Farthest Reach

CHAPTER FIVE

19 Mirtul, the Year of Lightning Storms

The first portal led to a ruined chamber high on the shoulders of an icy, windswept mountain. The bitter cold struck Araevin the instant he stepped through the magical gate, and the sting of wind-driven snow and the roar of the storm left him barely able to see or hear at all in the first moments after he arrived. He threw up one arm to shield his eyes, and peered at the old stonework around him.

“Araevin!” Ilsevele shouted to make herself heard above the wind. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know!” he called back.

Araevin finally blinked his eyes clear. The others stood around him, backs to the wind, holding cloaks close around their throats as the garments flapped and fluttered. Narrow window slits looked out over a scene of magnificent desolation, a cloud-wracked sea of black peaks and deep valleys. The chamber-and presumably, whatever structure it was a part of-actually stood well above the cloud layer. Sunlight streamed into the room, painfully bright.

About the same time of day as before, Araevin noted. We haven’t moved terribly far to the east or the west. What mountains of such size stand near Myth Glaurach? The Nether Mountains, but they are not so tall. The Spine of the World, or maybe…?

“I think these are the Ice Mountains,” he told his companions. “Two hundred miles north of Myth Glaurach, perhaps? It’s only a guess, though.”

“We can’t stay here long,” Starbrow replied. “Can we return through the portal?”

Araevin turned to examine the blank stone face of a gateway, framed by a similar rellana vine device.

“Yes,” he replied, “but we’ll need rellana again. I’ve got the rest of the blossoms if we need to go back.”

“It’s not so bad here,” Maresa observed. The genasi seemed more at home in the frigid air and howling wind than Araevin could believe. Her cloak hung from her shoulders, ruffling gently in the wind that streamed the others’ cloaks like pennants behind them, and her long white hair drifted gently. She was a creature of the elemental air, and she was well suited for high places and strong winds. “So what do we do now?”

“Explore,” said Araevin. “See if we can find any other portals the daemonfey might have used, or a trail or path leading away from this place.”

Starbrow shifted Keryvian so that the heavy sword’s hilt was close to his hand. He looked out the window slit at the steep slopes beyond.

“There might not be a road, Araevin. All the daemonfey have wings-maybe they just flew off from here.”

“We’ll consider that possibility when we have to.” Araevin looked around the tower. The row of windows overlooking the mountain slope below stood to his left. To his right a broad swath of the chamber’s wall was simply gone, as if something had cleaved the old building with a titanic axe stroke. The stonework had an elven look to it-somewhat heavier than elves might normally build, but given the evident remoteness and difficulty of the location, he could hardly blame the builders for using whatever materials were close at hand.

Was the place a watchpost of some kind? he wondered.

They made their way through an empty archway in the intact wall to another room, this one a large rectangular hall or banquet room, also brightly lit by the dazzling sunlight on the snow. Most of the roof was absent, lying in piles of rubble and debris on the floor of the chamber. Deep snowdrifts clung to the corners of the room.

It could have been a watchtower, Araevin decided. The elves of ancient Eaerlann would have wanted to keep an eye on the Spine of the World for dragon flights or armies of orcs and giants.

“What a miserable post this must have been,” he muttered.

“Yes, but the view would have been worth it,” Ilsevele replied. A gust of wind slammed into the stonework hall, kicking up high plumes of blowing ice and snow. She shivered and pulled her cloak as tight as she could. “For an hour, anyway.”

At the far end of the hall, they found a stairway leading down into a dim chamber below. Filsaelene spoke a brief prayer to Corellon and imbued a slender wooden rod with magical light, and they followed her down into the rooms below. There they found a set of chambers with thicker, sturdier walls, broken only by a couple of thin arrow slits less than a handspan wide. The roar of the ever-present wind diminished to an eerie moaning as they descended into the shelter of the lower floor.

Filsaelene raised her light rod higher then took a step back.

“There’s a body,” she said.

“Undead?” Starbrow demanded, unsheathing Keryvian. The sun elf cleric hesitated then replied, “No, simply dead.”

