“Starmeadow!” Laeral yelled, already laying a portal on the ground in the center of the elven company. “Teleport!”
Storm was already shoving paralyzed elves into the circle. Khelben took one look at the expanding circle of light and cursed, then wrapped his arms around Keya, Burlen, and two more elves, and vanished. Galaeron sprang to Vala’s side, grabbing her bound hands, and started back toward Laeral’s teleportation circle.
Vala jerked him back, nearly pulling him off his feet.
“Not without my sword!”
Back near the Groaning Cave, crooked forks of light began to dance down through the trees, and the war rumble there fell into a sudden silence. Galaeron stepped around Vala and found her sword leaning against the tree. He snatched it up and cut her bindings—no other blade would have severed the elven rope—then handed the weapon back to her.
“Now can we go?”
Galaeron grabbed her wrist and turned toward the teleportation circle and ran headlong into a small wood elf with doe-brown eyes, an impish smile, and a bared long sword.
“Well met, Galaeron,” she said. “Still rescuing Vala, I see.”
Galaeron’s jaw fell. “T-Takari?”
Takari smiled and said, “So you do remember.”
Galaeron surprised her with a heartfelt embrace, and she surprised him by returning it just as warmly.
“I was afraid I’d never see you again,” he said.
A long, deafening crackle sounded from the direction of the Groaning Cave, and a column of leaden light appeared in the forest in front of the veranda.
Vala appeared beside them.
“Break it up, you two!” She slid an arm between them and used a deft elbow to force Takari back, then said, “No offense, but we’ve got to go.”
Takari glanced at the offending elbow as though she might remove it, then smiled sweetly and said, “No offense taken.”
She glanced back in the direction of the brightening column of light, then turned and waved at what appeared to be a pile of leaves.
“Come along, Kuhl! We’ll let Galaeron teleport us out of here.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
2 Eleasias, the Year of Wild Magic
Galaeron arrived in a tangle of arms both human and elf, Vala clasping his shoulders on one side, Takari tucked against his ribs on the other, Kuhl standing opposite, encompassing them all in a great bear hug and glaring down as though he wasn’t quite convinced that Galaeron’s transformation from phaerimm to elf was a return to true form.
The air reeked of brimstone and charred flesh, and it resounded with booms and cracks and wails. Still struggling with teleport afterdaze, Galaeron recalled he had been somewhere else trying to flee some impending cataclysm. The air had smelled the same there, and the battle din had been just as loud. He began to fear they had not escaped after all, that they were about to suffer the consequences of whatever terrible event they had been fleeing.
Galaeron glanced up at the canopy of a bluetop forest and cringed at the familiarity of it.
“I think the mythal rebuffed—”
He was about to say “my teleport spell” when a leaden brilliance filtered through the wood. He was jolted by a tremendous concussion—a concussion that erupted in the pit of his stomach and blasted outward. His palms and soles went numb, his eardrums thumped, and pain filled his head.
He found himself on his hands and knees with Vala, Takari, and Kuhl, thinking they were all going to die and wondering why the mythal had interfered with his magic when it normally deflected translocational spells only when they crossed its perimeter. Of course, Galaeron had used shadow magic. Months before a healthy mythal had prevented Melegaunt from touching the Shadow Weave, but in its weakened state, it had not obstructed any of the shadow spells Galaeron cast outside the Groaning Cave.
This was as far as Galaeron’s thoughts went before it occurred to him that he had already survived the shock wave. The roaring in his ears was actually a deafening silence, he realized, and the ground beneath him had not shuddered once with the impact of a falling bluetop. He rose to his knees, glancing around, and saw that while the wood was familiar, it was not the one beneath the Groaning Cave. The undergrowth had been allowed to offer shelter to the birds and animals, and the terrain was not as steep.
Perhaps they had reached Starmeadow after all. Galaeron started to rise … and was pulled back down by Kuhl’s meaty paw. The Vaasan used fingertalk to call for silence, then slipped back into the underbrush as stealthily as any elf. When Vala and Takari did the same, Galaeron dropped to his belly and followed, then turned and peered through a bush.
