Final Gate

CHAPTER TEN

10 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms

Fflar opened his eyes in a small stone room, illuminated only by a single slitlike window. He hurt all over, and there was a febrile tremor in his arms and legs that left him feeling as weak as a kitten. Where am I? he wondered. What happened?

For a time he couldn’t put anything together, and simply stared up at the brilliant daylight pouring through the window. Then his brow furrowed in recollection. There was a fight, he remembered. A lonely manor house on a hill, arrows in the dark… the banquet! The dark elf assassins!

“Ilsevele!” he gasped.

“Peace, Starbrow. I am right here.”

Fflar turned his head and found Ilsevele sitting on a wooden chair by the head of the bed on which he lay. A rough abrasion scored one of her cheekbones, and she’d cut away some of her beautiful copper-red locks-most likely because they’d been singed beyond repair, he supposed. But she regarded him with a soft, shy smile and set one cool hand on his forehead. “I think the poison has run its course. We feared the worst, but Lord Selkirk sent a cleric of Tyr to tend to our wounded, and he spoke powerful healing prayers over you while you lay senseless. For that, at least, I am grateful.”

He looked past her shoulder, and saw several of their comrades waiting nearby-Aloiene, Deryth, and three others. But Seirye, Hasterien, and Jerien were not present. I saw Seirye die, he reminded himself. Did Hasterien and Jerien fall as well? He remembered other elves falling in the fury of the battle spells and swordplay.

“By the Seldarine, what a disaster,” he breathed. “Where are we now?”

“The Sharburg. We’re being held in one of the towers. The Sembians say it’s for our own protection.” Ilsevele grimaced. “I pointed out to Lord Selkirk that I would be quite well protected in the camp of my father’s army, but he hasn’t seen fit to allow us to leave yet. There are a number of guards just on the other side of that door.”

“We’ll leave any time you like,” Fflar promised her.

He started to throw off his blanket and rise, only to realize two things at the same time-first, he was still quite weak, and second, he was not wearing a stitch of clothing. While elves did not concern themselves quite as much as humans about that sort of thing, he suddenly found that he was not so willing to abandon his modesty with Ilsevele watching him.

He fell back into his covers, and he remembered everything. She knelt over me and wept when I was hurt. And she kissed me, and I kissed her too. All of the sudden, his heart was hammering in his chest, and he could feel his face flushing with embarrassment. He looked up suddenly in alarm. “Ilsevele, I think I-did we?”

She smiled down at him, and her eyes sparkled with delight. “Yes, we kissed,” she said, and she leaned close to kiss him softly again. “I knew what I was doing, and I meant what I said,” she whispered to him.

“I don’t know what to say,” he answered. In fact, he did, even if he did not want to admit it. Even as his heart danced with the words she breathed into his ear, a dark and ugly knot of guilt grew under his ribs. Seiveril had trusted him to guard Ilsevele, not to steal her heart. And he had dealt with Araevin in an even worse way, hadn’t he? Even if Ilsevele and her betrothed had quarreled lately, he hadn’t waited a day before stepping into his friend’s place. How could he ever look Araevin in the eye again?

“What is it?” Ilsevele asked.

He couldn’t bear to say what came next, but he had to. “Ilsevele… what about Araevin?”

“Do you think it is any easier for me?” A shadow flickered behind her eyes. “I wept for hours, Starbrow. But I came to realize that I have been growing apart from Araevin for years now. And lately he has been growing apart from me, much more so in the last few months. He has left me behind him, and I do not understand him anymore.”

“He is my friend.”

“I know. And I hope that somehow he still will be. But this is my choice, Starbrow, and it is my responsibility as well as yours. Who can tell their heart what to feel?”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

Ilsevele laughed and said, “Perhaps that is exactly why it did.” Fflar started to respond, but she simply laid her fingers across his lips and drew back. “No more for now. You still need rest, and we have all the time in the world to make sense of this. I am not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

Fflar started to protest, but Ilsevele pushed him back into bed with one hand, and he resigned himself to resting a little longer. Sleep-full, unconscious sleep, in the helpless manner of humankind-claimed him for a time.

