by James Wyatt
Albanon closed his eyes and took a deep breath, savoring the bouquet of pollen, leaves, moss, earth, and mushrooms. A sudden memory struck him. As a child, he’d been tumbling down a hill, laughing, with a giggling girl beside him. They landed tangled at the bottom of the hill, her hair tickling his nose and the pungent aroma of broken mushrooms surrounding them. He smiled as he cast about in his memory, trying to remember the girl’s name. Instead, Tempest’s face came to his mind.
“Come along, lad, you’re blocking the doorway.” Kri’s rough hand gripped his shoulder and drew him out of the dancing lights. “Is it good to be home?”
Albanon drew in another deep breath as he walked. “I wouldn’t call it home any more, but I never realized how much I missed it. Everything is so different, so much more alive.”
“It suits you,” Kri said. “You almost look like you’re glowing.”
Albanon laughed. “It’s possible. I can feel the magic everywhere around me, fueling my own power.” Drawing energy from the land and air around him, he casually tossed a burst of fire into the sky. “It’s so easy here.”
“Some say it’s an advantage to study magic in the mortal world,” Kri said, “because it’s harder to work magic there.”
Albanon nodded. “Magic comes so naturally to my people that they’re lazy about it. That’s why I wanted to study with Moorin.”
“You weren’t satisfied with the easy route.”
“I suppose not.”
Kri clapped him on the shoulder. “And that’s why I want you with me, learning beside me. You’re not going to settle for easy answers or look for shortcuts. That’s what I need, and it’s what the Order of Vigilance needs if it’s going to survive to another generation.”
Albanon swelled with pride. Since Moorin’s death, he’d been adrift. His adventures with Shara and Uldane and the others had been important, but Kri was beginning to show him hints of a greater purpose, as well as a goal for his own growth and learning. Kri would be his mentor as Moorin had been, and would teach him the things Moorin hadn’t been able to-starting with the ways of the order of which Moorin and Kri had been the last members.
The Feywild side of the Moon Door was like a distorted reflection of the world they’d left behind. Actually, Albanon supposed it was the mortal world that was distorted-the Feywild was the world as it ought to be, flowing with magic and unspoiled by the spread of cities and farms. The landscape around them was mostly familiar, but varied in a few details. A narrow strip of grassy earth replaced the rocky isles on the fey side of the door. An ancient grove stood in Moonstair’s place at the confluence of the rivers, but faerie lights weaving among the tall trees pointed the way to the pavilion that passed for an inn on the Feywild side of the Moon Door.
“I’ve been here before,” Albanon said, the memory dawning suddenly. “Midsummer’s eve, years ago now.” For a moment he could almost hear the music filtering through the trees, the laughter of the gathered fey. He laughed and shook his head clear. “This place is beguiling.”
“We’ll stay here for the night and set out at sunrise,” Kri said. “We should be able to reach the tower by the end of the day tomorrow, if we keep up a good pace.”
“Oh, it’s closer than I thought. Where is it, exactly?”
“Southeast,” Kri said. “Beyond the Plain of Thorns. You know the area?”
The smile faded from Albanon’s face. “I do.”
“We need to petition the local lord for access to the tower.”
“Indeed.” A chill dread gripped Albanon’s chest. “We should have discussed this earlier.”
“What’s wrong? You know this lord?”
“Of course I do,” Albanon said. “He’s my father.”
CHAPTER TWO
The thick air over the Witchlight Fens gave no hint of the coming winter. Sweat trickled down Shara’s back, tickling under her armor like a lover’s playful touch, but the black flies that swarmed her head kept any longing at bay. She waved her hand uselessly through the buzzing cloud. The bite of the insects was a sharp reminder of her more vexing concerns.
“There’s something moving around by that old wall,” Uldane said, pointing ahead and to the right. Shara swatted at the bugs again and peered through the haze. She spotted the wall on a low rise, part of some ancient ruin long ago claimed by the expanding swamp, but she couldn’t make out whatever Uldane had seen.
