Final Gate

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

18 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms

Dawn was still a short time away. Pale gray streaks lightened the eastern sky, but it was quite dark. All around Fflar, the elves and their human allies rustled and murmured to each other, quietly taking their places. To his left, he could make out the haphazard lines of the Dalesfolk, reinforced by a phalanx of elf footsoldiers from Leuthilspar. On the other side, the Sembians made up most of the right wing of the army. His foot ached, and he felt tired enough to lie down and fall into the senseless slumber of humankind, but Keryvian was still light on his hip.

Fflar found himself gazing to the rear of the mustering army, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ilsevele. Against her protests her father had assigned her to command the forces they were leaving behind. Too many soldiers were too badly wounded to keep with the Crusade and its allies, but if they were left behind without a strong guard, they would be easy prey for Sarya’s bloodthirsty demons.

She has the Tree of Souls to protect her, he told himself. She should be safe enough.

Seiveril rode up and joined Fflar at the head of the Crusade. He followed Fflar’s gaze to the warriors they were leaving behind and asked, “You are worried that the daemonfey will ignore us and fall on those we leave behind?”

“I don’t like to divide our forces,” Fflar answered. But there was no other way to draw the daemonfey into a stand-up fight, was there? He flicked his reins and turned back to face the mist-shrouded vale before the army. The fey’ri and their infernal minions were out there, likely preparing their own assault. “Is Selkirk ready on the right?”

“He just sent word that he is. What of Lord Ulath?”

“The Dalesfolk are ready on the left. And it seems that we’re ready here.”

Seiveril glanced up at the overcast sky. A few faint stars glimmered through the drifting mist. Then he set his helm on his head, and motioned to Felael Springleap. “Felael, pass the signal: Forward, all!”

Horns rang out, flat and low in the damp night air. From thousands of throats, both elf and human, a roar of defiance shook the Vale of Lost Voices, and the ground trembled with their footsteps. Fflar tapped his heels to his chestnut’s flanks, and the horse snorted and broke into a prancing walk, eager to run. The smoke and mist drifted slowly across the battlefield, stirred by the faintest of breezes, and a fine cool drizzle fell, dampening the banners and warriors’ cloaks.

They covered close to half a mile with no sign of the daemonfey army, and Fflar found himself wondering whether Sarya had thought better of meeting them in the vale. But then Jerreda Starcloak and a pair of her wood elf scouts emerged from the gloom before the marching Crusade, and trotted up to Seiveril. “The daemonfey are waiting about five hundred yards on your right front, Seiveril!” she called. “They’re drawn up opposite your center. Demons and devils, just like yesterday. The fey’ri are there, but they haven’t taken to the air yet!”

“My thanks, Jerreda!” Seiveril replied. The elflord looked over to his guard captain. “Felael, signal Lord Selkirk to hold in place. We’ll wheel to the right and hit them straight on with our center.”

“Yes, Lord Miritar!” the young captain answered.

He turned and called out more commands, and horns blared again in the morning. Seiveril turned his horse a few points to the right, and the Crusade followed, wheeling easily in the new direction. Fflar heard more signals off to the left, where the Dalesfolk and the elves marching with them had to jog to keep the line dressed. Some would manage it, and some would not; that was a simple fact of trying to maneuver large bodies of warriors on a battlefield.

“There they are!” a sun elf near Fflar shouted.

Fflar stood in his stirrups to see better. In the gray gloom ahead, a dark line of fearsome shadows waited. The hate and supernatural menace from the daemonfey army was as tangible as a thunderclap. The demonic tide roiled and surged ahead, eager for blood, while the fey’ri warriors took to the sky. In the darkness before dawn they seemed like great black crows, inky silhouettes against the lightless sky. He could hear their wing beats even over the footfalls and rustling and creaking of the Crusade on the march.

Seiveril brandished his mace above his head. “This is our time!” he shouted to all within earshot. “The dawn is coming, my friends! Today we break the army of the daemonfey and send their minions back to the Hells from which they came! Now, forward, all! Attack!”

With a great ragged roar, the armies of the Dales, of Evermeet, and of Sembia threw themselves forward, racing over the cool wet grass. Fflar drew Keryvian and followed close by Seiveril.

