CHAPTER FOURTEEN
21 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms

Jorin Kell Harthan led Araevin and his friends along the forest road for a day and a half more, leaving the circle of standing stones thirty miles behind them. It was hard to gauge the passage of time in Sildeyuir; the subtle darkening and lightening of the sky was no substitute for a true sunrise or sunset, and the hours simply had a way of slipping away. Araevin would find his mind turning to some thought or another as they traveled, only to come to himself with a start only to realize that miles had passed by under his feet while his mind was occupied. He began to wonder whether the great magic that had created this world beyond the world had also altered the flow of time in the place—but of course, he could not really test that without returning to the Yuirwood and Aglarond to find out how long he had been away.
On two more occasions they encountered strange creatures abroad in the woodland. The first time they met a wheeling, darting flight of great dragonflies whose gemlike bodies glowed in soft emerald and sapphire hues beneath the trees. Each insect was better than a foot long, which caused no small consternation on the part of Donnor's horse, but the glittering swarm seemed merely curious about them, following the company for a time as they filled the air with whirring wing beats and soft light. On the second occasion, they sighted another one of the blue-black worm creatures crossing their path a couple of hundred yards ahead. It flew through the air on slick, gleaming wings, its spiraling motion twisting its flight into a strange aerial weave as it went. But the monster did not sight them, and simply continued on its way.
As the dimming hour approached and the skies began to darken again, they finally emerged from the great band of forest through which they had walked, finding themselves on the edge of a long stretch of low, rolling hills, crowned with waving silver grasses beneath the stars. There another large stone circle stood, which Jorin examined with great interest.
"I think I know where this place is," he told Araevin. "Distance here correlates to distance in the Yuirwood. We've come more than forty miles to the south, as much as directions mean anything here."
"Do you know where to find the star elves?"
Jorin nodded. "If I remember right, there is a citadel about ten miles in that direction." He pointed over the bare, starlit hills. "It lies on the far side of this clear space."
They made camp for the darkest hours within the circle of standing stones. Araevin could not detect any wakeful spells or magic within the circle, but he sensed old and powerful wards around the ring, and he judged them as good a defense as his own spells. He composed himself for Reverie, sitting cross-legged at the foot of a great stone with his back to the cold, smooth granite, and drifted off into strange dreams.
"Araevin."
He roused to full wakefulness with a start, and found Ilsevele touching his shoulder.
"What is it?" he asked
"A rider approaches. Two more of those dark creatures pursue him."
Araevin climbed to his feet. Donnor Kerth stood beside one of the outer stones, murmuring calming words to the hitched packhorse and looking back along the forest path they'd recently passed. Ilsevele stooped to wake Jorin and Maresa next, while Araevin joined the big human by the stone. He followed Donnor's gaze and spied the rider, galloping along the path. The trail ran alongside the stone circle for a time before doubling back, so they had an excellent opportunity to watch the fellow as he raced past them perhaps three hundred yards downhill, appearing and vanishing as he passed behind trees and steeper embankments along the trail. At that distance, he was little more than a glimmering white figure, tiny and distant, but Araevin quickly spied the flying monsters that followed him, twisting their way through the air above the trees .. and gaining on their quarry.
"He'll pass close by in just a minute or two," Donnor said. "What do we do?"
"Hail him and make ready to stand against the flying creatures," Araevin replied.
He didn't know who or what the rider was, but he didn't like the looks of the sorcerous worm-monsters at all, and he was not about to abandon anyone to them. Besides, the longer he watched, the more certain he was that the rider was an elf.
Donnor nodded. He drew his broadsword and pressed himself against the stone next to him, trying to stay out of sight. Ilsevele took up a position against another stone, her bow of red yew in her hands, and Maresa joined her. Jorin drew his own swords and slid down the slope a little to a boulder closer to the trail, crouching low to keep out of sight. Araevin took a moment to whisper the words of a spell of shielding, and waited.
The rider rounded the bend close by the ring of standing
stones and spurred his mount—a fine dappled-gray destrier, stretching out its long legs with an easy grace that belied the speed of its run—up the hillside, following the trail as it wound past the old menhirs. The flying monsters shifted their own course and climbed over the trees, cutting the corner against their quarry. Araevin decided that he'd waited long enough. He stepped out from behind the stones and waved at the rider.
"Here!" he cried. "Into the standing stones!"
A momentary astonishment crossed the rider's face, but he wasted no time at all. He wrenched the reins to the left and took his horse scrambling up the steep, grassy hillside. He was indeed an elf, though not of any kindred Araevin knew. He had skin as pale and fair as a moon elf's, but his hair was a pale gold that didn't often appear among the teu Tel'Quessir. He wore a gray cloak over a shirt of gleaming mithral mail and a quilted white doublet lavishly embroidered with gold thread.
"Beware the nilshai!" he called in Elvish. "They are fearsome sorcerers!"
The winged worm-monsters did not miss the rider's change of course. They veered toward the hilltop ring and arrowed through the air. One of them whistled and piped loudly, twisting its limbs in a strange fashion, and a sizzling green orb of acid appeared before it. With a flick of its long torso, the monster hurled the acid ball at the company sheltering among the stones.
Great glowing gouts of emerald fire exploded around Araevin and his friends, searing flesh and burning foul, smoking holes in cloaks and clothing, but the stones served as good cover—Araevin ducked under the spattering acid, and he saw Ilsevele throw herself forward out of the ring, escaping the worst of the blast. She rolled upright and fired three quick arrows at the nearest of the monsters. One shivered to pieces in midair, broken on some invisible shield of magic the worm had raised, but two others pierced its long, serpentine torso. It fluttered and twisted, its weird whistling taking on a shriller note.
Araevin incanted the words of a potent lightning spell,
and blasted up at the two creatures with an eye-searing bolt of blue-white. One darted aside, but the wounded one could not escape. The bolt burned it badly, bringing it spinning to the ground, smoke streaming from charred patches on its hide. Donnor and Jorin charged it at once, blades bared, but the monster had fight in it yet—it pulled the Lathanderian's feet out from under him with one swift jerk of its curling tail, and at the same time it enmeshed Jorin in a gleaming black spell-web of freezing shadows. Jorin's charge came to a stumbling halt ten feet short of the creature.
"Damn it!" he snarled, gasping with the bitter chill that snared him. "I can't get to it!"
Araevin turned his attention back to the nilshai that remained airborne, and managed to quickly parry the monster's next spell, batting the alien magic aside with a quick countering spell. He exchanged two more spells and counter spells with the monster in the next few heartbeats, again astonished by the speed with which the nilshai worked its magic while continuously weaving and dodging against Ilsevele's rain of deadly arrows.
On the hillside below him, Donnor gained his feet again and approached the wounded nilshai more cautiously. The monster lunged at him, battering at his shield with powerful blows of its whipping tentacles, but Donnor slashed it twice with his broadsword, weaving a glittering cage of steel with his blade. The nilshai recoiled from the human knight—and Maresa lunged in from behind it, fixing her rapier in the center of its torso between two of its three wings. The monster leaped and bucked, carrying Maresa's rapier from her hand and knocking her to the ground. It shrieked a single high, harsh note, then drew into a tight coil on the ground and lay still.
Maresa rolled to her feet, and grinned fiercely. "This one's done!" she called.
Araevin parried another spell from the one that remained, but then the creature managed to slip a spell through by virtue of its uncanny quickness, trapping him in a bitter, freezing fog of silver mist. He fumbled with his disruption wand with fingers that were suddenly stiff and
numb, and fought to utter the words of a dismissing spell, but then he heard a high, clear voice ringing behind him. A brilliant white arc of magic swept out of the old stone ring and lanced upward to blast the remaining nilshai, scouring the monster's dark flesh with silver power.
Araevin struggled to look over his shoulder to see what had happened, and he saw the elf they had rescued standing within the stones and singing, hands clenched at his sides, eyes fixed on the winged horror overhead.
The winged worm hissed and tried to climb out of the reach of the arcing magic, but then a pair of arrows from Ilsevele brought it down. Its wings folded in midair and it dropped to the ground like a stone. The rider held his song for one more moment then allowed the eldritch music to fade. He leaned against a menhir in fatigue.
Araevin finally managed to shake off the clinging silver fog that had numbed him. He turned to Jorin and dispelled the shadow-web with a quick word and motion of his hand, then looked at his companions.
"Is anybody hurt?" he asked.
"Singed a little from that acid, but I'm fine," Ilsevele answered. She looked down at her side, where a handful of holes in her tunic still smoked.
"I can tend to that," Donnor said. He picked his way back up the hillside and began to chant a healing prayer to Lathander, holding his hand over Ilsevele's side.
The rider straightened and turned to face Araevin. "I don't know how you came to be here, sir, but I am indebted to you," he said. His Elvish was a little strange to Araevin's ear, due in no small part to the remarkable voice the fellow possessed, a rich tenor in which every word held music. "I am Nesterin of House Deirr, and I believe that I owe you my life."
"I am Araevin Teshurr of Evermeet. This is my betrothed, Lady Ilsevele Miritar. Our companions Maresa Rost of Waterdeep, Dawnmaster Donnor Kerth of the Temple of Lathander, and our guide Jorin Kell Harthan of Aglarond."
"I am pleased to meet all of you, especially considering the circumstances." Nesterin bowed to each of them.
"Might I ask what brings your company to Sildeyuir? We rarely see folk of other races here."
"I guided them here," Jorin said, stepping forward. "You are of the Yuir?"
Jorin nodded. "I am. They have an errand of some importance. The Simbul's apprentice decided that they needed to speak with the star elves."
Nesterin studied Araevin and his companions more closely.
"Very well," he said at length. "The masters of the Yuirwood do not lightly give strangers their trust, and I am indebted to you all in any event. My home is only a few miles away. I would be greatly pleased if you would allow me to offer you the hospitality of House Deirr."
*****
The First Lord's Tower gleamed in the sunset, tall and slender as a sword blade over the center of Hillsfar. The evening was warm and still, and the lamplighters hurried through the streets to perform their duties as the city's bustle and commerce guttered out for the day. A whisper of magic danced in the air, and Sarya Dlardrageth and Xhalph appeared on a balcony amid a dull thump of displaced air.
As before, Sarya and Xhalph wore their human guises. She glanced at the balcony around them, and nodded in approval. As promised, Maalthiir had left it bare of any awkward spells or arcane defenses so that she or her messengers could simply teleport directly to his home. There was even an iced ewer of wine by the door leading into the tower. Sarya approved; the less she had to see of the human squalor surrounding Maalthiir's tower, the better.
Two Red Plume guards stood nearby, straightening to attention and smoothing the surprise from their faces.
"I see we're expected," Xhalph noted.
Sarya looked at the nearer of the guards. "You, there— tell your master that Lady Senda and Lord Alphon are here, and desire a few words with him "
She went over to the table and poured herself a goblet of wine, first taking a moment to work a minor spell to reveal any poisons that might be waiting for her.
The Red Plume muttered a word of assent, and ducked through the door leading into the tower proper. He returned a few minutes later with a short, burly human warrior in fine court clothes. The fellow dressed like a dandy, but his eyes glittered coldly within deep, dark sockets.
"Lady Senda," he said, bowing obsequiously. "I am Hardil Gearas, High Warden of the First Lord's Tower. If you'll follow me, I will lead you to Lord Maalthiir."
"Of course," Sarya purred.
The high warden bowed, and led her into the tower. They proceeded through sparsely furnished hallways of polished stone, eventually reaching a conservatory of modest size that seemed like it had seen little use. Though the harps and recorders in their fine glass cases showed not a hint of dust on them, the whole chamber seemed too carefully arranged for actual recitals. Besides, Sarya doubted that Maalthiir was much given to music, let alone practicing or performing himself.
She composed herself for a lengthy wait, but Maalthiir swept into the room almost on her heels, his four pallid swordsmen a pace behind him, and another pair of Red Plumes following. The first lord was dressed in a scarlet coat emblazoned with a Draconic emblem, and he carried his dark iron dragon claw scepter in his hand He paused in the doorway to study Sarya, and something less than humor creased his stern features.
"Lady Sarya," he said. "To what do I owe this unexpected call?"
"Lord Maalthiir." Sarya kept her voice neutral, and did not lower her gaze an inch from Maalthiir's dark eyes. "I am concerned by the progress of our campaign in Cormanthor, and I hoped you might be able to reassure me."
"I am widely regarded as the very font of optimism," Maalthiir rasped. "What specifically concerns you, Lady Sarya?"
"Evermeet's army has marched west a hundred miles
in the last three days, in order to meet Fzoul's Zhentarim army descending on Shadowdale," Xhalph answered. "We have dispatched several messengers instructing you to bring the Red Plume army north of Mistledale westward, so that you and Fzoul might combine and effect the destruction of the elven army. Yet Hillsfar's army has not yet moved."
Maalthiir's eyes flashed, but he kept his temper in check. "Of course. I have not ordered them to march."
Xhalph squared his shoulders, a low growl rumbling deep in his throat, but Sarya set a hand on his arm and silenced him. She folded her arms and paced across the room, finding the space confining and small.
"This is an excellent opportunity to destroy the elven army, Maalthiir," she said. "Your Sembian friends have led Seiveril Miritar to leave a good quarter of his strength sitting in Mistledale. Between your Red Plumes, the Zhentilar, and my own warriors, we can crush Miritar. However, if you do not move, you will expose Fzoul to defeat in detail."
"Lady Sarya," Maalthiir said, "that is exactly what I intend. It would suit my purposes very well indeed if Evermeet and Zhentil Keep were to maul each other in Shadowdale. Therefore I see no reason to send help to Fzoul Chembryl."
"I do not care about your petty little spats with Fzoul!" Sarya hissed. "I will not allow your machinations to upset my opportunity to destroy Miritar. Betray Fzoul later if you like, but today I need your army in Shadowdale, and you will not delay an hour longer."
Maalthiir measured Sarya for a long moment, making no reply. His coterie of dead-eyed swordsmen stood unmoving at his side.
"I am not your servant, Sarya," he said. "In fact, I see no reason to continue our association. Should Evermeet and Zhentil Keep fight to exhaustion in Shadowdale, my Red Plumes and Duncastle's Sembians will be the only powers left in the Dales. I see no reason to share that prize with a hellspawned harpy such as yourself."
"You treacherous dog," Sarya snarled. "You have no idea of the might I have gathered at Myth Drannor. I will destroy you for your perfidy!"
"You would be better advised to save your strength for Evermeet's army," Hardil Gearas sneered.
"If you will not take the field against Evermeet, then I will," Sarya promised. "I will crush Miritar with my own power, Maalthiir, and I will use Fzoul Chembryl to destroy you!"
She snapped out the words of a teleportation spell, reaching out to take Xhalph's arm. But to her astonishment, nothing happened; the spell simply failed, leaving her standing in the middle of Maalthiir's conservatory.
"The chamber is warded against teleportation," Maalthiir observed. He smiled, a hard and cheerless expression that did not touch his eyes. "I have no idea whether you can even begin to make good on your threats, Sarya, but as I have said before, I take few chances. Prudence would dictate that I not allow you to leave this room alive."
With a curt gesture of his dragon-clawed scepter, Maalthiir vanished from sight, and the swordsmen swept out their blades as one. Sarya bared her fangs and crooked her hands to cast a spell—but an instant later she was battered by a whole array of deadly magic, as Maalthiir suddenly reappeared, surrounded in a shimmering spellshield. A scintillating blast of vibrant colors embraced her in magical destruction, sending sheets of crimson fire racing over her body, while at the same time a sinister black ray struck her over the heart like a spear of ice, draining life and power from her, and a dancing sword of emerald green energy appeared above her head and slashed at her with dizzying speed. Xhalph was struck by a yellow ray that sent crackling yellow lightning racing over his body, charring and stabbing him.
He froze time to cast all those spells! Sarya realized. The sudden assault filled her with anger beyond measure. The fires burning on her skin troubled her not at all. She was the daughter of a balor lord, and no flame could
harm her, magical or otherwise. But the other spells were dangerous.
With a savage snarl, Sarya conjured an orb of helltainted fire and detonated it in her hands, scouring the whole room with the sinister flames. The cabinets exploded in shards of hot glass, and the Red Plumes were virtually incinerated before they even took a step. But Hardil Gearas threw himself into a corner and survived, and Maalthiir's swordsmen, while scorched badly, did not even break stride or show the slightest reaction to the clinging hellfire that burned on them. Maalthiir himself stood unharmed, protected by his spell-shields.
"You will have to do better than that, Sarya," he called.
Xhalph abandoned his magical guise with a roar of rage, instantly gaining two full feet in height as his scarlet-scaled form appeared. He leaped straight for Maalthiir, sweeping his swords out in one quick motion, but two of the pale swordsmen interposed themselves with uncanny swiftness. The daemonfey lord tried to simply bull his way through the unearthly guards, but their sword points darted and stabbed, drawing blood at thigh, hip, and shoulder before Xhalph even began his first parry. The daemonfey swordsman whipped around to confront one of the pair and drove four swords into the fellow at once, ripping the blades free with a shout of bloodlust—but nothing except strange black mist came from the wounds, and despite being almost ripped apart, the pale swordsman made no sound. He only staggered a bit with the force of the blows, and came on again, moving a little slower and more awkwardly as slashed tendons and rent muscle failed him.
