Ilsevele first, he thought. And Maresa too. I have to get them out of Sarya’s hands before the daemonfey discover my escape. All I have to do is walk into the demons’ den.
Armed as he was with a mind full of spells and abjurations as potent as anything he could ever have prepared in his own workroom, Araevin didn’t shy from returning to the daemonfey halls. He even thought he might have an unpleasant surprise or two for them.
This should do, Araevin decided.
He looked around at the wet woodland and shivered. The vault of Ithraides, with its teleport-distorting spell wards, lay two miles behind him. He was well outside its magical mantle.
“Now, for the difficult part,” he breathed.
Gesturing absently, he prepared a couple of defensive spells to protect himself—one that covered him in an intangible shield of magical force, and another to turn himself invisible. He gazed around at the forest, breathing in the scent of spring rising from hidden roots and deep places.
Hold it in your mind, Araevin, he told himself. It might be the last good thing you look on in this life.
Then he incanted the teleport spell, fixing in his mind the image of the marble-floored cavern in the daemonfey stronghold.
The forest reeled away into darkness, and he felt himself falling through icy void for the space of an instant—then he appeared in the dim, lamplit halls of the daemonfey.
Araevin did his best to avoid making any sound as he arrived, but he couldn’t stop a soft gasp as the suddenness of the change staggered him. Fortunately, no one was in the hall. It was cold and forbidding even in the absence of its infernal masters, a stark and comfortless place where the air carried a subtle taint of blood and hot metal. Several passageways led away from the room, he presumed to other halls and chambers. At his back the hall ended in a crevasse or natural chimney that climbed up into the dark and fell away into measureless shadow below.
“What is this place?” he muttered.
He turned, studying the room again and trying to guess which way his friends might have been taken. His eye fell on the dark pool of blood where Grayth had died. Any fear or uncertainty he might have entertained vanished like yesterday’s winds.
Information is the first order of business, he decided.
He held himself still and closed his eyes, listening and feeling for the magical ward he had noted when Nurthel brought him before Sarya. If he was right about it….
“I thought so,” he murmured.
As before, he felt the peculiar magical vibration or resonance of a mythal ward embracing him. It was not a sound, a smell, or any sort of physical sensation he could accurately describe, but something in the very air and rock of the place announced itself to his wizard’s senses. There was no doubt the daemonfey stronghold was protected by a mythal stone, and a strong one at that.
How did Sarya raise a mythal in secret? he wondered.
More likely she’d found one and repaired it, he answered himself. It would require patience and lore, but there’s no reason to think that the daemonfey lack either.
Araevin paused, considering his next move. He glanced around to make sure that he was still alone, and moved to a somewhat more sheltered corner of the room just in case. He had intended to immediately set about searching for Ilsevele and Maresa with his divinations, but it occurred to him that the mythal’s properties might include alarms or spell traps against intruders. Each one of the old mythals was unique, and there was really no way of knowing what spells might or might not have been woven to shield the place before the daemonfey found it, or for that matter, whether or not the original spells still worked as intended. Old mythals tended to fray with time, and their powers sometimes faded away or decayed into new and dangerous properties unplanned by their makers.
It would help him judge the dangers of the mythal if he knew how long ago and by whom it had been raised. He was pretty sure Sarya’s stronghold was somewhere in the North. After all, the daemonfey army had marched on Evereska from somewhere in the vicinity of old Hellgate Keep—but Hellgate Keep itself had been completely destroyed. Most likely he was in some forgotten hold or vault of ancient Siluvanede or Sharrven, but he could not be certain.
“Enough speculation,” he told himself.
He spoke one of the spells Saelethil had taught him, coaxing the mythal’s woven web of ancient spells to become visible to him. All around him a bright golden network of drifting strands of magic slowly appeared.