Starmeadow lay directly ahead, its small expanse layered in acrid fume and its lush grasses blackened from battle. At the far end, Dawnsglory Pond had turned pink with spilled blood and was still boiling from some blast of magical heat. Bodies both elf and otherwise lay strewn along the far side, where the Chosen and the Company of the Cold Hand had been attacked while still dazed. Like Galaeron and his companions, those out on the battlefield were already starting to recover and rise. Both sides seemed to have been unprepared for the fighting, with the elves and their allies caught out in the open and the phaerimm and their mind-slaves strewn haphazardly along the meadow edge adjacent to Galaeron and his companions.
An elf in tattered armor picked up a darksword and used it to lop off the tentacled head of a mind flayer. A phaerimm floated up and countered with a black ray that left a melon-sized hole in the warrior’s chest. Another elf sprang up, catching the sword before it hit the ground, and charged the killer. The battle burst into full rage, silver bolts and white flashes tracing brilliant streaks through the air, flames bursting up from the blackened ground, heads and chests and bodies rupturing from no visible cause. Even the mythal exerted itself to join in, pelting Evereska’s enemies with a hail of slushy pellets that dissolved on their shoulders and had no effect except to make the elves fight harder.
Galaeron thought of Keya and wanted to charge out onto the field to find her, but the calmer part of him—the darker, more cunning part—held back. Foolish heroics would accomplish nothing except a foolish death, and Keya needed him alive. The entire Company of the Cold Hand needed him, as did Khelben and the other Chosen, as did all of Evereska. He was the only one who understood the phaerimm, who knew how to defeat them. He had to work toward his purpose and trust his sister to keep herself alive. To do anything less was to betray the warrior spirit in her … and that of Evereska herself.
Galaeron found the Chosen near Dawnsglory Pond, still in their phaerimm disguises and hurling spells back into the main body of the Company of the Cold Hand. At first, he thought they were just trying to protect their identities and escape until they could execute his plan. It took a moment of careful observation before he realized that their spells were all flash and thunder, and that they were carefully positioning themselves to catch the phaerimm in a flanking attack. Seeing they could do even better, he backed deeper into the underbrush, then motioned for the others to arm themselves and follow.
Kuhl moved more like a forest cat than the cave bear he so resembled, and the four companions slipped around the phaerimm flank guard. Galaeron sprang out of a bush behind an illithid, and the thing’s heart stopped beating before it realized someone had driven a sword through it. As Galaeron was dropping back out of sight, Takari’s death arrow droned past his head and killed the illithid’s beholder partner, then Vala and Kuhl charged out of the underbrush to attack four astonished bugbears. The closest pair raised their battle-axes to block. The Vaasans’ darkswords slashed through the thick oak shafts like bread, then opened the throats of both creatures. The second pair of bugbears, alarmed as well as stunned, thought better of fighting and turned to roar the alarm.
It was a bad mistake. Galaeron hurled a dark bolt, Takari fired two more death arrows, and the Vaasans threw their darkswords. Only Vala targeted the nearest one, but her black blade sank to the hilt between the monster’s shoulder blades. He took
three more steps, then crashed to the ground in a lifeless heap. The other bugbear fell where he was, head lost to Galaeron’s magic, heart burst by Kuhl’s darksword, legs shriveling around Takari’s black arrows.
The first sign of a counterattack came when a huge bluetop trunk burst into flaming splinters. A terrific cracking echoed down through the boughs, and Galaeron looked up to find what seemed an entire sky of leaves and trunk crashing down toward him. He flicked a wad of shadowstuff up at it and shouted a word in ancient Netherese. A web of dark strands appeared overhead, anchoring itself to surrounding trees to catch the falling bluetop.
The swirling crackle of meteor stones reverberated through woods from somewhere ahead. Galaeron dived behind the nearest bluetop and glimpsed a smoke trail bending toward him as the pebbles adjusted course. They struck the tree with a series of staccato bangs. He scrambled forward and peered around the other side of the trunk and almost lost his head to a black ray. He rolled back in the other direction and was flash-blinded by a fork of oncoming lightning.