Sarya found the other two swordsmen closing on her, while the blazing blade of green energy slashed and darted at her face. She quickly backstepped and managed to dispel the emerald sword before it did more than give her a couple of shallow cuts, but while she did that, Maalthiir intoned another spell, hurling a deadly blast of scathing cold at her. The thin white beam grazed her left arm and turned a solid foot of her forearm white and dead. Sarya screeched
in pain, and nearly died on the sword point of the first of Maalthiir's strange guardsmen to reach her.
Maalthiir cannot be beaten here and now, she realized. The First Lord's Tower was the heart of his domain, and he had prepared for a fight, while she had not. As much as she longed to rip the human dog to pieces with her own talons, she risked destruction with every moment she remained.
"Xhalph!" she shouted. "The window!"
Xhalph wheeled away from his antagonists at once, and hurled his heavy form at the row of narrow windows along the wall. They were not large enough to permit him to pass, but Xhalph's strength was immense, and he was caught up in the fullness of his wrath; nothing could stand in his way. Lowering his shoulder, he battered the lintel with such force that he sent a shower of masonry out of the tower's side and burst through into clear air.
Sarya darted after her son, abandoning her human appearance in midstep. Swords slashed and hissed through the air only a step behind her, and Maalthiir's last spell—a great, golden hand of magical energy that tried to snatch her out of the air—faltered and broke against the power of her demonic heritage, fizzling into nothingness. She spread her dark wings wide and soared away from the tower.
"I will tear him to pieces with my naked claws!" Xhalph bellowed, hovering in the air. "I will feed his entrails to rutterkin while he watches!"
"Yes, but not today," Sarya snapped.
She caught hold of Xhalph's hand and barked out another teleport spell. In the space of an icy instant, they hovered in the air above the green vastness of Cormanthor, with Hillsfar's spires and towers dimly visible in the warm haze far to the north and east. Sarya glared at the distant city, her eyes glowing red with pure hate.
"I should have known better than to try to find a use for stinking humans," she muttered. "Maalthiir thinks he is strong enough to defy me? He will learn otherwise. I will teach the humans to fear the wrath of House Dlardrageth!"
*****

As he had promised, Nesterin Deirr led Araevin and his companions toward his home. They walked over silvergrassed hilltops beneath the open, starry sky, leading the star elfs mount and Donnor's packhorse. As they walked, Nesterin questioned them about their presence in Sildeyuir and their travels in the realm—though he was fairly courteous and indirect about it, so much so that Araevin doubted whether any of his companions other than Ilsevele noticed that they were being skillfully interrogated as they walked.
Araevin decided to turn the tables on their host after Nesterin succeeded in drawing out of Maresa a good account of their meeting with the Simbul's apprentice and their journey through the Yuirwood. As the company fell silent for a moment, he asked, "What were those monsters you were fleeing from, Nesterin? We saw several others like them in the forest."
"They are the nilshai, and as you have seen, they are formidable sorcerers. They haunt the lonelier stretches of our forests." The handsome star elf glanced toward the dim line of trees, a dark tide washing against the hills by starlight, miles behind them. "It does not surprise me that you met them on your way here. They have been trying to poison our realm for many years now, loosing monsters in our forests and pulling the outlying reaches of Sildeyuir into their own sinister realm."
"Where do they come from? What do they want with you?" Ilsevele asked.
Nesterin shook his head. "We do not know. Some of our sages say that the nilshai are creatures of the Ethereal Plane, the spectral reality that infuses all the rest of existence. But Sildeyuir was disjoined from the Ethereal when our mages created this domain long ago. I cannot fathom why they would go to such lengths to bore gates into this realm, when the daylight world that you all come from is far more accessible to them."
"These things are even closer to our world than they
are to yours?" Maresa asked. She shook her head. "I don't like the sound of that."
"What business did you have in the forest we passed through?" Ilsevele asked Nesterin. "It seemed to be wild and desolate. You are the first person we've seen since crossing over from Aglarond."
The star elf was slow to answer. Araevin glanced over his shoulder at Nesterin, who was leading his horse as he walked alongside the rest of the company. The mage wondered for a moment whether Nesterin intended to keep his errand a secret, but it seemed that the star elf was simply organizing his thoughts.
"I had ridden out to the seat of House Aerilpe, where my cousin Leissera has lived for many years," Nesterin began. "It is a strong tower far to the south, overlooking the Shimmersea that marks the bounds of our kingdom in that direction. The nilshai have always been strong in that region, and their taint has filled vast tracts of the forest there with strange and dangerous creatures—things like plants or great funguses, but alive and hungry, and monsters to suit.
"I followed a road I thought to be safe to Aerilpe, but a few miles from the tower I found that the nilshai had been busy since last I passed that way. The forests were choked with creeping, groping tendrils and pallid, eyeless beasts that hunted in the shadows. And the very realm itself seemed to be, well . . . fraying. Sluggish streams or rivers of bright gray dust sliced through the landscape, and as I struggled to find my way through to Tower Aerilpe, the damnable stuff would close in behind me, trying to surround and trap me.
"In any event, I managed to find my way through to Aerilpe, but I found the tower utterly abandoned. Everything seemed as it should be—furnishings stood where last they had been used, clothes still filled the chests and drawers, food still lay almost fresh in the kitchens—but there was not a sign of another living soul. I lingered no more than an hour in that place, because it was simply so unnerving to be alone amid such silence, then I set out at once for home.
"I decided to try a different road on my return—the path that led past the old gate ring two days' walk behind you. The nilshai caught my trail, though, and they pursued me closely for the better part of a day." Nesterin glanced over at Ilsevele, and shrugged. "So there is my tale, Lady Ilsevele. A great House of our people has vanished, the distant reaches of my world seem to be coming undone, and I cannot explain why or how."
They walked on in silence for a while longer, and they crested another low hilltop. Before them on a high knoll overlooking a shining river stood an elegant tower of pale white stone. It was ringed by a tall, sturdy wall, and its lower galleries and bastions were carved from the dark gray granite of its natural footing. Dozens of softly glowing lamps gleamed in its windows and treetops.
"My home," Nesterin said. He glanced to Araevin and the others. "No one who has battled the nilshai will come to harm here, my friends, but I must warn you: Few who aren't star elves have ever walked in Sildeyuir. You will be asked to give an account of yourself, and you may be required to accept a geas or enchantment to ensure that you will guard our secrets well. I will speak on your behalf, but I cannot say how our lord will rule in your case."
Maresa scowled. "I'll be damned if I let you put a geas on me. Why shouldn't we just walk away now?"
Nesterin shrugged. "You saved my life today; you should know what awaits you. Araevin and Ilsevele, as Ar Tel'Quessir, have little to worry about. Nor does Jorin, though his judgment in bringing you here may be questioned. But you and the Dawnmaster have no elf blood, and are not known to us. If you choose to depart now, I must tell my lord that you are abroad in Sildeyuir, and he may very well decide that you are not to be allowed to wander about the realm."
Donnor Kerth's brow furrowed deeply, but the Lathanderian did not speak. Maresa, on the other hand, stopped dead in her tracks.
"I don't like jails," she said.
Ilsevele turned to her and set her hand on Maresa's
arm. "I promise you, Maresa, whatever they would do to you, they must do to me as well."
Maresa looked up to Ilsevele, and after a moment she snorted and shook her head. "You've got too much trust for any ten people, Ilsevele, do you know that?" She shrugged off Ilsevele's hand and started down the path again. "All right, then, let's see what Nesterin's folk make of us."
They followed the path down the silvered slopes of the grassy hillside, crossed the river on a bridge of luminous stone, and came up to the mithral gates of the tower. There half a dozen elf warriors in knee-length hauberks of whitescaled armor stood guard, armed with long halberds and slender bows.
"Welcome back, Nesterin," the captain of the gate guard said, but her eyes were fixed on Araevin and his companions. She searched for words, evidently more than a little surprised Finally she frowned and said, "I see you have been far afield in the last few days. Who are these people?"
"I did not find them; they found me," Nesterin answered. "They slew two nilshai and saved my life in the process."
"Two nilshai?" The captain glanced at Araevin again before looking back at Nesterin. "I will tell Lord Tessaernil of your return, and inform him that you have brought guests back to the tower."
"Good," said Nesterin. "They have a strange tale to share, and I have much to tell him of what I found at Tower Aerilpé. We will be in the high hall."
The captain sent a messenger off into the tower, and detailed two guards to attend to Nesterin's graceful destrier and Donnor's warhorse. Ilsevele flicked her eyes to Araevin, and the mage immediately grasped her unspoken thought—the gate guards treated Nesterin with an air of deference. Their host was an elf of some importance, one of the masters of the House.
"This way, my friends."
Nesterin gathered up Araevin's company and led them into the tower proper. It was a comfortable elven palace, though quite strongly built—more a citadel than a home, really, with high, well-made walls of stone. It was large
enough to be home to a hundred or more people, but Araevin quickly formed the impression that substantially fewer folk than that lived in Tower Deirr. They passed other elves only at odd intervals, and the echoing halls and corridors seemed too perfect and bare to have been lived in much.
Nesterin showed them into a small banquet room at the top of a winding flight of steps that ascended the rocky pedestal of the tower's hilltop.
"Please, lay down your packs, doff your cloaks, and make yourselves comfortable," he said. "I will send for refreshments for you."
"Thank you," Araevin murmured.
He shrugged his backpack from his shoulders and rested his staff by the door. The others followed suit. In the space of a few minutes they were dining on platters of fruit and warm bread. Nesterin joined in as well, with an apologetic smile.
"I fear that I haven't eaten in a couple of days," he said between bites. "I left Aerilpe in a hurry, as you might imagine."
As they ate, a tall, lordly star elf dressed in elegant robes appeared at the hall's door. Araevin sensed a deep and studious mastery of the Art in the elflord, a strength of spirit that reminded him of the might of Evermeet's own high mages. He had eyes of pure jet, with not a hint of iris, and his elegant features seemed to be graven with the weight of long care. His long white hair was bound by a platinum circlet at the brow, and hung loose to his collarbone and the nape of his neck.
"Jaressyr told me you'd returned, Nesterin," he said, his voice inflectionless. "I see that you have company."
Nesterin stood and bowed. "Lord Tessaernil," he said. "May I present Araevin Teshurr and Ilsevele Miritar of Evermeet, Maresa Rost of Waterdeep, Donnor Kerth of the church of Lathander, and Jorin Kell Harthan of the Yuir? My friends, this is Lord Tessaernil Deirr, my mother's elder brother and the master of this House."
The star elf lord nodded gravely to them. "I have heard that you aided Nesterin in a desperate hour. You have my
thanks for that. I want to hear what brings you to our land, but first-I did not expect you back so soon, Nesterin. Is everything well at Aerilpe?"
The younger elf frowned, and shook his head. "No, my lord, I fear that it is not." He quickly recounted the tale he had told Araevin and his friends, and went on to tell how he had encountered the company in the old stone ring at the edge of the hills as he fled from the nilshai "These travelers may very well have saved my life," he finished. "The nilshai pursuing me were more than I would have cared to face alone, and they were close to overtaking me when Araevin and his friends intervened."
"We would have done the same for anyone in your circumstances," Donnor Kerth said gruffly. "How could we have stood by and done nothing?"
Jorin looked to the two star elves and spoke. "My lords, I hope you will forgive my curiosity," he said. "I visited Sildeyuir once, many years ago. I do not recall meeting such dangerous and fell creatures abroad in your realm. Have these monsters always been here?"
"They have been getting much worse of late," Tessaernil admitted. His habitual frown deepened until his face seemed almost empty of hope. "There are portions of the realm that have been drawn almost completely into their influence. We are not a warlike people, but it is clear that we face a threat that we cannot hide from any longer. If the nilshai have learned how to assault our Towers, we face a dark and desperate battle indeed." He sighed, and turned to face Araevin. "Now, sir, you have already seen and heard more of this realm than I would like. I must ask: What brings you to Sildeyuir? Who are you, and what do you want here?"
"I am in search of knowledge that has been lost in the world outside your realm," Araevin said. "I hope that it still exists here, though."
"Knowledge?" Tessaernil folded his arms. "What sort of knowledge?"
"Thousands of years ago, a star elf mage named Morthil lived among the elves of Arcorar," Araevin answered. "He
helped the grand mage of that realm to defeat an ancient evil. I have reason to believe that Morthil returned to his homeland with magical lore that he removed from the enemies of Arcorar. I need to find out if anything of what Morthil removed from Arcorar still survives."
"There must be some reason you have come all the way to Sildeyuir in search of this old lore," Tessaernil observed. "What do you need with it?"
"I need it to defeat the enemies that Morthil once fought," Araevin said. "They are called the daemonfey, and they are an abominable House of sun elves who consorted with demons long ago."
He decided that Tessaernil was not an elf to be trifled with, and chose to tell him the story of events since Dlardrageth's return as completely and openly as he could.
When the tale was told, Nesterin and Tessaernil stood in silence for a long moment. The older lord finally moved to a seat at the head of the table and sat down heavily, his gaze troubled and distant.
"First Nesterin's tale, and now this," he murmured. "It has been a long time since I heard two such stories in the same day. We keep abreast of doings in Aglarond and the Yuirwood, but news of the wars and perils of the distant corners of Faerun rarely find its way to our realm."
Araevin paused, steeling his nerve to ask the question. "I perceive that you are skilled with the Art, Lord Tessaernil. Do you know of magical lore brought out of Arcorar to Sildeyuir? Have you heard the name of Morthil before?"
Tessaernil looked up at Araevin, his dark eyes unreadable. "I know that name," he said. "And I think I know where you might recover at least a remnant of Morthil's ancient lore. But you will find that it is a dark and difficult journey, son of Evermeet. Morthil's old tower lies in the farthest reach of our realm, in the borderlands where things have been slipping away into strangeness for many years now. Even if the place has not vanished entirely, I do not see how you can get there without passing into the domain of the nilshai. Few indeed return from that journey."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
23 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms

For two full days, Seiveril waited for the Zhentarim army to attack Shadowdale-town and the Twisted Tower. Forty-five hundred elf warriors of the Crusade held the woodlands and fields a couple of miles north of the town, standing alongside more than a thousand humans gathered from all corners of Shadowdale, a strong company from Deepingdale, and even a few dozen veterans from nearby Daggerdale. But having lost the foot race to crush the Dalesfolk before the elves of Evermeet arrived in Shadowdale, the Zhentilar settled for a very deliberate and cautious approach. Instead of pressing forward to the attack, they advanced at a snail's pace. By night the Black Network had fortified their camp with great earthworks and palisades.
On the evening of the third day, Starbrow found Seiveril standing among the pickets at the
northern end of the elven camp, gazing out across the fields toward the distant campfires of the Zhentarim camp. The moon elf joined him in studying the enemy entrenchments for a time.
"You understand what the Zhents are trying to do?" Starbrow asked.
"I didn't until this morning, when I saw that they were not marching today," Seiveril replied. "But I see it clearly enough now. They are going to make us come to them if we want to force a battle. And I have to do it, because the longer I sit here waiting on the Zhents, the more likely it is that the Sembians and Hillsfarians will overwhelm Mistledale or march against our rear." Seiveril ran a hand through his fine silver-red hair, and sighed. "I should have anticipated this response. Clearly our best strategy is to defeat our enemies in detail, and that means I must fall on the Zhents while their allies are still far behind us. The burden of action is on me."
Starbrow nodded. "You're learning. So when do we fight?"
"It has to be soon," Seiveril admitted. "Tomorrow is as good a day as any. What do you think?"
"Tonight, an hour after moonset," Starbrow said. "We'd have three hours until sunup. We see in the dark better than the humans, and we need less rest. It's the best time for elves to fight humans, and our Crusade makes up better than three-quarters of the fighting strength we have gathered in Shadowdale."
"A good part of their army consists of orcs, gnolls, and ogres. The darkness won't bother them."
"True. But if the Zhentilar break, the humanoid mercenaries in their camp might follow. It's the best we can do. We could wait another day and plan a more deliberate attack for the day after tomorrow, but why give Sarya and her human pawns another day to close the noose around our necks?"
"All right, then. Tomorrow morning." Seiveril clapped Starbrow on the shoulder. "Pass the word to our captains. I have to speak with Lord Mourngrym and Lady Silverhand, and tell them what we intend."
He glanced once more at the open fields before him, wondering briefly how many elves and humans would meet their ends in those common farm fields by dawn the next morning. Then he turned away to go in search of the lord of Shadowdale and Storm Silverhand.
He found Mourngrym Amcathra inspecting the old ditch-and-rampart earthworks that lay a few hundred yards north of the town, barring passage against any invader approaching along the northern road. The ramparts had been raised fifteen years past to defend the town against another Zhentarim invasion. The elven army was bivouacked a mile to the north, astride the road, but the Grimmar—as folk from Shadowdale preferred to be called, after the old Castle Grimstead that had once stood in the Dale—were readying the ramparts as a second line of defense. Mourngrym was pounding sharpened stakes into the ground with his own hands, hard at work with a whole crew of townsfolk, as Seiveril rode up.
