorcery at their command against the elves. Sinister voices snarled out the words of dark spells, fire roared and hissed in lethal waves across the street, and the very cobblestones charred and splintered with earsplitting reports.

  It seems Araevin didn’t unbind all of Sarya’s demons, Fflar observed grimly. Some at least she must have summoned without the mythal’s aid.

  He threw himself flat on the hard ground, ducking under a sizzling bolt of green acid that tore through the ranks around him. When he scrambled back to his feet, he found a vrock demon stooping on him, croaking in its harsh voice. Fflar blocked its filthy talons with a quick parry, passed its claws above his head as he spun beneath the monster, and finished by opening it from groin to breastbone with a leaping slash. The creature collapsed in a spray of foul black blood and gray feathers.

  “Seiveril!” he called. “Where are you?”

  He turned, looking for a new opponent. Elf knights, archers, and mages battled daemonfey swordsmen and sorcerers in a furious melee that stretched across the square… but the army of Evermeet was gaining the upper hand, and quickly. He spied Seiveril dueling a tall fey’ri general with curling black horns, plying mace and spell against the daemonfey’s skilled swordplay. The swordsman fought with cold fury, stabbing again and again at the elflord, but Seiveril parried each stroke with his mace until he found a chance to step back and speak a spell. A blinding white flash seared the battlefield, leaving the swordsman reeling-and Seiveril stepped forward and broke his neck with one swift swing of his silver mace.

  “Well struck,” Fflar cried. He hurried to Seiveril’s side. “Now stop fighting and start leading! You are in command here!”

  Seiveril flashed an easy smile at Fflar. “I think we have them!” he shouted back. “On to Castle Cormanthor! That is where Sarya will be hiding!”

  Fflar took his bearings with a quick glance and pointed toward the right. “Down that avenue, then. It’s only a couple of hundred yards away.”

  “Warriors of Evermeet, follow me!” Seiveril shouted.

  He shifted his grip on his mace and led the Knights of the Golden Star and his guards along the street. All around them, elves skirmished with fey’ri and monsters. Storms of arrows brought down anything that tried to take to the skies, and spells flashed and thundered on every side. They came to the broad plaza in front of the castle, where more of the fey’ri waited, and another furious skirmish erupted.

  Fflar found himself beset by a fey’ri bladesinger who leaped down into the fray from the battlements overhead. Keryvian gleamed like white fire in the morning light, leaping to deflect the spells and sword-thrusts the bladesinger threw at him. She was quick and graceful, her ruby face set in a small smile of concentration as she flowed through the bladesinger’s trance. Fflar finally managed a two-handed stroke in response. His opponent threw up her own blade to block the strike-but he was stronger than she was, and he beat through her guard and broke her sword against her upper arm, gashing her deeply. She drew in a sharp hiss of pain and staggered back, only to be lost as the battle swept her away.

  The roar of angry voices and shrill ringing of steel on steel filled the air. He took a moment to smother the smoking acid-drops still clinging to his armor with his leather gauntlet, and looked around to find Seiveril.

  The elflord fought on the steps of the castle’s front gate. He raised his hand above his head and loosed a towering ring of holy white fire against the demons and fey’ri nearby, scattering half a dozen foes like ninepins. Then a hulking daemonfey, the four-armed monster Xhalph, appeared behind Seiveril in a burst of fuming yellow smoke.

  “Seiveril! Behind you!” Fflar shouted.

  Seiveril started to turn-but a hezrou demon a short distance in front of him caught his eye, and he began a spell of dismissal against it. Xhalph took one step forward and plunged three of his swords into Seiveril’s back, grinning with bloodlust. Seiveril let out a cry and fell to his knees. The daemonfey prince wrenched his swords out of Seiveril’s back with a great spray of bright red blood, and flung the broken elflord headlong down the steps of the castle.

  “Seiveril! ” Fflar cried. With no thought for the enemies around him, he hurled himself toward the castle.

  Xhalph leaped down beside Seiveril with an easy bound. He raised his swords to butcher the elflord, but Fflar roared out a wordless challenge. Keryvian flashed in white wrath, sensing the blinding fury in his heart.

