by Troy Denning
"What is it, Wagg?" Takari asked, taking her cloak from him and swinging it around her shoulders. "Shadovar?"
Wagg-actually Wizzle Bendriver, but everyone called him Wagg because he shook his head whenever he smiled, frowned, or spoke-shook his head.
"Lord Ramealaerub has issued the call." He waved a helm over her shoulder, toward the shadowshell, and said, "He thinks it's coming down."
Takari closed the throat clasp of her cloak and turned to find that the black shadowshell had faded to gray-blue. Even from a hundred paces away, the barrier was unbelievably immense, a dark wall stretching beyond the horizon in both directions, the curve of its dome imperceptible as it climbed higher into the air than she could see. Before her eyes, the gray-blue shell faded to just gray. She began to see the terraced crests of the hills of the Desert Border South and looming beyond, the unmistakable crags of the High Shaeradim.
Just inside the fading shell, a broad ridge rose gently away from the desert, snaking its way deep into the foothills before ascending to a high mesa that would serve as the elven army's first staging ground inside the Shaeradim. Takari was relieved to see that the foot of the ridge lay directly in front of her company's campsite. When suggesting campsites to Lord Ramealaerub, she had been forced to recall the terrain inside the shadowshell from memory and guess at good staging points for each arm of the elven advance. That her own company was in proper position meant the others would be, too.
Takari took her war helm from Wagg and with a sigh put the thing on her head. It was one of those gaudy-some would say ornate-pieces of armor made by Gold elves. Gilded in silver and trimmed in gold, it was as heavy as a rock and about as comfortable. A circle of Evermeet's high mages had bestowed on it several useful enchantments, including their most powerful mind-guarding magic and the ability to stay in constant contact with her commander.
Wagg snickered. "You look like a bandit bird-only louder and uglier."
That's not all bad. Maybe now you'll stop begging me to play night games."
"You're going to wear that awful thing at night?"
"And so are you." Takari pointed at Wagg's helm, then at his head. "The phaerimm don't care when they take their mind-slaves."
Wagg frowned. Shaking his head, he sneered at the adornments hammered into the metal.
"Ships," he grumbled. "If s always ships and sails with that bunch. What's wrong with a few trees?"
"Who knows?" Takari was as genuinely puzzled as her deputy. "Maybe they don't have trees on Evermeet."
"You think?"
Wagg’s eyes widened at this frightening thought, and Takari shrugged.
The shadowshell had faded from gray to a transparent damson, and it had become more of a struggle to see the flickering barrier than the terrain behind it. Takari saw nothing but boulders, and scattered across the hillside, leafless smokethorn trees and the withered silhouettes of a few spiny soapleafs. The soapleafs she would have to watch. In the two decades she had spent patrolling the Desert Border South with Galaeron Nihmedu and his Tomb Guards, she had never seen one this close to Anauroch.
When Takari didn't see anything else of interest, she turned her thoughts inward and activated her helm's sending magic by picturing Lord Ramealaerub's stern face.
"Lord High Commander," she said.
The image in her mind grew more substantial, assuming the scowling visage of a sharp-featured Gold elf with a dagger-thin nose and eyebrows arched as sharply as ship keels.
Moonsnow, the Gold elf said, his words echoing in her mind. I was beginning to think something had happened to you.
"I was at the shadowshell, milord." Takari glanced at Wagg and rolled her eyes. Ramealaerub was a typical Gold, full of himself and the way things ought to be. "Looking for those mind-slaves Khelben warned us about."
Ramealaerub's expression grew impatient.
And?
"I couldn't see a thing, Milord." Annoyed by his attitude, Takari was not going to make anything easy on him. "That was before the shadowshell fell. Everything was too dark."
The shell is not dark now, Ramealaerub said.
"But now I'm back with my company." Takari's tone was innocent. "Didn't you call us to arms?"
A storm cloud came over Ramealaerub's face. Irritated, he said something to someone beside him then composed himself and turned back to Takari.