“Archers, rake those hellspawn!” the elflord cried. “Clerics, ward the ranks! Mages, cast at will!”

Better than a thousand elves, and hundreds of Dalesfolk and Sembians, paused to loose their arrows at the monsters charging up to meet them. Many of the demons and devils among the Dlardrageth armies could not be harmed by mundane steel-but some could, and more than a few of the elf archers carried enchanted arrows. Monstrous shapes stumbled and fell beneath that terrible storm of arrows, but many more shrieked and hissed in defiance and leaped forward to meet the first ranks of the oncoming warriors. Huge bursts of fire and brilliant strokes of lightning crisscrossed the battlefield, banishing the night in flashes of white and sullen red.

The fey’ri arrowed past overhead, seeking to surround the army as they had before. Many shot arrows or threw darts as they passed over, while others contributed deadly spells of their own. Some of the daemonfey spells winked out or rebounded harmlessly, stopped by hasty spell-shields or countered by the Crusade’s own spellcasters, but more hammered the elven ranks. All around Fflar blasts of fire and deadly gouts of acid seared man and beast alike, sowing chaos across the battlefield.

“Seiveril!” Fflar shouted. “It’s time!”

The elflord had his eyes on the fey’ri. As they crossed overhead, he bared his teeth in defiance and raised one hand in the air. “Guardians of the Vale, I call on you!” he shouted. “Aid us against the fey’ri!”

For a moment, Fflar feared that somehow the spirits had not heard Seiveril in the chaos of the battle. Spells, arrows, and furious melees on all sides were all that he could see. But then, a golden light caught his eye. He glanced in that direction, and it seemed that a path of molten light had sprung up in the sky-but this dawn was breaking in the west, not the east. Out of the shining door a host of brilliant white warriors streamed forth. Hundreds of elf spirit-warriors appeared silently and ran to meet the wheeling fey’ri overhead, simply mounting into the air to grapple with their foes.

The fey’ri cried out in consternation and shifted their attacks to the Vale spirits. Fireballs and blasts of lightning scoured the celestial ranks. Some of the ghostly figures winked out, extinguished or driven off by fey’ri spells. But more of the spirits leaped up, attacking the daemonfey legions with swords of blazing light. Despite the battle raging around him, Fflar could not help but watch the spectacle in the sky above the furious clashing armies, and he was not the only one.

“Starbrow, look out!” Felael shouted. Fflar whirled around and found a nycaloth rushing up from behind him. The huge winged daemon leaped for him, claws hooked to tear out his throat, but Fflar spurred his horse and ducked under the scaly monster’s swing. He spun in the saddle and lashed out in a backhand slash that dug a long, shallow gash across the nycaloth’s shoulders. Holy fire blackened its flesh.

The nycaloth howled in agony. “You will pay threefold for that insult, elf!” it screeched.

It leaped into the air with one snap of its vast leathery wings, and dropped down on Fflar like the shadow of a mountain. But the moon elf took his baneblade in both hands and rose in the saddle to stab the point straight through the nycaloth’s black heart. The creature fell on him, one clawed hand clenching its talons in his shoulder, and its fanged maw gnashed only inches from his face. Fflar managed to duck under the worst of the monster’s weight and let the horse ride out from beneath. The nycaloth fell heavily to its side and moved no more.

Remember, you still have a battle to fight, he berated himself. The shining spirits of the vale won’t keep you from having your head torn off by one of Sarya’s demons.

“My thanks, Felael,” he said, but the guard captain was no longer in sight. The battle had carried him away.

A chorus of sudden cries of dismay caught his attention. Fflar pulled the reins in that direction and spurred his horse forward. Seiveril’s banner was under attack. Barbed devils and mezzoloths swirled around the standard, battling Felael and the rest of Seiveril’s guards. The elflord himself laid about furiously with his silver mace, which flashed and thundered with holy enchantments. Without another thought, Fflar charged forward into the fray, and for a terrible instant he slashed and stabbed, and shouted defiance at the infernal creatures all around him.

He suddenly found himself standing in a space cleared of enemies, and briefly wondered if they’d driven off all their foes. He glanced at Seiveril, who was also looking for foes.

“Where did they go?” he asked the elflord.