"Lord Miritar," he said with a nod, wiping the sweat from his brow. "The Zhents are staying put?"
"Yes, for now," Seiveril said. He dismounted and left his reins with the knights who served as his guard. "They are not going to move, not as long as they hope to catch our army between the Red Plumes and their own force. Yet we have to scatter or destroy the Zhentilar as quickly as possible, so that we can turn back to deal with the Red Plumes and Sembians in Mistledale and Battledale. We will have to take the fight to them, I am afraid."
Mourngrym gave a stake two more taps with the wooden sledge he held then set down the hammer and said, "I'd rather stand on the defensive, but I understand your predicament. Shadowdale isn't the only realm you're fighting for. What do you have in mind?"
"We will march against their camp and attack an hour after moonset."
The lord of Shadowdale glanced sharply at him "You'll have to start marching in a matter of hours. Can your captains organize an attack on a fortified camp that quickly?"
"Yes," said Seiveril, and he felt a pang of pride in his heart as he realized that he was not boasting. "It will be hard, but we have faced worse in the last few months." He paused then added, "There is an advantage to a hasty attack. If there are any spies around—daemonfey or Zhent-they will not have much of an opportunity to discover our intentions and report."
"I wish that were not a consideration, but you are right." The human lord looked off toward the north, where the ruddy glare of watch fires drew a broad red smear across the northern sky. "Elven archery in the night is a fearsome thing, but my folk will be hindered by darkness until the skies start to lighten. Could you detail a company of your scouts to march with the muster of Shadowdale? A few of your elves will go a long way toward guiding my folk to the fight in the dark, and helping them until it grows light enough for humans to see well, too."
"A wise idea, Lord Amcathra. I will make sure that a good number of Jerreda Starcloak's wood elves march in your ranks in the morning." Seiveril looked around, and asked, "Is Lady Silverhand nearby? She should be told, too."
"She's out in the eastern dale with a party of riders— Harpers and such folk," Mourngrym said. "She saw an opportunity to waylay a Zhentilar cavalry squadron and a couple of sky mages that have been causing trouble out there, and I asked her to make a sweep of the forest border to make sure that the Zhents weren't looking to march east and outflank our lines. I'll send a couple of her Harpers after her tonight." He offered Seiveril a grim smile. "You know, Storm told me before she left that she thought you'd move against the enemy camp within a day or two. I think she knew your mind before you did."
"It would not surprise me," Seiveril answered. He stepped forward and gripped Mourngrym's forearms. "I must return to our camp. We will send the wood elves soon, and the moment I know where and when we will strike, I will send word."
Mourngrym nodded. "If we can drive them out of their camp, there's no place for the Zhents to stop running before they reach Voonlar. I like the thought of that."
*****
Six hours later, Seiveril sat on his courser, armed and armored for battle. He had managed only half an hour of Reverie while the rest of the camp was rising and arming, since he spent his whole night hammering out the best plan of attack he and Starbrow could come up with. Yet he did not feel tired. The hour having come for him to test his strength against Zhentil Keep, he was anxious to be 'about it.
"Edraele Muirreste reports that the Silver Guard is in position, Lord Miritar," said Adresin. The young captain was Seiveril's herald and adjutant on the field of battle. As much as Seiveril relied on Thilesil as his aide-de-camp, she was not a skilled fighter. Instead, she remained with the other healers and clerics to tend to the inevitable tide of the wounded and dying, and Adresin served as his voice and messenger on the battlefield.
"Very good, Adresin."
Seiveril looked up and down along the line. Concealed with illusory mists that mimicked a low ground fog hovering over the damp, cold fields in the chill night air, the Crusade was arrayed for battle. In the center marched Seiveril's best infantry, the Vale Guards from Evereska he had not left behind in Mistledale. Seiveril had also massed most of his magical might in the center. His bladesingers, spellarchers, and battle-mages marched among his heavy infantry, some openly, others disguised as common footsoldiers. To his left, on the west side of the dale, Jerreda Starcloak's wood elves were already slipping through the dark forests. On his right, where the land was somewhat more open, the Grimmar had gathered under their lord Mourngrym. Seiveril was surprised to find the townsfolk arrayed in quiet, purposeful ranks, with none of the sloppiness or empty bravado he might have expected of a
hastily gathered militia. More than a few of those farmers and merchants knew their way around the battlefield, and the elflord realized that he had misjudged their strength. Then again, the Zhents had done exactly that more than once, hadn't they?
Seiveril twisted in his saddle-an awkward motion in his plate armor—and verified once again the companies of knights and cavalrymen who waited behind the infantry. Ferryl Nimersyl and the Moon Knights of Sehanine, along with the remaining Knights of the Golden Star and Lord Theremin's men-at-arms from Deepingdale, made up most of that force. If Seiveril's hammer blow on the center carried the Zhentish earthworks, it was their job to stream through the hole and devastate the camp.
"All right, Adresin," he said. "Pass the word: Forward, march!"
Adresin softly called out the order, and the banners of Seiveril's command company dipped once. All along the line, keen-eyed elves watched for the visual signal. Seiveril had no intention of announcing the attack with horn blasts or battle cries. With an uneven surge, the elves flowed smoothly out into the misty fields before the enemy's own earthworks. The Zhentilar had raised their last camp only five miles from the town itself. The elves and the Grimmar had closed to within a mile in a cold, dark march they started three hours after midnight.
Corellon, grant us a swift and easy victory, Seiveril prayed fervently. Lull the Zhents to slumber for just a little longer. I do not want to send any more of your sons and daughters to Arvandor than I must today.
Their mail muffled with strips of cloth, silent in the dim fog, the army pressed forward. The elves were taking care not to march in step, and did not have heavy footfalls in any event, so all that met Seiveril's ears was an ominous rustle and creaking, punctuated by the occasional soft whicker of a horse or a low cough. Steadily the ramparts drew closer, and in the morning mist Seiveril found himself entertaining the curious conceit that his army was standing still, while the waiting battle at the
ramparts was slowly advancing on him instead of the other way around.
A brilliant stroke of lightning flashed overhead, followed by a peal of thunder. Seiveril looked up at once, and saw in the fading brilliance the shape of a great, winged monster wheeling overhead. He glimpsed a dark figure astride the flying monster, a staff clutched in his hands. The Zhentilar sky mage hurled another blast of lightning down at the Grimmar off to his right, but then a pair of Eagle Knights streaked down out of the dark skies, lances couched. The monster croaked and turned away as a furious melee erupted in the skies over the elves' march
"Well, I didn't really think we would reach the camp undetected," Seiveril muttered. "Adresin, wind your horn! Now is the time for speed!"
In the crude earthworks ahead a flat iron gong began to sound, beating an alarm. But a moment later it was drowned out by the high, clear ringing of dozens of elven horns. From the Crusade came a great roar in answer, and the elves and Dalesfolk broke into a run, hurrying to cross the last few hundred yards of ground before the Zhents could fully man their palisade.
A barrage of battle-magic blasted out from the Zhentilar camp, streaking fireballs and scathing ice storms, but Jorildyn and the other battle-mages were ready for that. They quickly countered most of the Zhentish magic, dispelling deadly invocations or raising magical shields to ward off battle spells. Many of the Zhentish spells faltered, broken on the elven defenses, but a few streaked through and detonated amid the onrushing elf and human soldiers. Horses screamed in the cold air, and battle cries became shrieks of pain, but the elves' rush swept on unbroken. From a dozen places in the elven lines mages halted their advance for a step to reply with spells of their own, scouring the enemy earthworks.
"Archers!" cried Seiveril. "Cover the ramparts!"
Trained to fire on the move, elf archers began to shower the palisade with a silver storm of arrows. Even though the Zhentilar rushing up to take up station behind their staked
ditch-and-berm were well hidden by their earthworks, all an elf archer needed was a glimpse of a foe to send an arrow winging his way with uncanny accuracy. Seiveril was close enough to see bands of gnoll archers gathering behind the ramparts to fire back, as companies of ogres, bugbears, orcs, and black-clad human pikemen streamed up to defend their ramparts. But they were slow to form ranks, and several large gaps beckoned, places where Zhentil Keep's soldiers had not yet reached their posts or elven battle-magic had seared the ramparts clear.
We have them! Seiveril thought, and he started to give Adresin the order to charge.
But at that moment the air all around Seiveril and his guard rippled and boomed with dozens upon dozens of sulfurous belches. Demons and devils by the score appeared all around Seiveril's banner, grinning with needle fangs, eyes ablaze with hellish glee as they teleported to attack Seiveril's standard. Elves surrounding Seiveril cried out in panic, and horses screamed in sudden terror.
"'Ware the demons!" cried Adresin. "To the banner! To the banner!"
The center of the charging elven line was thrown into chaos. Seiveril found himself beset by a pair of insectlike mezzoloths, fearsome hellspawn who carried great tridents of iron. He danced his mount aside from the stabbing points, and barked out the words of a prayer that unsummoned one of the monsters, hurling it back into the foul netherworld from which it had come.
The other monster lunged and nearly impaled the elflord with a low belly thrust that Seiveril barely blocked with his shield. He reared his warhorse and battered at the monster with his courser's deadly silver-shod hooves, then wheeled around and caught the dazed yugoloth off-guard, smashing at it with his holy mace. The weapon burned with a pure white light as it struck demonflesh, and the mezzoloth's beak clicked and hissed in pain.
The mezzoloth reeled back out of reach and vanished in the confusion of the fray. Seiveril looked around desperately, trying to see what had become of the attack.
The Zhentish ramparts were only sixty yards away, and he could see that on both the right and the left that the wood elves and the Dalesfolk were already sweeping up and over, laying down a storm of arrows. Whole companies of elven infantry from the center continued their attack as well, already ahead of the demons who had suddenly teleported into their midst. And behind him the Moon Knights and Knights of the Golden Star were falling upon Sarya's demonic minions. Seiveril had wanted to use them to wreck the camp, but they had to drive off the demons and devils, and Ferryl Nimersyl knew it.
A gout of fearsome hellfire washed over Seiveril, and he staggered in his saddle as his mount reared and screamed The elflord wrestled with the animal, speaking a quick healing prayer to salve his mount's injuries, and looked up just in time to catch the heavy blow of a nycaloth's brazen sword on his shield. The hulking monster snapped at him with its awful maw, and caught Seiveril's right arm in its teeth. Elven plate crumpled in the force of its bite, and Seiveril cried out as the foul fangs pierced his flesh. His mace dropped from his fingers, and the nycaloth wrenched him out of his saddle, shaking him like a dog worrying at a rabbit.
"Get away from me, hellspawnt" Seiveril snarled.
He ignored the agonizing pain in his arm and the bruising and battering, finding the clear still center in his soul where Corellon Larethian's divine power waited, and he shouted out a holy word of great power. In a burst of supernal white light Seiveril blasted a circle twenty yards wide clear of demons, devils, yugoloths, and all other sorts of foul creatures from the lower planes. The nycaloth shaking him vanished with an ear-splitting howl, so suddenly that Seiveril dropped to the ground and went to all fours, shaking his head.
Wincing inside his helm, he looked at the blood streaming from the punctures in his arm, and took a moment to whisper another healing prayer, staunching the wound. Then he groped for his silver mace and clambered to his feet, looking for his mount.
"Lord Seiveril! Are you hurt?" Adresin rode up, his golden armor badly scorched on one side, but seemingly unhurt otherwise.
Ferryl Nimersyl of the Moon Knights followed him, his gleaming white armor spattered with black gore.
"I've lost my mount, but I am all right," Seiveril managed.
He spied another horse nearby, its owner nowhere in sight, and hurried over to swing himself up into the saddle. The Golden Star knights and the Moon Knights were all around him, battling furiously against those hellspawn that still remained. He groaned in frustration, seeing the chaos that had come from the daemonfey intervention .. . but then a ragged shout of triumph from the right caught his ear. He looked toward the ramparts, and saw that only a few dark islands of Zhentilar soldiers remained on the ramparts. Left and right, wood elf and Dalesfolk archers held the earthworks and rained arrows down into the camp from point-blank range, and even in the center, the Evereskans had managed to seize their line as well.
"What kind of unholy alliance has Sarya forged with the lower planes?" Ferryl Nimersyl snarled. "Demons, devils, yugoloths all fighting together—they are supposed to be the most implacable of enemies!"
"I have no answer," Seiveril replied, though it was a question that troubled him too. There was no time to answer it just then, however. "Ferryl, rally your knights to my banner. I mean to take that camp."
The commander of the Moon Knights nodded and called for his riders to gather at Seiveril's banner. In the space of a hundred heartbeats, better than fourscore knights of both the orders assembled in a dense knot around Seiveril. Then they rode forward, veering to make for the gap where the Evereskans had breached the rampart. Seiveril kept his eyes away from the elf warriors who lay still among the stakes of the ditch and the steep berm, spurring his new mount to scramble up the rampart.
At the crest of the earthwork, he paused to take in the scene. There was little fighting along the rampart.
The elves had seized the camp's fortifications. But a furious melee still raged among the tents and wagons of the Zhentish camp. The first gray gleam of the coming dawn lightened the sky to the east, and by its faint light Seiveril could see to the far side of the camp—where hundreds of Zhents were streaming north, abandoning their encampment. But waiting for them along the road to Voonlar was the Silver Guard of Elion, with Starbrow and Edraele Muirreste at its head, five hundred elven cavalry to ride down and harry the Zhents as they fled.
"Well done, Seiveril," said Ferryl Nimersyl. "Even with the demon attack, your plan worked. We've got half their army trapped between us and the Silver Guard."
Seiveril nodded. "Corellon has favored us again. Come, my friends, we have hard and ugly work to finish here."
With a high battle cry he spurred his way down from the earthworks into the camp, followed by the knights of Evermeet.
*****
Araevin and his comrades remained at Tower Deirr for several days, guests of Lord Tessaernil, Nesterin, and their folk. They were not prisoners—at least, they were not disarmed or confined—but Tessaernil was very clear that they were not to leave without his permission. Maresa prowled the tower continuously, more than half-convinced that they were prisoners who simply didn't know it yet, but Araevin availed himself of the opportunity to study the elflord's library of old tomes, and Ilsevele studied the star elves themselves.
They were an ancient people, the descendants of the old kingdom of Yuireshanyaar that had once stood in Aglarond's forests thousands of years ago. In appearance they were very much like moon elves, though they tended toward fair hair instead of the dark brown or blue-black of most moon elves. But Araevin found their reserve and serious demeanor more reminiscent of many sun elves he knew. They had a love of song and music that was remarkable,
even among elves, and when a truly skilled singer such as Nesterin raised his voice, the effect was so unearthly and beautiful that time itself seemed to fall still and listen.
As Nesterin had told them, the star elves had created Sildeyuir as a refuge, a place to which they could Retreat from the cruel and ambitious human empires that had arisen in the ancient east. More than a thousand years before the raising of the Standing Stone in the Dales, the human kingdoms of Narfell and Raumauthar, as well as Unther and Mulhorand, had fought furiously for dominion in the region. In western Faerun many elves had retreated to Evermeet to avoid such ambitious human empires, but the star elves had decided to simply remove their entire realm rather than abandon it to flee elsewhere. All of Sildeyuir was a great work of high magic, an echo of the Yuirwood itself spun into starshine and dusk through mighty spells of old.
Since the creation of Sildeyuir, the star elves had slowly slipped farther and farther from Faerun, leaving the daylight world to its own devices. Many still traveled through the old elfgates and roamed Aglarond or the Inner Sea, but they passed themselves off as moon elves, and did not speak of their homeland to strangers. Few elves remained in the forests of the east outside of Aglarond itself, and those who lived within the Yuirwood kept their silence regarding the star elves' secret.
Araevin spoke with Tessaernil at length, and discovered that after leaving Arcorar almost five thousand years ago, the wizard Morthil had returned to Yuireshanyaar and subsequently become that realm's grand mage. He had played a leading role in the affairs of the kingdom for several centuries. The former apprentice of Ithraides had gone on to become an even greater mage than his master in time, founding a society of wizards known as the Seneirril Tathyrr, or the Mooncrescent Order. The order survived all the long centuries from the time of Arcorar down to Sildeyuir's creation, three thousand years after the time of Ithraides and two thousand years before the present day.
"Even among elves, that is a very great span of time," Araevin said to Tessaernil and Nesterin as they sat together in the library. "How is it that Morthil has been remembered for so long?"
"His tomb lies in the rotunda of Mooncrescent Tower," Tessaernil said. "He was revered as the founder of the order. I saw it when I studied there in my youth."
Araevin's heart leaped in his chest. He set his hand to his breastbone, and felt the Nightstar murmur under his touch. Morthil's works had survived to within a single elf lifetime of the present day. Was it too much to hope that a telkiira stone or a spell passed down from master to apprentice over the years might still endure, too?
"Does any of Morthil's handiwork still survive? Loregems, spells he created, spellbooks he scribed?"
"When I was young, there were stories told in the Seneirril Tathyrr that the secret libraries and vaults of the tower might hold such things. But that was a long time ago— about three hundred years after the making of Sildeyuir and the translation of our kingdom into this plane."
Araevin stared at Tessaernil. "You told me before that Yuireshanyaar had been removed to Sildeyuir two thousand years ago. You have lived that long?"
