The Summoning rota-1

by Troy Denning

  "Forget." He spoke in the ancient language of magic, calling upon Melegaunt's coldmagic to empower the spell. "Return to your rest."

  The demilich lashed out, catching Galaeron by his chain mail and ripping a handful of magic-forged loops from over his breast. Vala leaped forward to attack, but the links were already falling through the creature's hand. Galaeron raised a hand to check her attack, then watched as the thing's body dissolved back into dust. When the skull sank to the floor, he motioned her forward. "Now, Vala-before the spirit flees. Cleave it in one blow."

  Vala's sword descended in a black flash, splitting the skull lengthwise and dividing both sides again before they toppled to the floor. A crimson flamelight shot from the bones and streaked through Vala's body, then circled the room with a blood-curdling keen. Her jaw dropped and she looked as though she might collapse of shock, then a cold wind ripped through the room and the whirling flamelight faded from view. Galaeron glanced around the room. "Where's Malik?"

  The little man stepped out of a shadowy corner, dagger clutched in his trembling hand. "Have no fear on my account."

  Galaeron motioned at the skull fragments. "Douse them well-and hold your breath."

  Malik did as he was asked, and the blessed water began to eat through the skull fragments, filling the room with an evil-smelling fume that troubled the little man not in the least. Everyone else withdrew to the tunnel and took turns gulping down fresh air. The bone fragments dissolved, mixing with the dust in a single muddy heap. Malik continued to pour, but no matter how much he stirred, the whole mess adhered together like bread dough. Finally, when no chips of the skull remained visible, Galaeron returned and prepared another spell. Melegaunt caught his arm. "Allow me."

  "If you're not too weary, old man." Galaeron was surprised to feel his lip curl into a disparaging sneer. "All you need do is dispel the magic."

  Melegaunt glowered at him. "I can manage. And 1 could have handled the forgetting magic as well."

  The archwizard muttered a few syllables and waved his hand. A purple shadow fell over the doughy mass, then the mud lost its cohesiveness and spread across the floor. Malik dropped the waterskin, and on the pretext of stooping to pick it up, deftly swept up the six brown-crusted gems that had been in the demilich's mouth. Having no interest in the stones himself, Galaeron pretended not to notice.

  Jhingleshod came to their side, then propped his axe on the floor and looked at his iron palm. When the gauntlet showed no sign of flaking or disintegrating, he turned to Galaeron. "What next?"

  "I don't know." Galaeron glanced around the chamber, searching in vain for some hint of a forgotten step. "The lich is gone."

  "What of its phylactery?" Malik quietly pocketed the gems. "I have heard it said that liches hide their life-forces in repositories-usually an item of great worth?"

  "They do," said Galaeron. "But not so with a demilich. They have abandoned their repositories for worlds beyond, and remain connected to Toril only through their remains."

  "Liar! Do you think your excuses can fool me?" There was a note of desperation in Jhingleshod's voice. "Had you destroyed the lich, I would not be here now."

  "Unless we destroyed the wrong one," said Galaeron, recalling the argument between Melegaunt and Jhingleshod over the lich's true identity. "Malik, let me see those gems you took." "Gems?" asked the little man. "What gems are those?" "These."

  Vala slipped an arm around Malik's throat and used the other to pluck the brown nuggets from his pocket. Galaeron took them and carefully scraped the brown crust from their faces. He was down to the sixth, a deep ruby, before he found the inner light for which he had been searching. Returning the others to Malik, he displayed this one to his companions.

  "The chronicles suggest that this will be an imprisoned spirit," he said. "If we free it, perhaps it can help us."

  Melegaunt cast an impatient eye toward the tunnel. "How long?"

  "Not as long as trying to defend yourself from my axe," warned Jhingleshod.

  "It will need a body," said Galaeron. "Perhaps one of the undead?"

  "1 can make a body for it," said Melegaunt. "One that will be safer for it-and us."

  The archwizard took a piece of shadow silk from his cloak and laid it on Vala's shoulder. Repeating a long incantation over and over, he began to knead the stuff with his fingers, spreading the dark substance over her, carefully covering her flanks, limbs, even her head and face. When he finally finished, Vala resembled a living, breathing sculpture of the blackest basalt.