Araevin carefully observed the tangible dweomers pervading the hall, analyzing them. First he looked for signs of alarms or spell traps that would catch the unwary. He spotted an alarm first, a spell designed to warn anyone within the mythal if a non-daemonfey spellcaster entered the ruins—a reasonable precaution, given the nearness of Silverymoon and Alustriel. He grimaced, realizing that again the faint blemish in his bloodline turned to his advantage. Then he examined the drifting thread more closely, and saw that it was a dark and potent red-gold in color. It was clearly something new, something added to the existing mythal.
Sarya has modified the mythal! he realized.
“I didn’t think that was possible,” he breathed.
Of course it’s possible, Saelethil’s memory told him. If none of the mythal-raisers contest your efforts, you can modify a standing mythal. It is strenuous and requires a little lore, but it can be done.
Araevin examined the mythal-weave again. There he saw a corrupted thread that would cause spells of magical force to fail if cast within the mythal’s field. Another fraying weave allowed a knowledgeable caster to control the temperature within the mythal’s bounds. A more intact strand would permit him to use the mythal’s powers to enhance his own spells, making them swifter and more powerful.
“That’s a useful trick,” he noted.
More wards blocked scrying by those who did not know the proper key.
Araevin turned his attention to the founding ward, the strongest and most pervasive of all the magic streams, and there he found the lethargic golden trunk of the original ward warped by a strong new stream of burnished red-gold, like a strangling vine parasitizing an old tree. Sarya had twisted the first and primary warding the mythal offered. Araevin frowned and studied it more closely. In ancient times, he could see that the ward had been designed to absolutely bar the entrance of creatures who had knowingly consumed elf-or man-flesh. In the days when orcs, trolls, and demons besieged the North, it would have been a formidable bulwark against their armies. But Sarya had perverted that ward, and instead was using it to anchor something else in place. Hundreds of fine red filaments frayed out from the great ward, disappearing into the ether.
“Demons,” he whispered. “That is how the Dlardrageths are summoning so many demons. They’re using the mythal to do it.”
Despite the fearsomeness of Araevin’s newfound lore, he still felt sick. To see an ancient and noble work such as the mythal enslaved to a purpose its builders would have reviled simply turned his stomach.
He might be able to do something about that. But first he had to locate Ilsevele and Maresa.
Araevin closed his eyes and murmured the words of a powerful and unusual divination. In the air above his head, a dozen faint, ghostly orbs appeared. Each was a semitangible spell construct the size of a small apple, with a single black pupil in its center. They were not invisible, but they were small and translucent, hard to see unless someone happened to look right at one.
“Spread out and search this place,” he whispered to them. “Return and report if you find Ilsevele or Maresa, or in ten minutes if you don’t.”
At once the orbs wheeled and arrowed off in all directions, speeding through the shadowed stronghold and quickly vanishing from Araevin’s sight. While the mythal prevented scrying divinations, if he was right in his assessment of the mythal’s capabilities, it would not interfere with that particular spell. He folded his arms and waited, straining to detect the least sound that might indicate that his spying orbs had been seen or hi
s own presence detected.
The moments crawled by as he waited motionless in the dimly lit hall. Then the first of his orbs returned, speeding to him. He caught the tiny thing in his hand and focused his attention on it.
“Report,” he said.
Araevin’s mind filled with the image of a rapid flight through one of the passages exiting the room, up a set of stairs, down one corridor to a dead end, then to the other end of the corridor where a pair of fey’ri swordsmen stood guard over a short hall filled with cell doors. He seemed to peer into the cells one by one, spotting Ilsevele and Maresa almost at once. They had been stripped of their weapons and armor, and seemed a little worse for the wear, but both were alive and awake. The view spun away again as the orb returned. Fortunately, it seemed that the jailors hadn’t noticed its passage.
The orb dissipated in his hand, its task complete. Araevin looked up at the hallway it had followed. His companions were not far off, but he decided to wait a few minutes and see what else he might learn from his spying spell.