“I don’t know how you two can see anything in all this light,” Quarhaun muttered. The drow had stayed with them since they left the Temple of Yellow Skulls, but the weeks he’d spent on the surface world had done little to ease the discomfort he felt being out of the dark and confined tunnels of the Underdark.
Shara sighed. “I can’t see it, Uldane. Is it a demon?”
“Is it the dragon?” Quarhaun asked.
“It wasn’t big enough to be Vestapalk,” the halfling said. “And I lost track of it, but I think it might have been one of his minions.”
“Then let’s go kill it,” Shara said. “Sooner or later, these things will lead us to Vestapalk.”
Quarhaun spat. “Are you sure? The more we hunt the dragon’s minions, the farther we range around this valley. We don’t seem to be getting any closer to our prey-quite the contrary, in fact. We’re southeast of the temple now, and the dragon flew to the west.”
“But the demons were following the dragon,” Shara said. “Anywhere we find them, we could find Vestapalk.”
“And besides,” Uldane said, “it’s still worth doing. We’ve killed a lot of these demons, and they were causing harm to a lot of people. We’re making a difference.”
“But I’ve yet to repay the dragon for the injuries he dealt me,” Quarhaun said.
Shara gripped her greatsword and clenched her jaw. The drow didn’t seem to care much about the spread of the abyssal plague, but his hatred for the dragon was the one thing that the drow had in common with her, the reason that Quarhaun had helped her and Uldane hunt the demons that were spreading around the Nentir Vale. The dragon had killed her father and her lover, and Shara had already killed him once in exchange, or at least she thought she had. Perhaps it was appropriate that she’d have a chance to take the dragon’s life again, payment for the second companion he’d taken from her.
Her eyes burned. Slowly, over the past months, she had begun to feel alive again, secure in the belief that Vestapalk was dead. She had started to feel something other than pain and grief over Jarren’s death; she had been able, from time to time, to think of him and smile. Then the dragon reappeared, back from death and infused with the same crimson substance, like liquid crystal, that marked the demons they’d been fighting. All her pain and rage had returned, and all she knew was that she needed to kill the dragon again.
“We’ll find him,” she said. “He’s the source of these demons. If they’re coming from him, we’ll find him where they are most abundant.”
“Like a lava flow,” Quarhaun said. “The source of the eruption is where the lava is thickest.”
“Exactly.”
The drow scowled and shifted his grip on his own sword. “I suppose I am willing to kill more minions if it will lead me to their master.”
“Is that really all you care about?” Uldane said, looking up at the drow with wide-eyed curiosity rather than judgment.
Quarhaun crouched beside Uldane and put a hand on the halfling’s shoulder. “Care?” He snorted. “Where I come from, to care about something is to watch it die, slowly and in great pain, for no other reason than because you cared about it.”
Uldane scowled, knocked the drow’s hand from his shoulder, and stepped back. “I’m not a child,” he said. “And I saw this dragon kill three of my dearest friends in the world. I hate him, too, but I’m not going to let my hatred and pain turn me into a monster.”
Quarhaun laughed and straightened up. “Give it time. Let it fester long enough, and before you know it you will be a grim, merciless killer like me.” He clapped Shara’s s
houlder. “And like Shara.”
Shara looked at him in surprise. His pale, pupilless eyes showed genuine approval. “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or disgusted,” she said. But it had been a long time since any man looked at her that way, and when he lifted his hand from her shoulder she felt its absence.
Quarhaun’s eyes met hers. “You know I mean it as a com-”
“Quiet!” Uldane whispered. “There’s someth-”
A horrible shriek split the air and something slammed into Shara, knocking her to the ground. Claws scrabbled against her armor and a tooth-filled maw lunged at her throat before Quarhaun hacked at the creature and hurled it off her. Shara scrambled to her feet and saw a creature the size and rough shape of a panther snarling up at her, blood running from a gash across its face. Its body was long and sinuous, as much worm or snake as big cat, tapering only slightly at the wide, flat head. Familiar red crystals grew organically from its joints and crusted around its eyes and gaping mouth.