Galaeron dropped flat and bit dirt as the bolt cracked past overhead. With time passing at the same rate for everyone, he was no match for a phaerimm. He pulled back, readied a shadow shield, and barely had time to raise it before the undergrowth parted a dozen paces away and a thornback head rose into view.
Vala emerged behind it, ran her darksword down the length of its back, and disappeared back into the brush just before a beam of green radiance disintegrated the foliage where she had been standing. Takari’s bow sang, and the ray vanished. Vala leaped up, waving a severed phaerimm tail in Galaeron’s direction, and started through the forest again.
Before following, Galaeron said, “Khelben, they’re trapped between us. We’re coming from the opposite end.”
By the time he rolled out from behind the tree, Kuhl had already killed a second phaerimm rushing to aid the one that Vala had slain. Galaeron returned to his place in the battle line, and they sneaked through the undergrowth, slaying several more bugbears and two more illithids before Takari threw her voice into the trees overhead and gave a warning bird whistle.
A conflagration of fireballs and lightning bolts streaked up toward the sound, setting two bluetops ablaze and showering the forest floor with burning boughs and broken limbs. Galaeron followed one of the spells to its source and spied what appeared to be a cone-shaped log standing suspiciously upright in the heart of big honey bramble about twenty paces ahead. He sent a flight of shadow arrows streaking toward the log, then dived for cover and started rolling. He was helped along the way by several concussion waves and a wall of magical heat.
By the time Galaeron stopped, the forest ahead was disintegrating into splinters and flame. He came to his knees and found an illithid stumbling in his direction, its tentacled head looking wide-eyed back over its shoulder. Galaeron barely had time to draw his sword before the thing ran onto the point and impaled itself. He finished the job with a few blade flicks, then shoved the illithid away.
The situation was much the same along the rest of the battle line, and Galaeron had no doubt that it was because the Chosen were behind the enemy, attacking. The phaerimm mind-slaves were blindly fleeing the inferno, running headlong into Vala and Kuhl. The Vaasans were taking a terrible toll, spinning and whirling, cutting in two any monster that came within reach of their darkswords and using their pommels to knock unconscious the occasional elf mind-slave.
But there were only two of them and easily a hundred mind-slaves. Dozens slipped past and crashed off through the brush. Takari did her best to stop the monsters, emptying her quiver into their backs and slowly working her way forward so she could conserve arrows by plucking once-fired shafts out of dead bodies. Galaeron used shadow bolts to cut down a pair of bugbears and a beholder angling toward her back, then Takari felled a fleeing illithid, and there were no more enemies.
The patter of falling rain sounded behind Galaeron. He turned to find a small torrent deluging the battle line, dousing the fire and filling the wood with billowing steam. The storm would do nothing to save the trees already burning, but it would at least prevent the flames from spreading. When a trio of phaerimm emerged from the steam cloud, Galaeron found himself preparing a shadow bolt. He knew by how the forest murk seemed to cling to their bodies that they were the Chosen, but that didn’t prevent him from cringing. The disguise was more convincing than he had realized, and he suddenly understood why it had been so hard to convince Keya of his identity back at the Groaning Cave.
“A sad thing to lose so many bluetops,” Khelben said, twisting his head-disk around to look back toward the battle line. “Most are older than I am.”
“Evereska has been invaded,” Galaeron said. “The trees must pay along with the rest of us.”
Takari’s jaw dropped in outrage. She started to rebuke him for saying such a thing, then reconsidered and simply cast an accusing look in Vala’s direction.
Vala shrugged and said, “Don’t look at me. I’m not the one who told him to embrace his shadow.”
“I’m not saying we should let the forest burn,” Galaeron retorted. “Only that we should remember what will become of Evereska’s forests if we let the phaerimm take Evereska.”