  Melegaunt took her hand and pulled. She emerged from the shadow as though from a dark corner, leaving a dark likeness as perfectly shaped as one of Aris's sculptures.

  "If the spirit is troublesome, we can dismiss it with a little light."

  Galaeron laid the gem next to the figure, then waved Jhingleshod over. "If you would smash it." "If this is one of your tricks…"

  "By the shadow deep!" Melegaunt cursed. "We haven't time for trickery."

  Melegaunt brought his heel down and ground the gem to powder. A crimson radiance flowed out from beneath his heel and began to climb his leg. "Oh no, my friend!"

  The archwizard plunged his foot into the body he had created, then sighed in relief as the luminescence melded into the shadow. A glossy sheen spread over the figure's black flesh, then the eyes opened and stared at the ceiling. It raised a leg, and twisting it around at an impossible angle, studied its heel. Then, seemingly unaware of the arms hanging motionless at its side, did the same with the other leg-and crashed to the floor.

  Galaeron rushed to its side. "We didn't know what kind of creature you were." He waved at the body. "We made this in our own fashion."

  The shadow sprouted a pair of eyes on the side of its head. "You did well. The color is right."

  Galaeron glanced at Melegaunt and found the wizard staring at the dark figure with a dropped jaw. When the elf looked back to the creature, it had wrapped its arms around its legs, and all four limbs were melding into the body.

  "We were wondering if you could tell us…" Galaeron looked away. He could not quite keep from asking, "What are you?"

  "A sharn." It was Melegaunt who said this. "At least that is what I think."

  A smiling mouth appeared in the flank of the drop-shaped body "You think right, wizard." Another mouth appeared on Galaeron's side. "What is it you want to know? I am obviously in your debt."

  Galaeron was too stunned to answer, as was everyone except Jhingleshod.

  "We would know who captured you, and whether he has been entirely destroyed."

  The sharn rose off the floor and floated toward the door. That was the lich Wulgreth, who took my soul when I came thinking to end his depredations against the empire." "Wulgreth?" echoed Jhingleshod. "Which Wulgreth?"

  "The only Wulgreth that is a lich," replied the sharn. "How many do you think there can be?"

  Iron shoulders slumping, Jhingleshod whirled on Galaeron. "You have not destroyed him, not completely."

  "Wulgreth is completely destroyed," said the sham, now struggling to squeeze itself into the exit tunnel. "Were that not so, I would not be free."

  Jhingleshod whirled on the sharn. "Liar! If Wulgreth were destroyed-"

  "Jhingleshod, wait," Galaeron said, stepping in front of the iron knight "You asked the wrong question."

  "Then ask the right one-and quickly" The sharn paused in the tunnel mouth, peering out from a bulbous extrusion that might or might not have been a head. "Grateful as I am, I hunger for better company than yours."

  "Which empire were you trying to protect?" Galaeron asked.

  "Which empire?" The sharn withdrew completely into the tunnel. "Why, the only empire of course-unless you mean to include your quaint elven confederacies." "The Netherese Empire?" Galaeron pressed.

  "The very one." The sharn's voice faded as it retreated up the passageway "And now, if you'll excuse me, I shall return later to repay the favor you have done me."

  "Wait!" Melegaunt stepped forward,
speaking in a language of strange syllables. When the sharn did not reply, he turned back to the others, shaking his head sadly "He doesn't know. It's all gone, and he doesn't know." "The sharn were Netherese?" Galaeron gasped.

  The question jolted Melegaunt out of his despair. "I don't know." He shrugged. "No one does, I suspect. There are some who claim they were Netherese arcanists who transformed themselves in order to battle the phaerimm. Others claim they came from another world. What is clear is that they had a hatred of phaerimm, or they would not have erected the Sharn Wall."

  At the mention of the Sharn Wall, Galaeron cast a hopeful look up the tunnel, but Melegaunt shook his head. "He's gone, my friend-and even were he not, 1 doubt he could help us. Before we can patch the hole, we must fight our way through the phaerimm who have already escaped."