The demon shrieked again and leaped at Shara, but this time she was ready for it. Gripping her sword tightly in both hands, she slammed it into the beast’s flank, knocking it out of the air and opening a gaping wound in its side, splintered ribs jutting out from the gash. Its shriek turned into a howl of pain, and it landed hard on the ground. Shara shifted her grip and brought the blade around to take off the thing’s head, but it rolled to its feet and her sword bit into the soft earth instead.
The demon’s roll brought it within reach of Quarhaun’s eldritch blade, a jagged greatsword of some infernal metal as black as night. The blade thrummed with power as Quarhaun swung it at the creature’s neck, and Uldane darted in at the same moment, sinking his razor-sharp dagger into its flank. The demon roared and crouched low, its eyes darting around in search of an escape.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Shara growled, cutting a gash across the demon’s shoulder.
In answer, the demon sprang toward Uldane. Shara and Quarhaun both swung their blades as its attention turned away from them, and the two weapons clattered together instead of striking true. The demon sailed over Uldane’s head, but the fearless halfling thrust his dagger up to cut another gash in its belly as it went over. It landed with a grunt of pain but didn’t slow down, charging at full speed toward the ruined wall.
Shara cursed as she shook her sword free from Quarhaun’s blade. “After it!” she yelled, already starting her run.
She heard Uldane fall in behind her, but Quarhaun wasn’t moving. She shot a glance over her shoulder without breaking stride.
“It’s a trap,” the drow called after her. “There’s bound to be more.”
“So we kill them all,” Shara snarled back. She heard the drow sigh, then his footsteps joined hers, quickly closing her lead.
Quarhaun laughed as he passed her, less burdened by his light mail armor than she was in her heavy scale. Shara grinned in acceptance of his challenge and pushed herself harder, her breath coming faster as her legs carried her up the low rise behind the drow. The exertion was exhilarating, particularly after the thrill and terror of the brief battle. For all her effort, though, Shara fell behind as Quarhaun was the first to reach the wall.
The wounded demon pounced at Quarhaun and knocked him down, as it had Shara, but instead of sprawling to the ground, the drow and demon both disappeared from Shara’s sight. Shara reached the spot a moment later and saw a stone stairway descending below the rise. The daylight reached only a short way down the narrow stairs, and in the darkness beneath she heard the thud of metal on stone and Quarhaun’s grunt of pain as he hit another stair.
“Damn it, Shara,” she breathed. She fumbled in a pouch at her belt for a sunrod. “That was really stupid.”
A blast of blue eldritch fire lit the darkness at the bottom of the stairs, farther down than she had expected. In the brief flash, she saw Quarhaun back on his feet, fire wreathed around the demon’s body as it screeched in pain. She breathed a little easier as the sunrod sputtered to life. Uldane caught up with her and followed her down the steps without a word.
Uldane speechless-that was a bad sign. It probably meant that the halfling was as disappointed in her idiotic foot race with Quarhaun as she was with herself.
But she’d berate herself later. In the darkness below, a faint purplish glow lit Quarhaun’s inky-black blade as it swung in a wide arc. Shara thought she saw the blade bite into several demons, and she quickened her pace down the steps.
The sunrod’s light reached the bottom, revealing Quarhaun standing in a circle of six crouching beasts. One lay still on the ground at his feet, its shattered ribs identifying it as the one that had attacked them on the surface-the one that had led them into the trap as Quarhaun had predicted.
Shara dropped the sunrod, gripped her sword with both hands, and charged down the remaining stairs. Swinging the sword fiercely, she knocked the nearest demon aside and stepped into the ring of them beside Quarhaun. She slashed at a demon as it lunged toward the drow, cutting its face and driving it back. She put her back to Quarhaun’s and they both held their long, deadly blades at the ready.
“I win,” Quarhaun said over his shoulder.
“You take the prize, all right,” Shara shot back. “I should have just left you here.”
“But you didn’t. That was foolish.”
