Forsaken House

by Richard Baker

  Had he more time, Araevin would have been content to follow his trail on foot, closing in on the lorestone slowly and methodically. But the presence of the fey’ri army—encamped high in the Rillvale, driven back but not defeated—urged him to move faster. If the telkiira in fact harbored some secret lore that might be turned against the daemonfey, if it truly contained some useful knowledge or weapon, then it was needed in Evereska as soon as he could retrieve it. And if the telkiira quest proved to be a vain hope, then the sooner he followed the trail to its end and returned, the sooner he could lend his arcane strength to the crusade’s next battle. So, instead of creeping out of the Shaeradim through one of the secret trails to the north, they spent the morning following the track deeper into the mountains, traversing higher and higher vales that not even the Evereskans visited often, until at last they reached the barren stone plinth of a high, thready waterfall that coursed down from a cliff above them. A moss-grown stone marker stood beside the pool, leaning crookedly to one side.

  “Not another one of these,” Maresa observed. She dismounted and set her hands on her hips. “It can’t be good to tempt Tymora’s luck too often. Sooner or later we’re not going to go where we think we’re going.”

  “Where does this one lead, Araevin?” Grayth asked.

  “If I understand the Evereskan records, it will take us to the Moonwood, somewhat north of Silverymoon.”

  “Is that where the third loregem lies?”

  “Possible, but unlikely.” Araevin swung himself down from his own mount, and checked to make sure his saddlebags and gear were secure. “I can feel the telkiira quite a long ways north and west of here, and this is the nearest portal I know of that leads a fair distance to the north. It’s my hope that transporting ourselves to the Moonwood will bring us closer to our goal, and save us some travel.”

  “We might overshoot the mark,” Ilsevele said. “The Moonwood might be farther from the goal than we are right here.”

  “I know, but this seems worth a try. If I feel that the telkiira is farther away once we pass to the other side of the portal, we will simply step back through and proceed from here. It costs us no more time than it took to climb up here if I’m wrong, but if I’m right, we may save days of hard riding.”

  “So what sort of horrible monsters infest the Moonwood?” Maresa muttered. “Trolls and dragons again? Or something else this time?”

  Araevin replied, “The Moonwood doesn’t have quite the same reputation as the Trollbark or the Forest of Wyrms. But it’s been almost eighty years since I was last in Silverymoon and the lands about, so my information may be out-of-date.”

  He moved over to the stone marker and studied it, softly tracing the weathered Espruar runes carved into its lichen-covered surface. Evereska’s high vales concealed a handful of ancient elfgates leading to elven realms that no longer existed. Araevin cast a spell that let him study the ancient device and perceive its condition, its destination, and the method of its awakening.

  “This gate linked Evereska to a northerly outpost of the fallen realm of Sharrven,” Araevin said, “on the far side of the River Rauvin. This is the right one. Be ready to move swiftly when the gate opens, for it will not remain open for long.”

  Dutifully, his traveling companions ringed themselves around the elfgate, and waited for his signal. Araevin straightened, caught the reins of his horse, and led the animal closer. He spoke the ancient words needed to wake the portal, and quickly touched the device. A golden shimmer arose around him, warm and electric, and he was standing somewhere else, an overgrown clearing in a deep forest. He led his horse away from the weathered stone post marking the northern end of the portal, and watched as his companions came through one by one.

  Maresa made a show of patting her arms and legs, as if part of her might have been left behind.

  “Well, what do you know? I’m all here,” she remarked. Ilsevele looked to Araevin and asked, “Are we closer, or not?”

  Araevin hesitated only a moment, pausing to make sure of the magical intuition dancing in his mind, then answered, “Yes. The loregem now lies east of us, not close, but not terribly far.”

  Grayth glanced at the brooding sky.

  “More riding, then,” the cleric said. “Unless you know of another portal leading in the right direction.”

  “No elven realms ever stood between the Moonwood and Anauroch. I could try a teleport spell, but we’d have to leave the horses behind. And I would be guessing at where I’m going, which is not wise with such magic.” Araevin shook his head and concluded, “We’ll have to ride from here.”