“They drew back,” Seiveril answered. He started to say more but suddenly stopped in mid-word. And Fflar felt a presence, a malevolence so powerful and close that his war-horse gave off a high shrill whinny of panic and shied away. He wrenched at the reins to keep the animal under control, and looked up to see what new terror had come to the battle.

A dreadful king with pale skin and great gray wings confronted them, bearing a terrible black sword. Dark blood seeped from a wound or mark on his brow, and a guard of devils and yugoloths simpered at his side. The infernal lord studied the two elves with a predatory grin.

“It seems that I must take matters into my own hands,” he said. His voice was rich and musical, unbearably sweet. “Your Crusade ends here, Seiveril Miritar. I have raised up Sarya Dlardrageth as Queen of Cormanthor, and I do not intend to allow you to interfere with the work of fifty centuries.”

“You are Malkizid,” Fflar said.

The archdevil turned his black eyes on Fflar. “So I am, Fflar Starbrow Melruth. I well remember who you are and how you failed… though I have never forgiven you for destroying my servant Aulmpiter. I look forward to granting you a second death.”

“I do not fear you, devil!”

Malkizid’s cold smile failed. “Then you are a fool, mortal,” he snarled.

The mark burned into his forehead began to smolder, and the Branded King advanced to meet Fflar and Seiveril.

The rocky defile grew steeper and more narrow as Araevin and his friends pressed on from the scene of their battle against the hell hounds, until they finally found themselves toiling up a trail of sorts that switchbacked its way up to a bladelike saddle between the jagged hilltops. Here they found the first pitiful signs of vegetation that they had seen so far-black, iron-hard briars that clung to the deepest clefts in the rock. The wind grew stronger as they gained height, blasting at them with unpredictable and malicious gusts. Dust and grit coated their faces and hands, and clung to their garments.

With one last nerve-racking scramble, they reached the saddle proper and finally glimpsed what lay on the other side of their climb.

“That, I did not expect,” Nesterin breathed.

“Me, neither,” Maresa agreed.

The serried ridges continued on into the distance, their flanks scorched and bare. Immediately before Araevin and his friends, the steep-sided valley separating the ridge they had just scrambled over from the next was filled with a forest of sorts. The trees were black and dead-scorched by the dry heat of the Barrens, Araevin guessed, though he couldn’t imagine how they had grown there in the first place.

In the center of the dry, dead forest stood a tower of blackened glass. Its needle-like spires soared above the barren branches, glistening darkly in the ruddy light. Araevin had glimpsed its like only a few times in his life in some of the most ancient places of elvenkind. The spiraling ascent, the slender buttresses that arched away from the tower, the fluid lines of the place… it was a citadel of the Crown Wars, a glimpse of elven castles from the dawn of the world. But the fortress was blackened, its crystalline substance scorched and cracked.

“Malkizid’s tower,” he murmured. “That’s it.”

“That has the look of elven work,” Nesterin said, frowning. “Was this place made in mockery of the People? Or did elves once live here?”

“The Vyshaan of Aryvandaar,” Araevin answered him. “They built the Waymeet, and they had dealings with Malkizid. They might have built the portal leading to this domain and raised a tower here.”

“Elves lived here?” Maresa asked, incredulous.

“The Vyshaanti were more like daemonfey than elves, Maresa,” Araevin told her. “They would not have been deterred by dealing with the evil denizens of the Barrens. I don’t know if they actually dwelled in this place, but I would not be surprised to learn that they visited it often enough to see the need for a strong refuge here.”

They fell silent, studying the old citadel and its dead forest, until Jorin cleared his throat. “We’d better start down from this ridgeline. We don’t want to be seen.”

The ranger led them down the steeply descending path that dropped from the barren hills into the dead forest. Sliding and scraping their way down the hillside, they finally reached the sparse cover of the desiccated forest. Their path grew easier as the slope lessened. When they reached the black woods, Araevin could see that the valley floor was choked with thick briars. Thorns as sharp and long as daggers gleamed on each side of the path.

Jorin led the company deeper into the forest, staying on the trail. On several occasions winged fiends-devils or yugoloths, Araevin could not easily tell-flew overhead, croaking to each other in harsh voices. Each time he and his friends crouched down under the cover of the burned trees and sullen briars, getting as close to the thorns as they dared, and waited until the monsters flew off.