Araevin and Ilsevele moved up to stand on either side of Filsaelene, looking down on the corpse. The fellow had died sitting with his back to the wall, and had remained more or less in that position, his chin slumped down to his chest as if he had dozed off. The cold or the dry air had preserved him remarkably. He was human, dressed in the robes of a wizard, with a wooden staff clasped in his icy fingers. His eyes, dark and half-lidded, stared blankly into his lap.

“He just froze like that?” Ilsevele asked. “Who was he? How did he get here? Did the daemonfey kill him?”

Starbrow glanced at the dead mage and said, “Look at him. He might have been here for a hundred years, just like that. I doubt the daemonfey had much to do with it.”

“I can try to question his spirit,” Filsaelene said. “But I must prepare the proper invocations to Corellon Larethian first, and that I cannot do until moonrise tonight.” The sun elf girl frowned then added, “On the other hand, if he’s been here for a long time, this husk will hold no memory of the spirit. He might have been dead too long for my spell to work.”

“We’ll try to question him if we find nothing else here,” Araevin decided. “He isn’t going anywhere for now.”

From the chamber at the bottom of the stairs, an archway led into a long, barrel-vaulted gallery or redoubt of some kind that was illuminated by a row of shuttered arrow slits looking out over the steep mountainside. Araevin wondered who the builders regarded as enemies. The place was in such a lofty locale that it seemed hard to believe that any conventional army, the sort of enemy who might be stopped by stonework and arrow slits, would be able to reach the watchpost, let alone attack it. Then, along the back wall of the room, they discovered no less than five portals, each framed in its own stone archway, the lintels worked in the designs of various flowering plants and vines. Araevin recognized felsul and holly; the others he could not name.

“What is this place?” Ilsevele asked as the wind moaned eerily in the ruins above them.

“A portal nexus,” Araevin said. “Many portals are simple two-way devices, but sometimes portal builders wanted to link several destinations together in a network of portals. This is clearly such a place. You could step through one of those portals, and in a few moments use any of the others, choosing from a number of destinations.”

“In other words, the daemonfey could be behind any of those doors,” Starbrow said. He frowned. “Damnation. What if they lead us into a whole daisy-chain of magical doorways? We might be at this for days.”

“Or longer,” Araevin answered. “This explains the dead mage outside the room. He was probably a portal explorer, who used one of the doors leading into the nexus but then lacked the key to open another door to leave by. Without the right key, any or all of these doors would be nothing more than empty stone arches.”

Maresa shuddered. “Gods, what a lonely way to die. It just goes to show you that you should never break into a place you can’t break out of.”

“Well, I anticipated that I might have to decipher several portals today, so I have prepared a few of the right sort of spells,” Araevin said. “Give me a few moments, and I’ll see what I can divine about these doorways.”

The rest of the company stood watch, while Araevin chose the first portal on his left and spoke the words of his seeing spell. He realized at once that at least that one was damaged beyond repair. Only a fraying remnant of its magic remained, not even enough to guess at where it might have once led. He suspected that simple time and decay had been enough to ruin it. The second portal was still working and he divined its key-a small token of wood, marked with a few Elvish letters. Anyone who carried or wore such a token could use the portal, but no one else could.

I’ll wait on that one, he decided. If he needed to, he could attempt to manufacture a proper token to awake it, but first he wanted to examine the other possibilities.

The third portal was functional. Its key was a simple spell-inscribing an arcane mark on the door would open it for a short time. Many, if not most sorcerers or wizards knew that particular spell. But perhaps the dead mage in the other room hadn’t known it, or had been caught without the right spell ready. Araevin moved on to the fourth portal, and he found that this one had something close to the same key that the portal beneath Myth Glaurach had used, a rellana-blossom and a short phrase in Elvish.

He turned his attention to the last of the portals in the gallery, and he recoiled at once. It was an insidious trap. It was keyed to a simple pass phrase that was actually carved in the stone lintel above the arch, but Araevin observed that its magical strands were designed to unravel after conveying the user to some unknown destination.