When he woke again, the sunlight streaming into the room was dim and golden with the approaching dusk. He felt much stronger, and Ilsevele allowed him to rise and dress himself. He found that the elves’ arms and magic devices were in the keeping of their captors. He was just starting to examine whether the narrow window in their chamber could be widened with some judicious removal of stonework when a sharp knock came at the door.

Miklos Selkirk and several of his Silver Ravens entered the room. “Good evening, Lady Miritar,” the Sembian lord said smoothly. “I think it is time that we had a word.”

“It appears that I am at your disposal, Lord Selkirk,” Ilsevele answered, with just the subtlest inflection of bitterness in her voice.

Selkirk grimaced, but he pulled a plain wooden chair out from under a table by the door and seated himself. His guards took up places just behind him.

“Your father’s army is marching,” the Sembian began. “My scouts are not entirely sure, but it seems that Seiveril Miritar is marching east, along the south bank of the Semberflow. If he meant to attack Myth Drannor, he’d be on the other side of the Semberflow and he would be heading north. I can only assume that he means to attack Sembia.”

Ilsevele sank down onto a couch with a stricken look on her face. “He must have heard of the attempt on my life.”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“I believe you,” Fflar told him. “But you are holding us here like prisoners. What else do you think Seiveril Miritar would do?”

“I will have no choice but battle if he continues. And if I must fight, I see no reason to allow you to return to your people with knowledge of what you’ve seen here.” Selkirk raised a hand to forestall Ilsevele’s protest. “You will be treated honorably, of course. I am not a savage, and I will not allow you to come to harm under my protection.”

“If you continue to hold us, you will only confirm my father’s fears,” Ilsevele said sharply. “If you have any hope of avoiding a battle, you must let go. My father is coming here for my sake, and my sake only. When I am no longer in danger, he will turn aside. He does not want to fight you, Lord Selkirk.”

The Sembian lord nodded. “I think that is true, too. In fact, I am willing to risk allowing you to report on my strength and dispositions, because I hope to avoid the fight altogether. But before I consider setting you free, I need to know something. What happened last night? What exactly was your Captain Starbrow doing before he made his dramatic entrance? What game are you and your people playing at?”

Ilsevele glanced at Fflar. He met her gaze steadily. He was done with fencing with words. The truth was a better answer than anything else he might think up, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if Selkirk had some way of ferreting out a lie anyway. He straightened up and faced the human lord.

“Two nights ago, I was approached by a young woman, a human, who asked me to meet her at the house of the Elgaun family-a manor on the outskirts of town,” Fflar said. “She claimed that she had proof that some among your folk were negotiating in bad faith. I agreed to come, and so when Ilsevele and the rest of our companions went to your banquet, I slipped away unseen to meet my mysterious friend.”

“I did not deal dishonestly with you,” Selkirk said stiffly.

Fflar shrugged. “I felt that I had to hear her out if there was any possibility that she had information about a plot against Ilsevele.”

“What happened after that?”

“When I arrived at Elgaun Manor, I was ambushed. Several drow were there, waiting for me. I managed to kill three of them and make my escape-though I caught a poisoned arrow for my trouble. I realized that I had been drawn away from Ilsevele, so I drank a flying potion and raced to the Sharburg as fast as I could. You know the rest.”

Selkirk rubbed his jaw. “I’ll have my men search the manor at once. Perhaps they’ll turn up something. Did this treacherous lady of yours give her name?”

“Yes,” said Fflar. “She called herself Terian.”

The human lord looked up sharply at the moon elf. “Terian? Short and slender, with long black hair and a face that would stop a man’s heart?”

“You know her?”

“I only met her once, a few tendays ago,” Selkirk said. “She was in the company of a noblewoman named Senda Dereth. I hadn’t heard of either of them before, which struck me as odd. I know most of the highborn folk of Sembia, Cormyr, and the Dales too, for that matter. Both ladies were speaking with Borstag Duncastle when I came upon them.”

“Who is Duncastle?” Ilsevele asked.