"Time flows differently in Sildeyuir, Araevin. One year passes here for every two in the world outside." Tessaernil offered a small smile. "I was born over eighteen hundred years ago, but I am in truth not more than nine hundred years old."
"You may not find that remarkable, but few of my folk reach nine centuries, even in Evermeet," Araevin said. "Queen Amlaruil might be that old, but she enjoys the blessing of the Seldarine themselves."
"It is noteworthy among my people as well," Nesterin observed. He offered a crooked smile. "I introduced Lord Tessaernil to you as my uncle. It would have been more accurate to add a few 'greats' before that."
"You said before that you thought Morthil's tower lies in the farthest reach of your realm—you were referring to Mooncrescent Tower?"
"Yes," Tessaernil replied.
"So I need only speak to the masters of the tower, then," Araevin said. "They will be able to help me with Morthil's ancient lore."
"That is the problem," Nesterin said. "The order failed some time ago, and Mooncrescent Tower has been abandoned for centuries. It lies at the very border of our realm. Given what I recently discovered when I visited House Aerilpe, I fear that the place may no longer be accessible."
"As soon as you give me leave to, I certainly intend to try it, regardless of the tower's present circumstances," Araevin answered. "I have no small experience in dealing with ancient ruins and warding magic "
The older elflord nodded. "I cannot understate the peril you may face, Araevin, but I did not expect that you would depart without trying." He glanced to Nesterin and continued, "I have spoken with some of the other House lords of our land, taking counsel about you and your companions. I have decided to allow you to attempt Mooncrescent Tower. Nesterin here has agreed to guide you, at least as far as any road will serve."
"I thank you, Lord Tessaernil," Araevin said. He stood and offered a deep bow to the ancient elflord.
"You might not later, if things prove as dangerous as I fear they may," Tessaernil said. He stood as well, and gravely returned Araevin's bow. "You may set out when you like, Araevin. I wish you good fortune and a safe journey."
*****
For two days, Scyllua Darkhope fought with every inch of her zeal and determination to extricate something from the disaster on the borders of Shadowdale. By all rights, the Zhentarim army should have disintegrated completely in the retreat back to Voonlar, harried as it was by the slashing attacks of pursuing elf riders. But Scyllua personally commanded the rearguard action, turning at bay and standing her ground whenever the elves pressed too close,
then wheeling away to gallop another mile or two down the road as soon as the elves had been repulsed again.
As she harangued the last weary companies of the rearguard, keeping them on their feet and moving north through nothing more than her own unswerving will, she found Fzoul Chembryl at a nameless ford ten miles south of Voonlar. The lord of Zhentil Keep and his company of guards came riding south, against the march of soldiers retreating north, breasting a path through the exhausted ranks with callous indifference.
When Fzoul caught sight of Scyllua, he said, "Ah, there you are. Come, Scyllua, I would like to have a word with you."
Scyllua dismounted and followed Fzoul into an old stone cottage that overlooked the ford. She did not fear punishment for her failure at Shadowdale. There was no point in dreading it. She had failed, and she would be disciplined. That was the way of the Black Lord. If she wanted to earn Bane's favor again, she must endure her punishment stoically, with no attempt at evasion or excuses.
Fzoul muttered the words of a spell and sealed the cottage from scrying or outside observation. Then, when he was satisfied, he turned to Scyllua and delivered a great backhanded slap to her face that spun her half around and left her reeling drunkenly, her ears ringing.
"How did you allow this to happen?" he demanded.
Scyllua spat blood from her split lip, and slowly straightened. She kept her hands at her sides, expecting that her lord and master would strike her again.
"I failed to take sufficient precautions against an attack on my camp, my lord," she said. "I expected to attack, not to be attacked."
"Did you not entrench your camp every night, and post a strong watch?"
"I did, my lord. But events proved those measures insufficient."
"Clearly," Fzoul muttered. "Recount all that happened as you marched south from Voonlar. Do not seek to conceal anything from me."
Scyllua did as she was told. When she had finished, she awaited Fzoul's punishment with open eyes. But the Chosen of Bane did not immediately lash out. Instead, he turned away, frowning, his thick arms crossed before his chest.
After a long time, he spoke. "Circumstances beyond your control contributed to your failure," he grudgingly admitted. "We had an excellent chance to crush the elven army, but the Red Plumes and Sembians did not take the steps that needed to be taken."
Scyllua looked up at Fzoul. "The Red Plumes did not move on Mistledale?" she asked in surprise. She'd simply assumed that Hillsfar would have moved against the elven army's rear. "Maalthiir is not stupid," she muttered, talking more to herself than to Fzoul. "He would not have missed that chance unless he chose to miss it. He has betrayed us, Lord Fzoul!"
"My spies in Hillsfar report that Maalthiir had some sort of falling out with his mysterious new allies. There were reports of a fearsome magical duel fought in the First Lord's Tower several days ago."
"Does Maalthiir still live?"
"Regrettably, yes. But this story of a falling out with Sarya intrigues me." Fzoul looked back to Scyllua. "The daemonfey agents who accompanied you and summoned the demons against Evermeet's army—what became of them?"
"They abandoned us after we were driven from the camp," Scyllua said bitterly. "As soon as they saw that we were beaten, Lord Reithel and his guards declined to offer any more assistance and left."
"It seems that we are no longer useful to them," said Fzoul. He scowled. "Now what? Do I hold back strength to counter Hillsfar ... or Myth Drannor, for that matter? Do I strike a deal with the daemonfey and turn against Maalthiir? Or do Maalthiir and I hold to our agreement, and simply remove the daemonfey from consideration?"
Scyllua stood motionless, blood trickling from her damaged face. She would not be so forward as to offer an opinion. Fzoul was lost in his own dark thoughts, anyway.
He stroked his mustache, and nodded.
"We deal with Maalthiir," he decided. "That's the thing to do. As long as we have an understanding with Hillsfar and Sembia, we must profit by it. Let the elves worry about the daemonfey, and vice versa. In the meantime, Scyllua, you will repair this broken army as quickly as you can. I will have need of it soon."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
26 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms

Araevin and his comrades set out from the citadel of House Deirr on the day following Araevin's conversation with Lord Tessaernil. The elflord provided them with mounts for their journey; the horses of Sildeyuir were lightly built and graceful, with spirited manners. Donnor Kerth looked on their destriers with some suspicion, not entirely sure that the horses could keep up a good speed on a long ride, but the star elf mounts proved quick and enduring. They soon showed that they could outpace the heavily armored Dawnmaster, even if they were several hands shorter than the big roan Kerth had brought with him
Nesterin rode at their head, leading the way along dim, shadowy roads of moss-grown gray stone that wound through countless miles of dusky forest. Araevin and Ilsevele rode behind the star
elf, followed by Maresa and Kerth. Jorin Kell Harthan brought up the rear of the party, keeping a careful eye on the shadows behind them as they rode on. Tessaernil had warned them that no part of Sildeyuir outside the walls of an elven citadel was truly safe, and the Yuir ranger had taken the warning to heart.
They went on for several days, as near as Araevin could tell, halting to rest in the hours when the gloaming was at its deepest and the stars shone brightly in the velvet sky, then rising as the pearly gray of the lighter hours began to seep back up into the sky. From time to time they crossed over rushing streams on bridges of pale stone or came to silent crossroads in the forests, places where dim roads led off into the shadows beneath the silver trees. They even passed by several lonely citadels or towers, isolated keeps whose gleaming battlements looked out over the forest from rugged hilltops or slumbered in broad, grassy vales. Some of the towers glimmered with lanternlight and song, but others were dark and still, long abandoned.
As they rode past another of the empty towers, Maresa gazed up at the shadowed tower and shuddered. "Is this whole realm desolate?" she asked aloud. "We've gone sixty miles or more from Tower Deirr, and we haven't met a single person on the road. We've passed more empty keeps than occupied ones!"
Nesterin glanced back at Maresa and shrugged. "Most of the realm is like this," he said. "My people built true cities long ago, but our numbers have been dwindling for centuries. With the whole plane to ourselves, we never saw a need to crowd together into narrow lands and teeming towns. But I fear that the distances between our keeps and towers and towns are growing longer with each year."
"Do any towns or keeps lie ahead of us?" Ilsevele asked.
The star elf shook his head. "Our road doesn't take us near any towns," he said. "We are heading out toward the edge of the realm. In fact, I know of only one more keep on this road before we reach the place where Mooncrescent Tower once stood."
As it turned out, the keep that Nesterin remembered was also abandoned, with no sign of its People. Its walls were pitted and charred, as if by acid.
"The nilshai," the star elf said bitterly as they studied the ruins "They must have come here, too."
"You are under attack, Nesterin," said Donnor. "Your foes are destroying you one by one. You must gather your strength, and soon, or you will be lost."
"We are not as warlike as you humans," Nesterin protested. "Sildeyuir has never had need of an army. We are the only realm on this plane!"
"War has come to Sildeyuir, whether you are ready for it or not," Ilsevele said.
Nesterin bowed his head, and did not answer.
They managed another day and a half of riding before they came to the first of the gray mist rivers. The road dropped into a dark, shallow dell, and in the bottom of the small hollow a silvery mist or dust flowed sluggishly across the road like a low fog. At first glance the stuff seemed innocuous, but as they drew closer, the horses stamped nervously and refused to set foot in it.
"Is this the mist you encountered when you rode to Aerilpe?" Ilsevele asked Nesterin.
The star elf frowned. "Yes, it is. But I did not expect to meet it so soon. We're many miles from Mooncrescent yet." He glanced around the shining forest, his eyes dark and troubled. "Aillesel Seldarie! What is becoming of my homeland?"
"It's just a little mist," Maresa snorted. "Just ride on through, and have done with it!"
"The horses don't like it at all," Ilsevele said. "And now that I'm here, I find that I don't like it either. Ride on through if you like, but I think we should look for a way around it if we can."
The genasi tapped her heels to her mount's flanks, and urged the animal forward until the mist lapped over the horse's hooves, and strange tendrils or streamers of the silvery stuff seemed to wind around its legs. The horse began to shy in fright, its ears flat along its head, its eyes
wide and rolling. Maresa struggled with the animal, but then she gasped and drew away, backing the horse quickly away.
"The mist tried to grab me!" she exclaimed.
"I didn't see anything," rumbled Donnor. "Are you sure?"
"I felt it," Maresa insisted. "It's thick as molasses in there. And it was trying to pull me in deeper." She shuddered, her white hair streaming from her face as if she stood in a strong wind. "Have you ever stood in a high place and felt as if you might fall? As if you were about to slip over, but you didn't really want to stop yourself? It's something like that."
Nesterin nodded in agreement. "That's how I recall it. I discovered that I didn't dare cross more than a few feet of the mist, not even when the nilshai were on my heels."
Ilsevele looked over to Araevin. "What is this, Araevin? Do you have any idea?"
The wizard studied the weird, silver-gray mist, streaming slowly through the hollow's floor.
"I am not sure," he said. "One moment...."
He murmured the words of a seeing spell and studied his surroundings, searching for signs of magic. His companions all glowed brightly, armed as they were with various enchanted weapons or protective spells. Araevin ignored them and bent his attention to the sluggish silver-gray river of dust—or mist or smoke—that flowed across their path. Slowly he realized that the whole forest around him, and the sky overhead, was a vault of deep and powerful magic, a great silver artifice of staggering size.
High magic, he thought. Of course! Tessaernil said as much. The plane of Sildeyuir was called into being by high magic
He couldn't even begin to imagine the difficulty and precision of the high magic ritual that had called a whole world into being, but the evidence was before his eyes. He tore his gaze from the faint silver vault of flowing magic that filled the sky and shaped the ground, and looked again at the gray stream of dust.
It was a crawling black gate, a ghostly portal that flickered and shifted beneath the mist. And it was growing. Whatever it touched was consumed, taken out of Sildeyuir to some other place. When the mist dissipated, its contents might return—or they might not. Like a great boring worm, the mist was chewing its way through the homeland of the star elves, devouring the magic and the very existence of the plane itself.
"Corellon's sword," Araevin whispered.
"Well, what do you see?" Maresa asked.
"You did well to turn away from the mist," Araevin answered. "It's a portal to another dimension, and if I am any judge of such things, not a dimension you would want to visit. We will have to avoid any such rivers we come across."
"That will become more and more difficult the farther we venture from Sildeyuir's heart," Nesterin warned. "In the farthest reaches of the realm, there is nothing but this cursed mist."
They turned their horses from the road and climbed up the side of the dell, simply circumventing the silvergray pool roiling across the road. But as they continued on their way, they began to meet with more and more of the glimmering streams. Sometimes long tongues or arms of the mist seemed to shadow their path, twisting through the trees and glades of the forest beside the road. Other times pools or streams blocked their path, forcing them to detour away from the road and feel their way forward through the forest. The woodland fell ominously silent, with not a hint of bird song or animal movement. Araevin realized that most of the forest creatures had long since abandoned the mist-haunted districts of the forest, seeking more wholesome environs.
At the end of Sildeyuir's dim day, they made their camp atop a small knoll in the forest. Araevin had observed that the silver mist tended to cling to low-lying areas, and it seemed prudent to seek a camp in some high place so that they would not be overcome while they rested. When they rose in the morning and studied their surroundings, they
found that the knoll afforded a good view of the country around them.
A great gulf of silver-gray mist lay only a few miles away, carving its way through the forested hillsides like a fog-shrouded arm of the sea. Other inlets and channels glinted in the bright distance ahead and on all sides, as if they were approaching a sea coast of sorts.
"It's closing in behind us," Jorin murmured, looking back the way they had come. "I don't know if we could retrace our steps."
Araevin followed the Yuir ranger's gaze, and saw that large parts of the road they had passed along in their travel of the day before seemed to have been swallowed by the pearly streaks. He steeled himself and turned back toward the land ahead.
"We will find a way through," he told Jorin. "I know some spells that may help."
They broke camp quickly, unwilling to risk being stranded on the hilltop, and continued toward the edge of the realm. During the last hour of their ride great arms of silver-gray nothingness came to surround them on either side, so that it seemed that they were riding along a low, treacherous peninsula jutting out into a misty sea. Small patches and pools of mist began to appear in the road and in the woods to either side, slowly growing larger and more frequent as they pressed on, until they met and merged together. Finally they came to a place where they simply could go no farther. Ahead of them lay nothing but endless silver-gray mist, cold and perfect.
They halted and stood still for a time, looking out over nothingness Finally Araevin shook himself and looked over to Nesterin.
"How much farther to Mooncrescent?" he asked.
The star elf looked around, studying those landmarks that hadn't been swallowed yet. "Five miles, I think. But there's no other way through. It's gone."
Araevin stared at the mist, and remembered the pure shining fountain he had seen in his vision many days and long miles before. The Nightstar was cold and hard in his
chest, a dull aching weight that seemed to transfix his heart. He could almost hear Saelethil's mocking laughter, as this strangest of all obstacles checked his path toward high magic and the knowledge he needed to contest Sarya Dlardrageth's power in Myth Drannor.
I am not about to let Saelethil Dlardrageth laugh at me, he told himself.
Without glancing at his companions, he dismounted from his horse and began to undo the animal's saddle belt.
"Araevin? What are you doing?" Ilsevele asked.
"The horses are terrified of the mist," he said. "We can't take them in there."
"To the Nine Hells with the horses!" Maresa snapped. "We can't take us in there!"
"Nevertheless," Araevin said, "I am going forward. I ask no one else to come with me."
The rest of the company stared at him for a long moment, and Ilsevele slid wordlessly from her saddle and began to remove the harness from her own horse. A moment later Donnor Kerth and Jorin followed suit, and Nesterin as well. Finally Maresa swore and swung herself down from the horse.
"You're all mad," she snapped. "This is the worst idea I've heard in a long time!"
"I know," Araevin said. He tossed the saddle into the grass at the side of the road, and patted his horse's neck. "But it's the only one I have right now."
*****

The First Lord's Tower gleamed above the thin blanket of mist, smoke, and lanternlight that pooled in Hillsfar's streets. Despite the late hour, the city was not entirely asleep. The distant sounds of raucous shouts and bawdy singing drifted from those taphouses that were still open, apprentices worked to keep ovens and kilns stoked in workshops that needed their fires throughout the night, and folk were already rising to go to bakeries and smokehouses and
begin their work for the morning. Squads of Red Plume guards patrolled the streets and kept watch from the battlements of Maalthiir's keep.
Sarya Dlardrageth looked over the rooftops of the human city and bared her fangs in a malice-filled smile. She'd spent days preparing her counterstroke to Maalthiir's treachery. Through her mastery of Myth Drannor's mythal she had summoned hundreds of yugoloths and demons to her banner. She commanded the allegiance of scores upon scores of Malkizid's devils, outcasts from the Nine Hells who followed the Branded King. Gathered around her was a small horde of infernal monsters: demons and devils stronger than ogres, and invulnerable to anything other than magic spells or enchanted weapons. Some were armed with fearsome claws, fangs, and stingers, others with brazen swords and cruel axes forged in the fires of the pit, and each of them was capable of summoning scathing blasts of hellfire, blinding, choking, or stunning their foes with words of evil power, or calling on even more terrible supernatural powers. And close beside her were three hundred of her most dangerous fey'ri warriors, skilled sorcerers and swordsmen who could fight with blade or spell with equal adeptness.
