Forsaken House

CHAPTER 17

11 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms

Silver moonlight streamed down the shoulders of Daelyth's Dagger until the stark cliffs of the forest mountain shone like white beacons in the night. Nervous, Gaerradh studied the sky and the high slopes overhead, searching for any sign of daemonfey sorcerers above the vale. The deeply cleft valley was so narrow and high that the winged fey'ri would have to choose between staying so far above the gorge that they could not reach the elves below with their spells and quarrels, or descending into the straits of stone where it would be difficult to maneuver between the cliffs. On the other hand any fey'ri who remained above the Dagger could simply hurl stones into the deeps below and create no small danger for anyone sheltering on the valley floor below, even if their boulders were dropped at random.

"It's a clear night," Methrammar remarked. "That favors us greatly. As long as there's any light at all, we'll see as well as the orcs, and the moon shadows will help to hide us from unfriendly eyes."

The commander of Silverymoon's legion stood dressed in his great crimson cloak, his mithral mail gleaming like starshine beneath his mantle. All around him, hundreds of Silverymoon's Knights in Silver and their dwarf comrades from Citadel Adbar's Iron Guard filled the Dagger's mouth, standing in easy ranks to guard the narrow trail winding along the swift white stream.

Faint lanterns had been positioned high up on the rocky walls of the trail and the lower vale, throwing soft verdant light over the way the enemy must come if he came on foot. But Gaerradh thought that the dense ranks of waiting soldiers would make an excellent target from the air.

"The orcs do not concern me," Gaerradh murmured. "It's the daemonfey I fear. If they do not enter the vale…"

"If they do not enter the vale, they'll never get us out of here," Methrammar finished for her. "We can stand a siege of a month or more if we have to, and the mages of Evermeet tell us their army is marching here next. No, the daemonfey want to take the Dagger by assault. They don't have the time to starve us out."

"Your soldiers are too exposed. I don't like this."

"They're where they need to be." The half-elf turned to look Gaerradh in her eyes and said, "Our warriors are best suited for this task, Gaerradh. We've got heavier armor than your wood elves, and we're trained to fight in ranks. Holding this trail is our kind of fight. The rest of it is up to you."

"I know," she said.

She studied Methrammar's clean visage and fine features, finding no trace of fear in his eyes, only a shadow of anticipation-not that she should have expected less from a son of Alustriel. Still, the Argent Legion bore the greatest hazard, and that meant Methrammar did as well, since the high marshal was not in the habit of leading from the rear. He would be in the forefront of the fighting, his banner flying behind him, and Gaerradh knew what a prize he would be for the daemonfey and their allies. She did not want to see him wounded, or worse. "Be careful," she managed.

Methrammar rolled his eyes and started to answer, but then a harsh, brazen horn blast sounded in the darkness beyond the vale. Red torchlight bobbed up and down in the darkness beneath the trees, and the rumble and clatter of iron-shod feet filled the echoing gorge.

"I told you they wouldn't wait," Methrammar said. He stepped out and called to his soldiers, "Get ready, lads. We'll hold them here until the mountain itself cries for mercy. Iron Guards, take your position!"

The dwarves of Citadel Adbar raised a hoarse cheer and jogged forward, forming a wall of dwarven steel across the trail, with their right flank bending back along the stream-bed in case any foes came at them by climbing up the cold, rushing stream. Fitted head to toe in heavy dwarven plate, with big steel shields and deadly war axes, they were an unshakable obstacle in such a small space. The humans and half-elves of Silverymoon's Knights in Silver stood back a short distance, fighting afoot since there was no room for mounted troops. Dozens of seasoned Spellguards stood within their ranks, alongside a handful of the crusade mages sent to aid the beleaguered wood elves. It was their job to protect the dwarves under the brunt of the first assault.

The orc horns sounded again, along with a rising chorus of war cries and screams, and the ground shook with the thunder of the orc approach. The savage warriors appeared at the far bend of the Dagger's trail, rushing up the old road in a reckless, screaming mass. Gaerradh recoiled a step despite herself, and started searching for targets worthy of arrows.

An instant before the orc berserkers crashed into the dwarven line, the air itself seemed to lurch and thunder as dozens of demons teleported to the mouth of the Dagger, behind the Iron Guard dwarves.