“Do you think they are looking for us?” Donnor asked softly after the third such encounter.

“I doubt it,” Araevin said. “I think there would be many more devils prowling in this vale if they suspected our presence.”

“That’s reassuring,” Maresa snorted. “They’re going to figure it out sooner or later, you know.”

Araevin did not answer her. When the danger passed, they climbed to their feet and continued on. After another parched mile of walking beneath the bare branches and black trunks of the old forest, they came to a small clearing where an old fountain basin had once stood. It was crowned by a statue of a winged angel transfixed by a sword. Immortal agony and despair gaped silently toward the sky. Rising above the trees a few hundred yards away, the nearest spire of the ruined citadel peered down on them.

“I’ve seen this before,” Araevin murmured.

It was the place from which he had glimpsed the third shard’s hiding place in his vision. He could not make out any gleam of light in the spire to announce the shard’s presence, but that did not surprise him. Visions exaggerated things like that in order to convey information.

A broad balcony caught his eye. It ascended the outside of the spire for quite a distance before it came to a ruined edge. A dark doorway midway along its length seemed to lead to the tower’s interior. A sudden inspiration came to Araevin then. He’d been wondering how they could slip inside the tower proper, since he assumed that Malkizid’s minions would carefully guard what passed for the tower’s gate. But it might be possible to make their entry from the balcony outside.

“There,” he said, pointing out the balcony to the others. “We’ll enter the spire from the balcony. Link hands-I’ll teleport us all to the balcony.”

“Is it safe?” Donnor asked.

“Nothing here is safe,” Araevin admitted. “But I suspect that we may do better to trust in speed than stealth once we get inside. It will be very hard for me to conceal my presence.”

The Lathanderite bowed his head and murmured the words of a prayer. Then he looked back up at Araevin. “I’m ready.”

The mage reached out and seized his friends’ hands, and spoke the words of his teleport spell with his eye firmly fixed on the tower’s balcony. He felt the familiar icy plunge into blackness, an instant of disorientation… and he and his friends were standing high above the barren forest on a narrow balcony of ebon glass. Fortunately, it seemed sturdy enough to hold them all. Araevin had half-feared that it might give way beneath their weight.

Maresa glanced down to check herself, as if she expected that not all of her would have made the trip. Then she grunted in satisfaction and said, “Well, we’re here. What next?”

Araevin quickly took his bearings. The citadel was really three distinct spires in one structure, winding around each other as if they had grown out of the ground in that form. About halfway up the height of the central spire, one of the two smaller ones branched off and soared out as a hanging minaret. The other, the one Araevin and his friends stood on, branched out a little bit higher. The whole edifice spurned the earth below, boldly leaping out over dizzying drops below with the support of long, slender buttresses. Beneath their feet loomed a drop of two hundred feet or more.

“This way,” he said, and he led his friends to the doorway close at hand.

The archway was guarded by a warding symbol, glowing red with malevolent magic. Araevin studied it for a moment and framed a negating spell to suppress it while they passed. Inside the spire, he found a chamber finished in red marble with gold veins. A broad stair circled up to the floor above, and another led below. The room was appointed as a conjury of some kind, with summoning diagrams inscribed on the floor and shelves filled with scrolls of sallow parchment.

The third shard whispered to him from somewhere above. Araevin started for the stairs leading up-but then Nesterin hissed in alarm. “There’s a devil following us!” the star elf said. He stood by the archway leading outside, peering back the way they had come. “It’s alighting on the balcony…”

Maresa drew her rapier and melted into the wall beside the archway. Nesterin and Jorin backed up, readying their bows, while Donnor found the best cover he could on the opposite side of the archway from Maresa and hefted his broadsword. Araevin found a good place in an alcove along the far wall… but then he heard a hissing, scrabbling sound coming from the downward stairs to his left. He looked down just as a trio of chitin-plated canoloths appeared on the stair, spiky tongues lolling from their barbed snouts.

A black-scaled shadow filled the archway. It was a towering devil, easily the height of a good-sized giant, though it was lean and lanky. A bladed tail whipped anxiously behind it, and the fiend gripped a long, barbed chain in its talons. Two great, curled horns crowned its fearsome visage.

“Stupid mortals,” it gloated. “Did you think your sealing spell could hold us for long? You will soon learn-”

“Enough of this,” Jorin said.