  They mounted their horses again and headed east, riding beneath a cold but thankfully sparse drizzle. Winter might have been fading in the lands of the North, but spring’s grip was still frail. Large patches of snow lingered under the tall trees of the forest, and the air was damp and chilly. After an hour’s ride, they broke out of the eastern eaves of the Moonwood and rode across more open land, rolling hills crowned with bare, windswept heather, interspersed with thicket-filled vales and swift, cold streams. South of them rose the white peaks of a low but rugged mountain range marching off toward the east.

  Early in the afternoon they struck upon a clear track running north and south across their path. Araevin couldn’t recall the exact lay of the land, but Grayth prayed for Lathander’s guidance and directed the company to follow the track to the north. Toward the end of the day the track crossed a broad, swift river, icy cold but fortunately less than knee-deep at the ford.

  “We’re lucky,” Grayth called to Araevin over the rushing of the water. “If we come back this way in ten or fifteen days, the snowmelt will make this ford impassable!”

  “Does any of this look familiar?” Ilsevele asked Araevin.

  “I think this might be the Redrun. If we followed it south for quite a ways, we would eventually reach Sundabar.”

  “This track leads in the wrong direction, then.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Araevin pointed at a stout marker that stood overlooking the ford. “Those are Dethek runes—Dwarvish. I think this track might skirt north of the Rauvin Mountains and head east through the Cold Vale toward Citadel Adbar.”

  “I think you may be right, Araevin,” Maresa said, studying the Dwarvish writing. “I can make out some of this, I think … ah, that’s not good.”

  “What?”

  “The trail glyphs warn of orc lands ahead. And someone called Grimlight,” said Maresa. “It’s going to be a cold and lonely ride. I don’t think there’s anything between here and Adbar, and that’s more than two hundred miles off according to the dwarves’ glyphs. No civilization anywhere.”

  “The dwarves must pass this way,” observed Grayth. “They raised a stone here, anyway.”

  “Yes, but look at the track,” Ilsevele said. “Not much traffic at all.”

  They made another five miles before camping for the night in a small, sheltered hollow. The night was bitterly cold, cold enough that they decided to build a fire in spite of the risk of attracting orc marauders, but the night passed by without event. They pressed on in the morning, and rode as hard as they could reasonably push the horses for the next several days. The track skirted just to the north of the stark, forbidding foothills of the Rauvin Mountains, passing through a desolate land of tumbled boulder-fields covered in moss, boggy green fells, and sudden deep gorges across their path where icy streams plummeted down out of the mountains and carved paths through the hills. It was cold and wet, wreathed in dense fogs at night, empty except for the sound of countless white rills and falls amid the stony hills. Crumbling old dwarven bridges crossed stream after stream, some in such bad repair that Araevin or Grayth were forced to resort to magic to get the company across safely.

  At noon of the fifth day since leaving Evereska, they reached another old bridge spanning a narrow gorge less than fifty feet wide, but twice that in depth. A nameless mountain stream rushed by below, plunging from rock to rock as it descended. The
bridge was sound enough to cross, but in the middle of the span Araevin halted and looked downstream.

  “Here,” he said. “This is the gorge, I’m sure of it. We need to follow it downstream from here.”

  Ilsevele studied the landscape and said, “It will be impossible for the horses.”

  “We’ll leave them, along with all the gear we don’t need in a fight. I’ll hide the animals and our cache with a spell.”

  They led their mounts back a few hundred yards to the empty shell of an old, long-abandoned wayhouse along the road, and left the horses in the moss-grown ruin, concealed by an illusion Araevin wove to make the whole place seem like one more tumbled boulder den to anyone passing by.

  The company returned to the bridge and with great care picked their way down the slippery walls of the gorge to the stream at the bottom. The stream snaked back and forth between huge boulders and steep shoulders of rock and filled the gully with cold spray and roaring water. But by leaping from stone to stone or scrambling over tumbled rock falls they were able to pick their way downward. Fortunately, it seemed that spring was just slow enough in coming that the bottom of the gorge was still passable. Araevin could easily see that a few days of heavy rain or snowmelt would have filled the channel from side to side.