Moonsnow, the Lady of the Wood and I agreed that the wood elves would serve as the army's reconnaissance company. Though Ramealaerub's eyes looked as though they were about to pop free of their sockets, he spoke in a deliberately patient tone that suggested he did not realize how Takari was playing with him. Would you be kind enough to take your elves and see if there is any sign of the enemy?
"Of course-all you had to do was ask." Takari was beginning to worry that Ramealaerub truly did not understand that she was playing a game with him. If so, that did not bode well for the elven army. "But I can tell you already they know we're here."
You can see them?
He was worried.
"Not exactly," Takari said. "It's the trees."
The trees?
"A few shouldn't be here, this close to the sand," Takari explained.
At least Ramealaerub was enough of an elf to understand what that meant.
He grew thoughtful, then asked, Which ones?
"The soapleafs," Takari said. "They're the-"
I know what a soapleaf is, Moonsnow.
He looked away and spoke to someone else, then returned to her.
We have a few here, but not enough to slow us down. They're probably just sentries.
"Probably," Takari said, "but with the phaerimm, you can never-"
That's why you need to secure our flank, he said. We'll be going in fast and hard, but once the shadowshell comes down there's no telling how long it will take the phaerimm to regain their strength. You must stay ahead of us-and let me know when you run into problems.
"Oh, is that what a reconnaissance company does?"
/ mean it, Moonsnow, Ramealaerub said. Toy with me if you like, but not with your mission. You know better than any of us how quickly this can turn into a disaster.
Maybe this Lord High Commander did have more sense than Evermeet's previous generals.
Takari gave him a coquettish smile and said, "Lord Ramealaerub, I can't imagine why you think I've been toying with you."
She glanced toward the shadowshell and, seeing that it had faded to transparent shimmer, she said, "Well cross over as soon as we can. If you don't hear from me every quarter hour… consider that an alarm."
Very sensible, Ramealaerub answered. And Moonsnow, do try to avoid getting yourself killed. You're the only scout who really knows this part of the Shaeradim.
Ramealaerub's image vanished from her mind, and Takari turned to find her company waiting at the gathering circle. Though all of the rangers had fastened their battle cloaks and strung their bows, not one had donned the gaudy war helms sent by Evermeet Most of the helms lay tossed on the ground, and some were being used as footrests or stools.
Takari tapped her own helm and said, "Put 'em on."
"But they're ugly," complained Jysela Whitebark.
"And heavy," added Grimble Oakorn.
Takari shrugged and said, "Suit yourselves, but tell me now what you want done when the phaerimm make mind-slaves of you. Would you rather be killed or let them stick you with an egg?"
There was a scramble for the helms. Takari waited for them to go on, then explained their mission and led the way along a well-beaten trail to what had been the shadowshell. No sign of the barrier remained. The path just ended, and few paces later the rocky slope of their ridge emerged from the sand and began to rise in a jumble of boulders and barren ground toward the distant peaks of the High Shaeradim.
Takari dug into the sand until she found a pebble. Half-expecting it to vanish in a flare of darkness as had the hundreds of others she had tossed through the shadowshell, she threw it as hard as she could.
&n
bsp; The stone clattered to the ground thirty paces up the ridge.
She studied the pebble for a moment, not quite able to believe that it had actually landed in the Shaeradim, then turned to her company. They were standing together looking nervous and a little frightened.
"After all this waiting, I guess expected something more somehow."
"I'm just happy it didn't melt or something," Wagg said.
As Wagg spoke, Takari began to speak in fingertalk, her hands issuing silent instructions that were being studied much more attentively than her deputy's ramblings.
"From what you've said about these Shadovar," Wagg continued, "I didn't think it would just disappear. I was sure it was going to explode or something and kill us all."
"Then I thank Rillifane Rallathil you were wrong," Takari said. Her fingers continued to weave commands, warning her warriors to be wary of other things aside from soapleafs. This job is harder than I bargained for as it is."
Now! she signaled.
