Seiveril wasn't entirely satisfied with that answer, but unless he was willing to halt and see what the daemonfey did in response, he would not find out for sure. He guessed that the enemy commander would expect him to draw near and take a defensive posture to invite attack. He hoped that a swift hammer blow at the very beginning of the fight might rout the orcs and ogres, leaving the daemonfey and their infernal allies to fight alone.
He took one last look at the ragged enemy formation, and raised his voice to call, "Companies, oblique to the left, march! Sound the signal!"
Marching in swift ranks, the elven companies veered toward the left flank of the daemonfey army. At Fflar's suggestion, instead of marching dead into the center of the enemy horde, Seiveril wanted to hurl all his strength against a portion of the army. He believed that his forces were swifter and more easily maneuvered than the dae-monfeys' unruly horde, and the enemy center and right would have difficulty moving to defend the left. Of course, that meant that his own right flank was exposed to the bulk of the enemy army, but he had prepared for that by building his right flank from the heaviest and most dependable of his footsoldiers, his own Silver Guards from the northlands of Evermeet and two stout companies of Evereska's veteran Vale Guards.
"That threw 'em," Fflar said with a smile. "They can't match that move."
The ragged ranks of orcs and ogres seethed, as if they were not sure what to do. Then the harsh voice of a brazen trumpet sounded from somewhere in the enemy center, and the orcs and ogres on Seiveril's right started to move forward and in, trying to wrap around behind the elf's right flank. But the difficult terrain the daemonfey had chosen for themselves worked against them. The savage warriors trying to move swiftly to get behind the crusade's right flank found that they had hundreds of yards of wet, boggy ground in front of them. The orc spearmen farthest out on the enemy right had no hope of keeping up with the intended wheeling movement, and fell behind at once, even though they were running at their best speed to try to keep their place.
"It's only bought us a few minutes," Seiveril replied.
The shining silver ranks of the elf infantry flowed over the uneven ground, rippling like a stream of steel pouring across the moorland. The gap between the armies narrowed moment by moment, closing by two hundred yards a minute at their swift pace. Seiveril glanced to the west. The sun had descended from the day's overcast and gleamed, orange and cold, in the gap between mountains and clouds. It was a spectacular sunset, really, the skies streaked with shadow and gold.
Corellon, let our work be done swiftly and well tonight, he prayed. Speed our arrows to our enemies, confuse and foil them so that no more of your sons may go to Arvandor before their time.
"Archers!" he cried. "Fire at your pace as we advance. Look for fey'ri and enemy banners."
Strong bands of wood elf archers marched alongside the spearmen and swordsmen of Evermeet. The battle of the cwm had taught Seiveril that his archers were the best answer to the fey'ri spellcasters. By salting his ranks with small companies of Evermeet's wood elves and the elite spellarchers, he would make it difficult for the fey'ri legion to attack from the air without enduring at least some danger of their own. With easy skill, the archers kept the pace of the advancing swordsmen and spearmen, pausing a half step every twelve heartbeats to loose an arrow at the army waiting ahead.
More than a thousand bows began to speak as the elven force drew close to its adversary, sending ragged flights of white arrows whistling through the space between the armies. The fire was nothing like what they might have achieved if they had halted, but elf archers trained long and hard at firing on the move, and from the first volley their deadly shafts began to work destruction among the ranks ahead.
The orcs and ogres of the daemonfey army screamed and bellowed in anger. Banners fell, their standard-bearers slain. Captains and sergeants choked on slender arrows fired by keen-eyed elf marksmen. Seiveril considered ordering a halt to allow his archers even more time to rake the enemy ranks, but then the daemonfey decided matters for him. Again the heavy trumpet blatted out its deep note, and the uneasy ranks of savage warriors shouted in delight, breaking into a clumsy, ragged charge.
"Halt and hold!" Seiveril cried. "Archers, break the charge! Mages, stand by for the fey'ri and demons. Don't waste your spells on orcs unless you have to."
