Farthest Reach

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 silver-gray 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 birdsong 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 Sildeyuir, 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 Telmiirkara 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 selukiira; 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. Donnor 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 telmiirkara 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.