Nocking arrows as they moved, the company scattered and loosed. The shafts flew over Takari's head with a low droning whistle, and the slope behind her erupted into pained squeals and strange gurgling howls. She turned.
Where the soapleafs had been a moment earlier, she found half a dozen illithids collapsing to the ground, their bodies peppered with arrows and their mouth tentacles writhing in anguish.
The rest of the slope remained as still as before.
Nocking an arrow in her own bow, Takari dropped into a crouch and rushed forward. Taking cover behind the first boulder she came to, she scratched the surface with the tip of her arrow to make certain it really was a boulder, then looked left and right down the foot of the ridge. Camouflaged as they were by the magic of their battle cloaks, it took a few moments to find the nearest members of her company hiding behind boulders similar to hers. She did not attempt a head count. With the company spread across the width of the entire ridge, she would have been hard-pressed to find them all even had they been standing on tiptoe and waving their arms.
She envisioned her company waiting in the gathering circle a few moments earlier, then whispered, "Reconnaissance company, anything to report?"
When no reply came, she breathed a sigh of relief, then reported their progress to Lord Ramealaerub. He congratulated her on her success, informing her that the moon elves protecting the other flank were advancing as well, then reminded her that the main body of the army would start its advance in five minutes and urged her to keep moving. Takari bit back a sour reply and gave the order to ascend the ridge in two waves, each covering the other as it advanced.
Grimble Oakorn-her partner in this tactic-emerged from behind a boulder thirty paces to her right and raced another thirty paces ahead before ducking back into cover. Takari quickly left her own hiding pace, and weaving erratically to make herself a difficult target, ran sixty paces before finally kneeling behind the big trunk of a dead smokethorn. It was hard work, especially with the hot Anauroch sun beating down on the heavy helm she wore. Sweat began to trickle over her brow.
There was a three-second pause before Grimble and the others in the first wave emerged from new hiding places. Only fools left cover in the same place they entered it, and wood elf scouts were not fools. They raced sixty paces uphill and dropped back into cover. Takari and the second wave crawled to new starting points and rushed up the slope.
The depredations of the strange war had reduced this desert wonderland to a dismal ghost of its former self, leaving hundreds of smokethorns strewn across the hillside, their trunks snapped off at the base or their root-fan ripped whole from the rocky ground. The trees that remained standing were naked and bare, their dagger-shaped leaves scattered around their bases like withered gray skirts. Even the tough thorn-brambles, which seemed to flourish best in ground that was more rock than dirt and blossomed only in the worst of droughts, were withered and drooping, their tiny leaves brittle and brown.
The sight filled Takari with a cold anger, and not only because it pained her to see the Shaeradim defiled by war. The two decades she had spent patrolling the area with Galaeron Nihmedu had been the happiest of her life-even if he had spent the entire time refusing to acknowledge their spirit-bond-and the sight of the land withering away reminded her that her memories were also fading, that eventually she would be left only with the dry fact of the matter: that she had been a Tomb Guard on the Desert Border South and she had been in love with her princep. But the love itself-the simple joy of being always near him, the flutter that had stirred in her heart with his every smile-that would be gone, carried off by war and as lost to her as Galaeron himself.
Takari lost count of the times she and Grimble took turns rushing up the slope, but her breath began to come in ragged gasps, and her hair grew so sweaty it made squishing sounds under the helm. She kneeled behind a broken boulder and wiped her eyes on the shoulder of her cloak, then watched the slope above as Grimble raced ahead and kneeled behind a fallen smokethorn. His battle cloak turned the same pearly gray as the bark, a pair of streaks across his shoulders matching a band of furrows in the trunk. Half wishing she had picked a slower partner, Takari scrambled across the broken ground on all fours, emerged from behind a square boulder, and began her dash.
Takari had taken no more than three steps before her eye was drawn back to Grimble's hiding place. His cloak had turned dark and dappled, and so had his hair, ears, and boot soles-all she could see from behind. As she drew nearer, she could see that both he and his cloak seemed oddly rigid and were covered with tiny flecks of black and red.
