Memories and mind-pictures flashed and crashed, washing over the farmwife and the child alike. Storm barely heard their startled cries in the swirling tumult that ended abruptly. She was left trembling and drenched with sweat in the lamplit room, alone in her own head again, all contact with the Simbul gone.
The farmwife stared at her in terror, too frightened to do more than mew softly. Her baby, however, blinked, and said the first coherent words he'd ever uttered-in the fierce, feminine tones of the Witch-Queen of Aglarond:
"And when I find them-!"
The two women stared at him, but his face was once more full of wonder, as he stared back at them, and his next word was: "Glaaooo?"
Steel flashed into Florin's view: Merith's daggers, spinning smoothly end-over-end, heading for the eyes glaring out of liches' palms-forlorn strikes, doomed to miss those swiftly-moving targets.
The liches thrust their arms forward to keep the eyes glaring at Florin and Jhessail as they twisted around to head away from Merith's hurled daggers.
Something else flashed past Florin's shoulder-two somethings that sang and shimmered, whisker-thin and silvery-white. Bright beams of force stabbed out to strike the tumbling daggers in a spinning, whirling cage of silver-white stabbings, and turn them-yes, turn them- guiding them toward the liches.
Florin overbalanced, trapped in a shudder that held his body captive. Jhessail fell too, toppling over him.
She'd come down on his arm, the war-leader of the Knights thought calmly, as his spasms spun his turned-to-the-side head helplessly around to regard the place where they'd all been standing before the baelnorn came.
As he came down softly into unbroken whiteness where the baelnorn should have been lying-but seemed to have entirely faded away-Florin saw that those singing lines of force stabbed out from the thickenings in two strands that marked where Elminster and Dove had melded into the whiteness.
He didn't actually have to see those beams aim the daggers, curving their flights into arcs that bit into glaring eyes in lich-palms, he knew they'd done so. The chill that clawed him was gone, he could move again, and Jhessail thudded into him, trailing startled curses.
Florin cradled her and hurled her back upright, watching his oldest friend sway, seeking her balance in a swirl of flame-hued hair. He fought his own way back to his feet in time to see the liches grimace, their palms pierced with Merith's daggers-daggers that blazed like little torches, burning away to nothing but inky wisps of smoke. Beyond them, the mist flickered red and green in a dozen places or more, and liches stalked forth in scores, a walking wall of silent undeath.
Jhessail shook her head. "Sweet Mystra," she murmured, "if they could work their spells…"
Her husband chuckled, shrugged, and replied almost merrily, "If magic served us here, I'd be able to keep us alive-I think. As it is…"
Merith shrugged again, and hefted his humming sword in one hand, and the long knife he so rarely drew in the other. Catching Florin's look, he murmured, "Wanted to use it one last time, if we're going to-"
And the menacing ranks of liches were swept aside as if by a giant hand, as the white mists erupted into blue-white fire.
Out of the heart of those blue-white rifts strode upright warriors of metal, stiffly stalking things that moved in a series of jerks and swiveling movements, all gleaming battle-limbs and keening, whirling blades. They had no faces, but moved as if they could see. No two of them were the same. Some had arms ending in great axes, and others sported heads that looked like gigantic kettles with spouts that stuck out straight rather than angling upward. Gears and cogs whirred and clattered in chorus within their shining hides.
All three Knights stared in disbelief, and just a little wearily lifted their weapons and prepared to die by sharp, slicing steel rather than chilling lich-claws.
"Delight me," Jhessail whispered bitterly. "Show me new and exciting sights, take me far from the boringly familiar-and there slay me!"
"Steady, love," Merith murmured, beside her. "We'll be together."
The clockwork automatons whirred and clanked right up to the Knights-and turned aside, to stab and stalk liches.
Dark robes and cloaks swirled as undead limbs drew back in alarm, long-fingered hands became talons, and A kettle-head gouted fire that made a lich blaze up like a torch, and before Merith could begin to chuckle, half a dozen of the gaunt undead collapsed in the flashing flurry of a dozen dicing clockwork blades.
