Farthest Reach

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 telmiirkara neshyrr and I have shaped high magic. Saelethil’s selukiira 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 telmiirkara 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.”