“A very wealthy merchant of the sort that we in Sembia call ‘lords,’ and a member of my country’s ruling council. He was the power who was behind Sembia’s involvement in this war.” Selkirk frowned, fixing his dark eyes on the scene in his memory. “Duncastle was found dead the day after the daemonfey openly revealed their strength and turned against our army in Battledale. His eyes had been cut out, and Terian was nowhere to be found.”

“You believe she killed him?” Fflar asked.

“She went alone to his tent, and his guards admitted no one else that night. I looked into the matter myself, because the murder of a powerful lord is certainly of interest to the Overmaster.” Selkirk stood up and began to pace, chewing his lip absently as he considered the puzzle. “I presumed that she had decamped after murdering Duncastle, but it seems that she has been skulking around since. I wonder what other sort of mischief she has been up to? For that matter, who is she really? And who is she working for?”

“She managed to slip a dozen drow assassins into the middle of your army,” Fflar pointed out. “Who would be able to persuade drow to take on such work?”

They fell silent, considering the question. Then Ilsevele spoke up. “I think you have been dealing with a daemonfey, Lord Selkirk,” she said. “Terian must be a fey’ri in Sarya Dlardrageth’s service. Some of them are shapechangers of great skill, after all. And Sarya would certainly be interested in making sure that negotiations between my father and your father never bore fruit.”

Selkirk stopped his pacing and looked hard at Ilsevele. “Damnation, but that fits,” he said. “How many other daemonfey spies have been whispering a word here and a word there in order to set my countrymen against Evermeet?”

Ilsevele fixed her bright green eyes on the human lord and said, “Lord Selkirk, you are not our enemy. Our enemy hides in Myth Drannor. Regardless of what you decide to do, my father is going to march on Sarya Dlardrageth and destroy her once and for all. Now, are you going to stand aside and let him do his work? Or do you want to continue as Sarya’s dupe a little longer?”

Fflar shot a quick look at Ilsevele, surprised by her forcefulness. Then he looked back to the human lord to gauge the effect of her words. Selkirk glared at Ilsevele, and his face flushed red. “You need not remind me of how Sembia found herself entangled in this whole disastrous enterprise. I do not like to be made a fool.”

“What are you going to do about it, then?” Fflar asked.

Selkirk took a deep breath. “You are free to go,” he said to the elves. “I will have your weapons and other belongings returned at once. But I have a favor to ask of you.”

“What is it?” Ilsevele asked.

“Take me to see your father. You trusted me enough to come to Tegal’s Mark, so I can trust him enough to go to Semberholme-or meet him on the road between here and there, I suppose, since he seems to be on his way here.” Selkirk grinned fiercely, and set his hand on the rapier hilt at his belt. “I think Sarya Dlardrageth has a few things to answer for.”

The forgotten city of Lorosfyr was terrible and magnificent at the same time. Araevin and his companions wandered along empty boulevards and past proud towers whose curiously squared doorways and windows stared down on them, black and forbidding. Two files of six swordwights each marched on either side of the small company, escorting them at all times. Cold, dead eyes sunk in faces of pallid flesh stared back at Araevin when he studied the creatures. The only sound they made was the soft creak of molded leather and rasp of green-pitted bronze as the dead warriors followed the travelers.

Araevin drew his cloak closer around his shoulders and paused to study the facade of a public building rising above them. It seemed to be a library, or perhaps a courthouse. He started toward the steps leading up to the dark doorway, but two of the swordwights moved to bar his path. With a shrug, Araevin turned away.

“Are you really going to accept Selydra’s invitation?” Nesterin asked him in a low voice.

Maresa scowled fiercely. “Tell me you’re not going to bed that spell-spinning vixen, Araevin!” the genasi hissed. “She’ll stick a knife in you or poison you or worse the minute you let down your guard. I can see it in her soulless black eyes!”

“I do not trust her any more than you do, Maresa,” the mage answered. He also kept his voice down. The swordwights did not appear to be listening in, but that didn’t mean it would be wise to speak too freely in their presence. “I accepted her offer because I was not ready to offend her by declining.”