The three adventurers watched, open-mouthed, and became aware that the blue-white fire was fading, revealing in its darkening remnants the beautiful elf they'd seen earlier, standing smiling at them. Her sapphire-blue hair gently quested through the air around her, as if possessing a restless, curious life of its own.
"Well met again, Knights. Valiantly fought-too valiant to fall, if this or any world knew fairness. Fight on!" A tiny tan hand waved at them-and faded again, along with the last of the blue-white fire.
Crimson and bright green flashes flared in a score or more places in the mist, rolling across the whiteness as if angered or goaded by the blue-white rift. Baelnorns winked into being here, there, and everywhere to stare in bewilderment then-one after another-turn their heads to glare at the Knights, and thrust out withered blue arms straight, pointing.
They pointed not at the Knights, but at the largest red-and-green rift yet, which split the mists vertically like a giant, reluctant clam parting its shell. The high, eerie keening that the Knights knew to be mythal-song trilled forth along those arms, ringing through the air in almost visible echoes as it met and roiled along the edges of the widening rift.
"Ah, yes," Merith murmured. "This would be the traditional time for me to announce that I have a bad feeling about this, would it not?"
Florin grinned. "It would."
Jhessail rolled her eyes.
With clanks and gleamings, the marching automatons turned in unison from the last smoking remnants of liches to face the widening rift-and started walking toward it.
"As I recall," Jhessail observed with an edge to her gentle voice, "I was just going to ask Storm for some more tea, when Old Weirdbeard stepped out of thin air and volunteered us for this little jaunt. Someone remind me why I ever agree to go along on these-"
A lone figure stepped out of the green flare of the rift. Tall, dark, and terrible, it stood motionless in the heart of the rising trilling of mythal force that seemed to enshroud it in gilded, half-seen, writhing curves and fantastic curlicues of force that shaped and reshaped themselves constantly around it.
Within that writhing of mythal magic, the lich grew visibly darker and taller, looking at the Knights in silent menace. It was more intact and muscled than any they'd yet seen, looking more like a mighty, black-cloaked archmage with a sickly pallor than an undead.
"Mystra forfend," Jhessail muttered, "is this Larloch?"
"No," Merith replied. "Or at least, if it is, he looks much different than he did when I saw him."
Both of the other two Knights gave the elf sharp glances.
"When this is done, friend Merith," Florin said, "if the gods grant that both of us can still speak together, I'll be wanting to hear some answers from your lips, believe you me."
Merith's grin was as bright as ever. "I find myself unastonished."
Bereft of liches to dice and scorch, the clockwork automations clanked toward the lich, passing in front of the Knights to converge on the lone figure that stood a head taller than the largest of the clanking things.
"Stop the baelnorn," Merith said. "Whatever they're doing, it's feeding yon Bad Sir Blackcloak with power, and fairly soon he's going to-"
Silver fire snarled out in a cone of torn and shrieking mists. Jhessail's grim smile of satisfaction fell into a soft curse as the flames died away and the lich's spell took effect-blasting an automaton into shards of flying metal.
"Its spells are working, blast it!" she snarled. "Mother Mystra's tears!"
The Knights flung themselves hastily down a
s another two clockwork things exploded in twin shattering roars.
Deadly metal whirred in all directions. Jhessail saw a cog bounce once in the mist, and soundlessly sink out of sight as if into a bog.
The next spell bore no silver flames at all, and seared away the mist, as four streaking spheres shot into the heart of the marching automatons and burst with an ear-shattering roar and a flash of blinding, blistering-hot flame.
"Well," Florin said, "at least we're already lying down, and can die reclining at ease."
A second meteor swarm smote their ears, and the mists rained shrapnel and the twisted toothed arcs of gears and cogs that would turn no more.
Merith peered into smoke-darkened, shifting mists and muttered, "That's pretty well taken care of the clock-"
Another four spheres spun out of the mists, trailing sparks as they came, right at the Knights.