Maalthiir, the First Lord of Hillsfar, was about to wake to a city far less peaceful and secure than he'd imagined.
"Slay every soul you find in the First Lord's Tower," Sarya called to her fiendish horde. "Then tear it down and set the city afire. Now fly, my warriors! Fly!"
With a thunderous beat, Sarya's fey'ri warband leaped into the air as one. Those demons and yugoloths that could fly followed her fey'ri warriors, while the others simply teleported themselves directly to the battlements of Maalthiir's citadel. With the swiftness of a stooping dragon Sarya's winged warriors arrowed over the stout city walls, streaking toward the high tower gleaming in the moonlight.
Fireballs and gouts of hellish flame began to burst down in the city itself, and screams rose in the night as people awoke to a nightmare of fire and claws. Despite her orders, more than a few of her summoned demons had chosen to
simply attack the sleeping city. Sarya scowled, but she didn't try to recall the fiends. Random slaughter and chaos in the streets would serve to confuse Hillsfar's defenders as to the true nature of the attack.
She and her winged warband reached the First Lord's Tower, and Sarya alighted on the high terrace that Maalthiir had formerly set aside for use in teleporting to his keep. An ironclad door sealed the tower interior from the open battlements. Sarya gestured to a nycaloth hovering nearby.
"Through there!" she commanded.
"Yes, my queen!" the monster hissed.
It dropped down in front of the iron door and clenched its great talons in the iron plate. With a mighty effort, the hulking creature wrenched the door from its pintle and hurled it across the battlements, sending it crashing to the street. Sarya watched the heavy door shatter the stone steps at the tower's gate.
Down below the battlements a large band of fey'ri stormed Maalthiir's front gate, leaving a dozen Red Plumes dead on the steps, hacked down by daemonfey swords or charred by daemonfey spells. More bands of fey'ri and demons assaulted other entrances to the tower, or simply teleported inside.
The nycaloth ducked down and pushed its way into the tower, but a terrible flash of blue light suddenly flared in front of the creature, and a potent symbol shone brightly before it. The nycaloth screeched once and staggered back, its talons raised in front of its eyes—and it froze, motionless, its green scaly hide suddenly growing clear and translucent. In the space of an instant the monster was turned into glass.
Sarya motioned to her fey'ri. "Get rid of that," she snarled.
A pair of vrocks wrestled the glass nycaloth out of the way, and hurled the petrified creature from the battlements in the same spot where the iron door had been dropped. The nycaloth exploded into countless shards of flying glass below, but Sarya paid the creature no mind. She turned her attention to the symbol guarding Maalthiir's tower,
and she chanted the words of a powerful cancellation spell. The symbol glowed once under the force of her magic before it vanished.
"A potent defense, Maalthiir, but not sufficient to repel my attack," Sarya gloated.
She stepped aside, and her demons and hellspawned warriors poured into the fortress. Great gouts of hellfire exploded in the doorway, and she heard the ring of steel on steel and screams of terror. Maalthiir doubtless had many arcane defenses within his tower, but he likely had never planned on fighting off the attack of hundreds of demons and hellspawned warriors at one stroke. Towering constructs of stone and iron animated in defense of the first lord's sanctum. Yugoloths and demons shattered the living statues with their fearsome hellfire. Red Plume guards fought desperately to drive off the attack, only to fall by the score under fey'ri swords and demon claws.
"Find Maalthiir! Slay him!" Sarya cried. "Leave no one alive!"
Powerful spells and wards appeared to slay or block Sarya's minions, but she and her most skillful sorcerers struck down Maalthiir's defenses or simply overwhelmed them by hurling yugoloths and demons into the shrieking arcs of destruction until the spells were exhausted. Daemonfey magic shattered walls, broke open vaults, and set the tower burning with hellish red flames that leaped and spread, dancing through the First Lord's Tower.
For half an hour Sarya and her warriors tore Maalthiir's burning tower apart, searching for any sign of the first lord or his elite guards. But finally Sarya grudgingly gave up on destroying Maalthiir in person. Even if he had been present at the beginning of the attack, she had no doubt that he would have fled rather than stay to defend his citadel against her attack. She watched over the destruction, delighting in the screams of terror. Maalthiir would not soon forget her visit. And better yet, Xhalph was at that very moment leading an even larger attack against the Red Plumes encamped near the Standing Stone, fifty miles to the south. She had no intention of giving her foes any
more set-piece battles, not when she commanded thousands of hellspawned warriors and demons who could appear out of thin air or strike like dragons out of the night sky. Xhalph was under orders to slaughter, not fight—to rake the standards and pavilions in the heart of the Red Plume camp with hellfire and deadly spells, then withdraw with chaos in his wake.
Next, she'd visit the same terror on the Sembians. Then she'd turn her infernal hordes against those wretched humans in Mistledale or Shadowdale, and Evermeet's accursed army. There would be no disaster at the Lonely Moor to save Evermeet's traitors from destruction at her hands. With each sunset her armies grew stronger. More and more demons and yugoloths answered her summons and poured through the gates she'd opened in Myth Drannor. The next time Sarya met Evermeet in battle, she did not intend to be defeated.
Maalthiir will not elude me forever, she decided.
She had other things to do that night, and she had harried Hillsfar enough for the time being. Sarya called for her captains and demons, and strode out of Maalthiir's burning tower into a night that had turned red with fire.
"Well done, my children! Well done!" Sarya cried. She looked back on the inferno that had been Maalthiir's tower, and the firelight danced in her malevolent green eyes. "Now come away. We have more slaying to do tonight."
*****
The first three steps into the swirling gray mist seemed harmless enough, though Araevin's ankles crawled at the sensation of the thick vapor tugging at him as he moved deeper. It felt as if he were wading into a sea, warm and thick as blood. He could see the white tree trunks and silver-green boughs behind him, the fair green hills of silver-tasseled grass rising not far behind him, the pale mossy stones of the road leading back into the luminous depths of the twilit forest. Then Araevin took another step, and he plummeted into darkness.
He cried out and flailed, his senses reeling, transfixed in a moment of endless falling—but then his foot fell on the next step of the road. He stumbled to his knees and found himself on all fours on a path made of dull paving stones covered over with thick, oily black moss. The stink of wet rot assailed his nostrils, and he looked up into a pallid, festering jungle. Sildeyuir's silver starlight was gone, leaving only a humid, cloying blackness, broken only by the sickly green phosphorescence of huge, rotting toadstools.
The trees are dead, he realized. The great silver-white boles of Sildeyuir's forest still surrounded him, but they were leprous and gray, choked by more of the black moss and sagging under the weight of parasitic fungi. He had not left Sildëyuir, not really. The gray vapors marked the border of a creeping blight, a monstrous disease consuming an entire world.
His gorge rising at the smell of the place, Araevin pushed himself to his feet and wiped his hands on his cloak. The foul moss left long black smears on the elven graycloth. He turned to look for his companions, and for a horrible moment he saw that he was alone—until Ilsevele suddenly appeared in midair, only an arm's-reach from where he stood. She gasped aloud and reeled, but Araevin caught her arm and steadied her.
"I have you," he said. "The disorientation will pass." "It's horrible," Ilsevele gasped.
Araevin didn't know if she referred to the smell or appearance of the place, or her own nausea, but he held her while she found her feet. In the space of a few moments the rest of the company joined them, each appearing one by one. Donnor Kerth set his face in a fierce scowl and said nothing. Maresa winced and found a handkerchief, binding it over her nose and mouth.
Nesterin stared around the poisoned forest in horror. "This is what the nilshai have brought to us?" His voice broke, and he hid his face. "Better that it had been unmade entirely, than to be corrupted like this!"
"Nesterin, is this the road to Mooncrescent? Do we continue?" Araevin asked.
The star elf studied the landscape. "It could be. The lay of the land is right. But this is not Sildeyuir. It is a foul lie."
Araevin was not sure if the place was as unreal as Nesterin believed. Some great and terrible magic was at work, that much was plain to see. Maybe Sildeyuir's corrupted lands had acquired the traits of the nilshai world through some unforeseen planar conjunction. The creeping blight could have been a terrible spell or curse created by the nilshai to change the star elves' homeland into a place where they might exist comfortably. Perhaps some other force was at work-the presence of a malign god, the corruption of an evil artifact, something.
Whatever it was, Araevin knew for certain that he did not want to remain in the rotting forest a moment longer than he had to.
"Let's go on," he said to his companions. "The sooner we find the tower, the sooner we can leave."
They set out at once, picking their way along the overgrown roadway. The paving stones were slick and wet and made for difficult footing. Bulging, fluid-filled fungi dangled obscenely from the branches of the dying trees along the roadway, some overhanging the road itself. The whole place dripped, stank, and seemed to almost murmur and hiss with the rustlings and clicking of unwholesome things that wriggled and crawled in the slime and putrefaction of the forest floor. From time to time they encountered huge mounded balls of green-glowing fungus blocking the road, and when they set their swords to the stuff to clear a path, it broke with soft popping sounds and disgorged emerald streams of foulness across the path.
"We must put an end to this," Nesterin said. "When we return, I will have Lord Tessaernil send for the other great mages of the realm. Together they may be able to stem this foul tide. Or, if they cannot, perhaps they can rescribe the borders of Sildeyuir, excluding the corrupted parts."
"If I can help you, I will," Araevin promised. "This is an abomination."
"Shhh!" hissed Maresa. She stood still at the rear of
the party, looking back the way they had come. "There is something following us."
"What do you see?" Kerth asked, peering into the darkness behind them. His human eyes did not fare well in the thick shadows and witch-light of the place.
"It's not what I see, it's what I hear," Maresa said. "It's big, and it's coming closer. Can't you hear the toadstools popping back there?"
They all fell silent for a moment, straining to listen. Araevin caught the sound almost at once, a distant slopping or squelching as if someone had filled a bellows half full of water and was working it slowly. And as Maresa had said, there was an awful wet popping sound that preceded the other thing. He couldn't even begin to imagine what might make a sound like that, but there was no doubt that it was coming closer.
"Gods," murmured Jorin Kell Harthan. "What is that?"
"I prefer not to find out," Ilsevele answered. She tapped the ranger on the shoulder and pointed down the road. "Come on, let's pick up the pace. Maybe it's moving across our path instead of following us."
"Optimist," muttered Maresa, but the genasi did not disagree when Jorin and Ilsevele set off at an easy trot, pressing on down the road. They made another mile or more, by Araevin's reckoning. Abruptly they emerged from the closeness of the forest, and Araevin felt a great open space before him. He strained to see in the darkness, and gradually realized that sickly green luminescence marked out the great ramparts of a dark citadel before them.
Even though he could only catch a glimmer of its shape, Araevin recognized the place at once. It was the empty citadel he'd seen in his vision, the tower that Morthil raised long ago. Morthil's shining door was near, and with it the secret of the Telmiirhara Neshyrr. A lambent gleam stirred in the heart of the Nightstar, and sibilant whispers of ancient secrets gathered in the corners of his mind. Saelethil knew he was close, and the evil shade was watching him from the depths of the seluhiira; Araevin could feel it.
"Is this the place, Nesterin?" Jorin asked.
The star elf gazed on the citadel's moss-grown battlements and said, "Yes. That is Mooncrescent Tower."
"Why in the world did your mages build it so close to the edge of your realm?" Maresa asked.
Nesterin grimaced. "It was not always like this I think things have been slipping toward the mist for some time now. The tower disappeared from our realm decades ago. I suppose it has been here all that time."
"Inside, and quickly," Ilsevele said. "We are not alone out here."
They followed the road to a steep, climbing causeway that wound up the face of the low hill on which the tower sat. The air was warm, humid, and still, so thick that small sounds vanished in the darkness. At the top of the causeway, a great dark gate yawned open, leading into the lightless depths of the ancient stronghold.
"Be careful," Nesterin said to the others. "There were powerful spells in this place long ago, and the nilshai are drawn to magic."
Araevin drew his disruption wand from his belt, and paused to review the spells he held ready in his mind. Donned. Kerth slid his broadsword from its sheath, and shrugged his battered shield off his shoulder, while Maresa cocked her crossbow and set a bolt in the weapon. Then Araevin spoke the words of a minor spell, and illuminated the tower's open gateway. The surrounding darkness quickly smothered the light of the spell, but it carried a short distance at least.
Mooncrescent Tower was better described as a large castle than a simple tower or keep. High curtain walls and strong ramparts enclosed a broad courtyard in which a number of once-elegant buildings stood. At the far side of the bailey stood the keep proper, a sheer edifice of graying stone that disappeared into the oppressive darkness above Araevin's feeble light. The courtyard beyond the tower gates was choked by an orchard of once proud old fruit trees, all dead and rotting. Hanging curtains of green-black moss fouled the elegant arcade of arches that
ran along the foot of the walls, and the trees were black with dank, sagging bark.
"This place is huge," said Jorin. "Where do we start?"
"The front hall of the keep," Araevin answered. "That's the place I saw in my vision. Morthil's Door is there."
They crossed the courtyard carefully, brushing through the wet hanging branches of the dead trees. Weed-choked fountains and mold-grown statues were hidden in the dark foliage, a reminder of the elf artisans who had once raised the place. At the far side of the orchard, they climbed up a broad flight of steps to the keep's doorway. Like the castle gate, it stood open, lightless as a pit. Araevin could hardly make out anything more than the silhouettes of his companions in the heavy darkness, despite his light spell. He couldn't imagine how Jorin or Donnor could see a thing.
He led the way up the steps and into the keep's hall, the Nightstar whispering in his mind. Once the place had been a great chamber indeed, with a soaring arched ceiling and high galleries overhead. The walls were painted with rich frescoes, but the foulness of the corrupt plane had had its way with the paintings and the majestic old tapestries. Thick gray lumps of gelatinous mold left the paintings mottled and leprous, and the tapestries drooped to the ground.
The shining silver door was nowhere in sight. "Araevin, what are we looking for?" Ilsevele asked. "This is the right place, isn't it?"
"One moment," he said. He was certain the Door was there; visions did not lie, though it was possible that he had not understood what he'd seen. He fought down his sudden panic at that thought, and carefully pronounced his seeing spell, weaving his hands in the precise mystic passes of the casting.
The murk of the room lightened before his eyes, and the original shape of the ruined paintings and tapestries became clear to him. He had no attention to spare on the room's ruined splendor, though—before him, revolving slowly in the air, a spiral of dancing silver light shimmered with ancient magic.
"Morthil's Door," he breathed.
It was there, as his vision had predicted, simply hidden from hostile eyes by the star elf's old wards.
Araevin stepped forward, admiring the artistry of the ancient spell, but then he heard something strange. From the shadows overhead came a soft, fluttering, piping sound like the quick trill of a flute, followed by an odd crumpling or dull snapping beat. Araevin froze and stared up at the dark galleries in the top of the chamber, searching for the source.
"Beware!" cried Nesterin. "The nilshai come!"
The black hallways leading into the chamber erupted with the twisting blue-black forms of the alien nilshai, darting and swooping as they poured into the room. In the space of five heartbeats a dozen of the monsters appeared in the darkness, burbling and calling to one another in their weird piping voices.
Maresa's crossbow snapped, and one nilshai balled up in a dark tangle in midair, shrieking in anguish around the quarrel embedded in its wormlike body. Ilsevele and Jorin began to fire as well, sending arrow after arrow up at the creatures. But the nilshai were not so easily driven off. Two of the creatures flared their wings and hovered, stabbing down at Araevin and his companions with brilliant bolts of lightning. Araevin leaped aside and rolled on the flagstones, his cloak smoking from a shower of hot sparks, and the rest of his companions scattered.
He found his knees and hurled a blazing fireball up into the middle of the chamber. A great burst of crimson flame blossomed overhead with a frightful roar, blackening the old tapestries and sloughing the gray mold from the walls. Nilshai reeled wildly and shrilled in anger, but before Araevin had even climbed to his feet the monsters resumed their attack. One struck at Donnor with some kind of illusionary threat that only the Lathanderian could see. The human knight cried out in dismay and began to fend off an imaginary attacker with desperate parries of his heavy blade, backing across the hall and leaving his companions to fend for themselves. Another of the monstrous sorcerers created a whole writhing nest of blind, sucking
lampreylike maws right at Nesterin's feet, and the star elf battled furiously to pluck the slavering mouths from his limbs as the things fastened themselves on him.
"Get them off me!" he shouted.
Arrows hissed in the darkness, and more nilshai trilled in pain or lunged out with their awful magic. Araevin spied one of the monsters hovering back out of the fight, engaged in a great summoning spell that it was completing with fearsome quickness.
I don't want to see what it's trying to conjure up there, he decided.
He threw out his hand and barked the words of a powerful spell, and before the nilshai finished its terrible conjuration a great golden hand materialized around it. The giant-sized fist closed around the monster, cutting off its spell and crushing the flying worm against the far wall, slowly grinding the life from the thing.