“Stay away from the portal on the right,” he warned his companions. “Don’t say the word that’s carved there, and don’t touch the stone. I don’t know where it leads, but it is designed to strand you there for a tenday or more.”

Maresa happened to be nearest the trapped portal. She glanced at it suspiciously, and carefully stepped away from the device.

“Not that one, then,” she said. “Which door did the daemonfey use?”

“The third or the fourth, I think-maybe the second, but I doubt it,” Araevin answered. “Take your pick.”

“One moment, then,” Filsaelene said. She pressed her hands together before her chest, and looked up at the blank stone overhead, murmuring the words of a prayer to Corellon Larethian. “Which door did the daemonfey use?” she asked.

The others watched as the slender sun elf waited for a long moment, eyes closed. Then Filsaelene shook herself with a small start.

“Go left,” she said. “The third door is the one the daemonfey passed through.”

“Very well,” Araevin said. “Everybody, be ready to pass through the portal quickly after I activate it. Portals opened by spells normally remain open for only a few moments, so you will have to hurry after me.”

His companions gathered close around the portal. Araevin checked to make sure they were ready, and he whispered the word to the spell and traced on the stone surface the mark he used as his own sigil. Blue fire awoke in the ancient gate, rippling around its perimeter, and Araevin was snatched away to somewhere else.

He found himself in deep, near-total darkness, with only a faint glimmer of light spilling down from somewhere overhead. Despite the lack of illumination, Araevin took three quick steps away from where he had arrived, knowing that his friends would be arriving right on his heels. He barked his shin hard on something, stumbled and caught himself on a stone pedestal in front of him. Muttering a human curse-and any human tongue was much more suited to profanity than Elvish, after all-he managed to call a light spell from his staff and see where he was.

The room was a vault or cellar below a large stone building, evidently in ruins. A stairwell leading up stood across the room to his right. The soft glow of daylight filtered down, the glimmer he had seen when he first entered. He looked down, and discovered that he had very nearly tumbled headlong into a deep stone well in the center of the room. The knee-high lip surrounding the shaft was what he had walked into in the darkness.

“Damn,” Araevin breathed. He might have managed a quick spell of flying while falling in darkness-or he might not have.

Blue light crackled behind him, and Araevin turned to guide Starbrow away from the doorway. The moon elf had Keryvian out, and looked around, anxious for any sign of a foe.

“Are they here?” he hissed.

“I don’t know. Now, step aside, the rest are coming,” Araevin said. One by one Ilsevele, Maresa, and Filsaelene arrived in the same manner, simply appearing in the air next to the blank stone archway marking that end of the portal.

Araevin carefully studied the chamber of the well. It was another heavy stone room, built in the form of two intersecting barrel-vaults made of large stone blocks. At the end of three vaults stood empty stone slabs, perhaps meant to hold sarcophagi, but no such crypts were in evidence. The stairs climbed up at the end of the room’s fourth arm. The vault opened out in the center, providing a little space around the well. The portal was set in one curving wall ringing the well, with another old portal opposite. He couldn’t begin to guess what the place might once have been.

“Another portal,” Ilsevele observed.

“Let’s check the stairs and see what’s above before we try the next portal,” Araevin said. “Or for that matter, the well shaft. It might lead somewhere, too.”

Maresa leaned over to look into the dark well. A cold breeze faintly sighed up from below, musty and damp.

“There’s some light down there,” she said in surprise.

Araevin frowned. He didn’t remember seeing any such thing before. He leaned over to look, and he saw it too, a faint silver phosphorescence that danced far below them. It glimmered and swirled for a moment-then it started to rise, climbing swiftly toward them. For a moment, he continued to peer at it, trying to figure out what he was looking at, but then he decided that anything in such a place that was moving toward him and moving fast was not likely to be friendly.

He recoiled from the well, and called out a warning to his comrades. “Watch out, it’s coming up!”

Maresa retreated from the edge, too, just before a swirling stream of spectral silver light exploded up out of the well. In the baleful glow Araevin could see the misshapen form of a person, a human face with an oddly dark and downcast gaze, the suggestion of regal robes hanging in tatters, and a shining silver staff clutched in ghostly fingers.