“She seems to be interested in you, Araevin,” Nesterin offered. “I hesitate to suggest it, but perhaps if you played along, you might find a way through this impasse.”

“Or he might find that her bed is the most dangerous place in this city,” Maresa retorted. “Have you seen the way she looks at him? She hungers after Araevin, Nesterin. She has evil designs on him, I am sure of it.”

Araevin held up his hand, interrupting the conversation. “I think I have found what I am looking for,” he said.

They had reached a courtyard close to the edge of the abyss, with a tall citadel or palace overlooking it. The plaza was ringed by a colonnade of angular pillars, each scribed with the strict runic script of the long-dead city. Statues of forgotten heroes stood among the columns, each gazing sadly out toward the center of the court, where a great geometric mosaic of green, white, and purple tile gleamed in the dim light.

“What? What is it?” Donnor asked. The Lathanderite spoke over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the swordwights.

“One moment,” Araevin answered. He took a deep breath and examined the place, searching for any hint of secret enchantments or hidden wards. He could feel the whispers of old power in the place. Before him the mosaic glowed with the familiar hues of portal magic… strange and overly intricate to Araevin’s experience of such things, but a dormant portal nonetheless. He wove a spell of revealing, examining the magical doorway built into the tiled floor of the court. “I thought so.”

His friends waited. Behind them, Selydra’s swordwights watched impassively. “There is a portal network within this city,” Araevin said. He nodded at the mosaic, and lowered his voice. “We can return to the palace any time we like. For that matter, we can go anywhere the portals reach.”

“Can you tell where all of the portals are?” Jorin asked.

“Yes, though I couldn’t begin to guess what might be waiting for us on the other side of each door. I think I’ve already seen several of the portals, though.”

“So what do you propose?” Nesterin asked.

Araevin shot a look at the swordwights surrounding the company. “I think it is clear that anyone who employs servants such as these cannot be trusted. Our hostess intends to ensnare me if she can. Instead of waiting for her to spring her trap, I think we should try for the shard.”

“We won’t be welcome in Lorosfyr for very long,” Donnor observed.

“Good,” said Maresa. “It’s cold and it’s dark and I hate this place. I’m with Araevin.”

Jorin, Nesterin, and Donnor exchanged looks, and nodded. “We agree,” the Lathanderite said quietly. “How do we begin?”

“Stand on the mosaic,” Araevin said.

He led his friends to the center of the courtyard and paused on the delicate tile. The swordwights followed, but only two of the creatures actually stopped on the mosaic itself. Araevin took a deep breath, and began to work a portal-waking spell.

Selydra’s minions fixed their dead gazes on him but did not intervene. Evidently, the Pale Sybil had not instructed the creatures to stop Araevin from casting spells that did not obviously violate their instructions. That will change in a moment, he decided. Beneath his outstretched hands the blue, green, and purple chips that made up the old mosaic awoke to luminescence. Confidently Araevin grasped the metaphysical presence of the gate and reshaped its governing rules to suit his needs.

“Be ready,” he warned his friends.

The mosaic glowed brighter, and suddenly seemed to vanish beneath their feet. There was an instant of motion, and Araevin and his friends were standing in the courtyard of the sussur tree, in front of the portal he had seen before. The two swordwights who had been standing on the mosaic when Araevin cast his spell stood alongside them. Despite their lifeless silence, the creatures were quick to realize that the travelers were no longer where they were supposed to be. The two Lorosfyrans raised their halberds and rushed at Araevin, but Jorin and Donnor intervened. In the space of ten heartbeats Araevin’s friends cut down the undead creatures.

The sun elf quickly swept the courtyard with his eyes, thinking. He settled on a hallway leading into darkness on the far side of the plaza.

“This way,” he said, and he loped across the flagstones under the white tree and took the steps at the far end two at a time, descending into a long passage that ran deeper into the palace. Whatever else happened, he did not want to linger too close to the sussur tree and its null-magic aura.