The ranger loosed his arrow and buried the slender shaft in the thick scales over the fiend’s chest. The devil roared in pain and started toward the archer just as Maresa slipped in from the left side of the portal and skewered its hip-the highest part of the creature she could easily reach-with her rapier. The devil roared again and leaped away from her, ripping her rapier from her hands.

“Impudent insect!” the creature snarled. “I will eat your liver before your dying eyes!”

It lashed out in a blinding frenzy, whirling the huge barbed chain in its taloned hands. With one quick strike it wrapped the cruel chain around Maresa’s shins and jerked the genasi off her feet, and with the other end it smashed the bow out of Jorin’s hands. The monster wheeled and lashed its bladed tail at Donnor, striking the knight’s shield with a resounding clang that sent him staggering to his knees.

“Araevin! The stairs below!” Nesterin shouted. He gave voice to a sharp atonal song that scoured the lean monster’s side with a blast of blue power. An instant later he very nearly lost his left leg to the creature’s bladed tail as it whipped around and lashed at him, slicing through his mail as if it were paper. The star elf cried out and fell, his leg buckling.

“I know!” Araevin answered Nesterin.

The canoloths below bounded up the stairs with startling speed for creatures so large and heavy. Doubled jaws, wide enough to bite a man in two, gnashed and slavered. He snapped out the words for an ice spell, sealing the top of the stairway with a glistening white wall. The ice shuddered as the monsters below hurled their strength against it, but it held.

The horned devil glanced once at the ice sealing the stairwell then fixed its hateful eyes on Araevin. “You are the mage who tampered with the speaking stone,” it hissed. It began to gather a ball of green fire in one fist, but Donnor Kerth surged forward and laid into its black-scaled flesh with his broadsword.

“For Lathander!” the human knight shouted.

He turned and hewed at the devil’s knee, cutting its leg out from under it. The devil threw out its wings for balance-knocking Maresa off her feet again, just as she disentangled herself from the end of the chain-and hopped awkwardly, trying to stay aloft. It hammered Donnor to the ground with one spiked elbow, and flicked its chain out at Araevin in an easy motion that would have shattered his skull if he hadn’t ducked at the last instant. Instead, the chain whistled over his head and pulverized a divot of red marble out of the wall behind him.

The devil drew back for another strike, but a red-feathered quarrel sprouted behind its ear as Maresa’s crossbow thrummed. From the floor she had quietly cocked her weapon and waited for the perfect shot. The towering fiend crumpled to all fours, fumbling to pull out the bolt with one taloned hand, but that brought its head within reach of Donnor’s sword. The cleric surged up and clove the devil’s skull in two with one huge overhand swing. Black blood sizzled and smoked on the dusty ground as the creature folded.

“Well struck, Donnor,” Jorin said.

He stooped and retrieved his bow while Maresa reclaimed her rapier from the devil’s corpse. Nesterin struggled to his feet, having improvised a bandage for his wounded leg by ripping the sleeve off his shirt and binding it tightly over the cut.

“How long will your ice wall hold?” the star elf asked Araevin.

“Only a few minutes. We must move quickly now.” Araevin took a moment to cover the archway leading out to the balcony with a mass of gluey webbing, just in case the canoloths had a way to double back and climb the outside of the tower. Then he hurried to the stairs leading up. “Come on, my friends! The third shard is close.”

Bruised and battered, Araevin and his companions rushed up the curve of the stairs to the next chamber. Two clicking mezzoloths appeared on the stairway above them, iron tridents clutched in their thick talons. “Fight through them!” Araevin called. The mezzoloths raced down the steps to meet them. One hurled its trident at Donnor, who ducked under the weapon and kept going. Jorin and Nesterin shot together, their arrows transfixing that monster long enough for Donnor to bound close and cut it down. Araevin handled the other one, blasting it into flakes of smoking ash with an emerald ray of disintegration. He did not even break stride as he leaped past the wreckage of the two infernal warriors.