“We’ll see about that.” The demons were holding back, assessing them, looking for an opening in their defenses.
The demon nearest the stairs screeched as Uldane’s dagger slid between its ribs, and it wheeled on the halfling in surprised rage. Shara lashed out at it and it turned back to her, batting uselessly with an enormous claw, weakened by Uldane’s strike.
“They’re still coming,” Quarhaun said.
Shara glanced behind her and saw two more of the creatures fill in the circle around them, and she noticed dark shadows moving just beyond the sunrod’s light. “That’s a lot of demons,” she muttered.
“So we kill them all.”
“Right.” Shara scanned the circle and found the one Uldane had stabbed. Blood from its side ran down its front leg, leaving sticky footprints glistening in the light as it stalked around the circle. She lunged at it, bringing her sword down in a mighty swing toward its neck.
Her target hopped back away as the two demons beside it leaped at her. The one on her left clamped its jaws around her arm, pulling her sword off target, though her armor kept its teeth from biting into her flesh. On her right, sharp claws cut through the leather and mail that protected her knee, but the wound was shallow. She slammed the pommel of her sword into the face of the demon that held her arm, but it held her fast.
Uldane appeared out of the shadows again and drew his dagger across the beast’s throat. It yowled and released Shara’s arm. Its voice died in its throat as Shara brought her sword down to split its skull.
“We need to get into a passage or something,” Quarhaun said, “a narrower hall where they can’t surround us.”
Shara glanced at the stairs where the sunrod still sputtered, and she saw Uldane nod. “Right,” she said. “Follow me.”
With a roar, she slipped between two of the creatures and made for the stairs, swinging her sword in a wide arc to slash at the demons as she passed. Uldane shadowed her movement toward the stairs. Shara turned and paused to let Quarhaun get behind her, but the drow was nowhere in sight.
“Quarhaun!” she called.
“I’m here.” His voice came from somewhere beyond the pool of light the sunrod shed, and he sounded annoyed. “In the hall I was pointing to.”
Shara slashed at a demon that came too close and called back, “I can’t see you!” Even as she spoke, though, she saw a flash of fire illuminate the drow, two demons snarling as the flame licked around them, and the mouth of a narrow tunnel a half dozen paces ahead and to the right.
The beasts were tough, and there were a lot of them crowded into the room. The smart thing to do would have been to get to the stairs and retre
at. On the narrow stairs, the demons couldn’t surround them, and they could fight just two or three demons at a time. Quarhaun’s idea had been sound, but he’d apparently had a different narrow passage in mind-one that he could see but that her human eyes couldn’t.
At this point, retreating up the stairs would leave Quarhaun stranded in his hallway with no way out. Shara doubted he could hold the passage by himself-the demons would get around him, attack from both sides, and bring him down in a minute or less. She changed her plan.
“Uldane, light another sunrod,” she said.
Her heart pounded as she rushed at the demons again, hacking furiously on every side, her sword cracking through bone and drawing spurts of blood. She advanced in the general direction of where she’d seen Quarhaun’s fire, keeping an eye out for any other sign of his presence. Another sunrod sputtered to life behind her, and Shara gasped as she realized just how many demons were crowded around them. But then Uldane rejoined the battle, slicing and cutting with his dagger, making up in precision what he lacked in strength. Together they carved a path through the demons until the mouth of Quarhaun’s passage came into view in their circle of light. The drow wasn’t there.
“Quarhaun!” Shara called. The only answer was the roar of another demon as it lunged at her, clawing the wounded spot on her knee. This time the claws went deeper and pain shot up her leg. Her knee buckled under her and she stumbled, giving another demon the chance to lunge in, slashing at her side, slamming against her ribs without piercing her armor. Then another pounced onto her back, and she fell under its weight.
“Get off her!” Uldane shouted, and the demon’s weight lifted from her back. Uldane might have been small, but he wielded his dagger with such speed and skill that he could outmaneuver even much larger and stronger foes, positioning them just where he wanted and driving his dagger home.