The sheer violence of the collision staggered Gaerradh. The dwarves had expected demons to show up behind them, and with uncanny swiftness the powerful company turned turtle, sealing the road like a cork in a bottle. Demons shrieked and clawed, trying to tear into the dwarven ranks from behind or scour the sturdy fighters with their terrible spells of hellfire and destruction. But Silverymoon's Spellguards countered many of the spells or threw hasty defensive wards over the Iron Guards, while the rest of the knights-led by Methrammar, who brandished his sword and bellowed commands-charged against the vrocks, hezrous, and babaus who sought to surround and overwhelm the dwarves. The whole time, the orcs roared and hacked at the front line of the dwarf fighters, while the dwarves roared their own challenges back and hewed down orc berserkers like farmers threshing grain.

Gaerradh calmly nocked an arrow with a point of blessed cold iron, a weapon no demon could shrug off, and sighted carefully to make sure that she would not strike an ally. She spotted a hulking hezrou laying about itself with its long, powerful claws, froglike mouth gaping with needle-sharp teeth. She buried two arrows in its thick neck, her hands blurring with the speed of her shot. The creature coughed black blood and disappeared at once, teleporting away from the battle-wounded or dying, Gaerradh did not care. She sighted another demon and fired again, slipping her arrows through lightning-quick openings and shifting, battling figures as a master duelist might wield a rapier.

Silverymoon's knights counterattacked the demons who'd thought to surround the dwarven company with such ferocity that the foul creatures were forced to turn away from the Iron Guards. In turn, the demons hurled themselves against Methrammar's soldiers with blind fury, claws rending and jaws tearing, all the while blasting and scouring any warrior who stood against them with sickening blasts of evil power, great gouts of clinging hellfire, and billowing yellow clouds of poison vapor.

Human soldiers died screaming under the claws and fangs of the hellspawned monsters or staggered down into death, bodies charred, poisoned, or ruptured by demonic spells. Methrammar stood in the center like a shining silver tower, cutting down any fiendish creature who came against him and hurling blasts of his own magic at demons who avoided him. Around their high marshal the knights of Silverymoon rallied, and held.

Gaerradh shot and shot until her quiver was empty, then she slung her bow across her shoulder and drew out her paired fighting axes, looking for a way to help. The furious melee around the Iron Guard dwarves and the demon-battle among the Knights in Silver were fights she wanted no part of. She was at her best with her bow, and did not wear anywhere near enough steel for that sort of brawling. She held back and waited, axes in hand. Sheeril growled anxiously at her side.

"Patience, girl" Gaerradh told her.

A streaking ball of fire arced down from overhead to detonate amid the Iron Guard dwarves and their orc adversaries. The vale thundered with the sound of the blast, and dwarves and orcs flew through the air like ninepins. The dwarves in their heavy armor and defensive enchantments fared better than their adversaries. More fireballs streaked down into the battle, filling the mouth of the valley with orange and red blasts of flame that charred the very rocks black. Gaerradh threw herself behind a big boulder and ducked under her cloak, trying to stay out of the worst of the flames.

"Methrammar!" she cried. "The fey'ri are in the valley!"

"Up and at them, lads!" called Silverymoon's champion.

Shielded by his defensive magic, the fey'ri spells washed over Methrammar with no more effect than a gentle shower. Other Knights in Silver stood by as well, likewise protected by their spells and enchantments. Some of their comrades did not rise, but more stood than fell. Gaerradh quickly looked over to the open trail where the Iron Guards had been fighting. The dwarves lay in a great crumpled mound, scorched and still. She stood on the edge of black, dizzying despair, but then she saw the tangled mass of dwarves shift and move. Awkwardly, the heavily armored warriors of the Iron Guard contingent picked themselves up, disentangling themselves from their comrades, and set their shields and weapons right, reforming their turtle-like formation.

"Is that your best?" cried one dwarf sergeant, shaking his axe at the sky. "Is that all you can do?"

Gaerradh looked up, waiting for the fey'ri reply. A great company of the bat-winged demonspawn descended into the gorge, hurling spells and iron javelins at the Argent Legion troops below. There were hundreds of them, and the air between the walls of Daelyth's Dagger seemed to broil with magical energy and supernatural power. Dressed in armor of scarlet and gold, the daemonfey wheeled overhead like sinister angels.