“Sometimes the lesser of two evils is the only good possible,” Laeral agreed. She started toward the edge of the meadow. “Let’s see if Keya needs help, shall we?”
But the Company of the Cold Hand had the situation well in hand. Without their phaerimm masters to guide and intimidate them, most of the mind-slaves had already lost interest in fighting and started to withdraw. It required only a couple of thunderbolts from the flank to turn the retreat into a rout, and Evereska’s forces were alone in the field only a few minutes later.
Keya gave orders to gather the wounded and retrieve the darkswords, then waved Aris out of his hiding place on the opposite side of the meadow and came over to join Galaeron and the others. With a battle-jaded face and worry lines in her brow as deep as field furrows, she looked immeasurably older and grimmer than when Galaeron had last seen her, but stronger as well. With Burlen at her back, she stopped and gave Vala a warm—though weary—embrace, then stepped back and studied her brother.
There was a hardness in her eyes that made Galaeron worry she blamed him for what had happened in Evereska, and he began to fear their reunion would be less than a joyful one. He was more than willing to accept responsibility for his blunders, but the thought that his mistakes might drive a wedge between him and his sister was more than he could bear. It was bad enough that the war he started had taken their father from them; that it should also destroy the little that remained of his family would be a punishment worthy of Loviatar.
Finally, Keya dropped a hand to her protruding belly and said, “You heard, I suppose?”
Wondering what her pregnancy had to do with his mistakes, Galaeron replied, “Storm told me.”
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Keya moved her hand back to the hilt of the darksword hanging in her scabbard and said, “You might as well say it and be done with it.”
Galaeron frowned, puzzled.
“What is there to say?”
Keya cringed, but tightened her lips and visibly began to gather herself.
“I know this isn’t something you expected, but I’m over eighty years old. I can make my own decisions—and it’s not like there was anyone here to ask.”
“Ask,” Galaeron repeated. “About what?”
Vala nudged him the back with her elbow. “The baby.”
“You rothé!” Takari hissed. “Have you gone completely human?”
Finally, Galaeron realized that Keya did not blame him for what had happened in Evereska, that she was not even thinking about the war. She was frightened, not angry, and she only wanted the same thing from him that he wanted from her. He started to laugh, which only made Keya set her jaw.
“Is that all you’re worried about? What I think?” Galaeron asked. He took her by the shoulders. “I can’
t tell you how happy that makes me!”
Now it was Keya who looked puzzled.
“Why wouldn’t I care what you think?”
Before Galaeron could answer, Takari interposed herself between the two.
“Galaeron is very happy for you,” she said, “and he thinks Dex will make a wonderful father … for a human. Right, Galaeron?”
“Of course,” Galaeron said. “I only thought—”
“And Keya is happy to have you back,” Takari said. “No matter what the Golds say, she knows this isn’t your fault. Isn’t that true, Keya?”
“Even the Golds know the Shadovar tricked you,” Keya said. “They’ve been planning this for centuries.”
Takari nodded to Burlen and said, “Let’s get out of here before the phaerimm come back to finish the job.”
“Come back?” Galaeron repeated. “That’s the one thing we don’t have to worry about. No phaerimm survivor is ever going to admit he was defeated.”
Keya and Takari exchanged looks, then Keya said, “Galaeron, they always come back.”
“They’re determined to wipe out the Company of the Cold Hand,” Takari added, “but we’re making them pay.”
“Determined?” Galaeron did not like the sound of that. “You mean they’re still fighting an organized battle?”
Burlen scowled down at Galaeron and grumbled, “ ’Course they’re organized. You want to kill a wolf pack, you’d better be more organized than they are.”
“So they’re all working together?” Galaeron asked. This felt wrong to him, contrary to all Melegaunt had learned about the phaerimm during his century of spying. “None are fighting over Evereska’s magic? None are trying to claim the best lair?”
Keya said, “They’re too busy hunting us.” She turned to Burlen and said, “Have the war mages lay some death wards. We’ll rendezvous at the Floating Gardens to plan our next strike.”
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