  Xhalph looked up and grinned, his mouth full of small fangs. “You wish to be next, hero?” he hissed. “I have not forgotten our duel of a month ago. We have unfinished business, you and I.”

  “You will not live out the day, murderer!” Fflar cried.

  Xhalph readied his swords, preparing to receive Fflar’s attack. Then a blazing white arrow streaked into the daemonfey’s breastplate, taking him high on his left chest. The blow spun him half-around, but his armor took the worst of the impact. Xhalph roared once and reached up to snap off the shaft. Another arrow hissed toward him, and he threw up one of his swords in its path and batted it aside.

  Fflar glanced to his side. Ilsevele knelt by her father, drawing her bow again.

  “Xhalph, come!” Sarya Dlardrageth appeared in the empty doorway of the castle, dressed in her armor of black and gold. Ilsevele shifted her aim and loosed an arrow at her, but the daemonfey queen deflected it with a word and a gesture.

  “Another time,” Xhalph growled. The wounded daemonfey spared one fang-filled snarl for Fflar, and leaped back up the stairs and disappeared into the castle proper.

  Fflar started after them, but Ilsevele’s voice stopped him. “Starbrow!” she wailed. She cradled Seiveril in her arms, his blood streaming down the marble steps.

  With one more glance after the fleeing daemonfey, Fflar turned back to Seiveril and hurried to his side. He stumbled to his knees beside the elflord. “Seiveril,” he murmured.

  Seiveril’s face was pale, and blood flecked his lips. He breathed in shallow gasps. “Starbrow… my friend… I had hoped to walk with you in Cormanthor… when all this was at an end.”

  “You will, Father. You will,” Ilsevele promised through her tears. “We will summon a healer. Stay with us just a little longer!”

  “I am afraid… that it is too late for that, Ilsevele. It is time

  … to walk in Arvandor instead…”

  Fflar’s eyes blurred with tears. He had seen too many warriors fall on too many battlefields to argue with Seiveril. “Ilyyela is waiting for you there, my friend.” He reached down and found Seiveril’s hand, and gripped it tightly. “There is nothing to fear. I know it.”

  The dying elf found a smile. “I saw Myth Drannor before I died… I am content. Ilsevele… you must finish what I have started here. Starbrow… live the life you have been called back to. You have surpassed any failures… you carry in your heart.” He reached out and set Ilsevele’s hand in Fflar’s, and breathed one last time. “… Love…” he whispered, and his eyes closed forever.

  “Father,” Ilsevele murmured. She lowered him to the palace steps and sobbed over his chest. “Father!”

  Fflar simply bowed his head. No words came to him. He clasped Ilsevele’s hand in his and knelt in silence by Seiveril’s torn body. He knew he was soon to leave this world, Fflar thought. He knew, and he set out to right the wrongs he could before he was called home.

  “Rest, my friend,” he finally whispered.

  Ilsevele looked up at him, i
gnoring the tears that streaked her face. “Starbrow, the daemonfey,” she said. “They fled into the palace. Sarya must have another portal inside.”

  “It would not surprise me,” Fflar grated. He picked up Keryvian and climbed to his feet. The broken gates of the castle waited for him. “We cannot let them escape again, Ilsevele.”

  “Go, Starbrow!” she said. “I will finish the fight here.” She stood, bow in hand, and raised it above her head. “To me, warriors of Evermeet! To me!”

  Sehanine, watch over her, Fflar silently prayed. He looked around and saw Jerreda Starcloak and two of her wood elves, who stood gazing at Seiveril with horror.

  “Jerreda, follow me!” he said, and he turned and leaped up the stairs.

  The wood elves tore their eyes away from the fallen leader of the Crusade and bounded after him. Together they dashed into Castle Cormanthor, blades bared.

  Fflar could hear the sounds of battle echoing throughout the castle. He followed the first hallway he came to for thirty paces or so, and it opened out into a small chapel or shrine. The old symbols of the Seldarine had been removed, but a blank alcove behind the altar still shimmered with a thin gray mist.

  “As I thought,” he said. “It’s a portal.”

  Jerreda recognized it too. “What do we do?” the wood elf princess said. “The daemonfey might have gone anywhere.”