Araevin whirled to look for a new foe, but another of the nilshai seized his body in a telekinetic grip and hurled him into the air. He heard Ilsevele shout in terror, and the room spun end-over-end. As quick as he could, Araevin began a flying spell to save himself from the fall, but he was too slow—he hit the cracked flagstones with a bone jarring impact before he finished. His skull bounced on the stone floor, and everything went black for a long, cold moment.
Damn, he thought. They're quick.
He started to fight his way back up through the darkness to his battling comrades, distant and strangely high above him. With a groan Araevin managed to roll over onto his elbows and knees, and pushed himself upright. His head swam and his left arm dangled at his side with a searing hot pain burning in his forearm.
He staggered to his feet and pointed his wand at the first nilshai he could see, barking out the command word for the device. A terrible shriek of tortured air split the darkness as the frightful blue bolt of disruption ripped the ancient hall, bursting one of the nilshai asunder and tearing the wing from another one behind the first. Araevin whipped around to blast at another one of the aerial sorcerers, but
he missed the creature—in the blink of an eye it simply vanished from sight, teleporting away.
All around him, the sounds of battle slowly faded. He looked around, and realized that the nilshai had broken off the fight, fleeing back into the black depths of the old tower. Half a dozen of the monsters lay crumpled on the dark flagstones around the party, some burned, some riddled with arrows and bolts, one hacked into pieces.
"They ran off!" Maresa cried. "Come on back whenever you're ready, you foul flying slugs!"
"Is everybody all right?" Ilsevele asked. She straightened up, still searching the dark galleries overhead for any sign of the flying monsters.
Araevin glanced around. Nesterin bled freely from the ugly sucker bites on his legs and arms, and Jorin was hunched over, his clothes smoking from the lightning bolts the nilshai had thrown. But they all seemed alive, and no one terribly hurt. He looked down at his left arm. His hand trembled and ached when he tried to close his fist.
"I think I broke my arm," he said.
Donnor Kerth sheathed his sword and came over to examine his hand. "So it seems," the Lathanderian agreed. He chanted a healing prayer, setting one big hand firmly over Araevin's injured arm, and the hot ache faded somewhat. "It will trouble you some for a day or two, but you should be able to use it now," Kerth said.
"Thank you," said Araevin. He flexed his arm and made a fist. It hurt, but not as badly as before.
"Now what, Araevin?" asked Ilsevele. "Where do we go from here?"
"Morthil's Door," Araevin replied. He spoke a few arcane words, and revealed the floating aura for his companions to see. Nesterin's eyes widened in wonder. "What I'm looking for is in there."
"Do what you came here to do, and do it quickly," Jorin advised. "The damned nilshai might return at any time."
"Go ahead, Araevin," Ilsevele said. Her bow was still in her hand, and she shook the hair out of her eyes. "We will stand watch."
"I will be as quick as I can," Araevin promised. He turned to face the revolving cloud of silver lights in the room's center. It, too, was a portal of sorts. He whispered the words of an opening spell. The nimbus of magic slowed its turning, and grew brighter, so bright that his companions could make it out even without Araevin's help.
Without waiting, Araevin stepped into the gleaming spiral of magic. At once he felt himself carried away, lifted up into a marvelous chamber of streaming mist and translucent walls, a ghostly room that hovered in the air above the black courtyard. His companions stared at him in amazement, but they were dim and indistinct. He suspected that he'd become nothing more than a spectral blur of himself when he entered Morthil's Door, at least to the eyes of any who waited outside. But within the ghostly chamber, he felt completely solid. He glanced down at his hands, and found that his body had indeed grown somewhat translucent. He could see the lightless hall outside through his own garments and flesh.
Some sort of extradimensional space, he decided. Araevin was familiar with spells of the sort, though he had never studied any of them at length, and hadn't heard of any that endured as long or as perfectly as Morthil's evidently had. He turned his attention to the chamber's contents, and as he did so he felt himself drift farther into the ghostly walls. The world outside faded to a dull dark smear obscured by misty walls beneath his feet, and the ghostly chamber grew more substantial. Spectral shelves and tomes began to appear all around him, the secret library Morthil had preserved in the ethereal matrix so long ago.
Morthil did not want that knowledge to be lost, Araevin realized. He created a place where his books and tomes would be preserved forever, safe from harm or theft, yet accessible to anyone who entered without deceit. Even though Mooncrescent Tower had been swallowed entirely by the nilshai plane, Morthil's library survived unspoiled.
I have to find a way to bring this out of darkness. I cannot leave it here like this.
He glanced up, at the higher and better-defined floors overhead, and his eye fell on a great dome above him. Centered beneath the streaming mists stood a reading stand carved in the shape of two entwined silver dragons. In their outstretched claws they held a large, heavy tome of burnished copper plate, its pale vellum pages shining brightly in the muted light.
It was the tome he had seen in his vision, the tome in which Morthil had inscribed the words of the telmiirhara neshyrr, the Rite of Binding.
He approached the massive tome on its ornate stand. He could feel the magical power contained in the book. Golden glyphs crawled across its burnished pages, glowing softly in the sourceless light of Morthil's vault. He could no longer see or hear his companions in the black hall outside, but he paid that no mind. The tome absorbed his attention completely.
He touched the pages, and sigils of molten gold lifted from the tome and began to swirl around him. An eldritch melody of ancient notes thrummed in the air, as if the book itself spoke to him.
Eyes shining in wonder, Araevin began to read.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1 Flamerule, the Year of Lightning Storms

Curnil looked ahead into the thick green woods, dark and damp with the second straight day of rain, and shook the raindrops from his hair. All around him rode the cavalry of the elven-host, a column of gray-clad riders moving quietly alongside the Ashaba like so many ghosts. The battle at the Zhentish camp was six days behind Evermeet's army. The elves and all the Dalesfolk who could be spared marched hard, retracing their steps back toward Ashabenford. Curnil was no strategist, but it was plain enough to him that Lord Miritar had no choice but to march the army back to Mistledale as fast as he could.
Since the skirmish at the farmhouse, Ingra and Curnil had stayed with Storm Silverhand, riding in a small company made up of all sorts of odds and ends. Some were plain-looking Grimmar who
turned out to be former adventurers, murderously deliberate in the thickest of fights. Others were freebooters and travelers from all corners of Faerun who had simply showed up to ride at Storm Silverhand's side. None of the twentyodd riders who followed the Bard of Shadowdale wore a uniform or held a commission, but Curnil guessed that half of them at least wore the silver pin of the Harpers under their dirty jerkins and worn hauberks. They'd all fought like lions on the earthworks of the Zhentish camp.
Curnil glanced toward the head of their small company, where Storm Silverhand rode, her long white hair plastered to her back. She was laughing and speaking with one of the other riders in their odd little company, when she whipped her head up and to the left, searching the treetops overshadowing the narrow track alongside the river. He glanced that way, wondering what had caught her eye, when realization dawned.
"Ambush," he hissed
From the treetops a dozen brilliant bolts of fire streaked down, exploding among the elven cavalry all around Storm's small company. Horses whinnied and screamed, fair voices cried out in pain or fear, and the dull gray drizzle of the day flashed into heat, steam, and mayhem. A fire-bolt blasted into a rider near Curnil, incinerating man and mount in one terrible, glaring blast that hurled gobbets of liquid fire throughout the small company. One thick gout splattered across his horse's face and clung to the animal's flesh, blazing fiendishly. The animal bolted off at once, fleeing in blind panic.
"Whoa! Whoa, damn you!" Curnil cried, but he realized that he would never get the animal under control with the fire clinging to its face.
Curnil kicked his feet out of the stirrups, and let the horse run out from under him He stumbled into the mud on the trail, but a moment later he had his feet under him again, and he scrambled ten feet toward the river to crouch by a boulder and figure out what was going on.
The air was filled with winged swordsmen and sorcerers, armed for battle. Curnil stared in amazement. They
were elves, of a sort, though their skin had a crimson hue and their eyes blazed with malice.
"The daemonfey," he breathed.
The first flight swooped past the panicked column, and Curnil saw that it was not a true ambush. The daemonfey had simply streaked in through the rain and drizzle, soaring low and fast over the treetops and falling on the elven column like a fiery thunderbolt. More spells and blasts came from above as the creatures wheeled in midair, scouring the track with emerald globes of acid and crackling yellow lightning. Curnil's ears rang with the fury of the explosions.
White arrows hissed up through the air at the flying sorcerers, and a few of the daemonfey warriors reeled or crumpled in flight. Storm Silverhand burned half a dozen of the sinister warriors out of the air with a great blast of blinding silver fire, carving an argent swath out of the rain-streaked sky.
Curnil swept his swords out of their scabbards and shouted defiance up at the sky. "Come on down and fight, you bastards!"
He had cause to regret his challenge only a moment later. A wave of strange, low booming sounds washed over him, leaving a foul acrid stink in the air. All around the column terrible demons appeared, teleporting into the elven ranks. Behind Storm Silverhand a pair of hulking monsters materialized, gripping huge cleavers in their horned claws. But the silver-haired swordswoman was already engaged in a furious melee with two more monsters in front of her, her sword flashing as she battled against them.
"Storm! Behind you!" Curnil shouted.
He hurled himself forward, charging at the demons attacking her. For one timeless instant the battle drifted motionless around him, his blood thundering in his ears, and Storm turned slowly to meet the new threat. Then he crashed into the closest of the ogre-sized monsters, ramming the point of his silvered sword into the small of its back. Curnil was not a small man, and even though the green-scaled monster towered over him, he sent the thing
stumbling off-balance directly into Storm Silverhand
With a single clean slash of her gleaming sword, she took the demon's head. She flashed Curnil one quick smile, the fierce smile of a warrior born, and her eyes flew open in horror.
A terrible blade of bronze flashed past Curnil's eyes and slammed into his shoulder, driving him to his knees. He grunted in cold shock, as the hulking demon wrenched its gore-spattered cleaver out of his chest. Hot metal grated on bone, and a horrible spurt of blood burst out of Curnil's collar.
"Curnil!" screamed Storm.
The demon's blade stuck for a moment, and with a growl of irritation the hellspawned monster shook Curnil viciously until he was flung off the axe. He landed badly, crumpled in the mud of the trail.
Get up, he told himself. You'll die if you just lie here. But dark spots gathered at the corners of his vision, and
he felt empty. His swords slipped from his grasp.
He tried to push himself upright, to stand, to clap a hand
over the awful wound, even to call for help, but he had no
strength in his limbs and no breath in his throat.
Damn, he thought. I don't think I can get up.
Then the darkness swallowed him.
*****
Araevin sat cross-legged on the floor of Morthil's vault. The great tome of the star elf archmage lay open on his lap, but he no longer looked at it. The telmiirhara neshyrr was upon him, and having begun it, he was powerless to draw back. Of their own accord the endless passages and phrases of the rite tumbled from his mouth, and the air of Morthil's library trembled with the magic he had unleashed.
Some small part of him wondered how long he had been engaged in the reading, how much time had passed since he had spoken the words Morthil had learned from Ithraides and left for others after him to find. With each word he felt his power, his strength, his vitality draining away,
dissipating like frost misting away on a winter morning, leaving him empty, hollow and aching. He could not bear to continue another moment, and yet he realized that if he halted there he would not survive.
He pressed on, repeating the ancient prayers and supplications of the spell, even as his strength began to fail him and his chin drooped toward his chest.
I cannot stop, he told himself. I must not stop.
Yet even though his will was firm, his words began to slur, and his voice dropped to a mumble. He felt like a cold cinder, a graying coal reduced to nothing but an empty shell of ash.
Softly, slowly, he slumped to the mist-wreathed floor. It feels as though I'm falling asleep, he thought. Falling asleep with my mind awake.
Am I dying?
He knew that he should care about dying, that he had great things to do and friends who needed him, but Araevin had no determination left to fend it off. He had lived long and well, he had traveled the world and left it a better place than he had found it. What was there to fear?
He surrendered to the soft gray blanket that was stealing over him. Darkness hovered within, strangely close and warm, but then he sensed a growing light. He felt a presence approaching, coming to him through the dark. It was a woman, radiant and beautiful, an elf in shape and features, yet incandescent with the power contained in her form.
He looked up to her, and saw her with his own eyes. She was a creature of starshine and wonder, a fey queen whose eyes shone like the sun. There was light and affection of a sort in her face, but there was something more besides—a terrible strength and willfulness that awed him. She was magic made flesh, the sudden power of the storm, the capriciousness of the wind, the delight of the ancient stars.
"An eladrin," he whispered. I have called a queen of the Court of Stars, a high lady of the fey lords!
She stooped over him, her eyes stern, and laid a hand
op his forehead. Her touch was frigidly cold.
Few have spohen the words you have spohen this day, she said with her eyes alone. Is this truly what you wish, Araevin Teshurr?
"It is what I have to do," he answered, his breath as faint as candlelight.
There is nothing that you have to do, she said. That is the gift of the gods to mortals. To complete the telmiirkara neshyrr is to surrender something precious beyond words.
He looked into her eyes, as brilliant as suns, and did not flinch.
The fey queen seemed to sigh. You will learn the price of your power, Araevin, she told him But this, too, you are free to choose.
She leaned down and kissed him, her lips soft yet bitterly cold, and she breathed into his mouth a single whisper of breath.
Radiance, warmth, and life poured into his heart. He drew a great breath, and felt his soul kindle in unbearable fire. Yet it did not harm him, and it did not diminish. In the space of a dozen heartbeats the fire within had spread to the tips of his fingers and the bottoms of his feet, until it felt as though his entire body was a single sheet of steel-hard flame, dancing and flowing and burning and yet frozen into the shape of an elf.
He looked at the white lady in wonder. "What have you given me?" he asked.
It is not what I have given you, Araevin Teshurr. It is what I have tahen away. She smiled sadly, and her eyes glimmered. You will count this a great gift for now, yet you will also hnow regret.
Then she vanished, fading away into golden light and leaving him alone in Morthil's ethereal sanctum.
Morthil's great tome was lying beside him, closed.
Araevin lay there for a long moment, trying to understand what it was he felt. Then, slowly, he pushed himself upright. He glanced up at the ethereal walls of Morthil's vault, and realized that he could see the threads of magic, the warp and woof of the Weave, woven with skill and care
thousands of years ago. He reached out to touch a wall, and watched as his fingertips caused a ripple in the flowing magic just as a child might start a ripple in a still pool by brushing his fingers over the water.
Despite himself, he laughed out loud in delight.
He noticed that his fingertips seemed to glow in his mystic sight. Frowning, he drew his hand close to his face and studied it. Veins of magic pulsed beneath his skin, intertwined with his own blood. His flesh was possessed of an unmistakable radiance. It was still his own hand, warm, alive, and feeling, yet it was changed. Like a fine golden foil it served to indicate his shape and form, but it was delicate, paper-thin, nothing but a hollow shell of magic in which his sense of self existed.
Is this in my mind? he wondered. Only a perception of the rite's completion? Or have I really . . . changed?
He decided that he simply could not encompass what had happened during the telmiirhara neshyrr, not at that moment. In time he might make sense of it, weigh the words of the eladrin queen, sort out the strange sense of self and detachment he felt mingled in his own body, but he could not do it now. He could only continue on this desperate course, and finish what he had started. There would be time to comprehend and reflect later.
Araevin drew the Nightstar from his breast and held the gemstone in his hand. In his new vision he could hardly stand to gaze on the device, so great and dire was its power; it blazed like an amethyst fire in his hand.
Is this what Kileontheal and the others saw when they looked on the Nightstar? he wondered. Or have I gained powers of perception that even other high mages do not share?
He frowned, and effortlessly he hurled his consciousness into the gemstone, descending down through its lambent depths like a falling meteor. He sensed the vastness and the purpose of the thing, just as he had before, but this time he retained his bearings. He arrowed straight for the heart of the gem. The Nightstar no longer held the power to overwhelm him.
"I am coming, Saelethil," Araevin said, and he bared his teeth in challenge.
*****
Ilsevele studied the oppressive gloom that smothered the ancient hall, and shuddered. The air was hot and rank, and she felt a cold sick sense of danger beneath her ribs. The place was perilous; she could feel it, and she knew that the others sensed it as well. They'd beaten off two more nilshai incursions in the time since they'd entered the place, but above and beyond the danger posed by the alien sorcerers infesting the place, the nilshai world itself was dangerous. The longer they remained, the deeper they seemed to sink into the darkness, even though they hadn't moved from that spot for hours.
I fear that retracing our steps back to Sildeyuir will prove harder than finding our way to this tower, she thought.
"How much longer will Araevin need?" grumbled Maresa. She glanced over at the revolving spiral of faint white light hovering in the room's center. They'd tried several times to follow Araevin through the door, but apparently they lacked something the portal required. "He's been in there too long! I want to get out of this place."
"Unless the nilshai return in overwhelming force, we will remain here and guard Araevin's back," Ilsevele said. "He is counting on us, Maresa."
The genasi snorted and returned her attention to Ilsevele. "What if he's stuck in there, and can't get out? What if it's a one-way gate? How long do we give him before we leave?"
"We remain until we are forced to leave," Ilsevele repeated. She turned her back on Maresa and walked a short distance away, making a show of peering down a black corridor as if to check on it, but in truth she was avoiding the argument, and she knew it.
What happens if the nilshai come back? she asked herself. Is it worth our lives to protect what Araevin is doing?