Exactly where they were supposed to be.

"Let's see how you like the marksmanship of the wood elves," Gaerradh murmured.

A clear horn call echoed high up in the rocky walls of the vale, and the air between the gorge's sides was filled with a black storm of arrows. From a hundred perches high up on the cliffs overlooking the narrow valley, wood elf archers-including a score of Evermeet's best spellarchers, brought to the Lost Peaks only hours before-threw aside their concealment and loosed a terrible fusillade of arrows against the flying fey'ri warriors. Many of the archers were actually shooting down on the airborne fey'ri, as the daemonfey company had descended past the uppermost shelves of hidden archers in their rush to eradicate the dwarves and humans who held the valley mouth.

Fey'ri wheeled and fluttered in desperation, pierced again and again by the merciless onslaught. More than a few arrows blazed with holy spells or crackled with whispered enchantments as they sped on their way, finding fey'ri chests and throats. In a single deadly volley scores of the fey'ri died in midair, wings folding as they plummeted to the boulder-strewn floor of the valley.

Those who survived the first volley searched wildly for escape from the killing zone, but even fey'ri flying over the center of the valley were not more than one hundred yards from one wall or the other, and that was well within the wood elves' range. To descend was to brave even more arrows, to climb would be murderously slow, and to seek cover on either wall was to simply come closer to one nest of archers or another. So the fey'ri struggled and flew east along the vale, fleeing for the mouth of Daelyth's Dagger as they ran the terrible gauntlet. A few quickly worked spells to turn themselves invisible, or cover themselves in obscuring darkness, or simply teleport to safety. But with every beat of their wings, more daemonfey warriors crumpled and fell to the hard boulders below.

"It worked!" Gaerradh cried, elated.

She had thought Methrammar was insane to offer his soldiers as bait to draw the fey'ri spellcasters, but the high marshal's plan was proving to be nothing less than pure genius. Broken and pierced, the demonspawned warriors littered the valley floor.

Avoiding the arrows and debris clattering down from the ambush overhead, Gaerradh sprinted over to where Methrammar stood. Sheeril flashed at her heels, growling. The Knights in Silver had beaten off the worst of the demon assault, though a few savage skirmishes still continued around the edges of the company. Methrammar watched the fighting in the air, blood streaming from a nasty bite on his left arm and a sword-slash on his thigh.

"Great work, friends!" he cried. "That will teach them some wisdom!" He looked down as Gaerradh reached his side, and he offered her a fierce grin. "I knew that all we had to do was to get the fey'ri in front of wood elf bows!"

"What now?" Gaerradh called.

"We finish this," Methrammar said. "We can drive these orc marauders all the way to Hellgate Keep if we strike now." The son of Alustriel laughed with delight, and whirled away to dash up the road, brandishing his blade.

"To me! To me!" he cried. "We're taking this fight out of the valley and into their teeth, lads!"

The Knights in Silver rallied to Methrammar's cry, and the dwarves of the Iron Guard as well. With a deafening clamor of battle cries and roars of challenge, the warriors of Silverymoon and Adbar clattered forward, battering their way back down the Dagger's trail to meet the oncoming orcs head-on. Gaerradh shouted in martial fury and followed, axes in hand, Sheeril snapping and slashing to guard her back.

At dawn the orcs broke and fled.

Araevin plumbed the lambent depths of the Nightstar for what seemed like hours, examining the spells Saelethil had stored within, cataloging the deep reaches of hidden lore for later study, confronting the fiery secrets of high magic and mythalcraft preserved by the Dlardrageth high mage. He could sense Saelethil's cruel persona graven in the very substance of the high loregem, observing his fumbling explorations with a sneer of disdain, though he decided he did not care what the sinister apparition happened to think of his efforts. It would take some study yet before he could master many of the secrets waiting within the selukiira, but he knew enough to comprehend mythals and other such wards of high magic in a way he had never dreamed possible. Araevin suspected that some at least of the things Saelethil taught him had been forgotten-or shunned-by other high mages for many centuries.