  Fflar hesitated only a moment before deciding. “After them,” he growled. Then he ran up and hurled himself through the gray mists.

  It did not take Araevin long at all to find a portal in Myth Drannor. The city was riddled with them. A brief search and a quick spell of portal mastery allowed him to locate a suitable gate and shift its destination to the Fhoeldin durr.

  They emerged in a blind alley of the Waymeet, surrounded by a thin, acrid yellow fog. Riveted iron plate inscribed with red-glowing runes covered the walls and pillars around them. Lurid firelight reflecting from the low-hanging clouds that roofed the Waymeet illuminated the place, striking angry gleams from the scorched glass spars and columns that still survived.

  “By Tymora, they’ve ruined the place,” Jorin said. “Malkizid’s devils have made it into some kind of infernal machine.”

  “Araevin, what is the purpose of all this? What is Malkizid trying to do here?” Nesterin asked.

  “I am not sure,” Araevin breathed.

  He frowned at the sharp smell of hot metal in his nostrils and made himself study the evil runes driven into the ancient glass walls. Hellish sorcery pooled and churned slowly through the metal conduits, pinning the ancient elven mythal spells open in the same way that a vivisectioned animal might be opened for inspection. What more could the archdevil want with the device? Didn’t he possess sufficient knowledge of mythalcraft to do what he wanted with the Fhoeldin durr?

  Unless… Araevin peered closer, studying the mythal weave before him, and it came to him. The ancient weave of the Fhoeldin durr was spun by the Vyshaanti of Aryvandaar… and they had woven their mythal in such a way that it could not be changed from its purpose except by another scion of House Vyshaan. Malkizid, for all his lore and skill, was not a sun elf of House Vyshaan, and so he could not exert his mastery over the Last Mythal of Aryvandaar without first devising a means of overpowering those ancient restrictions. The iron runes were Malkizid’s own mythal, a mythal the archdevil was building for the purpose of destroying the ancient concordance governing the Fhoeldin durr and replacing it with rules more to his own liking.

  “It’s a battering ram to break down the Waymeet’s defenses,” he told Jorin. “Malkizid is building a mythal of his own that will take over the governing of the Waymeet.”

  “How much time do we have?” Donnor asked.

  “None,” Araevin said grimly. “Malkizid’s spell is complete. I can’t excise his influence with the Gatekeeper’s Crystal.”

  “So all this was for nothing?” Maresa shook her head and muttered a savage oath as she turned her back on the rest of the company and kicked at the iron bands on the wall. “What was the point?” she demanded.

  Araevin looked again at the corrupted mythal around him. Then he withdrew the Gatekeeper’s Crystal from under his cloak and looked at the three-pointed star. Its substance had taken on a sullen reddish hue, but power still coursed through it. The crystal still draws on the Waymeet for its power, he thought. Maybe… “The crystal no longer commands the Waymeet, but it still channels the power of this place,” he said to Maresa. “We must use the crystal to destroy the Fhoeldin durr.”

  “Like the way the Dlardrageths destroyed the wards over the Nameless Dungeon?”

  “Yes. I think it’s the only way.”

  The genasi gave him a skeptical look. Then she shook her long silver-white hair out of her face with a toss of her head. “I saw what the crystal did to that hillside in the High Forest,” she said. “Is that what you’re going to do here?”

  “First we must find the center of the Waymeet,” Araevin said.

  Maresa and Nesterin led the way as they set out along a curving corridor that spiraled in toward the middle of the place. The foul smoke hanging in the air of the place burned the eyes and seared the nose, and it limited visibility to a few dozen feet. Araevin quickly realized that the smoke kept them from navigating toward the Waymeet’s center, but at least it also served to help conceal them from any of Malkizid’s servants unless they actually blundered into their enemies.

  They came to an intersection, and Araevin studied their surroundings for a moment before pointing to the right. The genasi and the star elf started down the new passageway, stealing forward as quietly as they could.

  Harsh voices croaked in the mist behind the company. Araevin whirled just in time to see three mezzoloths emerge from the acidic fog just behind them, following the intersecting avenue. The bulky insectile creatures did not hesitate for an instant; the moment they caught sight of Araevin and his friends, they threw themselves at the travelers, clacking and chattering to each other.