"Farewell, friends," Florin said, "we've had a good ride togeth-"
Right above their heads, the spheres flickered as they always did in the instant before they exploded-and froze, spinning vainly in the grips of four vibrating silver spheres that had formed out of nowhere.
The spheres had spark-trails of their own, leading back to the thickened strands that were, or had been, Elminster and Dove.
The humming strands faded, the spheres tightened like crushing fists, and the lich's four meteors winked once and were gone as if they'd never been.
More lines of thrumming force raced out from the two strands, flaring out into a great web as they raced toward the Knights. There was a sudden flare of crimson beneath their glow, and the lich stood beside the strands, leaning toward them malevolently.
"Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Jhessail snarled, clambering to her feet again.
The lich turned its head to glare at her, another spell roaring from between its fingers-and the silver strands flashed blinding-bright before it, blocking the speeding magic.
From behind that sudden wall came a larger flash and roar. White strands bent outward and writhed. The dark figure of the lich reeled back, crashing against the strand that was Dove.
The strand grew arms-Dove's arms-that wrapped around the lich from behind, embracing it fiercely. Her face emerged from the whiteness, contorted in pain, her eyes closed and cords stood out like curved blades on her neck as she clung to the struggling lich.
The Knights were all on their feet, sprinting toward the struggle. The lich dwindled in Dove's grip, melting and shuddering even as it tried vainly to turn and claw her, its fingers lengthening into cruel, curved talons each as long as Jhessail's forearm.
Dove's arms tightened around the lich as it sank and sagged, crumbling. Ash fell in streams from it as she slid down the strand, bringing her arms in tightly and her knees up, curling around the undead as it crumbled entirely away, leaving her shuddering and gasping.
"Dove!" Florin cried, rushing up to her. "Love, I-"
She shook her head at him, fighting to speak, and managed only to gasp, "I'll call-" 'ere her violent shudderings overwhelmed her. Waving him away, she sank back into the strand, melting into smooth whiteness once more beneath Florin's reaching fingertips.
His fiercely-hissed curses were interrupted by Merith.
"She's back," the elf snapped, pointing.
By which he meant that the tiny, beautiful, blue-haired elf had returned, stepping out of a rift with one arm raised to point at the baelnorn.
It vanished. She pointed again, and the next one winked out. And the next.
She'd banished over a dozen baelnorn, and their singing" mythal-force with them, before the mists erupted in dozens of crimson-and-green mouths. Whereupon she vanished in an instant, even before more liches with glaring eyes in their open palms came striding through the new rifts and looked hurriedly in all directions.
They ignored the Knights as if the three humans were mere mist, to peer at the few remaining baelnorn. Then the liches hissed various curses, exchanged dark glances with each other, and started to cast spells-or rather, the same spell.
It was a magic unfamiliar to the warily-watching Knights, that made drifts of mist nee from the liches in all directions, laying bare the endless webwork of white strands-and the glittering web of silver threads around and above the Knights.
Several liches peered at that web with narrow, unfriendly eyes, and stood sentinel, watching it from right where they were in the distant mists. Others worked spells that sent seeking radiances bobbing among the strands like agitated will-o-wisps, searching behind every strand.
"So few," one lich snarled in disbelief. "What happened to them all?" It waved at the three Knights. "Those worms could not have slain more than a handful at most."
Even Merith, whose ears were far keener than those of his two human companions, could not hear the reply that the lich standing nearest made to that angry cry.
Nor could he properly hear what the loud-voiced lich said next, because a soft, melodious whisper sounded between his own ears. The voice was that of the she-elf who'd welcomed them there, the one he was almost certain was the-
Knights of Myth Drannor, the warm whisper said to them, and Merith knew they were all three hearing it; he could feel the mind of Florin, like a bright sharp sword, and his beloved Jhess, like her warm arms around him, moving against his own thoughts. I need you to strike at these creatures of Larloch. Please. Without their spells, they are but striding undead.
"Larloch? We can't prevail against Larloch!" Jhessail's voice held a sob of horror amid her incredulity. "Nor against so many liches!"