Takari dropped behind a knee-high outcropping ten paces below Grimble, then used her helm to call the company to a halt. Without looking out from behind her cover, she pictured Grimble's handsome face.
"Grimble?" she whispered.
There was no reply.
Takari's pulse began to pound in her ears-just when she really needed to hear. She closed her eyes, set her weapons aside, and took a few calming breaths. When the noise finally died away, she picked up a good-sized rock, and rising from behind her outcropping, threw it at Grimble's back.
It struck with a stony clink.
Takari dropped back into her hiding place and activated her helm's sending magic.
"Reconnaissance company, watch yourselves. We're under attack-something turned Grimble into a statue."
Wyeka, too, Wagg whispered. Didn't see what happened.
"Me either," Takari answered. "Anybody?"
No one reported anything. Takari was not all that surprised. The phaerimm cast their spells entirely with their thoughts- no gestures or words required-and the eye-magic of their beholder servants was just as silent
"We need to figure out where this is coming from," Takari said. She lifted her head just high enough to peer over the outcropping. "I'm just below Grimble, and I can see half a dozen good places to hide, starting with a clump of daggerhedge off to the left and ending with a three-boulder pile on the right"
I'm even with Wyeka, Wagg said through her helm. I can't see the daggerhedge on the left, only the roots of the overturned smokethorn.
"Then it's somewhere between the roots and the boulder pile," Takari said. "Everyone who can't see that keep advancing and circle a-"
Wait. An image of Alaya Thistledew's rosy-nosed face came to Takari's mind along with her voice. Something's hissing. Maybe it's nothing, but I'll take-
Her image vanished from Takari's mind.
"Alaya?"
Turned to rock, said Alaya's partner, Rosl Harp.
Though the two were lovers, Rosl didn't sound overly frantic. With a hundred battle wizards and three circles of high mages in the elven army, there were worse things that could happen to a warrior than being turned to stone.
It got her when she looked around the boulder, he continued. She couldn't have seen any of the cover you were talking about.
It's moving around, then, Wagg said.
You mean walking around, Rosl said, his voice co
ming to Takari's mind as a barely audible whisper.
"You're sure?" Takari asked. "Phaerimm float. Beholders, too."
/ hear it, Rosl said. Moving away.
"A lot of feet?" Takari asked. She was beginning to think she knew what they were facing. "Maybe a tall dragging?"
Sounds like it, Rosl said. / can't see anything, though.
Takari rolled her eyes and replied, "You might have to risk a look, Rosl."
/ am looking, Rosl spat / can't see anything but rocks and…
"It's invisible!" Takari and Rosl reached this conclusion at the same time, then Takari asked, "You're sure you're behind it?"
I'm sure, Rosl said. What do you think I am, a human? Be ready to cover, everyone. I'll do a cast-and-run.
Rosl's voice vanished as he prepared his spell. Takari looked to her right. Fifty paces away, Wagg was turning in Rosl's direction, his bow slung across his back so his hands would be free to use his own magic. Though Takari could see none of the other scouts, she knew that everyone within two hundred paces of Rosl's position would be doing the same.
She was just beginning to wonder what was taking so long when a spark of silver cracked down the slope from somewhere above and flashed out of existence. An instant later, a low boom rumbled across the ridge.
"Rosl?" Takari asked.
He's down, Jysela Whitebark, appearing in Takari's mind, said. Her copper-colored eyes were opened wide in shock and horror. Lightning bolt, I think. It wasn't that powerful. He's still smoking, and alive enough to be thrashing around.
"Did you see where it came from?" Takari asked.
Jysela shook her head. Though she was undoubtedly the closest elf to Rosl, she did not volunteer-and Takari did not suggest-going to his aid. Their unseen attacker was waiting for just that, and Jysela would only have ended up lying on the ground beside him.
Moonsnow? Lord Ramealaerub's sharp features appeared in Takari's mind. We heard a bang.