More importantly, the Nightstar offered him the chance to turn the tables on his captors. Nurthel had likely thought that he posed no threat so long as his spellbooks remained out of his hands, but like the telkiira, the Nightstar itself also served as a spellbook. The three telkiira stored twenty spells between them, and the Nightstar by itself recorded more than seventy. Of course, many of the spells were difficult or impossible for him to cast until he acquired the correct materials-pinches of reagents, herbs, tiny charms carefully readied under the right conditions-but Araevin had found a number that he could manage. An hour's study sufficed to fill his mind with spells, ranging from insignificant cantrips to mighty dweomers he never could have managed before Saelethil's lore had burned itself into his brain. He was as well-armed as he could possibly hope, and then some.

When he was finally ready, Araevin touched the portal design in the Nightstar's chamber and instantly transported himself back to the silver hall of the ghost. The selukiira lay over his heart, the purple crystal embedded in his flesh and fused to his breastbone. He had considered leaving it exactly where he'd found it, but there was too much in the gemstone that he needed to know, and so he risked bringing it with him.

A moment of dizziness and darkness, and he stood by the wall in the mist-wreathed hall of the silver pillars. He felt strong and certain in a way that frightened him, doubting as he did the source of his strength. It was not simply a physical vitality, his mind was sharper, clearer, more focused, and the spells the high loregem had taught him girded his very thoughts like eldritch armor. He turned and faced the hall.

The daemonfey waited for him. Apparently the sudden operation of the portal had caught them off guard. Two of the fey'ri warriors cursed as they drew their blades, and the hissing mezzoloths rose up from crouches, seizing their iron tridents. Nurthel Floshin spun to face him, his single remaining eye alight with ire.

"Where have you been?" he demanded. "Where is the Nightstar?"

Araevin stepped away from the wall, carefully noting the positions of Nurthel and his band: A fey'ri spellblade and two more fey'ri swordsmen, standing close by Nurthel; the two surviving vrocks, skulking in the shadows to his right; and the two mezzoloths, standing up on his left.

Eight of them, he thought. And only one of me.

"Where have I been? The vault of Ithraides," he answered. "And as for the Nightstar, I have it."

Nurthel bared his pointed teeth and held out his tal-oned hand.

"Come here and give it to me," he hissed.

"No, I don't think I will," Araevin replied.

He looked over at the vrocks, gestured, and calmly spoke the words of a spell, banishing them back to the foul Abyss from which they had been summoned. The creatures clacked and hissed in rage, starting toward him, but before they had even taken wing azure fire flickered over their hideous forms and hurled them into their native dimension.

"He has broken the dominion spell. Subdue him at once!" Nurthel screamed.

He began a spell of his own, barking out the magical words, while the mezzoloths charged at Araevin from his left side and the fey'ri swordsmen approached more carefully from his right, sword points weaving in lazy circles before them.

Araevin darted to his right, avoiding the mezzoloths. One of the insectile creatures hurled its trident at him. The heavy weapon struck him on his left shoulder blade, spinning him around with the impact and throwing him to the floor. But the trident rebounded from his flesh, which was hardened to the denseness of granite by the spell he had cast on himself before activating the portal to return to the silver hall. He rolled to his hands and knees, looking up at the two fey'ri warriors closing in on him, and he spoke a word of power that blasted both swordsmen off their feet. Streaming blood at ears and nose, the armored daemonfey skidded across the floor and groaned, both struck senseless by the spell.

Nurthel finished his own casting and conjured a great golden hand of magical force that lunged for Araevin, seeking to seize hold of him. The second of Araevin's hastily prepared defenses came into play. As the mighty hand closed on him, Araevin's turning spell triggered, deflecting the glowing apparition back at Nurthel. The fey'ri sorcerer cried out, startled, as his own spell grappled him, fingers like a giant's arms curling around his golden armor and pinning him in place.

"Kill the paleblood!" he screamed in frustration.

Araevin gained his feet just in time for the other fey'ri spellcaster to hurl his own spell, an enchantment intended to mire his body and mind in a dolorous lethargy, dulling his reactions and slowing his efforts. He fought off the spell with a gesture and a thought, turning his attention to the two mezzoloths who stalked him. The creatures clawed at him, their foul talons scraping across his hardened skin and tearing gashes in his clothes without causing him serious injury. Still, Araevin knew that he could not ignore them for long. Sooner or later his spell would wear out, or the mezzoloths would give up on trying to tear him to pieces and instead just tackle him, and he could not allow the powerful creatures to pin him. He dodged back and immobilized one with a spell of holding, rooting it to the spot. The other stayed after him.