“It’s the wizard!” Filsaelene gasped. “The one from the mountainside!”

The apparition hovered in the air above the well, its features cruel and proud. It fixed its empty gaze on Maresa and snarled out something in a tongue Araevin did not recognize.

“Hai zurgal memet erithalchol na!” it said, its voice imperious and demanding. “Memet na irixalnos nairhaug!”

“Araevin, what’s it saying?” Starbrow asked in a low voice. He kept his sword raised before him in a guard position.

“I can’t even begin to guess,” Araevin replied. The elves exchanged looks with each other. “I have heard stories of travelers dying in portal networks, which their ghosts then haunt. Let’s just leave it alone, and try the stairs. Move away slowly.”

Maresa carefully backed away, feeling her way along the wall toward the stairs leading up out of the vault. Filsaelene followed close behind her. But before the two had moved more than ten feet toward the door, the ghostly wizard muttered something else in its incomprehensible tongue, and attacked. It flung out one spectral arm, blasting at Maresa with a sickly purple-white bolt of crackling lightning.

The genasi cried out and dived away from the bolt, which gouged a fist-deep scar across the stone wall behind her. Smaller side-bolts stabbed out at Filsaelene and Araevin. Araevin managed to parry the lightning bolt before it struck him, grounding it with his staff and a quick defensive spell, but Filsaelene was spun around and knocked off her feet.

“That was a stupid idea!” Maresa shouted.

The genasi scrambled to her feet and snapped off a quick shot from her crossbow, which passed clean through the center of the ghost’s chest without leaving the faintest mark-though it made Starbrow curse and duck on the other side of the well.

Ilsevele whispered a spell as she put an arrow on the string of her bow. The arrowhead burst into cold silver flame as she loosed it. The missile tore a dark hole in the ghost’s torso. The ghost howled in its forgotten tongue, but it did not recoil or crumple as a living person might have done. It simply ignored the wound, even as streamers of mist blossomed from the ragged hole and faded into nothingness.

The ghost seemed to gather itself for a moment, glaring at Ilsevele, and its eyes flashed with a pale and terrible light. Ilsevele screamed and raised her arms to shield her face, but her hands and arms turned dead white and smoked under the ghost’s awful gaze. Her bow clattered to the floor.

“Ilsevele!” Araevin shouted as he wheeled on the ghost.

He hurled a spell of his own, riddling the spectral figure with a barrage of glowing blue darts. Like Ilsevele’s arrow, the magic punched black holes in the silver image. More missiles followed an instant later, repeating the attack as Araevin threw his best effort at the specter. But the ghost, though hurt, kept its baleful eyes fixed on Ilsevele, searing her with its chill gaze.

“I can’t reach it!” Starbrow snarled. Keryvian glowed in his hand, a shining blade of holy fire, but the ghost hovered over the center of the well, outside any conceivable sword-reach. The moon elf reversed the enchanted sword in his hand, cocking his arm as if to throw the blade, but he hesitated. Ilsevele wailed again, writhing under the ghost’s cold-burning stare, and Starbrow muttered a curse and straightened up.

With calm deliberation, he walked over and interposed himself between the ghost and Ilsevele, turning his back on the apparition and shielding his face.

The pale glow surrounding Ilsevele faded at once, only to spring into existence on Starbrow’s back. He groaned, but keeping his back to the monster, he seemed to avoid the worst of it.

“Araevin… somebody… kill this damned thing!” he gasped.

“Maresa!” Araevin cried. “Use your wand!” Then he seized one of the wands at his own belt and snatched it out, blasting the ghost with dart after dart of glowing energy. Maresa dropped her useless crossbow and did the same, pelting the ghost from the other side.

The ghost howled again, and wrenched its gaze away from Starbrow and Ilsevele. The moon elf crumpled to his knees, collapsing on top of her. Then the specter intoned another spell, and blasted Araevin into senselessness with a mighty word of power. Araevin staggered back and tumbled to the hard stone floor, eyes seared white, ears ringing, blood streaming from his nose. He could see nothing, hear nothing, could scarcely even move as his thoughts reeled drunkenly.