Or do we abandon this expedition if the danger grows too great? It would be easier to answer that question if she were absolutely certain that Araevin's quest was something that had to be done.
If I knew there had been no choice but to come here, it would be easy to steel myself to stand and die in this black chamber if necessary, she thought. But I wonder what Father is doing. Has the Crusade joined battle against the daemonfey in Myth Drannor? And just how might I have been able to help if I were there instead of here?
"Something is coming," Jorin called in a low voice. The Yuir ranger crouched on the moss-covered remains of one of the higher balconies, his bow in hand. "The same thing we avoided in the forest, I think."
Ilsevele cocked her head to one side, and she heard it as well—a distant wet wheezing or sucking sound, slowly squishing its way closer.
Did the nilshai corral the creature to send it at us? she wondered. Or did it follow us of its own accord?
"Everyone, move to a new place," she called softly. "They're expecting to find us where they saw us last."
She followed her own advice, and darted across the hall to stand hidden in a narrow alcove. Maresa simply leaped up and levitated to the highest gallery; as a daughter of the elemental wind, she could take to the air when she liked. Donnor moved beside a pillar where he could watch the doorway leading back out to the courtyard of the keep. Nesterin flashed a quick smile at Ilsevele, and found an alcove opposite hers.
They waited in silence, listening to the approach of the unseen monster. Ilsevele laid a pair of arrows across her bow, and whispered the words of a spell to set them both smoldering with arcane power. The horrible squelching drew closer, and she heard the abominable piping voices of the nilshai, several of them warbling to each other in the black tunnels around the banquet hall. Peering into the dank gloom, she finally caught a glimpse of the massive creature drawing near.
Its skin glistened a translucent pink in the dim light of
the glowing doorway in the room's center. Its flesh oozed and rippled as it heaved itself closer, and Ilsevele glimpsed the indistinct outlines of a wormlike body and a ring-shaped mouth surrounded by small, rasping teeth. The thing was the size of a small inn, and she exhaled in relief. It was so large that it couldn't fit through the archway leading to the courtyard outside.
"Thank Corellon," she murmured, and straightened up.
The thing quivered for a moment, blindly groping for a way inside. Then it found the archway and began to press forward. Its flesh was so malleable that it squeezed through with ease, pouring itself into the room like a viscid stream of slime.
She looked over to Nesterin in horror, and found the star elf looking back at her with a similar expression on his face.
"I thought it couldn't get in!" he protested.
Ilsevele raised her bow and shot. Two arrows flew as one, each flaring into brilliant fire in mid-flight under the power of her spells. They struck the blank wall of glistening flesh and vanished, sinking deep into the monster before coming to rest with the fletching completely submerged. The shafts hung in the thing's body for all to see, burning with bright white light in the worm's snout. The creature quivered and recoiled, but still it groped onward.
"What in the world is that thing?" Ilsevele muttered as she drew two more arrows and readied another spell.
Across the hall from her, Nesterin stepped out of his own alcove and peppered the creature with arrows. More rained down from overhead, where Jorin shot over the edge of the gallery. And Maresa barked the trigger words of her wands, pummeling the worm's snout with bolts of magic.
The creature hesitated for a moment then it lashed out with astonishing speed, firing a pair of long, silky strands from pores in its head right at Nesterin. The star elf ducked under one, but the other struck him in the left thigh and clung to him. Nesterin cried out in revulsion and tried
to pull away, but the giant worm gave a small toss of its head and jerked him off his feet. It started to reel in the star elf, retracting its strand and dragging him in with irresistible power.
Nesterin dropped his bow and struggled to draw a knife at his belt, grimly ignoring the terrible rasping maw of the worm as he sought to free himself.
"Let go of him!" Donnor Kerth called.
He stepped out from behind his pillar and dashed over to the strand by which the worm was dragging Nesterin. He gripped his sword and struck a mighty cut at the strand. It parted with a snap, sending Nesterin reeling backward. The worm moved farther into the room and fired two strands at Donnor. Both struck the Lathanderian's shield, and with a savage oath the human knight shook the shield off his arm before he was dragged off his feet. The shield skittered across the floor to the huge monstrosity in the doorway.
"Ilsevele!" Maresa cried. "It's too dumb to know that we're hurting it! What do we do?"
Ilsevele shook her lank hair out of her eyes and looked up at the genasi in amazement.
How in the world should I know? she thought. But she didn't speak her thoughts aloud. Instead, she paused for a moment then called back, "Try fire!"
She changed the spell she was about to lay on the arrows on her bow, and instead chanted the words to a fire spell. Her arrows glowed cherry-red and began to smolder. Quickly she raised her bow and let them fly. They struck together as flaming bolts, and the worm bucked and twisted, crushing masonry and shaking the whole building. Overhead Maresa changed to her fire wand and seared a great black swath across the monster's quaking flesh.
Donnor Kerth dashed at the huge monster, chasing after his shield. He sang out the words of a holy invocation to Lathander as he ran, and the broadsword in his hand burst into a brilliant yellow corona of flame.
"Burn!" he shouted. "Burn in Lathander's holy fires, foul monster!"
He hacked into the worm's snout, carving great black slashes through its body as his broadsword flared with the heat of the sun.
The worm shuddered and began to retreat, pouring itself back out of the room. It carried away Kerth's shield, shredding the metal war board to pieces with its teeth as it moved away. The Lathanderian howled in outrage and redoubled his efforts, but the worm flowed away and retreated into the darkness outside.
"It took my shield!" he snarled.
"Better your shield than our friend Nesterin," called Jorin from above.
Ilsevele lowered her bow and watched the creature flee. "Is everyone all right?" she asked.
"I will be, as soon as I get this damned stuff off my breeches," replied Nesterin.
The star elf continued to saw at the remnant of the strand that clung to his garb. The stuff was like a cable made of glue, tough and sticky at the same time, and his knife blade kept catching in the stuff. Ilsevele moved over to lend him a hand.
"Thank you," Nesterin murmured. "I hate to say it, Ilsevele, but the longer we remain here, the more likely it is that we will meet with disaster. Is there any chance you could hurry your friend Araevin?"
Ilsevele looked up to the shining mist in the center of the hall. "I would if I could," she answered. "But for now, he seems to be out of our reach."
*****
Araevin streaked over a hellscape of seething lava and billowing clouds of foul vapor. For the first time he perceived what lay outside the white walls of Saelethil's palace in the heart of the seluhiira.
This is Saelethil's soul, he realized. This is the part of himself that he preserved for five thousand years in the Nightstar, hoping that his evil might endure long after his physical defeat.
I am the failure of a dark hope nourished for five millennia.
Araevin grinned to himself. He liked the thought of disappointing Saelethil Dlardrageth.
He caught sight of white walls and golden domes glinting amid the ruddy firelight below him, and he altered his course to descend into the heart of the place. With his cloak streaming behind him he alighted in the golden courtyard of Saelethil's palace. The monstrous mockeries of vines and flowers that filled the place shrank from his presence.
"Saelethil!" he called. "I have performed the rite of transcendence. Come forth!"
Behind him he felt a cold and sharp sensation, a gathering of malice that grew stronger in the space of a few heartbeats. He turned and watched as a column of black mist poured up out of the ground to the height of a man. It roiled violently before materializing in the shape of Saelethil Dlardrageth.
"I am here," he said.
Araevin gazed on him without lowering his eyes, and perceived the demonic corruption of the Dlardrageth high mage. Saelethil's very form fumed with intangible streams of spite and hatred, a black thundercloud of ancient anger hidden behind the veil of a noble-born sun elf.
I see more than I did before, he told himself. This is what the telmiirhara neshyrr has given to me.
Saelethil looked on him, and in that moment Araevin saw many things in his eyes: recognition, a grudging measure of respect, a bonfire of hatred and envy, and finally, a shadow of fear.
"I see you have followed the path I set you on," Saelethil said. "You have purged yourself of the flaws with which the gods have afflicted all lesser creatures. Only the most powerful of mages learn how to set right what the gods made wrong in the first place. I suppose I should congratulate you, Araevin."
"Save your congratulations," Araevin answered. "I am still myself."
The daemonfey archmage snorted. "You are no more an elf than I am. We are exactly alike, you and I. You have tempered yourself like steel in a smith's fire. I did no more or less than that when I chose my path."
"I am your antithesis, Saelethil." Araevin allowed himself a cold, hard smile. "Morthil's rite invoked the powers of Arvandor instead of the Abyss. I fear you no longer."
Saelethil's eyes flashed in anger. "Then you are a fool, Araevin Teshurr. You believe that you have not damned yourself with your pursuit of power, as if there were a difference between a demon's embrace and an eladrin's kiss! You have surrendered your soul. What does it matter to whom you surrendered it?"
"I did not come to bandy words, Saelethil. I came to study the spells of Aryvandaar, not debate your twisted views on good and evil. Now, show me what you have been hiding all this time."
The Dlardrageth glowered at Araevin for a moment, but then his face twisted into a cruel smile.
"Ah," he said to himself. "Now that I did not anticipate. The irony of it!"
He laughed richly, expansively, and the poisonous flowers of the garden quaked and trembled in reply.
Araevin frowned. Saelethil's persona in the Nightstar was bound by laws the archmage had laid down long ago. That was why the seluhiira had been bound to instruct him instead of destroying him when first he set his hand to the stone. Yet clearly Saelethil had discerned something new, something that pleased him greatly, and Araevin suspected that he would not like it at all.
"What is it?" he demanded. "I did not come here to be laughed at, Saelethil!"
"Oh, but you did, foolish boy!" Saelethil said. His eyes were cold with contempt as he laughed again. "You have no idea what you have done, do you?"
Araevin folded his arms and simply waited. He did not care to serve as the object of Saelethil's humor.
"When you chose Ithraides's path instead of mine," Saelethil hissed, "you severed yourself from your salvation.
I have not been able to destroy you because I was not permitted to harm one whose soul was marked by descent from my House, no matter how remote." He advanced a step on Araevin, and seemed to grow taller. "By infusing yourself with the celestial essence of the eladrin, you have removed the last thin vestiges of Dlardrageth blood. I am no longer required to serve you, which means that I am free to do with you as I wish."
Araevin stared in amazement. Then he stepped back and snapped out a potent abjuration, building a spellshield to defend himself for a time while he figured out what to do.
The spell failed. The passes of his hand were nothing more than empty gestures, the words devoid of power.
Saelethil laughed aloud. "This is not a spell duel, Araevin! Your consciousness is enclosed entirely within my substance. Neither of us can work magic here. This is a contest of will."
Saelethil grew larger than a giant, shooting up into the air like a crimson tower, so tall that Araevin stumbled back in astonishment and fell.
"You have placed yourself in my power!" Saelethil boomed. "Now, dear boy, I will repay the indignities I have accumulated in your service!"
He strode forward and set one immense foot on Araevin, crushing him to the hot flagstones below, leaning on him with the terrible weight of a malicious and living mountain.
Araevin cried out in dismay as Saelethil's power gathered over him and crushed him down. Shadow rose up around him, and he felt his very substance, his life, his consciousness, compressed all around, being squeezed out of existence. Saelethil's cruel laughter lashed him like the winds of a dark hurricane, and the malice and power of the Dlardrageth's will filled the universe with black hate.
"Do not fear for your friends, Araevin!" Saelethil cried. "You will rejoin them in a moment-or at least your body will. I have yearned for flesh to wear for longer than you
can imagine. You are not so handsome as I was in life, but Ilsevele will not know the difference, will she?"
"You will not lay a hand on her, monster!" Araevin screamed in empty protest.
Saelethil's scorn battered him. "I will do whatever I like with you, fool! You will bring me to my niece Sarya, and I will take up my rightful place as a lord of House Dlardrageth. I may even allow you to retain a glimmer of awareness so that you can perceive the extent of your defeat. I owe you that much after the servitude you have visited upon me."
Araevin despaired in the shrieking blackness beneath Saelethil's will. He had stumbled into the very fate he had first feared when he found the Nightstar; the seluhiira would crush his sentience and seize his own empty body for its own use. The evils that might follow sickened him. What might a Dlardrageth high mage do, with the freedom of Araevin's own body? Destroy more of Evermeet's high mages? Lead the daemonfey legions against Seiveril Miritar's army? Or simply murder anyone Araevin ever loved?
He struggled to fight back, to find some purchase with which to gather his will and make a stand. For a moment he battled his way back to the palace of Saelethil's heart, struggling on the ground with the foot of a giant pinning him to the stone. But the Dlardrageth grinned at his struggles and caught him by his throat in one finetaloned hand.
"This is my mind, my soul," Saelethil gloated. "Within these boundaries, my strength is limitless! Do you not understand that yet?"
Araevin said nothing, but grimly fought against Saelethil's grip, his feet kicking, his chest crying out for air. But Saelethil drew back his arm and hurled him straight down into the ground. The palace of white walls and venomous flowers shattered like a broken mirror, and Araevin plunged into the bottomless darkness underneath, tumbling and falling away from the light.
He shouted in outrage, trying to fight his way up out of the gemstone, escape, return to his own mind and body
so that he could simply drop the damned stone and get away from Saelethil Dlardrageth. But he could not stop himself from sinking, falling, drowning in darkness as thick and heavy as a sea of black stone.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
3 Flamerule, the Year of Lightning Storms

The horrors of the last two days and nights had hardened Seiveril to death in a dozen gruesome forms, but at last he looked upon something that he could not bear. Not caring who saw him or what they might think, he staggered to his knees and covered his face.
"Ah, Corellon! How have you allowed me to fail your people so?" he cried.
Demons had fallen on a small company of wood elves—his wood elves, the merry band from Evermeet's forest who had followed him to Faerun with such pluck and bravado—and flayed alive all they could catch. Seiveril stood in the center of the carnage, sickened by the sound of flies buzzing thickly around the dead and the mewling cries of those the demons had chosen not to kill. Starbrow let him grieve for a time, standing close
by with Keryvian naked in his hand in case the demons returned. Over the past few days Sarya's infernal hordes had struck again and again, hammering at the Crusade as the army of Evermeet fought its way back toward Mistledale to rejoin Vesilde Gaerth. They were still ten miles from Ashabenford, but the smoke of the town's burning streaked the eastern sky.
Starbrow looked at the place where a handful of Seiveril's soldiers had fought and died alone, with no help at hand, and shook his head.
"Gods, what a scene," he murmured. Then he trudged over and set a hand on Seiveril's shoulder. "Come, my friend," he said wearily. "We cannot stay here any longer. The demons may return to attack our healers, and we cannot afford to lose any more clerics. Or you, for that matter."
"I have led us into disaster, Starbrow," Seiveril said. "My pride brought these wood elves to this place, and my stupidity killed them. How can I bear to live?"
"The measure of a general does not lie in victory, Seiveril. It lies in defeat. To continue after the worst has happened is hard, but if you do not lead us from this place, no one will."
Seiveril remained motionless, giving no answer. But then he slowly came to life again, and he nodded once. "If only we had been closer. . . ."
"Frankly, Seiveril, it is a miracle you have kept the army together as well as you have," Starbrow said. "Many have fallen, yes. But many have lived, too. We are not defeated yet." He looked around at the bloodstained clearing, and the gray-cloaked healers who worked silently among those who could still be helped. "Come. You can do nothing more here."
Seiveril followed Starbrow to the far side of the clearing, where Adresin and the rest of Seiveril's guard waited with their mounts. They climbed up into their saddles and rode away, passing through a narrow belt of trees before emerging into the open fields and groves of the Dale proper. The weather had warmed quickly since the fight at the river, and the day was hot and humid. Seiveril could smell
a thunderstorm gathering in the air. Doubtless Sarya's demons would strike again in the storm, falling on some other part of his harried army to maim and kill and burn, melting away before he could bring them to battle. That had been the way of it for days.
"We should join up with Gaerth and the companies we left here soon," Starbrow offered. "That's almost two thousand bows, plus many of our best champions. Even Sarya's demons will be deterred by that."
Seiveril suspected that the moon elf was speaking simply to set Seiveril's mind on something other than the horror back in the clearing, but he allowed his friend to pull his thoughts to a new course.
"Vesilde has had an easier time of things than we have," he admitted.
The knight-commander had done as Seiveril had asked, giving ground instead of fighting. His footsoldiers had retired south and west down the Dale, covering the flight of the Dalesfolk and surrendering Ashabenford to the oncoming Sembians. Had the Sembians wanted to, they might have overrun the whole Dale with the help of the Red Plumes, and forced Gaerth to fight, but they had not moved farther into the Dale in days, and Seiveril could not fathom why.
Seiveril rode closer to Starbrow and lowered his voice. "There is something I need to know," he asked. "In the last days of Myth Drannor, when the Army of Darkness roamed Cormanthor . . . Was it like this?"
Starbrow did not look at him. He kept his eyes fixed ahead, gazing on the smoke from the burnings in the distance. "Yes," he said with a sigh. "Yes, it was like this. The orcs, ogres, and gnolls outnumbered us badly, yet we could have defeated them regardless of numbers. But not while legions of demons fought against us too."
"I was afraid you would say that."
Starbrow shrugged. He had always been reluctant to speak of his long-ago life in the days of Myth Drannor. "It's harder than you might think to pick your wars. The ones you least wish are the ones you often have to fight."