The small band hurried through the dimly lit corridors, past huge empty chambers and echoing halls. Araevin paused every few yards to stretch out with his senses, seeking some hint as to the direction of the second shard. It was close, he could feel it, yet it was not clear which passages might lead him closer to his goal. They broke out into another courtyard, this one a narrow cloister surrounded by high walls, and headed for the hallway that continued on the far side.

They were halfway across when dozens of the swordwights poured into the court ahead of them. Araevin halted, and started to retreat the way they had come-only to meet more of the creatures following them, with one of the pallid giants shambling up behind.

“Well, I did not think that Selydra would be truly surprised if we tried for the shard,” Araevin said.

“Damn the luck,” Donnor grated. The Lathanderite took a deep breath and dropped the visor of his helm. “Forward or back, Araevin?”

“Forward,” Araevin answered.

He turned back to seal off their pursuers with a spell, but a strange white radiance abruptly glimmered in the ranks ahead of them. Streamers of pale mist collected in mid-air and coalesced into the form of the Pale Sybil. Cold fury blazed in Selydra’s eyes as she glared at the travelers caught in the center of the courtyard.

“I had thought better of you, Araevin,” Selydra hissed. “While you took your rest in my hall and dined at my table, you plotted treachery of the basest sort! Why, you are nothing more than a common thief.” She drew her scepter of black platinum from the folds of her dress and motioned at the bronze-armored swordwights accompanying her. “Slay all but the mage,” she commanded. With dull rasps the creatures drew their weapons and rushed at Araevin and his friends.

“Donnor, keep her minions at bay!” Araevin barked. “Leave Selydra to me.”

She faced Araevin, her dark eyes narrowed. Araevin did not strike at once, instead waiting to counter whatever spell the Pale Sybil attempted. Selydra hesitated as well, doubtless intending a similar strategy. For a moment neither mage began casting, and they watched each other warily as Araevin’s comrades leaped forward to meet the silent rush of the Pale Sybil’s minions. Steel rang against bronze as battle was joined.

“It seems that one of us does not have the measure of his or her foe,” Selydra said softly. “Let us find out whom.” With a small scowl, she began to speak an enchantment designed to ensnare Araevin’s mind and bend his will to hers.

Araevin hastily incanted a negating spell. For a moment Selydra’s voice seemed to whisper enticingly in his ears, but then the enchantment unraveled and dissipated. He waved his hand to brush away the fading embers of her spell and gather himself for the next enchantment, expecting another attack on the heels of the first.

“I see you are not so easily taken, Araevin,” Selydra called. “I knew you would prove a worthy adversary!”

“I have no wish to be your slave,” Araevin answered.

He began a spell of his own, summoning out of the darkness a whirling chain of emerald-glowing links. The chain crackled and hissed with an oddly grating sound, growing louder and stronger as it emerged from the shadows over Selydra’s head. With a confident turn of his hands he shaped the emerging spell and moved to catch the Pale Sybil in a tightening globe of magical energy.

Selydra frowned and attempted a counterspell. But she failed to excise the spinning green chain that settled around her. Araevin sensed victory-the spell chain would make her own spellcasting nearly impossible if she allowed it to bind her. But at the last moment the enchantress abandoned her attempt to cancel the spell with her own Art, and instead flicked her platinum scepter out to parry the tightening chain. In the space of an instant Araevin’s spell chain vanished, its energy absorbed by Selydra’s scepter.

“A potent spell,” the Pale Sybil murmured.

A dark look flickered across her cold and perfect face. She wove her hands sinuously together and muttered powerful, perilous words. The very stone around Araevin’s feet seemed to groan in reply, and from her outstretched fingertips a sickly purple ray lanced out.

Araevin recoiled in alarm and barked, “Iorwe!”

In the space of an instant he slid out of the path of the lambent ray, conjuring himself a dozen feet from where he stood. The Sybil’s spell arrowed past him to strike one of her own warriors dueling Jorin on the opposite side of the courtyard.

The luckless swordwight crumbled into dust and bits of pitted bronze.

Jorin spared a quick look over his shoulder and grimaced. “Bane’s black fist,” he muttered. “That was too close.” The ranger twisted out of Selydra’s line of fire and engaged a new foe.