His vision cleared a little, and he looked up through unfocused eyes as Filsaelene picked herself up off the floor. She steadied herself with one hand on the wall, and presented the star-shaped holy symbol of Corellon Larethian, shouting out a prayer that Araevin couldn’t hear through the ringing in his ears. A great ring of golden light burst from her raised hand, racing through the chamber. When it touched the ghost, the apparition’s substance simply boiled away into nothing. The same golden glow washed over Araevin and the others, bringing vigor, strength, and renewal.

Buoyed by the cleric’s spell of healing, Araevin climbed to his feet as his eyes focused again and his ears stopped ringing. He groped for the magic wand he had dropped, closed his fingers around it, and hammered the ghost again with more of the magical darts. The spirit’s whole form flickered and danced uncertainly, as if it was having trouble keeping itself together.

“Keep after it!” Araevin cried. “We can destroy this thing!”

The ghost drifted down toward the floor of the chamber, reaching out with one spectral claw for Filsaelene. The cleric quickly recoiled, backing up as the apparition drew closer.

“Shield me, Corellon!” she cried, and she spoke a prayer, guarding herself with a shining golden radiance that the ghost could not seem to reach past.

She whirled her long sword in front of her, but the weapon simply passed harmlessly through the ghost.

Araevin tried another spell-a bolt of fire-but the ghost’s otherworldly body simply wasn’t affected.

Think, he told himself. What other spells do I have that might destroy a ghost?

Before he could determine the next attack to try, Starbrow scrambled to his feet and charged at the ghost’s back, Keryvian in his hands. The ancient sword burst into brilliant white flame as he slashed at the specter. Unlike Filsaelene’s sword or Maresa’s crossbow bolts, Keryvian proved quite capable of damaging the spirit. One slash dragged Keryvian through its torso from shoulder to hip, and Starbrow’s spinning follow-up drove the point of Demron’s last and greatest blade through the center of the ghost’s forehead.

The ghost groaned horribly, a sound that chilled Araevin to the bone, and it slowly dissolved into nothingness. Starbrow held his sword ready, in case it re-formed, but the phosphorescent mist simply dimmed and vanished.

“Thank the Seldarine that’s over,” the moon elf breathed. He looked around. “Is everybody all right?”

“Thanks to Filsaelene’s spell, I am unhurt,” Araevin replied. He hurried over and knelt by Ilsevele, who still crouched by the floor, broad swaths of her flesh dead-white and ice-cold to the touch. “Ilsevele is injured!”

“S-so c-cold,” Ilsevele gasped.

She locked one of her hands around Araevin’s forearm, pulling herself close. Araevin hissed with the cold of her touch. Then Filsaelene hurried over and knelt beside them. The cleric spoke the words of a healing prayer and set her own hand over Ilsevele’s injuries. Beneath the warm golden glow of her touch, the pallor of Ilsevele’s wounds faded, and her shivering stopped.

Ilsevele shook herself and stood up slowly.

“Thank you, Filsaelene,” she said. She rubbed her arms vigorously, and the color returned to her face. She retrieved her bow, and looked over at Starbrow. “And thank you, too, Starbrow. You risked your life to shield me from the ghost. I don’t know what to say.”

Starbrow said with an awkward smile, “It just seemed like the best thing I could do, since I couldn’t reach the ghost as long as it hovered up there. I couldn’t stand there and do nothing.”

Ilsevele stepped over and reached up to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you, again.”

Araevin couldn’t help but smile at the sheepish look that came over Starbrow’s face.

“Well, come on, then,” the wizard said. “Let’s see where we are and where the daemonfey went from here.”

Curnil Thordrim stalked something terrible through the forest gloom a few miles from the old Standing Stone. He didn’t know for certain what it was, but it had killed two of his fellow Riders of Mistledale in their simple camp a few hours before, and they had died badly indeed: bodies marked by odd punctures surrounded by swollen, blue-black flesh, limbs broken and twisted, and awful bites gouged out of faces and skulls. He knew all the dangerous animals and most of the deadly monsters that haunted the depths of old Cormanthor, but he had never in his thirty-five years seen anything in the woodland that killed in that manner.