Oh, but you can, the whisper came, confident, with my aid and with what Elminster is sending you.
"And Larloch? What will you do to shield us when he appears?"
He won't. He plays a long game, and this is but one ploy among a thousand thousands for him. He's too coldly calculating to ever come to consider it worth risking his own existence. Long before that fate would be faced, he'll judge the cost in lost liches too high.
"Again," Jhessail snarled, "I'd like to know what by all the gods is going on."
There was silence in their heads; the mind-voice was gone.
"Sing, minstrels, of my total lack of surprise," Jhessail snapped. "I thought I took up adventuring to escape being marched through life under the commands of others-but then, to be an adventurer is to be a fool."
Florin said that last quotation along with her, grinning. She gave him a black look and said savagely, "Care to join me in blasting a lich or two?"
"Your spells won't work, remember?"
"Then I'll just have to scratch them to shreds with my bare hands, won't I?" she growled, striding toward the nearest lich. As she went, she dipped a hand into one of her boots to draw her largest dagger.
Merith and Florin exchanged glances, and watched silver tendrils drift after the purposeful mage known to many-behind her back-as "the Mother of the Knights." together in small groups, forming circles around every baelnorn and working strange, elaborate castings. Mythal force flowed golden once more.
Jhessail paid it no heed, just as the liches ignored the three Knights. When she overtook her chosen victim and stabbed him viciously, the liches walking just ahead of him-heading to join the nearest baelnorn cluster-kept right on walking, even after the three Knights hacked that lich apart and watched its limbs fade away into the whiteness around their ankles.
Jhessail shook her head, and started striding toward the next lich.
Merith and Florin rolled their eyes at each other and trotted after her.
At the heart of every circle, spell-glows rose, ghostly rings of emerald light forming and rotating at various inclinations around the motionless baelnorn. Gold mythal-force spun out to join those rings, and long, spider-fingered lich hands worked intricate spells that made the green and gold rings rise around their heads. Rise, and spin, and brighten…
"What're they up to now?" Jhessail wondered aloud.
Trotting at her shoulder, Merith grinned and sh
rugged. "You're the spell-hurler here, love."
Jhessail's answer wasn't long in coming. She was still a dozen hurrying strides away from the lich she was running down-and it was barely half that distance from joining a ring of undead around a baelnorn-when a familiar crimson radiance burst into being within the emerald rings above that circle of liches, and widened into a bright green.
And in that glow was another baelnorn, blinking in surprise as it floated down into the circle. Mythal-force tugged at its raised arms until golden curlicues flowed from its fingers, and it lost its look of alarm.
Merith frowned. "They're fetching more baelnorn hither!"
"Soon there won't be a mythal left unguarded in all Faerun," Florin commented, watching other rifts open above circles.
Jhessail slowed as her quarry joined a circle. "Should I strike at yon?" she asked. "Or will I just be dooming us for no good reason?"
Dooming yourselves, I'd say.
The voice in their heads was back.
The mage of the Knights sighed. "Are you going to tell us who you are? And what we're doing here? And what they are up to?" Jhessail kept her voice to a low mutter, but her gesture at the backs of the nearest liches was so violent it seemed a shout.
Of course. As soon as I work a particular spell. Larloch's creatures have obligingly prepared the perfect conditions forme.
The Knights looked all around, but saw no swirl of sapphire-blue hair, nor the tiny tan elf who should have been beneath it.
"Let's get back to Elminster and my lady," Florin suggested. "I'm thinking standing near liches might not be the wisest stratagem, just now."
In silent unison, the three Knights turned and hastened back together, glancing often over their shoulders.
They were about halfway back to the strands that sourced the silver web when it began.
A low ripple in the blood, an uneasy swell and surge. The Knights might have thought it mere indigestion if every white strand in sight wasn't bending in time to the slow, inexorable rhythm.
"I'm still not being told what's happening," Jhessail whispered, but she sounded more amused than exasperated.
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