One by one his orbs returned, and he examined the findings of each. By the time he was finished, Araevin had a good sense of the layout of the place. The rift led up to a ruined city above, and from it, like the spokes of a buried wheel, radiated passages and halls. Forges, armories, storerooms, barracks … the place was a small fortress, hidden beneath the forgotten ruins above. He glimpsed a dozen or so fey’ri in various places, plus a handful of demons and yugoloths, most of whom seemed to be assigned to guard duties. Otherwise, the stronghold was almost vacant, and the majority of its halls and corridors were empty and silent. Sarya’s army was not at home.
The final orb to report held a surprise he had not expected: Below him, near the bottom of the shaft, he glimpsed a large boulder of pale pinkish stone, half-covered with green moss.
The mythal stone! he realized.
Araevin filed away the glimpses shown by his orbs, and set out down the hallway leading to the daemonfey dungeon.
“For Evermeet!” Seiveril cried.
With Fflar at his side and the Knights of the Golden Star at his back, he hurled himself headlong into the foul tide of demons who sought to encircle the crusade. There was nothing to gain by avoiding the fighting anymore. No orders he might give could possibly affect the outcome, as the battle of maneuver was clearly done with. All that remained was to slay or be slain.
The Golden Star raised a high, clear war cry that echoed across the twilit moorlands. Chancing falls and broken legs, they spurred their elven coursers toward the wave of demons, who gladly leaped forward to meet them. Hellborn fangs, claws, and sorcery met elven steel magic in a tremendous collision that shook the battlefield.
Seiveril’s war-horse reared and plunged, beset on both flanks by the hulking, chitinous forms of mezzoloths. One jabbed its iron trident at Seiveril while the other lunged low, seeking to gut his horse. But the elflord managed to wrench his mount’s reins aside and dance the horse away from the second fiend while parrying the strike of the first with his holy mace. He turned toward the first mezzoloth and rode close up on it, standing in his stirrups to smash down at its head and shoulders with all his strength. Chitin split and ichor flew, and the monster went down beneath the stamping silver-shod hooves of his mount.
Seiveril wheeled to parry the attack he expected from the second mezzoloth, but that one was gone, swept away by the tide of battle. In its place a grossly obese hezrou battled with its back to him, battering at one of Gaerth’s knights with its long, clawed arms. He rode three steps closer and slammed the spiked mace head between the toadlike demon’s shoulder blades. The thing howled abominably, but it did not die—demons were difficult to kill, at best. Instead it spun around and struck him a backhand blow with its ogrelike fist that knocked the elflord clean out of his saddle.
Seiveril grunted as he hit the ground, but there at least the moorland was a blessing—he landed on a tuft of stiff grass that helped to break his fall. The elflord glanced up just in time to find demons scrabbling toward him from all sides, fangs dripping with venom, eyes aglow with the power of the hells.
From his knees he spoke a single word of power, a holy word of Corellon Larethian so mighty that no evil creature could endure its utterance. Several of the demons nearby disappeared with wails of agony, instantly banished back to their infernal domain by the power of the word. Others reeled away stunned, black blood trickling from their ears, smoke rising from their foul bodies.
“That’s better,” Seiveril managed, and found his feet again.
All around him the battle between the Golden Star knights and the demonic allies of the daemonfey raged without respite. The collision of armies had devolved into hundreds of individual encounters. Fortified by their magic, the elf knights were giving as good as they got. Blasts of argent light and bursts of holy wrath tore through the demonic ranks, while hastily raised spell shields parried or deflected many of the demon’s own unholy blights and scourges of hellfire. But elves were falling on all sides, dragged down into blood and death by their infernal foes, and powerful sorcerers in the daemonfey ranks strove to pull down or pierce the elven spell shields. Horses screaming in mortal agony, the awful din of metal on metal, angry war cries, and roars of bestial wrath threatened to drive all thought from him.
“By the Seldarine, what a disaster,” he breathed.
“Seiveril! Are you hurt?” Fflar called as he rode into the small circle Seiveril’s holy word had cleared.
Keryvian agleam like a bolt of pure sunlight in his hand, Fflar struck left and right as he approached, cleaving demon flesh and searing yugoloths with the sword’s terrible power.