The fey'ri spellblade hurled a bolt of fire at Araevin that burned away the last of his turning spell. The creature was clever enough to anticipate the return of his own spell, ducking out of the way as his fire-bolt struck Araevin's spell shield and rebounded. In return, Araevin charred the fellow to a black husk with a terrible bolt of purple lightning. The smell of burning flesh and smoke filled the room. Nurthel continued to struggle against his own spell, snarling vile curses the whole time.

"I will dismember you myself!'' he hissed. "Your woman shall pay for your treachery, paleblood!"

With a tremendous effort, Nurthel managed to slip one arm free of the magical hand holding him. He brought it to his face to raise his eye patch, and Araevin glimpsed a bright green stone in the socket. Nurthel looked down at the golden force around his body and snarled a word. From his eye-gem leaped out a green ray that instantly disintegrated the hand holding him. He stumbled awkwardly to the ground, then looked up and grinned at Araevin, already beginning another spell.

The remaining mezzoloth finally managed to catch Araevin by the arm, its horrid pincers seizing him in an inescapable grip. Araevin cried out in dismay, not really hurt yet since his spell still protected him. The creature's mandibles clacked and dripped before his face, and it wrenched him half around as it sought to catch hold of his other arm. But Araevin steadied his mind with a conscious effort, and set his free hand on the monster's chitinous torso.

"Let go of me!" he snarled, and cast a disintegrating spell of his own at the yugoloth.

A brilliant flare of green energy gleamed from within the mezzoloth's thick carapace, shining forth at joints and eyes, and the creature abruptly vanished into a gray, stinking haze of dust.

Araevin shook himself free of the mezzoloth's drifting ash and spun to face Nurthel. The fey'ri lord hissed out the last sibilant whispers of his own spell and raised a globe of shimmering colors around himself. Araevin recognized the spell at once as a potent ward against many magical attacks. Nurthel advanced a couple of steps, and the crawling globe of color moved with him.

"You have done well to eliminate my warriors and demons," the fey'ri said. "You surprised me. I admit it. I don't know how you found the opportunity to conceal so many spells, but you will find that I am not so easily overcome as my fellows."

"Your confidence is misplaced," Araevin replied.

"Is it?" Nurthel smiled. "Not many spells can pierce this defense, as I am sure a mage of your accomplishment must know. And I observe that, while you may still have spells at your command, you are unarmed." He drew a short sword of dark, rune-scribed iron from a sheath at his side, and advanced another two steps toward Araevin. "Now, before I kill you, where is the Nightstar?"

Araevin did not bother to reply. Instead he began another spell, one he had learned from the telkiira stones. Speaking the words loudly and swiftly as he moved, he turned his hands in the proper manner.

Whatever Nurthel's confidence in his spell shield, the fey'ri sensed danger. He scowled and leaped forward, charging close to reach Araevin before the elf mage finished his spell.

Nurthel fell three steps short. Araevin completed his casting and seized the fey'ri's spell shield, inverting the magical protection on its caster. The magical power swirling around Nurthel froze, motionless, and contracted in upon him. Brilliant flashes of green and blue wrapped around him as the spell shield turned on its master, flaying his flesh with crawling arcs of power. Nurthel screamed and staggered one more step before collapsing at Araevin's feet, charred and smoking.

Araevin knelt slowly and took the fey'ri's sword from his crumbling fingers. He tugged open his shirt, and showed the dying sorcerer the Nightstar embedded in his chest.

"As I told you before," he grated, "I have the selukiira." Then he took Nurthel's own sword, shoved it through the fey'ri's throat, and watched as the daemonfey lord died. "That was for Grayth, you black-hearted hellspawn."

He took his wands back from the corpse, then strode out of the mist-filled hall. Ilsevele and Maresa were still in Sarya's hands, and more importantly, Sarya had control of a mythal stone. Saelethil had known many things about what could be done with unattended mythals. Thanks to the selukiira, Araevin did too.

The battle on the Lonely Moor began an hour before sunset.