Curnil was a burly man with thick black hair on his forearms and a heavy black beard. Despite his size, he glided through the underbrush without sound, his dark eyes flicking from sign to sign as he followed the trail of something that stood as tall as an ogre and had long, narrow feet with small claws at the toe. He was not entirely sure he wanted to catch up to it, if he was to be honest with himself.

He came to a small stream trickling through the woods, and looked and listened for a long time before breaking out of the ground cover. Curnil had learned his woodcraft from some of the best, the moon and wood elves of Elventree, a hundred miles to the north. Nothing but the burbling of the stream greeted his ears. Curnil drew a deep breath, and slipped out of the bushes to the stream bank, looking for a print that might show whether his quarry had continued on or turned aside there.

It only took a moment for him to find the end of the track. The creature’s footprints simply ended in the wet sand, as if it had taken to the air or just vanished outright.

“That’s impossible,” he muttered, brow furrowed in confusion. “What in the Nine Hells vanishes into thin air?”

He grimaced-the Nine Hells indeed. The pieces fit together all too well. Something wicked, something strong, something that disappeared without a trace. Myth Drannor was not far off, and he’d heard plenty of stories about the horrible devils that haunted the ruins. But they were supposed to be trapped within the old elven mythal, weren’t they?

“Some idiot set one of those things loose,” he decided.

Some cruel new plot on the part of the drow who lived in the shadows of the forest? Or a stupid blunder by some glory-hunting adventurers in Myth Drannor. Who would set such a creature free?

For that matter, why assume that only one was loose in the forest?

Curnil looked around at the silent woods, and shuddered. He was sure that he had not seen the last of the monster he’d just tracked to the empty streambed, and he didn’t look forward to finally meeting it. He didn’t look forward to that at all.

The structure above the chamber in which they fought the ghost turned out to be a mausoleum of some kind, buried deep in a forest unfamiliar to Araevin. Starbrow believed it might be one of the woodlands near old Myth Drannor, possibly the old realm of Semberholme in western Cormanthor. Araevin had never visited the eastern forest, but the fact that it was near dusk when they emerged gave him reason to believe that the portal had carried them a fair distance to the east of the mountaintop stronghold.

“Why would the folk of Myth Glaurach or Semberholme have built that mountain stronghold we first explored?” Ilsevele asked Araevin. “Are you certain the portal-builders were elves?”

He nodded. “All the portals we’ve seen so far have shown the same workmanship and design. I suppose it’s possible that someone carved newer portals and attempted to match the workmanship of the older ones, but the spells that bind the portals together all seem to be about the same age, too. I favor the simpler explanation that the whole network was constructed at one time-most likely by mages of Myth Glaurach who wanted to join their city to several distant destinations.”

Starbrow studied the forests, rubbed at his jaw, and said, “You know, it might have been mages of Myth Drannor who built this portal network. They were masters of such magic, and created portals to many distant places. Myth Glaurach might have been a destination, not an origin.”

Eventually they all decided that it didn’t matter very much, since Filsaelene’s divinations revealed that the daemonfey had not emerged from the portal network there. Instead, their adversaries had fled through the second of the two portals in the chamber below. They rested for the night in the forest above the mausoleum, and returned to the vaulted chamber beneath the empty tomb.

Araevin cast his spells of portal sensing again, and studied the doorway they had passed by before. As he suspected, it was another keyed portal, requiring nothing more than a simple phrase in Elvish. However, the magic guarding it was intermittent. Once opened, the portal would not work again for hours.

“All right, I am opening the portal,” he told the others. “The portal will remain open for a short time, just a few moments likely, and it won’t open again for hours. You must follow me quickly.”