  Though it angered Galaeron to concede the argument, he nodded and turned toward the back of the chamber. "Then let's find the help we need and get to it." amp;• • amp;•• amp;• •(c)•‹§›•

  Keya Nihmedu stood atop the Livery Gate watchtower, slightly self-conscious in her form-fitted chain mail and painfully aware that the magic pike in her hand was no defense at all against phaerimm. Her eyes were as sharp as any in Evereska, and she had seen enough of the battle in the High Vale to know that fifty years of half-hearted blade drill- suffered daily at her father's insistence, Hanali bless him- would stand her in poor stead against the thornbacks. The unsightly monsters had already turned the high slopes into a forest of bare-limbed scarecrows, and now they were working their way onto the upper terraces of the Vine Vale, using their hideous magic to turn the vineyards into dead tangles of thorn hedges.

  Most of the Long Watch felt their duties were of little real importance to the war, that they were only standing a post to free the real soldiers to fight, but Keya was not so sure. She had it from Manynests-if she understood his scattered peeptalk correctly-that the Cloudtop Magi Circle had divined the phaerimm's plan. They intended to capture Evereska much the same way they had destroyed the Netherese Empire, by using their life-draining magic to devitalize Evereska Vale. Without the surrounding lands to sustain it, the city's mythal would slowly lose its magic, and eventually it would grow too weak to keep out the thorn-backs.

  At first, Lord Duirsar had not been overly worried. The groves and lands within the mythal were large enough to sustain its power for a year or two, by which time help would surely arrive. Then the high mages of the Bellcrest Spire had reminded him that plants need light and water, and the Moon-dark Circle had named a dozen spells that could shut off both. According to Manynests, Lord Duirsar had decided on the spot to create the Long Watch, and that was how Keya knew her duty to be as important as whatever her father and Galaeron were off doing-wherever they were off doing it.

  Keya selected a wand from her belt and dutifully swept it across the four quarters of the sky, studying its wake of blue radiance for any telltale glimmers of invisibility magic. The wand was one of a trio quietly supplied to each member of the Long Watch by the three towers of high mages. Keya had not known there were that many circles in Evereska until Manynests had "slipped" during a rather curious visit to inform her that Lord Duirsar had not heard from her father and the Swords-a fact well known to all of Evereska.

  After a day's reflection, Keya had dutifully let it slip in gossip that she had heard from a reliable source that Evereska still had three full towers of high mages. This had done much to reassure her friends, who had promptly spread the secret so efficiently that it was repeated to her twice over the next two days-exactly as Lord Duirsar had intended, she was sure. What she had not passed along was the high mages' concern about the mythal, since she felt certain the bird had, in fact, not meant to reveal that bit of bad news.

  When Keya found no invisible phaerimm lurking above the mythal, she returned the wand to her belt and started a slow, top-to-bottom scan of the encircling cliffs with her naked eye. She was about halfway around when she noticed a crag hawk circling its nest, claws extended as though it would like to attack but could not. As she had been taught, Keya did not dwell on the spot or immediately reach for a wand, but marked the place in her mind and continued her routine to fool any watching phaerimm. Then, feigning boredom-also a part of Long Watch's meticulously rehearsed routine-she yawned and shook her head, studied her nails for a moment, and glanced back to the spot. The bird was still circling.

  Keya retreated casually down the stairs and found a window from which she could see the hawk. Standing in the shadows, she pulled the first wand from her belt and swept it over the area. She was rewarded with a row of telltale sparkles. For the first time, her heart began to pound with excitement. Though she descended the stairs a dozen times every watch to check on something, this was the first time she had ever found anything suspicious. She pulled her second wand and waved it at the street-side window.

  The image of a beautiful Gold elf appeared in the window. "What is it, Keya? If you are thirsty, I can send a boy with some wine."

  "No wine, Zharilee." Keya could not keep the excitement from her voice. "I've something to report." The Gold elf arched her brow. "You're sure?"

  "Crawling down the face of Snagglefang," she said, trying to remember the elements of a good report: what doing what, where, when, how many. "A group of invisibles. Maybe a dozen, side-by-side. Just passing the crag hawk's nest." "Crawling, you say? Why would they crawl?"

  Keya looked back to the cliff, where the invisibles continued to descend in crooked row. "It might be a battle line."

  Zharilee frowned doubtfully. "Phaerimm don't need to crawl. Why wouldn't they just float…" She let the sentence trail off and grew more serious. "I'll send word to Cloudtop. Keep watching."