Ignoring the destruction behind him, Araevin responded by fanning his fingers out before him and invoking the brilliant, many-colored rays of his prismatic blast. Rays of blazing red fire and crackling yellow lightning shot past the Sybil, and the beam of emerald poison she parried with a graceful flick of her glossy black scepter.

That’s the second time she’s saved herself with the scepter, he thought. Clearly it was enchanted to absorb magic. He would have to figure out how to get it away from her. Thinking furiously of the spells he had ready that might serve, he prepared himself for her next attack.

But Selydra did not strike immediately. She studied him avidly for a moment, perhaps considering her own tactics.

“Enough,” she said. “I think you are perhaps a little too dangerous to toy with any longer, and I am growing hungry.”

Araevin started to speak a defensive spell, but Selydra fixed her eyes on his and opened her mouth wide, looking for all the world like she was giving voice to a silent scream, and inhaled deeply. Shadows dark and potent seemed to rush into her open mouth, and Araevin felt something in him tear free from his body and fly to her. The Weave tore away from his grasp, and spells held in his mind faded and vanished as the Pale Sybil literally drank them from his soul.

Appalled, he took several steps back and staggered to a knee. He could see it as a visible phenomenon: a nimbus of ethereal silver light ringed his body, but over his heart it streamed out toward Selydra like a plume of white sand driven by a wild wind. It should have been intensely violent-the wind should have roared in his ears, his hair and clothes should have whipped and flapped in the force of that ethereal blast-but Selydra’s hunger was something that was not at all physical. Even as tatters of his soul seemed to tear loose and fray in the awful storm, Araevin suffered in silence, the blackness of Lorosfyr’s night still and cold around him.

“What are you?” he gasped.

“You are strong, Araevin,” Selydra said. Her voice was a deadly moan. “I have rarely encountered your equal. You will sustain me for many long years, I think.”

“Araevin!” shouted Maresa. “Fight it off! Do something!” She snapped a shot at the Pale Sybil with her crossbow, but the quarrel struck an invisible shield around Selydra and shattered.

She is a vampire of some kind, Araevin thought. She drinks souls and magic, not blood. Any spell he had that might guard him from such an insidious attack was gone already, consumed by the Pale Sybil in her hunger. More were being ripped from him with every moment, and he could feel himself literally fraying away. In the space of moments she would tear his soul free from him, and that would be his destruction.

“Magnificent,” Selydra crooned. Her eyes blazed with a sinister purple light, and there was a feral cast to her face that had not been there before. “Not since I consumed the archmage Talthonn have I tasted such as you!” She stalked closer, reaching out one white hand as if to hold him in place through sheer force of will.

Fight it, he told himself. Saelethil Dlardrageth taught me something about battles within the soul, if nothing else.

With great cry of anguish, Araevin threw all of his heart, his will, into battling Selydra’s consuming hunger. For a moment he stemmed the awful tide, and in the space of that instant he lashed out with a blinding bolt of lightning. It was a deadly enough spell in its own right, but all he really wanted to do was to drive her back and gain a moment to gather himself.

Selydra drank the spell the instant it left his fingertips, and laughed in evil delight. “Surely you can do better than that, Araevin! Have you no more powerful spells than that left to you?”

Araevin’s other knee gave out, and he found himself kneeling on the cold tiles. Think! he raged. She will simply consume any spell you hurl at her. How else to strike back, to break her deadly grasp?

A sudden intuition sprang to his mind. Desperately clutching at the remnants of his magical power, Araevin conjured up a wreath of deadly green flame around his fist. It was a spell meant to smite an enemy, but deliberately he brought his smoldering hand up and set it against his own breast. Searing emerald pain exploded against his chest-but then it vanished at once, drawn away by Selydra’s black hunger.

A tiny green flame sprang into life above the Pale Sybil’s heart. She frowned and looked down in puzzlement-and the small spark burst into a roaring sheath of emerald fire. She shrieked in pain and staggered back… and with that her connection to Araevin was broken, and the black consuming void ceased with the suddenness of a slamming door.