"I picked this one, didn't I?"
Starbrow halted and set a hand on Seiveril's reins, pulling the elflord around to face him. Seiveril's horse nickered in protest but turned.
"Sarya Dlardrageth picked this war, Seiveril. If you hadn't decided to stand up to her, she would have sacked Evereska and burned half of the North in her wrath. You answered the call to arms, yes. But that does not mean that you chose this fight." The moon elf looked into Seiveril's face, and after a moment he released the elflord's reins. "If it's any comfort to you, Sarya is not happy with her choice of enemies. She thought she was making war on a scattering of isolated wood elf settlements and a city weakened by a war against the phaerimm. She did not plan on you, my friend, and that is a cause for hope."
Seiveril considered that as they rejoined the column of weary elf soldiers who marched across Mistledale's open fields like a river of dusty steel.
"So what do I do now?" he asked Starbrow.
"Withdraw," the moon elf said. "We don't have the strength to move on Myth Drannor, and there's no point in staying here. The folk from Mistledale have fled to the southern parts of the Dale. We'd be defending empty farmland"
"I can't bear to turn my back on Myth Drannor, not when we're this close."
"What do your auguries tell you?"
Seiveril looked sharply at Starbrow. He hadn't realized that his friend knew the extent to which he had relied on his prayers and spells of guidance during the campaign.
He sighed and said, "This is not the hour to march against Myth Drannor, and disaster awaits us if we stay here. But I can't see what follows from this, Starbrow. If we retreat, what must change for the better before we can take the fight to Sarya again?"
"If we don't retreat, will any of our army be left to draw sword against her in the first place?" Starbrow asked. "There will be another day, Seiveril. The Seldarine did not bring you to this place-or me to this place, for that matter-without a purpose."
Seiveril nodded. He, of all people, was not likely to forget that. "Call the captains, Starbrow. We must plan a fighting retreat."
Starbrow clapped him once on the shoulder, and rode off, calling for the captains of the Crusade. The elflord watched him ride off, and looked again to the east. The thunderheads gathered there, moving lazily against the wind. Ominous rumbles rolled across the dry fields.
The storm is upon us, he thought. In more ways than one.
*****
Araevin plummeted through darkness, an infinite abyss in which the vast power of Saelethil's will threatened to swallow him completely. Grimly, he resolved to endure as long as he could. Even if he was to be extinguished in Saelethil's black hate, he would not go gently.
"You are not real!" he shouted into the endless night. "You are a ghost, a reflection, an echo of a mage who died five thousand years ago! You are not Saelethil Dlardrageth!"
He felt his fall begin to slow, and he turned his will toward arresting his plunge.
"You are nothing, Saelethil! A ghost!"
Saelethil's face appeared before him in the darkness, a titanic apparition that dwarfed Araevin.
"I am substantial enough to destroy you!" the Dlardrageth thundered. "And in your body I will be as real and alive as I ever was. You do not know my strength!"
"You do not know mine," Araevin replied.
He curled into a ball and closed his eyes, blocking out the maddening plunge and terrible vistas of purple towers and bottomless violet wells surrounding him. He envisioned himself as a shining white light smothered in darkness, a diamond glittering under the blow of a terrible black hammer, and he threw his full will into resisting Saelethil as long as he could.
"That will not avail you," Saelethil laughed.
He gathered up the force of his will, and hurled himself down on Araevin's last resistance with the force of a thunderbolt. Araevin screamed with the power of the attack, and darkness welled up to fill his being . . . but somehow he survived the blow.
Saelethil roared in frustration and attacked again, clutching at him, stabbing into his mind with dark blades that seared and cut Araevin's very soul, but Araevin battled on, repelling the blows. Saelethil's voice became the hissing of a demon, great and terrible, and black fires roared up out of the night to incinerate Araevin where he huddled, alone in the dark.
"Yield, curse you! You cannot endure me," Saelethil demanded. "Yield!"
"No!" Araevin cried. Saelethil redoubled his assault, but still Araevin refused to let himself be extinguished . . . and with that came the realization that Saelethil might not be able to crush him, not unless he allowed it to happen.
I am stronger than I was when I first encountered the Nightstar. I have completed the telmiirhara neshyrr and I have shaped high magic, Saelethil's seluhiira could have destroyed me a few months ago, but no longer.
Saelethil's terrible will lashed Araevin again and again, but Araevin pushed the assaults to one part of his mind, and concentrated on gathering his own counterstroke. In his heart he conceived a white sword, a blade of purpose and perfection. He poured his determination, his hope, his love into the sword. He shaped its point with his pride and ambition, and he envisioned himself gripping the hilt with his hands and drawing back for the blow.
"I will not be extinguished!" he cried back at Saelethil, and with all the force of his will and mind he burst against the darkness, lunging out with his white sword.
In a single great cut he slashed a white gap across the encompassing darkness, and Saelethil screamed a high and horrible scream. The Nightstar trembled and thundered. Araevin lashed out again, and the white-hot fury of his wrath against Saelethil and Sarya, and all the evil the Dlardrageths had wreaked against him, drove
him onward. He struck and struck again, until the great violet abyss within the Nightstar blazed with jagged lines of white lightning, and the purple ramparts crumpled in white fire.
The Nightstar's interior filled with an awful flash of white light, and Araevin found himself standing in the courtyard of Saelethil's garden, his sword in his hand. He wheeled about, searching for an adversary, but the horrid crawling vines were withered and dead. He looked at the ruddy fields of lava beyond the walls, yet nothing but cool black rock met his eye.
Saelethil Dlardrageth lay at his feet, a bloodless wound piercing his heart. Even as Araevin watched, Saelethil's form froze into a perfect statue of purple crystal then the crystal grew dark, gray, and brittle. Slowly it crumbled to powder and hissed away into nothingness. Araevin looked at the smear of lambent dust in the dead courtyard, and he turned away, gazing up at the white-shot sky overhead. The Nightstar was evidently damaged, possibly dying.
"The Aryvandaaran spells," Araevin whispered in a sudden panic, and whirled to look around him. But at the instant he conceived a desire to see the secrets within the loregem, he felt an artifice of magic awaken in his presence. Golden scrolls appeared around him, drifting in the air, each seeming to shimmer and tremble with the power of the spell it held.
He stared in wonder, surrounded by the secret hoard of lore. If Saelethil had not lied to Araevin, those spells were ten thousand years old, the legacy of the proudest and most powerful empire of elves that had ever existed in Faerun. The things that the Aryvandaaran mages might have set down. . . .
Choosing a scroll at random, Araevin gently pulled it closer and began to read.
*****
The setting sun glowered in the west, sinking into the distant forest amid the acrid smoke of dozens of great
fires. The day had been hot, and in the sweltering heat and fumes it seemed that Myth Drannor was burning again. But these were the fires of industry, the spewing plumes of soot and ash from new foundries Sarya's best craftsmen were raising amid the wreckage of Myth Drannor's outlying districts. The air rang with the sound of hammers beating against hot metal as her fey'ri worked to restore one by one the war machines and battle-constructs they had brought with them from Myth Glaurach.
The sound pleased Sarya well. She lingered on the balcony for a time, simply enjoying the open air and the sounds of victory being forged in the ensorcelled foundries of her folk. Then she turned away reluctantly and descended into the great hall of Castle Cormanthor, descending in a single graceful leap, her wings snapping open only at the last moment to arrest her descent.
Her captains bowed deeply, until Sarya took her seat. "You may rise," she told them.
As they straightened and folded their wings again, she glanced to the side of the dais. There Malkizid stood, a pale swordsman dressed in black robes, his wounded forehead showing only a thin line of dark blood that evening. The devil prince smiled sardonically and inclined his head to her. In the presence of Sarya's underlings he was careful to remain subservient, advising only when asked, never instructing or issuing orders, not even in her name. She believed she was an ally that Malkizid did not want to discard for a long, long time, but only a fool would trust an archdevil, even an exiled one.
She reclined in her throne, and considered her fey'ri lords: Mardeiym Reithel, the brilliant general, resplendent in his dragon-blazoned armor of black mithral; Jasrya Aelorothi, the fierce champion, the match of any bladesinger she had ever seen; Teryani Ealoeth, back from her work among the Sembians with Borstag Duncastle's eyes in a small silk pouch at her belt. They were the tools with which she would raise her new Siluvanede, and her heart glowed with dark pride as she considered her cadre of captains.
"I have tidings from my son," she began. "This afternoon Xhalph broke the Red Plumes on the Moonsea Ride. Maalthiir's army is falling back on Hillsfar in disarray. Meanwhile the Sembian army is vanishing like the snows of last winter. Whole companies of mercenaries have abandoned their standard entirely." Sarya smiled on Teryani Ealoeth. "Lady Teryani, you have done well."
She smiled at the fierce glow of pride that sprang up in Teryani's eyes then returned her attention to the rest.
"Seiveril Miritar and the army of Evermeet are fleeing for their lives. The Zhentarim have been shown to be less than nothing. Everywhere we look, our enemies are in retreat. We are literally the masters of all we survey. No army within a thousand miles dares take the field against us. Cormanthor is ours now, the realm we have waited five thousand years to rule. We are the true heirs of Aryvandaar, and this is our ancient home. No one will deny us our birthright again."
"Command us, Lady Sarya," said Mardeiym Reithel. "We await your bidding."
The other fey'ri lords bowed, and voiced their assent.
Sarya looked down on the fey'ri. Not long ago their faith in her had wavered in the wake of their defeat in the High Forest, but they were hers once again, mind, heart, and soul. She need only stretch out her hand, and they would die to do her bidding. She felt Malkizid's eyes upon her, and she met his avid gaze with a dark smile of her own. Archdevil or not, she was the one who ruled in Myth Drannor.
"A month ago, we did not have the strength to challenge Miritar on the open field," she said. "But we have grown stronger while Evermeet's army has bled in Shadowdale and Mistledale. The time has come to smite Seiveril Miritar and break Evermeet's power, once and for all. We will fall on our ancient enemies like a hurricane of fire, and we will utterly destroy them."
*****
The blackness in the hall brightened, and Morthil's Door became sharply visible. It started to revolve again, a ghostly image made of white light, and Araevin stepped through. He felt strange, light of step and clear of mind, as if his encounter with Saelethil had served to hammer out of him the last bit of dross that weighed down his heart. His mind reeled with the things he'd survived and seen in the last few hours, and he longed to do nothing more than sit silently for a tenday and simply sort out what he had learned. But he had things to do.
He opened his hand, and let the Nightstar fall to the stone floor. It was dull and gray, its diamond-hard facets starred with countless cracks. He ground the device to powder with his foot, until a single white shard remained, bright and undamaged. He carefully picked up the smaller gemstone and slipped it into his pouch. The spells of Aryvandaar remained within, but nothing else. Then he whispered a minor spell to disperse the gem dust left on the floor.
Good-bye, Saelethil, he thought, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a small, hard smile.
"Araevin! You have returned!" Ilsevele ran up to embrace him, but when he looked up to greet her, she gasped and came to an awkward halt. She stared at him, her face open with amazement. "What . . . what happened in there?" she finally managed.
"I found Morthil's tome, just as I had seen it in my vision, and I performed the telmiirhara neshyrr," he said. "After that, I had a word with Saelethil Dlardrageth in the Nightstar. Do not concern yourself with the Nightstar any longer, Ilsevele. Saelethil's sentience in the loregem has been destroyed."
Maresa dropped down from the top of the great hall, alighting near Araevin. "I don't think that is what Ilsevele meant," the genasi said. Her face was tight and concerned, with little of her customary sarcasm in her voice. "Have you looked at yourself, Araevin?"
"Looked at myself?" Araevin glanced down at his clothes, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But a faint
golden glow clung to him, an aura of magic that flowed through him with the smallest motion, as if he swam in a pool of light. It was not bright, but it must have been noticeable, or his friends would not have remarked on it.
A temporary effect of the rite? he wondered. Or something more permanent?
Ilsevele looked at Maresa and said, "I don't expect he would be able to see it. Do you have a mirror?"
"Oh. Of course." Maresa hurried over to kneel by her pack, rooting through her gear for a moment. Then she returned with a hand-sized mirror, and without a word she handed it to Araevin.
Araevin felt his companions watching him, and with a little trepidation he raised the mirror to his face. He saw the cause of their consternation at once, and almost dropped the mirror in surprise.
His eyes were blank, shining orbs of pearly silver without a hint of iris or pupil. Faint streaks of emerald, rose, and sapphire danced within, slowly changing as he watched. And his face was young, even more so than might be expected of any elf. He looked as he had when he was twenty-five or thirty, in the first bloom of an adulthood that would last for centuries. Light, promise, and vitality had left his face free of the small marks and habitual expressions he'd accumulated over his long life.
What did the eladrin's kiss do to me? he wondered. "Araevin . ." Maresa said quietly. "You're not . . . dead, are you?"
"No," he answered. "No, I'm not. I am not entirely sure what has befallen me, but I know I am not dead." He looked back to Ilsevele. "How long was I inside Morthil's sanctum?"
"It's hard to judge time here," Ilsevele replied, gesturing at the lightless hall pressing in on the small company. "But I would guess twelve hours, perhaps more. We have repelled the nilshai or their monsters several times since you left."
"Did you find what you were seeking?" asked Donnor. "Can you defeat the daemonfey with the lore you've mastered?"
"Yes, I found what I was seeking. As for the daemonfey, we will have to see."
Araevin closed his eyes, thinking back to what he had seen when he stood in the Burial Glen of the ancient city and looked on its mythal's secrets. The wards were old and treacherous, much damaged by the city's fall and the centuries that had passed. Burning wheels of magic turned in his mind, sweeping arcs and crackling fonts that geysered from the ground. He found that he could set names to things he had not known before, and understand more of things he had previously glimpsed only in part.
With a sudden shock, he perceived the true peril that was rising in the heart of Cormanthor. Doors, he thought. A thousand doors. And they are open wide.
He shook himself free of Ilsevele and stared toward the west, or what would be the west if nilshai-poisoned Sildeyuir were a place where such things mattered, trying to peer through the deadly gloom of Mooncrescent Tower to distant Myth Drannor.
"Aillesel Seldarie," he breathed. "It cannot be!"
"What, Araevin?" Ilsevele demanded. "What is it? What do you see?"
"We must return at once," Araevin said. He looked around at his friends, his eyes glowing like fire opals, luminous and alive. He saw their confusion and fatigue, but he pressed on. "There is a graver threat at hand than the daemonfey, a threat to all Faerun. We must destroy the Last Mythal of Aryvandaar, or everything is lost. Everything."

EPILOGUE

It was a peaceful spot, a grassy sward high on a hillside, with the cool waters of Lake Sember glinting through the trees a short distance below. The wind sighed in the treetops, and the forest creaked, rustled, and breathed around Fflar, warm and alive with the summer. Insects buzzed and chirped in the noontime sun, and lances of golden daylight splashed the forest floor through hidden gaps in the canopy overhead.
At his feet a smooth stone marker showed the place where Sorenna's spirit had been burned free of its mortal frame, five hundred years ago. She had outlived him by a century and a half, it seemed, there in the restful forests of Semberholme. Still, that was too young, was it not? She would have been a little more than two hundred years in age, with centuries ahead of her still.
Someone might have known her here, he thought. A few of the older moon elves who lingered in Cormanthor after the Elven Court Retreated. I hope it was a peaceful life. So much strife befell our city in the last decades, so much horror in the years of war. It would please me to think that she passed the rest of her days in peace. If I bought her a hundred years of life in Semberholme by spending my last days fighting on without hope, I would count it a bargain.
Fflar's eyes strayed to the marker beside Sorenna's stone, and he felt his heart break for the hundredth time that day. It was not his son. That would have been hard, but he would have been content that his child had lived with his wife even for a short time in Semberholme. But there was nothing there for Arafel, and he could only guess that their son had gone on to live out his days in some other place. He hoped so, anyway.
The second marker in the glade was the stone for Sorenna's husband, Ildrethor. He laughed softly at himself, even as tears gathered in his eyes.
"I would have told her not to mourn me," he said to the clearing. "I would not have wanted her to be alone for the rest of her days. But now I see that I wouldn't have meant it."
The strange thing was, he could almost remember a glimpse of Arvandor in his heart. He had been with her there, hadn't he? And he had not known jealousy, or resentment, or anything other than love in the eternal glades of the Elvenhome ... or had he?
He looked up into the daylight streaming down through the trees, and his tears ran freely.
"Is that why I came back?" he asked. "Is this the thing I am supposed to make right, Corellon? I am a warrior. That is all. Why have you done this to me?"
He stood there for a long time, trying to make sense out of something so strange, so bittersweet and sorrowful that he could not begin to fold it within his heart. But after a time his heart did not ache so much, and the sunlight on his face felt warm and good.
He looked down at the stone markers again, and he understood that his former life was no more. He had been given a new one, and he could not use it to live the old, could he? Not after six hundred years.
With a sigh, Fflar turned his back on the silent stones. The Crusade, battered and bloodied but still intact, was encamped not far off, and he would be missed before much longer. He picked up Keryvian and slung it over his shoulder, and he left Sorenna's glade forever.