He spoke the pass phrase, and watched the old lichen-covered lintel glow brightly. He reached out and tapped the blank stone of the door, and felt the familiar dizzying sense of moving without moving. All went dark for an instant, and Araevin found himself looking on a small forest glade. One side of the glade ended in a stone wall, in which the portal’s archway stood. The morning was young there as well, the sky pale gray and streaked with high, rose-colored clouds.

“Neither east nor west this time,” Araevin observed.

He stepped away from the doorway, and studied the dark forest looming around him. The broken fingers of slender stone towers rose a short distance away, glimmering softly in the coming dawn over the treetops.

Behind him, Starbrow emerged from the portal, followed by the others in short order. The moon elf warrior halted in surprise, a look of consternation on his face.

“I know this place!” he said. “We’re near the Burial Glen, only half a mile or so from Myth Drannor.”

“Myth Drannor! Are you certain?” Ilsevele said. She quickly drew an arrow and laid it across her bow, scanning the vicinity for any enemies.

“Trust me,” Starbrow said. “I know this place.”

“Aren’t the ruins supposed to be overrun by devils and dragons, monsters and ghosts of the worst kind?” Maresa asked, obviously uneasy.

“So it is said,” Ilsevele replied.

“Myth Drannor… of course,” Araevin said.

Where else would the daemonfey go? Saelethil Dlardrageth and the rest of his accursed House had arisen in the ancient realm of Arcorar, which had become Myth Drannor. He’d already seen that Sarya knew how to use mythals to anchor demons to Faerun and compel their service-and there was a mythal here, one even more powerful than the mythal that had stood over Myth Glaurach. And mythals often served to absolutely block scrying, which would explain why no one had been able to divine the whereabouts of Sarya’s defeated army.

“Be careful,” he told the others. “I think there is a very good chance we have found Sarya’s hiding place.”

“So what now?” Ilsevele asked. “Make certain that they’re here, or return and report what we’ve found so far?”

“Press on,” Araevin said at once. “If nothing else, I need to get a look at the mythal spells and see if Sarya is manipulating this mythal as she did the other one.”

“The mythal stone is in the heart of Castle Cormanthor,” Starbrow said. “I can’t imagine how we can reach it, if the whole fey’ri army is here.”

Araevin looked at Starbrow. “You know Myth Drannor well. Mythal stones are usually hidden with care.”

“I’ve spent some time here.” Starbrow shrugged and looked away, searching the trees for danger, Keryvian’s hilt in his hand.

“I don’t need to see the stone itself, at least not right this moment. I just need to be within the bounds of the mythal’s influence.”

“That’s easier, then,” the moon elf said. “We need only walk a couple of hundred yards in that direction-” he pointed toward where the old spires could still be seen over the trees-“and we’ll be within the mythal.”

“We might be walking into the middle of Sarya’s legion,” Maresa said. “Anything could be in there. Hells, even if she isn’t here, I’ve heard enough stories about Myth Drannor to think twice about setting foot in that place.”

“I’ll conceal us, at least for a short time,” Araevin promised.

He drew out a tiny pinch of spirit gum from his bandolier of spell components, and plucked out one of his eyelashes, wincing. Pressing the lash into the gum, he carefully spoke the words of a spell. The forest around them seemed to grow dimmer, more distant.

“Araevin, what did you do?” Filsaelene asked.

“A spell of invisibility. It covers all of us, but you must remain close to me. If we run into enemies, do not strike unless you’re sure it can’t be helped, because you’ll break the spell if you do.” He looked over to Starbrow. “Lead the way, since you know where we’re going.”

Starbrow nodded grimly and took the lead. They followed an old, winding path that led from the portal glen toward the city, taking pains to move quietly and avoid talking. Many things could pierce a spell of invisibility, but if they were quiet and careful, they might be able to avoid trouble of that sort.

They reached the outskirts of the city, and took cover behind a low stone wall. Araevin sensed the moment they entered the mythal. His skin tingled with the power of the ancient magic.

“Let’s stop here. I have a couple of spells to cast, now that we’re inside the mythal. Keep watch for me.”

Ilsevele crouched beside him, an arrow on the string of her bow. Starbrow stood behind a tall pile of stones, sword in hand, watching the ruins with his face set in an unreadable expression. Maresa and Filsaelene guarded the other side.