It had taken the army of Evermeet most of the afternoon to climb up to the plateau and form themselves in their battle-order. As he had feared, the ground was too difficult for his cavalry to make much use of their mobility. They could fight mounted, but they could not use their speed to much effect, not without crippling their horses in unseen soft spots and deep, narrow gulches.

"I don't understand why the daemonfey did not defend the hillsides climbing up to the moor," Seiveril said to Fflar as the army advanced.

The enemy had chosen to make his stand several miles inside the boggy highland. The daemonfey army, only a thousand yards distant, waited before them, divided into a large center and two sweeping wings. Most of the soldiers in the ranks were orcs and ogres, a serried line of dark figures who hooted and jeered and shook their weapons at the approaching elves. Seiveril spotted numerous demons waiting amid the savage warriors, flexing terrible claws and snarling with needle-fanged jaws. The fey'ri waited behind their orc allies, a glint of gold and scarlet shining through the surging mass of tribal warriors.

"Maybe they just wanted us to have to walk a few more miles to get to them," Fflar suggested. "Better to fight a tired soldier than a fresh one. Or maybe they were afraid that we would encircle them by climbing up a different route while they were engaged in the defense of the old road." The big moon elf shrugged. "It hardly matters now. This is where the battle will be."

Seiveril wasn't entirely satisfied with that answer, but unless he was willing to halt and see what the daemonfey did in response, he would not find out for sure. He guessed that the enemy commander would expect him to draw near and take a defensive posture to invite attack. He hoped that a swift hammer blow at the very beginning of the fight might rout the orcs and ogres, leaving the daemonfey and their infernal allies to fight alone.

He took one last look at the ragged enemy formation, and raised his voice to call, "Companies, oblique to the left, march! Sound the signal!"

Marching in swift ranks, the elven companies veered toward the left flank of the daemonfey army. At Fflar's suggestion, instead of marching dead into the center of the enemy horde, Seiveril wanted to hurl all his strength against a portion of the army. He believed that his forces were swifter and more easily maneuvered than the dae-monfeys' unruly horde, and the enemy center and right would have difficulty moving to defend the left. Of course, that meant that his own right flank was exposed to the bulk of the enemy army, but he had prepared for that by building his right flank from the heaviest and most dependable of his footsoldiers, his own Silver Guards from the northlands of Evermeet and two stout companies of Evereska's veteran Vale Guards.

"That threw 'em," Fflar said with a smile. "They can't match that move."

The ragged ranks of orcs and ogres seethed, as if they were not sure what to do. Then the harsh voice of a brazen trumpet sounded from somewhere in the enemy center, and the orcs and ogres on Seiveril's right started to move forward and in, trying to wrap around behind the elf's right flank. But the difficult terrain the daemonfey had chosen for themselves worked against them. The savage warriors trying to move swiftly to get behind the crusade's right flank found that they had hundreds of yards of wet, boggy ground in front of them. The orc spearmen farthest out on the enemy right had no hope of keeping up with the intended wheeling movement, and fell behind at once, even though they were running at their best speed to try to keep their place.

"It's only bought us a few minutes," Seiveril replied.

The shining silver ranks of the elf infantry flowed over the uneven ground, rippling like a stream of steel pouring across the moorland. The gap between the armies narrowed moment by moment, closing by two hundred yards a minute at their swift pace. Seiveril glanced to the west. The sun had descended from the day's overcast and gleamed, orange and cold, in the gap between mountains and clouds. It was a spectacular sunset, really, the skies streaked with shadow and gold.

Corellon, let our work be done swiftly and well tonight, he prayed. Speed our arrows to our enemies, confuse and foil them so that no more of your sons may go to Arvandor before their time.

"Archers!" he cried. "Fire at your pace as we advance. Look for fey'ri and enemy banners."

Strong bands of wood elf archers marched alongside the spearmen and swordsmen of Evermeet. The battle of the cwm had taught Seiveril that his archers were the best answer to the fey'ri spellcasters. By salting his ranks with small companies of Evermeet's wood elves and the elite spellarchers, he would make it difficult for the fey'ri legion to attack from the air without enduring at least some danger of their own. With easy skill, the archers kept the pace of the advancing swordsmen and spearmen, pausing a half step every twelve heartbeats to loose an arrow at the army waiting ahead.