Araevin toppled forward as his soul seemed to snap back into his body with startling force. He heaved a great sobbing breath and clutched a hand to his burned chest, momentarily defenseless. But Selydra was engulfed in green fire, wailing like a banshee. Somehow she managed to gain enough control to rasp out the words of a countering spell and extinguish the flames.

Wreathed in acrid emerald smoke, almost doubled in on herself, Selydra glared at him. Her face twisted in a murderous fury. “I will have you yet,” she hissed. She barked out the words of a teleport spell, and vanished.

Araevin pushed himself to his feet, looking around for any sign of the enchantress. The Pale Sybil’s warriors pressed Donnor, Maresa, Nesterin, and Jorin from all sides. Several of the hunched giants lumbered up after the dead warriors, huge mauls gripped in their massive fists.

“There are too many of them, Araevin!” Nesterin cried. He wheeled and gave voice to a piercing shriek that blew several of the undead warriors into shards of bone and crumpled bronze plate. Jorin and Donnor fought furiously side-by-side, giving ground as they backed out into the courtyard.

“Leave that to me!” Araevin took a deep breath, trying to find his strength again, and took a quick look around. Selydra’s servants crowded both the doorway through which he and his friends had entered, as well as the passage she had emerged from-there was no easy escape in either direction.

He wasn’t about to let that stop him. He faced one wall of the narrow court, and deliberately incanted his next spell. Parting his hands slowly, he phased a six-foot wide plug of the wall into nothingness, creating a safe passage out of the courtyard.

“This way!” he shouted, then he hurled himself through into the still, silent chamber beyond.

One by one, his comrades broke away from their own fights and hurried after him, abandoning the cloister to Selydra’s minions. Donnor was the last one through, pausing before the gaping hole to brandish Lathander’s sunburst and blast a half-dozen of Selydra’s warriors back into the true and final death from which they had been called.

“To dust with you!” the cleric shouted. “Return to your graves, warriors of Lorosfyr!”

Jorin and Nesterin reached out to pull Donnor through the hole. Several of Selydra’s giants reared up before the opening, mauls raised over their heads, but Araevin made a single curt gesture, and the stonework phased aside by his passage spell suddenly returned to its rightful place. With a rush of displaced air and an echoing boom! he walled off their pursuers behind them.

“Well done, Araevin,” Nesterin said. The star elf wiped blood from a shallow cut across his forehead. “Our enemies are confounded, at least for a moment. Now what do we do?”

“We find the second shard,” Araevin answered. “We’re not leaving Lorosfyr without it.”

The smoke of burning fields left a yellow-gray pall over the Moonsea’s shores. Scyllua Darkhope saw little point in the destruction, really. The grain was shoulder-high and close to harvest. It would have been better to capture Hillsfar’s fields rather than fire them. But at least the burning induced the folk of Hillsfar’s westerly farms and hamlets to flee east to the city proper, carrying panic, despair, and disease within the distant city walls and clogging the roads for miles.

“All is in readiness, High Captain,” reported Marshal Kulwarth. A fierce soldier who had been born among the barbarians of the Ride, Kulwarth was in charge of Scyllua’s cavalry. Other marshals led her archers, ogres, footsoldiers, and spellcasters. “We await your order to attack.”

Scyllua gazed at the simple ditch-and-dike the Red Plume brigade had thrown up across the road in front of the village. She could not quite make out the towers of Hillsfar itself, but she could see twisting ribbons of smoke rising a few miles to the east, where parts of the city were said to be burning still after the daemonfey raid. Four days before, she and her army had crushed the Hillsfarian garrison at Yulash, driving the Red Plumes out of the ruined city. Within two days, perhaps three, she would lead her army against Hillsfar itself. The renowned Red Plumes of the city were broken and leaderless, and the paltry collection of mercenaries and peasant levies thrown into the path of the Zhent advance would not delay her long.

“Your orders, High Captain?” Marshal Kulwarth asked again.