The elven army slowed to a stop, heavy infantry in the front grounding their shields and setting their spears and swords, the archers redoubling their fire. The ragged volleys of the advance became a withering storm of white shafts. For one endless minute, the archers scythed down hundreds of orc berserkers and rampaging ogres as the feral warriors struggled to reach the elves across the rough moorland.
The first of the orcs and ogres reached the elf ranks, while the fey'ri legion took to the air, their wing beats as great and terrible as thunderclaps.
"Beware the daemonfey!" Seiveril called.
He readied his own counterspells and defenses, prepared to withstand a magical assault. But the fey'ri stayed out of reach and flew over his army, in one swift and precise movement sealing off his retreat.
The sun sank below the dark, cold mountains, and shadow fell over Seiveril and the army of Evermeet.
Sarya Dlardrageth watched her orcs and ogres hurl themselves upon the elves' army, breaking on the rampart of the elven line like a stormy sea unable to overcome a stone breakwater. In truth, she was impressed by the speed and handiness of Evermeet's army, as well as their sheer determination. She hadn't been sure that they had the stomach to press their pursuit to the point of another pitched battle, but so much the better.
"It's going poorly for the left flank," Mardeiym Reithel said. "Without our fey'ri behind it, I think they will break and run."
"No matter," Sarya replied. "The palebloods will have to turn to meet the attack of our center and right. And we are about to give them something else to worry about, anyway."
She paced across her Vyshaanti battle-platform, watching the fray closely. She was dressed in golden mail of exceptional quality and exquisite workmanship, a highly enchanted artifact she had found among the spoils of Nar Kerymhoarth. Sarya intended to lend her own mastery of the Art to the attack, and she was well prepared to do so.
The fey'ri, hovering well above arrow-reach, passed over the entirety of the elven army and alighted behind her foes. The sorcerers and warriors of her daemonfey legion began to attack the rearmost companies of the elven army, guarding themselves with potent spell shields as they scoured and blasted the elf ranks with their terrible spells and fire wands. She had deliberately ordered her captains to allow Evermeet's host to reach the moorland unchallenged in order to draw them well and truly into the open. The elven army was engaged on three sides by her left flank, her center, and the fey'ri.
The moment was as right as it would get.
Sarya laughed with malice and hissed, "Now we shall test the mettle of our enemies. Mardeiym, you will take command of the center. Send word to the right that I want them in the fight in five minutes, or I will personally slay every captain in that host."
The fey'ri general struck his fist to his chest and replied, "As you wish, Lady Dlardrageth."
Sarya made a gesture with her hand activating one of the useful enchantments in her battle-platform. Switching to the Abyssal tongue, she barked out her orders.
"Time to spring our trap," she grated. "All of you, follow me and slay to your hearts' content!"
Lurking in the shadows sheltering her from sight, hundreds of demons waited-virtually all who could transport themselves from place to place with a simple act of will. Many were survivors of the Battle of the Cwm, but better than threescore were newly summoned and bound to her service. Sarya spoke a command word, and her platform teleported from its place of concealment to a barren, sandy stretch on the unengaged left flank of the elven army. An instant later, the first of her demon marauders followed her, appearing from midair like a rain of horror.
Her army surrounded
Evermeet's host on all four sides.
"Destroy them!" she cried, sweeping her arm at her foes.
Demons howled, barked, and laughed in response, and threw themselves against their prey.
CHAPTER 18
12 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms
Araevin trotted swiftly through the damp, rain-soaked trees of Cormanthor, distancing himself from the vault behind him. He deliberately avoided the old elfroad, just on the chance that the daemonfey might discover his freedom and their dead comrades and come looking for him. The side of his chest still burned with the broken ribs the behir had given him, and various other injuries announced themselves as he traveled, but he refused to give the pain a place in his thoughts, and instead considered what to do next as he jogged on.
Ilsevele first, he thought. And Maresa too. I have to get them out of Sarya's hands before the daemonfey discover my escape. All I have to do is walk into the demons' den.