More than a thousand bows began to speak as the elven force drew close to its adversary, sending ragged flights of white arrows whistling through the space between the armies. The fire was nothing like what they might have achieved if they had halted, but elf archers trained long and hard at firing on the move, and from the first volley their deadly shafts began to work destruction among the ranks ahead.

The orcs and ogres of the daemonfey army screamed and bellowed in anger. Banners fell, their standard-bearers slain. Captains and sergeants choked on slender arrows fired by keen-eyed elf marksmen. Seiveril considered ordering a halt to allow his archers even more time to rake the enemy ranks, but then the daemonfey decided matters for him. Again the heavy trumpet blatted out its deep note, and the uneasy ranks of savage warriors shouted in delight, breaking into a clumsy, ragged charge.

"Halt and hold!" Seiveril cried. "Archers, break the charge! Mages, stand by for the fey'ri and demons. Don't waste your spells on orcs unless you have to."

The elven army slowed to a stop, heavy infantry in the front grounding their shields and setting their spears and swords, the archers redoubling their fire. The ragged volleys of the advance became a withering storm of white shafts. For one endless minute, the archers scythed down hundreds of orc berserkers and rampaging ogres as the feral warriors struggled to reach the elves across the rough moorland.

The first of the orcs and ogres reached the elf ranks, while the fey'ri legion took to the air, their wing beats as great and terrible as thunderclaps.

"Beware the daemonfey!" Seiveril called.

He readied his own counterspells and defenses, prepared to withstand a magical assault. But the fey'ri stayed out of reach and flew over his army, in one swift and precise movement sealing off his retreat.

The sun sank below the dark, cold mountains, and shadow fell over Seiveril and the army of Evermeet.

Sarya Dlardrageth watched her orcs and ogres hurl themselves upon the elves' army, breaking on the rampart of the elven line like a stormy sea unable to overcome a stone breakwater. In truth, she was impressed by the speed and handiness of Evermeet's army, as well as their sheer determination. She hadn't been sure that they had the stomach to press their pursuit to the point of another pitched battle, but so much the better.

"It's going poorly for the left flank," Mardeiym Reithel said. "Without our fey'ri behind it, I think they will break and run."

"No matter," Sarya replied. "The palebloods will have to turn to meet the attack of our center and right. And we are about to give them something else to worry about, anyway."

She paced across her Vyshaanti battle-platform, watching the fray closely. She was dressed in golden mail of exceptional quality and exquisite workmanship, a highly enchanted artifact she had found among the spoils of Nar Kerymhoarth. Sarya intended to lend her own mastery of the Art to the attack, and she was well prepared to do so.

The fey'ri, hovering well above arrow-reach, passed over the entirety of the elven army and alighted behind her foes. The sorcerers and warriors of her daemonfey legion began to attack the rearmost companies of the elven army, guarding themselves with potent spell shields as they scoured and blasted the elf ranks with their terrible spells and fire wands. She had deliberately ordered her captains to allow Evermeet's host to reach the moorland unchallenged in order to draw them well and truly into the open. The elven army was engaged on three sides by her left flank, her center, and the fey'ri.

The moment was as right as it would get.

Sarya laughed with malice and hissed, "Now we shall test the mettle of our enemies. Mardeiym, you will take command of the center. Send word to the right that I want them in the fight in five minutes, or I will personally slay every captain in that host."

The fey'ri general struck his fist to his chest and replied, "As you wish, Lady Dlardrageth."

Sarya made a gesture with her hand activating one of the useful enchantments in her battle-platform. Switching to the Abyssal tongue, she barked out her orders.

"Time to spring our trap," she grated. "All of you, follow me and slay to your hearts' content!"

Lurking in the shadows sheltering her from sight, hundreds of demons waited-virtually all who could transport themselves from place to place with a simple act of will. Many were survivors of the Battle of the Cwm, but better than threescore were newly summoned and bound to her service. Sarya spoke a command word, and her platform teleported from its place of concealment to a barren, sandy stretch on the unengaged left flank of the elven army. An instant later, the first of her demon marauders followed her, appearing from midair like a rain of horror.

Her army surrounded Evermeet's host on all four sides.

"Destroy them!" she cried, sweeping her arm at her foes.

Demons howled, barked, and laughed in response, and threw themselves against their prey.