  The gorge turned to the east in a sharp bend that took quite a scramble to negotiate—and they saw the cave mouth. Beneath an overhanging shelf of rock, about fifteen feet above the stream below, a great dark tunnel gaped in the moss-covered wall of the gorge. Araevin halted, riveted by the sight of the place that had hovered in his mind since finding the second stone. It was not quite exactly as he had seen it. The stream was higher, some of the boulders seemed to have shifted or moved, and the vagaries of light and weather were not the same. But he could feel the closeness of the third stone. And as he looked closer, he realized that some of the smaller boulders and water-soaked branches clustered below the cave mouth were not rock and wood, but crushed and splintered bones.

  “That’s it,” he replied in answer to the question he had not yet been asked. “It’s in there.”

  Grayth doffed his helm and mopped his brow with the sleeve of the loose surcoat he wore over his plate armor. “Good, I was getting tired. Can’t say I like the looks of it, though. That’s a monster’s lair if I’ve ever seen one.”

  “What do you think it might be?” Maresa asked.

  “Maybe it’s the lair of Grimlight, whoever or whatever that is,” Ilsevele offered.

  Grayth replaced his helm, looked up to Araevin, and asked, “So what’s the plan?”

  “Rest a few minutes, then ready ourselves with spells and go in,” Araevin said.

  He looked around at the gorge. He could feel the menace of the place, and wished he had Whyllwyst with him to keep an eye on their line of retreat once they entered the cave. He didn’t like the idea of not knowing if anyone else might be coming up behind them.

  “I suppose we’ll have to find out the hard way who lives here,” Araevin said, “and whether or not they’re willing to part with the lorestone.”

  It took Methrammar Aerasumé almost ten days to gather a force from the cities of the League. Most of the confederation’s soldiers were scattered all over the Silver Marches in small detachments and companies, doing their best to check the depredations of raiding giants and marauding orcs. The High Marshal stripped whole companies from other tasks and sent them up the Rauvin by barge, gathering them in Everlund’s Great Armory, the walled barracks compound overlooking the busy riverfront of the city. His agents scoured the city’s markets and caravan yards, buying up every pack animal in sight as they amassed a tremendous store of food and supplies for the march.

  Gaerradh was impressed by the martial array Methrammar assembled, even though she was more anxious with each day that passed. Two hundred of Silverymoon’s famous Knights in Silver rode at the head of the column—human, elf, and half-elf soldiers strengthened by a dozen mages of the city’s famous Spellguard. Four hundred sturdy dwarf warriors—Iron Guards from Citadel Adbar, and a small company from Citadel Felbarr—tromped along behind the riders, openly discontented with the notion of marching off into the trackless woodlands to fight in the service of wood elves who weren’t even members of Alustriel’s league. Several small companies from smaller towns such as Auvandell and Jalanthar followed, including a handful of human huntsmen and trackers almost as comfortable in the forest as Gaerradh herself. And finally, Methrammar had prevailed upon the First Elder of Everlund to lend him three seasoned companies of the Army of the Vale. All told, Methrammar’s expedition numbered well over a thousand soldiers.

  After assembling his force, Methrammar did not lead his army straight south into the wood, as Gaerradh would have expected.

  “If your folk are retreating to the Lost Peaks, then that is where we should march to,” he explained. “The forest is a road to elves, but this army we have gathered will not make good speed on elven trails.”

  Instead, they marched southwest along the trade road known as the Evermoor Way, skirting the western edge of the forest for fifty miles before turning south into the forest on the fifth day of their march. From there, Gaerradh led them along the remnants of the elven highways that had once crisscrossed the High Forest in the days of Sharrven and Siluvanede.

  On the sixth day out of Everlund, soon after Methrammar’s army entered the forest, the daemonfey struck.