Armed as he was with a mind full of spells and abjurations as potent as anything he could ever have prepared in his own workroom, Araevin didn't shy from returning to the daemonfey halls. He even thought he might have an unpleasant surprise or two for them.
This should do, Araevin decided.
He looked around at the wet woodland and shivered. The vault of Ithraides, with its teleport-distorting spell wards, lay two miles behind him. He was well outside its magical mantle.
"Now, for the difficult part," he breathed.
Gesturing absently, he prepared a couple of defensive spells to protect himself-one that covered him in an intangible shield of magical force, and another to turn himself invisible. He gazed around at the forest, breathing in the scent of spring rising from hidden roots and deep places.
Hold it in your mind, Araevin, he told himself. It might be the last good thing you look on in this life.
Then he incanted the teleport spell, fixing in his mind the image of the marble-floored cavern in the daemonfey stronghold.
The forest reeled away into darkness, and he felt himself falling through icy void for the space of an instant-then he appeared in the dim, lamplit halls of the daemonfey.
Araevin did his best to avoid making any sound as he arrived, but he couldn't stop a soft gasp as the suddenness of the change staggered him. Fortunately, no one was in the hall. It was cold and forbidding even in the absence of its infernal masters, a stark and comfortless place where the air carried a subtle taint of blood and hot metal. Several passageways led away from the room, he presumed to other halls and chambers. At his back the hall ended in a crevasse or natural chimney that climbed up into the dark and fell away into measureless shadow below.
"What is this place?" he muttered.
He turned, studying the room again and trying to guess which way his friends might have been taken. His eye fell on the dark pool of blood where Grayth had died.
Any fear or uncertainty he might have entertained vanished like yesterday's winds.
Information is the first order of business, he decided.
He held himself still and closed his eyes, listening and feeling for the magical ward he had noted when Nurthel brought him before Sarya. If he was right about it…
"I thought so," he murmured.
As before, he felt the peculiar magical vibration or resonance of a mythal ward embracing him. It was not a sound, a smell, or any sort of physical sensation he could accurately describe, but something in the very air and rock of the place announced itself to his wizard's senses. There was no doubt the daemonfey stronghold was protected by a mythal stone, and a strong one at that.
How did Sarya raise a mythal in secret? he wondered.
More likely she'd found one and repaired it, he answered himself. It would require patience and lore, but there's no reason to think that the daemonfey lack either.
Araevin paused, considering his next move. He glanced around to make sure that he was still alone, and moved to a somewhat more sheltered corner of the room just in case. He had intended to immediately set about searching for Ilsevele and Maresa with his divinations, but it occurred to him that the mythal's properties might include alarms or spell traps against intruders. Each one of the old mythals was unique, and there was really no way of knowing what spells might or might not have been woven to shield the place before the daemonfey found it, or for that matter, whether or not the original spells still worked as intended. Old mythals tended to fray with time, and their powers sometimes faded away or decayed into new and dangerous properties unplanned by their makers.
It would help him judge the dangers of the mythal if he knew how long ago and by whom it had been raised. He was pretty sure Sarya's stronghold was somewhere in the North. After all, the daemonfey army had marched on Evereska from somewhere in the vicinity of old Hell-gate Keep-but Hellgate Keep itself had been completely destroyed. Most likely he was in some forgotten hold or vault of ancient Siluvanede or Sharrven, but he could not be certain.
"Enough speculation," he told himself.
He spoke one of the spells Saelethil had taught him, coaxing the mythal's woven web of ancient spells to become visible to him. All around him a bright golden network of drifting strands of magic slowly appeared.
Araevin carefully observed the tangible dweomers pervading the hall, analyzing them. First he looked for signs of alarms or spell traps that would catch the unwary. He spotted an alarm first, a spell designed to warn anyone within the mythal if a non-daemonfey spellcaster entered the ruins-a reasonable precaution, given the nearness of Silverymoon and Alustriel. He grimaced, realizing that again the faint blemish in his bloodline turned to his advantage. Then he examined the drifting thread more closely, and saw that it was a dark and potent red-gold in color. It was clearly something new, something added to the existing mythal.