Satisfied that they were ready, Araevin first cast one of his divinations. Myth Drannor’s magical aura made scrying impossible, but he hoped that a different sort of divination might work. He spoke the words of the spell that conjured up unseen drifting eyes, hovering above his head like a halo.

“Spread out and search for the daemonfey,” he instructed them. “Return when you sight any.”

The intangible sensors whirred away out of sight, each dodging and darting its way into the ruins and the forests around him.

He waited patiently for several minutes, as his spell-creations went about their searches. Then they began to return, one by one. Araevin caught each in his hand as it came back, closing his eyes to see played out in his mind’s eye the things the magical eyes had seen. He glimpsed buildings with broken windows, fallen-in roofs, and piles of masonry inside; streets overgrown with vines and wild trees; proud old manors and schools still surprisingly intact, though their windows were dark and empty. And he also found the daemonfey-glimpses of fey’ri companies bivouacked in whichever buildings were best preserved. The demonspawn were hard at work in repairing their weapons and armor, forging new weapons, drilling with spell and blade, or simply patrolling the ruins, fluttering from building to building like oversized bats.

“Well?” Maresa asked.

“Yes, they’re here,” Araevin said. “This is the fey’ri army, I’m certain of it.”

“We have to leave, then,” Starbrow said. “I have to get word of this back to Gaerth and Seiveril.”

Araevin nodded. “In a moment,” he said. “There is one more thing I want to see here.” The others shifted nervously, watching the ruins for any sign of approaching enemies, but Araevin moved his hands in arcane passes and murmured the words of another spell, the spell of mythal-sight that Saelethil had taught him.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them he perceived Myth Drannor’s ancient and mighty mythal as a golden vault filling the sky, a huge dome of drifting magic threads that slowly orbited the whole city. The beauty and power of the thing astonished him. Araevin trained his vision closer in, studying carefully to see what the mythal’s effects were. He glimpsed protections against scrying-well, he knew about those already, didn’t he? — and wards to suppress spells of compulsion and domination. There seemed to be no modifications to the drifting strands of magic.

Sarya hasn’t figured out how to manipulate this mythal yet, he decided. Maybe it takes her a while to determine how to attune herself.

He allowed himself a confident smile, and spoke the words of a spell that would allow him to gain access to the mythal so that he could raise defenses against Sarya. But even as he spoke the last syllable and reached out to grasp at the magical strands he saw around him, he realized that he had made a mistake.

From the drifting golden strand hovering in arm’s reach, a shimmering red-gold thread suddenly emerged, appearing from nowhere. Araevin yelped and stumbled back, but not before the new strand hummed angrily. A scarlet veil descended over him, dancing across his body in a thousand motes of painful pinpricks, jabbing and sharp. With each pinprick, a spell vanished from his mind, draining away at a horrendous rate.

“Araevin!” Ilsevele cried.

She sprang to her feet and backed away as he jerked and flailed in his crimson cocoon of light motes.

The great golden dome of Myth Drannor’s mythal wavered and faded from Araevin’s view. He desperately tried to speak a counterspell, but before he had even said the third word of the enchantment, the spell was sucked out of his mind in mid-casting. He tried to quickly think of another, but then there was no more time-every spell he held prepared in his mind was gone, drained away.

I am powerless, he realized. Sarya set a trap for me!

“Araevin! What’s wrong? What has happened?” Ilsevele asked. “Are you hurt?”

“Not physically,” he managed. He steadied himself against the wall. “But I’ve been drained of magic. I have no spells. We have to flee, before the daemonfey come for me.”

Starbrow drew back from his post, and glanced at Araevin.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Araevin answered.

He hugged himself, feeling a strange ache in the center of his body, as if something had been torn out of him. He wasn’t sure exactly how he’d been injured, but he prayed to Corellon that it wasn’t permanent. He couldn’t imagine being powerless for the rest of his days.

He forced himself to look up at Starbrow and say, “Yes, I can walk. But I think we ought to run.”