They came to the top of the stair, and Araevin halted in amazement. The chamber filled the entire top of the spire. Despite the black ruin that had come to the tower, it was still majestic, soaring half a hundred feet above his head. In the center of the room hovered the third shard of the Gatekeeper’s Crystal, suspended twenty feet above the floor by magic. A great shield of elemental fury enclosed the artifact-dancing bands of ruby fire, crawling arcs of blue-green lightning, spinning boulders covered in foot-long spikes of stone. The sound was indescribable as the flames roared, the lightning snapped and thundered, and the heavy stone spheres howled through their orbits.

“Selune’s starry eyes,” Maresa said. She had to shout to make herself heard over the roaring that filled the room. “There it is, all right, but how do we get it?”

“Is that some sort of shielding spell, Araevin?” asked Jorin.

“Yes. A very powerful one, too,” the mage replied.

Malkizid clearly commanded rare and potent magic indeed. Araevin studied the elemental sphere, picking out the complex weavings of arcane energy it was made of. No ordinary spell would suppress Malkizid’s defenses… but high magic might. The difficulty was that the spell he had in mind could not help but draw a great deal of attention.

Speed, not stealth, he reminded himself. Malkizid’s servants already know we are in the spire. It’s only a matter of time before the master of the house returns.

“Stand back and guard the stairs,” he warned his friends.

Then he raised his hands and began to declaim the opening verses of the kileaarna reithirgir, the spell of unbinding.

Power flooded into him, and he felt the room around him growing gray and unreal, insubstantial. Only he was real and solid, he and the fiery font of magic he coaxed from his heart and hands. The stone blocks of the chamber floor under his feet cracked and dissipated in granite dust, while the air around his body kindled into pure white flame.

Honing his will into pure purpose, Araevin threw his might against Malkizid’s defenses.

Malkizid and his infernal champions tore into the warriors surrounding Seiveril’s banner like a hurricane of black fire. Shrieking, grinning barbed devils hurled themselves against the Evereskan guards and the Knights of the Golden Star and literally ripped seasoned elf warriors limb from limb. Mezzoloths clicked and buzzed in their hideously insectlike speech, dragging down Sembian riders and working awful slaughter with their red-hot iron tridents. In return, elf champions and Silver Ravens hurled themselves into the fray, trying to stem the onslaught. Everywhere gouts of fire and crackling blue rays of disruption hurled back and forth between Malkizid’s fiends and their foes, leaving Seiveril’s ears ringing with thunderclap after thunderclap and the insane roar of hellspawned rage.

The Branded King himself stalked through the elven ranks with avid glee dancing in his black eyes, slaying with spell and blade all who stood against him. Elves and humans who looked him full in the face reeled away, hands covering their eyes and mad shrieks rising from their throats.

“Seiveril Miritar!” the fiend shouted, and his voice shook the vale. “Face me!”

Seiveril’s horse stumbled and foundered, dragged down by a mezzoloth that caught it by its hindquarters and broke its back. The elflord managed to free his feet from the stirrups and leap away as the animal screamed and fell. He banished the insectile daemon back to its hellish home with a spell of dismissal, and found Malkizid striding toward him, only twenty paces distant.

“Your doom is at hand, Lord of Elion!” snarled the archdevil.

“For Tower Reilloch!” Jorildyn appeared beside Seiveril and lashed out with ray of emerald destruction.

The battle-mage’s spell caught Malkizid in his right side and blasted deep into his stony white flesh. Malkizid hissed in pain and twisted away, his ebon armor smoking. Seiveril immediately began to chant a spell of his own, hoping to overwhelm the mighty devil with a barrage of magic.

“Insolent mortal!” Malkizid roared.

He threw out one taloned hand and clenched it into a fist, speaking a word so evil that spikes of hot pain stabbed into Seiveril’s ears. An unseen force crushed Jorildyn’s ribcage like matchsticks. Blood burst from the half-elf’s mouth, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed in a nerveless heap. The archdevil returned his attention to Seiveril-and Seiveril finished chanting his spell. A column of brilliant white fire stabbed down from above, pure and holy, engulfing the Branded King.

Malkizid roared in pain and ducked aside. He retaliated by turning his talons on Seiveril, reaching out to crush him in a fist of malice as he had just destroyed Jorildyn. Seiveril felt the horrible pressure of Malkizid’s grip settling over his chest, tightening, buckling the elven steel of his plate armor. Dark spots danced before his eyes, and the elflord gasped for breath.