“Send the ogres and the footsoldiers against the center, with the support of the spellcasters. Give them a short time to allow the attack to develop, and lead your cavalry against the enemy left flank. You will shatter the Red Plumes and drive them into the sea. I will lead the flanking attack personally.”

Kulwarth thumped his fist to his breastplate and grinned. “I am honored, High Captain. It will be as you say.” The scarred barbarian rode off, barking orders, while Scyllua settled her helm over her head and drew on her gauntlets.

Horns blared and drums rolled ahead of her, and phalanx after phalanx of the Zhentilar infantry started forward against the Red Plumes in their hasty fortifications. Ogres in heavy hauberks of mail, armed with maces and axes the size of small trees, waded among the human and orc warriors. Scyllua expected that the infantry alone would suffice to break the Hillsfarians… but she wanted to annihilate the Red Plumes, and that meant cutting off their retreat with her cavalry.

The sounds of battle drifted back from the ramparts, while the Zhentilar horsemen sat impassively watching. Then Kulwarth had his trumpeters sound their commands. Scyllua led the way as the cavalry rode south, moving away from the center of the fight. When she judged that they had circled far enough, she stood up in her stirrups and let out a high, piercing cry: “Warriors of Zhentil Keep, follow me! ”

Brandishing her scalloped blade, Scyllua Darkhope wheeled her pale white hellsteed in one tight circle and spurred the nightmare across the trampled fields before the Hillsfarian position. Blue fire fumed from the nightmare’s nostrils and struck from the ground at each hoof beat, wreathing Scyllua in the hot stink of brimstone as she dashed out in front of her soldiers. Few of the cavalrymen at her back could keep up with her, but she did not concern herself with what was happening behind her back. In front of her the Red Plumes of Hillsfar were arrayed for battle, and she meant to conquer or die.

Arrows hissed past her, and a couple glanced from her armor of black plate. One even pierced her left leg just above the greave, skewering the meat of her calf, but Scyllua shoved the pain out of her consciousness with a single shrill battle cry. There would be time to worry about her wounds later. A foolish wizard hurled a blazing ball of fire right at her and her hellish mount, but the High Captain of Zhentil Keep rode through unscathed-no flame found in Faerun could harm her nightmare, and her armor was magically warded against fire.

“For the Black Lord!” Scyllua screamed.

She hurled herself over the warriors of Hillsfar, striking off the head of a Red Plume who tried to spear her as she rode past. She threw herself into the middle of the biggest knot of Hillsfarians she could see, and for twenty red heartbeats she laid about her on all sides, taking arms and cleaving skulls in a bright and perfect battle-madness. Her steed kicked, tore, and spumed blue fire everywhere her sword did not reach, and together they worked awful destruction.

“Kill her! Kill the captain!” cried the Hillsfarians around her.

On all sides Red Plume veterans hurried to attack her, hoping to strike down the leader of the Zhent army while Scyllua fought recklessly and alone. But then the rest of the cavalry caught up to her, sweeping into the gap her impetuous charge had ripped in the Hillsfarian line. The Zhentilar cavalry broke like a black thunderbolt over the Red Plumes’ defenses and swept them away.

In the end, a small number of the Red Plumes managed to escape. Half a dozen Hillsfarian war galleys arrived on the shore late in the afternoon and carried off a few hundred of the surviving soldiers. Scyllua killed her last Red Plumes of the day while her nightmare plunged steaming belly-deep in the cold waters of the Moonsea, chasing after the enemy soldiers floundering toward the waiting ships. Only then did she allow her warriors to lead her back to the shore.

Kulwarth greeted her on the rocky strand. “We have about one hundred prisoners, High Captain. What do you wish done with them?”

“Put the badly wounded ones to the sword. Send the rest back to the slave markets in Zhentil Keep.”

“As you command, High Captain.” Kulwarth struck his breastplate again in salute.

“One more thing, Marshal. Have our spellcasters send word to Lord Fzoul. Tell him that we are victorious. The Red Plumes are driven from the field.” Scyllua doffed her helm and shook out her short-cropped hair. “We march on Hillsfar tomorrow.”