“I’m well enough,” Seiveril answered, even though he was surprised to find that something had torn deep furrows in the mailed skirt guarding his hips. He limped over to his war-horse and awkwardly swung himself back up into the saddle, while Fflar stood guard. “We have to reform, regroup! This is not the battle we meant to fight!”
Fflar shook his head and replied, “There’s no place to go. We’re hemmed in on all sides. We have to stand our ground, or press forward and cut our way out. There is no retreating now!”
“But we are being slaughtered!”
“Yes, but so are the daemonfey. We will simply have to slaughter a little better than they do tonight, my friend,” Fflar said. He wheeled his horse, and pointed with his sword. “Look there!”
Seiveril followed his captain’s sword point. Amid a foul phalanx of demons hovered a great brazen disk or platform, its sides armored and scribed with ancient Elvish writings. From its deck he glimpsed fey’ri hurling spell after spell into the melee.
“I see it,” he answered.
“Our scouts reported seeing it at the Battle of the Cwm. The daemonfey general is there!”
“Guard me,” Seiveril replied.
He began to cast a powerful summoning. His voice rose and fell in the ancient holy words of the invocation. He noticed that Fflar turned to drive off another trio of demons prowling closer, but he paid it no mind, focusing on completing his spell. He called out the last words and held Corellon Larethian’s symbol high—and the ground shook again, fountaining water and mud. Before Seiveril rose up a titanic mound of animated earth and rock, an elemental the size of a small tower.
“Destroy the battle-platform!” he cried to his summoned elemental.
The colossal creature turned ponderously and marched toward the enemy spellcasters, simply burying lesser demons and fiends who could not get out of its way. A whole barrage of magic abruptly shifted to the elemental. Seiveril watched its progress, but then Fflar grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed his head down, just as a thrown spear sailed over him. The battle was returning, and quickly.
“We need a plan!” Seiveril growled, turning to face the newest threat.
“I advise, fight hard and don’t get killed,” Fflar answered.
The moon elf warrior raised a war cry and charged at the enemy ranks. Seiveril hesitated, then foll
owed the champion of Myth Drannor into the fray again.
Padding quietly through the chill stone corridors of the daemonfey stronghold, Araevin followed the path traced by his orb, still cloaked in his invisibility spell. It seemed that he need not have bothered, since he met no enemies as he passed through the empty hallways. Sarya’s war against Evereska and the High Forest had emptied the place, or close to it.
Araevin climbed the long, winding steps leading up to the level of the prison, and turned to the right as he had previously seen. Ahead he saw a dim glimmer of lamplight, and heard the low sound of voices in conversation. He slowed his steps even further and crept close to the guardroom’s entrance, staying near to the right-hand wall even though he was mantled in invisibility. There were spells that negated invisibility, after all, and the fey’ri were skillful enough as sorcerers to know such invocations. He reached the doorway and risked a quick glance inside.
Three fey’ri stood watch over the hallway with its cells.
There were two of them a few minutes ago, he thought. Is there a change of the watch coming?
He decided that it didn’t matter. He was too close to Ilsevele and Maresa to wait on events, not when he couldn’t be certain of avoiding discovery for long. Stepping around the corner, he quickly evoked a devastating blast of multicolored rays at the three fey’ri. Potent beams of brilliant yellow, sullen red, and vivid blue lashed out at the daemonfey even as they scrambled to their feet, warned by the arcane words Araevin used to unleash the spell. Magical power filled the air with a deafening crackle, and the bright rays destroyed the dark shadows of the room with a sudden burst of light as bright as the sun.
When Araevin’s sight cleared, one fey’ri stood petrified, transformed to stone by one of the prismatic rays. The second slowly picked himself up from the floor, his scaly flesh puckered and sizzling from the terrible acid of the orange ray. The third fey’ri was simply gone—disintegrated by multiple rays or blasted into some far plane, Araevin neither knew nor cared. His invisibility spell spoiled by his attack, he drew Nurthel’s iron short sword with one smooth motion and charged the remaining fey’ri.
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