  The image faded, leaving Keya to her invisibles. They were descending rapidly, three of the twelve bunched together. She waved a different wand. The cliff drew close enough to see individual crags and crevices, but the wands would not work together and the twinkles were no longer visible. She went back to the first. The invisibles reached the base of the cliff and started down the jumbled talus boulders beneath. Several of the other twinkles gathered around the close-bunched trio, helping them over the rough terrain. Was the trio carrying something? No-more likely, they were two carrying a third. A pair of warriors carrying a wounded comrade.

  Any lingering doubts about their identity vanished. Even had it been phaerimm crawling down the cliff, they would not be carrying wounded. From what she had seen of the thorn-backs, they did not carry their wounded anywhere-least of all into an attack. The invisibles had to be elves-or elf-friends-trying to reach Evereska.

  Keya reported her observations to Zharilee, then switched wands and examined the surrounding mountainside. As she had feared, there were five phaerimm and a dozen times that many beholders and illithids scurrying through the denuded forest to intercept the band. She reported that as well.

  Zharilee said she was passing the information to Cloudtop Tower, and that she was sorry, but Keya would have to watch what followed. Keya replied that watching was the least she could do. Seeing that there was no longer a danger of giving the party away, she returned to the roof for a better view. Though she would appear only a speck to the invisibles even if they knew where to look for her, she pointed toward the ambush.

  The warning proved unnecessary. The invisibles paused at the bottom of the talus, then one sprayed the wood ahead with a stream of silver fire so brilliant it spotted Keya's vision from more than a thousand paces away. The five phaerimm reeled away, pouring columns of smoke into the air and slapping at their burning bodies with all four hands, and the invisibles followed the assault with a volley of enchanted arrows. As each of the shafts struck their targets, they exploded in golden flashes of magic and filled the wood with blazing red smoke.

  When Keya used her wand to report this development, the too-gaunt face of Kiinyon Colbathin appeared next to Zharilee.

  "This silver fire-who cast it?" he demanded. "Was it a human?"


  After losing the entire tomb guard in the initial battles with the phaerimm, Kiinyon had apologized to all of Evereska and tried to resign. Lord Duirsar had refused the resignation and placed him in charge of the vale's defenses, saying that Evereska had need both of his experience and the wisdom he had earned by it. "1 can't see," Keya reported. "The smoke is too thick." "Well look, damn it!"

  Keya looked, but, as she said, the smoke was impervious to sight and magic-at least any magic she had been given. All she could see was the curtain of smoke billowing across the hill, a handful of illithids scrambling up into the talus- and it occurred to her what she did not see. The invisibles had attacked, so now they should be visible-but she still couldn't see them, not with any of her wands. Realizing how well the small band had planned its attack, Keya swept her gaze down the mountainside.

  She found them halfway down the Vine Vale, staggering out of a small black door in the middle of an arbor-covered terrace. The first was a bearded human in scorched robes, the hair on his bare chest singed away around a grotesque brown scar. The second was a Gold elf in the elaborate armor of an Evereskan noble, as were the third, fourth, and all the others that followed. "It's the Swords!" Keya cried. "They're back!" "The Swords?" gasped Kiinyon. "Of Evereska?"

  "Well, some-a few" No sooner had Keya said this than she thought of her father and began to search the faces in the party. "1 see Lord Dureth, and Janispar Orthorion, and a black-bearded human."

  "That human, could it be Khelben Arunsun?" This time it was Lord Duirsar himself asking. "And tell us how you can see them, damn it! The tower mages can't find them in that wretched smoke."

  "I'm sorry, milord-they're down in the Vine Vale, in the ThistleHoney Vineyard," said Keya. "And I don't know Khelben Arunsun, but the human is carrying a black… by the golden rose, no!" "What?" demanded Lord Duirsar. " 'No,' what?"

  Keya did not answer, for the last two elves emerging from the black door held a litter bearing the shrouded figure of a dead body She could not see who lay beneath the shroud, but there was no mistaking the acid-pitted helmet lashed across the figure's chest. A simple basinet of silvery mithral steel, it was by far the plainest of any worn by the Noble Blades. It belonged to Aubric Nihmedu. "Watcher!" roared Kiinyon. "Answer Lord Duirsar!"