  Jorin shot one in the center of its chitin-covered torso, but the monster shrugged off the arrow and kept coming. The ranger stepped back, continuing to shoot as fast as he could bring arrows to the string. Green-feathered shafts peppered the fiends, but then the ranger had to drop his bow with a sharp curse and sweep out his swords, for the mezzoloths were on him. Araevin drew a wand from his belt and looked for a chance to strike back at the monsters, but Donnor threw out an arm.

  “Go on!” Donnor growled. “Perform the rite! Jorin and I will hold them!”

  The mage started to argue, but he could hear more fiends hurrying to the fray. If he allowed himself to be drawn into a skirmish, he might not get a chance to strike the blow that truly counted.

  “Follow us as soon as you can,” he said to Donnor, and he hurried back to Maresa and Nesterin. “Come on, we must do what we came to do.”

  Behind him, the Lathanderite turned to face the oncoming mezzoloths, with the Yuir ranger at his shoulder. He shouted a holy prayer to his deity and banished one of the monsters back to its own plane, sending it shrieking back to the hells in a shroud of golden fire. Then Araevin pulled himself away and ran on into the Waymeet, Maresa and Nesterin a step behind him. Angry roars and hisses filled the mist behind them.

  The foundations of the walls and columns grew thicker as the three of them came into the center of the Waymeet. Here the fence of titanic crystal spears that formed the heart of the mythal reached hundreds of feet overhead, and not even the elves of ancient Aryvandaar could build such things without a sturdy footing. The bitter yellow mists cleared a little, affording them a good view of the cathedral-like space in the heart of the Waymeet. Bold spurs of glass crossed and crossed again overhead, creating a ceiling of sorts far above. Smaller ribs of crystal linked the great columns; the place was a spiderweb of glass.

  Beneath a spiraling dome in the center of the structure stood another speaking stone, a column easily thirty feet tall, but like the lesser speaking stone Araevin had se
en on the outskirts of the Waymeet, the master stone was also encircled by iron runes. Thick bands of black metal pressed Malkizid’s hellforged spells deep into the crystalline flesh of the living mythal.

  “This must anchor the mythal,” Nesterin breathed. “What a magnificent work this Waymeet must have been!”

  “Admire it later,” Maresa said. She looked to Araevin. “So how do we do this?”

  “Here, take this.” Araevin brought out the Gatekeeper’s Crystal and quickly disjoined it, separating it into its original three shards. He handed one piece to Maresa, and another to Nesterin. “We need to spread out and create three points of a triangle with the shards-the wider, the better. At the very least, we should surround the master stone there. When you are in position I will invoke the crystal’s power and unbind the magic in this place.”

  “What happens to us when you do that?” Maresa asked.

  “If the Seldarine smile on us, the damage will be contained within the shards’ borders. You must be careful to stand outside the triangle, not inside.”

  The genasi nodded once. “I’m off, then,” she said, and she sprinted across the open plaza, running past the chained speaking stone. Nesterin observed her course for a moment, then hurried off at a right angle, seeking to separate himself as widely as possible from both Maresa and Araevin.

  A winged shape dropped down out of the tangle of poisoned crystal overhead, diving down toward the star elf. “Nesterin, above you!” Araevin cried.

  Nesterin looked up, and threw himself to one side as the monster above him slammed into the ground where he had been standing. Stone split with piercing reports, reverberating through the Waymeet’s chancel. The monster, a powerful green-scaled nycaloth, cast its baleful red eyes on Araevin.

  “You spoiled my pounce, elf,” it hissed. “You will pay for that when I finish with your friend.”

  It turned to spring after Nesterin, who rolled away and came to his feet with his sword in hand. Araevin blasted at it with a bolt of lightning, charring a broad black scorch across its shoulders. The monster roared and kept after the star elf. Nesterin lunged forward and stabbed it twice in its thickly muscled torso, but the nycaloth shrugged off the blows. It beat its wings once and leaped up to fix the talons of its feet in Nesterin’s shoulders, and dragged him up off the ground.