“Now, Seiveril Miritar, I send you from this world,” the archdevil gloated.

“Not while I can help it!” Leaping over the body of a dead mezzoloth, Starbrow hurled himself against the Branded King. Keryvian sang with clean holy light as the moon elf launched a furious assault against Malkizid. The baneblade darted past Malkizid’s guard to gash him once across the upper arm and a second time at the knee, but Malkizid parried blow after blow that might have done real harm.

“Is that the extent of your swordsmanship?” the archdevil laughed.

Quickly recovering from the surprise of Starbrow’s attack, he suddenly leaped forward and returned a dizzying fusillade of stroke and counterstroke with his great black sword. Starbrow left his guard just a little low for an instant, and the archdevil very nearly took his head off. The black sword whistled up in a deadly arc that the moon elf somehow ducked under-almost. Instead of decapitating him, Malkizid smashed Starbrow’s helm, sending it spinning through the air, and stretched him out senseless, blood pouring from a bad cut across his forehead.

“Now, to finish this,” the archdevil said.

He turned back to Seiveril, who was wrestling for breath on all fours. But then Malkizid hesitated, and tilted his head to one side as if listening for some faint, far-off sound. His feral grin faded, replaced by a scowl of anger so hot and fierce that Seiveril had to look away.

“What? Impossible!” the archdevil hissed. Then he vanished, teleporting away without another word. In the space of an instant, the concentrated malice and violence at the heart of the fiendish attack vanished as well.

Seiveril pushed himself to his feet, reeling with astonishment. The archdevil simply left? he thought. What in the world is more important to him than what is happening on this battlefield?

He was jarred from his confusion by a scream over his head. He looked up, and leaped aside as a mortally wounded fey’ri warrior plummeted into the ground almost exactly where he had been standing. The red-scaled daemonfey groaned once and fell still. Seiveril turned to search the skies for some clue as to where the fey’ri had fallen from or what might be happening above the battlefield.

The fey’ri were fleeing the fight. Speeding toward the north, they wheeled away from the Vale of Lost Voices and beat their leathery wings with all their might. The shining spirits of the vale guardians ran after them across the sky, swift and tireless, but it seemed that some of the fey’ri at least would escape to fight another day. Seiveril raised a shout of exultation and held his mace in the air. “The fey’ri flee! Strike now, my friends! We have them!”

Warriors all around him added their voices to his. From somewhere off to his right, scything rays of brilliant purple fire-some mage’s work, Seiveril guessed-lanced into the sky and burned two more fey’ri out of the air. A little farther beyond them he saw a tight cordon of daemonfey withdrawing in good order, recklessly hurling powerful spells left and right to keep the vale’s spirits at bay and discourage any mages below from interfering. It was too far to be certain, but Seiveril thought he glimpsed a slender feminine form amid the retreating band. So the queen of the daemonfey was retreating to her stolen throne, was she?

“Enjoy Myth Drannor while you can, Sarya!” he called after her. “I am coming to end your reign!”

Starbrow staggered to his feet, bleeding freely from the cut across his forehead. “Where did Malkizid go?” he managed.

“He left,” Seiveril answered. He hurried over to help his friend, already speaking the words of a healing prayer as he reached out to steady him on his feet. “The fey’ri are withdrawing.”

The moon elf’s eyes cleared as the healing spell took hold. He looked after the retreating shadows in the sky, and surveyed the battlefield with one quick glance. “Some of the demons and devils are fighting on.”

“If they can’t fly or teleport,” said Seiveril, “we’ll surround them and deal with them one at a time.”

A warm light flooded over the battlefield, and Seiveril looked to the east. The sun was climbing above the horizon, slipping into a narrow strip of open sky below the overcast. As the sunlight touched the field, the brilliant spirits of the guardians of the vale grew dim and translucent. The spirits slowed their pursuit and hovered for a moment in the sky. Then, silently, they turned toward the sunrise and vanished in motes of golden light, striding back into the radiant forests of Arvandor. The last of the warriors looked down on Seiveril and touched the hilt of his sword to his lips in salute before he vanished, too.

“Thank you, Father,” Seiveril murmured to the sky. He shook himself, finding new strength in his tired body with the bright golden light of dawn. “Felael! Sound the pursuit! We have more work ahead of us this morning!”