  Gaerradh was with Methrammar, riding with the Knights in Silver at the head of the column. Behind them the other companies were scattered over close to a mile of trail, threading their way among the rugged, dense forest of the hills that climbed ever southward to the hidden slopes of the Lost Peaks. Suddenly, from the dark hillside above the trail, a barrage of magical fireballs whistled down into the marching column.

  “Ambush!” Methrammar cried. “To arms! To arms!”

  The fireballs exploded a bowshot behind the lead company, huge orange gouts of flame blossoming in the gloomy, dripping forest. The heat of the magical fire was so fierce that Gaerradh could feel the flames from where she stood. Before the flames fully vanished, brilliant bolts of lightning stabbed down from the hillside above the track, splintering trees with tremendous cracks! and booms! that left Gaerradh’s ears ringing. Everlundan soldiers staggered and screamed, burned or maimed by the deadly magic.

  Methrammar wheeled his horse about, his handsome face hard and flat with anger.

  “Damn! Where did they come from?” he hissed. Then he shouted at the Silvaeren knight who commanded the vanguard, “Take defensive positions and spread out! They’re going to try to swarm the vanguard while the rest of the column is cut off by the spellcasters!”

  I should have been scouting the trail instead of riding with Methrammar, Gaerradh thought angrily. No fey’ri sorcerers would have ambushed Sheeril and I!

  Few others came close to matching her woodcraft, but Methrammar had asked her to stay close by him, pointing out that her knowledge of the trails and landmarks of the forest was irreplaceable. In truth, she had not minded the opportunity to keep the company of the handsome commander. She cursed her own foolishness and swept the woods nearby with her keen eyes, looking for the next step of the ambush.

  Dark, swift forms dropped down from wooded hillside above the trail with bared steel in their filthy talons.

  “Here they come!” she cried. “Watch upslope!”

  Gaerradh slipped off her own mount and unslung her bow. She had no skill in fighting on horseback, and she suspected that anyone on a horse would be singled out by enemy archers and wizards.

  Sheeril growled at her heel, baring her fangs at the forest. Gaerradh quickly knelt down beside the wolf and tapped her shoulder, pointing downslope.

  “Scout!” she commanded.

  She didn’t think the ambushers would try to struggle up the hillside to get at the Silvaeren soldiers, but having just been fooled once, she didn’t mean to be fooled again. Sheeril was trained to seek out hidden foes and stay
out of sight. The wolf yipped once and bounded off down the hillside. Then Gaerradh darted over to take cover by a huge dead spruce, already seeking out marks for her arrows.

  Orcish war cries filled the air, and a ragged line of berserkers leaped down the hillside through the trees, shrieking like blood-maddened beasts as they hurled themselves on the humans and elves of Silverymoon’s company. A barrage of fireballs preceded the orc charge, but the Silvaeren mages among the vanguard were ready and countered many of the attacker’s spells. Gaerradh searched the treetops and high branches for the daemonfey spellcasters, ignoring the orcs. She glimpsed a bat-winged fey’ri in dark mithral armor gliding overhead, its hands gesturing as it shaped another spell. Gaerradh drew and fired in one smooth motion, sending two arrows at the enemy wizard. One glanced away from a spell ward of some kind, but the other struck true, taking the fey’ri just under its breastbone. The demonspawned sun elf crumpled in midair and began to fall.

  Gaerradh looked for another target, but with a terrible crash the orcs reached the waiting soldiers. Axes rose and fell, swords flashed, and the dead and wounded began to fall. Steel clattered and rang, and angry human battle cries rose to match the bellowing of the orc raiders. A hulking orc with a great hooked axe ran straight for Gaerradh, hurling past the human and elf swordsmen around her. She didn’t have enough time to shoot, and had to parry quickly with the strong shaft of her bow until she managed to draw one of her gracefully curved axes from her belt.

  “Die, elf!” the big orc shouted. His mouth was flecked with foam, and his eyes rolled wildly in his porcine face. “Kill! Kill!”