Sarya has modified the mythal! he realized.
"I didn't think that was possible," he breathed.
Of course it's possible, Saelethil's memory told him. If none of the mythal-raisers contest your efforts, you can modify a standing mythal. It is strenuous and requires a little lore, but it can be done.
Araevin examined the mythal-weave again. There he saw a corrupted thread that would cause spells of magical force to fail if cast within the mythal's field. Another fraying weave allowed a knowledgeable caster to control the temperature within the mythal's bounds. A more intact strand would permit him to use the mythal's powers to enhance his own spells, making them swifter and more powerful.
"That's a useful trick," he noted.
More wards blocked scrying by those who did not know the proper key.
Araevin turned his attention to the founding ward, the strongest and most pervasive of all the magic streams, and there he found the lethargic golden trunk of the original ward warped by a strong new stream of burnished red-gold, like a strangling vine parasitizing an old tree. Sarya had twisted the first and primary warding the mythal offered. Araevin frowned and studied it more closely. In ancient times, he could see that the ward had been designed to absolutely bar the entrance of creatures who had knowingly consumed elf- or man-flesh. In the days when orcs, trolls, and demons besieged the North, it would have been a formidable bulwark against their armies. But Sarya had perverted that ward, and instead was using it to anchor something else in place. Hundreds of fine red filaments frayed out from the great ward, disappearing into the ether.
"Demons," he whispered. "That is how the Dlardrageths are summoning so many demons. They're using the mythal to do it."
Despite the fearsomeness of Araevin's newfound lore, he still felt sick. To see an ancient and noble work such as the mythal enslaved to a purpose its builders would have reviled simply turned his stomach.
He might be able to do something about that. But first he had to locate Ilsevele and Maresa.
Araevin closed his eyes and murmured the words of a powerful and unusual divination. In the air above his head, a dozen faint, ghostly orbs appeared. Each was a semitangible spell construct the size of a s
mall apple, with a single black pupil in its center. They were not invisible, but they were small and translucent, hard to see unless someone happened to look right at one.
"Spread out and search this place," he whispered to them. "Return and report if you find Ilsevele or Maresa, or in ten minutes if you don't."
At once the orbs wheeled and arrowed off in all directions, speeding through the shadowed stronghold and quickly vanishing from Araevin's sight. While the mythal prevented scrying divinations, if he was right in his assessment of the mythal's capabilities, it would not interfere with that particular spell. He folded his arms and waited, straining to detect the least sound that might indicate that his spying orbs had been seen or his own presence detected.
The moments crawled by as he waited motionless in the dimly lit hall. Then the first of his orbs returned, speeding to him. He caught the tiny thing in his hand and focused his attention on it.
"Report," he said.
Araevin's mind filled with the image of a rapid flight through one of the passages exiting the room, up a set of stairs, down one corridor to a dead end, then to the other end of the corridor where a pair of fey'ri swordsmen stood guard over a short hall filled with cell doors. He seemed to peer into the cells one by one, spotting Ilsevele and Maresa almost at once. They had been stripped of their weapons and armor, and seemed a little worse for the wear, but both were alive and awake. The view spun away again as the orb returned. Fortunately, it seemed that the jailors hadn't noticed its passage.
The orb dissipated in his hand, its task complete. Araevin looked up at the hallway it had followed. His companions were not far off, but he decided to wait a few minutes and see what else he might learn from his spying spell.
One by one his orbs returned, and he examined the findings of each. By the time he was finished, Araevin had a good sense of the layout of the place. The rift led up to a ruined city above, and from it, like the spokes of a buried wheel, radiated passages and halls. Forges, armories, storerooms, barracks… the place was a small fortress, hidden beneath the forgotten ruins above. He glimpsed a dozen or so fey'ri in various places, plus a handful of demons and yugoloths, most of whom seemed to be assigned to guard duties. Otherwise, the stronghold was almost vacant, and the majority of its halls and corridors were empty and silent. Sarya's army was not at home.
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